Now shines the light.
Now comes the warm time.
Now is our hour.
Koshmar and Torlyri passed through the hatch side by side, with Thaggoran hobbling along right behind them, and then Konya, Harruel, Staip, Lakkamai, and the rest of the older males. Hresh, marching third from the end, threw his head back and bellowed the words louder than anyone:
Into the world now
Fearless and bold.
Now are we masters
Now shall we rule.
Taniane gave him a scornful look, as though his raucous singing offended her dainty ears. Haniman, that waddling plump boy, sticking close beside Taniane as he usually did, made a face at him also. Hresh stuck his tongue out at them. What did he care for Taniane’s opinion, or glassy-eyed Haniman’s? This was the great day at last. The exodus from the cocoon was finally under way; and nothing else mattered. Nothing.
The springtime is ours
The new time of light.
Yissou now gives us
Dominion and sway.
But then he passed through the hatch himself, and the outside world came rushing toward him and struck him like a great fist. He was overwhelmed despite himself, shaken, stunned.
That first time when he had crept outside it had all been too fast, too jumbled, a flash of images, a swirl of sensations, and then Torlyri had seized him and his little adventure was over, almost before it had begun. But this was the real Going Forth. He felt the cocoon and all that it represented dropping away behind him and plunging into an abyss; or else it was he that was falling into the abyss, drifting downward now into a vast well of mysteries.
He fought to regain his poise. He bit down hard on his lip, he clenched his fists, he drew slow, deep breaths. He looked around at the others.
The tribe was crowded together on the rocky ledge just outside the hatch. Some were crying softly, some were gaping in wonder, some were lost in deep silences. No one was unmoved. The morning air was cool and crisp and the sun was a great frightful eye high in the heavens on the far side of the river. The sky pressed down on them like a roof. It was a sharp hard color, with thick swirls of dust-haze making spiral patterns in it as the wind caught them.
The world stretched away before them, a vast empty desolation, open in all directions as far as Hresh could see: there were no walls, there was nothing at all to confine them. That was the most frightening thing, the openness of it. No walls, no walls at all! There had always been walls to press yourself against, and a roof over your head, and a floor beneath your feet. Hresh imagined that he could simply leap forward into the air beyond the ledge and go floating on and on forever, never striking anything. Even the roof that the sky made was so far above them that it scarcely provided any sense of boundary. It was truly terrifying to be staring into that immense open place.
But we will get used to it, Hresh thought. We will have to get used to it.
He knew how lucky he was. Lifetime after lifetime had gone by, thousands of generations of lifetimes, and all that while the People had huddled in their snug cocoon like mice in a hole, telling each other tales of the wondrous beautiful world from which the death-stars had driven their ancestors.
He turned to Orbin beside him. “I never thought I’d be seeing this, did you?”
Orbin shook his head — a tiny stiff movement, as though his neck had become a rigid stalk. “No. No, never.”
“I can’t believe we’re outside,” Taniane whispered. “Yissou, it’s cold! Are we going to freeze?”
“We’ll be all right,” Hresh said.
He stared into the gray distance. How he had yearned for even a single glimpse of the outside world! But he had resigned himself to his fate, knowing that he was surely destined to live and die in the cocoon, like everyone else who had existed since the beginning of the Long Winter, without ever having had that glimpse of the world of wonders that lay beyond the hatch, other than the fleeting ones they promised him for his naming-day and his twining-day later on. He was stifling in the cocoon. He hated the cocoon. But there had seemed to be no escaping the cocoon. Yet here they were beyond the hatch.
Haniman said, “I don’t like this. I wish we were still inside.”
“You would,” said Hresh scornfully.
“Only someone crazy like you would want to be out here.”
“Yes,” Hresh said. “That’s right. And now I’m getting my wish.”
From old Thaggoran he had learned the names of all the ancient lost cities: Valirian, Thisthissima, Vengiboneeza, Tham, Mikkimord, Bannigard, Steenizale, Glorm. Wonderful names! But what was a city, exactly? A great many cocoons side by side? And the things of nature out there: rivers, mountains, oceans, trees. He had heard the names, but what did they mean, really? To see the sky — just the sky — why, he had almost been ready to give his life for that, the day he had slipped past the sweet offering-woman and out the hatch. He nearly had given his life for that. Would Koshmar really have had him thrown out of the cocoon, if the Dream-Dreamer had not awakened just then? Probably she would. Koshmar was hard. Chieftains had to be. In another moment or two, but for the sudden outburst of the Dream-Dreamer, he would have been outside, yes, and the hatch forever shut behind him. That had been close, very close indeed. Only his luck had saved him.
Hresh had always thought of himself as gifted with unusual luck. He never spoke of it to anyone, but he believed he was under the special protection of the gods, all of them, not just Yissou, who protected everyone, or Mueri, who consoled the sorrowful, but also Emakkis, Friit, Dawinno, those more remote deities who governed the subtler aspects of the world. In particular Hresh thought Dawinno guided his days. It was Dawinno the Destroyer who had brought the death-stars upon the world, yes, but not in any malevolent way, he believed. He had brought them because they had needed to be brought. It was the time, and they had to come. Now the world would be resettled, and Hresh thought that he would have an important role in that; and so he would be doing the task that Dawinno had set aside for him. The Destroyer was the guardian of life, and not its enemy as simpler people believed. Thaggoran had taught Hresh these things. And Thaggoran was the wisest man who had ever lived.
Still, it surely had seemed to Hresh as if he had run out of luck that day of his attempt to go outside. If they had pushed him out the hatch into the world he so much yearned to see — and they would have, Torlyri or no, he was certain of that, the law was the law and Koshmar was a hard one — what would have become of him? Once outside, Hresh suspected, he wouldn’t have survived half a day on his own. Maybe three quarters of a day if his luck held out. But nobody’s luck was good enough to let him live long by himself in the outside world. Only Torlyri’s quickness had spared him — that and the mercy of Koshmar.
His playmates had mocked him when they learned of what he had done. Orbin, Taniane, Haniman — they couldn’t understand why he would have wanted to go outside, nor why Koshmar had not punished him for it. They had thought he was trying to kill himself. “Can’t you wait for your death-day?” Haniman asked. “It’s only another twenty-seven years.” And he laughed, and Taniane laughed with him, and even Orbin, who had always been such a good friend, made a jeering face and punched him in the arm. Hresh-full-of-questions, Hresh-who-wants-to-freeze, they called him.
No matter. They forgot about his little exploit in a few days. And everything was altered now. The tribe was truly going forth. For the second time in just a few weeks Hresh was seeing the sky, and not just a glimpse this time. He would see the mountains and the oceans. He would see Vengiboneeza and Mikkimord. All the world would be his.