"I'm thinking about the month," I say.
"Right."
"Whatever Drogath's found, it runs the lunar cycle. That's—" I do the rough count. "Four weeks."
"A month, yes, that's what a lunar cycle is."
"I'm saying there will be events."
"There will always be events," Kai says. "Drogath will ensure there are events."
"Events," I say, with the patience of making a point to someone who has decided not to receive the point, "that involve the clan. Together. Over a month."
Kai looks at me. He takes a drink. He looks at where I was looking a moment ago, which is not subtle of him. He looks back at me.
"There it is," he says.
"That's what I say?—"
"I am telling you," he says, not unkindly, "that whatever your competitiveness has just found a use for, it will find a way to make the month harder than Drogath has already made it."
"For who?"
Falla, who has been quiet in the way Falla is quiet when he's waiting for his moment: "For someone you've already picked out."
He doesn't look at anyone specific. He doesn't have to.
Ressa is fully smiling now and has given up hiding it. I open my mouth and then the horn sounds — Drogath's attendant with the long horn, three short blasts, which is the signal for everyone to turn and face the centre — and the gathered clan rotates and the moment disperses into the general forward attention of sixty people.
Drogath is already at the ceremony table.
He is wearing the ceremonial layering that adds approximately four inches to his already considerable height, which he knows, and he has arranged the colorful bundles on the table behind him in a pattern that I'm certain means something to him specifically. He lets the silence build — he always does, he is a man who understands that silence is a tool and has the discipline to use it, which I respect even when it's for something absurd — and then he opens his arms.
"People of Frostfang." His voice fills the clearing. Even after all these years, the shaman's voice has a quality that hits the chest. "The moon has turned. The earth turns with it.Lifeturns with it."
Beside me, Kai exhales. It's a deep sigh, one that relays every bit of his unwillingness to be here. Though he is decidedly more invested in this than he was in the Valentine Rites, so there's progress.
"I have spent many weeks," Drogath continues, each word given its full weight and then a little more on top, "in deep study of the ancient texts recovered from the human settlements. Many weeks." He pauses. He does not pause because he's lost his place. He pauses because he has calculated this pause. Drogath is nothing if not dramatic. "I have uncovered something extraordinary."
The gathering is quiet. Even the children, with the instincts of creatures who understand when an adult has become genuinely compelling, have gone still.
"The great Spring festival." Drogath raises one hand. An attendant, on cue, lifts one of the colorful bundles — something bright, painted, done in colors that don't occur naturally this close to the snowline — and holds it aloft. "Passed down through human tradition, carried in the oldest texts, connected to the great cycle of rebirth itself." His voice drops half a register. "The Festival ofEaster."
A murmur moves through the clan. I hear the word passed back through the rows —Easter, Easter— the way words pass when they're new and interesting.
"Easter," Drogath repeats, savoring it. "Known in the human records as a festival of the earth's renewal. Of new life emerging from what appeared to be ended." He pauses again. Lets that land. "Presided over by — and I tell you this as someone who has read the texts carefully, who has cross-referenced across sources, who hasstudied—" a single breath, "—Peter the Long-Eared."
I press my lips together.
Beside me, Falla makes a very small sound. Ressa's shoulders shake once, quickly suppressed.
We are all barely holding it together.
"What the fuck is Peter the Long-Eared," Kai mutters, and I nearly break.
Drogath's expression holds the absolute serenity of a man who has no idea what he's just said to us. He sweeps his hands wide and the attendants begin distributing something to the nearest rows, passing objects forward. Painted wood. Bright colors. I take one when it reaches me — a small rounded thing, smooth and dense, decorated in red and gold — and hold it and try to think of what it is and fail.
"There will be four great Observances," Drogath announces, voice climbing again. "One each week until the moon turns again. Each connected to the sacred lore of Peter the Long-Eared and his gifts to the season. Each—" he extends the word into something close to music, "—greater than the last."
