Hresh held out his hands to the mother, to the father, to Torlyri, as the rite required. Then he went around to each of the women in the group, one by one, even his mother Minbain, touching them on each cheek in a sort of blessing. Torlyri had never seen that done: it was something that Hresh must have invented, unless he had revived some ancient rite described in his books. He came last to Torlyri and touched her in the same way. His eyes were shining. What a splendid moment this must be for him, she thought: this boy-chronicler of ours, this strange little Hresh-full-of-questions, who seemed now both man and child, man in a child’s body. She thought of him that day at the cocoon’s hatch when she had seized him before he could flee, and remembered the terror in his eyes when she had told him that he must be taken before Koshmar for judgment. How utterly different everything had become for them all, since that day! And here was that same Hresh, in a land far from the cocoon, proclaiming a new Thaggoran to the world with all the seriousness of the old one.
Afterward Hresh took her aside and said, “Did I do it well? Did I do it properly?”
“You were magnificent,” she told him; and, impulsively, she swept him up against her bosom, holding him dangling off the ground, and kissed him twice.
He seemed ruffled by that. He gave her an odd look when she set him down, and preened his fur with a distinct attitude of offended dignity. But when she smiled and put her hands to his shoulders in a more seemly caress he looked less irked. No one could stay irritated at Torlyri for long.
“There’s another ceremony we must do soon,” Hresh said.
“Nettin’s baby, you mean.”
“That too. But I meant one for me.”
“And what is that?” Torlyri asked.
“My naming-day,” he said. “I will be nine, you know.”
She struggled against laughter, could not suppress it, let it finally burst out.
Hresh stared at her, offended all over again.
“Did I make some joke?”
“No, there was no joke, Hresh, nothing funny at all — but — but—” She started to laugh again. “I’m sorry. It’s wrong of me.”
“I don’t understand,” Hresh said.
“Your naming-day. You are the old man of the tribe; you have just given a child a name yourself. Without even having had your own naming-day! Oh, Hresh, Hresh, these are truly strange times!”
“Nevertheless,” he said. “It is the proper time for me.”
She nodded. “Yes. You’re absolutely right, Hresh. I’ll speak to Koshmar about it this afternoon. Which day should it be, do you know?”
Sadly he said, “I’ve lost count, Torlyri. In these weeks and months of wandering. I think it may have gone past already. Some days back.”
“Well, no matter. I’ll speak to Koshmar,” she told him.
What might be the correct procedure for a naming-day in this new life was a puzzle to Torlyri and Koshmar both. There had been no occasion to perform such a rite since the Going Forth.
In the cocoon times the naming-day, which marked a child’s formal entry into adult life, had been one of the three sacramental days on which it was permissible for a member of the tribe to pass the threshold and briefly enter the outer world. Accompanied only by the offering-woman, the trembling nine-year-old would step through the hatch, proclaim the name that he or she had chosen to wear thenceforth, and — though dazed, astounded, by the view of the cliff and the river and the open vault of the sky, by the clutter of bleached old bones, and by the intoxicating impact of fresh cold air — perform the appropriate offering to the Five. A few years later would come a second rite, the twining-day, to mark the formal acknowledgment of maturity of soul; and the next time that most tribe members would go outside would be at the time of their death, when if they were strong enough to walk they would be escorted to the hatch by the offering-woman and the chieftain or sometimes the senior warrior, and otherwise would simply be carried out by the offering-woman and left to await the wind and the rain.
But how could Hresh go outside the cocoon for the rites of his naming-day, if he was outside it to begin with?
The old rite had become meaningless. But the naming-day was important. Once again, Torlyri realized, it had fallen to her to invent a rite. There was something strange and a little troublesome about that — simply making up a rite. Was that how all the old rites had come into being? she wondered. Invented by priestesses on the spot, or the old man, to meet some sudden need? Not decreed by a god at all?
The god, she told herself, speaks through the offering-woman.
So be it. She excused herself from Koshmar and went apart, back to the lake of the water-strider, and knelt there to Dawinno and asked for guidance. And Dawinno gave her a rite. It sprang clear and bright into her mind.
The water-strider appeared once again, while she still knelt there. She looked to it fearlessly, smiling as it unfolded its vast flimsy self. You could not harm me if you wished to, she thought. But even if you could, I would smile at you this day, and you would not do me injury. The strider, weaving slowly about at its great height, studied her somberly. And then it seemed to her that the strider smiled to her, and took pleasure in her presence there.
She nodded to it.
“The Five be with you, friend,” she said. And the strider laughed; but the laugh seemed more gentle than it had been that other time.
As Torlyri returned to the camp she saw a flock overhead of the creatures that Thaggoran had named bloodbirds, which had swarmed upon them more than once far back in the plains, trying to pierce the marchers with their beaks. She remembered their frightful swoops, their screeching cries, the wounds they had inflicted. But this time she felt no cause for alarm. She looked upon them unafraid, as she had with the water-strider, and they stayed far above, circling without swooping.
This is the proper way to dwell in this place, she told herself. Meet these creatures without fear, meet them if you can with love, and they will do you no harm.
“Now, this is the rite,” she said to Koshmar. “I will go off with him into the forest, deep, far from the tribe, to a place where we are all by ourselves with only the creatures of the forest around us. That will be like leaving the safety of the cocoon in the old days. And he will make the offerings to the Five, and then he must go before some creature of the wilderness, it makes no difference which one, a snake, a bird, a water-strider, anything, so long as it is a creature not like us: and he will go to it in peace and tell that creature his new name.”
Koshmar looked troubled.
“What purpose does that have?”
“It says that we are people of the world and in the world, and that we live among its creatures again. That we come to them in love, without fear, to share their world with them now that the winter is over.”
“Ah,” said Koshmar. “I see.” But Torlyri could tell from the way she said it that she was not convinced.
Even so, it was the time of Hresh’s naming-day, and there was no cocoon for him to step out from, and this was the new rite that Torlyri had devised, and she was the only offering-woman the tribe had. So who was to say that the rite was incorrect? Torlyri gave Hresh instruction in what he was to do and they set forth together at dawn, just the two of them. He had an offering-bowl in his hand and as they walked he gathered blossoms and berries to give to the gods.
“Tell me when we are at the place,” he said.
“No, you must tell me,” said Torlyri.
His eyes were aglow with life and energy. It seemed to Torlyri that she had never known anyone so much alive as this boy, and her heart overflowed with love for him. Surely the force of the gods flowed in his veins!
“Here,” Hresh said.
It was dark in the place he had chosen, for the trees were stitched together high above by networks of vines thicker than a man’s arm. The ground was soft and damp. They could have been the only people in the world.