"Give me the pretty thing," Karak grumbled pettishly.
The Kapaka stretched up, offered the coal-dark bird the silver brooch. The Raven took it in his beak.
"I swallowed the sun," he muttered. "You would think people would remember that."
"Oh, we remember," the Huntress said. "We remember that we had to slit you open before you would give it up."
"How rude," Karak said crossly, and, lifting his great wings, flew off into the forest. Perkar could hear the heavy beat of his wings long after losing sight of him.
"Is that true?" Perkar asked. "Did he really do those things?"
The Huntress smiled. "The world was much different in those days. Perhaps they never really happened at all."
"What do you mean?"
"The only difference between a story and the truth is how often the story is told," she replied.
Perkar didn't understand that, either, but he didn't say so. He was used to gods; they lived everywhere. He was not used to gods who claimed to have created the world or swallowed the sun. That seemed ridiculous, beyond the power of anything. Yet these were the old gods, the gods of the mountain, rarely spoken of, rarely sung about. After all, better to sing about the god of your pasture who would hear you, consider your requests.
These Mountain Gods frightened him, but they fanned a flagging spark, as well. His dreams were not just fantasy. Gods who could swallow the sun would have weapons to match their power. Such weapons could slay other gods, could they not?
The Huntress led them down the steep trail, and eventually to a meadow, nestled deep in the mountainside. The moss there was a carpet; Perkar's feet sprang upon it as they walked. In the center of the meadow was a tree, its girth greater than that of his father's damakuta. The tree—it looked like an oak—soared upward, enormous, shadowing out the sun entirely.
"Here," the Huntress said. "Here we wait."
Wait they did. Once or twice, Apad made overtures to a conversation, but the words died, eaten by the silence the magnificent tree seemed to cast about itself. Birdsong rang out, but it was far away, the memory of song. The tree seemed to be the still point of the world. So still it was that, despite himself, Perkar began drifting in and out of dozing, his head lolling over onto one shoulder, then jerking awake. Attempting to remain alert, he contemplated the tree, walking over to its spreading base, and gazing up its trunk, trying to count the layers of branches he could see, guess those he could not. Soon enough, however, he returned to sitting, and his eyelids began to droop once more.
All of his companions seemed to be having similar troubles; only the Huntress seemed alert, crouched in the clearing, unmoving as a statue, bright quick eyes darting here and there. The Alwat, Perkar suddenly realized, were nowhere to be seen.
A moment arrived, and Perkar no longer felt sleepy. The tree, the moss, everything around them suddenly unfocused, blurred into colors without much form and no detail. At first he believed the trouble was with his eyes, blurring vision to trick him into sleep; but then he heard the gasps around him. The world had gone strange, had faded. Perkar wondered if it would return. His mind turned over a conversation his father had had, long ago, with a shamaness who came to visit them, a relative of his mother's. She said something that reminded Perkar of this blurring. "The world of gods and the world of Humans is the same world," she said. "They are both like a damakuta; but the world of gods is like the whole damakuta and the world of Humans is the paint on the outside of it. We live in that paint, see only what is painted there. The gods are visible to us sometimes—they are like carvings on the beams of the damakuta, and if the painter painted those carvings we know that they are there. Of course, the gods may choose to paint and then unpaint themselves, when it suits them…"
A god was painting himself, and in doing so he was smearing the paint already present.
This went on for longer than was comfortable, but finally the greens and browns congealed into what they were before: the great tree, the meadow, the surrounding forest and cliffs.
Save that now Balati, the Forest Lord, was among them. He stood where the Huntress had been crouching; she was gone.
At first glance, the Forest Lord was mostly Bear, an enormous shaggy mass reared up on hind legs. But Perkar quickly realized that he was not a bear, but something older than bears or men or Alwat, something that they were all dim reflections of. Huge, furred, with legs and paws like the boles of trees. Like the Huntress he was horned, but these were not horns of wood; they were great elk antlers, that measured, from tip to tip, more than Mang's body length. A powerful smell of black soil and beast permeated the air, nearly overpowered him with its intensity. Equally overpowering was the Forest Lord's single eye. It was bird and panther, deer and snake, flashing, changeable. Compelling and frightening. Its companion was a dark and empty socket.
"Lord Balati," the Kapaka said, and he bowed. The towering figure regarded him impassively.
"Balati," the Kapaka continued, after a suitable interval, in which Perkar found himself on his knees, as well. "We sing songs of you, down in the pasturelands, in the valleys, in our hill holdings. We remember you well, and the ancient pacts you made with our fathers and their fathers."
Balati shifted back his shoulders, and a low growl issued from him, so profound that it was more a rumbling in the earth than a real sound. And yet there was sense in it; there were words.
"It is good," Balati said. "It is good that you remember. Tell me of something. Tell me something you remember."
There was silence; Perkar saw that all of his companions were bowed down, Eruka on both knees, Apad, grim-faced, on only one. Both looked as frightened as he felt.
"Eruka!" the Kapaka prompted, after a moment. "Sing an Ekar!"
Eruka looked up slowly, as if he were having difficulty understanding his king's command. Perkar feared he would not sing— that his voice would be as frozen as his body had been when the Wild God spoke to them. But after a moment, Eruka cleared his throat.
Among roots and branches
On and on I dreamed
One day like the next
In the tall birches
In the white rustling aspen
In the deep bottoms
In bright pools
On and on
One day like the next…
Eruka's voice shook at first, uncertain. But the songs of birds seemed closer now, seemed to fly beneath and between his song, supporting it, lifting it higher. He gathered confidence.
Ages passing, on I dreamed
Hooves and claws
Coming and going
In the hard wind from the ice
Dreaming in the sweet southern wind
Age to age
One age like the next…
It was a song that Perkar had never heard, and it was beautiful, captivating. Eruka sang of Balati in the endless forest, walking about his mountain, of the legions of gods in the forest who were both a part and not a part of him. The song went on like that for many, many stanzas. For hours, it seemed. Then, finally, the words became more familiar, as it told of the coming of the Alwat and finally of Human Beings. After that, Eruka sang of the first meeting of Humans and the Forest Lord, of trees chopped down for pasture, of bargains made. When Eruka finally finished, Perkar found himself still listening, still waiting for an ending. But there was not one, of course. There was no ending. But one verse—a brief, minor thing in the course of the Forest Lord's Epic—one verse glittered to Perkar like silver to the Crow God. It stayed there, shining, repeating itself:
Dreaming on and on
I watched my brother grow bitter
Grow gluttonous
Humans fed his appetite
Fed his dark, voracious desire
Flowing from the root of our mountain
Our cradle, our birthplace
Bitter my brother, Rivergod, Changeling
Took his hunger seaward
Dreaming on and on
Growing and changing
Each day more ravenous
Than the last
Dreaming on and on