Jack in front with two behind, and they bear their makeshift flames high above their heads, rippling and twisting them with violent arm motions. The triad breaks and they sweep the brightly painted palm fronds across the ground and swirl them back through the air, a frenetic firestorm, chaos and destruction that sends the beleaguered chorus scratching and crawling across the ground. Jeneth appears now as just a small dark mound, her back arched over and her head buried in her hands.
The deafening riot of drums ceases abruptly, the calamitous Fire recedes, and the night is still—even the forest seems rendered silent, suspended momentarily as if time’s very passage has stopped. The stage is empty. The cowering mystic form behind the screen undulates, adagio, like a faint and laboring heartbeat.
Lia steps to center stage, unhurried, and begins her dance in silence. She is draped with garlands of lush greenery and wreaths of pressed flowers. Graceful and gorgeous, her tiny ballet sweeps across the vast open space as the reed flute pours out a few sparse notes. Jeneth is ascending now, the pulse of her movements growing stronger with each beat. Lia is lost in her dance, elegantly rising on one arched foot and spinning urgently and perfectly, then crouching and sprinting lithely across the dirt stage and soaring into the air, spinning and spinning.
The shadowed demigoddess on the backlit rawhide is again reaching skyward, conjuring new creation from some mysterious deep. They dance in ecstasy as the bass drum booms and the vibrant music swells.
The villagers rise to their feet and step down from the raised seating, joining Lia and the other children who are running out from behind the bonfire. They dance and drink and shout and laugh in the golden amber firelight for what feels like eternity.
The Nezra observe this impassively. Their espionage of the village has lasted well more than a year’s time. This is the night of their choosing because it is the longest night of the year and the village will be gone to inebriated slumber before sunrise. They have watched long enough to know in which cabins the strongest and most powerful men live. They will strike these homes first.
The skeletal remnants of a tremendous feast lay strewn across the tables of the dining hall, and the adults are carrying their fattened stomachs across the long chamber to a small tavern at the end, still serving wine in fired clay mugs. After pleading their parents’ permission, the children run onto the largely deserted promenade to play forts.
When the elaborate ritual of team selection is complete, they scamper off to their respective forts and begin their gruesome campaigns of infiltration and murder. Jack huddles with Jeneth, Braylon, and a few others to conspire and plot strategy. Braylon, the oldest, takes charge.
“We have to spread out to the edges and get around behind them,” he says, scratching arcs and arrows on the ground with a bent stick. “Aiden and Phoebe cut up the middle, Jack and Creston take the left side, me and Jeneth will go right. Everybody else stay here and guard the fort.”
Jack and his partner, a slight boy of only seven, creep down the side of a cabin, stepping slowly and softly. They flatten their backs against the rough wood and peek around to see if the coast is clear. They wait for a shadowed form to pass on the far side of the promenade then scurry across the short expanse. Creston is killed immediately. William leaps from his hiding place in the bushes and slaps his frail back, before wheeling and searching for Jack. He is too late. Jack counters behind, then lunges and swats William on the shoulder, smiling broadly. Creston and William slink off to the dead pile.
Alone and deep in enemy territory, Jack forges ahead. He is on his hands and knees, moving toward the far edge of the cul-de-sac, where he will double back and wage a surprise attack. Prone on the ground, he elbows his way across the exposed space to shelter again behind a darkened hut. He is making good progress, crawling forward, when something lands hard on his back and knocks the wind out of him.
“You’re dead,” Lia whispers, rolling off onto the dewy grass and giggling hysterically. She looks like a little crazy person.
“Lia…”
“Sorry.”
Jack dusts himself off and starts to head toward the dead pile.
“Wait,” says Lia, “come over here.”
She takes his hand and leads him away from the cabins and the game, toward