The cave that led from Musa territory to New Yogo yawned wide in the warm spring sunshine. Multicolored flowers covered the grassy space before it, and birds warbled in the bushes, rejoicing at the advent of spring.
Balsa hitched her bag higher on her back.
“You’re really going?” Gina asked.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I’ve rested long enough.”
After the Herders’ song had ended, Balsa and Kassa slipped from the chamber unnoticed. Guided once again by the Herder People, they had traveled underground, returning quietly to Musa territory. Toto the Elder, who met them in the caves, was clearly relieved to see them. He looked up at Balsa and murmured, “Forgive me for leaving so many things unsaid when I sent you on that journey.”
She gazed back at him steadily. “You knew, didn’t you? You knew who waited for me under the earth.”
Toto nodded. “When the hyohlu dropped the luisha for Gina to find, I immediately suspected that they were summoning someone. Then I met you and, as I listened to your tale of Jiguro, I realized that you were the only person who could hope to lay the hyohlu to rest. The Spear Dance can only be danced when your soul is completely exposed. The hyohlu throws all his emotions at his partner. Their souls become so close that it’s impossible to tell whose feelings are whose.” He smiled suddenly. “But even so, usually the Spear Dance is not that difficult. The Dancer doesn’t need to be an outstanding person. As long as he can connect with the hyohlu’s soul and let him unburden himself, luisha has always been given.
“This year, however, we were very worried. Not only Jiguro, but so many other hyohlu had been betrayed and murdered. Never had we seen hyohlu as difficult to lay to rest as these. And that is why I think they must have been waiting for you. Waiting for you to visit Kanbal … For who else could possibly have danced the Spear Dance and brought them peace?”
Balsa shrugged. “Are you saying that because they were waiting for me, the ceremony was delayed more than ten years? You’re wrong. Because if that were true, if I hadn’t decided on a whim to return to Kanbal, the ceremony would never have taken place.”
Toto grinned. “You would have come back. Because it was your destiny.”
Balsa shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I disagree. Destiny is just a convenient interpretation to help us accept the past. It wasn’t me they were waiting for.”
“Then who do you think they were waiting for?”
“King Radalle.”
Toto raised his eyebrows at her reply. “Why do you think that?”
She sighed slightly. “I think that they were waiting for the new king to become old enough after Rogsam’s reign ended. Because the hyohlu certainly would never have given luisha to a king like Rogsam. In the end, thirty-five years passed before the next ceremony could take place…. But …”
Toto waited silently for her to continue. She hesitated and then said in a low voice, “I think that Jiguro was waiting for me. Because he came all the way out to meet me when I came back. So you’re probably right in that respect — that my return was the reason they decided to start the ceremony.”
Toto nodded. Then he said cheerfully, “We Herders call luisha the ‘heart stone.’ The hyohlu take all the hopes and sorrows from their lives, turn them into blue light, and return them to the earth, so the hyohlu can finally die a true death. So the blue light of luisha is really all the thoughts and wishes of men. You laid Jiguro to rest and his feelings turned into luisha, which will one day become the bread of life that feeds the people of Kanbal.”
Balsa sighed again and smiled. “It was so different from what I imagined as a child when I heard stories of the Mountain King’s palace made of luisha, and the Last Door.”
Toto smiled back. “By what name could we possibly call the great Mountain King, who carves the rock beneath the Yusa mountains with his own body? He makes the roads for the water to pass, and thus brings life to all Yusa. Would you call him a god? A spirit?” He shook his head. “Like a brilliantly shining cocoon that protects the life inside it, we use simple words to spin many tales in order to guard our king.”
When Toto had led them outside into the sunlight, the snow-covered land had glittered with a brilliance that cheered their hearts. Kassa breathed a lungful of clear, bracing air and felt a deep satisfaction fill his chest along with it.
When Balsa and Kassa returned to the chieftain’s hall, Kaguro came to greet them, his expression reflecting his mixed feelings. As he listened to their tale of the events under the mountain, the frown on his face softened, and when they had finished, he thanked Kassa quietly. One of his younger brothers had been freed from the Darkness, while the other had been trapped within. Yet he felt as though a painful ache in his heart was gone.
To the rest of the clan, Kassa was still nothing more than a youth belonging to a branch family. But Kassa returned to that life quite gladly. When spring came and it was time to take the goats up the mountain with the Herder People, he no longer felt discouraged. The Herders accepted him as one of their own and taught him many secrets of the mountains. Besides, what he had seen on his journey on the underground river had shown him the connection between the life force in the Mountain Deep and the abundant springs and rivers that pushed their way through the earth. Now he could see that the work of the Herders and that of the King’s Spears were, in essence, one and the same.