began snowing that evening. It was too cold to snow very much, but what little snow that the sky shed, the wind found and blew into drifts. 'Snow is the frozen tears of Nashira, the sky,' he told Jiro. He had called the dog closer to the oilstone and was playing tug-of-war with him. He pulled at one end of a braided leather rope while Jiro had the other end clamped between his teeth, growling and shaking his head back and forth. It was childish to pamper the dog with such play, but he excused himself from the usual travelling discipline with the thought that it was bad for a man – or a half-man – to be alone. Today, the sky is sad because the Devaki have all gone over. And tomorrow too, I think, sad, and the next day as well. Jiro, Jiro, why is everything in the world so sad?'
The dog dropped the rope, whined, and poked his wet nose into his face. He licked the salt off of his cheeks. Danlo laughed and scratched behind Jiro's ears. Dogs, he thought, were almost never sad. They were happy just to gobble down a little meat every day, happy sniffing the air or competing with each other to see who could get his leg up the highest and spray the most piss against the snowhut's yellow wall. Dogs had no conception of shaida, and they were never troubled by it as people were.
While the storm built ever stronger and howled like a wolverine caught in a trap, he spent most of his time cocooned in his sleeping furs, thinking. In his mind, he searched for the source of shaida. Most of the Alaloi tribes believed that only a human being could be touched with shaida, or rather, that only a human being could bring shaida into the world. And shaida, itself, could infect only the outer part of a man, his face, which is the Alaloi term for persona, character, cultural imprinting, emotions, and the thinking mind. The deep self, his purusha, was as pure and clear as glacier ice; it could be neither altered nor sullied nor harmed in any way. He thought about his tribe's most sacred teachings, and he asked himself a penetrating, heretical question: what if Haidar and the other dead fathers of his tribe had been wrong? Perhaps people were really like fragments of clear ice with cracks running through the centre. Perhaps shaida touched the deepest parts of each man and child. And since people (and his word for 'people' was simply 'Devaki') were of the world, he would have to journey into the very heart of the world to find shaida's true source. Shaida is the cry of the world when it has lost its soul he thought. Only, how could the world ever lose its soul? What if the World-soul were not lost, but rather, inherently flawed with shaida?
For most of a day and a night, like a thallow circling in search of prey, he skirted the track of this terrifying thought. If, as he had been taught, the world were continually being created, every moment being pushed screaming from the bloody womb of Time, that meant that shaida was being created, too. Every moment, then, impregnated with flaws that might eventually grow and fracture outward and shatter the world and all its creatures. If this were so, then there could be no evolution toward harmony, no balance of life and death, no help for pain. All that is not halla is shaida, he remembered. But if everything were shaida, then true halla could never be.
Even though Danlo was young, he sensed that such logical thinking was itself flawed in some basic way, for it led to despair of life, and try as he could, he couldn't help feeling the life inside where it surged, all hot and eager and good. Perhaps his assumptions were wrong; perhaps he did not understand the true nature of shaida and halla; perhaps logic was not as keen a tool as Soli had taught him it could be. If only Soli hadn't died so suddenly, he might have heard the whole Song of Life and learned a way of affirmation beyond logic.
When he grew frustrated with pure thought, he turned to other pursuits. He spent most of three days carving a piece of
The dog dropped the rope, whined, and poked his wet nose into his face. He licked the salt off of his cheeks. Danlo laughed and scratched behind Jiro's ears. Dogs, he thought, were almost never sad. They were happy just to gobble down a little meat every day, happy sniffing the air or competing with each other to see who could get his leg up the highest and spray the most piss against the snowhut's yellow wall. Dogs had no conception of shaida, and they were never troubled by it as people were.
While the storm built ever stronger and howled like a wolverine caught in a trap, he spent most of his time cocooned in his sleeping furs, thinking. In his mind, he searched for the source of shaida. Most of the Alaloi tribes believed that only a human being could be touched with shaida, or rather, that only a human being could bring shaida into the world. And shaida, itself, could infect only the outer part of a man, his face, which is the Alaloi term for persona, character, cultural imprinting, emotions, and the thinking mind. The deep self, his purusha, was as pure and clear as glacier ice; it could be neither altered nor sullied nor harmed in any way. He thought about his tribe's most sacred teachings, and he asked himself a penetrating, heretical question: what if Haidar and the other dead fathers of his tribe had been wrong? Perhaps people were really like fragments of clear ice with cracks running through the centre. Perhaps shaida touched the deepest parts of each man and child. And since people (and his word for 'people' was simply 'Devaki') were of the world, he would have to journey into the very heart of the world to find shaida's true source. Shaida is the cry of the world when it has lost its soul he thought. Only, how could the world ever lose its soul? What if the World-soul were not lost, but rather, inherently flawed with shaida?
For most of a day and a night, like a thallow circling in search of prey, he skirted the track of this terrifying thought. If, as he had been taught, the world were continually being created, every moment being pushed screaming from the bloody womb of Time, that meant that shaida was being created, too. Every moment, then, impregnated with flaws that might eventually grow and fracture outward and shatter the world and all its creatures. If this were so, then there could be no evolution toward harmony, no balance of life and death, no help for pain. All that is not halla is shaida, he remembered. But if everything were shaida, then true halla could never be.
Even though Danlo was young, he sensed that such logical thinking was itself flawed in some basic way, for it led to despair of life, and try as he could, he couldn't help feeling the life inside where it surged, all hot and eager and good. Perhaps his assumptions were wrong; perhaps he did not understand the true nature of shaida and halla; perhaps logic was not as keen a tool as Soli had taught him it could be. If only Soli hadn't died so suddenly, he might have heard the whole Song of Life and learned a way of affirmation beyond logic.
When he grew frustrated with pure thought, he turned to other pursuits. He spent most of three days carving a piece of
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