Chapter 228 - The Birth of Death part 3

They named the boychild shortly after he took his first steps. It was winter again. The warm season had been brief and anemic, but the child had survived. In fact, he'd thrived.

He was strong, if small, and his father grudgingly found himself growing attached to the little boy. He did not want to love the boy, not yet, mainly because all of his previous children had died, but he found that he could not help his heart. He even erupted into laughter one evening when the baby yanked out a handful of his beard, saying to his wife, "Ha! This one is mean as a badger, Ona!"

His wife laughed with him and snuggled up to her husband's side, proud that she had given her mate a strong son.

"He will be walking soon," Ona said dreamily, staring into the fire as father and son wrestled. "Have you given any thought to what you will name him?" Anaki men almost always named their children, unless the father of the child was unknown, or he died before the child began to walk. Sometimes that happened, too.

"I have not," Minos admitted. The little boy gurgled and pinched his nose hard enough to make his eyes water, and he laughed again. "Perhaps we should call him Naga," he said. Naga was the Anaki word for badger. "Would you like that?" Minos asked the boy. "Would you like to be named badger?" He put his lips to the boy's bulging tummy and blew a farting sound on it. The boy squealed and kicked his feet, deliriously happy.

"We could name him after my father," Ona suggested, stroking the matted fur on her husband's chest.

"Kelborn?"

"It is a strong name."

"No, I don't like it."

"Yes, husband."

Minos scowled all of a sudden and pushed his mate away. "I don't want to talk about his name," he said, and then he pressed the child into her arms. "It is bad luck. If there are wicked spirits nearby, they might hear our words and be tempted to harm the boy." The spirits were jealous of the living, and disposed to torment the joyous and proud. Everyone knew that.

"Yes, husband. I am sorry," Ona said. She hushed the crying child, who had been startled by his father's unexpected change of mood. "Shhh, quiet, baby. It's okay."

A few days later, as Minos prepared to depart for another hunt, Ona cried out her husband's name.

Minos was sitting outside with the other hunters, hardening his spears in a fire. He leapt to his feet when his mate shouted and rushed inside the cave, afraid that something bad had happened to the boy. In all honesty, he was so certain the boy would be dead that he stood staring blankly for a moment when he saw what Ona had shouted to him about. His mind was so set on the child lying dead, he could not process what he was seeing. He blinked at his wife, mouth open.

"Minos, look!" Ona laughed. She was standing with the boy between her feet, holding his hands. As her husband stroked his chest, trying to calm his thumping heart, she released the child's hands and said, "Go to dada! Walk to dada!"

Grinning and drooling, the boy tottered toward his father, chubby little hands reaching for the big man.

Minos squatted down and held out his arms. "Come to me, boy! Walk to me!"

The other men had followed Minos inside. They stood behind their leader, watching the child walk with expressions of approval on their stern, weathered faces.

"He is young to be walking already, Minos," Padua said. Padua was Minos's younger brother, and second-in-command of the tribe. "He is a strong boy."

"We should hold his naming ceremony tonight before we leave for the hunt," Duroc said. Duroc was Minos's father. He was a great burly man with hair and beard as white as snow.

Minos swept the boy into his arms and rose. He nodded, kissing the child on the forehead. "Yes. Tell the shaman. We will name the boy tonight."

It would be a great relief. Now he would be able to hunt, secure in the knowledge that his son had been named before any wicked spirits, capricious beings that they were, could steal another child from him. The spirits of unnamed children, like the animals they hunted, were not allowed into the Land of Warm Days. They simply evaporated, like morning mist in the sunshine, when the body perished. Some said they were reborn into new flesh, that they were reborn again and again until they had lived long enough, and grown wise enough, to find their way to the afterlife, but who could say for certain.

They held the ceremony that night, after the sun had passed beyond the edge of the world. Most Anaki magic rituals were held after dark. That was the time of day when magic was most effective.

Donning his ceremonial wolf skins, old Zambi, the clan's shaman, invoked the protection of the spirits. As a cold wind howled outside the mouth of the cave, he took the boy in his arms. Frightened by the old man's menacing hood, a snarling wolf's head, the boy began to cry. Zambi undressed the child and placed him in the center of a circle of stones. Chanting under his breath, the old man drew mystic runes on the boy's bare flesh with red ochre, each mark a symbol for one of the tribe's protective spirits: wolf, hawk, snake, bear. When he was finished, he held the boy aloft, his old bones crackling, and asked Minos what name he would like to give the boy.

"I wish to name him Khronos," Minos said without hesitation.

Ona looked up at her husband in surprise. She was disappointed he had not named the boy after her father, as she had suggested.

Khronos was a conjunction of two Anaki words: shout and loud. He wanted to name their son "Loud Shout". It was an unusual name, but the more she thought about it, the more she liked it.

"Khronos," old Zambi repeated. Then, raising his voice, "O Spirits! Hear me now! This boy, the child of Minos and Ona of the Gray Wolf Clan, would like to name their boychild Khronos! If his naming displeases you, make your will known to us!"

All who had gathered for the naming ceremony held their breath, firelight glimmering in their eyes. Minos, a superstitious man, grasped his wife's hand. They all listened, but there came no sign of the spirits' displeasure: no stones fell over in the cave, no animals yowled in the dark outside. The only sounds were the hooting of the wind and the crackling of their collective hearths.

The old man lowered the boy. "The spirits approve. Your son is named Khronos of the Gray Wolf Clan!" He passed the boy to the father.

"Khronos," Ona said, kissing her son on the forehead.

"Khronos," Minos said, stroking the boy's cheek.

They presented the child to each adult member of the tribe then, and one by one they spoke his name.

"Khronos."

"Khronos."

"Khronos..."