It was late in second summer. A hot day. The air thick and humid, full of flies and cicada shrieks. The ground was wet from the previous day’s rain and it kept our feet cool as we walked the path to the river. The trees full of birds and squirrels. LoPa sang an old song from a foreign land. A soothing melody though we didn’t know what the words meant.

  “Can’t be translated,” LoPa said, his mouth smiling but his eyes sorrowful. “Some songs are like that. I’ll tell you what it means later.” He returned to his song. His beautiful tenor reaching higher and higher, flowing easily. It was the kind of song we needed. The day was hot and wet, dragging us down, making us heavy.

  When we came round the bend and saw the river, Akmuo and Medis ran for it. I was too tired. The suns beat down and sapped my strength. HoPa lifted me up into the air, “Little moon, little moon, tired too soon.” Weary as I was, I smiled but the laughter never made it out my mouth, even when he ran, bouncing my body in his hands with each stomping step, squelching into the mud of the path.

  Mother carried her sword with her even though we were all naked. She was sweating, wiping her face on the back of her wrist.

  HoPa ran into the river, kicking up the water in big splashes that washed over Akmuo and Medis, making them laugh and splash back. Held up high, I lifted my feet up to avoid the splashes, and laughter finally tumbled from my lips. HoPa kicked splashes at my brothers and they splashed back. Laughter rising in all of us and filling the air. Then HoPa brought me down to his shoulder and launched his arms up into the air, letting me go.

  I arced through the air. In the distance, I saw the rest of the clan downriver, splashing and playing their own games. I closed my eyes and held my nose shut with my hands, curling into a ball. I hit the water like a stone, sinking to the riverbed. My knees met the bottom and I kicked off to get back to the surface. Medis and Akmuo were running to HoPa, begging him to throw them too. HoPa laughed hard and long, his muscular body glistening in the sunslight.

  I hurried back to HoPa, who threw my brothers and me through the air and into the water over and over again. When I wasn’t in the air, I watched mother go through her Mirtis Kardas forms over and over until she was so wet with sweat it seemed she swam in it. LoPa lay beside her creating melodies and lyrics about her. He lay on his back, knees in the air, right crossed over the left, his left foot bobbing in time with the melody he was trying to make. Reaching into his falsetto, he pulled melodies from her movements.

  That’s how he wrote songs. First, he made the melody, then came the lyrics. He fit the lyrics into the melody, rather than the other way. But if the melody wouldn’t allow the right words in, he’d rework the melody. It was an interesting process. He always started with the melody, just singing a tune. Then, in that tune, he threw words into it. Over and over, he played with the melody and lyrics. It could take him weeks to write a song. Once he found the melody and lyrics, he pulled out his lute and plucked or strummed the chords that would shape the melody.

  Mother ignored him, but I caught her smiling when her back was turned.

  We all knew how special she was. How she deserved songs and legends to be written about her.

  Sometimes, when I’m at my worst, I think it’s our fault. We wished so hard for her to be remembered forever that we made it so.

  Eventually, mother entered the water, and my brothers and I coated our bodies in the mud on the banks of the river. It started when Medis, after being thrown by HoPa, swam to the far side of the river. He formed a ball of mud in his hands and threw it at HoPa. It missed, but HoPa laughed from his belly and ran after him. Medis scooped up more mud balls and launched them at HoPa, hitting him in the chest. HoPa grabbed Medis, lifted him into the air, carried him back into the river, and then threw him through the air.

  This became the new game. We chased each other, throwing mud, and then HoPa would launch us into the water.

  That’s how I like to remember us all.

  Screaming with laughter. Loving every moment. Being so happy. LoPa creating music that would stick in your head for the rest of your life. Mother perfecting a fighting style of her creation. And all of us together.

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  But that was the last time we had a day like that. A day full of laughter. Where all the rest of the world slipped out of our heads, forgotten, unimportant.

  When HoPa threw mother into the air and she came crashing into the river, she burst through the surface and wasn’t laughing. She didn’t turn back to us and the laughter died in our mouths. Even LoPa stopped singing.

  Mother walked to the far side of the river and onto the bank. She kicked the mud from her feet and then disappeared into the trees. I called after her, but she didn’t turn round so I followed. Fear knotted in me. Fear that mother would keep walking and never turn back. That she’d leave us there in the river and I would be forced to live the rest of my days with only my fathers and brothers.

  I don’t know why those thoughts came to me. She had never left me before. No one had. More than that, they had recently spent an entire day trying to find me.

  It doesn’t matter that it didn’t make sense. It was real, and I panicked.

  I ran after her, bursting through the trees.

  She was just ahead of me, standing still. I ran to be by her side. I grabbed her hand before I saw what she was doing.

  She squeezed my hand but kept her eyes ahead. I turned where she looked and there were people walking through the trees. Not just one or two, but hundreds. Women carrying children and men carrying spears.

  I had never seen a man carrying a spear.

  “Why do those fathers have spears?”

  Mother didn’t look at me. Her eyes were hard as she stared ahead, “They’re warriors.” Her voice was flat and harsh.

  “But they’re men.”

  A slight smile crossed her lips, “Some clans believe men can fight.”

  “Then what do the mothers do?”

  Mother shrugged, “People are different all over.”

  A woman wearing the head of a boar walked towards my mother. She held a smooth black bone and used it as a cane. A necklace of tusks draped round her neck and seven black full moons tattooed on her chest, between her drooping breasts and collarbones. She waved to my mother, who waved back. I held mother’s leg and leaned into her.

  The woman spoke but it sounded strange. It was very similar to our language and many of the words were familiar, but I couldn’t make sense of it. The words were all slightly wrong. The sounds coming out crooked and with the wrong emphasis.

  But my mother spoke it back, which surprised me. I knew my mother had traveled far but it never occurred to me that other people spoke languages different than what we spoke in the village.

  The woman with the boar’s head had a soft, delicate voice. Her words fell like a torrent and rolled through my ears. My mother spoke in the same manner, which worried me. It was unsettling, hearing my mother sound so unlike the woman I had known since before I had memory.

  They talked until the hundreds of people were past us. They carried packs and some pulled carts full of their belongings. They walked alongside the river, through the forest. When the last of them disappeared into the trees, my mother made a fist with her right hand. She brought the back of her fist to her own lips, kissed the knuckles, then extended her hand and opened the fingers.

  The woman with the boar’s head made the same gesture, then left, following after the rest of the people.

  “What did she say?”

  Mother only lifted me up onto her shoulders and walked back to the river. HoPa was still throwing my brothers into the air and laughing as they crashed into the river. LoPa sat in the river chewing his fingernails.

  Mother walked past the rest of our family, straight through the river and to the opposite shore. She picked up her sword, now sheathed in its boiled black leather. Holding it with both hands, she seemed to be weighing it. Turning round, she said, “Back home. We all need to talk.”

  HoPa was holding Medis, preparing to launch him into the air, but he stopped, put Medis down in the water. Mother turned round and we walked back to our home.

  I don’t remember what I was thinking then. But I remember the walk took longer than it ever had before. Every step in the mud, every bounce on her shoulders, every cicada shriek, and birdsong. It all happened so slowly. As if giving me more time to memorize those moments. As if to solidify the perfection of the day before that moment. The way the wind blew the leaves. The way the leaves fluttered in harmony, as if they were a single entity performing a complex choreography of color and movement and sound. The way the insects filled sound and space. The way they buzzed and hummed through the air, their bodies and sounds carried by the wind. The way every step squelched into the mud. The way the mud clung to my skin, wriggled between my toes. The slap of our feet on more solid ground. The way my mother’s heartbeat was tied to the wind. Or, back then, it seemed the other way. As if my mother’s heart and lungs controlled the wind itself, controlled the shine of the suns.

  Back then, I thought we had so much time. Felt like the slowing day gave us extra time to remember. But I didn’t need that extra time. Not to remember, anyway. Every day with my mother sticks so clearly in my memory. I needed that time to never happen.

  If I could go back and stitch myself into those moments in the fabric of time, I would. I would give up so much to go back there. To smell my mother’s sweat. Her skin. Bury my face in her hair. Burrow deeper into the hair. Let it cover my whole body.