THE NUMEN’S WARD

by

Ren Sakurai

“O, what fortunes are created and destroyed, lives made and unraveled, histories written and rewritten, all for the sake of a single word, a single motion, a single drop of water, placed or misplaced at a moment of consequence. So, too, begins a mountain from but a single grain of sand.”

--Author unknown, translated from Coptic from the lost texts of the Nag Hammadi

PROLOGUE—THE BRIEFEST OF INSTANTS

Pyrénées Orientales, France – June 30, present day

The midday sun had turned the red Renault into an oven. Raphael sat, sweating, in the sweltering car with his eyes shut, his hands gripping the slick steering wheel.

Although his eyes were closed, they still saw, the vision materializing as if from some invisible gland hidden deep within his mind, developing slowly, building drop by drop until it formed a complete image…

A building with brown stucco and blue shutters; water dripping from a showerhead; a dim hallway lined with photographs; a man asleep in bed; a weapon poised to strike. A boy of about fifteen walks along the road carrying a football under his arm. Above him, a gull hovers momentarily before disappearing into the cloudless sky. A car speeds down the road . . .

The vision swam and churned, then dissolved into nothingness, only to reemerge, gradually, lazily, like being woken from a dream by the crescendo and diminuendo of voices from another room.

The boy with the ball plays on the beach with his friend. Nearby, his sister scoops sand onto her legs, her cheeks sunburnt and freckled.

The boy kicks the ball too high, and it sails over the seawall and lands in the dark green water. “Guinevere,” he calls to his sister, “stay there!” Then he leaps into the sea.

A wall of sound rose in Raphael’s ears, as if the sea had closed in around him. The vision blackened and began to fade, but not until he saw its sickening conclusion.

At first, Guinevere smiles as she watches her brother, but then the skin on her lips blisters and peels, until her mouth opens into a skeletal maw. Waves rush over her. She tries to scream but instead chokes on an endless sea of saltwater.

Raphael reemerged from the vision, as from a nightmare, gasping and sweating. The sunlight momentarily blinded him, and it took a moment to remember where he was. He clutched the steering wheel, letting the sweat pour down his face as he tried to slow his breathing.

Something about the way the girl had smiled beneath the brim of her sunhat reminded Raphael of a different girl, one he’d known long ago. Good, he thought. Let it be a reminder not to screw things up again.

He tried to get his bearings again. Where the hell am I now? Even after all these years, the visions never failed to disorient him.

Rue du Temple. He could walk from here.

Dragging an arm across his drenched forehead, he stepped out of the car, unlocked the trunk, and hauled out the heavy red toolbox. Waves of shimmering heat drifted up from the asphalt.

He’d grown accustomed to the often-incomprehensible way the visions worked. Sometimes they made sense, but most of the time he was simply operating on faith. Faith in what, he didn’t know, had never figured out despite all his knowledge of the countless religions of the world. They all came back to one thing: You had to have faith in some intangible thing that couldn’t be explained. Faith: The word festered in his mind. If it would annul the evils perpetrated in its name, I would gladly erase the word from every language.

Raphael shut the trunk and crossed the street. The nauseating stench of garbage spewed from a row of trash cans baking in the late-afternoon sun, smothering him and stinging the back of his throat. Dark patches of some undistinguishable substance made his feet stick to the asphalt. He craned his head to peer up at the brown building with its blue shutters and swaths of flaking stucco.

The building from the vision. Raphael checked his watch. 15:15. He would have to be quick; the man would be waking up soon.

Raphael knocked on the faded blue door and waited. Do you have the stomach for this? He almost laughed. There were far worse things he’d already done—and would likely be called upon to do in the future.

He was about to knock again when the door opened partway. Sunlight cast a rectangle of light against a face—an eye, a lock of brown hair, half a mouth painted a dark shade of red.

“Oui?” said the woman in the doorway.

“Homme à toute faire,” said Raphael. Handyman. “Your shower is broken, yes?”

The woman opened the door all the way, revealing her thin, bony frame, a sleeveless white shirt draped across her shoulders and down over the top of her tan shorts. She searched his face with her large, doe-brown eyes. “I didn’t call for a handyman.”

“It was a man who called. Your husband, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. Come in,” she said. “The shower is upstairs.”

Raphael followed her inside into a small, dark vestibule and up a narrow flight of stairs lined with framed pictures clinging to the walls: the beaming face of a towheaded boy holding a glistening trout, a wedding party standing on the steps of an altar, a black-and-white shot of the woman and her husband riding a tandem bicycle on top of a seawall. He glanced at the smooth curve of the woman’s hips and fought to restrain his bitterness. You will outlive them all. And then what will you be left with?

“You mustn’t wake Gaston—my husband,” said the woman, keeping her voice low. “He works the late shift.”

“Not today, he won’t.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I said I will try to be quiet.”

Raphael admonished himself for being overly cavalier. You know what happens when you reveal too much.

The woman showed him into the small bathroom at the top of the stairs. She leaned against the doorway and watched as he set the toolbox on the tile floor and opened the lid. The smell of lavender filled the room, at odds with the grime that coated the bottoms of the sink and tub. Thick tufts of hair drifted across the floor as he pulled back the shower curtain. Orange hard-water residue crusted the bottom of the curtain.

“It drips all day and all night,” said the woman. “It is like…what is it called? Chinese water torture.” As if on cue, a drop of water fell from the showerhead and splashed in a puddle on the floor of the tub. “If you can fix it, I would seriously consider letting you sleep with me.”

Raphael raised his eyebrows. He’d been with forward women before and had found that, most of the time, their forwardness was a screen erected to hide some deeper insecurity. “Your husband might have something to say about that.”

“He is a sound sleeper,” she said, smiling mischievously.

That will soon be put to the test. “Probably needs a new seal,” he said.

“My husband or the shower?”

Raphael smiled politely, the pit in his stomach widening. This has to be the way, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

He made sure the faucet was turned all the way off, then, using a pipe wrench, unscrewed the showerhead from the nozzle.

The woman shifted against the door frame, her floral perfume washing over him in a heavy cloud. She rubbed one bare foot silkily up and down her calf.

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“Watching the nozzle to see if it still drips with the showerhead off.”

“I see. You seem like you are very good with your hands. Do you only do plumbing?”

He cast a quick glance in her direction to find her watching him, a wry smile playing on her lips. Her smile reminded him of someone from long ago, the memory coming only as a vague sense of loss and longing. Enough wallowing in your own self-pity, you old fool. Just do your job and be done with it.

“No. I fix whatever is broken,” said Raphael, turning back to the nozzle. A bead of water oozed from the tip, the meniscus hanging that way for a moment before falling to the floor of the tub in a splash of water.

“And I can predict the future,” he said, winding a piece of plumber’s tape around the threads of the nozzle. Careful.

“Oh, really?” She pushed away from the doorway and took a step inside, resting a bony hip against the sink. “And what do you see in it?”

He replaced the showerhead back onto the nozzle and screwed it tight. “I see myself installing a new faucet in your shower.”

The woman let out a sharp laugh. “And are we speaking metaphorically?”

“I’m afraid not.”

The woman shrugged and smiled ruefully. “Too bad.”

“Would you mind turning off the water for me? There should be a shutoff valve in the cellar. You know where it is, yes?”

“Sure. But now I think this makes me part of your team, no? Maybe you should pay me.” She arched one eyebrow and turned to leave, looking at him over her shoulder as she strolled out of the bathroom and down the darkened staircase.

Once the woman rounded the corner at the bottom of the stairs, Raphael placed the pipe wrench back into his toolbox, then paused to rest his hand on a different tool, testing its sharp tip with the pad of his finger. As if to counterbalance it, he drew a tiger’s eye stone from his pocket, running his thumb over the smooth, polished oval, the brown and gold bands reflecting what dull light there was in the room.

He knew what he had to do.

He slid the stone back into his pocket and retrieved the ice pick from the toolbox, thinking, May the earth be kind to me for what I’m about to do. Closing the lid, he hefted the toolbox with his free hand and stepped into the hallway.

Two doors stood closed on either side of the landing. Setting the toolbox down, Raphael carefully turned the handle of the door on the left. It groaned as he inched it open. From downstairs came the squeaking sound of the woman turning the handle of the water shutoff valve.

Through the narrow gap between the door and the doorframe Raphael could just make out a person lying in bed, a white sheet draped over a pair of legs. A ceiling fan whirled overhead, a soft creak coming with every turn.

As Raphael eased the door open a little more, the rest of the man came into view—Gaston, the woman’s husband. He was a large mound of a man. Everything about him exuded density. The man didn’t have ankles, his calves instead terminating directly atop a pair of wide, meaty feet. He was tan, with dark hair cropped close to his head on the sides but longer and wavy on top, several days of stubble on his chin. Gaston slept face down, his bulging neck twisted so his head faced the side. His mouth hung open as he breathed heavily in and out. One hand hung limply over the side of the bed. The place smelled like a locker room.

The woman’s muffled voice forced its way up the stairs from the cellar, “The water is off now.”

Raphael froze as Gaston stirred, one eye opening a sliver before closing again. Then Gaston resumed his deep breathing in and out.

The clock on the nightstand read 15:40. Right on time. Raphael closed his eyes for a moment, relishing the brief moment of peace he allowed himself. Why must things be this way?

In one quick motion, Raphael stepped into the room, seized the man’s wrist, and slapped his hand palm-down against the nightstand.

The man’s eyes shot open. He raised his head from the pillow and looked at Raphael, a bewildered look igniting his face.

“Forgive me,” whispered Raphael, and drove the ice pick into the top of the man’s hand, embedding it into the nightstand with a dull thud.

The man sprang up. He looked from Raphael to his hand—now pinned to the nightstand—before the pain hit him. Then the shrieking started. He clawed at the ice pick with his other hand but lost his balance and fell out of the bed, ripping his hand open against the ice pick as he fell. There wasn’t much blood . . . yet.

Raphael didn’t need to see the rest. He strode from the room, collected his toolbox, and started down the stairs. Pausing halfway, he cocked his head to look at the photograph of the woman and her husband riding the tandem bicycle.

Reaching up, he removed the picture, turned it upside down, and hung it back on the wall. It should cause just enough of a delay.

At the bottom of the stairs, the woman was just rounding the corner as she emerged from the cellar. Her eyes grew wide as she looked up the stairway towards her shrieking husband.

“What on earth is going on?” she said.

“A bad dream, perhaps,” said Raphael, already opening the front door. Upstairs, the man shrieked again. “A very bad dream.”

#

Raphael drove through the tunnel under the railroad tracks and on up la Rue de la Galère that led to the D914 which zig-zagged up through the terraced vineyards of the lower foothills of the Pyrenees. Parking along the dusty shoulder, he tried reconciling the rotten feeling in his gut with what should have been the satisfaction of a job well done. It isn’t done yet.

He breathed in the faint floral scent emanating from the vineyard, thinking, Why this air? Why these hills? What future approaches that I must now redesign?

A tan, shirtless boy strolled past Raphael’s car, whistling something repetitive and off-key. The boy carried his shirt in one hand and a football in the other. He peered over his shoulder to see a gull above him, hovering on a passing breeze, before the bird flapped its wings and flew off.

Thank you, boy—you’re right on time.

Raphael had considerably less gratitude for the gull. Cursed creatures. Earn yourself a better welcome, bird, by more often delivering better tidings.

Raphael took a moment to consider that the boy had absolutely no idea what was about to happen. Nor could he fathom all the ways the future would change because of this single, violent instant. Raphael caught himself; he didn’t even know what ramifications this would have on future events, beyond those which the vision had disclosed to him. For all he knew, the destiny of this boy—or his sister—ranged from becoming a homeless junkie to the president of France.

The sound of screeching tires made Raphael turn his head sharply. A white Toyota came tearing around the corner with Gaston riding shotgun and his wife at the wheel. The car swerved, the woman paying more attention to Gaston than to the road.

They’d be on their way to the hospital now, just as Raphael had planned.

As she sped past Raphael’s car, the woman turned her attention back to the road—but too late. The boy stepped into the street just in front of her car.

The car’s tires screeched against the pavement.

Jerking his head toward the sound, the boy’s eyes bulged, his feet frozen to the ground.

The car skidded toward him, fishtailing this way and that.

For an instant it looked as though the car would miss him, but then came the dull thud as the boy bounced against the bumper. He cartwheeled once, seeming to hover in the air for a moment before he fell with a crack against the street, the full force of his weight landing on one foot. His momentum sent him spinning backwards before he came to rest face down on the street.

Raphael winced. Forgive me, boy.

In the car, the woman’s hands shot to her mouth.

A second later, Gaston and his wife hurried from the car to attend to the fallen boy, who had sat up and was bravely trying not to cry.

Good timing—although the boy would probably dispute that.

Through his open window Raphael heard Gaston say, “My God, Margot! A second later and you would have killed him.” With one hand wrapped in a bloody kitchen towel, Gaston tried to keep the boy’s leg from moving.

“And a second sooner,” the woman shot back, “I would have missed him entirely.”

#

A gust of hot wind blew a lock of brown hair across Raphael’s face, although the wind brought little relief on such a sweltering day. He stood on the seawall and held a small stone in his hand, a tiger’s eye, rubbing his fingers across the smooth bands of yellow and brown.

Overhead, gulls circled and cried and swooped low over the water to pluck fish out of the sea, their scales glinting in the sunlight before disappearing into the gulls’ mouths.

On the beach, two boys, about fifteen, tan, and shirtless, tossed a football back and forth. One of the boys sported a waterproof cast on his lower leg. They threw the ball without enthusiasm, clearly wishing they could use the ball as it was intended. But with the cast, there would be no football for the boy for a long time.

A little farther up the beach sat the boy’s five-year-old sister, a straw hat shading the tops of her freckled, sunburnt cheeks. She looked up briefly to watch a gull dip and soar above her, then went back to scooping handfuls of sand over her bare legs. She was trying to bury herself, but gravity was winning the battle, the sand sliding off her legs and down the sides.

Her brother cast a glance at the girl, and she beamed, waved, and went back to burying her legs.

The boy threw the ball too high for such a windy day. But because of his cast he couldn’t put much momentum into the throw, and the ball landed only a few meters away from the seawall, not far from where Raphael was watching. The ball rolled across the sand, safely on the near side of the seawall.

The girl decided to wash off her legs in the sea and stood up, the sand pouring off her body in sheets.

The boy called after her, “Wait, Guinevere! You know you can’t swim.”

Collecting the ball from the beach, her brother met Guinevere at the water’s edge. The boy’s friend joined them, each taking one of her hands as they waded up to their waists in the blue-green water of the Mediterranean Sea. A wave broke against them and they laughed when it sprayed saltwater in their faces.

Everything was as it should be.

Later, the brother and sister would walk home together, slower now because of the cast on the brother’s foot, and they would go into their house and eat dinner with their parents, who would scold them for staying late at the beach and for not doing their schoolwork first. And neither parent would know how close they had come to having only one of their children return home that day.

From his vantage point on the seawall, Raphael saw it all and smiled. But his smile was tainted by weariness and gloom, for although he had saved the girl, he knew how carefully life was held in balance and wondered how many more times the visions would demand his intervention. He wondered this and many other things, and, not for the first time, he wondered when the visions would stop and he would finally be set free.

#

Heedless of the troubles of humankind, the surf rolled in, dragging away the sand and pebbles farther and farther down-shore. Unrelenting, the waves transport an entire continent southward, grain by single grain, so slowly that only the immortals possess the frame of reference to perceive its migration.

But such perception is granted to but a few. And perhaps because they possess such insight, the responsibility falls upon them to rebalance those events which should never have been.

PART I

THE TIGER’S EYE

CHAPTER 1—BY WIND, WAVE, AND TIME

Place unknown, a very long time ago

mmm

la

mmm

listen

mmma

there

ma…

good!

la

mmm…

Ral

#

kwi?

…Ral

Oc

I.

#

dark

from it he emerged, materializing bit by bit

like a wraith

coming on in the night

then…

a voice, high and sweet

comfort, wrapped in warmth

then…

pale fragments of light, here and there, and soft murmurs

of things being said, until the dark absorbed it all again

#

Another

Louder this time—sharper, brighter

The one with the soft voice cooing, whispering magical things, with the faint thrum of life all around.

#

She didn’t move. Ral touched her arm and said ma, and when she still didn’t wake, he shook her and tried giving her a drink from the deer skin. But the water flowed down her cheek and into her hair and wet the dried grass beneath her head.

He sat down next to her in the cave until her skin became very cold. When it grew dark, he made a fire and covered her with the deer skin to warm her, but even that didn’t help.

Ral sat with her for two more passes of the sun, talking to the lion drawings he’d made on the cave walls with the tip of a burnt stick, asking them when maman would wake up. But when he got no answer, he made new drawings, rubbing black charcoal from the stick on his fingers, then tracing the outlines of gulls soaring in the sky, and he asked the gulls to tell him what he should do, for gulls see all from above, and they would know. But the gulls made no sound.

He stayed in the cave until his water skin was empty and the beasts came and he had to poke them with the sharp stick to make them go away.

A terrible smell grew about her, and her skin changed to the color of the ash at the bottom of a cold fire pit. Ral couldn’t stand to be in the cave with her anymore, but he didn’t want the beasts to go near. So he moved her to the field of bones and piled up rocks all around, turning her face to the side before sliding the last rock into place.

And although he did not know a word for goodbye, his heart knew its meaning and made the sharp and awful aching fill his gut and the water squeeze from the corners of his eyes.

From the top of the hill he stood watching as the dark- and gold-coated beasts pushed their noses into the spaces between the rocks, until the light faded first to orange, then purple, then black, when all he could hear were the yips and yaps of the beasts in the valley below.

In the morning he awoke to a thin layer of frozen powder on his deer skin. The pile of rocks had held in the night, and now as he looked out over the valley covered in the grey powder, he knew it was time to return to the warm place by the great water, although he would have to make the trip from memory without her to lead the way.

Ral gathered the dried meat and berries and nuts and packed as much as he could into the pouch maman had made, remembering how he had watched her graceful fingers work as she poked holes along the sides of two pieces of doe skin and tied them together with long bits of sinew. He remembered how she had first given thanks to the doe for her gift, then to the earth for having fed the doe, then to the sky for having watered the earth.

Later in the morning the sun tried to rise above the great water, but dark clouds threatened it from the sky, and the sun in its cowardice hid its face. And although the skywater didn’t fall that day as he made the long trek down from the mountains, it rained from his eyes when he thought of her under the rocks and of the games he’d played when he should have been hunting and of all the things he should have told her but which now would be forever spoken only in his heart.

#

Summer again.

Ral knelt before the patch of bare earth and untied the top of the water skin. From a blue and cloudless sky, the sun baked the top of his head and burned the back of his neck. Hot air drifted down the mountainside in slow, smothering waves.

A speck of motion drew his attention to the sky, where a gull cried and circled overhead. Gulls rarely flew this far inland, except during nesting season. Bird lost is? He craned his head to follow the bird’s flight, but it had flown into the sun.

Ral returned to his work, mounding the earth so when he poured the water it would pool in the center where he had planted the seed. Clutching a handful of dirt, he lifted it to his nose. It smelled old. The dirt had been there forever, accumulating bits of rock worn away from the mountains and the leaves of green things long since dead, all ground up by wind, by wave, and by time, until from it sprouted again the green leaves and the high mountains formed anew by wind, wave, and time.

Ral picked up the skin and poured the water again, making a star pattern as it spilled over the dark, brown earth.

But then he saw something new. He set the skin back down. Pulling back a lock of wavy, brown hair from his face, he peered closer.

A tiny green shoot had fought its way up through a jagged crack in the hard ground. It grew where it ought not have grown.

Pleased with his effort, he rolled over and lay on his back, the silver nailwort rough against his skin even through his shirt. As he looked up at the white clouds floating through the impossibly blue sky, the gull reappeared, hovering motionless in the westerly breeze that drifted down from the mountains.

But as Ral lay in the sun, as is wont to happen when but a moment’s rest is taken, something bit him. At his ankle an asp viper slithered away to disappear between two rocks. Ral winced in pain. He sat up and rubbed some of the brown earth over the fang marks the snake had left on his skin. He knew he would need to find a sharp stone or stick to draw out the snake’s poison, and afterwards he should rub it with the petals of the purple flowers that grew in the valley a short journey from the cave where he slept. If lucky Ral is, Ral live will.

He hobbled to his feet and down the hillside at a slow limp. The gull returned, circling on the hot breeze flowing down the slopes of the mountains that would, in a later age, be called the Pyrenees.

Events had been set in motion that could not be now undone.

CHAPTER 2—HEAD OF THE LION

Valley of the Bones, a very long time ago

The doe had been quick. Ral had tracked her all morning. Now, at the edge of the clearing, he waited. If she would just come a little closer, he would have a clear shot. Instead, she stood just at the edge of it, taking nibbles from the matted grass covering the forest floor, still wet from the morning rain. She chewed pensively. To Ral, it looked as if she were burdened with heavy thoughts.

A slight breeze rustled the leaves of the stone pine tree in the center of the clearing. Ral considered himself lucky that the wind hadn’t shifted; he’d had to go a fair distance out of his way to approach the clearing downwind from the deer.

Ral’s arm was getting tired. He’d raised his spear when the doe had come almost close enough from him to hit her with any accuracy. He wasn’t bad with the weapon—not nearly as good as Merc or his brother, Chos, or even Sev who was still two heads shorter than Ral. Now that Ral thought of it, he wasn’t very good with the spear at all. But this was his chance to prove himself. If he could just kill the small doe… He imagined what it would be like to drag the carcass home and see all the faces of his people beaming and nodding, with the other hunters slapping him on the back and perhaps even granting him the right to paint the story of his kill with the deer’s blood on the wall of the cave. Maybe even Leo would smile.

Ral had to stifle a laugh. Leo smiled for nothing. Not even for a good joke. Like the time Sev had made the yellow stream into Merc’s water skin. Everyone had laughed except Leo, who had calmly taken Merc’s skin from him, handed it to Sev, and made him drink from it—all without even a trace of humor.

Not for the first time, Ral wished Chos were Head of the Lion instead of Leo. Chos was always kind and playful and seemed to know how to do everything better than anyone else, but never in a proud or boastful way. This was just another way that Ral had begun to notice that, more often than not, life had a way of disappointing you, sometimes in ways you hadn’t even imagined.

The doe took a step forward. Ral’s heart raced. She was only about five lengths of the spear outside of his range. And there was the matter of the rock she stood behind; the rock wasn’t that big, but it was big enough that he worried about it blocking his throw.

Suddenly, the sky darkened. The sun blew out, like the last ember of a dying fire. In Ral’s ears there grew a rushing sound, as if a terrible storm had blown in from across the big water. His heart pounded like a deer escaping a wild beast. Ral’s skin tingled, as if he’d been wrapped in the feathers of a giant gull. He held up his hand in front of his face, but he saw not. But Ral wasn’t frightened; it was like when the older boys told the hunting stories in the night, when they prowled around the fire jabbing their spears into the air to show what they’d done to the beast they’d slain. The stories thrilled him, but he knew there was no danger; he only watched.

Out of the darkness emerged a silvery form—his brother, Chos, creeping through the glen. It was Chos, but not Chos. It looked like what Ral imagined a spirit might look like.

Then the massive bulk of a great, hairy beast materialized, its tusks glowing silver against the black forest night. But, like Chos, it was only the beast’s spirit, a silvery outline cutting through a black void.

The spirit of Chos slinked closer to the beast.

The beast rubbed its great tusks against a tall shape that now grew from the dark—a stone pine, straight and smooth, its branches sprouting leaves at the top like clouds. Near the tree stood a large rock. A bird came to alight on the rock; it cocked its head at Ral as if to ask some wordless question before it spread its wings and flew away.

Chos’s spirit raised its spear and stepped forward, poised to strike. But then he stumbled. A hole opened up in the ground, and Chos fell forward. His foot made a crunching sound as it broke through the dry grass covering the hole.

The beast’s spirit turned. With a roar that shook the world, the beast charged. Chos stumbled, tried to bring his spear up, but Ral knew with helpless, sickening certainty, it would only end in blood. The beast caught Chos with the tip of its tusk. Chos made a sucking sound, like all the breath coming out of him at once. With a yank of its massive head, the beast tossed Chos across the glen and headlong into the trunk of the stone pine. With an awful thunk, Chos’s spirt collapsed into a shadowy heap. Sickness dug at Ral’s heart. My brother, my brother!

The silvery outline of Chos’s form began to dissolve and fade, until it was no longer discernable against the black sky. Then came a long moment where everything was dark. Nothing moved. No sound was made. Even the tingling from the gull feathers disappeared, and Ral was left in a state of utter nothingness. It felt like he hadn’t been born yet, as if the earth itself were just the shadow of an idea sprouting from the black depths of some unknown being’s incipient dream.

Ral gradually became aware of the sound of a voice crying out in alarm. He was back in the clearing where he’d tracked the doe. He could just make out the deer’s white tail bounding away through the trees. And he realized it was his own voice he’d heard.

It felt like an arrow had pierced his heart. He silently cursed his bad luck. Why had the dream come to him while he slept not? And what was the meaning of the silver spirits he had seen, not with his eyes, but seemingly from some other, nameless sense. Had he been looking inside dark eyes? But, no, he hadn’t been dreaming. The othersight had seemed so real!

Ral lowered his aching arm and was about to turn around and walk home, shameful and empty-handed, when a gull appeared in the sky above the clearing. Ral shaded his eyes against the sun and watched as the bird circled three times, then landed on the rock near the stone pine tree. It pecked once at something, then cocked its head at Ral.

It looked just like the bird in the othersight.

Then the bird spread its wings, flapped once, and flew away.

Ral stood very still for a moment. It made him uneasy that the bird had landed in the clearing, just like in the othersight. And the bird had looked at him in the same way. He didn’t know why, but a sense of dread descended upon him. It felt bad, like when he was younger and had gone to play in the stream when he was supposed to have been collecting wood for the fire, and when he’d returned home empty-handed, the look on maman’s face had been more than enough to remind him of how he’d shirked his duty.

Brushing off the feeling, Ral approached the rock. He stepped across the clearing but then stumbled. His foot broke through the long, matted grass that covered a large hole, about the size of the rock.

Ral fell forward onto his hands and knees. He knelt there for a moment in the grass. What was happening? First the bird, now the hole that had been covered with grass. But in the othersight, it had been Chos who had fallen, not Ral. What did it mean?

He waited for more of the silvery spirits to show themselves to him, but after a while the afternoon heat grew around him, and he knew it was time to return home. Perhaps on the way, luck would be with him and he would run into the doe again. But in the back of his mind, Ral didn’t hold out hope, for he’d learned that life grants not luck to those who wait for it; luck is never given, only made.

#

Dead quiet. Ral’s breath came in shallow gasps, as if someone had cut his body in half. A bead of sweat rolled from his temple down the side of his face, then the length of his neck and down into his deerskin shirt. He dared not move to wipe it or the tusk-beast would hear him.

On the other side of the glen came the great animal, its long fur matted and tangled, reeking of wildness, trampling the tall grass and saplings. A gibbous moon, low on the horizon, made the beast’s enormous, curved tusks glow pale and dull.

Ral had never felt more alive than at that moment. He saw everything clearly. His thoughts came one at a time, in order. Hide upwind. Rub charcoal on your face to blend in with the night. Stay as still as possible and make no noise. Wait for the beast to find the stone pine in the center of the glen. With luck, the animal would be hungry and stop to strip the sweet, juicy bark from it. Then, when the beast was distracted, wait for Chos—Ral’s brother—to creep up from behind and draw first blood.

Chos had been given this honor after proving his speed and accuracy in the Great Race at the end of the cold season. He would keep the privilege until the end of the summer.

Unless first he dies, thought Ral uneasily. He slowly turned his head, straining to see the others hidden in the low, thorny garrigue that rimmed the glen. He could just make out Leo’s mass of black curls and, a little farther away, the tip of Chos’s spear. The rest were hidden in shadows, but he knew they were there—Merc, Fen, Dain, Grel, Nal, and Jac. All but Sev, Leo’s youngest son, who had broken his leg playing carelessly on the rocks at the top of Giant’s Knuckle.

The tusk-beast lumbered forward, the wild smell roiling through the glen in a noxious wave.

Movement off to Ral’s left.

Ral turned—slowly—to see Chos creep forward, silent as death. Chos’s shirtless body glistened with sweat as he crouched low to the ground, his spear angled forward. Chos looked once toward Ral and pressed two fingers against his lips—not one finger, but two; it was more than just a simple warning. But Ral didn’t need to be reminded of the danger. The awful sight of the tusk-beast was warning enough.

Chos crept up behind a large rock that stood near the stone pine tree. Ral felt a slight breeze against the back of his neck and thanked the earth that the wind hadn’t turned.

But then something clicked in Ral’s mind. The rock—the one the bird had landed on in the othersight. And the hole! This was the clearing where Ral had seen the bird, the tree, the rock—and the hole. It had been two passes of the sun, but he had no doubt this was the same clearing.

Ral could just make out the slight depression where the grass dipped into the hole. But it wasn’t enough for Chos to notice, unless it were daylight and he were consciously looking for it.

And now Chos was almost upon it. If Ral didn’t do something, Chos would stumble, and the beast would rip him to pieces.

Just like in the othersight!

Chos took another step.

Two more steps and he’d fall through the hole.

What could Ral do? He shot a glance at Leo and Merc, the two who were hiding closest to Ral in the dense garrigue. Even if he could warn them, Chos was already too close to the beast.

Chos stepped again.

He was only one step away now.

Ral did the only thing he could think to do. He snatched up a small, rotted tree branch from the forest floor and heaved it as hard as he could. He’d meant to throw it across the clearing, downwind of the beast and away from the hunters, but it hit a low-hanging branch very close to Ral.

A loud crack split the air as the two branches collided.

The beast whirled.

There was a long moment—the longest in his life—when Ral saw everything in stark vividness—the awful head of the tusk-beast, Chos caught in shocked surprise in the middle of the glen, the ghostly stone pine tree cast in the light of the moon. And the fear that overtook Ral was one that made him feel like every part of him was screaming aloud.

Then, mercifully—or not so, for it ended the long moment of terror but began another anew—the tusk-beast roared once and charged.

From out of the forest the rest of the hunting party suddenly emerged. But Ral himself could only remain frozen in place. This was just what he’d seen in the othersight!

The rest came as a blur of motion and noise. The beast hurling men aside—Nal, closest to the beast, fell with a jagged red gash that ripped his belly open. Jac, Leo’s eldest son, who was to become head of the lion after Leo, was trampled under the beast’s massive feet. Leo himself was thrown head-first against the trunk of the stone pine.

Merc was the only one able to get a spear into the beast. Using its blind fury against it, Merc ran up behind it, braced his spear, and let out the shrill warrior’s cry. The beast turned its thick neck and impaled itself on Merc’s spear. Merc was thrown to the ground and was only barely able to roll aside before the beast thundered away, crashing through the garrigue and on down the valley.

The hunting party—those who were still alive—stood in the pale glen panting and sweating, rent and broken. Ral could only stare at the bodies of Nal and Jac in shock and horror, until Leo turned to face him, his lifewater oozing thick and dark from his temple. Leo’s face was masked by an expression halfway between wrath and revulsion. Ral’s shock turned to humiliation. What had he done?

Ral lowered his spear and sat down heavily in the brush. He looked at the still bodies of Nal and Jac, wishing in that moment that he’d had the presence of mind to charge the beast, wishing it had been Ral himself whom the beast had ripped open with its tusk.

Then, with an inchoate bitterness which he had no idea would later come to enshroud his every waking moment, he thought, The Valley of the Bones, on this day, its name has earned.

#

Giant’s Knuckle, a very long time ago

The air shook, but the shaking came from far away, out of the darkness spreading above the big seawater like a great bird wrapping its black wings around the sky. Ral held out his hand and closed his eyes, feeling for skywater.

“Ral skywater feel not. Ral skywater smell,” said Chos, sniffing the air. “Skywater later fall.” He wiggled his fingers like water coming down out of the sky.

Ral shrugged. Chos was usually right—about everything. He knew where the biggest fish were in the high green lake. He could track a deer even when it had a half day’s lead. And if there were a tusk-beast prowling about, Chos was always the first to hear it.

Chos scratched at his tan face. He was just beginning to grow the face hair, like Leo’s but not yet as big. “Chos y Ral rest make,” said Chos, sitting down on a large, flat rock and pulling out a piece of dried fish. He ripped the fish in half and handed one of the pieces to Ral, who sat down next to him on the rock.

Across the valley, the wind blew the tall grasses almost flat against the rocky ground. “Sky cold blows,” said Ral, crossing his arms against his chest.

Chos nodded and tugged at Ral’s beast-skin, motioning for him to pull it up around his shoulders. “Skin of lion Ral warm make.” He made the clawing motion, first against his own cheek, then, grinning, against Ral’s.

Ral laughed and batted Chos’s hand away. Ral looked now at his brother, feeling the warm love wash over him like lying down in the green tide pools after the water has baked in the sun all day. Why couldn’t Chos be Head of the Lion? Chos was always kind and playful, unlike Leo who was ugly and mean and covered with thick, black hair and always looked at you as if you were thinking of uncovering the smoke pit to spoil the winter meat. And he hated the things Leo did to maman in the night—when she made the hurting sound.

Ral rubbed at his back. He could still feel the sting of the switch against it.

“Ral big hurt still have?” asked Chos. His eyes smiled.

Ral nodded bitterly. Then he pointed at Chos and held his palm above his head.

Chos grabbed Ral’s hand and pulled it down, shaking his head vigorously. “Leo Head of Lion is.” Chos pointed an adamant finger at himself. “If Chos Head, Chos hurt on Ral make. Same like Leo.” He touched his fingers to his mouth then spread them open in the loud-talking motion. “Ral big sound make. Ral tusk-beast warn.” He closed the lids of his eyes using two fingers. “Nal to spirit world go. Jac to spirt world go.”

Ral bit his lip. How could he explain why he’d thrown the branch and made the noise? Chos would have done the same thing, had he seen what Ral had in the othersight. Ral pointed first to his eye, then at the darkening sky. “Ral spirit in time unborn see. Spirit there is.” He waved the air away from him. “Spirit away go.”

Chos smiled. “Ral inside dark eyes look.” He leaned his head against his hand in the sleeping motion and laughed.

Ral steamed. That had been no dream. He’d seen what would have happened if Chos had taken even a single step more.

Chos looked across the valley and pushed a strip of fish into his mouth. The wind blew a lock of black hair back from his face as he chewed.

It puzzled Ral. Why had the spirits shown him these things if he weren’t meant to stop them?

“Chos inside dark eyes look,” said Chos when he’d finished the fish. He stretched out his lean body on the wide, flat rock and covered his eyes with his arm.

Ral rubbed at his back where Leo’s switch had stung him and watched the sky blow closer as his brother slept. He thought again about the othersight. Perhaps he should go to Aran. The shaman knew the spirit world better than anyone else. But Aran was always busy making little marks on strips of bark. The old man didn’t like to be bothered. From behind his viney, grey locks, Aran would squint at you with his blue eyes and make you feel like you had just let the fire go out when it was your turn to watch it. And Ral found the black, bulbous growth on his face to be very ugly. Ral decided he would only go to the shaman if it happened again. Maybe it never would?

While Chos slept, Ral glanced uneasily at the path that would bring them home. It wound through the stand of thick trees. That was where the lions slept during the day. Sometimes Ral could see their gold coats perched on thick branches high above him, and he would freeze in his tracks, watching as they breathed in and out, their fur rippling in the speckles of sunlight that found its way through the leaves.

It was still early enough in the day, and Ral oughtn’t have worried, for the lions only came out when the sun began to sink below the mountaintops. That was when he and Chos would have to climb higher and take the path next to the green lake that went around the trees to avoid the lions.

While he waited for Chos to wake up, Ral took a piece of the burnt stick he carried in a fold of his deer skin and began making a drawing on the flat rock where he sat. He rubbed the black charcoal on his fingertips and began drawing. He didn’t want to remember the tusk beast, but sometimes he found that drawing something unpleasant made him stop thinking about it. As he worked, Ral thought again about the lake and wondered how deep the snow would be around the shoreline this early in the season.

Suddenly, the world changed.

Black waves covered the sky.

Ral’s fingers and toes tingled like when his sister, Enjoli, tickled him with the soft bird-skin. A hissing filled his ears, blocking out all other sound.

Then he knew, the othersight was coming to him.

The waves disappeared to reveal a silvery forest. Ral and Chos walked through it. Ral wanted to go the other way, around the edge of the high green lake, although the ground was still covered in snow. Chos stopped for a moment to look in the sky. A silvery gull circled above them. Chos removed his water skin from his belt and took a long slow drink as they watched the gull.

Suddenly, the spirit of a lioness emerged from the forest. She pounced on Chos, tearing at his neck with teeth as long as fingers. Thick red lifewater sprayed from Chos’s neck. He made the big hurting sound many times.

Ral awoke from it. He didn’t know how long the othersight had lasted, but now the sun had sunk noticeably lower in the sky. Chos was still asleep on the rock.

Dung of the mind! What othersight is?

Dread crept into his heart. Was it certain these visions would come to pass, or were they only one possibility? Was he meant to stop them? Or were they only affirmations of a harsh and cruel life? Or, worse, were they only mean to show him how maddeningly close that cruelty was to being avoided.

There had been a bird in the other sight—both times. Ral had learned from the shaman, Aran, that when signs appear, they don’t come lightly. But what did the birds mean?

He thought back to the gull who had sat on the rock in the first othersight, the rock near the stone pine tree and the hole in the ground. He cursed himself for not filling in the hole when he’d had the chance.

Ral’s sat bolt upright. The bird had alighted on the rock. And the rock had been about the same size as the hole in the ground. With just a little bit of effort, he could have rolled the rock into the hole. Is that what the bird had been trying to tell him?

If so, what about the other bird, the one Chos had been watching in this new othersight while he drank from his water skin?

Ral didn’t have time to think any more on it, because Chos woke up just then. He stretched his arms, then hopped to his feet and went to stand on the edge of the flat rock, looking out across the green valley. They had stayed too long on the rock, and dusk had begun to fall.

“Chos smell,” said Chos, raising his nose into the air. “Skywater.”

Ral had to warn his brother what he’d seen in the othersight. He got to his feet and tugged on Chos’s arm. “Chos! Spirit of lioness.” He tapped his eye and made the clawing motion against his cheek. “Lioness there is. Lioness there gone.”

Chos laughed. “Ral inside dark eyes look.” He touched his own chest. “When Chos inside dark eyes look, Chos spirit of Odila see.” He was talking about Leo’s girl-child, the one with the face like fresh skywater and with eyes always making the happy look. Chos made a curving motion with his hands, where Odila’s breasts and hips would be. “Odila there is. Odila there gone.” He grinned and tapped his eye. “Odila here is.”

But Ral knew what he’d seen. “Chos y Ral by high green lake walk,” he insisted.

Chos made the crazy face and shook his head. “Snow deep is. Chos y Ral in trees walk.”

Ral stepped in front of Chos on the path. “Lioness in trees walk.” He tried making the claw against Chos’s face, but Chos grabbed his hand.

“Ral look. Sun down go.” He held his hand flat, raised it in the air, then slowly lowered it. “Chos y Ral home go.” Then he laughed and pushed Ral’s charcoal-covered hand against Ral’s face. “Ral not good look.”

Ral looked at his brother, helpless as Chos continued on down the path, the skin full of arrows bouncing against his back as he walked.

Grudgingly Ral followed, looking behind and all around him on the path as they picked their way down from the rocky dome of Giant’s Knuckle and through the stand of tall, straight trees that smelled like the fire pit at the Réu.

Maybe the othersight meant nothing. Chos was right; the snow would still be deep around the high green lake. It would make the hurt on their feet that started out small and sharp but then became big and horrible and went all the way up his legs.

But going through the trees when the sun was beginning to drop below the land brought its own problems.

That was when things came out to hunt.

There must be a way to make Chos want to take the path by the high green lake.

Water! Ral glanced at the water skin attached to Chos’s belt. If only he’d emptied their water skins when Chos had been asleep. Chos would surely have wanted to refill them in the lake.

Ral’s eyes suddenly grew wide. The bird in the othersight! Chos had been drinking out of his water skin and looking at the bird.

But the realization had come too late.

Ral felt it before he knew what it was. The air moved next to him. Then came a blur of golden-brown. The lioness knocked Chos to the ground and dug her teeth into his neck. She made a deep sound with her throat, like an angry sky about to spit the many-fingered fire.

For a moment Ral could do nothing. His arms and legs felt cold, as if they were frozen in place. Chos made the terrible, sharp, hurting sound as the lioness shook her head from side to side, ripping and pulling, pulling and ripping. Her wild beast smell filled Ral’s nose and choked his throat.

Ral shook his head clear. He ripped the stone axe from his waist strap. With a voice that growled from the depths of his lungs, he leaped, burying the blade into the lioness’s back.

She turned in anger, the muscles in her back moving in strong waves. Facing Ral, she crouched in the jumping stance. Ral held the axe ready, knowing he didn’t have a chance. The lioness would carry his spirit and Chos’s away to the spirit world. With helpless shame, he felt the yellow stream flow down his leg.

But just as the lioness was about to leap, an arrow flew from the sky. It slid with a thunking sound into her side, between two of her chest bones. Another arrow came, hitting her in the neck. She turned in surprise, made an angry sound, then fell heavily onto her side. Red lifewater streamed from her mouth onto the ground and pulsed from around the thick arrow shafts.

Ral turned to see Leo running toward them on the path, bow in hand. Kneeling next to Chos, Ral pressed his palm against the ripped part of his brother’s neck as he’d seen the healers do. “Brother,” Ral cried, “great spirit away turn!”

Chos’s lifewater felt sticky against his hand. Chos made soft hurting sounds and ground his teeth together. His eyes found Ral’s and made the big scared look, when the great spirit begins to pull you away.

Then Leo stood over them. Anger burned in his eyes.

“Sun,” he said, jabbing a finger at the light fading above the mountains. Leo raised his thick, hairy hand high, then lowered it. He shook his large head, the black curls going back and forth.

Ral touched his eye and found that his finger came away wet. “Ral spirit of lioness see.” He turned back to his brother. Chos’s chest made a strange sound like the flapping of wings. His eyes stayed open, but he no longer moved.

Leo pushed Ral away, leaned his ear against Chos’s lips, and listened.

“Spirit of Chos…” Leo blew against his palm, then turned it skyward.

A stabbing feeling came to him, the feeling Chos had called grief, for Chos’s words would now only live on within Ral’s ears and behind his eyes. And when Chos spoke his words in time unborn, only the spirits would be there to hear them.

And as Ral watched Chos’s lifewater flow from his neck and paint the forest floor red, a sudden loneliness descended upon him, although at the time he only had a vague notion about what the othersight would come to mean. All he knew was that he would miss his brother, from now until the end of time unborn.

#

After five more passes of the sun, the othersight came to him again. In it, Ral saw at his feet a small black insect with a curved tail. Nearby, a herd of deer crossed a valley. These were docile creatures not used to people, very easy to hunt. Ral recognized it as the Purple Valley, where the tall flowers grew—the ones used by the healers to staunch gashes and cuts. With so many deer in the valley, there would be meat enough to last the entire cold season.

Like before, a gull flew down out of the sky. It circled and landed on a rock very near the black insect. But then the gull flew away amidst a rumbling that grew from the col encircling the valley. A cascade of rocks and trees slid down the sides of the valley, scattering the herd of deer in all directions.

When he awoke from the othersight, Ral tried to tell Leo about what he saw. But the Head of the Lion growled at him and turned back to the fire, where he sat chewing on the sweet bark of a sapling. “Purple Valley far is,” said Leo.

After Ral insisted, Leo waved him away. “Leo Head of Lion is. Ral…” He slapped himself on the backside. “…ass of lion is.”

Everyone laughed. But the next day, Leo led a party up to the Purple Valley, almost a full day’s trek through the Valley of the Bones and over the Pyr Massif, with its peak that stayed covered in snow far into the summer. Ral ran ahead, excited at the prospect of being vindicated. He scarcely even noticed the black insect that sat sunning itself on a rock near the edge of the valley. When Ral got to the Col Blanc overlooking the valley and saw deer in multitudes grazing among the purple flowers, he was overjoyed and made the dance of thanksgiving right there atop the col. But in his carelessness, he strayed too close to the edge. His foot dislodged a large rock and caused it to hurtle down the side of the col. The rock gathered more rocks as it rolled. It seemed like the whole mountain was collapsing into the valley.

Ral was devasted to see the deer scatter, eventually reforming into a thundering herd that disappeared around a bend at the far end of the valley. By the time Leo and the rest of the hunting party arrived at the col, the valley held but a single deer, one whose leg had been broken by a falling rock.

Leo peered over the edge, his face reddening in anger. He didn’t even look at Ral.

Then Merc came to the edge of the col and surveyed the valley. He laughed, pointing at the injured deer. “Meat all winter long last,” he joked, slapping Ral on the head. Although Merc had meant it playfully, Ral felt deeply ashamed.

They made camp for the night. Ral sat, cold and miserable, away from the campfire. He didn’t deserve to be warm, and he didn’t feel like joking around with the others. He just wanted to understand what was happening to him. It felt like something was wrong with him.

In the morning, they were about to start out for home, when a sudden rainstorm blew down from the mountains. They stood under a stand of spindly cypress trees to wait out the rain. But as Ral sat shivering and wet under the dripping leaves, the othersight came to him again. It revealed the same scene as before—the Purple Valley, filled with deer. The difference was that, this time, the valley floor was littered with boulders from the rockslide Ral had caused. As before, a gull appeared in the sky and began to circle a small, black insect with a hooked tail, which sat perched atop a rock near the edge of the valley. Ral couldn’t tell what it was or what it meant, only that the sight of it stabbed his gut with dread.

When he awoke from it, Ral considered asking Leo to return to the valley. But then he thought better of it. Leo would never make the same mistake again. Ral would have to think of a different way.

Or he could simply ignore it. The thought gave him pause, for that was just what he’d done when he’d seen the lioness—or rather, Ral hadn’t been able to convince Chos not to walk through the forest. And now his brother was dead.

Another thought struck him cold—a cold that went much deeper than the rain against his skin. If Leo wouldn’t listen to him, there might be another way. And it would tell him if he should pay attention to the gulls that had appeared to him.

The rain suddenly let up. Then the sun showed her face from behind the clouds. Ral stood up and made his way to an outcrop of black rocks that reminded Ral of the ugly growth on the shaman’s face. Ral stood atop the outcrop, which was still wet but beginning to dry in grey patches. In one of the dry spots sat a fat, black scorpion, sunning itself after the rainstorm.

The creature from the othersight is, thought Ral with revulsion.

Ral watched the scorpion for a while—from a safe distance—and wondered how he could force Leo to go back to the Purple Valley. The scorpion’s tail twitched.

“Ral!” Merc called from the stand of cypresses. The hunting party was gathering their things to leave.

Ral looked back at the scorpion, then glanced again at the hunting party. His heart beat faster in his chest. Was it worth the risk?

Merc again called Ral’s name, this time more insistently.

Ral thought no further. He unwrapped the deerskin from around his calf, stepped forward, and planted his bare foot next to the scorpion. The scorpion froze. Ral nudged it with his toe. With lightning speed, the scorpion’s tail shot out and dug its stinger into the top of Ral’s foot.

The pain didn’t come right away. But when it did, it came with an agony that felt like his entire leg had been lit on fire. From the depths of his mind came the memory of a snake that had bitten him long ago. The poison wasn’t the same, but the treatment would be.

He must have cried out, for the entire hunting party hurried to the rock. Leo quickly crushed the scorpion with a large rock, then bent to examine Ral’s foot. It crossed Ral’s mind that perhaps Leo would simply leave him there, or that they might carry him all the way home without treating him. But then Leo turned to Merc. “Merc flowers of Purple Valley bring,” he growled.

Even through the pain, Ral couldn’t help but feel some measure of satisfaction. And when Merc returned, he brought not only the purple flowers to slow the scorpion’s poison, but news that the deer had returned to the valley, and in numbers so great they could scarcely be counted.

It was the beginning of Ral’s understanding of the othersight, of how it could be used, and of how it must be handled carefully, like the eggs they collected from gulls’ nests along the shores of the big water. And although the scorpion’s poison made him sick with fever and kept him awake for three nights with sweat pouring from his body, in the end the hunting party returned with such a bountiful hunt that they had enough meat to smoke for the entire cold season.

After they returned home, laden with meat and dear skins, Ral finished his recovery sleeping in the cave, where his maman treated him with cool strips of deerskin dipped in water rubbed with the petals of the purple flowers.

On the third night, Aran came to visit him. In Ral’s feverish state, the shaman’s dark growth looked even more hideous. Ral could see every hair sprouting from it, like the leaves of some kind of infected grass growing from a foul garden blackened by disease.

At first, the shaman’s face was like stone, but then he placed his hand on Ral’s forehead, not roughly. His eyes softened, and he looked upon Ral not unkindly but with the curiosity of a parent whose child has done something unexpectedly wonderful—something the parent would have never thought the child capable of, leaving the parent to wonder how this product of his own flesh and blood could have exceeded that with which it had started out in life.

“Ral spirit of deer,” said Aran, touching his eye, “in time unborn see?”

Ral nodded.

Aran grunted. “Like other one is.”

“Other one?”

“Far,” said Aran, motioning toward the cave’s entrance.

Ral wanted to ask more about the “other one,” but the shaman seemed deep in thought. It was bad luck to disturb a shaman when he was thinking.

“Ral spirit of lioness see?”

“Oc,” said Ral, nodding. “In time unborn.” He bit his lip, wondering if he should say it. “In othersight.”

Aran met Ral’s gaze and stared for a long time. Then he slowly shook his head, the way a parent might scold his child. Then he touched his fingers to Ral’s lips in the way that meant to be silent, not with one finger but with two. It was more than a simple command; it was a dire warning.

Ral held his hand first over his ear, then over his breast, to show where he’d heard and felt Aran’s words. Ral thought he understood, although perhaps not why it must be so.

In the weeks after Ral’s fever broke, he went to Aran several more times to seek his counsel, to ask not only about the othersight but about the “other one” the shaman had mentioned. But every time, Ral was again met with Aran’s two-fingered warning pressed against his lips.

Over time, Ral grew to know how the othersight worked, sometimes peacefully, but often through violence and death, as had happened with the lioness and the tusk-beast. He came to realize he must never speak aloud what he saw in the othersight, as Aran had warned him, or the outcome would be horrific.

And if Ral ever tried to change the outcome of an event himself based on what he’d witnessed in the othersight, the consequences would be just as dire as those inflicted by the tusk-beast. He learned to bring about changes more subtly, without intervening directly. And he learned to pay attention to the clues given by the circling gulls that seemed to infest the othersight.

In time, he came to an uneasy understanding of how the othersight behaved, although he could never seem to fully master it. And he couldn’t force the othersight to come to him. It seemed to only come at maddeningly unpredictable intervals. Sometimes he would have two on the same day, and sometimes there would be many passes of the sun between them.

He found, too, that he couldn’t ignore them. Once, when he’d seen the spirit of Odila overcome by a wave while she fished along the shores of the big water, he hadn’t done anything to prevent it; he’d been exhausted from a particularly long and unprofitable hunt, and he’d simply wanted to sleep. But he’d awakened to the news that the poor girl had almost drowned. She had been heavy with child at the time, and the child hadn’t survived, just as the othersight had predicted.

After that, Ral grew more and more somber, feeling the weight of a great and powerful responsibility descend upon him. And as the seasons came and went and the tribe moved from the mountains to the big water and back again many, many times, Ral began to look upon life not as a thing to be explored and enjoyed but rather only to be endured. It would be a very long time before the thought would leave him.

#

It would be another thousand years before his people would learn to plant and grow things in the green fields that filled the valleys among the rocky knolls of his homeland. During that time, Ral saw his brothers and sisters and friends live, grow old, and, inevitably, die. He knew not why he alone was spared, although he grew to consider his longevity not so much a blessing as a source of grief, for to outlive all those you have known and laughed with and loved is to endure the unendurable. Sometimes, the loneliness would swallow him, and he would be wracked with an ache so complete he was afraid he would die of it.

And later, as each year faded into the next, he was afraid he wouldn’t die of it—or of anything. While he admitted to having the occasional suicidal thought, he never seriously entertained the idea; there was always something that held him back: some notion of duty he couldn’t fully comprehend but which seemed an innate component of who he was. Am I no better than a wild beast that eats because it is hungry? Or, even baser yet: a plant that grows when it is watered and withers when it is not?

His perpetual youth seemed a curiosity to some, a wonder to others, and, to the rest, a manifestation of demonic possession. Owing to the latter, he decided to periodically change his name and move among the various tribes that lived in the region. First, when he found a tribe of fishers who lived on the sunny southern shores of the great water, he used the name Chos in honor of his slain brother. Then, when the head of the tribe grew suspicious of his abiding youth, he moved back into the mountains, where he joined a group of herders who lived in caves during the cold months and moved to goatskin tents in the summer. But after some of his family were lost in a cave-in, he moved back to the coast, swearing to never willingly enter a cave again. He changed his name back to Ral and learned to paint it using the symbol his new tribe had given him during a naming ceremony they traditionally held for newborns; they’d made an exception in Ral’s case, giving him a symbol with the shape of a man from the waist up, hovering above a flat line representing the earth—a variation on the same symbol they used for anything that was unknown.

A thousand years later, Ral found himself drawn on a long journey eastward. Guided by the gulls in consecutive visions that led him farther and farther east, he arrived in Sumer, where he met a man of great learning, an engineer named Suen who was charged with architecting a great temple for the god Utu. Suen had a moment of inspiration when, after having a long conversation with Ral on a rainy afternoon on the banks of the Tigris, Ral left a series of footprints in the mud, exclaiming with feigned surprise, “Look there, Suen! My name appears in the mud.”

Suen had laughed, saying, “I see it, boy. And when it dries, your name shall be forever there etched.” But as Suen said it, Ral could see a moment of realization dawn on his face. At that, Suen gave some pretext to leave, and he immediately set about creating a series of plates out of mud from the riverbank. Into these, he etched drawings of the temple he was designing, calculating the dimensions with markings on the plates, then laying the plates out in the sun to bake and harden. Ral had to smile to himself when he realized how these new markings would change things for generations to come. It would become a source of pride and satisfaction whenever he beheld words carved in clay or stone and remembered the role he had played in their genesis.

Ral changed his name again after a vision brought him to Media. The monosyllabic names of old had grown unfashionable, and he sought for himself a new name that had both meaning and purpose. He had come to think of himself as a healer of sorts—one who sought to right things that were about to go wrong. He had become fairly competent at Hebrew from speaking with traders from the west, and he took a variation on the word “rapa”—to heal—and added to it the ending “ael”, a suffix that had become popular in names. He wasn’t thrilled about the implication that he was the “lord” or “god” of healing—or of anything else, for that matter—but the name had a nice ring to it, and he liked how it both started and ended with the same sounds as his original name.

In Media, Ral—now Raphael—settled himself on a parcel of farmland nestled in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains. There, a series of visions came to him in which he saw a woman named Sarah he was to protect from various dangers, including one incident in which she almost contracted leprosy; Sarah was given to promiscuity and, as such, was susceptible to the diseases that wracked her various lovers. Following that episode—and for reasons that didn’t become clear to Raphael until later—a second vision led him to persuade an older gentleman to seduce the young Sarah. But as she sat on the man’s bed, removing her veil in feigned, demure innocence, the man suddenly backed away in horror. At the same time, they recognized each other for who they were—father and daughter, separated from each other by time and circumstance but never having forgotten the memory of the other.

After that, the demon of Sarah’s lust having been abruptly dispatched, Raphael was led westward, to Egypt, where the name he had chosen for himself would soon be put to the test.