“Belonging is important,” Sangae said, “and Aliver belongs among us. No one in this village would say otherwise. He has companions here, women who lie with him. No one notices his skin any longer. Such difference is no great thing among family. He belongs among us.”
Thaddeus heard a double meaning in this, a slight edge to the chieftain’s voice. Yes, he acknowledged silently, it was always hard to lose a son, even an adopted one. Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost-or might lose-defined him more than the things he yet possessed.
“I don’t know how he’ll receive you,” the chieftain continued, “but do know that he has not forgotten why he was sent here. In truth, I think he ever thinks only of what the future holds for him. This angers him, and yet…that is how he is.”
“What of the contagion?”
“The prince burned with it like most of my people. He weathered it, though, and is no worse for it now.” Sangae was quiet a moment. He turned his gaze away and watched a bird hop through the glare of a lane some distance away. “What will you ask of him?”
“I ask nothing. His father has, and it is for Aliver alone to answer it. This laryx, is it dangerous to hunt?”
Sangae turned to gaze at him. “Few men ever accomplish a test so great.”
When hunting a laryx, Sangae explained, one actually becomes the hunted for most of the contest. One first riles the beast by finding a nest it is currently using for bedding. The hunter fouls the area, kicking the matted grasses with his feet, urinating on it, spitting, squatting to defecate. After that, he waits nearby until the creature returns, catches his scent, and pursues him. That is when the hunt begins.
“You see, a laryx does not take insult well. Once on a scent, it will follow it until it either kills the offender or drops from exhaustion. The hunter must run before it, staying near enough that the beast does not lose the scent. But not too close. One twisted ankle, a bad route chosen, or if one overestimates his stamina…any of these things mean death. The only way to kill the beast is to run it to complete exhaustion and then to attack it with all you have left, hoping that is enough. If Aliver triumphs, he will have been through a physical and mental ordeal that cannot really be imagined. He will have lived with a demon panting at his back for hours, with death one misstep away. This is not a challenge he had to take. He chose it, and I have been praying ever since that he was ready for it. Men die at this effort, Thaddeus. It may be that you never get a chance to take him from me. If you are blessed to look into his living eyes, you can know for certain that he is strong. Strong in a way no Akaran has been for many generations.”
“Do you believe he was ready for this hunt?”
“We will see,” Sangae answered.
The unease this response filled Thaddeus with remained throughout the three days he waited for Aliver’s return. How cruel, he mused, would it be if the prince died now, just before I invite him to find his destiny?
But he need not have worried. When Aliver arrived, he did so amid a cacophony of jubilation that could announce only triumph. Thaddeus stood in the small room Sangae had offered him, watching the scene through a window propped open with a stick. The tumult of black bodies was tremendous. They thronged into the streets like a school of fish in frenzy, all of them learning of the hunter’s return at once, each of them dropping whatever activity he had been engaged in. They seemed more numerous than the village population. Where had they all come from? Thaddeus almost stepped out and joined them, but he felt a need to stay hidden as yet, to observe from the shadows inside his open-air window.
They swarmed around some sort of wheeled conveyance. It was a cart pulled by several men, a thing large enough that normally it would have been harnessed to one of the long-horned oxen the villagers used for larger loads. But instead the men had grasped its leading poles with their bare hands. Thaddeus could not make out exactly what it bore until it passed by his vantage point. It was still a distance away but near enough that he drew back a step. It was a beast, a dead creature so large that at first he wondered if several of the things were piled on top of one another. There was something wolflike in its long limbs, something of a laughing dog in the thickness of its neck, something boarlike in its snout, but it was none of these creatures. Beneath its scraggly coat the beast was purple skinned, a dry, pocked, and scarred surface, scaled by peeling patches. It was a horrible thing, a monster. How could Aliver have killed such a thing with only a spear? It scarcely seemed possible.
A young boy climbed up onto the wagon and tugged the creature’s ears. Several others grabbed it by the hair around its neck and yanked the head this way and that, to roars from the crowd. Still another leaned his weight onto the lower jaw, opening the mouth enough that he could feign sticking his head inside it. But he thought better of this and leaped away in exaggerated fear, stirring still greater mirth.
All this was nothing compared to the reception the hunter himself received. He was easy to pick out. He marched through the throng like an epic hero brought back to life, returning to universal adoration. Or like the ghost of this hero, a paler form of man than those around him. He shouldered his way through arms patting him, faces pushing close to his, each person with some comment to make, so many white teeth moving close to him. They looked, for a strange instant, like creatures thrusting forward to take bites from him, but Thaddeus knew this to be a corruption of his own eyes and not true to the scene before him.
Thaddeus was surprised by Aliver’s height. He was a full head taller than his father had been. Under the constant burn of the sun, his skin had ripened like oiled leather, though it was still pale compared to that of Talayans. He was bare chested. The striations of his muscles carved fine, well-proportioned lines. His wavy hair was tinged with yellow highlights, making it much lighter than it ever would have been back in Acacia. Because of this he might have seemed out of place in a far southern Talayan village. And yet, at the same time he had never looked more at home within himself. He was a sculpted, sun-burnished, hard- and lean-muscled man, strong in the exuberant, absurd manner of youth. He wore that gold ring-the tuvey band-above his left bicep as if it were a part of him and had always been there. He took the attention well, smiling and answering comments in kind, but with no air of superiority.
For a moment Thaddeus wondered if there was a hint of humility in his expression, if in fact he had not killed the beast as these folks imagined. Many an Acacian noble took credit for kills made by their servants. Watching a little longer, he decided that whatever Aliver held back he did so for reasons other than shame. He sent word to Sangae that he did not wish to disrupt Aliver’s homecoming. He asked that Aliver be sent to him later that afternoon, once the commotion had died down.
When they did meet, nothing went as Thaddeus had expected. Months before, when he had imagined this meeting, Thaddeus had thought to greet Aliver with an embrace. He would pull the lad in and squelch any distance between them, any recrimination. The bond would be instant. A touch would do it, and everything else would fall into place. But as Aliver closed the last few steps that separated them, Thaddeus knew that had been a fantasy.