A voice shouted nearby and a dozen then a hundred voices joined it in song. Everyone was stomping and clapping, shoutsinging like all the world was ending, like we were just newly born into a world of wolves and dragons where only the moon lit your way, where every bit of ground was covered in glowing flowers and trees singing with the voice of the ages. The fires roared and the sky so purple and clear it was right on top of us, inside us, swarming like songbirds I had no name for. My voice was already raw from the day of celebration, but I screamed and howled with the rest of them.

  We were the storm, rising from a thousand thousand years of history. We crashed and we burst like thunder, lit up like lightning. And at the center of the maelstrom was my mother. Howling and dancing, her smile wickedly large. Like a demon, all her teeth showing. The fire danced round her and the purple was everywhere. She let loose her hair and it flung out in all directions, like a net for stars but no stars could be seen even though the suns should’ve been tumbling past the horizons. But instead they kept howling large and too close, but now they had switched places, with the blue in the west and the red in the east. And at the center of it all was my mother. Heart of the clan, though no one would say her name or even look in her direction on any other day. But today, she swung from body to body, her movements so fluid. They were viciously beautiful, so similar to Mirtis Kardas that had she unsheathed her sword there would’ve been a mountain of dead. My heart was bursting with love and awe and pride as I watched my mother. She stomped harder, sang louder, and howled longer than anyone else.

  That’s what I remember best about that whole day. The happiest day of my life. It’s sad to think I was so young when I was happiest, but I don’t think anyone is happier than they are as a child, free of the burden of the world and life and people.

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  Fucking people.

  But there was my mother, shining so bright. It’s hard to put into words because so much of it was simply her movements, her smiles, her strong voice. Everyone else was lost to me. First Mother and all the other faces became a tapestry to the day. But my mother was alive. A goddess. And HoPa and LoPa, Akmuo and Medis all joined in.

  My mother threw me into the air and I rose with a thousand howls. She caught me high above her head and kept holding me above the clan, spinning. The wind she made blowing my hair, laughter flowing from me so hard and easy, and the only sound was my mother’s voice. The only sight was her shining black eyes, her wide mouth.

  I don’t remember sleeping. I remember being held against my mother’s chest as we walked the long way home. All the howling was behind us. But the dance still lived in her blood. I heard it in her heartbeat. In her breathing. LoPa hummed the tunes that had cycled through the purple day, and it was still purple. Everything washed in violets. Everything turned magic by the neverending purple sky. By the rush of being one with the clan, for the first time in my memory. Knowing that they didn’t just need my mother. They longed to be her. And maybe that’s why they hated and feared her. She was so beautiful and bright, so powerful and overwhelming. She brought them together round her by sheer power. She drew them in. Like a force of nature. They revolved round her like the moons revolved round Saol. We all did. Even LoPa and HoPa and my brothers, and me.

  I had never been happier. And then being rocked to sleep by the motion of her steps, the beating of her heart. I thought I heard it then, that ancient song in the blood of my mother. A whispering melody of overflowing life and abundant love.

  When I woke the days were still purple and neverending, but everything was different.

  There were no howls, no songs or dances. It was just us again, at the edge of the forest.