2
Caylus woke a moment before Rahbin took him by the shoulder. “Up now, my boy,” he whispered. “You’re in for a long day.”
Caylus sat up and rubbed his eyes. Rahbin moved over and woke his mother, who sat up with a jerk and sharp inhale.
Caylus closed his eyes and fell back on his mat, not caring much if his uncle shook him again. It was too early.
“Come on, Caylus!” Rahbin said, no longer whispering. “You’ve got a mountain to climb! Don’t embarrass the tribe by being late up its face.”
Caylus scrambled to his feet. It was his birthday. He pulled on a shirt and followed Rahbin into the kitchen, where Gheras and Esoala stood waiting.
“We don’t have a tribe,” he said, rubbing his eyes again. “It’s just us.”
“Good morning, little man!” Esoala said.
“Ah, not yet,” Rahbin said. “Wait till the process is complete.”
“Pardon my excitement,” she answered. “Caylus, I know you’ve been looking forward to this day for a long time, but we’ve been looking forward to it too.”
“Let’s stop looking forward and start looking up,” Rahbin said. “This mountain isn’t a stroll across sand.”
“You wouldn’t leave without your sister?” Esoala said.
“Sisters catch up,” Rahbin said. “It’s their special skill.”
Caylus’ mother entered the kitchen, carrying his pack and sandals. “You know, son, as a man, you’ll have to rely less on others to get your things.”
He took them sheepishly and slid his sandals on. Then he went to the front room, where his offering sat in a basket on a round table. Together with the seeds they’d gathered, it contained some fruit and vegetables from the garden, just beginning to ripen, and the device that Gheras had helped him to build. They represented everything he’d learned to do in twelve years of life.
“We’re ready now,” Rahbin said. “Let’s get going.”
A path from the front door led down the hill, through the garden, and to the gate in the wall that encircled the Hilltop. Rahbin led the way out the gate. Joa paused by the gate, laid a hand on the wall, and breathed a prayer. Caylus couldn’t hear what she said, but they waited till she was finished before locking the gate and moving on.
They approached the mountain in darkness. Looking toward the east, Caylus saw a spot of light on the horizon, like a drop of ink seeping through a page. It was just enough light to see the shapes of his uncles, aunt, and mother walking along beside him.
The sand was soft underfoot. Its grains slid into his sandals and between his toes. It was colder than he’d expected. He wished he’d brought another coat.
The ground climbed slowly before them; soon Caylus’ legs protested against the incline. They climbed in relative silence, occasionally speaking to point out a rough way or loose rocks underfoot, till the sun spread light further across the sky. Looking back, Caylus saw the Hilltop, lower than they were, and far off. The dull clay-colored adobe walls of the house were still mostly in shadows.
All along the trail Caylus noticed large jagged black boulders and scraggly scrub plants. He heard birds making guttural croaking noises, and occasionally flying overhead, but he never saw any up close. As they went on, the scrub became greener, and low stalky weeds rose up to brush their ankles and calves.
Caylus decided to risk a question. He’d debated asking it for months as he’d prepared for today. “If I’m half Borunda, why are we doing an Amaldi ceremony today?”
Up ahead, leading the group, Uncle Rahbin sighed, as though relieved. “See there, sister?”
“You were right as always,” Caylus’ mother answered, playfully. To Caylus she said, “I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know much about how a boy passes to manhood in Borunda culture, but I know how it happens among my people.”
“There are some Borunda pieces in here,” Rahbin said over his shoulder. “If you were full Amaldi, you’d have waited till you were fifteen.”
“But there were things we couldn’t do,” Caylus’ mother said. “In the Passages, you would have been betrothed too, and set on your path of education toward your life’s trade.”
“Betrothed?” Caylus said. “To be married?”
“I don’t understand it either,” Rahbin said. “Your father’s people had a strange habit of putting people together without consulting them.”
“Our people have done that too,” Esoala said. “It’s called slavery or concubinage. I think I’d prefer the Borunda’s way.”
“In any case,” Caylus’ mother said, “we couldn’t do that for you. I don’t mind that, and I don’t think you do either.”
“No, not at all.”
“Just wait,” Rahbin said.
They continued climbing long into the day, finding paths that wove up through the jagged rocks and the thickening brush. Finally they reached a level, sandy path that cut through the brush and in toward the mountain, past the rocks and under the shade of sheer cliff faces. Caylus looked up to see the path narrow into a place where two rocks sloped down together to make a V shape. Wedged between the arms of the V was a long wooden pole, with a ragged brown cloth hanging from it.
“This is the place,” Rahbin said.
“This is the peak?” Caylus said.
“We’d have to go much longer, and quicker, to reach the peak. Your mother and I decided we’d hold the ceremony here.” He ducked into the V-shaped opening, and the others followed.
Past the makeshift doorway, Caylus found a cleared area surrounded on three sides by steep sloping rock walls. Green brush was scattered around the edges. As they entered, a bird fluttered from one of the bushes into the sky. There was a single flat stone sitting in the center of the clearing, with small white markings chalked on it. Caylus stepped over to it and looked down. It read, “KeRandh.” His father’s name.
He closed his eyes and fists and struggled to control himself. A thick, strong hand gripped his shoulder.
“We didn’t know where he was, where to find him,” Rahbin’s voice said, soft but strong. “This was the best place we knew to lay the stone. One day, in time to come, all who’ve gone beyond the death stone will return. They’ll take up these stones and break them over their heads and it will shower them with the white dust of justice, and then they’ll never die again.”
Caylus opened his eyes and looked at the stone again.
They sat down together near the stone, passed a skin of water and drank, and ate a little food quietly.
Finally, Rahbin stood and motioned to the others to do the same. They stood in a circle around KeRandh’s death stone. Rahbin motioned Caylus forward, and he stepped into the circle, holding the basket filled with his offering.
Gheras stepped forward and held out his tablet to Caylus. He’d written, On this mountain you become a man.
He held the tablet aloft. Everyone repeated, “On this mountain you become a man.”
Gheras stepped back and Rahbin stepped forward, laying a hand on Caylus’ shoulder.
“Will you, like the mountain, climb up toward the sky?”
Caylus nodded. “Yes I will.”
“When you reach her, will you pierce her and bring forth your own tribe?”
“Yes I will.” He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he would learn.
“Will you raise them on your shoulders so they can reach high?”
“Yes I will.”
“Will you go beyond the death stone when your time comes to die?”
Caylus drew a deep breath. He wasn’t sure he was ready to say it, but he had to. He hardly knew what death meant. But everyone had told him not to worry about it. Facing death was the most important thing for him to learn.
“Yes I will.”
“Then present your offering.”
Caylus raised his basket so they could see what was inside. “As a child I’ve trained and learned these skills. I can work the ground, and I can build with tools. With these skills, I will make the mountain taller.” He laid the basket down, just at the foot of his father’s death stone.
“NeCaylus, my boy–” Rahbin’s voice caught. He swallowed and said, “On this mountain you became a man.”
He stepped back, and Gheras stepped forward again, holding up his tablet. Now it read, Go, and walk with the Wind in your face.
Caylus smiled. That was from the Borunda. Father Behrund had spoken those words to his son as he died. It had become the ultimate defining goal for their whole people.
His mother hugged him, and Esoala, and Rahbin, and Gheras. They laughed and congratulated him and started back down the mountain. That night they ate a rich meal, sang, and danced together long into the night.
*
The next day, a group of travelers stopped at the house. They were Amaldi, his mother’s people, though they were taller and darker-skinned, like Esoala. Their group occasionally visited and talked to her for hours before moving on. Caylus usually helped Rahbin in the garden or hung around Gheras’ workshop while they were around.
For the week following his manhood ritual, Caylus had held his head higher and walked straighter. He’d worked longer in the garden without taking breaks, he’d tried volunteering for tasks instead of being told, and he’d even spent more time with Gheras.
But after a while, it began to feel like nothing had changed. After a week of asking, he decided his mother still wasn’t going to tell him what it meant to “pierce the sky” or what that had to do with starting a tribe. She still called him for dinner and gave him chores and punished him when he disobeyed, like she had when he was a boy.
“What am I supposed to do, now that I’m a man?”
He and Rahbin were in the garden, pulling the thin viny weeds that grew in and amongst their rows of staked totter plants.
Rahbin sat back on his knees and wiped his face. “What you’ve been doing.”
“But I’m a man now. Aren’t things different?”
“Some things are, some things aren’t. Your work, for now, is still the same. Men have to know how to keep doing the same things over and over because they need doing. Because they’re right.”
“Mom said that my father was a leader in his city when he was sixteen.”
“You think he got there by doing something new and exciting every day? If I know anything about the Borunda, it took ungodly hours of reading and study.”
Caylus pulled at another tangle of weeds. “I just thought it would be different.”
“You’re thinking of the Golems’ worlds again.”
Caylus shoved his handful of weeds on the pile. “The oath says I should grow tall and great like the mountains. How can I do that if I just stay here pulling weeds?”
“You think getting to the Golems will make you great?”
“It’ll be a start.”
“There are two ways to fulfill the oath. Both will make you a man, but only one will make you a good one.”
Caylus looked up at him. Rahbin picked a totter fruit off the vine and held it up, its tattered skin coming apart in his fingers.
“You can have this in two different ways,” he said. “You can reach out and take it from me, or you can reach out and receive it from me.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You tell me. What is the difference?”
Caylus shrugged. He’d been hoping Rahbin could help things move on a little faster. He hadn’t wanted to be taught a lesson.
“What do we pray before we eat every night?”
“We gladly receive,” Caylus said. “But we worked the ground, and dug the well. Didn’t we go and get that ourselves?”
“We reached out to receive,” Rahbin said. “We didn’t command the water, or pull the plants up from the ground.”
“But that still doesn’t get us any closer to the sky,” Caylus said.
“You need to be patient,” Rahbin said. “You need to give yourself to someone else’s will.”
“I thought the point was to become my own man.”
Joa’s voice rang out above and behind them. “Rahbin! Check the gate! Someone’s coming!”
She was on the roof, looking out. Caylus was on his feet in a second, right behind Rahbin as he rushed to the gate. His uncle looked out through an opening in the top of the gate’s latticework of iron. His face hardened. “Don’t see him yet.”
Caylus waited, an agonizing minute, before Rahbin said, “Wait–there!”
Caylus’ mother came up behind them. “Can you tell?”
“It’s just one,” Rahbin said. “I’m not sure.”
She moved to the gate and looked out. A moment later, she stepped back, white-faced, jaw clenched. “It’s him.”
Caylus looked up at her. “Mom?”
“He’s here,” she said, then looked down into his eyes. “It’s Ortigart.”