To Old Father, Danlo said, 'It is good to see you, sir. You seem ... much the same.'
'Ahhh,' Old Father said. 'Ohhh – the same, only more so.'
'Perhaps we should have found a meeting-place closer to your house. It must be hard for you ... to walk this far.'
'Oh ho, it is hard,' Old Father said. With his black fingernails, he scratched the great double membrum dangling between his legs, then touched his hips. 'When I was younger, I tried to flee the pain by sitting and doing nothing. But that only made me more aware of it. Therefore, let us walk down by the water, and you will tell me about your pains so that I may forget about mine. It's a lovely day for walking, don't you think?'
Together, arm in arm, scuttling along like two crabs who had locked claws, they walked down by the water's edge. There was a brisk wind blowing off the sea. The air was heavy with salt and the reek of rotting wood. And with other smells, too: bird droppings and crushed shells and old, wet fur. They stepped over strands of crackling seaweed and driftwood bent into deranged shapes, and Danlo told Old Father all that had happened between him and Hanuman li Tosh. He had much to tell. Even at their crustacean pace, they walked a long way, almost to the end of the Darghinni Sands where the dunes gave way to the rugged shoreline of Far North Beach. It was an afternoon of darting clouds and wind. Snow fell in sudden flurries followed moments later by bursts of sunshine. Delicate little snowflakes – which Danlo once would have called shishay – hung suspended in the air only to be vaporized before striking the ground. Faced with this uncertain weather, Danlo could not decide if he was hot or cold. But Old Father seemed completely in his element. Neither the snow nor the spray off the breakers dismayed him. He liked to dig his furry feet into the hardpack, leaving footprints larger than a bear's. As Danlo told him how Hanuman had broken the god that he had carved, Old Father played in the sand and his little black nose quivered happily.
'Ah, oh, you were right to keep your vow of ahimsa,' Old Father said.
Danlo listened to the waves breaking against the shore, and he said, 'Every moment since I gave Hanuman the god ... I have wondered if that is true.'
'Aha, never harming another, not even in one's thoughts.'
'But I did harm him,' Danlo said. 'I saw him ... dead.'
'Oh?'
'I wanted to kill him.'
'Ahhh, but instead you saved his life. So, it's so.'
'Yes,' Danlo said, 'it is so.'
Old Father smiled as one of his eyes shut halfway. He whistled and said, 'You shouldn't judge yourself, oh, no! You saved his life. In the field of action, you were a man of ahimsa, and I honour you for this.'
Old Father's insistence that he had saved Hanuman's life did nothing to ease Danlo's doubts. In fact, his words were like salt in the open wound that divided Danlo in two. With his thumb, Danlo massaged the bone above his eye; there was an aching in his head, now, nearly all the time. 'I think it is still your delight to inflict the holy pain,' he said.
'Oh ho, the angslan!' Old Father said. 'Am I not still a Fravashi?'
'More so than ever, sir.'
'And you're still human, I see. This new religion of yours has done nothing to change that.' Old Father's face was radiant with sunshine, and both his eyes were now wide open. 'It's a tradition that we Fravashi give gifts to human beings. Once, on this very beach, I gave you a gift. Do you remember?'
Danlo nodded as he reached down to slip the shakuhachi from his pocket. He held up the bamboo flute so that the sunlight glinted from it.
'Aha!' Old Father said. 'And now I wish to give you another gift.'
Except for his shining fur, Old Father was completely naked, and he held nothing in his long, fine hands. His gift then, would be no musical instrument or other thing wrought of wood or ivory or stone.
'There's a title,' Old Father said, 'by which certain of the Fravashi Fathers are known. This I give to you, from my lips to your ears: I shall call you "Danlo Peacewise". Oh ho, you are wise in the ways of peace, and you'll wear the name well.'
'Thank you,' Danlo said. 'But I do not feel very wise.'
'Ahhh.'
'Nor am I at peace.'
'Ohhh.'
'At least, I cannot be at peace ... with what I have made.'
'Do you mean with this religion that everyone is calling the Way of Ringess?'
Danlo hadn't meant precisely that, but he said, 'I have spoken against the Way, you know.'
'I would imagine so. Many of the Peacewise are great speakers.'
'But I am afraid what I have said has caused ... great harm.'
'Never harming anyone – this is ahimsa,' Old Father said. 'Oh, ho, but freeing others from their beliefs – this is the holy task.'
'This belief in the way my father became a god – I would destroy it if I could. All beliefs. All ... religions.'
Old Father stood quietly with both his eyes nearly closed. It seemed that he was staring out across the Sound at the mountains, whose white peaks were now lost into layers of puffy white clouds. 'Oh, Pilot, you must be careful,' Old Father finally said. 'There is a union of opposites: the stronger your will to destroy a thing, the more tightly you'll bind yourself to it.'
'But it was you who taught me,' Danlo said. 'To oppose all beliefs, yes?'
'Ha, ha, I think I taught you too well.'
Danlo stood watching the waves come and go. The tide was going out, moment by moment, slipping away into the deeper parts of the sea. After a while, the sky fell cloudy and grey, and the waters of the Sound were as dark and turbid with sediments as old wine. As he listened to the far off barking of the seals and the gulls screaming and circling above the waves, he was aware that a whole part of his life was ending. He could no longer be a student of alien philosophies, or dreamscapes, or techniques of remembrance. Here, on this cold beach, he would try at last to stand beneath the universe naked in the mind without beliefs. He would will himself to do this, even if Old Father thought that such a way of living was impossible for any man.
'Danlo, Danlo.'
He turned to see Old Father standing next to him, touching the shaft of his shakuhachi. Old Father smiled at him as if he were reading his thoughts.
'You can't give up everything,' Old Father said. 'What of your devotion to ahimsa?'
'But there is no devotion,' Danlo said. 'Ahimsa is not what I believe. It is ... what I am.'
Old Father whistled sadly and said, 'At our first meeting you told me that you wished to journey to the centre of the universe. A noble conception, don't you think?'
Danlo shook his head. 'No, it is ... a childish view. The universe goes on and on. There is no centre.'
'But you will go to the Vild?'
'Yes.'
'Oh, ho, to find a cure for the plague that killed the Devaki?'
With an uncharacteristic urgency, Old Father hummed a strange little melody that Danlo had never heard before. Old Father's right eye was entirely closed while the left searched Danlo's face with the intensity of a moonlight.
'Once, I believed the slow evil could be cured,' Danlo admitted. 'I believed the Alaloi could be saved.'
'Once it was also your desire to become an asarya.'
'That is your word,' Danlo said. 'Affirming everything ... is a Fravashi ideal.'
'Ah, oh, then it's no longer your ideal?'
Danlo stepped out a few paces toward the water until the surging waves began lapping at his boots. 'The problem,' he said, 'is to affirm anything.'
'So, it's so.'
'Do you see?' Danlo said. He pointed toward the offshore rocks that pushed like granite needles into the sky. Sheets of feather moss covered them in green. Everywhere, they were speckled white with snow gulls resting or making their nests. 'It is all so beautiful. But so flawed. With shaida. The mountains, myself. Even you, sir – we are all a part. There is no escaping it. I think that Hanuman understood this more clearly than anyone should.'
'And you can't forgive him for this, can you?'
'No ... I cannot forgive myself.'
'Ahhh.'
'I used to hope that there was a way out in remembrancing. A way towards ... an innocence.'
'Then you never found the answer in the Elder Eddas?'
'Once, I thought I did,' Danlo said. 'I was so close. But ... no.'
'"Shaida is the cry of the world",' Old Father said, quoting a line from the Song of Life that Danlo had once taught him. 'Aha, but you didn't make the world.'
With a habitual motion, Danlo reached up to touch the feather in his hair, but he found that it was gone. He bowed to Old Father, then said, 'Shaida is the way of the man who kills other men. There was a man who Hanuman might have become. A truly splendid man. And I... killed him.'
'And you find it impossible to accept this murder.'
'I am sorry, sir. I must ... disappoint you.'
Old Father smiled mysteriously and said, 'No, it's just the opposite.'
They stood there in the wet sand, looking at each other and smiling. It was now past late afternoon; in the west, out where the ocean ran fast and deep, the clouds had pulled back to reveal the blazing sun as it spread out along the horizon. The sky was on fire, melting, and the waters burned with crimson and gold. Because it would soon be dark and the Fravashi do not like to be outside at night, Old Father made ready to leave. He placed his fingers on Danlo's flute one last time. He whistled a quick song of blessing. (Or perhaps it was a ribald aria – with the Fravashi, one never knew.) And then he opened both eyes com-
pletely and said to Danlo, 'But how will you live now, Pilot? Oh, ho, what will you do?'
Danlo pointed toward the eastern sky, at the night's first stars twinkling between the breaks in the clouds. 'There are gods out there,' he said. 'Perhaps my father still lives ... somewhere. I would find him if I could. Any god. There is a question that Hanuman once asked me – my question, now: I would ask the gods if the universe could have been made differently. Halla, not shaida. The gods know. The gods create, on and on, and so they must know.'
Soon, he said, he would go out into the universe, not to find its centre nor to discover a cure for a disease that had no cure, but simply because he was a pilot of the Order on a desperate quest. The stars were dying, and even if there was no help for the world's evil, at least the destruction of the entire galaxy might be averted.
Old Father's response to Danlo's words was strange. His eyes were open yet devoid of light, as if his consciousness had slipped away from him and flown up toward the sky. Although he stood three feet away on the sand of a darkening beach, he seemed to be looking down on Danlo, even while looking intensely at himself. His mouth was set into a sad smile that told of painful and elusive memories, or perhaps a vision of a future that had never been. There was a vast coldness about him. It seemed that he wanted to tell Danlo something. But for once – and only for a moment – this Old Father of the Fravashi race could not speak.
'Sir ... it is falling late,' Danlo said.
At last, the great tide of consciousness rushed back in to Old Father's eyes, and he whistled softly. 'Ohhh, very late – we should say goodbye. It may be a long time before we walk here again.'
Danlo bowed his head, looking down at the tiny black and white grains of sand beneath his boots. 'I think ... I will never return,' he said.
'Then I must ask you to give me a gift before we go,' Old Father said.
'But what do I have to give you?' Old Father looked at Danlo's flute. 'Why not a song?'
'What ... song?'
'Something that you've composed yourself. Something strange and wild, yet peaceful. Oh, ho, you are Danlo Peacewise, are you not?'
Danlo smiled as he shrugged his shoulders. He held the shakuhachi's cool ivory mouthpiece to his lips and began to play. A stream of long, low notes flowed out over the beach. He had to play strongly with much breath or else the music would have been lost to the wind. It was a simple song really, a song that returned to itself over and over with subtle variations in each round. He might play it forever and not reach any conclusion or climax, yet, in the poignant passages and movements, there was a progression toward a completeness of sound that hinted of infinite possibilities. Old Father listened to this song with his head held rigid and his eyes nearly closed, in the attitude of a Fravashi who wishes to remember a piece of music perfectly. He appeared well-pleased with the composition. At last, realizing that Danlo had no intention of stopping, during the pause between rounds, he reached out to touch Danlo's forehead. And then he announced, 'Oh, ho, I must go now, but you must play. Ha ha, oh ho, you were born to play.'
In this way, Old Father said goodbye to his favourite student. He whistled and smiled and laughed, and then he turned to make the long walk back to his home. The sound of his laughter – rich, compassionate, and overflowing – rang out above the beach sands for a long time. Strangely, it did not interfere at all with the music that Danlo made.
All during twilight Danlo stood alone by the water's edge, playing his shakuhachi. After a while it grew dark and cold. The wind blew the clouds away, and the sky fell through the colours of deep blue until it was as black as a pilot's robe. In a great circle all around him, from east to west, north to south, the stars glittered in the heavens. He looked up at these cold, bright stars, and the sound of the song that he played was lost into the immense light-distances. The familiar constellations that he had known since childhood were impossibly far away, yet they appeared very near, almost as near as the luminous waves rushing at his feet. He played and played, and Old Father's last question reverberated inside him: what would he do? He listened to the ocean's long, dark roar as he waited for an answer. He might wait forever, for that was the marvel and mystery of the ocean, the way it shimmered in the starlight, always waiting, always the same, yet always moving, always calling, always astonishing with new sounds and creations. Although it was now full dark, he listened for the cries of the various sea birds, the loons and gulls and puffins, and the silver thallows and other hunters who liked to fly at night. He listened for the rare song of the snowy owl. At last, in the neverness of this one sound that he longed for above all others, in the thunderous silence of the sea, he had his answer. He would continue to play his own song and no other. He would look clearly upon all that he had done. He had created Hanuman – this was a truth of the universe too terrible to deny. And Hanuman had created him. The difficulty now, as it ever would be, was in saying 'yes' to such broken, hateful creations. But if he were strong enough, if he were wise enough, he could do one simple thing. He could affirm the act of creating, in itself. The miracle of simply living. Life, he remembered, was everything. One day he might laugh again, or find completion in love, but now it must be enough for him to live, on and on without end.