The sack of food proved to be just enough to carry the girl through the drought. The night she ate her last bit of dried fruit was the night the rains started. She crawled out of one of the little caves she used for shelter to stand in the rain. She stood with her arms outstretched and her face upturned and let the cool, fresh water wash the dirt and grime from her body.
This was no passing shower. It was a long, steady, soaking rain, the kind that marked the beginning of the rainy season. The fresh water from the rains here and upriver would wash much of the filth away from the flats. It would bring fish. She could almost taste them now - the big juicy ones with colorful scales and the small tasty ones with hundreds of tiny bones. The frogs would return. The cattails would grow with their crunchy, gritty roots.
It rained like that for three weeks before the rain had tapered off. A warm breeze pushed the clouds north just as Mother and Father were going to sleep and the star children were blinking themselves awake. She knew that The Three would be hiding tonight, so the star children would be especially bright and playful.
The Three only hid together a few times a year, so she decided to go to the wide pool that night. She would hunt frogs and watch the star children. Perhaps a few would chase each other across the sky. She smiled as she made her way to the pool.
It was dusk when the she arrived. It was not really a pool she had come to. It was an inlet of the great river. It was narrow at the mouth but it broadened to a nearly circular shape that was over one hundred paces across. Though there were ripples at the mouth, the water soon smoothed itself out to a glassy surface that mirrored the star children as they winked awake above her.
It was shallow, too. Most days, she could walk across it without the water rising much above her ankles. It would be deeper now, after more than two tens of steady rain. In the middle it would be up to her waist at least, maybe to her neck or even over her head.
During the wet seasons, the banks were thick with foxtails and bull grass. The drought had killed all but the hardiest of these. But the brown remains of the dead plants now sheltered hundreds of frogs that croaked and chirped their approval of the return of the rains.
She spent nearly two hours hunting frogs on the fringes of the pond. She was good at catching frogs. She moved silent as the night to sneak up on the slippery little creatures. But she had to be silent she also had to be slow, so it took a long time to catch the six fat croakers that now filled her tendak'ra sack. She would have something to eat in the morning, a few to dry and one or two to share with the little ones.
Night was deep and dark now. She hid her sack among the wet grass and made her way back to the pool. She eased herself down to sit in the water just at the edge of the foxtails. As she settled into the soft mud, the water came up to her shoulders. She held herself motionless and waited for the ripples to die and the water to become smooth and flat.
A great host of star children were awake now, their bright forms perfectly reflected on the water. She gazed wonderingly at the stars above her and the stars before her. She imagined that she was sitting not in the water but among the stars themselves.
She longed to go out to the middle of the pool. From there the weeds and trees would be hidden in the darkness and the illusion of resting among the stars would be complete. But she knew better than to expose herself that way. Others could be hunting frogs or stargazing tonight. So she contented herself with sitting on the fringes of the stars. She smiled whenever she saw one leave its place to race across the sky. This night the star children were very playful. Looking up she watched delightedly as three stars chased each other in succession the length of the pool. Looking down she saw another one streak the length of the pool and down to-
-a light. A light blinked into being at the mouth of the pool. She blinked her eyes to try to clear her vision. The light remained. She looked up in the sky to see if a new star had awakened. But there was no light in the sky to match this light. She looked down again and realized that the light was not in the water. It was just above the surface. And it was not silvery white like the star children. Nor was it yellow and flickering like a lamp or a torch. It was a steady, deep golden light, so deep that it was almost brown.
She tensed preparing to slip out of the water and disappear into the forest.
Please, don't leave.
She froze. The voice was in her head and her heart, not her ears. She was sure of that. She was just as sure that the voice had come from the light - the light that was clearly growing and moving toward her. As the light approached it resolved itself into the form of a man. He carried neither torch, nor lantern, nor candle. The light came from him. Or perhaps he was the light - light itself molded into a man with nut-brown skin and tightly curled hair. Even his clothes - dark green trousers and a deep red tunic - seemed to radiate the strange and beautiful brown-gold light.
His eyes brought this unfathomable tension of light and matter into precise focus. They were dark, gentle, and earthy brown. But deep inside they radiated a light that was piercingly bright like stars that had drifted too close to the earth.
Every instinct she possessed - instincts honed by a life-long pursuit of survival - screamed at her to flee, to escape into the safety of the dark forest before this...this...strange and mysterious ghost man reached her.
But something else - something deep within her, something deeper and more basic than her animal instincts - recognized him, longed for him and pleaded with her body to stay, to wait for him. Her deeper-self won. She remained motionless and frightfully calm in the water.
As he drew closer, she noticed another amazing and impossible thing: he was not walking through the water, but upon it. His feet pressed into the surface of the pond like her own feet pressed into the firm, pale mud of the flats after a gentle rain.
He stood before her and looked down at her with a fierce gentleness. She began to tremble, her quivering body sending tiny ripples across the water.
"Thank you for waiting for me," he said
"What do you want," she asked surprised at the steadiness of her own voice.
He smiled and sunlight seemed to well up within her. Then he knelt down and extended his hand.
"I want to dance with you," his voice was gentle and inviting, "if you are willing."
She had seen dancing. The townspeople sometimes came to the open space in the forest to celebrate. They often brought musicians who played as the townspeople danced in intricate patterns.
To her surprise she discovered that she wanted to dance. She took his hand and stood. The water lapped gently around her knees as her toes pressed into the muddy bottom.
"That will not do," he said. "Come up here with me."
He lifted gently on her hand as she stepped up onto the surface of the water.
He was taller than she. The top of her head came to just above his shoulder. She thought nothing of this. She also thought nothing of her nakedness. Normally she would have been terrified to be this close to any man. She had seen what men did with squilchers who had reached their womanhood. But she had no fear of that with this strange man and his golden-brown light.
Instead she stared in wonder at her feet as they rested gently on the surface of the water. She used her toes to tap a star and watched as the star field rippled and danced at her touch. She held both his hands now feeling unsteady standing on a surface that should not hold her.
She hopped and laughed as the sky rippled and splashed at her feet. She let go of him and spun using her big toe to draw a wide circle in the sky. She looked up half expecting to see the stars above moving in rhythm with the stars below. Then she looked at him and smiled. He smiled back.
"It is good to see you smile," he said.
"How is this possible," she asked
"It is possible because I am me," he replied still smiling.
"And who are you?"
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"I am Fel'na'sulani," he answered.
The words meant nothing to her. Squilchers did not use names, did not even have names. She had heard townspeople and bu’dra call each other by names, but she gave little heed to them and could not remember whether she had heard this name before. Yet somehow it felt…familiar, like she had known this name and the man who bore it all her life. It made her think of the light that had streaked across the pool.
"Are you a star? Have you fallen from the sky?"
"One might say that I am The star. I have, indeed, fallen from the heavens."
"I have been watching your sisters and brothers chase each other tonight," she said in awe looking again at the sky. "They are beautiful."
"I have been watching you," he said.
"You can see me from there?"
"I can." Then his voice dropped to an awe-filled whisper, "You are beautiful - more beautiful than all the star children together."
She looked at him sharply, "Don't lie to me. Don't mock me. I am a squilcher. I was born in the mud. I live in the mud...and I'll die in the mud...." her voice trailed off as if she were for the first time contemplating her own mortality. "I am no more beautiful than the frogs."
"Oh but you are," he said with the force of unassailable authority. He gently lifted her chin until she was looking at him. "If only you could see yourself as we see you. You are more beautiful than you can possibly imagine. Now, will you dance with me?”
For the first time since he arrived, she felt embarrassed.
"I- I don't know how to dance," she admitted.
He smiled again and laughed. "You do know how to dance, although you don't know that you know. The knowledge is here." He touched her gently on the center of her chest just above the divide of her breasts. "We must get that knowledge out to here," he said tickling her toes with his and lifting her hands out from her sides.
Something warm and light began to spread from where he touched her out through her body. She wanted to move - to jump and spin and sway with...the music. She frowned again.
"There is no music," she said tears welling in her eyes. To have this feeling - this yearning - to dance but to have no music was more than her young heart could take.
"There is music," Fel'na'sulani said drawing her close to him. "You just have to listen carefully."
He drew her in until her head rested upon his chest.
"Listen," he said with his strange, gentle, authority.
She listened. She heard his heart beating, strong and steady in his chest. Then music emerged deep and beautiful - more beautiful by far than any she had heard from the townspeople. She gasped! Suddenly the music was not just in him; it was in her. Her heart lurched and stumbled for a moment as it sought to match its beating with the rhythm of the song. She would have fallen had he not been holding her.
Then at last he heart found the rhythm and the music exploded! It was no longer just in her it swirled all around her - around them. She stepped back from him as her hands flew to her mouth in astonished wonder.
She could see the music dancing and flowing around them! She could hear it! She could feel it as it caressed her ebony skin. She lowered her hands and breathed deeply as if she were the first person, taking the first breath in a new and wondrous world. As she did she could smell the music and taste it.
She looked at him now, and he laughed. Joy flooded her spirit, soul and body. Such joy that could not be contained. He reached out to her. She took his hand, and they danced. With stars above and stars below, with music swirling and laughing around them and through them, they danced. Sometimes they swayed slowly holding each other close. Sometimes spinning at arm’s length touching only at their fingertips. Sometimes leaping and undulating on opposite sides of the pond, held together only by the music that embraced them both. Sometimes they laughed with uncontainable joy. Other times they wept with inexpressible grief. Through it all the music flowed and they danced.
She could not have told you how long they danced. If she had been pressed she would have said quite seriously that it was for at least ten thousand years.
At last the music drew them back together until their physical embrace matched the slow, gentle swaying of the song. Their chests heaved for a time as their lungs sought to draw in the breath of eons. They wept, too. Her tears staining his tunic, his tears upon her head. When at last he stepped back from her, her heart nearly broke with grief.
"I have four gifts for you, gifts to sustain you on your journey." Tears still streaked his face but his voice was steady and loving.
She held out her own hands to receive them. He smiled again and took her hands in his.
"The first gift," he said, "is a name. Your name."
Her eyes brightened.
"I know that some have called you su'drae."
Her face fell slightly and he laughed gently.
"But I also know that you do not much like that name. I do not blame you for that, for it is true that kindness sometimes kills the kind, though not always in the ways you imagine. And though you have shown kindness that name does not do you justice. So I name you No'ra'na, The-One-Who-Is-Deeply-Loved, for, indeed, I love you deeply. Whatever may come, whatever you do or whatever is done to you, whatever is asked of you, do not doubt or forget that I love you. And one who is loved deeply can love deeply."
She moved to embrace him again, but he held her hands fast in his.
"My second gift is this. He brought his right hand to his chest and moved it three times in a way that looked like he was trying to draw something from his chest. One the third motion something came - light. Deep, golden brown light such as came from his body now rested on his fingertips like a golden star from the heavens. He took the light and placed it against No'ra'na's chest precisely where he had touched her before. He pushed firmly, pressing the light into her.
She gasped and panted. Her eyes widened in shock. No words exist that can describe what she experienced in that moment. Joy, pain, love, grief, gift, loss, hope, despair, light, darkness - all in a sharp, massive, concussive moment. The fear and wonder she felt reflected in her eyes.
Now Fel'na'sulani did embrace her. He held her tightly, but she had no strength to return the embrace.
He said fiercely, "I have given you a piece of my very own heart. It now beats within you." Then echoing his words after his first gift he said, "Whatever may come, whatever you do or whatever is done to you, whatever is asked of you, do not doubt or forget that that my heart beats within you."
The sky began to lighten in the east as the Mother and Father awoke from their slumber. No'ra'na could feel more than see that Fel'na'sulani's light, like the stars above and below was fading with the coming dawn. The thought of his leaving gave her the strength to return his embrace, to hold him tight and somehow prevent his departure.
He let her hold him as he took her face gently in his hands. He leaned her head back until she could see his face. Tears streamed down his checks and over his lips.
"My third gift is a gift of Words. The Words am giving you are Words of deep and ancient power. They are infinite Words - Words out of time and space. You may not understand them when I speak them to you, but you will understand them when it is time for you to speak them. But take care, do not speak them, do not utter them with your lips until it is time."
"How will I know when it is time?" No'ra'na asked.
"You will know. When it is time, speak them with complete confidence that they will accomplish what they are intended to accomplish. They will yield what they are intended to yield."
Fel'na'sulani leaned over so close that when he spoke his lips brushed her ear. He whispered the Words to her and his breath caressed her and covered her with goose flesh. When he finished speaking she shuddered. He had spoken truly. She did not understand the words, but she knew that she had been imbued with great and terrible and glorious power.
Fel'na'sulani straightened and spoke again.
"My fourth gift is this." He kissed her then on the forehead. The tears from his eyes mingled with the saliva on his lips and burned her forehead, not like fire but with an ardency that was far deeper. Though she could not see it, her skin glowed for a moment where he kissed her. Though there was no visible mark, she could feel the fire of his kiss even after he drew his lips away.
He was fading now. Not only was his golden light diminished, but she could see the trees of the forest through him. She wept all the more, knowing that no matter how hard she clung to him, she could not keep him there.
He spoke his final blessing, "Whatever may come, whatever you do or whatever is done to you, whatever is asked of you, do not doubt or forget that we will embrace again, I will kiss you again. Be strong. Take heart. Remember."
With that, Fel'na'sulani was gone.
She sank slowly back into the water and cried some more. As she cried she remembered his words. She repeated them to herself. And etched them into her mind. As she did she was startled to realize that she could still hear the music, not with her ears, but in her heart which was his heart, too. With that realization her tears ceased. She became aware of her surroundings. She discovered that she was sitting in the precise spot where she had been when he came the night before.
It was no longer night though. Mother and Father had nearly reached the horizon. Day was almost upon her. Her squilcher instincts returned. She was exposed here in the light. She moved quietly out of the water and into the tall grass and reeds on the edge of the pond, retrieved her sack of wriggling frogs and crept silently back to the cover of the forest. She was fully alert now. She did not feel sleepy even though she had been awake all night.
How could this be? Is it possible that she had dreamed it all? No. She could feel the kiss on her forehead. She remembered his words and her name - The One Who is Deeply Loved. And she could hear the music singing quietly in her heart. It could not have been a dream. It had to be real. He had to be real.
With all the stealth and awareness of a squilcher that had lived long in the mudflats and the forest, she stepped under the first branches of the trees. The net fell silently over her.