My brother pulled a knife out from his clothes and danced with it, and now from the crowd came up a kind of music, hesitant at first, but stronger and stronger as it became clear to us what he was going to do. Our voices, young and old, rough and smooth, searched for a common music, making it out of nothing, and some had carried their instruments with them, and some ran to fetch theirs, and all clapped their hands and sang—we didn’t know this music. But like the dance it came together as we sang, more sure with every motion, every note. It sang of freedom, sang of emptiness, and it came together as if out of our own empty hearts. My brother danced a long time. And in the end, everybody knew it; we forced him with our voices, we built him to a climax, and at the end of it he drew the knife around his neck, once, twice, in perfect rhythm to the dance, a scarlet string around his neck—too tight, for he tried to sing then and couldn’t, for his mouth was full of blood. He spit it out, and summoning his strength, he sang a song that was not like singing nor like anything.

And as he sang, a shadow rose, and it got dark. The sun was hidden in a cloud of frozen dust, remains of the volcano we had seen the night before. Sticks and pieces of dirt fell from the sky. Horses cried out and kicked their stalls. People gathered together, cursing in the filthy dark. We ran inside out of the storm, and then the biter spoke again, and said in plain language that he was running south with others of his kind, to bring some war into the cities there. He said the storm was some barbarian god. He said it was a sign. People clustered around him, desperate and afraid, but more prepared to go off by themselves, according to our custom of leaving and never coming back. They prepared to ride out north, perhaps, alone. They had no maps. They prepared to ride out into the unbroken snow. For some it was as if they had found a sudden reason to do as they had always wanted. The mud lay inches thick on all the beds. It seemed pointless to clear it all away.

* * *

My lords, a child’s mind is not to be relied on. If I thought that you were interested in the truth, I suppose I would keep silent. Yet I have carried these images with me, and now I unpack them, some for the first time. And always I am tempted to describe my life as if to an empty room, as if the words could simply disappear. Tempted and not tempted, for the bitterness is that I have changed and not just gotten older.

Here in your sad city I have let a world collect around me, opinions, objects, thoughts; I have found a name. Nor can I claim compulsion. I have made myself a slave, and now I look around me through a slave’s eyes, that’s all. Therefore I have become very fine in my distinctions, and I think I was mistaken. I think now the volcano and the mudstorm came some other time. Reason tells me now there must have been a period when people came to their own conclusions and rode out, too hungry to stay, but how could we measure time in that blank winter, with our blank minds? When my mothers and fathers were growing up, there were still seasons in the lives of animals, but in that last phase of winter, when I was a child, there were no more fawns, no cubs, no colts, no pups, no calves, no goslings, no sweet lambs, and after that the hills were empty. We went hungry. Why would people stand for it, who had a choice?