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The watcher also heard, and charged by her:
     a beast with bared teeth, bristling fur, vicious bark. Wolfcoyotedog.
    She heard:
Nothing born of earth or sky can harm you.
    The dream faded.
    Leaving her body on the riverbank, Ashan rose like heat, unnoticed. Interesting to see the flesh down there, looking so dead,
     everyone so concerned, all of it becoming smaller as she ascended.
    A strand like fine sinew connected her to the shell she’d discarded like a worn-out garment. Tor’s voice climbed up the strand,
     plucked at her.
    “You cannot leave me now… ”
    But Ashan was a spiderling caught on a breeze, spinning out an invisible web, carried ever higher, knowing no more than a
     young spider knew where it was going, nor any more caring. As she drifted through the colors of dawn and into the blackness
     beyond, the world shrank behind her.
    A distant point of brilliance showed her the way.
    The Light.
    Still Tor reached her, ever so faint: “You are alive.”
    Ashan’s spirit laughed.
Oh, Tor! Of course I’m alive! More than when flesh bound me, more than you ever dreamed of being, more than any creature who
     ever lived!
    The Old Moonkeeper Raga joined her flight. Ashan knew her Spirit Mother by a new sense—not sight or touch, sound or smell,
     but all these and more.
    Raven Tongue,
she thought,
I love you.
    I love you, Whispering Wind.
    Presently Ashan wondered,
Why are we here?
    We are Moonkeepers,
Raga replied.
    Beyond stars the Moonkeepers flew: through light that didn’t blind them and heat that didn’t scorch them; by clouds of colored
     dust and swirls of ice specks glittering; past silent voids and rivers of sound. Always toward the Light, whose rays were
     love.
    On her own, Ashan might not have known when to stop, but Raga did.
    The home of Amotkan. We will go no farther.
    There was only light in this part of the sky—no stars, no sounds, no smells. But it was not an empty place. Ashan felt power.
     Amotkan was everywhere, but would remain invisible to protect the puny visitors.
    From the Creator’s home far away in the sky, Ashan looked down on a frozen world—a world without people, or any living things—nothing
     but ice.
    The Beginning of Time,
Raga said.
    Ashan blinked, and then she saw people, uncountable as migrating birds.
    The First People,
Raga said.
Our ancestors.
    Had there ever been that many people? If the Shahala were like the seeds in one head of grass, then the ones below were the
     seeds in all the heads of grass in a meadow. It would take days to walk from the first person to the last.
    They snaked along a passage between tall mountains of blue-white ice. They must be freezing, and starving. How could there
     be any food in that frozen land? Yet the First People seemed happier than people could be.
    Children of the same Father,
Raga said.
    Another voice filled Ashan—thunderous, yet soothing—a voice with all the power and knowledge of creation:
    In the Beginning, the people were one.
    Ashan understood. Her destiny was greater than she’d thought, and far from finished. Bringing the two tribes together had
     been the easy part. Making them into one, in the way of the First People, would demand everything she possessed.

CHAPTER 6
    L IKE A TADPOLE IN ITS BUBBLE, ALONE AMONG MANY , Kai El walked along the Great River searching for a rock with special power. But he felt more like kicking rocks than looking
     for one.
    She’s dead! What will a boy of only five summers do without a mother? Would somebody tell me that?
    No, no, Kai El,
he said to himself,
she’s not
really
dead. She’s the Moonkeeper, who can die and live again, like other people go to sleep and wake up. So they say.
    He didn’t understand this rock-finding medicine, but he wanted to do right, and that meant
not
thinking bad thoughts. Too young to have his own song, he walked in silence searching the ground not just with his eyes,
     but also with the part of his mind above and between his eyes, and with his