“Perhaps it is you who are swayed. By a charlatan and his boiled blood.  By a darkness in your heart that feeds on revenge for your mother – “

Kir leapt to his feet.  “I do this to honor her and protect the innocent like her!  You could not even save her! “

“ENOUGH!”  Nemar reared up like a bear.   “I will care for her when I reach Nara.  You are my son and my subject.  You will do as I say!  

Kir stared at his father’s unblinking eyes – no regret, no doubt, no tears.  Just determination, as hard as the river stones.  He left without a word.  His thoughts were as soft and rapid as his footsteps – the stride of a hunter tracking his quarry.    

·           

Kir intently stirred his bowl of blood.  The black syrup clung stubbornly to the sides. 

“Enough?”  he asked.

Fawnwa took a long pull of smoke from the fire pit before looking into the bowl.  “More.”

Kir drew his hunting knife. “How much?”

“More.”

Kir hissed through clenched teeth as he traced the blade across his chest.  The wound drew to a fresh bead and then flowed.  Nausea washed over him as he milked his blood into the bowl. 

“You drain me too far, “ Kir warned.  “I will need my strength tomorrow.”

Fawnwa squashed a few ditry rags against Kir’s gash.    “Fear not, Second-son.  With this palor you will have strength aplenty.  Did you bring a piece of your brother?”

Kir held out a thin lock of hair, which Fawnwa stirred into the blood with his finger.  “This will allow you to track him.  You will smell him as the wolf smells the deer.”

“And I will be able to keep pace with him, even with the shaman’s blessings?”

           Fawnwa peeled the sticky rags back from Kir’s chest and twisted them tight.  Crimson spiraled down into the bowl.  “You will move like the wind, every step as five.”

Fawnwa’s hands hopped like small birds as he pinched spices and scattered them into the blood.  The silence of his work was broken only by his ragged sniffling.         

Kir’s mind drifted through the smoke, thinking of the face in the tapestry –  

He jerked as something heavy scrapped next to him.  The bucket of blood Fawnwa had set down was immense, threatening to spill, and it’s dark depths set Kir’s head spinning again.  

Kir managed to ask, “How many cattle did you sacrifice?”

“Five.  And some other . . . things.”

Fawnwa’s creeping smile worried Kir.  “What else – “ 

 “A little late for questions now, Second Son.  But no, no human blood.  Now you must leave.   The rest I do alone.  The palor will be waiting outside tomorrow morning.”

Kir slowly gained his footing.  “Fawnwa, why did you join in this venture?”

 “The same reason as you – to prove your father wrong.”

Kir’s anger stirred.  “I take a great risk in trusting you.  If any were to learn of this plan, I would be cast from the village.  If you betray me–“

“ – yes yes, you’ll kill me.”  Fawnwa snorted more palor, then laughed soberly.  “I know the dangers, Second-son.  Perhaps better than you do.”

“Then you know not to bait me.”  Kir left the magug-na without closing the door.

            Outside the husky shack, the crisp forest air helped clear his head.   The breath that streamed from his mouth was cleaner than smoke, more brittle.  The first snow would not fall until after the Bearer had brought the Child into the village, but Kir could feel winter crouched somewhere beyond the trees, waiting.

            Kir needed no torch that night; the village throbbed with light visible even from Fawnwa’s lonely outpost.  No magug-na was without at least a dozen candles; the magug-ka glowed violet with purple flames specially cast for Codan eve.  Voices rose and fell like waves as groups drifted from building to building, sharing food, giving thanks.  Kir slunk in the shadows, hiding from the reverie even as he slipped into Anzla’s magug-na.        

His scurried entrance startled her into gasping, dropping her spoon.  For an instant Kir saw her as all other men must – tawny skin, hair flowing to her knees, eyes like mountain pools.  Then she laughed at his foolishness, and her own.  The sound cut through any remaining palor smoke within him.  He saw her then as only he could, as his betrothed, and the rippling of her voice banished from him, for the first time in many days, any thoughts of the Codan.

            She gracefully retrieved the spoon, wiped it clean, and set back to the boiling stew pot with a smirk.  “Oh dark bandit, you bear a resemblance to one I once knew.  Alas, I have not seen him for many days.  I fear he has run off with another.”

            “Well, perhaps I might stand in his place, just for tonight.”  

            His words broke the spell: the thought of the night, and what lay coming tomorrow, wavered her mouth and clouded her eyes.  Kir saw the wound, was helpless to prevent it, and so he hid from her pain in a kiss.

            When they released her eyes were clear, though not as bright as before.  “Come sit, “ she gently took his hand, “ the lamb is almost done.”

            They ate lamb stew with mint and pine nuts, and tart gooseberries mashed into jam and spread on slabs of bread.  He listened to her talk of holiday gossip – who was bribing the shamans to enchant their Codan lights, who was scheming for a Codan betrothal by claiming pregnancy.   Her biting humor drew deep laughter from them both and swept high their spirits.  She lived alone, her parents having died of illness three Codans ago, so there was no one to impede when their laughter drew their hands together, Anzla leading him to her sleeping flat and slowly peeling off his shirt.  Her face crinkled at the raw valley on his chest, but she said nothing, lightly traced it with her finger, kissed it.  He guided her mouth to his, and soon they were entwined.

            Afterward, her fingers kept straying to the cut.  “Did you do this yourself?”

            “Yes.”

            She nodded, biting her lip.  “Will you tell me what you plan to do?”

            “No.”  He felt her stiffen, and he brushed his fingers along her thigh in apology.  “It’s better if you don’t know.  It is against my father’s wishes – “

            She flicked his earlobe.  “I know that much.   What do you take me for, Second-Son?  A fool? Some simple girl you can ravage and then sneak away from in the middle of the night?”

            He kissed her between the eyes.  “I take you as my betrothed.”

            Her tears were sudden and hot as they landed against his cheeks. “Then stay – “

He pulled her close, brushed at her tears on his face –

–  and suddenly he was a boy again, his own tears streaking his face as he stood screaming in the doorway of the magug-ka.  The storm had appeared from nowhere.  He had been stomping green footprints in a melting snow cover when the wind suddenly pelted him with chunks of ice.  He scampered to the magug-ka, his vision streaked as the snow whipped whirlwinds through the village.   He had just gotten to the doorway when he heard his mother’s voice, tossed and torn by the wind.  She emerged like a ghost through the runny white veil, arms stretched out in snow-blindness, reaching for help.  Reaching for him. 

Kir cried out, and she stumbled toward his voice.

But something approached behind her, a grey shadow that seemed to drive the snow forward.  The shadow loomed, three times as tall as her, and it was gaining as she slowed.  Kir charged forward but he was stopped, his father’s rough hands clamping him back, and all he could do was scream as a pair of cobalt eyes opened behind her, almost on top of her, and through the storm emerged a vortex paw, each claw as thick as a tree, and the paw swallowed his mother in its winds, ripping her back and flinging her high in the air –

Anzla was stroking him, mingling their tears together with her fingers.  She smiled at him – so beautifully, so sadly – and any doubts were swept away.  The Walker has already stolen one from me.  It will not take you as well. 

She saw the decision settle across his face.  “Promise me, “ she whispered.  “Promise me you will come back.”

Kir kissed her instead, their tongues flickering so that their bodies flamed again,  glowing coals stoked to a steady burn, blazing so long that each of them forgot how many times the other cried out, until slowly the light dimmed, the heat ebbed, and they pulled blankets over each other without knowing and were asleep.

 When Anzla woke in the morning, he was gone.

·           

The village slept as Kir crept.  By the time he reached Fawnwa’s magug-na the forest was backlit in the heavy grey-blue of dawn.  His pack leaned against the murky brick.  Kir rifled past the clothing, the rope, the jerked deer-meat, until his hand closed upon a small, hot jar.   The palor. 

The jar was narrow-necked, corked with a stopper of compressed bark.   No sound as he shook it – all the blood-letting from yesterday had been boiled to smoke and sealed in.  The jar was enchanted, almost burning to the touch, so that the smoke could not condense back to liquid. 

Kir hefted it, trying to gauge an amount, but the jar seemed as if it would float right from his hand.  He carefully worked his fingernails at the stopper until he had purchase, then brought the jar to his nose and pulled the stopper out. 

            Like drowning on land.  His face curdled – couldn’t see, couldn’t breath.  Kir somehow managed to re-stopper it before falling to the ground as the smell burrowed through his nose.  Animal blood, his blood, who else’s? He retched, but only vapor came out.  The land whirled out from under him, and he ground his face against cold tufts of grass.

            When he gingerly tried to stand again, the first beams of the sun were spearing across the horizon.  Kir was uncertain he could walk, let alone run, but he slowly took his first step –

            – and the world changed.  As he stepped forward so did the trees, each branch at the ready.  Everything around him had awoken – alert rocks, attentive sky.   The ground rumbled from the crunchings of pebbles.  The wind ran its fingers through his braids, so that he could feel its caress against each individual strand of hair.  And beneath all of this, the scent of his brother: an odor of fleet passing, the dampness of freshly-burst moss-spores, hair and sweat and a golden purpose, sweet like honeysuckle  -

            When Kir next stopped, Fawnwa’s magug-na was far behind him.  He realized he could not feel the jar’s heat through his own burning – his hands shining, his breath visible not as frost but as steam.   He stripped off his outer shirt, flesh blazing against the cold air, and wrapped the jar in the shirt for protection.  He could barely stow it in his pack before the palor pulled him deeper into the forest.

            This was how morning passed: fits and bursts of something beyond speed, as though he were liquid flame.  Twigs crackled as he brushed by.  He could hear his blood crashing with each stride.  Time got lost in the boil, and the sun’s beams coalesced into a saffron haze that washed pale the bark of bare branches.  And between those, furry shadows: encroaching fir trees, evidence of his progress east –

            A flash of movement.

            Kir’s nose twitched, the odor of exertion almost yanking him off his feet.  He froze, but still his eyes surged forward, like a hawk zooming between the trees, color and shape leaping out – steady gait, slender back, riverstone around his neck –

            Lernu.

            Kir set off again, tracking parallel to his brother.  This proved difficult – Lernu’s scent gripped at Kir, once almost dragging him down a hill.  He slowed his pace into some form of restrained jog.  Still, he was forced to hide several times as Lernu stopped and peered back at Kir’s stray noises.  Kir settled back even further, trusting the power of the palor but not happy to lose sight of his brother. 

            Still, there was nothing else he could do - the palor was barely controllable.  Lernu glided between the trees; Kir smashed through.

              And then a true smashing, as the forest halted and the smell died.  Kir’s momentum abruptly threw him to the ground.  The palor burning within him had gone out, and his whole body shook with an intense cold. 

            Trembling, Kir dug at his pack, thinking this is what my mother felt, when the Walker seized her.  Barren.   Powerless.  A memory of Anzla’s tears from last night.  And then, as he pried the lid from the palor jar and pulled the rough smoke down his throat: after tonight, no one will ever feel that way again.

            And so Kir followed his brother the rest of the day.  The land began to roll – gentle crests and troughs of pine and hunter green, broken only by patches of rocky soil as wide as a magug-na.  Kir tried to ignore their similarity to gigantic footprints.

            As if in response to the grimness land, late afternoon cooled under clouds of dusky pearl.  Soon the sky was fragile, as if any movement would break free rain or snow.  Or something else.  

            Kir had just finished his third dose of palor when his ears prickled.  Even with Lernu one valley away, Kir could hear the cessation of his brother’s running, the quickening of his breath.  He sees something.

            Kir moved as quietly as he could, reaching the top of the ridge in two steps.  He instantly spied Lernu and the tree at which he stared.  There, within the Y-crook of two large roots, wiggled a bundle of linen – the same linen the Child had been wrapped in before being set adrift at Nara-na last year.          

Kir thundered down the slope.

Lernu stared as his wild-eyed brother crashed into the valley.   “Kir, “ he began in disbelief.

Kir launched himself the width of the valley, spearing into Lernu.  As they both hit the ground, Lernu’s bafflement vanished under his Bearer responsibility.  He twisted away from Kir’s clawing hands and lunged toward the child.  Kir snagged Lernu’s ankle and dumped the Bearer face-first to the ground.  Kir jumped atop him, managed to pin one arm down.  With his free arm, Lernu lashed blindly at his brother’s face. 

Without thinking Kir whipped his knife from his belt and pressed it between Lernu’s shoulder blades.  “Stop,” he said calmly.  “On your life and mine, stop now.”  

Only once the blade had rasped a bloodless line down his spine did Lernu quit struggling.   

Kir bound his brother’s wrists quickly.   As he moved on to the ankles, Lernu spoke.  “There is no honor in this, Kir.  You cannot claim the Bearer-right through force.  Even if you kill me – ” 

Kir snickered as he tested-tugged the knots.    “I’m not killing you.  I’m saving the village.” 

His brother secured, Kir turned to face the Codan infant.  

The Child was unearthly in its silence.  A seemingly normal baby – plump body, downy skin, indeterminate gender.  Its sex was a mystery to all, for it had never been disrobed.  There was no need to clean it –  it neither sweated nor ate. 

That’s not true, Kir thought.  You’re a cannibal.  You consumed my mother, and all the others who have died for you –   

Its eyes . . . too large for its head, like an owl hatchling, and engulfing blue, cobalt blue, like the eyes that had opened behind his mother in the storm . . .

Kir roughly grabbed his brother.  “Its eyes glow!”

 “The shamans instruct that the eyes are always thus when the Child is first discovered.”  Lernu spoke reluctantly.  ”The eyes calm upon human contact.”

Kir’s mind churned.   The same eyes – “This is why the Walker can never find the Child within the village  . . . we change it, take it away from . . . “

 . . . and on the heels of that, a revelation. “The Child is the Walker’s infant, isn’t it?”   Kir asked. 

 Lernu said nothing.     

“I was right!  The old legends are all lies.  The Walker just wants its offspring back!  If we turn over the Child, all this will end.”

Lernu’s face contorted.  “What are you saying?”

“We will reunite them, parent and child.  This will be the last Codan.”

“Kir, you doom us!”  Lernu thrashed against his bonds.  “If you wish to be Bearer, than so be it.  Leave me if you have to, but you must take the Child back to the village.”

“There will be no more Bearers, ever.”       

“You have no right to make such decisions!  If the child is not touched by nightfall, the Walker will certainly find it, and both of us . . .” Then, seeing his words had no impact on his brother, Lernu shouted, “With this act, you kill Anzla!”

”But it’s the lies you follow that killed mother, isn’t it?”   Kir answered.   His gaze fixed on the Bearer-stone still hanging around Lernu’s neck. He remembered Lernu’s words – Mother will be with me as I run . . .

Kir yanked the stone from his brother’s neck and placed it around his own.  “You don’t deserve to have her with you.”

Kir settled himself where he could easily watch both Lernu and the Child.  The confirmation of all he had done seemed to cast a quieting pall across the forest.  The sun continued its downward swing as Kir waited in the calm, blocking out Lernu’s voice by shutting his eyes.  This will all be over soon, Kir thought wearily.  He vaguely realized the palor had worn off, but he didn’t feel the telltale tremble of its withdrawal. Instead, there was a warmth settling across his chest, spreading from the Bearer-stone – not at all like the palor, but rather as if he’d picked up a sleeping animal and pulled it close, as if it were heated from within, as if it were alive –

            Kir . . .

            The voice sounded like high spring days, hand in hand with her as they had walked along the banks of the Naew, reeds brushing at his cheeks and the smell of lily covering her like perfume as he lay, her arms cradling him, her touch lulling him deeper, defenses down and palor-drained, and then he was crying without sound, crying from so deep within him that tears could not hold his sorrow.  She held him as his body sobbed. 

Later, he tried to speak but found his throat locked.

I can hear you, Kir.  Somewhere far behind her voice, heavy waves rolled but never broke.

He thought, I miss you so much.

I know.

I could have reached you, if I’d just been stronger . . .

Fingers of mist combed his hair.  Kir, you could not change what happened.  Pattern pervades.  Leaves unfurl when the Child departs for Nara, and they fall as Codan approaches. 

Soon I will end the seasons.

No, she said sadly, and the sorrow in her voice snapped Kir’s eyes open.  He was again sitting in the valley, but her final words still echoed clearly into his ear.   Without season, there is only eternity.  

            The chill of imminent night was settling in.  All around, twilight had crept in through the pine needles.  Both his brother and the infant were vague forms –  the infant giving indistinct kicks, Lernu still on the ground but struggling with focused movement.  Even without light Kir could see the glistening wrist that his brother had rubbed raw in an attempt to slip from the rope. He scrambled to Lernu, seized his arm before he free himself further.   

            “You saw her, didn’t you?”  Lernu demanded as Kir re-tied the rope.  “What did she tell you? Did she praise you, for this scheme of yours – “

            Kir suddenly cracked his brother across the face with an open palm.  Lernu rocked back, blanching with fear – too much fear.

            Not at my blows.  At something else.   Kir turned.

              A pale blue sheen was spilling over the lip of the valley.  Weak streaks of light,  strengthening as their source approached.  The wind began kicking pine needles down the ridge in pattering swells.  A sound filled the night – something between whispered speech and growling.  Carried on the wind, the touch of this almost-voice dropped Kir to his knees as it sucked the heat from his body.  Lernu sputtered vapor, convulsing against his bonds.  The Child didn’t seem to feel the cold, but it did abruptly quit stirring, the way a small animal does when something big approaches.  Prone alertness – not a kick or a wail, even as the storm broke and the Walker crested the ridge.

            It bowled down the valley with a roar.  Through a haze of gooey snow, Kir could make out little of its shape – a body of shifting form, hunkering but still taller than the trees, changing as the storm did, limbs alternately transparent and impenetrable.  Even as its face flickered – wolf’s head devoid of hair, whisked to ice-encrusted corpse stare, whipping to matted fur and thousands of rain-shard teeth – throughout these transformations, the eyes never wavered.  The cobalt orbs flashed as they spied the child, then narrowed at Kir and Lernu.  

            The winds lashed hail at the brothers.  Through the din, Kir heard the skinned wolf slavering as it charged forward.

            “No!”  He tried to shout over the storm.  Half-blind, waving his arms as the Walker bore down on them.  “We submit!  The Child is yours!   Take back your kin!”

            The storm halted just before the brothers.  The Walker eyed them again, suspiciously, then returned its gaze to the Child.   Still the Child made no sound.

            “Go on, great one, “ Kir called out as he wiped ice from his face.  He placed a hand over Lernu’s mouth to muffle any protests.  “Reclaim your child, we shall not stop you.”

            The Walker hesitated for only a moment before sweeping up the Child. The storm wrapped protectively around the Child, so that the infant was clear of the pelting sleet.   Kir watched as a hand-paw emerged through the frigid miasma .  It stretched out gingerly, as if afraid of hurting the Child, until finally the coarse fur and claws made contact. 

            The Walker cupped the Child, cradling it, and cried out – not the blizzard shriek from before, but something almost joyous.  Almost, if not for the terrible longing that echoed from the depths of the shout, thundering through Kir’s ears, through his whole body.  He thought of years apart, time stolen away, gaps so wide that whether demon or human you would do anything to fill them, to end the void . . .

            Then, over the Walker’s bellow, Kir discerned another noise.  A more familiar sound, high and keening – the sobbing of one who is lost and scared.  Himself at the door when his mother was taken.  Anzla begging him not to go.  And now the Codan child, face breaking into wails, reaching back toward him and Lernu, two tiny blue pinpoints among the tempest.

             You’ve come home!  Don’t be scared, no one will ever leave you again!  But Kir could not deceive himself.  There was no mistaking the tone in the cry, the dread creeping through him.  Something was wrong, that a child should make such a noise when being held by its parent . . .

            Everything began to freeze. 

            From the hand that held the child, the petrifying spread forth.  The Child was untouched, but the Walker became a small glacier, its face clogged in mid-blur.  Permafrost crackled out from the Walker in ripples that twitched the land as they advanced. Small plants popped like corn thrown in a fire.  Rocks screamed as they flash-froze.  There was a terrific tearing as the bark on a ancient tree exploded in jagged stripes of dry-ice.  A squirrel burst from a hole beneath the tree but dodged the wrong way, running directly into the path of the ripples.  Kir heard a slight noise – thhhhit, the sound of contraction, of blood vessels breaking – and then a clang as the squirrel dropped to its side, frozen solid.

            Kir numbly pulled his knife and with two swipes cut the ropes binding his brother.   Lernu sagged when he tried to stand, but Kir drug him to his feet as the tide of frost seeped toward them. 

            Beyond cold – a slowing, like trudging through pine syrup.   Against his chest, Kir could feel the warmth slipping away from the Bearer stone as the forest gleamed in immobility, utter stillness, as if time itself were stopping –

             – his mother’s words –  without season, there is only eternity . . . –

            The pieces fell together so sharply that Kir stopped in spite of himself.   The Walker craves its child so badly that it wants this moment to last forever, never moving, never changing.   Eternal winter.  Oh mother, what have I done?

            Faintly, whether through the Bearer stone or simply in his mind, he heard her reply.  They must be separated.  The bond must soften, melt . . .

            And with that, Kir saw the answer, and what he must do.

            Lernu yanked on his arm.  “We have to keep moving – “

            “Can you still Bear the Child?” Kir said quickly.

            “Kir, it doesn’t - “

            Kir gripped his brother, but he spoke gently.  “Can you complete your duty as Bearer?”  

            Lernu’s mouth went slack with understanding.  He nodded.

            The brothers turned.  They sluggishly back-stepped as the ice continued its advance – mindless but determined, slowly consuming everything in its path.  At the source, the frozen effigy of the Walker still held the Child, who continued its warbling cry.

             Kir studied the ever-increasing distance across the ice to the Child.  “When you receive the Child, do not look back, do not turn back.  Tell father . . . and Anzla  . . . “

 “I’ll tell them you saved the village, “  Lernu said.  “But how?”

Kir hefted Fawna’s jar from his pack.  “With fire.“

He sucked in the last of the palor.  The smoke rushed through him, beating back the utter stillness around him with pounding heart, churning blood.  He drained the jar as dry as he could, then dropped it and charged across the ice field.

The ice cracked beneath his feet as he ran, steam detonating in his footsteps.  He covered half the distance to the child almost instantly, but then the permafrost began to break through.   The air coalesced around him, hugging him and refusing to let go.  Kir pumped his arms, snorting and heaving for purchase.  His feet went slack but still he pounded his legs down harder, trusting the rhythm to keep him going.  Encased in ice, his hair braids banged against his back as he neared the Walker. 

Now the cold was like a blade, splitting the back of his calves open.  The gelling blood threatened to cement him to the tundra, and so he desperately leapt, driving his knife into the Walker’s forearm like a climbing crampon.  Both hands clamped around the knife shaft, he dangled for a moment before pulling himself up.  Immediately after he released the handle, the knife shattered. 

He precariously made his way across the Walker’s arm.   The smoke within him was down to barely-warm ashes, and ice threatened to seal his eyelids shut.  He locked his crystallized vision on the Child, whose crying had now stopped as it watched Kir fall to his hands and knees.  The skin of his palms tore against the Walker’s permafrosted skin of the Walker as he struggled forward.  

Too short, I’m too . . . far . . . as his thoughts slowed, everything quieting, and with the last of his energy he threw his hand forward, straining, still too distant . . .

            The Codan child reached out and grasped Kir’s finger –

            – a the split-second between action and reaction, the Child’s eyes changing, their blue fire dying down to placid brown as the Child stared at Kir and smiled –  

            – and then a vortex of noise as the cold slithered in reverse, violently retracting to the point of contact between the Child and the Walker.  The air surrounding Kir and the Child contracted with a fierce bang, blowing both of them from the arm.  Kir scrambled in mid-fall, managing to wrap the Child in a crossed-arm hug just an instant before his back crashed into the ground.

            He felt wet drops on his face – large snowflakes, plopping.  The wind had returned in a confused groaning.  Kir looked up and saw the Walker before him, its eyes blinking as if just awakening from a long sleep.  The clouds surrounding it like a cloak brewed to black as it stared at its outstretched but empty hand.  Its eyes descended to Kir, then dilated – three, six times their size, in trembling fury.  Kir rolled to his feet as the storm broke with a scream.

            He tried to flee but found himself empty.  The palor strength was gone, consumed in the ice run, and his split legs could barely hold him up.  Hail the size of his fist shot past his head, and he heard trees being ripped from the ground like weeds.

            Lernu was already heading toward him, but Kir knew the howls behind were too close, breathing on his back, and so with the last of his strength he flung the Child with both hands – a high easy arc, the Child’s face peacefully gazing at him as it flew through the air. 

            Lernu easily caught it and drew it close.  He looked a final time at his brother. 

            Kir limply waved him forward.  His ears were filled with the roaring of the Walker, its unseen paw descending at his back, but Kir just kept his eyes on the bounding Lernu, who was already half the valley away from them.  That’s it, brother, fly back home, fly home –

            Then Kir himself was flying, back broken but somehow still soaring, above the pall of the storm so that the land stretched clear beneath him and he could see the valley, even past the village he was so high, all the way to an shimmering expanse of blue, as if the sun were breaking over a river without banks, and the roaring in his ears became the sound of waves rolling to the shore and then pulling back, rolling and pulling, and on the next roll he felt his mother’s hands on his shoulders, and he let the waves pull him into their warm embrace.