The evening continued with an exercise in extemporaneous performance. Lily’s father began by inventing a history or fiction of some lore. Lily’s mother then condensed the story into poetic form. Lily herself was charged with adding a melody to accompany the poem, which we all then sang. I remember the poem verbatim. The history I remember as best I can, but I cannot achieve justice for the craft of Lily’s father:
> A prince went forth, a ruddy savior of men, the son of a true man, a king, a kingly prince. The tribes of war lay beneath his feet on the plain below his father’s kingdom. The king had united the kingdoms of the mountains, all kingdoms which belonged to him by ancient right, and he had held them in peace. The young prince, son of the blue sky, was given command of the king’s army to hold back the barbarians upon the plain. When morning was upon the mountain but darkness still covered the plain, the prince held his sword above his head. It caught the sun, flashing into the darkness more brightly than the smoldering fires within. “Death!” The prince pierced the air with his voice, a clear horn itself, to rally his people who loved him. “Death!” came the response from behind him, a host of armed men. “And judgment,” the prince whispered to himself. “For the time of the oppression of my people is at an end. As the spring brings an end to the eastern winds, so shall my sword bring an end to the western hordes.” The hordes beneath his feet mustered a pitiful growl in reply.
>
> The mighty men of the prince mustered their commands, counting them off by twelves, in the same way the armies of the skies are numbered. Twelve by twelve thousands they wound their way from the heights, where God could easier bless them, to the plains of battle, using the secret paths known only to the men of the stars, men who had dwelt only within the kingdoms of the mountains for many generations.
>
> Prince Il-neth (for that was his name) made his way lastly, remaining upon the heights to observe his dark enemy. Surely they knew that death was coming to them, and surely they would defy Il-neth of the Mountain Kingdom, these with no kingdom at all. Prince Il-neth stood tall as he climbed down after the manner of his very own men.
>
> Many days had passed since the cry from the mountain had issued forth. The countless twelves had become supplied, each twelve encamped and ready behind their commander, each commander a mighty man, a king himself, except for loyalty to the son of the King of the Mountain Kingdom. Each commander stood to receive his princely son, and Prince Il-neth received each commander as a brother into his camping place for a final feast that night.
>
> The feast was interrupted by the approach of an envoy on behalf of the barbarian king—if a king he was—a lord of shame, not of the glories of man. “Il-neth-ta sends greetings to his brother, Il-neth, and begs him to remember the kinship of old. A young goat comes down from the mountain to graze in fields of green while the old goat steadies his feet.”
>
> Il-neth drew up a spear in his hand. The envoy said, “What shall I speak to my lord from my lord?”
>
> Il-neth placed the point of the spear upon the chest of the envoy and said, “The young goat remembers the milk of his mother, even while drinking the brooks of blood.”
>
> “This is what I shall repeat to my lord,” said the envoy, and he turned away. Il-neth called after him, “The fat of your goat-lord shall be burning as an offering to God by this time tomorrow.”
>
> The mighty men of the prince were well-pleased with his responses, for they showed wisdom, courage, and wrath. The twelves rattled in their encampment, prepared for battle at dawn.
>
> The commanders, when dawn came, ordered their twelves. Prince Il-neth led his commanders, giving orders to this commander to attack into the middle, for that commander to attack the right upon a certain signal, and for that other commander to attack the left upon a certain signal, and still others to remain in reserve. The battle, he observed plainly, would not be won without loss.
>
> All the twelves saw their mighty enemy for the first time under the light of day without the distance of the heights of mountains intervening. They were a host, truly, a horde. They were like flies, swarming, without sense or order, but they were a swarm, indefatigable, with one man upon another man. Each man of the son of the King of the Mountain Kingdom looked and saw that this horde was of men who could be his brothers. Their faces were painted with the dust of the plains, and their war-clothes were sewn from cloth of the plains, but pigments and threads were not distinct under the probing eye of the spear. When they saw this to be true, a kind of fear came over the twelves, and the commanders were sore pressed to maintain the twelves in their ranks.
>
> The prince, the true son of a man, a savior of men, perceived this trouble, as perceiving a storm rising up just before battle, drew his sword, and pointed it at the sky. He took his station before his men, and said these few words: “These men are your brothers, your cousins, your very own flesh and blood, but war is upon them because we must take the secret paths in and out of our land. They themselves offer their swords to our daughters in our land, sneaking through the passes into and out again. My father, the king, once offered them tribute to leave us in peace. Now he has given me a command to recover his tribute from the belly of my brother, Il-neth-ta, his very own son, the son of treachery!”
>
> And this was enough, a reminder to the men that they had mustered themselves according to the invitation of the King of the Mountain Kingdom. Immediately, Prince Il-neth began to run toward Il-neth-ta, who had stationed himself in defensive posture behind several lines of the swarm of his men. He was running backward, Prince Il-neth, running backward while crying out the word “treachery!” turning to bring wrath to the hordes. The mighty men ran as men stung by bees, pursuing their prince. The twelves ran as one man, each following his commander.
>
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>
> Treachery came to Prince Il-neth; an arrow destined to bring him his death came falling out of the sky. Grace was his, however, and he was wounded upon the shoulder. He was taken up from the field onto the place for observing, where he could command his reserves. He ordered forthwith for one reserve unit to press the battle forward in the center, for the army was pressed in at the brunt of the battle, and many of the men who had followed him were already dead.
>
> His men grew pale at the command following. He sent a courier to the very same reserve unit with the command to “fall back rapidly toward the place for observing, where I am stationed.” Some speculated that the wound in his shoulder was speaking madness through his mouth, but none cowered, trusting the son of the King even in madness, touched even so by God himself.
>
> He observed the center of his attack turn to run toward him. He dispatched the remainder of his reserves to the right, and when the horde swarmed over the rise leading to the observation post, his reserves fell upon them in full force and full wrath. All of the anger of the King found its way into the arms of his twelves as they held up shields and swung swords and thrust spears.
>
> At the same time, a survivor of the very first attacking unit, a man who followed the prince into the swarm of men, had continued to battle, finding himself in the midst of the swarm, alone, without support, and without hope. At the very point of the darkness of death, the wrath of the King fell upon the left flank of the horde, there breaking their lines. The commanders of the horde were unable to be heard, and even if they had been heard, they would not have been obeyed. This only remaining man blindly stabbed forward at the oncoming rush, causing chaos to overcome the horde. Each man of the horde was suddenly terrified, stabbing his neighbor without discrimination. The swarm scattered, leaving the man alone face-to-face with the son of the King, Il-neth-ta. Il-neth-ta raised his sword, a massive sword, and raised his voice into a battle-cry, a massive voice, poised to destroy his enemy, a small man from the mountains.
>
> This only remaining man who followed his prince into the swarm, instead of defending from the blow, ran directly under it, without regard for his life. He was rewarded that day on the battlefield, not with eternal life above the mountains; no, that was delayed. To see again in this life his wife and children was his reward, for his sword found its mark in the fat of Il-neth-ta, cutting the life of this treacherous man from him. How it came to pass that Il-neth-ta was unable to kill this lesser man is a tale told in truth only above the mountains.
>
> When the battlefield was cleared, this man was stationed before the Prince, Il-neth. He knelt with his head down upon both his knees, holding forward the sword laid across the palms of his hands. “Here is the sword which killed your brother, the son of the King,” he said.
>
> Il-neth looked upon the outstretched neck of the man. His mighty men gazed upon their lord to see what grief would drive the prince to do.
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> “What is your name, my son?” he asked.
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> “Ladhmet-na,” came the answer from near the earth.
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> “From now on,” cried out Il-neth for all to hear, “you shall be written in the book of the Kingdom of the Mountains as Il-hmet-na, for you were this day afraid of no man, not the hordes of your own brothers, not the son of the King, and not even his Prince.”
>
> And his mighty men nodded and cried out. And all the twelves shouted their approval. Il-neth turned to his mighty men and to the twelves, “Il-hmet-na will be counted as a son of the King of the Kingdom of the Mountains, for his heart heard, like no other man, the cry of ‘Death!’”
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> And all the mighty men and all the twelves immediately cried out in victory, “Death!”
Lily’s mother took no time to interpret:
> Smoke goes up above the mountains
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> A fire sends its gift to the heights
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> A gift Il-neth
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> A gift Il-neth-ta
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> A gift Il-hmet-na
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>
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> Death goes up above the mountains
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> A prince sends its gift to the heights
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> A prince spear
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> A prince sword
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> A prince will
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>
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> What gain to men a victory on the plains?
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> Profit to kings salvation below the mountains?
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> The priests do they know when victory is won
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> Prophets to kings do they tell before gain is at hand
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> Salvation comes from above the mountains
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> Where one walks
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> The peaks are his playground
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> The steep cliffs his seat
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> He shows the goats their way
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> He shows the winds their way
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> He shows the sun its way
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> And dances with the moon and stars
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>
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> He makes the smoke rise and fire send
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> He sends the gifts of men
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> Of princes of men
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> Of princes of kings
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> Of the prince of the king.
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>
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> He brings death to the princes of men and princes of kings, and makes brothers of all men.
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>
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> We lift up our hands as smoke above the heavens.
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>
And so it was, every evening. The melody this first evening was unforgettable, with a surprising tone of masculinity to defeat the enemy, countered by the fair light of the woman in the final victory. When she taught us the melody, singing by herself, I understood why her name was Lily: her singing was what one might imagine the lilies to sound like when the sun of the spring rises over all life. It was the sound of happiness from places which are beyond those we know. The sun would set, and I would hear that it had not set nor would it ever, that winter did not come, nor would it ever. Countless evenings I was taught by her, taught with her mother and father to sing that song, to bring that sound from my own reluctant voice.
That first evening has never been surpassed because of the newness of the newness. The power of this family to live, seemingly without any effort, even though under the same hardship with all of us under the sun, where winter kills summer, and summer beats upon us in an endless pitched battle—I was given refuge, and it was a gift, refuge to hear him speak his tales, which taught, to hear her cast his teaching into memory’s mortar, and to hear her bring life to the teaching, to give it arms and legs and breath and vision; his tales look into your eyes when she gives her mother’s poetry melody.