his waist jostle and bounce with each step he takes across the uneven forest floor.
High above him, the darkened form follows his movements with cool detachment. When the lone guardsman curves right and trudges off out of sight, the soot-rimmed eyes return their vigil to the courtyard and the revelers seated around it.
The children crouch behind the fire, fixing their costumes and fidgeting before their big moment. Most of them have played in the cycle in years past—it has been performed since long before even the eldest in the village were children and played in it themselves. It has gone on for centuries.
“Nervous?” Lia asks.
Jack is shifting from foot to foot. “No, are you?”
Lia smiles serenely and shakes her head no.
Rows of wooden benches encircle the footworn stage and every seat is full, the village having nearly outgrown itself. Olen steps to the front of the spirited congregation and moves to quiet them, his wild shock of gray hair lit like a halo by the roaring bonfire.
“Been a good year,” he says. “One I’m thankful to have seen.”
The small audience stills itself, rapt with attention as Olen’s grizzled old voice cracks over the fire. He dispatches the village business, carrying on about the new irrigation system and giving brief salutations to those who helped in its construction. He calls out the new mothers and fathers, holding their little bundles close for warmth. Small, pink faces peer out and gaze at the fire like solemn little monks. When these niceties are complete, Olen lowers his gaze.
A drummer boy beats a taut, hide-wrapped barrel and a low bass rumble vibrates the ground. Two men traverse the clearing carrying long wooden poles, which they mount before the fire. Stretched between the uprights is a patchwork stitching of hides, glowing amber, backlit by the roaring flame.
“Much has been lost,” says Olen, his voice turning grave. “Turned to dust. Gone. The world was not always like this. Almost every people I’ve encountered in my long years has told a story of terrible fire and destruction, and the tellings run common. I’ve dreamt since I was a boy that someday we’d know why. But for now, at least, this is all we have… and all we know.”
Behind the luminescent screen of animal skins, silhouetted by fire, a wiry girl named Jeneth rises and begins rhythmically stirring her arms through the air. The shadow she casts is enormous next to her slight body, a spectral apparition summoning forth the Ages, her limbs disproportionate, her figure warped and flickering.
Two lines of children snake slowly around the fire, moving with a crouching skip-step, and the lines join at the center to form a circle. The circle splits and becomes a figure eight. The figure eight splits and becomes two loops, and they in turn split again and suddenly there are four small circles churning like gears, the children in their regalia marching in step with the drum swell.
They take out lengths of colored ribbon and begin passing them back and forth, hand over hand and above their heads, and when they step out to the far reaches of the dirt-floor stage, the entwined ribbons form complex patterns of eclipsing diamonds. Jeneth writhes ecstatic, her shadow looming—the dance of civilizations coming together and falling apart.
A little boy stumbles and loses his ribbon and the corners of his mouth curl up sheepishly as he runs to retake his position and catch up to the steps. In the furthest row of benches the boy’s parents grin wide and a hushed giggle lights through the crowd.
The rhythm turns warlike and severe. Each cell pulls its thread from the geometric vector and the children begin to bind themselves with the ribbons. Jeneth is frozen behind the screen of skins, her image wavering, ethereal in the dancing flames.
A reed flute sings an eldritch melody as young Haylen steps tenderly forward. She wears straps of hide around her limbs and torso. There are bones, animal bones, tied to the straps—ribs where her ribs would be, femurs and fibulas attached to her leggings, skinny bones covering her arms. Her face is painted in a grotesque skull masque. She is Famine, Sickness, and Death. In the audience, the levity fades and their moods become serious. Tears well in some of their eyes as Death pirouettes in wide meandering arcs through the bound ranks, taking their small hands from the bindings and gently kissing them, and at her very touch they shrivel and thrash in the dirt.