He cut the air with it, once, twice, thrice, and then returned it reluctantly to the embroidered scabbard that hung on his back. Yet there, too, it pleased him, for he could feel the new weight, the mark of his manhood. A man at fifteen! Or man enough to receive a sword, anyway. He reached once more joyfully for the hilt of his sword, delight sparkling in his gray eyes.

No, his own hidden voice told him. You were given the sword because you have shown yourself to be trustworthy. Tend to your father's cows!

Even reminding himself of his mundane duties made Perkar feel good today. After all, that was what an adult—man or woman—did. They looked after their obligations. Dutifully Perkar crossed the low ridge in the pasture. The sun was halfway from noon to sundown, scattering gold upon the otherwise verdant landscape. Forest bunched thickly at the borders of the Cattle-Field, wild and dense as the forest at the start of the world. The pasture itself rolled on east, dotted here and there with the rust-red cattle his father preferred. Between two hills, a thin line of willow marked a stream leisurely crossing the pasture.

Perkar stopped first at the shrine on the brow of the high ridge. It was a modest affair; an altar of stone that came up to his waist, a small roof of cedar and cane sheltering it. On the altar rested a bowl of plain design. He took a cowhide bag from his waist and withdrew an incense brick, and with tinder and his bow-drill ignited it. The faint scent of cedar wafted up, and he sprinkled tallow onto the hot ember, smiling as the fat sputtered and flared. Clearing his throat, he sang, clearly and distinctly:

Leaving the brick smoldering, he moved on to a second shrine just inside the edge of the woods. This invocation was a bit shorter; they owed less to the Untamed Forest, and even let deer and other creatures graze at the edge of their pasture to mollify him.

The sun was well toward the horizon when he reached the stream.

The stream had cut deep banks, etched into the pasture; the cattle had likewise worn deep trails down to it. Perkar loved this part of the land the best; when the sun was bright and straight overhead, he often came here, to cool himself in the water, to chase crawfish, to throw crickets on the surface of the water and watch the fish snatch at them from below. Humming, enjoying the feel of the sword flapping against his back, Perkar moved upstream, away from the cow-roiled waters, to where the creek flowed clear and cool from the forest. He paused there, savoring the transition from the smells of grass and cow to that of dark, leaf-strewn soil. He reached down and cupped a handful of water to sprinkle on himself. Then he took out the sacrifice he had for the water: rose petals from his mother's garden. He started the song:

Now, at last, Perkar took his sword back out. He laid it across his knees and marveled at it.

The blade was slim, double-edged, about as long as his arm. The hilt was made large enough for both hands, wrapped in cowhide, a round, polished steel pommel its only decoration.

"I know who made that," a girl's voice said.

Perkar nearly dropped the sword, he was so startled. Instead, he stared, gape-mouthed, at the person who had spoken to him.

She stood waist-deep in the creek, wearing no more than her dark, wet hair. Her face was pale, the color of ivory, her large almond eyes golden as the sunset. She looked to be a year or so older than he, no more.

Perkar was not fooled.

"Goddess!" he whispered.

She smiled, twirled around in the water so that her hair fanned out across it. He could not see where the silken strands ended and the stream itself began.

"I liked the rose petals," she told him.

"It's been a long time since I saw you," Perkar breathed. "Many years."

"Has it been so long? You have grown a bit larger. And you have a sword."

"I do," Perkar answered stupidly.

"Let me see it."

Perkar obediently held the sword up where she could see it. The Stream Goddess approached, revealing more of herself with each step. She looked very Human indeed, and Perkar tried his best to avert his eyes.

"You may look at me," she told him. She scrunched her eyes, concentrating on the weapon. "Yes. This was forged by the little steel god, Ko. He cooled it in me, farther upstream."

"That's right!" Perkar agreed enthusiastically. "Ko is said to be related to my family. He is said to have fathered my grandsire's sire."

"So he did, in a manner of speaking," the goddess replied. "Your family is old hereabouts, as Human Beings go. Your roots with us on the land are deep."

"I love you," Perkar breathed.

"Of course you do, silly thing," she said, smiling.

"Since I first saw you, when I was only five. You haven't changed at all."

"Oh, I have," she corrected him. "A little here, a little there. Wider in some places, more narrow in others. My hair, up in the mountains, changes most. Each storm alters it, alters the tiny rivulets that feed into me."

"I meant…"

"I know what you meant. My Human form will always look like this, little Perkar."

"Because…"

"Because someone with this shape was sacrificed to me long ago. I forget her name, though I remember a little of what she remembers…"

"She was lovely," Perkar said, feeling a bit bolder. When he said things like that to the girls at the gatherings, they blushed and hid their faces. The Stream Goddess merely returned him a frank stare.

"You court me, little Perkar? I am older by far than your entire lineage."

He said nothing to that.

"It is so silly," the goddess went on. "This thing about swords and men. I made my agreement with your family only because it amused me."

"Agreement?"

"There is more to receiving your sword than I suspect you know. A silly, symbolic thing, but as I said, amusing." And she reached out her long, slim arm. He took it, and felt that her flesh was indeed warm, like a Human Being's. She stepped up out of the water, glistening, her long, graceful legs nearly touching him. She smelled like—he didn't know. Rose petals?

He was certainly frightened. He had gone off, recently, with Hame, a girl his own age and Human. What they did—touching each other, exploring—had frightened him enough. The feelings it aroused had been so hungry. He could not see how such feelings could be sated, though he had come near to understanding once when he was alone.

But this woman drawing him down to her flesh was not Hu-man. She was Anishu, a spirit, a goddess. Perkar was trembling as she gently tugged at the belt of his pants. "Shhh," the Stream told him. "Don't worry."

Perkar and the goddess lay beneath a sky gone slate gray, and the shutters of the brightest stars were opening as night threw wide her windows. Huna, the Pale Queen, was brightening but already halfway across the sky, a thick crescent. Though the night breeze should have been cool, Perkar's bare skin prickled with unnatural warmth. The Stream Goddess was tracing the lean contours of his face with her index finger. She giggled at the downy promise of beard, then cupped his cheek when he flushed in embarrassment.

"You people age so quickly," she told him. "Don't hurry it more than necessary."

Perkar nodded without understanding. His life was too full just now. He felt as if all that he had ever seen and known was about to boil up out of him, become something he had never anticipated. He was having trouble thinking. And he was in love.

"That first time, when I was so young," he asked her. "Why did you appear to me then?"

"I need no excuse to appear," she said lightly.

"You came this time to honor a bargain."

"True enough. I came last time because you were laughing, and I thought it beautiful. I wanted to hear you with Human ears."

"The stream cannot hear?"

"Oh, it can. I can hear everything, the entire length and breadth of me, from the mountains until…" Her lovely face clouded. "I can hear it all. But it isn't like this. Being tied up in one place, being just a point, a quickly moving speck—it has a different sort of appeal."

"Is that what we are to you? Specks?"

She frowned, turned over on her side, so that the curve of her hip gleamed, impossibly beautiful to Perkar. "Before, my memories are different. I remember being born, I think, long and long ago. I remember when I came through this place in the old dry bed, over there." She gestured behind them. "Mostly, though, it was all the same: swelling with the rains, greeting my little ones and taking them in. The little thoughts of all the things that live within me. The Old People—you call them the Alwat—they came and touched me now and then, but I hardly noticed them— though other spirits told me much about them. Then your people came. They annoyed me at first; they angered me. I tried to ignore them. That was when they cut this girl and put her in the water. Her blood mixed up with mine, I felt her brief little life swimming away in me. Not like a fish at all. I was very sad, sad that Human Beings thought I craved such things. That is not my nature."

"Some spirits crave death, my father says."

"The land spirits need it, though they care little for sacrifice. Without death, forests have nothing to eat. But I…"

"Streams do not crave death?"

Perkar did not understand at first. The idea of a goddess weeping was beyond his young imagination. And yet she was.

"Why are you crying?"

"My song. Do you remember the last part of my song?"

Of course, Perkar thought. How could I ever forget your song? He cleared his throat.

"What?"

"The Old Man," she said at last, "is a terrible god. He eats me up. He eats me up!" She shuddered, her breath hissing.

"He swallows me each day. In time he will swallow this seed you have just put in me. He eats everything."

She rose up, a night goddess now. Huna touched her with silver.

"Stay away from him, Perkar," she said.

"Stop. I love you." He had begun to weep, too.

"I'm always here." She sighed, but now he heard the pain in that. As if she had also said, "and he always devours me." He could picture how, each moment of each day, she fell down the hills into him. Whoever he was.

She stepped onto the water, smiled at him. Then she was a sheet of silver water, collapsing. She was a ripple. She was the stream.

Perkar watched her flow, long into the night.

"I love you," he said again, before he left. He took up the sword that had been made by the god Ko, but it no longer seemed a delightful burden. It seemed heavy, somehow. Yet it was not a melancholy heaviness, not a grief. He felt strong, happy. But sober. Determined.

I will find out who this River is that eats her, he promised. That is the first thing I shall discover.

It was morning before Perkar returned home. The rising sun banished the melancholy from his soul, lightened his step as it lightened the sturdy cedar walls of his father's damakuta. He stopped at a little shrine at the base of the hill the fort stood upon, offered a bit of wine to the little god that slept there in the stone. A rooster crowed from somewhere up beyond the wall.

The damakuta had always seemed unimaginably huge to him, but as he glanced back up the hill at it, he knew that it had be-come smaller. He was a man now, in every way that mattered, the first of his father's sons to come of age. Soon he would seek Piraku, a thing that had many faces: destiny, wealth, cattle, prestige—and, of course, a home. Still, he reflected, when he did build his own house, there could be no better model than his father's. The sturdy walls had protected his family and cattle from more than one attack by jealous chieftains and once, even, the fierce horsemen of the eastern plains. The longhouse within the walls was tightly built, warm in the harshest winter, airy and cool when the windows were unsealed in the summertime.

Perkar came lightly back to his feet and fairly bounced up the hill. The outer gate was open, of course, and Apiru, one of his father's bondsmen, waved down at him from the watchtower.

"Morning, Perkar," he shouted, a little too loudly. A little too—was that a smirk on Apiru's face?

"Morning," Perkar returned. Did Apiru know? Did everyone know? By the forest gods, did his mother know?

Some of the bounce was gone from Perkar's step by the time he saw his father, sitting on a stool in the courtyard. The yard was large and bare, picked clean of vegetation by the gold-and-red chickens that roamed upon it. It was large enough to hold the most valuable of their cattle, when raiders came. Still, at the moment it seemed a little cluttered. There were more people than there should be, this time of morning. Besides his father, a number of his father's bondsmen and their families stood about, apparently doing nothing. Two of his younger brothers, his sister, and her husband were clustered together in the doorway of the longhouse. His father's two younger brothers, their wives—and grandfather! He must have come over from his own fort—nearly a day's travel—last night. What was going on?

"Good morning, Perkar," his father remarked. The older man's seamed, sun-browned, angular features and hawklike nose were a worn, presently unreadable version of Perkar's own. It always made Perkar nervous when he couldn't tell what his father was thinking.

"Morning, Father. Piraku beneath you and about you." That was the formal greeting, and Perkar guessed this to be a formal occasion, though no one seemed dressed for it. His father, in fact, was taking off his shirt, revealing the hard muscles and tight white scars Perkar had always so envied.

"Did your night go well, son? Do you feel more of a man?"

Perkar felt his cheeks flame with embarrassment. Father did know. He recalled the goddess' reference to some sort of arrangement between her and the family.

"Ah…" was all he could manage. A ripple of laughter fluttered around the yard. Kume, his father's oldest dog, lifted his head and yawned as if he, too, had a comment on the matter.

"One more thing, then, Perkar, and you will be a man," his father said, his eyes daunting, an ambiguous smile now ghosting on his lips.

"But I thought…" Perkar stopped in midutterance. When one did not know, it was best to keep silent. He wished desperately that he weren't the oldest son, that he had observed someone else coming into manhood. "What part is that, Father?"

"The part where I beat you senseless," the older man replied, gesturing with his hand. Padat, Perkar's cousin, came out from the doorway then, trying to keep a smile from splitting the round face all but concealed by his bushy, flaxen beard. He was carrying two heavy wooden practice swords. Perkar felt his bowels clutch. Oh, no. Not in front of everyone.

The swords were handed out, first to Perkar's father, then to Perkar. Perkar reluctantly moved out to face the older man.

"I, Sherye, patriarch of the clan Barku, challenge this whelp to combat. Do all of you hear this?"

There was a general chorus of assent. Sherye smiled at his son.

Perkar cleared his throat. "Ah… I, Perkar son of Sherye, son of the patriarch of clan Barku, take that challenge in my mouth, chew it like cud, spit it back."

"So be it," Perkar's grandfather growled from his stool.

That was that. Sherye stood immobile, waiting for Perkar to make the first move. He always did that, waited like a lion or a snake, and when Perkar attacked…

But Perkar had not even lifted his sword to fighting position, and suddenly his father was there, the oaken blade cutting at his shoulder, fast and hard. Perkar yanked his own sword up more by instinct than by design; his footing was all wrong, and though he caught the attack, he stumbled back beneath the sheer force of it. He let his father think he had stumbled more badly than he had: Perkar went back on one knee and then cut out at his father's extended leg. Sherye, of course, was no longer there: He was leaping in the air, the sword a brown blur. It thudded into the meat of Perkar's shoulder. The pain was immediate and paralyzing; Perkar nearly dropped his weapon. Instead he backed wildly away, amid the hoots and jeers of his family.

Sherye came on, and the expression on his face was anything but fatherly. Again the punishing blade swept down, and again Perkar's only consolation was that the weapon was wood and not sharp, god-forged steel. The blow scraped down his hasty guard, and flick, it whacked against his thigh. It could easily have been his hip, crippling even with a wooden weapon.

Twice struck was enough for Perkar. He was going to get hurt in this match—he might as well resign himself to it. Avoiding his father's attacks was an impossibility. The next time the blade darted at him, he ignored it, instead stepping into the blow, aiming his own attack at Sherye's exposed ribs. His father's sword caught him on his uninjured shoulder. His own weapon cut empty air.

Perkar bit his lip on a shriek. Sherye did not press his advantage, but instead stepped back and regarded his eldest son.

People were laughing at him again. Perkar set his stance and charged. The two men met and exchanged a flurry of blows; miraculously, none landed on Perkar, though he barely deflected one aimed straight at his head. Even more miraculously, one of his own strokes grazed his father's arm. Bolder, Perkar howled and leapt, committing himself to an attack that left him defenseless.

His father's blow landed first, a bruising slap against Perkar's ribs, but an instant later he felt the shock of wood meeting flesh from a more favorable perspective as his own weapon thwacked his father's upper arm. Perkar's war cry turned into a jubilant shout, but that was cut quite short as Sherye spun and laid a stinging blow across his shoulder blades. Perkar lost track, then, of how many times he was hit. In the end he thought it a miracle that nothing in his body was shattered, that the only blood was from the lip he himself had bitten.

The heat in the sauna was delicious—it almost made Perkar glad he was hurt. Sore muscles and bruises acquired a better flavor when marinated in deep heat.

The woti didn't hurt, either. It went down his throat like a warm coal and settled warmly in his stomach a moment before venturing on out into his veins.

"You never forget your first taste of woti," his father was saying. "You never forget when you become a man."

"Likely not, after that beating," Perkar complained—but lightly, so his father would know there was no real resentment.

"You took it well. You made me proud."

Perkar bowed his head, afraid to show the fierce grin of pleasure at his father's approval. Sherye laid his palm on Perkar's back.

"Piraku," he said. "You will find Piraku, just as I did, as my father did."

Perkar nodded; he could not speak. The two of them sat in silence, let the heat work further into their bones. Sherye threw a handful of water and spruce needles onto the rocks, and fragrant steam hissed up around them.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?" his father said after a time.

"Yes," Perkar answered. "Beautiful. Father…"

"Hm?" The older man's eyes were closed.

"I love her, Father."

Sherye snorted. "Of course you do. We all did… do, though the way we love her changes. That's why our grandfathers made that pact with her, son. It's good to love the things in the land."

"No. No, not like that," Perkar went on. "I love her like…"

"Like the first woman you've ever made love to. I know. But she's Anishu, son. You'll see that soon enough."

"It's happened before! That song, the 'Song of Moriru,' where…"

"I know the song, son. But the man died, and Moriru lived on and on, always sad. That's the way it would be." He smiled and reached over to tousle Perkar's chestnut hair. "You'll find a Human girl soon enough. Don't worry about that."

"She's already sad," Perkar whispered, unwilling to pass over the subject so lightly. "She says…"

"Son." Sherye's voice was solemn, sober. "Son, let it go. There is nothing you can do for her. Let it go."

Perkar opened his mouth to speak again, but his father half-cocked one eyebrow, his signal that the matter would be pursued no further. Perkar turned his gaze down into the empty woti cup.

But he did not let it go. He could not.