Yaltring got up bright and early on his next birthday, not wanting to miss a thing. On the longest day of the year, the sun burned dim within skies that were laden with gray. Rain was in the moist, sweltering air; but it did not come. It held, hot and heavy, up in the heavens, where Shulaff, the great invisible cow, was not well.

"Aren’t you going to the square?" his mother asked, after he had washed and eaten and was sitting on his bed, staring at the wall of their little house. "The other children are waiting." But he was thinking of the capspool he’d be hunting later that day--and not at all about their game.

The children of Afa played it again and again. Each time one of them had a birthday, all would gather within the village square to play gahuak, the game of join and leave. Often there were two or three children gahuaked at the same time; but Yaltring was the only one born on this day. And yet he did not even think on it as he walked the dusty path. His mind was not prepared.

The children’s faces turned strangely towards him when he reached the square. Their voices made a rain, pattering down on him from all around. "You are joining us," or "You are leaving us," they said, all together in an alternating rhythm, the older ones he was joining by crossing the threshold of eight years, and the younger ones he was leaving behind. Always, when Yaltring came back to this point, after a year’s elapse, the same voices would be there, except the oldest who were no longer children, and perhaps one or two who had died; but always, always at the other end, new voices, new children came into the world, singly, in droves, only to say, "You are leaving us, you are leaving us, you are leaving us, Yaltring."

Their arms waved back and forth in the morning air, the younger children from east to north, the older ones from south to west. His life was passing, changing, joining. There was little he could do.

After a time, the clamor dimmed, and died. The children joined hands and formed a big circle, almost filling the square where, on other days and hours, fruits and fish and nuts and herbs were bought and sold by neighbors, where meetings were held and votes cast, where solemn decisions were made. They started singing the words to a great song, that told of life coming into the Middle World, how it spread across one of the Four Lands, how people came, and grew, and had a king, and princes, and the king fell, and the princes departed, but the people endured, and flowered still, like stalks sprung anew from the soil of death. Now they sang, together, the ancient words, working Yaltring’s name into the proper place, weaving him into the tapestry of time. There were words in that song no one alive could understand. And yet they sang the words, and danced in a circle as they sang, slowly, slowly turning, one sideways step at a time, moving around him while he stood, still as stone, the silent center of their spinning wheel.

And all the while, his mind was on the capspool.

"Hey, Yaltring!" One of the boys was chasing after him. "It’s good to have you eight, like me. Where are you going?" He touched Yaltring’s shoulder as he caught up to him.

"Home."

"You gotta go home now?" The boy sounded disappointed.

"Yeah," said Yaltring. "What’s going on, Loimenu?"

"Well," said Loimenu, "not that much, really, but I thought we could think of something." He smiled a shy smile. Although older than Yaltring, he had always looked up to him, from the time they were tots and tussled gleefully on these same village paths. "Do you have to stay home all day?"

"No, I’m going to hunt a capspool," Yaltring replied quietly.

"Capspool? What’s a capspool? My granddad knows all the beasts that live here. He never mentioned that one."

"It’s something I hunt with my father on my birthday," Yaltring replied, remembering his father’s words: "Do not tell others about it."

"Never heard of it," said Loimenu.

"We do it every year."

"How come no one else does it?"

"Don’t know," said Yaltring. "Something my father learned from his folks. This time, he says if I find it, I'll learn something about the Four Peoples."

"Weren’t his folks from the North?"

"Yep. My dad’s grandfather was a Northerner born, from the Mainland. I wish I knew more about the other Peoples."

Loimenu looked at Yaltring strangely. He, too, was thinking of Way-Goner, who had predicted Yaltring would unite the Four Peoples someday. "Well, we’re Easterners," he said, and stopped.

"Yeah, but they say there’s more Easterners in one of the Sister Kingdoms than in all the Southeast Islands combined."

"I don’t know much about the Mainland," said Loimenu, a bit warily.

"Nor I," said Yaltring, his voice high and soft. "Nobody seems to know--or they won’t tell me."

"Hey, where’s the birthday boy going?" came a louder, deeper voice behind them. It was Kazo, three years older and already angling to be a man, though he was too young. In the meantime, he policed the younger boys as if he were a village elder with many grown children.

Yaltring didn’t answer. "I don’t know," said Loimenu. "He’s hunting something called a capspool."

"A capspool?" said Kazo. "What in Dark’s blood is a capspool?"

"Ask him," said Loimenu.

"Well?" asked Kazo, coming up right beside Yaltring to stare into his face.

But Yaltring, though half a year younger than Loimenu, understood Kazo better, so he didn’t say anything at all.

"Answer me!" shouted Kazo. "What is it, Yaltring, you little twerp?"

"Something I am given and you are not."

"And why should you be given what I am not? I am your elder!"

"You’re only a boy," Yaltring said contemptuously. "This is between my father and me. Come along and shout questions at him, if you wish. He will be interested to learn that you follow me around without a welcome."

Kazo was silent. Yaltring’s father, Drengo, though a kind, genial man, friendly to all, was thick-set and strong, and a formidable sailor. Stories were told of him, perhaps because he was not native to the island, speaking with the throaty accent of the island of Zernoi, far to the north--or because he was strange looking, with drawn eyes and curly, black hair, shorter and paler than other Imme men, but broad-shouldered, with a face that looked weather-beaten yet hardly seemed to age. It was said that when he was younger, he had killed a whale. No one seemed to know where or when. All the same, some men feared him, and those that didn’t still respected him. Even a few of the women feared him, though most liked him too much to bother.

Loimenu drew back. "Do you want me to leave, Yaltring?" he asked in a small voice.

"Naw, come along, Loimenu. I won’t have to leave home for a while." The two boys strolled ahead. Kazo looked on darkly, but did not follow. Or not right away.

By late morning, Shulaff’s milk was gray and discolored as ever, poisoning the realm above the sky, but the stars had not yet opened the dome to let it fall. The sun, king of the Upper World, hung high and unshrouded now within a blue tear in the cloudy fabric. The air, though wringing wet, was rainless. Yaltring had been hunting the capspool for two hours and still had no idea where it was. He kept coming back to his father, who smiled but would not give a hint. "You’re doing well," he told the boy.

"Worse than last year," said Yaltring. "Worse than any year!"

"No, you’re doing better than last year. You’re just taking longer, because it’s harder to find! In a few more years, you will be a man, and able to find the fish in the sea."

"I already can find them," said Yaltring a bit petulantly.

"You can see them," said Drengo. "When it comes to fish, that’s a very different thing." He cocked his head to one side as he held the boy’s gaze. "But a capspool, while it may hide, cannot swim. No point wasting your time talking to me. Find it!"

Yaltring turned away with a sigh.

"Someday, my young son, you will be able to find a fish with a rusty spear, even where the waters are cloudy."

Yaltring turned back, for one moment, with pure love in his eyes, gazing at his father’s rugged yellow face, so like and unlike his own smooth brown one. Then he shrugged, turned again, and disappeared into the woods.

A couple minutes later he was panting, arms hung around the last mark he’d found. His father had painted the lower part of the old pine’s trunk a bright blue, except for a thin, vertical, dark red streak that pointed the way he must go. Drengo told him it marked out an invisible line as far as the eye could see. But the last time he tried to follow it, Yaltring had lost track of the direction as he tried to navigate some treacherous hilly ground, where it took all his attention to keep his balance.

He started again now, walking very straight. When he neared the steep part, he saw that there was a flatter stretch of ground off to the right. He could walk along a parallel line there. The terrain would still not be easy, and he would have to remember the distance so he could return to the original line. He was in the middle part of the island, where the land is high and uneven.

Anxiously he paced, keeping his feet low, and stumbled on a big root. He let himself fall straight forward. Carefully, he pushed himself back up on scratched hands, his eyes fixed along the line. But as he rose, something pierced so bright that it caught his eye from the side.

He turned his head only, letting his body mark the line. Over a rocky crest, there was a spot of golden light, overpoweringly brilliant. Around it was solid stone, but the light was too molten and piercing to be a part of the stone. It was small, that little light, but bright like no earthly fire. It seemed to Yaltring to come from nowhere. For he did not see the sun.

All around him, the trees grew high and straight. They stood erect, witness to this moment, sentinels of his arrival. Their trunks, wild, of every kind, pierced the sky, yet cast no shadow. Only the branches, only the twigs, only the leaves cast shadows, shadows so sharp and life-sized they looked like silhouettes of the trees themselves. But he did not notice.

Even the capspool could not hold him back from that stark, unaccountable blaze of light. Abandoning the line, Yaltring crept forward, searching for a way through the twelve-foot high intervening rocky barrier.

He could find no opening, only a spot to his right where the top sagged a little lower. And suddenly he remembered the place. Happening by a month or two earlier, he’d tried to jump up the wall at that spot, then to climb it. But it was too high and sheer for him, and the wall went all the way around, in a rough circle. He could not get over the top.

His eyes wandered wildly, until they fixed on something strange. Almost directly in front of him, there was a patch of ground where the bright sunlight disappeared, and the weeds that grew near the wall continued in darkness. What darkness? Yaltring dropped to his hands and knees and scrambled forward. There was an opening before him. The stone did not close with the ground, but hung in a low arch; the dirt sank down beneath a rocky roof, and dimly, through the foliage, he could see light on the other side. He took a breath, and crawled in. Fronds of fern brushed his tawny face. Dead yet proliferating browns of green, masses of matted leaf, choked his path. But he dug on.

A few feet. A few feet only, and he came out into another world, treeless, where all was still.

He rose to his feet. There was a small red bird atop the stony perch above, but it did not fly away. It stood still, stretched on oily stalk-legs, defying the air to take it. All around him was stolid stone. Nothing moved but dampened breeze. Grass stuck out from the dirt, and clods of dirt from the grass. Small stones lay between the slanted blades, mountainous and forestlike within the ground’s tiny contours. There was no sound. Only the faint hint of the sea-echo came in, and the shifting sigh of the many stirred stalks in the outer wind. Only far-off pines, high above the walls, could be seen.

His world was just two dozen feet across, but it held together. Its walls were solid, its size relative. With brushing fingers, patient ears, and near-set eyes, the alert soul could find every intricacy of life within them. Its outside was but a myth.

It was a minute or two before Yaltring, his mind caught within this new space, remembered the light that had drawn him.

But where was it?

He looked around in puzzlement, walking the tight circle of an enclosed world. He could not find it.

Lingering awhile, almost not caring, he let the stillness of this small secret sink into him. He knew that he had time. He knew he would return. Then he clambered back, under the low arch, out of the Stone Circle, back to the painted tree, to resume the hunt for the capspool that his father, seeing the boy’s early sharp-eyed skill, had so cunningly hidden.

His tension gone, his muscles took him speedily to the next blue tree, whose red streak turned him rightward, southward, and right into a huge oak. He went around it, wondering how to find his way back--and suddenly there it was, the capspool, propped against a dark trunk amidst thick, waxy leaves.

It was the same large, round, lidded pot of white wood as always, carefully hidden--Yaltring never knew where--all the rest of the year. The important thing was what was on the inside. That was all his.

Amidst a knife, fishhooks, and a generous assortment of treats--some of which he was already munching as he trudged back--there was also something he had never seen before: a small statue, carved of dark wood, astonishingly detailed. It showed two eggs, one stacked atop the other, with four bulges on top. The lower egg was smaller, and closed. The upper one, though, was open on one side, revealing four fat, boyish, seated figures, looking crabby and distinctly uncomfortable, their heads bent slightly forward. The tops of their heads were hidden to the casual gaze, but could be found with fingers or carefully angled eyes, and were welded to the top of the egg, exactly where the bulges were. The biggest of the four looked the most annoyed, and had to bend over the furthest. A fifth figure, almost as big as he, was lying down near them with eyes shut, sublimely comfortable.

Yaltring ran his eyes and fingers over the five figures and four bulges. Could this have something to do with the Four Peoples? He kept staring and staring at the little piece of wood, almost bumping into trees as he walked on. Suddenly, there was a rush of noise, and three bigger boys materialized out of the woods behind him. One of them was Kazo.

"So, Yaltring, what have you got there?" said one boy with a sneer in his voice. "Kazo’s told me all about you and your bragging."

The boys surrounded Yaltring, who dropped his arm and tried to hold the statue inconspicuously. He quickly swallowed the rest of the fishball he’d been chewing. Kazo, inches away, stared menacingly into his eyes. "What’s that?" he demanded, pointing at the capspool.

The first boy, Uggort, spoke again. "So your father tells you you’re better than the rest of us, huh?"

"He doesn’t say anything like that," said Yaltring, breathing heavily. He tried to hold a hard face. There had been an incident, less than a year before, when somebody dropped a log on a man as he walked alone through the forest. It had just barely missed, but could easily have killed him. No one could ever prove who did it, but rumor had it that it was these same three boys. Yaltring believed the rumor.

"That’s not what you said earlier," Kazo jeered.

"Liar!" said Yaltring.

"What have you got inside that big bowl of yours, Yaltring?" said the third boy, Wengo, Uggort’s best buddy in the western village of Shaxa.

"He calls it a cap-spoo-el!" said Kazo, lengthening the syllables maliciously.

"A cap-spoo-el, eh? Mmm, do you have some munchies in there?" Wengo reached for the lid, and Yaltring pushed his hand away. "Hey, watch what you do, little boy! I’m hungry!" Wengo bumped hard against Yaltring’s side.

"Hey, what’s he got in his hand?" Kazo shouted suddenly. "Leave off--I want to see what’s in his hand." He twisted Yaltring’s wrist around. "Ow!" said Yaltring, trying hard to resist the stronger child’s grip. But nobody heard his cry, for at that moment, there was a clamor of drumming all around them.

"What’s that?" said Uggort.

"Nothing," said Kazo. But his head turned too, and his grip loosened. Yaltring broke out of it with a sharp jerk.

"What’s going on?" bellowed Wengo.

Suddenly one of Yaltring’s brothers came bursting into view inside the twin lanes of trees that flanked the forest trail. Another emerged from the other side a moment later. Hand-drums hung from their necks, and they were beating them loudly.

"And just what do you think you’re doing?" asked Hovak. He was the eldest of Yaltring’s siblings. At fifteen, he was already a man; the initiation scar on his left cheek had fully healed. He was not tall, shorter in fact than Wengo, who was twelve; but, though slenderly built, he was trim and fit; his brown, sweat-slicked arms were not scrawny like the boys’.

"What do you think you’re doing?" said Wengo, already mad and in no mood to be pushed around by someone smaller than himself. He moved threateningly close to Hovak.

"Trying to stop you from acting stupid," said Fimak, who at thirteen was Yaltring’s youngest brother. "Where’s Himak?"

"He’ll be here any moment." Hovak turned his eyes to Wengo. "I’d advise you to get out before then. It’s easy enough for three of you to bully a boy, but you don’t exactly scare a man, Wengo."

"They only made you a man by some mistake, Hovak."

"Did they also make Drengo a man by mistake?" Hovak paused, his eyes gleaming. "He’s the one the drums are for. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if there are others in the woods by now who will also be coming."

"He’s bluffing!" shouted Uggort.

"My folks could be in the woods," said Wengo. "They’ll back me up."

"Wengo!" shouted Kazo. "Come on, let’s go."

"Why would they back you up?" asked Hovak, unblinking. "Do you honor them by attacking an eight year old?"

Wengo lunged forward then and shoved him. "Don’t be stupid, Wengo, these guys aren’t worth it!" yelled Kazo. Hovak strode forward and, with a quick flash of his arms, knocked Wengo to the ground. Wengo was just pushing himself up, with a look of murder, when Yaltring, suddenly furious, kicked him in the head from behind. "Take that for my brother!" he yelled, at the top of his high voice, and ran out from the middle of his three enemies.

With a shout of pain, Wengo was about to chase him, but before he could rise Fimak jumped on top of him, also from behind, and pinned him to the ground. Uggort advanced on Fimak, but Hovak leapt to his side. Yaltring did too. Kazo was holding back at the edge of the path, torn, waiting for the others to run away with him.

"That will be quite enough!" said Hovak. "I am losing my patience." His hand strayed to the hilt of the dagger that, as a man, he alone among them could carry.

"Let me go!" yelled Wengo.

"Look what they’re doing to Wengo!" shouted Uggort furiously at Kazo. "Help me, you coward!"

Angry and unwilling, Kazo strode over to his side. "Let him go, Hovak!" he said. "Make Fimak let him go, now! I promise you won’t like what the two of us are going to do to you otherwise."

Just then, there was a crashing in the bushes behind, and they all turned. Some branches shook, the leaves wobbled, and there suddenly was Drengo, looking stern as he seldom did.

"What in all the four worlds is going on here?" he shouted. Even Yaltring was afraid. He had never seen him so angry.

Hovak, Kazo, and Wengo all started to answer at once. "Be quiet!" bellowed Drengo. "Yaltring, you tell me what happened."

"I was walking along here, and these three"--Yaltring pointed--"came up to me and wouldn’t let me go, and tried to take away--" He stopped, not wanting to say the word in their hearing, and mutely pointed at the capspool. "And then my brothers came and tried to defend me, until you came."

"Why is Wengo pinned down?" asked Drengo sternly.

"Because he pushed Hovak, and Hovak pushed him back, and I kicked him, and then Fimak grabbed him and held him down."

Just then, Himak, panting, came into view from the opposite side, facing their father.

Drengo stood for a few heavy, unbearable moments, looking from side to side. Then he advanced on Uggort and Kazo.

"You two get out of here, now. If I ever catch you bothering my son again, by the time I’m through with you, you’ll be smaller than he is. Shame on you! Eleven and twelve you are, all of you, and big for your age. Can’t the three of you together take on anyone older than eight? When you ask to be made men, they will laugh at you, and tell you you must wait till you are ten feet tall before you will be brave enough."

"Why do you listen to him?" Kazo shouted, pointing at Yaltring. "We haven’t even--"

"Yaltring does not lie," said his father. "Do you have anything to add?"

There was a moment of silence.

"But what about Wengo?" shrieked Uggort. "We’re not going to leave unless you let him go!"

"Yes, you are," said Drengo evenly. "You’re going to leave, and get well away from here. And then, when you’re gone, I’ll let Wengo go away, in the other direction. There’ll be no more mischief today. I’ve heard what you boys are capable of."

Uggort stared at him defiantly. "I said now!" Drengo shouted. "If my sons knocked Wengo down, Uggort, just think what I’m about to do to you." And with no further ado, he strode forward, his fists swinging. In two flashes, Uggort and Kazo both disappeared into the woods.

Wengo’s face was twisted and red, too angry to speak. Still pinned to the ground, he looked up in rage at Drengo.

"We’ll wait a little while," said Drengo, staring hard at him. "Just make sure they’re not coming back."

But even Yaltring’s relatively unpracticed hunting ears could hear their noise fainten and die in the distance.

"All right," Drengo said. "We’ll let you go, Wengo. And then, since you’re so angry at me, why, you’re welcome to fight me if you wish. Not a very fair fight, I admit, but at least it’s one on one." He nodded to Fimak.

Fimak, weary with effort, gratefully released the furious boy. Wengo stood up slowly, looked around himself resentfully, then walked off.

"Well, that’s that, then," said Drengo. "Come along, you guys. Let’s get Yaltring home with his capspool before any more mischief happens." He put his arm around his young son as they walked away. Yaltring lifted his arm again to look at the wood-work still in his hand. It was unharmed.

"Ah, so is that what they were after?" Drengo asked in a gentler tone.

"That, and mostly my treats," said Yaltring in a high voice on the edge of breaking.

"That just shows how stupid they are," said Drengo. "They’d be better off robbing an East Point pirate than trying to squeeze away what belongs to my son." He put his hand on Yaltring’s hair and tousled it, then spread both his arms to hug his three other boys.

"I’ll tell you more about it later, Yaltring," he continued, nodding at the statue as they traipsed on across the crackling ground.

"But how did you know to come?" Yaltring asked. "I mean, how did they know to come? Hovak and Fimak? They came and banged the drums, but why were they even there?"

"I got a little concerned when you told me what happened earlier with Kazo. That was why I stayed near you in the woods."

"But Daddy, you always do that!"

"I’d been planning to let you be alone this year. I did keep my distance. But I kept an eye on you, just the same. And so did your brothers."

"I never saw them," said Yaltring.

"You never saw Uggort, or Wengo, until they went after you, or Kazo either, after he left you this morning--or did you?"

"No, I didn’t," said Yaltring soberly.

"First lesson of the woods," said Drengo. "First, and last--and likely to be your last, should you forget it, especially once you’re a man. Never think something isn’t there, just because you don’t know where it is. The people around here are used to open seas, where everything that doesn’t stay underwater can be seen. That’s not how woods are. There are always things hidden in the trees--some that come after you, and some that wait for you to find them."

"I know, Daddy," said Yaltring, who had heard this lesson before. He didn’t mind being reminded; but suddenly he was tired. He looked above, and noticed that the sky was darkening. The sun had disappeared from view.

"We’ll be home before long," said his father, looking down at him.

Suddenly, there was a crack of thunder. All heads turned dumbly toward the sound. A blinding light flashed, followed by a deep, ground-shaking rumble. The skies opened, and through its troubled portals, down came the rain. Big drops doused the five, men and boys, thick and fast.

"Argh!" shouted Himak. "Just in time."

"Never mind," came Drengo’s voice through the grey shimmer. "The water won’t stick to us, and we can always wring these out."

He shook his already-drenched shirt and grinned a dark grin. The forest trail turned rapidly to mud, and the Sky People above smiled to see their world emptied of Shulaff’s poisoned milk. Down below, a patch of the far eastern waters resounded with a vast swarm of drops that only the ocean could count. Deep within it, a jut of land absorbed its little share of the wet abundance, where a young boy straggled with his elders to reach his little home, cut off from the world’s larger outposts only by wave upon wave of unfathomable water.