And he stretched his hand toward me and encircled the thick part of my arm with his fingers, three above and three below, digging his fingertips into my flesh so that I had to gasp with the pain of it: and this was little Traiben, who had no more strength than a fish! Something leaped from him to me in that moment, something of the strange fire that burned within him, something of the fever of his soul. And I felt it burning within me too, an utterly new thing, the passionate yearning to find my gods on that mountain, and stand before them, and say to them, “I am Poilar of Jespodar, and I am here to serve you. But you must serve me too. I wish you to teach me all that you know.”

He held me like that for a long moment, so that I thought he would never let go. Then I brushed at his hand, gently, as one might brush at a glitterfly hovering around one’s head that is too lovely to hurt, and he released me. But I heard him breathing hard beside me, in hot excitement. It was a troublesome thing for me, this frenzy of Traiben’s that had come over him so passionately and that he had passed over into my spirit.

“Look,” I said, desperate to step back from the intensity of the moment, for passion of that kind was something new to me and it was making me tremble, “the Procession is going to start.”

Indeed everyone was uttering little hsshing noises to silence his neighbor, for the grand march was beginning. The Sweepers in their purple loincloths went dancing by, whisking dangerous spirits out of the roadway with their little brooms, and then, in silence, came the heart of the Procession out of the heavy morning mists that lay at the lower end of town. My father’s father’s brother’s son Meribail led the way, all bedecked in a shining and magnificent cloak of scarlet gambardo feathers woven tightly together.