The boy stood. His dog growled more savagely than before, then crouched in a whine when the child motioned him to silence. Moving like one in a dream, the boy crossed his father’s hut and stood in the doorway.
“Fall-of-Rain,” said the boy’s father behind him. The boy did not turn but stood silhouetted against the night sky, listening. “Fall-of-Rain, back to bed,” said his father.
Bullbear’s growl was continuous now. He pressed up against the boy’s side, his haunches nearly as high as the young one’s shoulder. He rumbled in his throat, then let out a vicious, snarling bark.
The boy smacked the dog’s face. That massive head drew back, and the dog yelped at this sudden cruelty from its master.
“Fall-of-Rain!” said his father sharply as he rose from his bed. Then he too heard what the boy had heard.
Send out your firstborn! Send out your firstborn!
“Cursed flame!” the man gasped. His wife was up now, reaching for her little ones, who hastened to her circling arms. She put out a hand to her oldest son, calling his name.
The boy stood with his back to them, his head tilted a little to one side. His heart beat a wild resistance in his breast, and yet his body moved of its own accord. He stepped out of his father’s house into the dirt of the village street.
Through the darkness, twelve bright lights approached. Tall figures of shadow loomed like storm clouds, low to the ground and moving swiftly, thundering as they went: Send out your firstborn!
Other children appeared in the doorways of all the village houses, some older, some very small, all those old enough to walk but not yet adults. They, like the boy, stepped out into the street and gathered together. Mothers followed and fathers as well, catching at their children, struggling to lift them off their feet, to carry them back. But it was like catching at smoke. Their hands could not grasp what no longer belonged to them.
The tithe is due.
The Bronze Warriors standing beyond the village fringes raised their arms in summoning. And the firstborn children, moving like phantoms, flowed down from the safety of their homes and hearths, their eyes full of the Bronze light. Mothers screamed. Fathers grabbed weapons and charged down the hill.
But one figure outstretched the others. Bullbear, faithful and true, his mouth red with snarling, caught up to his young master and leapt between him and the otherworldly beings. His nose caught the scents of distant worlds and a scent deeper and more dire. His whole body trembled with the terror of what he smelled, but far outweighing terror was devotion.
He flung himself at the nearest of the warriors.
And she, her red hair streaming behind, stepped forward with her shining stone upraised, and plunged it into the neck of the leaping dog.
Bullbear fell broken at her feet. She put out her arms to the boy, who stood so near, unable to see for the light of the Bronze in his eyes. Daylily opened her mouth, and words came forth:
Come to me, firstborn. We will make the worlds new.
The child was in her arms then. She lifted him as though he weighed no more than a feather, and she carried him away from the village, following the footsteps of her brethren. She felt the presence of the other eleven around her, as near to her as her own skin. She was one with them, and they with her. She clutched the boy close to her heart as gently and as firmly as a mother might, and she carried him away into darkness—him, and other children as well, caught up in her wake and that of the Twelve.
What are you doing?
Daylily gasped and dropped the boy, who lay still and dull upon the ground. Daylily bent double, her hands clutching her head as the wolf, ravening and furious, tore at her mind.
What are you doing? Are you a puppet on a string? Will you never let me free?
“Get out!” she screamed. “I don’t want you!”
It doesn’t matter what you want! I am your deepest, truest self! And I won’t let you bow to this new idol as you bowed to the idol of your father!
“You are no longer part of me! I bound you!”
We bound you.
I’ll always be part of you, the she-wolf roared as she hauled against her chains, rattling Daylily’s body to the core. You’ll never subdue me, not for long!
“I’ll kill you, then,” Daylily replied. “It will be as though you’ve never been.”
You can’t! You’ll only kill yourself!
“It does not matter,” said Daylily. And her mouth moved and spoke of its own: It does not matter. It is mine.
She knelt then and picked up the child, and once more carried him in the path trod by the other warriors. She followed the gleaming of their bronze stones into the night, into the shadows, moving swiftly across terrible reaches and landscapes that her heart knew. For this was her homeland.