He came at me, no pause and no preparation—not straight on, though. It was the circling of before, the swirling dance, in and out and revolving. Since he wasn’t wearing robes or hair I could see it better now. I stood for a minute, getting the feel of it, then clumsily tried to move like he did; everyone laughed, at first.
But then—oh. Ohhhh. The chanting started again. The foot-stomping shook the fires, making the light jump, sound and sight in rhythm, cacophony given meaning, and that made it just the tiniest bit like the gods’ realm. Then it became easy to mimic the way Eino sort of jog-jumped into the circle and back, and to use the momentum the way he did, turning and turning, arms out, legs flying. At once I could feel the way moving in circles made the center of me almost unshakable. I could dart in unpredictable directions even while seeming to follow a pattern! Eino was circling on his side of the circle, waiting for me to get the hang of it, but that was no fun! I darted toward him and back. Come at me! Eino puffed out an approving sort of laugh, and then the dance really got started.
Oh, it was perfect. No drums this time, but none were needed; the boys’ voices were heavy and deep, their movements in unison like a guide. I went to the ground when Eino did, planting my hands in the dust and kicking out with my legs, laughing and breathless when he dodged me effortlessly with a backflip, delighted even when he leapt back and slammed me to the ground. It hurt, but what was pain? The dance became everything. The dance was worship, and strength, and better magic than anything I’d ever known in my short life. “I am!” I cried, and maybe it was boy-language and maybe it was god-language but it did not matter because it had the same meaning either way! Eino felt it, too, and he answered me in kind with sweat and ferocity and magic. Now when he threw a fist at me the movement said FORCE and it hit me really hard! If I had been mortal I would’ve gone flying; several of the boys in the ring behind me cried out and fell. But I laughed and said back WIND, silly! And I spun the force away in a gust that made everybody’s pretty long hair whip around. Then Eino stomped the ground and I felt the verb of his muscles shout SHATTER, and the ground cracked in a line of rubble from his feet toward mine. (His eyes got really big, but the dance had him; he had no time to react, beyond this.) So I jumped up high, like ten feet into the air, and I said WHEE without words and he stopped staring at the ground and stared at me instead. The dance! He started to grin. Then he jumped, too, not as high but just right, and we both landed in a spin. We spun and spun, our circle getting wider as the other boys backed away, the earth shaking harder, the chanting growing louder and harsher and faster until—
Everything stopped.
I was mid-leap when the world suddenly narrowed to a fine point, and my whole self shifted and flexed and rang like a bell.
I understood. I understood something new!
“Power,” I said softly. I uncurled myself from the leap and stuck to the air in surprise. “That must be part of it!”
“Yes,” said Nahadoth, who curled out of the shadows of the crowd.
I turned happily. “Naha!” She materialized in grace and silence and movement, the swirls of her substance licking and flickering round every boy nearby. Their abandon fed her and she fed them in turn, for this was her time and they had invoked her spirit. The fire went out as she passed, the logs pop-hissing as they frosted over—but the moonlight above, and that from her face, was more than enough to see by.
“Look how you’ve grown,” she said. “Multiple shapes, new perspectives, new languages… Shill.”
I beamed, putting my hands on my hips. “Yes, Naha! Hello, hello! I made that name up myself. Do you like it?”
“It is beautiful.” I could not be sure if she was talking about me, though, because she had stopped to stare at Eino, frozen as he was in mid-lunge. For a moment a look that was avid, almost greedy, came over Nahadoth’s face, and I started to get worried. Eino had spoken Naha’s name in the dark. Even I knew that was never safe.
Maybe I could make her think about something else. “Naha, I think I found a little bit of my nature! It’s power!”
“Yes.” She was reaching out to touch Eino’s face. I got really nervous, because I liked Eino—but she just drew a finger over his lips, so I relaxed. “Not your power, though.”
“I—” Oh. “Huh?”
“Can you not see?” Naha was behind Eino now, staring intently at his back like she wanted to hollow him out and live in his skin. “Look, Shill. We made your eyes from the stuff of the Maelstrom Itself. See everything.”
So I looked again, really hard, and then I looked some more, and then I got bored and started thinking about whether power had anything to do with being a trickster like I wanted, I mean what if I ended up being something weird like the godling of lizards or something, I didn’t want to be weird, and then all of a sudden I saw all the realms and all the paths and all the lines of meaning that mortals could not.
“Oh!” I dropped to the ground and trotted over to one of the boys standing frozen around us. There it was: a little bloorp of intention, of devotion, running from him to Eino. “And oh!” I ran over to another boy; another bloorp, like a thread made of bubbles, or maybe heat haze. A tie. A web. They were all of them, every boy at that camp, fixed on Eino. Every one of them had given him something of themselves, making him stronger; every one of them would die for him. Because of the dance? I did not know. But even I had a little, thin link to him. Mine, however, glowed gold-white, and it ran in both directions. I was making him stronger, but he was making me stronger at the same time. I didn’t know what that meant.
“We make them in our image,” Nahadoth breathed, “and they replicate us endlessly in their own.”
I didn’t understand at all, but that was pretty normal when talking to Naha. I just shrugged.
When Naha stepped out from behind Eino, I finally noticed how the little city Yukur was shivering, the very bricks of it radiating awe and fear at her presence. It did not protest her being there, though the shape she wore was female now, because she was even less a she than I was the he I seemed to be. It would not have mattered much if Yukur had protested, though; Nahadoth was Nahadoth. Rules meant nothing to the god of chaos and change.
I trotted over to stand before her; at once the tendrils of her swept round me, possessive. “I know you didn’t want me to come here, Naha,” I said, earnestly. “I… I hope you’re not mad.”
She looked amused, cupping my face in her hands. “I have no interest in obedient children.” Then the light of her face dimmed, and for some reason she looked away, southward. There was nothing south except that other continent of the planet; what was she thinking about, looking that way? “But beware, Shill. Never underestimate mortals—especially not where power is involved. Not even when they have power of their own already.” She looked at Eino again, and this time the look was cold. “They always crave more.”
I nodded solemnly, even though I did not understand this, either. I was more now, smarter maybe, but some things were not about smarts.
Naha left off glaring at Eino to look up at the moon, which echoed her face, quick-switch as always. “ ‘Comes the moondown,’ ” she said, thoughtful. It could have meant lots of things. “You should warn them, by the way.”
And then, because that was how Naha said good-bye, she faded away.