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and disoriented. Once, when he was eight years old, he and Haidar had been caught out on the sea in a morateth. The sky had closed in, white and low over the endless whiteness of the ice. After ten days, he hadn't been able to distinguish right from left, up from down. Now he felt lost again, as if a morateth of the spirit were crushing him under.
    'I do not understand.'
    'The stars are like fires burning across space. Across the black, frozen sea. Men can cross from star to star in boats called lightships. Such men – and women – are called pilots. Your father was a pilot, Danlo.'
    'My father? My blood father? What was his name?' He took Soli's hand and whispered, 'Who is my blessed father?'
    But Soli didn't seem to hear him. He began to speak of things that Danlo couldn't comprehend. He told of the galaxy's many wonders, of the great black hole at the core, and of that brilliant, doomed region of the galaxy called the Vild. Human beings, he explained, had learned to make stars explode into supernovae; even as they spoke together, beneath the dying sky, ten thousand spheres of light were expanding outward to the ends of the universe. 'So many stars,' Soli said, 'so much light.'
    Danlo, of course, couldn't comprehend that this wild starlight would eventually reach his world and kill all of the plants and animals on Icefall's surface. He knew only that Soli was dying, and seeing visions of impossible things.
    'Sir, who is my father?' he repeated.
    But now Soli had lapsed into a private, final vision, and his words made no sense at all. 'The rings,' Soli forced out. 'The rings. Of light. The rings of eternity, and I ... I, oh, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!'
    Quite possibly he was trying to tell Danlo that he was his grandfather, but he failed, and soon his lips fell blue and silent, and he would never utter any words again.
    'Soli, Soli!'
    Again, Soli began gasping for air, and very soon he stopped breathing altogether. He lay still with his eyes fixed on the stars. Danlo was surprised at how quickly he had died.
    'Soli, mi alasharia la shantih Devaki.'
    How many times, Danlo wondered, had he said that prayer? How many times must he say it again?
    He closed Soli's eyes and kissed them. 'Shantih, Soli, may your spirit find the way to the other side.'
    Then the enormity of all that had occurred during the past days overwhelmed him. He jumped up and threw off his fur, standing naked to the world. 'No!' he cried out. 'No!' But there was no one to listen to him. The fires had burnt low, dim orange glimmerings lost into the blackness of night. It was very cold. He watched the fires die, and he began to shiver violently. 'No,' he whispered, and the wind stole the breath from his lips and swept it away. His body hurt so urgently that he welcomed numbness, but next to the pain of his spirit, it was almost nothing. How would he live now, he wondered, what would he do? He had been cut, and part of him had died, and so he was no longer of the onabara, the once-born children. But until he completed his passage, he would remain unfinished, like a spearpoint without an edge; he would never be of the diabara, the twice-born men. And because he knew that only a twice-born man who had learned the whole Song of Life could be wholly alive, he almost despaired.
    Later that night, above the cave, he buried Soli with the others. After he had hefted the last frozen boulder onto his grave, he prayed. 'Soli, pela ur-padda, mi alasharia, shantih.' He pressed his eyes hard before shaking his head and crying out, 'Oh, Ahira, what shall I do?'
    He fell into the dreamtime, then, and the wind through the trees answered him. There was a rush of air carrying the deep-throated hooing of the snowy owl. It was Ahira, his other-self. Perched high on a yu tree's silvery branch, across the snow-covered graveyard, Ahira was looking through the darkness for him.
    'Ahira, Ahira.'
    The owl's snowy round head turned toward him. His eyes were orange and black, wild and