The sky was black and cloudless, the stars brilliant. Above the forest floor that grounds the innards of the little land called Imme, a restless, fitful wind stirred the treetops. Presiding over all was the moon, round and full. The boys that stood in a single row, side by side, their backs near the edge of a clearing, waiting to become men, looked up to her in their flimsy clothes and shivered.

Out of the woods and into the clearing came a man, robed simply and in black. His face was hooded, only the eyes showing, so that Yaltring could not recognize him in the dim light. He moved slowly, with dignity, without hurry, with unhesitating, precise movements. He came to face Yaltring and the other boys, standing there for a long while, gazing at each in the eyes in turn and saying nothing, until they all were abashed. But when he spoke, it was in a voice so powerful and resonant and full of danger that Yaltring rocked back on his heels in shock.

"Up until now," he thundered, "your mothers have taken your care, and born the burden of your weakness. That time is at an end. Now you must take your deeds upon your own shoulders, and it is you whom the law will bind. For in truth, already you are no children. No longer do you hang innocent in an elder’s soft arms. You see women with new eyes; and the time has come for you to seek and wive, according to the ancient law.

"You have heard of Boy-Twin and Girl-Twin, who lived long ago in the darkness of the Lower World, before there was fire or sun. Inside First Mother’s womb they grew together, and together they stayed, always, as they had been from the first, within each other’s arms, wrapped up in a ball. They became mates, when they were grown, and many were their children. Those were the First Children, later to become the Old People, fathers and mothers to you all.

"But when her belly first grew round, Girl-Twin went to Boy-Twin, asking for a vow. She bade him swear that he would take no other woman. ‘For I,’ she said, ‘can take no other man, since my sons are forbidden me, and my father and grandfather are dead. And there are yet no other people in the world.’ Her words echoed in that dim-lit world, like the space in which we stand. Boy-Twin heard them and agreed. And ever since that day, men and women have bound themselves together.

"You are gathered here tonight for that great passage from the boys you now are to the men you shall become. As men, if you join yourselves to women, Boy-Twin’s vow will then be yours. From that day forth until you die, you must honor your wives, faithful in body and dutiful in labor. For that is the law of marriage.

"So it is with all vows you undertake. Your words will bind your names beyond the paths of life, and bad faith will never be forgotten. You cannot be men unless this burden is upon you. Will you accept it?"

"We will!" came the eager chorus from the boys, carefully coached to answer all questions.

"The law of marriage is an old one," the man went on, "and it is known to you. There are laws that are older still. There were words spoken, there beneath the ground, in the shadows of the Lower World, that you have never heard, though their echo still holds the world together. Boy-Twin and Girl-Twin, born of First Mother: tell me who their father was!"

"First Father!" called out all the boys.

"No!" roared the man. "First Father was not their father." He stopped, and let the words sink in. Yaltring frowned in puzzlement. Boy-Twin and Girl-Twin had parented the very first race of people. Who else could have been their father, if not First Father? No other male was in the Lower World then. And why else did he have that name?

The man went on, his voice now low and hard. "In the earliest days, when First Father and First Mother entered into the world, there were as yet no laws. In the Deep Realm whence they came, only the Unspeakable Word, written in the ground there, was binding. And when First Mother and Father left, into the Lower World, all alone, there was no common bond, and no law but the rule of passion.

"They had a son there together, born outside the Deep in the earliest days, the first child of the world. First Son, we call him. You have not heard his name before. You have never heard of him, ancestor to us all.

"For it was First Son who fathered the twins. From First Mother’s womb he came, and to her womb he returned, planting them within her. For then there were no laws." The boys stared, astonished, at the man in black, as a weird wind blew over them, chilling with its gust and whistle.

"When the twins were still newborns, First Father learned what had happened. And he became terribly angry."

At this point, another man emerged from the woods, and he did indeed look terribly angry. He was dressed in wild rags of spiked fur, and moved on all fours, with a strange, shuffling gait. He had long ears, crazed eyes, bared teeth, and a bristling, hooked tail. His weird form shone dimly, lit only by the moon.

The man in black continued, "He took his walking staff, brought with him from the Deep Realm, and sharpened it." As he spoke, the beast-man drew forth a thick, sharp stick and held it menacingly before the recruits, so that they all shivered, thinking they were about to get their scars. "Then he went forth to look for his son!" said the man in black. They gasped; but the beast-man walked away like a deranged beast, his face working in hate and fury, until at last he disappeared into the woods.

The man in black, who had stood the while, not moving a muscle, now chanted in a voice of thunder: "And when he found First Son, he pierced his heart with the staff, so that First Son died. He fell in the dust, in his own blood, and died. No one had ever died before. He was the first. He was the first to die, First Son. He was the first whose blood spilled, and passed into the ground. He was the first whose spirit left him, left him cold, there, on the ground, down below, in the Lower World, where there is no wind or rain." The man paused, and stood in absolute stillness for a long while. The wind whistled in the trees; the moon shone harshly, silvery.

Finally, the animal-man, First Father, came shambling back into the clearing, moving more steadily now. He looked shaken but still furious, his face, chest, and staff now spattered with blood. When he reached the space in front of the boys, he started to groan and shriek and furiously growl. Over the din, the man in black began his chant again.

"Still First Father’s jealousy was not sated, nor his terrible anger, and he screamed aloud his rage to the wind. To the wind he cried, in words of violence and madness. And the wind answered. The voices that always whispered in the air, beyond all human knowledge, from the Outside of the world, came together and formed themselves into words." And now Yaltring indeed heard voices, hissing from nowhere, from no one, through the dark of the windy night, whispering through the trees like the wind, forming words he could barely understand. They seemed to come from all directions, from the woods all around them.

"Shhhhhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhhhh, what do you want, shhhhhhhhhhh?"

"First Mother took her own son as a lover!"

"Yesssssssss. Yesssssssss. He died of your jealous rage."

First Father screamed, "Never, never again! She is mine--mine forever! If I give her a dozen more sons, her body must be forbidden them all. But--" he stopped for a moment, staring up into the night air--"who has the power to forbid?"

"From outside, we speak," the voices whispered, "but our words echo in your world unto the end. We can decree a law. Yesssssssss. We can command. But not so little as you ask. For that would die with you, passing flicker of light. We make no gifts to anyone. We will only grant more."

"I wish no more. What would you grant?" shouted First Father, looking wildly around, trying to find the voices in the air. They sighed slowly:

"A law for everyone, unto the end of time. It must be no less. Not like the Unspeakable World, not binding people’s flesh, but a threshold that they dread to cross. It would ban any mother from lying with her son--ever again. Not with her son, nor her son’s progeny. Not her son’s progeny, nor her daughter’s. No woman, ever, with one from her descended, or she and he shall both unleash our fear!" The voices became louder and higher until the last syllable peaked in a killing knife of sound, and some of the boys vainly clapped their ears.

"Command it, command it!" First Father screamed, his pointed staff waving wildly in the air.

"We can command, yesssssssss, but you must pay the first price. Ssssssssswear to obey your own law."

"How can that be?" asked First Father. "I have no mother."

The voices were quiet for a long while, whishing in the shadows.

"Shhhhhhhhhhh. That is so. Yet it is only through youuuuuuu"--the voices rose eerily high and then fell--"that the law can be bound."

First Father dropped to his knees. "Find me a way!" he begged. There were tears, now, on his wild face, as he looked up into the void; yet anger still shone through.

The voices whistled again. "What you do now," they cried thinly, "cannot be undone. Ever, ever. By you, by anyone. Do you understand?"

"Yes, yes!" First Father screamed frantically.

"Then," said the voices, come together for one syllable in a dense hiss, "you will be beyond your own law. You must swear to it. This law is for others, not for you. It does not rule you, nor will it aid you. You cannot benefit. It shall avail you nothing. Your own law will never protect you. You, alone, must stand outside the rent it cuts through the flesh of all speaking things. To thisssssssss you must swear."

"I swear it!" shouted First Father into the night.

"Ssssswear by the Unspeakable Word!"

For several seconds, First Father stood utterly still. "I swear it by the Unspeakable Word!" he gasped at last, as if he had forgotten to take a breath.

"Ssssssssssssss. Ssssssssssssss. The command is given."

First Father turned to walk away. He looked relieved, yet shaken.

"Where are you going?" muttered the voices from nowhere.

"Back to First Mother." But suddenly he stopped in his tracks, in mid-stride, as if frozen in place. His head swiveled round, eyes perplexed, his legs still rigid, and then the voices slowly spoke.

"If you went there, you would lie with her--and she would bear you sons. From their lust you would be safe. Jealous, jealous creature! They could not touch her; but you cannot have such sons. For you swore, you sssssswore, that your law would not protect you. It shall not cool your jealousy, it shall not slay your fears. It shall not make First Mother yours.

"And so, now, the Law lies between you. She, on the far side, is beyond your reach forever. You cannot go to her--never, never, never."

First Father fell down and wept. The voices were silent. The night seemed suddenly very still. There was only the soft, pitiful weeping of the fearsome beast-man, crouched on the ground, in the clearing, in the dust.

Finally he stopped, and slowly rose. He raised his head to the sky, and howled. It was a long, weird howl, and as it grew higher his face lifted up toward the moon, until he looked straight into its silver face. His voice rose to a yelp, and died away.

The boys standing in the shadows, silently watching, felt as if their spines would never stop tingling.

Finally, First Father rose to his feet, slowly, sorrowful, angry still. "I must have a new woman!" he shouted. "I will claim Girl-Twin in her mother’s stead. She shall be mine, when she is grown. She will bear my sons. And never, never will they take her away from me!" His voice rose to a shriek, and he started in a different direction. But his feet froze again.

This time, the voices sounded like the roar of wind crashing through the woods, bringing down heavy branches. "Yesssssssss, again, the law would protect you, as cannot be! As Girl-Twin’s lover, you would be safe from your spawn. But such safety is not for you. You can father no son to replace the one you slew, nor find any soil to plant your seed. While the world endures, within time’s long circling stream, you will seek in vain the comfort of another’s arms. Nor as the world breaks and time draws to its end will the law that rules all others let you go."

First Father stood, breathing heavily, grief and fear working through his face. "Then," he burst out, "I must head into darkness. I must plunge into darkness alone. I shall be alone, always, as First Mother will always be alone. And though we never meet, in our loneliness we are united!" He started shambling desperately towards the woods. But after a few strides he fell, and lay on the ground, panting.

"Why can’t I move?" he wailed. "Why can’t I move?"

The voices were very quiet now. "Ssssssssssssss, ssssssssssssss. Your law still protects you."

"How?" cried First Father, eyes bulging, rocking back and forth on his side, unable to rise.

"It is your knowledge that comforts you now, assuaging your jealous grief. For you know First Mother can never take a lover again--not Boy-Twin, nor any to come after, for all that may be born will bear her blood within her veins. All shall be forbidden her! She must stay alone, like you. That knowledge soothes you, yes, it cools your jealousy from afar. And that cannot be."

"What must I do, then?" First Father cried.

"It is too late. There is no bend in the Unspeakable Word. It is too late for you, for you have sworn. She stays alone, and this you cannot know. You cannot know, you cannot know, you cannot know!" The last words burst out in a piercing blast, and First Father broke suddenly loose from his invisible bonds.

"But how, how can I stop knowing?" he shrieked, clawing at the ground as he struggled to his feet.

There was a long, chilling hiss, and a brief silence; then the words:

"You may not live."

First Father stood as still and grey as stone.

"Go--now," came the shadowy sigh. "Make an end of yourself. The Law enacted on your corpse shall never cease."

It was a long while before this wild beast-man, First Father, shuffled off. This time, he reached the woods and disappeared. There was a fearful quiet, the boys still shivering in the moonlight, First Father’s footsteps just audible in the distance.

Yaltring looked around the clearing, the other boys, the empty space with its faintly stirring grasses, the man in black still standing motionless before them. Suddenly a distant, heart-rending shriek pierced his ears. All around him the boys jumped, or clutched at their own arms, digging in the nails, and looked about in fear at the wide open night.

Then the man in black began to speak again, in a voice still powerful but now subdued. "Far away, First Father took the staff that was his son’s doom and plunged it into his own breast. He lay where he fell until the Flood. No one dared to touch his sleeping corpse, and his body is still drifting in that empty sea Below.

"And when its last twitches ceased and the blood drained dry, so began the death that is born into us all. Because he bound himself by his death, we, too, must die, all who descend from him--the Old People, the human people, and the beasts.

"But not by each others’ hands. For First Mother spoke to the twins, her children, her grandchildren, who no longer had any grandfather or father. ‘Never again,’ said she, ‘should we kill one another, people who have risen from the Deep. Let us swear it together. For there are too few of us already, and comfort is hard.’ And they swore, with her, the little children, Boy-Twin and Girl-Twin, the only three people left alive, there in the Lower World. Binding themselves upon the first law, they made their own. That was the law against murder, oldest and highest of the People’s Laws, the laws that we understand, made by consent and not the voices.

"Since then there have been many other People’s Laws. All of them hold us now, passed down from the people before us. But all are tied to that one First Law, the Law we do not understand, the strange Law of the Voices, for which First Father paid with his blood long ago. He paid it with his life, alone in the dark, far beneath this ground, in the endless night of the Lower World, where there is no wind or rain, and the Voices whisper still above the desolate sea. His life spilled out, emptied into the earth, but his law, his one law holds us still.

"For on this very night, as you join the fellowship of men, you lose your mothers. As you learn of the law, and how it came to be, you renounce their embrace and protection. As you take the law upon yourselves, the hanging threads of your umbilical cords are ripped asunder. You do not belong now to the bellies where you were bred. The bond is broken, and you must find your solace in the arms of another; for your mothers’ will not reclaim you. Even now, the First Law cleaves you apart.

"And even now, ages after First Son fell, no man may lie with his mother, for fear of those same voices, that come from no place anyone has known, that listen to no mercy, and that echo in the night--unless it be with the earth that is mother to us all, to whom we return to sleep, as it has been ever since."

A drumming started, away in the woods: thump, thump, thump, a steady rhythm that went on and on, until Yaltring thought he would never hear another sound, and that the forest itself was a drum. He could not tell where the noise was coming from; it seemed to be all around, pounding and pounding into his bones.

At last the drumming stopped. The man in black had left the clearing. There was a dead silence for a space of minutes. Nothing stirred. The boys scratched their heads, wondering, but did not dare to move.

One of them turned. Yaltring turned too, and saw something, or someone, shuffling slowly into view near the clearing’s edge. It crawled towards them backwards on four legs, huddled down. As it got closer, the boys recognized its furs. They were the same ones First Father had worn, though they seemed darker now and spikier. Finally, when it was not a dozen paces away, the thing turned around. The living hairs on Yaltring’s neck stood up as straight as those dead, stiff furs.

It was, indeed, First Father--or a terrible after-image. Its head and neck were a ghastly white; the rest of the body was blood-stain brown. The eyes gazed off into nowhere within a vacant face. The mouth hung open, but there were no teeth or gums, only a black void. And the sharpened stick they had seen earlier stuck out from both sides of the slumping body, the chest and back. Straight through the heart it went, a hand’s width thick, and sharpened to a razor point at either end. They saw all this, as the creature wheeled towards them!

All the careful training of the past months, the stern warnings not to move, could not keep every single boy from jumping back. They dug their feet into the ground, their hands trembling.

Their courage was being tested.

"All the boys shall die!" said the man, the beast, the thing, eyes crooked, staring at nothing. The corpse’s voice floated out into the night, like a log slipping into a stream, high and toneless, unwavering, sonically powerfully yet strangely lacking in drive, speaking without reason to speak, words beyond hope or fear. "Your lives as boys are at an end. Your blood will spill into the dust, as mine did. As mine did, into the ground! Your lives will now pass into the night.

"You shall fall, and rise again, in new form, as I have risen before you. As men, you will be like me! Alive, but not alive, with a stake forever in your hearts. Do you accept this death?"

The boys stood silent, waiting. The beast, First Father impaled, stared off into the space above them, eyes fixed and vacant, saying no more. There was a huge silence. The beast made not a sound, moved not a muscle. Finally, one boy from the far side of the line said in a small voice, "Yes, I do." Then others joined in: "I do. We do. We do!"

The voices rose to a shout, and died away. First Father turned his face vaguely in their direction, swept his hand in a half-circle around the clearing, and resumed speaking in that same weird voice, as though he had never paused. "All of you who pass through death tonight belong together as one. What has turned in this circle stays within the councils of men from year to year, forever. You cannot pass on unless you are forsworn to keep these secrets among us. When will you tell women and children what you have seen, what you have heard?"

This time, the shouts came at once. "Never! Never!"

"You cannot pass on," First Father repeated, his voice tonelessly rising, "unless you uphold my law, the law for which I died, the law which was pounded through my breast. It falls from my blood, and the blood of all who come after. Will you uphold it?"

"We will! We will!" shouted the boys, anxious, proud, exuberant.

"The law is cruel!" First Father wailed. "It binds and kills--there is no mercy in it. It has taken my life, and soon will murder yours. Your blood will be spilled, your freedom forever chained. Do you still uphold it?"

"Yes, yes, we will!"

Suddenly, First Father’s vacant face turned to a hideous snarl. "It was forced upon me!" he howled. "Against my will, they cast me out of the world! I, though I have no mother, was unjustly broken by my own law. It was driven through my heart to destroy me. Will you uphold it?"

"We will!" cried the boys, not as loudly as before.

"Defy it, defy it!" screamed First Father, kicking into the dirt and thrashing his arms. "Break the law for me, that I may break from death. Undo and dissolve what is buried in my heart, or I will be locked outside the world forever!"

The boys were silent, looking one to the other with fearful eyes.

"Do not hesitate, young ones, do not wait! For it is I, Father to you all, who am commanding you. You, too, can live, unfettered and unrestrained, as I once did, and will again--if you but heed my words!" First Father rose up on his hind legs with maddened eyes, masterful before them, and stared down at their cringing faces. All were aghast. They had never heard anyone speak this way before.

"Do not work, I say, for your fathers, but let them suffer and starve. Do not take wives, but use mothers and sisters as lovers. Burn down your villages, and kill your elders. Yes! Break every law, every law, for all were built upon the one, the one law that burned me, that killed me, that tore me, that rent my breast apart!" His eyes blazed, and his powerful voice resounded with malice. "Only you can unlock the law that binds me," he cried. "Will you set me free? Will you destroy my law?"

"No!" called a few of the braver boys. Yaltring stood transfixed, watching this ghostly beast in mounting fear and horror. "No! No! No!" came the same voices again, chanting in a steady rhythm, and now Yaltring joined in with them. Soon the other boys took courage and added their own voices, and the repeated syllable rang deafening through the woods.

"I will revenge myself upon you!" First Father shrieked, his face convulsing with fury. "You nail me, a dead being, first of you all, into the bloody ground where I was laid. You nail me there, helpless, and leave me forever, for the winds to howl over, and the salty waters to steep. Do not leave me! Do not leave me, or I will rip you open!" His eyes bulged, he fingered the sharpened staff, and it waved as his body shook. The boys realized what was about to happen, and the blood drained from their faces.

"I give you one more chance to pluck out this stake!" First Father screamed into the night. "But if you uphold it, the law that was driven into me, and leave it stuck within my breast, it will tear you apart. Do you now swear to uphold it?"

There was a brief and terrible pause, pregnant with murder. Yaltring took breath into his lungs, and shouted, "Yes!" as loudly as he could, and he found that a few other boys had shouted with him. First Father frothed and snarled, moving three steps closer.

"Yes!" they cried again, and their numbers were greater this time. But most were still silent.

A boy’s voice rang out, "Yes!--or would you be boys all your lives?" And then the others were shamed, and there was a swelling roll of noise--"Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!"

At that, First Father charged towards them, still on all fours, his eyes bulging in his frenzied face as if they soon would pop loose. Then the drumming began again, and he skidded to a halt. His feet pawed the ground continually, but he advanced no further, though his snarling face still twitched and twisted.

This time the beat seemed to come from behind them. Yaltring turned and saw men emerging out of the trees, most of them banging on hand-drums. More kept coming, until there were several hundred, surrounding the boys from the back and side. Nearly all the men of Imme were there. And one of them spoke from their midst in a high, powerful voice to the drums’ rhythm:

"We are here for you, sons of Imme, soon to be men. We cannot defend you against the Law, or the price that must be paid. But we take you into our arms."

The men without drums now stepped forward. Each stood behind one of the boys and reached around his chest. The boys flinched fearfully, then sagged into the men’s arms, yielding to their support. They stared at First Father, whose mouth was still frothing, and whose arms gestured ceaselessly towards them in menace and in rage. But he did not approach.

The drums stopped beating; and now every man present spoke his name, from youngest to oldest. "I am Nazara," said the first, a fourteen year old whose voice had not yet fully changed. Soon Yaltring heard his brothers speak, and later Drengo; but he could not see them. "I am Kalakhan," said the very last, an ancient man of nearly a hundred, in the hoarse low whisper of a voice seldom used.

Then all the voices spoke at once, a deep, rich sound that shook the forest.

"We are the men of Imme. We have taken you under our guard. You have left the care of your mothers. In our arms, you will become men. You will be among us. You will be in the bosom of our people.

"Next year, you will stand where we now stand. You will speak to the boys. You will help them to be men.

"You will be children no longer. You will be guarded no longer. You will protect the children, as we have protected you.

"The roads of the past are long. They meet, here. They meet in the opening where we stand. They will not meet again.

"Your paths are not yet given. Listen for your Summons. Each of you will hear it. You will follow the Open Road."

The voices stopped speaking. At that very moment First Father, who had stood in place, gnashing his teeth all the while, charged forward again, fury gleaming in his eyes and slaver. Some of the boys cried out; others closed their eyes.

Soon, he was face to face with a boy named Luren in the middle of the line. First Father wheeled and spun. The stake that was through his heart wheeled with him. The man holding Luren tightened his grip. The stake became a blur. A shriek was heard, and blood flew wildly into the night air, from the place in Luren’s cheek where the point of the stake had landed. First Father turned away, and shuffled on. Luren was helped down upon the grass, moaning and grasping his face. And First Father struck the next boy in line.

Yaltring, watching in dumb horror from the other side, had to wait until the beast-man had gone all the way down the line, making men of each in turn before he shuffled his slow way back. Such was the tightness gripping his belly that Yaltring longed for the fresh agony of the cut. It was less a fear of pain than of the great, irrevocable change he must undergo, powerless in the arms of another.

When First Father, coated with fresh blood, came at last and stared him in the face with crazed eyes, Yaltring did not feel the tightness any more. His mind went clear and liquid as water; and his legs, too, were watery. He felt he would collapse without the support of the man who now gripped his chin with one hand, the other still clasping his chest; but there was no fear.

Nor was there time to think about the blow. It came from nowhere like a lightning strike, swinging from the side. There was a ripping, bitter and dark--then a biting agony of the night air. The man helped him down, and though his legs’ strength had suddenly returned Yaltring was thankful to this man, Horez, a southern Imme dweller whom he hardly knew, thankful for his care, his kindness, his welcome among equals, men whose pain had healed but who, like himself, would not recover from the tear. He felt blood, pain, but also bonds, bonds of iron, hurting him there, binding him to all the others. They were men. They were of one kinship--not only with each other, but with all the men who had suffered the same wound, bound together through the ages under a common law.

When First Father had finished and there were no more boys within the clearing, he collapsed, quite abruptly, and lay in a heap on the ground, unmoving. "Come," said one of the older men. "Let us leave the dead."

They left the clearing together, though the wounded did not know where they were going, and some were not steady on their feet. But all moved slowly through the forest, lighting torches, helping one another. Their arms were around each other’s shoulders, no one alone. A feast awaited them in another clearing beneath the moon, and deep well water, fragrant with herbs, with which to bathe their wounds. Women awaited them too. Wounded wayfarers would learn at last what wrinkled crones and deep-scarred men had heard many times, the stories and songs of the Feasts of Passing, held on the first full moon of summer or winter, when boys or girls passed on to become protectors of others. Marking the turning year, they told of the Sky People, the moon and the stars and the sun, and how they rose to where they are.

In an open space between two trees, Yaltring’s eye caught a moonbeam from above. There was no dark in the moon. She shone alone and untroubled, the same as she had a hundred months before. She spindled down her light to him. A silvery thread entered where he was not whole, piercing the pain in the side of his face. His pain became cold, pale, and moonish.

Then he passed under a tree. The light was cut off, the thread broken.

But he knew that high above, in silver slippers, beyond the hurt and blood, a pure princess danced across the sky.