No one has come here to replace them. Only a bright blue bird stares from a high branch and complains loudly about the intrusion. Young trees and thick underbrush crowd the ruined village and heavily obscure most of the houses; most of them are in worse state than his own, and some barely remain to be seen at all. Perhaps it is not all in his mind that the sky grows heavier on his shoulders as the seasons revolve.

Uye-te-reyos makes only the most cursory pass through the village. It is obvious the boy has not come here, and the hunter feels little reason to inspect the decay of an abandoned home. He turns back and starts down the slope on the lower road, which will rejoin at the foot of the mountain the higher road he followed in. If there is no trace there, then--he will decide then where to go next.

The boy steps again with his right foot. Carefully he lifts his left to a higher stone in the rockfall and lurches forward to swing his weight up onto it, steadying himself with one hand. And then it is time to move his right foot again.

It has been so all day, that Ko-natat must concentrate on each step as though it were the first. He is weak, now, and slower than ever; since dawn his eyes have seen little color, everything less brilliant as though there were no colors but grey, as though all the day were fading dusk.

Today he is like one memory in a dreaming head, at times unsure that he is still in the world at all; even the ever-present pain inside him seems less real and pressing than before. The visions themselves do little more than whisper. He is sure he is finally dying.

Many of the stones under his feet are slick with the icy water of the melting snow; the earth of the road is all mud that chills his feet. In some places the ground crackles under the grass, the sound of water too slowly draining into the saturated turf. The rivulets of meltwater flow around him and run always down as he trudges uphill.

Sometimes it is as though a great many people walk this road, people he does not know; a throng of pilgrims walking silently and colorlessly all around him, unhurried but steadily outspeeding him. It is difficult at times to remember that it is fruitless to send his visions ahead by themselves, and he must keep forcing his own way.

The road itself helps him to continue. He knows it. He is sure he knows it, just as he recognizes the sharp and cluttered leaves of the highland, or the call of the blue bird whose desperate voice sounds almost human. This road also is known to him from his forgotten childhood. He is certain of it. Every bend and rise carries a shock of familiarity.

It is well past midday when Uye-te-reyos breaks from the trees. Since he came back down to the foot of the low mountain he has walked a broad loop around it, hoping to find some trace or trail. He has no idea where to look if the boy has not come here. Still, he must be absolutely certain if he is forced to return and report his death. And he still hopes to find the boy; he has always had great fondness for him, the bright and voluble young boy in whom he cannot help but see himself. He must search a while longer; he will not abandon the young man easily.

Until this moment it had slipped his mind that a road wound down the northeastern face of the mountain at all, a little-used path to the higher slopes in the heart of the range. Suddenly, though, he has stepped out of the trees onto it, and automatically he drops to one knee to check for any sign of human passage.

Before he reaches the ground he knows--his eyes have told him someone has passed this way, and he finds himself abruptly certain it was Iniei-dreyu. A moment's inspection supports this; a lightweight man, barefoot, moving slowly and unevenly, some hours ago. It is enough. As quickly as he knelt the warrior is on his feet and running uphill.

The east road, he thinks. What route can he possibly have taken, to approach from the east? How has he made it so far as this, when his tracks say he is moving like a tree-sloth? How can he have survived at all?

But he has survived, and succeeded, alone. Even now he is almost to the village.

He glances at the sky, still grey and doubtful but without rain, as it has been all day, spent by the night's excess. Hold steady, he bids it in his mind, and settles in to a gruelling pace, chasing down his young charge.

If he closed his eyes the warrior might think his legs were gripped all about by angry hands. Several hours have passed, hours of pounding his feet and driving himself inexorably back up the mountainside in the chill and misty air. He has rested some few times but never for long; the trail is fresh and he will not let it be lost. But such a hunt is harder now than it might once have been.

The eastern road is more thickly covered than the western one was. The boy's track is obvious even in this light, dimmed prematurely by the coarse roof of clouds. He is close by now, Uye-te-reyos knows, and he is determined to close the distance as quickly as possible; the clouds might fall again whenever they choose, and the light will soon fade entirely.

He cannot say what sense it is that tells him when he is nearly upon the boy, but when he nears a slight bend he slows his pace slightly and cranes to look ahead as soon as he can. It is no surprise to see a human figure shuffling its feet some distance ahead on the nearly-level stretch.

"Iniei-dreyu," he says, little clouds seething from his mouth with the words, and then calls out. "Iniei-dreyu!"

There is no response. The young man in the distance keeps plodding forward, his long hair tangled over a torn and muddied ruin of clothing, his shoulders curled as though dragged down by the weight of his arms. Uye-te-reyos begins to trot again, calling out to the boy as he goes. Still the boy walks on unheeding, until the warrior draws close and says commandingly, "Stop for a moment, boy. Can you hear?" The boy hesitates, lifting his head slightly as though just now listening. Uye-te-reyos lays his hand on his shoulder, stepping to his side, and lightly pulls the boy around to face him.

"Iniei-dreyu," he says again, staring into the young man's face. There can be no mistake; the face is the same, though streaked and grimy, the long young face with those arresting blue eyes like no other human eyes in the world. The eyes look back at the warrior blankly, and the boy frowns as if mildly surprised. Perhaps, Uye-te-reyos thinks, he has lost his senses? But this is not possible; he has come here, so far to walk by himself over such terrain, and yet somehow he has reached his destination. "How is it with you, boy? Are you hurt?" he asks the younger man insistently. After a moment he seems to realize he should reply.

"My name is Ko-natat," he says flatly when he finds his voice.

The warrior has nothing to say to this; he looks closely at his young kinsman's distracted face, not sure even if he has been recognized. Until now he has largely forgotten how it is with this youth. He knows he cannot really understand the illness; this haunting appellation, dry-heart, is a reminder to him that he can only hope to guard the boy from the world outside him. He stands quiet for a moment before speaking more gently.

"As late as I am, my friend, now that I have found you, I would walk with you to the top. Have you eaten? Surely you must be hungry." He begins walking forward along the trail, releasing the boy's shoulder to rummage through his bag for cooked meat, a wrapped piece of a fat bird he brought down with a stone at sunrise and hastily dressed. He becomes aware of the boy, still unmoving behind him, and turns to raise his head in inquiry. The boy looks perplexed as though he cannot understand what was said, and labors in his awkward way to find words.

"The lily," he begins, and the hunter's head flicks halfway around and back. He gestures loosely behind him as though he tossed a stone up the slope.

"It is here," he tells the boy. "Iniei--Ko-natat-yes, you have made it. This is the mountain where you were born, boy. The thunderlily grows at its top." He sees a mix of emotion on the boy's lifted face, a look something like disbelief, and Ko-natat lurches at once into his stumbling walk.

The story of Ko-natat is bound up within him, and only disparate pieces can escape despite the warrior's efforts to draw it out. The boy speaks slowly when he speaks at all, laboring for awful quiet stretches of time to answer even one question. His breath does not steam. Sometimes low groans come from him, long croaking sounds that seem to go on forever, unchecked as though he does not hear them himself.

He has indeed come to look for the thunderlily, this much is clear, and he has been lost in the mountains for a time; he seems to have had no idea where he was or how many days passed. He was obviously unaware of having been virtually upon his goal until he was told. Uye-te-reyos is able to discover that the boy struck out almost directly east, having no real knowledge of the village's location, and it seems he penetrated some distance into the mountain range before turning north as he must have done.

Often the young man lapses into silence as he speaks his distracted and disjoint answers, and more than once Uye-te-reyos suspects he has forgotten entirely that he was speaking. Even so, the boy may simply resume long moments later as though he had never paused. Sometimes, though, strange and often indecipherable statements are interspersed with his answers, as though he speaks in his sleep. Uye-te-reyos feels fairly certain he is still being addressed, as the boy shows no inclination to talk unless prodded, but Ko-natat makes reference to people he can hardly have met or seen, though this is the apparent implication, or to encounters with animals that seem unlikely, and other things that make no immediate sense at all. He makes one thing plain, and adheres resolutely to it: his new name was given to him by "the monkey." Folk tales are rife with monkeys and spirit-monkeys but not in the way the boy seems to mean, so in the end the warrior helplessly abandons this line of questioning, as before very long he abandons all of them.

The boy apologizes for his reticence, explaining that he has so many to listen to. At a loss, Uye-te-reyos reassures him that this is no trouble. He is increasingly certain now that the boy has been seeing things for some time.

Ko-natat also denies having eaten. He barely eats now, pacing grimly ahead of his elder with a leg of meat in one hand, held in front of him like a weapon; Uye-te-reyos must continually remind him to eat, but the boy's arm never relaxes. The hunter frowns. There is too much he does not understand about the boy's affliction. He has noticed that he has not been forced to moderate his pace as much as he expected to; he is almost sure now that Ko-natat moves more quickly than he did before their paths crossed. Does it galvanize him to know he is so close, the warrior wonders, or is he simply walking faster because I come behind him?

They walk quietly for some time; only once does the youth half-turn, unbidden, and tell his guide in a distantly distressed voice: "I am still lost." It is unclear whether he refers to the trail they walk or some other concern, and the warrior makes no reply as they continue.

At length the ongoing twilight deepens to night, and Uye-te-reyos stops.

"Here, this will do for the night." He surveys a slight clearing, little more than a widening of the path, for a moment before his eyes flick back to Ko-natat who goes on walking. "Ko-natat?" He catches up in three long strides and lays his hand on the boy's arm. "Listen, you need to rest--"

"No." At once the warrior's hand is forcefully thrown off, and the boy stares at him with some alarm. Uye-te-reyos frowns; this is the quick and easy strength of a young man, not an invalid lost in the mountains for days. He searches the face of the youth, who is already looking for words.

"If I stop--" he begins, falters, and begins again. "Uye-te-reyos. I cannot stop. I--oh..." and his eyes are glassy again. He flexes his hands helplessly, shaking his head just a little. "I think I should just walk."

The soldier glances away for a moment, eyes on a neighboring hillside, melting into the one behind it as the light sinks away. "You are determined."

"Yes," the boy answers.

"Have you not slept?" It is hard to believe, but the boy shrugs.

"I don't know."

The warrior nods slowly, considering this, and surveys the sky; already there is precious little light to see by, close to none at all. It seems unlikely that the stars might show through the cloud cover on such a night. But he cannot bind the boy, and anyway he is likely correct. Certainly he believes what he says. The warrior realizes now, though he had not made note of it at the time, that as far as he has tracked the boy there has been no evidence that he ever stops. My business is not with these matters, he thinks, and after all these years I don't understand them.

"I will walk in front," he tells his companion.

During the night the rain begins again; it is a cold rain, quiet and steady, and there is little lightning to see by. Ko-natat follows the warrior numbly over the darkened stony earth, comforted by the steadiness of the older man's tread. Following is infinitely easier than walking alone. He still falls sometimes, but now when he slips Uye-te-reyos is upon him all at once, catching and lifting him with both his hands--his unerring and effortlessly strong hands. Now when the road is hard the warrior helps him climb, steadying him with those hands and offering guidance in his voice of seemingly limitless calm.

Ko-natat has been meaning to ask the question for some time now. Time moves vaguely by and too many steps to count before he opens his mouth.

"Please--" thunder rolls at some distance, a sound like teeth grinding in his own mouth, and convulsively he tries again--"will you tell me about it?"

His guide is barely visible, turning his dripping head to glance out of the corner of his eye. "Tell you about what, boy?"

"The lily, the thunderlily. Who--what is it?"

He can hear a short and thoughtful sigh in the blackness ahead of him before the warrior's voice comes back. "I would rather Ten-kaoa were here, it is her tale to tell, but after all--

"I don't really know what it is, my friend. I know this much: almost at the crest of this mountain grows a flower, something like the lilies of the river but broad and far darker--well, you will see it; there is only one. As far as I know there is only this one in the world; in any of my dealings with other peoples in the mountains I have never seen or heard of another such flower, though the mountains stretch around the borders of the world, maybe, and I do not know them all. I do recall a visiting traveler, once, from far away; he was taken to see the flower, and at once he fell on his face in front of it and wept, calling it--a god, as he said, which is like a mighty spirit, maybe the very greatest; talking to it, thanking us over and over for bringing him. I was a boy then, barely past my own naming.

"It grows alone; I might say 'lives,' because in my memory it has never grown or changed at all. In the winter, even under the snows, I truly believe the blossom simply closes--and waits. I believe this.

"I will not pretend to understand how it is possible. I can only suppose that perhaps it is a spirit flower, and it cannot die. I hope so, my young friend, if it can help you.

"I think Ten-kaoa would tell you this: the thunderlily is the beloved of the sky, she says, and so it was at the very beginning; I believe I have heard Ten-kaoa say it was the first flower to blossom." Uye-te-reyos breathes deeply and falls silent a moment before continuing tonelessly.

"So bright and beautiful was the flower that the sky itself was at once enamored of her when he glimpsed her from far above, softly swaying in the wind by the river bank. He asked the wind to sing to her, and she sang also, and she stretched out in the sunlight, and she loved the sky.

"But the sky could not come down to touch her, there on the earth, and they grieved to be kept apart. The rains, Ten-kaoa might tell you, they are the thousand tears of the sky, weeping as he has always wept for the touch of his beloved.

"But the thunderlily, in her sadness she swore they would not be denied, and as she was rooted forever in the soil she called upon the earth itself to lift her. Such was her love. Such was her love that the earth took heed, and in its own slow devotion it lifted. The earth lifted up its back forever higher, always straining to reach the sky, cradling the thunderlily on its shoulders, until it was stretched so far that the river was swept aside and the earth almost brushed the sky: that is these mountains, boy. They grew here, all around you, for no other reason than to lift the thunderlily up to reach her lover. And since then all the other flowers, each one beautiful in its own right as though beauty has just been learned over again, have grown up beneath the sky; but the thunderlily is closest to him, high on the top of her mountain, and she and the sky sing together.

"So Ten-kaoa would tell you. Also she might tell you that the sky is barely higher than the tip of the mountain, and that if a tall man stretches upward from the peak he might touch it; a sign that the flower has nearly come to her destination."

The warrior shakes his head, silhouetted for a moment by a faraway lightning strike. "These are stories. They might be true, Ko-natat, or they might not. I have my doubts, but anyone can tell you I am a notorious skeptic; I don't need to speak of them. It may all be the truth.

"For as long as anyone remembers, we named children at the glade of the lily. At naming age we would take a child to the lily and place a drop of water from its petals on the child's lips; and then the child's mother would speak the name, and we all would repeat it, and the child would repeat it; it was a great fuss we made. This was our way, in the mountains. And this is what you were denied, my friend, and if Ten-kaoa is right it is your cure; have I told you what you needed?"

Uye-te-reyos' voice, strangely quiet in the highland air, falls silent altogether, and the boy walks on without speaking. The story threatens to take his breath away in its melancholy whimsy; while the warrior has spoken the boy has seen all of the tale in visions.

"I don't--" he falters, and they climb in the rain for some time; by now Uye-te-reyos never presses him.

"I think it must be true," he says with finality. The warrior nods and says nothing, leaving Ko-natat to his visions, addressing him only now and again when he must help him climb.

It is the man he most admires, come so far for his sake alone--this drifts through his mind again whenever he remembers the warrior's presence. The knowledge tries to move him to awe and humbling gratitude as it might once have done, and it begins to, but here and now he has no words. He follows dumbly, his eyes listlessly tracking the waterlogged ground in the sparse and fitful light.

"We should reach the village just after daybreak," the warrior tells him, and now the boy recognizes the slight colorless lightening as the beginnings of dawn. He says nothing. The slope has grown steep again and his guide is moving a little more slowly, the only sign of his weariness.

Together they climb a road that begins in the increasing light to look familiar. The sense of rightness is hard to explain; he cannot remember setting eyes on any specific bend of the path before, but each seems somehow proper and unsurprising, and with each step he finds himself more firmly in the grip of a subtle excitement, more than he can remember feeling. He is coming home--his childhood home, fading in memory but the subject of a lifetime of daydream. He has always wanted to return and now he feels a swell of curiosity.

As the daylight grows strong he is disappointed; colors are still faint to him, though he is sure his memories of the mountain are bright with color. The sunrise is only a gauzy whiteness behind the rainclouds over the great hedge of hills behind him as the pair press on. It does not seem like a long time before the drizzle falls in full daylight and the birds call out cautiously from their hidden shelters.

"Here. Ko-natat." Uye-te-reyos has moved a little way ahead and from here he beckons, holding aside a slim, budding branch to look onward past the boy's view. Ko-natat walks a little faster, straining to glimpse what must lie further on.

When he does draw even with the hunter and pauses to scan the road ahead he cannot immediately see anything notable. The path levels out again and cuts back to their left, widening somewhat; it has the same tenuously familiar feel, but he cannot place himself among his memories by the grass stretching up from its track.

"There," the guide's voice says behind him, and the boy stares where the powerful hand directs him. A thicket, or an overgrown stone pile?

This is a house, or was a house, he understands after a moment. These many years it has sat unused and uncared for, fallen to such catastrophic disrepair that one can look through it, taking it for a hillock. Once he sees it for what it is the structure is apparent, the old round wall and thatched roof now barely showing under its thick fleece of clinging vine.

"Ten-kaoa lived here," his companion is telling him, "apart from the rest of us, as she likes to do even now. The rest of the village is just a little further on." Ko-natat jolts forward and strides ahead more strongly than before, the warrior at his heels. If the boy were to walk entirely into a vision it could seem no more astounding than this unimagined return to his old village. It is as though the trees and the birds and the texture of the earth have resolved into one picture, all of their changes between the valley and this mountain explained at once; they are the things that belong here, where his memories are. The boy walks on openmouthed, turning his head to stare all around him, as though every striking raindrop is one more prophecy suddenly fulfilled.

The path swings around the southern face of the mountain in a gentle curve, still leading slightly upward, until at last it tumbles out into a broad clearing, bare of anything but ragged thicket and sloping gently down for a long way before the treeline overtakes it again. Similar meadows are visible further down the grade.

"Another one," the warrior says, pointing out a similarly decrepit dwelling near the top of the field. "There lived Iele, and her father too, while he still lived. See, their pastures are all overgrown since we came down; you need sheep to keep a proper pasture. Look there, there above us." He waves his arm at a cluster of other ruins further ahead. The tightness in the boy's chest throbs anew as he moves on.

Ko-natat cannot tell anymore which are memories triggered and which are purest visions; he cannot tell what is before his own eyes. The warrior follows him at a respectful distance, quietly naming the occupants of any house he stops to look at for any length. He is surprised at the differences; only a very little of the village resembles his memory of it, isolated leaves in a larger tree that he remembered altogether wrongly. The paths and houses of the village range from height to height without ceasing, as is only to be expected of a hillside settlement, and though during his long slow sojourn in the river valley his memory appears to have leveled the whole village, almost never does he set his foot on a flat place now.

It is more beautiful as it truly is, he decides all in a rush. If only he had come back years before! For all the wistful nostalgia of his memories he realizes now he had forgotten all of what was best about this mountain. He is enchanted. When he stands before his own house he stops and stares a long time.

"Ko-natat."

"Ko-natat," the warrior's voice addresses him again, using the name now almost without hesitation. The boy looks around uncertainly to see Uye-te-reyos stepping backward, surveying the ruinous encampment around them. "We should be on our way, I think. Are you ready?" He turns and sets out slowly toward the upper end of the village.

"No." The boy tries to speak strongly and suddenly. The older man turns to face him, waiting without expression.

"Show me," Ko-natat says, frowning. "Show me which way, and--I want to go up alone."

Uye-te-reyos blinks. "My friend, I don't like the idea of sending you anywhere alone. I think we ought to go together. I'll keep apart when we arrive if--"

The young man makes a weak gesture of dismissal. "You wait--just wait here. Please. I should go alone." He tries to nod vigorously. His companion shrugs, uncertain.

"Can you go so far? It is a little ways up yet."

"I can make it." The boy leans forward a little, speaking earnestly. "Please. I have come so far--you said so. I will reach the top. But alone."

The warrior shakes his head without talking for a moment. "Why?"

"You left," the boy answers simply, the faintest tone of accusation in his voice.

The slight rain has increased since the early morning, forcing the boy's dimming eyes to squint as he makes his dogged progress around a wide, curving ledge of stony ground. Little grows on this highest path up from the village but great mossy stones lie all about and he is forced to pick his path around them in the thickening mist that sweeps in around him many times only to sink away again. The growling wind has subsided somewhat when the mountain wall finally drops back to widen the path, and the rain thins to a gentle shower, but the lightning still flashes occasionally and the thunder echoes through the mountains' proud chorus so the boy must flinch from it in pain.

Very suddenly Ko-natat finds himself on a gently sloping meadow, with no path left before him. He looks around him desperately, no longer knowing where he must go. Ahead, what was a trail is only the backbone of the mountain, the ridge still softly climbing. He staggers almost into a run, searching like a lost child. He is almost upon the mountain flower when his darkening eyes understand.

There can be no other flower here and now, and the boy falls roughly to his knees in the mud before it, his hands hanging forgotten at his sides.

Rainwater trickles in little rivulets over the thunderlily, dripping from dark curving petals to the mossy ground beneath. The stark chatter of lightning shines on the leaves and the boy kneels speechless, distraught. The spirit-flower is high and graceful on a long, slender stem that holds it even with the kneeling boy's chin; the petals are a deep dusty blue, tipped with darkest purple, some spreading wide to curve down away from the center and some arching above the deep bowl to just brush one another over the center. It leans slightly forward, swaying slowly in the flickering light, and it is singing--strangely, as the mountains sing, and sweetly, as though it has always known he would come here.

As though the flower might draw back, he brushes the slick dark leaves with his fingertips, and looses a spray of droplets from the stalk, raising his hand to cradle the blossom itself, lightly; a stream of gathered rain runs off of the petals and over his palm.

Uye-te-reyos sits quietly, showing nothing of his agitation. He has gathered and cooked enough food for two comfortable days; earlier he cut hide from his outer wrap to fashion makeshift footwear for the boy. No skilled work; good enough to keep his feet dry as far as the valley. The pestering temptation to violate the boy's edict and look for him has swept over him and passed many times; now it builds again in the waning sunlight, and the warrior considers. Nevertheless; as slow as the boy is to move he may just now be reaching the lily. He stirs his little fire against the slow dappling of rain.

In one instant he is frozen, motionless before the quietly shivering flames, listening. Momentarily he relaxes again, never turning his head. His heart lifts despite a lingering trepidation. The boy has come back, at least, and there can be no harm in that. Soon the noise of human passage grows near. Moving easily, even swiftly: a lively tramping, not the dispirited trudge of his companion of the morning. The warrior cannot help but to smile slightly.

When the boy is almost upon him he stands quickly, closing the distance without words to drape what remains of his outer wrap over the young man's shoulders. The boy flashes the shy smile that has characterized him since before he could walk and makes a place to sit by the fire.

The warrior watches him closely. Such an immeasurable transformation! Just to see the boy move with such ease, like anyone else, is proof enough that he is healed. Still, the warrior can hardly bear not to ask him outright.

"I cannot thank you," the boy says, his numinous eyes wide in earnestness. "What do you tell a man when you might have died in the morning without him? Maybe you know." Uye-te-reyos hears himself chuckling out loud, half in relief and half at his young friend's helplessness, and the boy grins also, his quick and infectious grin.

"How is it with you, Ko-natat?" he asks more seriously, offering meat and some few seeds he collected during the day.

"My name," the boy tells him unsmilingly, straightening with an expression almost of defiance, "is Kodreyu."

"Kodreyu," he corrects himself gravely, gripping the boy's hand more than is needed as he presses food into it. The name signifies Sky in His Heart.

There is no rain when Kodreyu wakes. For a moment he is lost in the dark, and he sits straight up in a panic and meets the level eyes of Uye-te-reyos. He stares wildly for a moment before he begins to remember. He relaxes.

"You should sleep as well," he blurts, and blushes at his presumption. The older man nods.

"I was. You woke me yourself, just now." His roughened head leans against the bole of the spreading tree; only his eyes stir, glinting red in the scant light of the embers.

"Oh. I'm sorry," the boy answers, frowning. "You seem wakeful enough."

Uye-te-reyos sighs quietly, settling into a more comfortable position. "There is a trick, or a habit, to sleeping and waking whenever you must. I learned it fighting other men's wars downriver."

"I could use to learn it," Dreyu offers wryly. "I don't feel much like sleeping at all." The older man gives his shrug that passes for a smile and says nothing. The boy tries to see his face, ruddy and indistinct in the encroaching darkness. "Did you win?" he says in a small voice. "The wars," he amplifies, when the hunter rolls his head to stare at him directly as though in disbelief.

"What a question."

Kodreyu hangs his head in chagrin. After a moment he has to laugh at himself, and when he sneaks a glance Uye-te-reyos appears tolerant.

The clouds have cleared considerably, and stars gleam through the sprouting leaves of the sheltering tree. At this late hour the wedge of bright stars has climbed almost to the zenith, almost lost in the impossible dazzling hordes scattered thick in their unreadable pattern. The boy sits upright, listening to his own heart and surveying the sky for a few long moments before the urge to speak overwhelms him again.

"I'm going to come back," he proclaims firmly. "I want to keep coming as long as I live. I will be a hunter, maybe. But I have to learn to live in these mountains. Will you teach me?" He stops, nervous.

"Begin," his companion says dryly, pushing himself straight against the trunk, "with your first lesson--sleep, now, here under a tree, under stars, even the shiny and fascinating stars." His voice is unconcealably good-humored, now, and Dreyu grins broadly without meaning to. "Your mother," the man continues menacingly, "will have me spitted if you fall ill now from lack of sleep." He tries to hide his own smile in a scowl as Dreyu laughs aloud, shaking his head. The boy can see plainly that he has already given in, waking himself fully to talk, which is better than he could have asked.

"Oh, I won't be sick now, I'm sure of it."

"Truly?" Uye-te-reyos scrutinizes him frankly, and tilts his head forward. "Kodreyu, teach me a lesson." He waves the boy to silence. "Tell me--I will not ask again if you wish not to speak of it, but tell me, what happened at the top today? Between Ko-natat, this morning, and Kodreyu now..."

"I wish I knew the words," the young man says with empty hands. "I found the thunderlily, you see that."

"Yes. So it still grows, up there."

Dreyu looks over the coals, at the shadowed slope. "She knew me," he says, and shakes his head. How can he explain? She welcomed him, he heard her singing, she knew him as if nothing had changed--the baby with the sky in his eyes. And she took the name away, his terrifying name.

She bid him drink, and he did, nameless and dripping. Even now he is full of the memory; the little reservoir of water, deep inside the funneling petals, the cold fury of it inside him.

Uye-te-reyos waits, his expression unreadable, so he must begin again. "I found the lily, and I drank." He nods to himself. "And then I had to run further uphill. She told me, you must just accept that. She told me to keep going up, and I ran. And my heart beat." The first sound seemed almost to precede the brilliance of the flash--a splitting thunderclap that came from all directions at once. He remembers the howl of anguish distantly, as though it tore from another throat. And there, at last: like an echo, the somnolent heart within him struck a single beat, deliberately, like the solid thump of a drum. The shock of it carried to his fingertips.

"You cannot know, you cannot ever know this unless your heart stops and beats again. One time, it beat, and then I almost thought there would be no more. There can be no words for this. And now--do you listen to your heart?" He does not wait for an answer. "I cannot hear anything now but my heart, it is so loud. I begin to fear I will never sleep again."

He stops talking, for a moment. There is too much to tell; he cried tears when he drank of the lily, and the colors came back in his eyes, and he could run like a slung stone even before his heart woke. "I had to get to the top," he says at last, shaking his head. "She told me so, she commanded it. To reach the very top I had to climb stone, just a jumble of stone, but I enjoyed it--do you understand? Because I could, it was easy, and it was real. Even the cold was good. Like your foot going to sleep and coming back, only it was everything. But that's not quite it either."

Now Uye-te-reyos is almost certainly laughing to himself, and Dreyu spreads his hands. "I don't know how to say these things."

"You're telling me what I want to know, I think. What then? Go on."

The boy considers. "I just looked," he says. "I looked out over the mountains, and there was a great hole in the clouds, where there was just blue." Lightning still flashed, and his sodden clothes stung his skin where the wind touched him; the hills rolled away to the west, but the range reared higher and higher in the east, up into the hanging stormcloud. The barest hints of rainbow gleamed at the edges of the tempest.

His eyes swept the full course of the horizon, as if he would learn the shape of it forever, but his attention was all inside himself; he was listening to the strong, even pulsing of his heart. It could never have been so forceful before. The mountains sang unceasingly, and the thunder shouted; it was the sound of his own heart that bound them into shape and meaning.

"I decided, there, that this is my place," he says deliberately. This place. The thought was delicious. He told the thunderlily so when he sat with her again, and he promised her in every way he could think to that he will come back.

"Will you help me?"

"You haven't finished," the older man says, eyes lowered as he prods the fire. "There was no one there to name you."

"Kodreyu is my right name," the boy says. His companion nods, falling silent. Dreyu waits only a short while in restless quiet before his impatience wins out.

"I mean it, please," he insists, and the warrior looks at him sidelong. "Will you show me how? How to live here? I know nothing, I know that. But how can I go down to the valley and stay there?" He eyes Uye-te-reyos, tries to measure his reaction. "I could never bear to leave for so long again. But--I don't know--"

"Say it," the warrior says shrugging. Dreyu spreads his hands.

"You were born on this mountain, too," he says, and lets it hang.

Uye-te-reyos rocks his head back to watch the stars for a while. When he speaks, though, he sounds untroubled, thoughtful. "I was born here." He gestures vaguely at the village. "And a great many people have been born here besides. You, your mother, my mother, a great many people. And more than you can count lived their lives and died here. This is not such a terrible place. And we do come up into the hills some distance, sometimes. Some of us do. And yes, Kodreyu, before you ask me again, yes. I will teach you whatever worthwhile tricks I may know for traveling here." The boy cannot contain his pleasure at this, and the man chuckles openly, raising his eyebrows.

"But listen, now. One's home is not so simple a matter as that. One is born--everyone must be born somewhere. But a home does not come so easily. Maybe some people never do have a home."

"This is my home," Dreyu states with fervor.

"I believe it," the hunter answers simply, "but listen. I would not say it is mine." The boy frowns, rubbing his hands together restlessly, biting back a question.

"And why not? I lived in this place far longer than you, truly. And I cannot tell you. You were meant to be here, maybe, or you took root in your infancy--and I think it is proper for you to be here, close to the naked sky.

"In my few years I have walked in a lot of places. There--east of here, the mountains stand to greater heights, but beyond the range there is a great plain, and a river valley. There runs a great river, far wider and deeper than our river even at its mouth; it is hidden in the most dense of forests, and yet in the midst of this people thrive.

"This way--yes, west, you know that this way lies our little valley, and our river. As unlike this mountain--"

"Your home," the boy interjects, interested, his palms brushing back and forth. Uye-te-reyos looks at him oddly.

"No; no, I would not say so."

"But surely," the boy frowns, "you live there, you have lived there for years, and without leaving--after your journeys." The warrior nods, his eyes fixed on the dim coals. "But if not--"

"Follow the river," Uye-te-reyos presses on, stirring the embers with a half-charred stick, "and in time you will meet other peoples; strange peoples, Kodreyu, nothing like anyone you have seen. There are powerful people downriver, people who cut stone and carve it and walk roads as wide as the river itself; never mind. There are powerful peoples, believe it, whose chieftains rule hundreds or thousands; they war among them, sometimes, terrible wars.

"The river flows further. At its widest it spills into the sea; you have heard of the sea. It is water beyond measure, and it goes on forever. North and south along the coast of the sea are other peoples, too many to speak of, all of them different as the land itself is different. The water of the sea smells sharp; it is full of salt. There are birds flying there whose cry--I cannot explain, but it is a sound like no other. And great fish, fish you could never imagine, so many things. You do not understand. Of course, you cannot.

"On the sea--listen, the people on the edge of the sea take their boats out over it, boats bigger than houses, and they--their boats take them farther out than I have ever walked on the land, on the endless ocean where the water piles up on itself like these mountains, but in motion--."

He breaks off at last, feeding the fire whose reflection lights his eyes. Dreyu sits waiting, his eyes wide.

"They sail on the sea," Uye-te-reyos says sighing, "so far that the land is lost to them, beyond sight, and they keep going out for days sometimes. Try to imagine it, Kodreyu. Imagine the world is water as far as you can see in any direction, for days, all alike and moving." Dreyu shivers, awed. The warrior leans against the tree as though he has finished, his eyes searching up through the branches.

"Have you?" the boy asks after a little silence. "Have you been there?" The warrior nods once, and Dreyu hesitates again. "When you go so far," he says almost fearing the answer, "how do you know the way back again? Aren't you afraid?" Uye-te-reyos looks at the boy for a moment and then stretches his arm up to point straight above him.

"Look there," he says quietly.

Dreyu sees stars glimmering in their countless array, as he did before; the sky is almost cloudless and the sliver of moon has long since gone. His companion's voice is serene, quieter than the popping of the flames.

"The stars are the same, Kodreyu. There is only one night sky, and even on their furthest voyages over the face of the water, the seafarers lie under the same stars you see now. So long ago they learned the pattern, and they cannot be lost on the sea: those stars will always guide them home."

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