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knees and tenderly helped the old woman down beside him.

  The Kawani continued her statements, scrolls in hand, ‘Pada sariana dari kaku sankasha noh shinboru ini naisetsu avalokana karo, kudasai.’ Then the Kawani looked at each participant who would soon be inscribed with the noh.

  ‘No viennav augliba parce koko mat ini naisetsu dans auglibs, a nirdosa no ini abisua souviens a bhavi dans nu motsu gia panta,’ she chanted.

  Ravno looked up and saw her eyes, but not her lips, above the scroll as she ended her speech: ‘Kaku vie bezona kaku vie.’ Every being depends on every other being, both now and forever.

  Without giving it a thought, Ravno switched with the victim as the Ammit brought the blazing hot noh against her neck. An ugly chrysalis of shame desperately clawed the inside of her chest. Ravno could see nothing else as her hair clung to her wet face and blurred eyes; it masked her vision like clouds. But the sun still shone hotly on her tears. Either compassion or the terrible clawing inside her chest forced Ravno to plant his face on the earth even before the Kawani threw her declaration over the people, ‘No ini kayama!’

  The word ‘kayama’ overshadowed the word ‘ini,’ in all its supremacy. It stood as a feline over its prey, kayama over ini. Ini was shriveled and grotesque, Kayama was beautiful and proud—but the corrupt kind of beauty that fosters resentment in the onlookers. The Kawani branded a fair mark on the rest of the condemned.

  On his knees with his forehead on the ground, Ravno toppled to his side. He watched the trio of designates walk sideways through his field of view to the canal, one more batsu omhaal on their list. He realized how effective the branding was. He understood how the victim would easily convince everyone she knew to obey the mandate. Weathered grass pushed against the side of his face and he absently picked at the blades. It struck him, too, that Keba must dislike his restrained approach, passive and non-committal. He lay there in the grass as a growing fetus under the late afternoon heat. How could he prove himself definitive to her while he was still unsure of which side he supported? He felt himself sway toward the decision to reject the mandate, either from his desire to please Keba or from the raw pain left inside after his switch with the victim. Either way it was curious, right after he experienced how effective the branding technique was, to realize how detrimental the batsu omhaal might be.

  Flagrant use of an unsacred thing and further disconnection

  The moon had one last visible crescent ascent before sunrise on the day of the fourth historia forum. The porter had been describing vast lands covered by enormous cities connected with black veins for most of the morning. He talked of the ancient, sprawling clusters of towering packs with see-through walls. Gardens stretched as far as the horizon and large devices did the work. Bizarre systems created power to let the cities function throughout the night. Because of their mechanical suns, the sun, as they knew it, never set. The people never slept, though they reproduced at maddening rates. They combed the surface of the earth, above and below, for resources to plunder and places to keep their things. But, according to Mr. Sunshine, they lost their sense of incumbency to maintain the earth—an ironic contrast to their obsession with ownership.

  The porter said, ‘Don’t you see, with their larger land masses and populations, that their sense of responsibility should have been equally large?’ The seven looked at him quizzically.

  Ravno broke the silence. ‘Is it possible that they’re still out there and that they will come against us and take over our islands?’

  With a switch he sensed Mr. Sunshine’s innate fear of invasion and pounced on him ruthlessly. ‘I mean, we really have no idea what’s out there, do we?’ Ravno said. ‘The oceans are massive and you describe other lands as massive too, so there must be millions of people out there, as you say. Or billions? Then the chances are high that they will come across our little paradise before too long….’

  Payudara and the others restlessly questioned the porter with their eyes.

  Mr. Sunshine looked around at them, almost fearfully, as he tried to regain composure. Then, avoiding Ravno’s eyes, he said, ‘You see, many cultures and people groups in the past had similarly supportable ways of life like ours, but at a time when consciousness and connection with the earth was most—’

  ‘I’m sorry Mister,’ Ravno said, ‘I don’t see the connection to my question.’

  ‘…When connection with the earth was most important, the land wars and colonialism began in full force,’ the porter continued, reinforced by the line of crows that cackled upon his head. ‘The colonialism drove these little paradises, as you say, right out of existence. I guess you’re right,’ he looked Ravno straight in the eye, ‘perhaps they will come, if there are any left. But as we’ll soon discuss, the majority of the people were gone after the earth had changed forever.’

  The porter looked around ominously and thought to himself that Wawasens had become like the ancients, in a way; the ancients saw themselves as an advanced civilization. In some ways they were, but they didn’t know how to align with their environment. Or align with themselves, for that matter. They got stuck.

  ‘Now,’ Mr. Sunshine said, ‘you’re wondering why we talk so much about the menial aspects of the ancient lifestyle. It’s because, contrary to other approaches of understanding past peoples by way of their recorded beliefs, we try understand and learn from their actual ways of doing. Though people profess to believe one thing, they often act in another way entirely. In that case, it doesn’t benefit us to know what they officially believed in their written records. What they actually believed, through practice, is of interest to us.’

  Aadi watched Aron’s feet as he created gullies and ridges in the dirt around where he sat. Aron inwardly questioned the validity of the porter’s lecture and whether to trust someone who referenced documents that only he had access to. Tap-tap. He wondered if any of it was even written down or whether it had mutated through thousands of years of oral transmission. Bapor eyed Payudara and his rough hands. The way the whole Wawasen circle behaved, through their actions, proved at least one matter: Everyone needs to find their anchor.

  Ravno and the Botorang and the view from the water

  That afternoon Ravno bypassed his pack in Mara and headed straight to the east beaches as an afterthought. On his way he crossed through the knee-pocked meadow where he had viewed his first batsu omhaal with Keba. He saw the spot where the fire had come to die; it left but a dismal ring of charred black and grey dust. The tears of Zus had long since dissipated. Ravno gathered a handful of black embers and entered the tree line. He collected slender sticks and dry bark on his way to the beach.

  The late afternoon wind weakened along the quiet coast. A pair of raccoons dug in the sand for butter clams and a pelican flew along the surface of the sea. Ravno watched the two raccoons from the trees until they wobbled off past the rock pile. He built up a fire on a flat, rocky outcrop that overlooked the ocean. Peninnah was in the distance, sun-brightened against a cimmerian curtain. Terns played through the last rays that grew distant from Lurruna’s shores. Ravno warmed his feet and hands and watched the fire’s heat drive dampness from chert depressions on the rocky platform. He moved to the other side of the flames to warm his lower back. He adjusted his eyes to the dark sky, his mind open and at rest. The gentle warmth gave Ravno a false sense of confidence as he sat on his flat outpost. Though comfortable on the beach alone, the ever-changing elements and the grand mysteries of the sea beyond made him vulnerable. Would it be foolhardy to cross the channel in the evening—now, after the sun was gone? It would be hard to judge distance and easy to lose direction, especially as the wind picked up and drove away the clouds. The exposed, moonless sky tossed the ocean to and fro. He settled back in front of the fire to face the sea and reached his fingers to the small flames.

  All of a sudden he looked up. He glimpsed a flickering light in the dark sea. The light came from a spot on the beach, or just up from the edge of the shore. On the beach? he wondered. Rav
no looked over to see a muscular woman, surprisingly discernible in the near-darkness, grip her oars with commanding ease. Gripping her oars…. Ravno looked back to the shore, nearer now, and to the figure that reflected with firelight. In his mind he felt Mr. Sunshine’s stubble brush his ear and he shook his head quickly, this way and that way, and fear flung from his hair. He saw the woman again, with one oar tucked under her arm and her hands signing incomprehensibly. He saw his own hands respond confidently. One of his shoulders held a coiled rope. Ravno saw the shore again and noticed the figure scattering the fire. The fingers at the base of his skull shattered and Ravno startled in the thick, ocean air with hot ember fingers.

  Ravno had just observed the shore from afar. The last time he saw it that way had been during the day. He again recalled the maro bulanbederatzi on his face and Keba’s arm around his neck; her capa torn in two like a temple curtain. My switch was not with her on the beach. I saw the beach. When I switched the beach was wide, me first, Keba second. His second hand absently crushed over his sea hair, firmly. He listened intently for the people of the sea, and waited for the woman’s oars to strike a wave. His eyes