'Welcome, Kapaka, Prince of the Human People,' she said. Her voice was a burring kind of sound, filled with vibration and resonance.
'Thank you, Goddess,' the Kapaka said. 'I have brought gifts for you, and for the Lord of the Forest.'
'Our Lord will distribute whatever gifts you bring,' the goddess said. 'As for me, this form you have provided me is a fine gift—rare that I am incarnate in this fashion, and it pleases.'
'You are more than welcome,' the Kapaka said. 'But still, I would offer you something, if you are to guide us to…'
'I shall take you to him,' she interrupted, seeming amused. 'Worry not. The Alwat know to call upon me, and not some more feckless god.'
'I regret,' the Kapaka told her, 'that I know not your name nor any song of yours. But I have brought a singer along.' He indicated Eruka, who might have shrunk back just a bit. 'He can learn one, if you will teach him, and we will sing it in our damakutat through the winter months.'
'You may call me Paker,' she said, and now there was certainly humor in her expression; her generous lips parted to reveal a row of sharp, shining teeth. 'You may call me Apa, Bari, Ngati. Or you may call me Huntress. I care not.'
'Those are other names for the Forest Lord,' Eruka whispered, so that Perkar—but surely not she—could hear. Even so, her smile broadened.
'And here,' she said, stepping away from the Kapaka and toward the other Humans. 'What is this? What scent is this?' She walked to Perkar, growing taller, it seemed, as she came. She reached out with one furred, long- fingered hand and very, very lightly touched his cheek.
'How sweet,' she said. 'How very sweet.' But her grin was carnivore, a tiger sizing up a meal. Stepping away from Perkar, she seemed, for an instant, lost in thought, until her head snapped back up and around, black eyes flashing suddenly yellow and green, iridescent.
'Come now,' she said.
The rest of the journey was dreamlike; Perkar remembered striding over chasms on the woven backs of branches, groves parting for them, dark hollows that seemed more like cists beneath the earth than anyplace aboveground. At last they descended farther still, into what amounted to a huge bowl-shaped depression, a valley within a valley. The walls were of crumbling stone, and the dark mouths of caves gaped at them as they passed.
'Are these the dwellings of the Forest Lord?' Perkar asked.
The Huntress shrugged. 'I suppose. He dwells in them at times.'
'Damp, dank places,' another voice said. Startled, Perkar turned toward it.
It was a raven that spoke, a raven the size of a large dog. He sat, grinning, on a low branch, eyes glittering like jewels in deep water.
'Huntress, what do you bring me?' the Raven asked their guide.
'Pretty things,' she said. 'Pretty little things to line your nest with, to show the other gods when you come to the feasts.'
The Raven lifted one leg nervously from his branch, clenched his claws closed, then flexed them open, renewed his grip on the limb.
'I see no pretty things,' he complained. 'Nothing pretty at all.'
'As you say, then,' the Huntress said. 'And so we shall bid you good day.'
'Wait,' the Raven croaked, cocking his head suspiciously. 'Perhaps they have pretty things
The Huntress sighed and turned to the Kapaka. 'Best give him something, I think. He can be childish at times.'
The Kapaka nodded and opened his treasure bag, felted and embroidered with clouds and feathers. He searched about for a moment.
'Here is this,' he said at last. He held up a sparkling brooch, silver with a blood red garnet.
'Pretty,' said the Raven. 'Yes, pretty. Perhaps you have more.'
'I know you,' Eruka interrupted. The Raven looked puzzled— he tried to shift his glance to Eruka but at the same time seemed unwilling to take his regard from the jewelry.
'Know me?' the Raven asked.
'Yes,' Eruka told him. He coughed and then sang:
I swallowed the Sun
A pretty light
Thus I was, thus I am
I brought up land
And spread it out
Thus I was, thus I am
I carry Lightning
To glitter at night
Thus I was, thus I am
I painted the birds
Who sing in flight
Thus I was, thus I am…
'Thus I was, thus I am,' the Raven repeated. 'An old song, sung long ago. Almost I have forgotten it.'
'You are Karak, the Crow God,' Eruka said.
'I know who I am,' the bird replied testily.
'Yes, and I know who you are, as well,' the Huntress put in. 'And if you do not cease your prattling and let us be on our way, I will add another feather to you—on the end of a hard, straight shaft.'
'Give me the pretty thing,' Karak grumbled pettishly.
The Kapaka stretched up, offered the coal-dark bird the silver brooch. The Raven took it in his beak.
'I swallowed the sun,' he muttered. 'You would think people would remember that.'
'Oh, we remember,' the Huntress said. 'We remember that we had to slit you open before you would give it up.'
'How rude,' Karak said crossly, and, lifting his great wings, flew off into the forest. Perkar could hear the heavy beat of his wings long after losing sight of him.
'Is that true?' Perkar asked. 'Did he really do those things?'
The Huntress smiled. 'The world was much different in those days. Perhaps they never really happened at all.'
'What do you mean?'
'The only difference between a story and the truth is how often the story is told,' she replied.
Perkar didn't understand that, either, but he didn't say so. He was used to gods; they lived everywhere. He was not used to gods who claimed to have created the world or swallowed the sun. That seemed ridiculous, beyond the power of anything. Yet these were the old gods, the gods of the mountain, rarely spoken of, rarely sung about. After all, better to sing about the god of your pasture who would hear you, consider your requests.
These Mountain Gods frightened him, but they fanned a flagging spark, as well. His dreams were not just fantasy. Gods who could swallow the sun would have weapons to match their power. Such weapons could slay other gods, could they not?
The Huntress led them down the steep trail, and eventually to a meadow, nestled deep in the mountainside. The moss there was a carpet; Perkar's feet sprang upon it as they walked. In the center of the meadow was a tree, its girth greater than that of his father's damakuta. The tree—it looked like an oak—soared upward, enormous, shadowing out the sun entirely.
'Here,' the Huntress said. 'Here we wait.'
Wait they did. Once or twice, Apad made overtures to a conversation, but the words died, eaten by the silence the magnificent tree seemed to cast about itself. Birdsong rang out, but it was far away, the memory of song. The tree seemed to be the still point of the world. So still it was that, despite himself, Perkar began drifting in and out of dozing, his head lolling over onto one shoulder, then jerking awake. Attempting to remain alert, he contemplated the tree, walking over to its spreading base, and gazing up its trunk, trying to count the layers of branches he could
