Chapter 1
The funeral was a grim one. There is nothing pleasant about a ceremony of spirit-relinquishing under normal circumstances, but such mourning as occurred after the death of the Karaya clan chief Lucia had never before been heard throughout all the Grasslands.
The sun was preparing to set in the dimming violet sky as the Karaya clansmen gathered with heavy hearts to the funeral pyre. A rectangular stack of brushwood awaited its queen, and four warriors held torches at the ready at each of its corners.
This was one ceremony that Hugo, son of the chief, was well-prepared for. Death was the beginning of a much greater thing to his people: the joining of a spirit to planet. There were spirits all around--in the wind, in the earth, in the water. The spirits of brave warriors were the most powerful of all, sacred and intangible. Their force brought the sun each morning and the moon each night, caused fire to burn and water to flow; their force gave the Karaya people strength against enemies and protected them from harm until the earth beckoned to them.
Hugo was familiar to all of this, and with the knowledge of the ways of passing came the preparation of the ceremony that went along with it.
The fifteen-year-old led the procession with his head high and his eyes straight, his face a mask to hide the painful emotion lying just beneath the surface. He walked to the beat of the sacred drum without missing a beat, the rhythm in his steps becoming one with the pounding of his heart. He was in awe when by peripheral vision he realized that his people made up the smallest portion of the mourners. It may have just been that the lizard people were so much larger that they seemed of greater number, but Hugo also recognized the garb of the peoples of Chisha, an entire brace of duck clansmen, many warrior women from Alma Kinan, an unknown group who might have been part of the Sefi clan, and even a company of knights from Camaro.
A likely cause for the widespread sorrow was that Lucia was the first victim to be claimed by the sickness that had struck the Karaya village following a band of infected travelers who had passed through from Caleria. They left their plague in their wake, and when nearly a dozen Karayans had been struck by the illness, Chief Lucia had stayed by the bedsides of the sick, praying to the spirits for swift recovery and offering words of comfort and hope to their families. It was the constant exposure to the virus that finally took her life.
When last Hugo had spoken with his mother, she had warned him with a raw, hoarse voice of what was to soon follow. She knew, the same as he, that the end was near. Her face was gray, hollow; her eyes dim and sunken, with deep, dark grooves cut into her face with obvious pain; her skin was thin and stretched tightly over her bones. The change had occurred in a matter of days, and within three weeks, Karaya's lovely queen was dead.
His expression showing nothing of the grief he felt inside, Hugo marched a full circle around the pyre with the others in the procession following quickly behind. It wasn't until he turned the curve and led the others into the ring that he saw his mother atop the flowered bed that was to be her final resting place. Strong boards had been laced carefully together; large, bright flowers covered the ties, and finally the body of the chief placed on top. Her hands, at her stomach, were clutching a dagger, the one that had been presented to her at her coronation.
Hugo nearly sobbed aloud, but restrained himself with all his might, looking at the pyre with his gaze out of focus so he wouldn't really see.
There wasn't a sound as the chief's body was placed upon the platform; not a tear was shed while the village elder said a prayer in the old tongue, nor when chiefs of the other Grasslands villages each removed a flower from the garden of death.
But when the four torches were raised, and each member of the Karaya clan followed Hugo's lead in taking up arms in salute, a wail rose up from the masses. The torches lit the pyre at precisely the same moment, the fire quickly encircling the chief's body. The spirits lifted the wind to howl, but naught could be heard above the screams and cries of Lucia's people, even as the other villages took up the song of passing.
Life and death make a pact within you,
Body of the world, house of death
I've been falling endlessly since my birth,
I fall in myself without touching bottom
Gather me in your eyes,
Collect my scattered dust and reconcile my ashes
Bind these unjoined bones,
Blow over my being,
Bury me deep in your earth,
And let your silence bring peace to thought that rages against itself...
Open your hand, lady of seeds that are days,
The day is immortal, it rises and grows,
It has just been born; its birth never ends,
Each day is a birth, each dawn is a birth
And I am dawning, we all are dawning,
The sun dawns with the face of the sun...
I want to go on, to go further, and cannot:
As each moment was dropping into another
I dreamt the dreams of dreamless stones,
And there at the end of the years like stones
I heard my blood, singing in its prison,
And the sea sang with a murmur of light,
One by one the walls gave way,
All of the doors were broken down,
And the sun came bursting through my forehead,
It tore apart my closed lids,
Cut loose my being from its wrappers,
And pulled me out of myself to wake me
from this animal sleep and its centuries of stone,
and the sun's magic of mirrors revived
A crystal willow, a poplar of water,
A tall fountain the wind arches over,
A tree deep-rooted yet standing still,
A course of a river that turns, moves on,
doubles back, and comes full circle,
forever arriving...
(==)
Excerpt from Octavio Paz's "Sunstone," translated by Eliot Weinberger.
The funeral was a grim one. There is nothing pleasant about a ceremony of spirit-relinquishing under normal circumstances, but such mourning as occurred after the death of the Karaya clan chief Lucia had never before been heard throughout all the Grasslands.
The sun was preparing to set in the dimming violet sky as the Karaya clansmen gathered with heavy hearts to the funeral pyre. A rectangular stack of brushwood awaited its queen, and four warriors held torches at the ready at each of its corners.
This was one ceremony that Hugo, son of the chief, was well-prepared for. Death was the beginning of a much greater thing to his people: the joining of a spirit to planet. There were spirits all around--in the wind, in the earth, in the water. The spirits of brave warriors were the most powerful of all, sacred and intangible. Their force brought the sun each morning and the moon each night, caused fire to burn and water to flow; their force gave the Karaya people strength against enemies and protected them from harm until the earth beckoned to them.
Hugo was familiar to all of this, and with the knowledge of the ways of passing came the preparation of the ceremony that went along with it.
The fifteen-year-old led the procession with his head high and his eyes straight, his face a mask to hide the painful emotion lying just beneath the surface. He walked to the beat of the sacred drum without missing a beat, the rhythm in his steps becoming one with the pounding of his heart. He was in awe when by peripheral vision he realized that his people made up the smallest portion of the mourners. It may have just been that the lizard people were so much larger that they seemed of greater number, but Hugo also recognized the garb of the peoples of Chisha, an entire brace of duck clansmen, many warrior women from Alma Kinan, an unknown group who might have been part of the Sefi clan, and even a company of knights from Camaro.
A likely cause for the widespread sorrow was that Lucia was the first victim to be claimed by the sickness that had struck the Karaya village following a band of infected travelers who had passed through from Caleria. They left their plague in their wake, and when nearly a dozen Karayans had been struck by the illness, Chief Lucia had stayed by the bedsides of the sick, praying to the spirits for swift recovery and offering words of comfort and hope to their families. It was the constant exposure to the virus that finally took her life.
When last Hugo had spoken with his mother, she had warned him with a raw, hoarse voice of what was to soon follow. She knew, the same as he, that the end was near. Her face was gray, hollow; her eyes dim and sunken, with deep, dark grooves cut into her face with obvious pain; her skin was thin and stretched tightly over her bones. The change had occurred in a matter of days, and within three weeks, Karaya's lovely queen was dead.
His expression showing nothing of the grief he felt inside, Hugo marched a full circle around the pyre with the others in the procession following quickly behind. It wasn't until he turned the curve and led the others into the ring that he saw his mother atop the flowered bed that was to be her final resting place. Strong boards had been laced carefully together; large, bright flowers covered the ties, and finally the body of the chief placed on top. Her hands, at her stomach, were clutching a dagger, the one that had been presented to her at her coronation.
Hugo nearly sobbed aloud, but restrained himself with all his might, looking at the pyre with his gaze out of focus so he wouldn't really see.
There wasn't a sound as the chief's body was placed upon the platform; not a tear was shed while the village elder said a prayer in the old tongue, nor when chiefs of the other Grasslands villages each removed a flower from the garden of death.
But when the four torches were raised, and each member of the Karaya clan followed Hugo's lead in taking up arms in salute, a wail rose up from the masses. The torches lit the pyre at precisely the same moment, the fire quickly encircling the chief's body. The spirits lifted the wind to howl, but naught could be heard above the screams and cries of Lucia's people, even as the other villages took up the song of passing.
Life and death make a pact within you,
Body of the world, house of death
I've been falling endlessly since my birth,
I fall in myself without touching bottom
Gather me in your eyes,
Collect my scattered dust and reconcile my ashes
Bind these unjoined bones,
Blow over my being,
Bury me deep in your earth,
And let your silence bring peace to thought that rages against itself...
Open your hand, lady of seeds that are days,
The day is immortal, it rises and grows,
It has just been born; its birth never ends,
Each day is a birth, each dawn is a birth
And I am dawning, we all are dawning,
The sun dawns with the face of the sun...
I want to go on, to go further, and cannot:
As each moment was dropping into another
I dreamt the dreams of dreamless stones,
And there at the end of the years like stones
I heard my blood, singing in its prison,
And the sea sang with a murmur of light,
One by one the walls gave way,
All of the doors were broken down,
And the sun came bursting through my forehead,
It tore apart my closed lids,
Cut loose my being from its wrappers,
And pulled me out of myself to wake me
from this animal sleep and its centuries of stone,
and the sun's magic of mirrors revived
A crystal willow, a poplar of water,
A tall fountain the wind arches over,
A tree deep-rooted yet standing still,
A course of a river that turns, moves on,
doubles back, and comes full circle,
forever arriving...
(==)
Excerpt from Octavio Paz's "Sunstone," translated by Eliot Weinberger.