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off a slice of beef jerky with his teeth, and the stiff veins on his neck stand up. This is not about what he has seen, or where he has been, but what he has missed. His mind has drifted back to the broken signs. Uncle, you would be proud of me, he laughs. I didn't forget my language studies after all. But now is the time for discipline. Just a bit longer, at least. Storytelling is a tradition, rattling between generations, and with each telling the tale is twisted and hammered and massaged, until nothing remains but the emotional kernel that prompted the telling in the first place, and yet this urge is manifested over and over, delayed sometimes, forestalled by death and loss of memory and doubt, and still it persists. And now 
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the warrior continues his story: Once upon a time, in a faraway province . Not so faraway, he corrects himself. He is here, in that province. Home. Burdened by his knapsack and the empty sheath lashed to his side, he has trekked across lands and climates, until the seams in his boots split and his feet grew muddy and gray like the earth, and he has finally returned to the lake. Once lanterns lined the shores and plaintive string instruments celebrated the onset of autumn and festivals, now there is barren darkness. The bodies are gone. The survivors must have gathered them, spirited them away, incinerated them, buried them. The warrior is not a religious or super- stitious man, but as he strikes the flint on his  |
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