Miyara faltered, voice breaking, but within the darkness she stamped and kept singing.

Be woven into the land with this song.

Be strong. We cherish you.

Joss stumbled out along the path and groped along the ruined wall until he found the lamp. It took him three tries to light the wick with his flint, and by the time he got back into the cave the infant had been placed on Mai’s chest, still attached by a cord pulsing with faint flashes of blue as though the last tendrils had actually slipped into its umbilical. Above, a weave of light bridged the cave’s high ceiling, glimmering faintly.

“One more!” exclaimed Mai, and she sucked in a breath and pushed again.

Priya caught a red mass in a bowl.

Miyara hurried forward to offer tea to the new mother. “You have to name the child before you cut the cord,” she said to Mai.

Mai’s eyes were closed, and at length she opened them to stare at the baby, who opened its tiny eyes as if in answer. “The father names a child,” she said, in a remarkably ordinary voice. “I must wait for Anji.”

Miyara glanced at Joss as if for support. “That’s not our way,” she said. “It’s—”

“Never mind it,” said Joss hastily. “She’ll name the child, or he will, as they please.”

“I guess we’re uncle and aunt now,” said Miyara. Then, as an afterthought, she added, “That’s how we do things here, Mai.”

Mai smiled wearily, too exhausted to move as Priya washed her and bound a pad of linen torn from Miyara’s shirt to absorb her bleeding. “And I am glad of it, for I thank you, both of you. What is it, Priya? A girl, or a boy?”

“A boy, mistress.”

“Just as Grandmother said. Aiyi! I thought it would never come out!” Her skin gleamed from sweat, and all at once Joss saw how naked she was.

“Marshal,” said Priya, “please fetch water so I can wash child and mother. It must be cooled enough so as not to burn, but still generously warm.”

He flinched as though he had been slapped, although she had spoken in an entirely pleasant tone. He hurried out, carrying the lamp. Thunder rumbled among the crags, and the air felt charged, ready to snap and spark. High in the air, almost out of range of his vision, a fireling winked into existence and vanished, and then a second, and ten more, and after that more than he could count, like kinfolk come to weave a new child into the heart of their clan, chanting the greeting.

He stopped to stare, but they were already gone.

Eiya! Never for him a child called from beyond the Spirit Gate to join father and mother; he must be content as an uncle, and unaccountably he wept as he trudged the long dirt path to the fire pit, where flames blazed and the wind caught sparks and sent them tumbling. Away up in the mountains, lightning flared, and thunder boomed, and as he hooked the pot off the tripod, rain washed over the valley, cleansing everything in its path.