AELDU-YAN

"Ouch!" I cursed under my breath and sucked on the line of blood that appeared across my thumb.

"You're doing it wrong." Fendul took my hunting knife and peeled a curl of dark wood from the palm-sized figurine. "Hold it like this. You'll stab yourself in the gut otherwise."

"Nei. It doesn't work that way." I yanked it back from him.

We sat cross-legged on the rocky beach of Kotula Huin, a still, glacial lake. Drifts of fog surrounded us. Colossal hills loomed over the valley, its dense layer of trees barely visible against the dark sky. A dull pink glow silhouetted the jagged peaks to our right. Behind us, the forest dripped. My fingers were too damp to grip the rawhide cord wrapped around my bone knife.

Voices drifted down the shoreline. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" I asked.

Fendul shrugged. "Not until the ceremony starts."

"So you're up this early for the fun of it." I rolled my eyes. I'd been awake for an hour already drying wood for a bonfire, along with my aunt Isu and three others who'd spent years learning to call water. Our skills weren't usually required so early in the morning, otherwise I might've been more reluctant to learn. Not that I had much choice. As the eldest — and only — child of an antayul, I was bound by custom to become one as well.

I bent my head over the driftwood. In my peripheral vision I saw Fendul tossing a stone from hand to hand.

"Can you stop that?"

The stone fell with a clatter. "Concentration conquers distraction."

"Don't underestimate yourself," I muttered.

"Ever consider I'm not the problem?"

"Ever consider shutting up?" I tossed my knife away and flopped backward, piling my hair into a pillow.

Fendul's face appeared in my field of vision. We shared the same dark eyes, sharp features, and wiry builds. Even after a summer apart, our skin had tanned to the same warm muted shade — but while my light brown hair spilled past my waist, his hair was charcoal black and cropped short. We didn't have much choice in that either. He couldn't grow his long until he married. I'd never been allowed to cut my hair and never would be.

His amulet swung back and forth as he leaned over me. I reached up as if to touch the crow, carved from a black shark tooth, then pushed on Fendul's bare chest. "You're blocking my view."

"Of what? It's barely light."

"Of the clouds, bludgehead."

"Come on. Try again." He grabbed my hand and pulled me upright. I sighed and picked up the knife, letting him place my hands in what he insisted was the right position.

"What is that? A fox?" he asked.

"Nei." I could hear the pressure to elaborate. "It's a wolf."

"That's not the colour used for wolves. Lighter wood is more suited to ..."

I stared at him. He trailed off. Without breaking eye contact, I flipped the figurine over my shoulder. It rustled through some bushes and thumped to the ground. He muttered something that sounded like "immature."

The clouds were brightening, turning pale pink and white like the smooth rocks I used to collect from creeks. The lake was turning turquoise. I stood up and sheathed the knife at my back next to my throwing dagger. "I'm going to find Nili."

I wandered down the shore. The beach would only exist for a few more days now that the autumn rains had started. Kotula Huin sat in the eastern reaches of Anwen Bel, a rainforest where everything was wet, covered in moss, or covered in wet moss.

Dozens of canoes made from hollowed tree trunks had been pulled up past flood level. My father had carved our family's canoe. A thin-billed kinaru with its long slender neck rose from the prow, its wings flowing down the sides. Supposedly our ancestors came from a kinaru egg laid on this very spot. Our tribe's name, the Rinjouyen, was an ancient term for people of the lakeshore.

These days I shared our canoe with Isu, my mother's sister. We 'd just returned from the east where we traded every summer with itherans, the foreigners who settled around our lands. My hair still smelled like goat from their alpine pastures. The remaining Rin had trickled in last night, exhausted after canoeing the lakes and rivers of Anwen Bel on their own trading trips.

Past the canoes, at the tip of a small peninsula, stood a pyramid of stacked driftwood. Drummers, carrying their hide drums on straps around their hips, stood angled toward it. Dancers faced them from the far side, their embroidered shawls making surreal silhouettes in the dawn light. I barely had time to notice Nili's absence before she dashed out of the forest, clouds of dark brown hair flying, her shawl streaming behind her.

"Help." She thrust out a handful of tangled black ribbon and a thin polished stick.

I gathered her hair into a tail and tied it with a ribbon. "Every year, Nili." I wouldn't have done it for anyone else. Hair was as sacred as the heart or blood and was bound by even more taboos, but Nili and I were long past the point where that mattered.

She half-turned, her round cheeks wide with a grin. "Isu said the firewood was done a while ago. What've you been doing?"

"Wasting my time." I slid the stick into Nili's hair and tied ribbons to each end so they hung down to her shoulders. "Fen thinks he can teach me to carve."

"Fendul couldn't teach a fish to swim. Don't let it get to you, ai?"

"Yeah. Whatever." I knotted her shawl laces around her wrists. "There. Get in place."

"I'll find you later." Nili waved and stepped into the dancers' line.

Fendul now stood on the opposite side of the bonfire from his father, Behadul. Both held lit torches. As sunrise crept closer, the rest of the Rin assembled on the shore, leaving gaps for those we'd lost. The dead took up more space than the living. We were a small jouyen now, just over a hundred people left. The elders said we once had thirteen thousand.

Among the gathered Rin, Isu turned, looking for me. I retreated under cover of the trees. Antayul were expected to watch and sing along. Not talk, not move, not be disturbed that six years ago I found my cousin, Isu's elder son, washed ashore here — months after we buried him. Storms had uprooted his grave and dumped his body in the lake. We could only tell it was him from his tattoos.

The elders said it was a blessing he returned to our sacred place of origin. Every autumn ceremony since then, I'd stood at Isu's side twisting snare wire around my hands until they bled, watching the lake, wondering which of my eight dead cousins would turn up next. This year I'd had enough.

A drum boomed as the sun burst over the mountains. Behadul and Fendul lowered their torches to the tinder. Flames licked up the pyramid. They retreated to the base of the peninsula, their torches forming a triangle with the bonfire. Drummers filed into a half-circle around the fire, swaying and stamping their feet as they pounded drum skins with leather mallets.

Dancers whirled and moved their arms like birds soaring across the sky and diving to earth. Their shawls — black outside and white inside, like kinaru wings — billowed out behind them. Clusters of crow feathers in their hands sliced the air. The dancers seemed to float above the earth, a second away from taking flight into an invisible world just out of reach.

Drumbeats echoed off the slopes. Behadul's voice resonated in a chant. The others joined until the entire jouyen called out to the lake valley....