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...A voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes

On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—so:

"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—

Something lost behind the Ranges, Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

—Rudyard Kipling: The Explorer—

Staring down from unknown heights, I struggle to know...the where. It comes, but ever so slowly, as if toying with my mind. Out of the murk rises rank upon rank of leaden waves, spindrift topped, marching to far horizons.

I grab at this, eager to reassure myself, desperate to stop this dizzy rush into the unknown. Yes! I’m somewhere over a storm-whipped sea. Be patient, I remind myself, and you will soon learn more. Yet, should I trust my senses?

"No!" the external world signs. Dawning over the earth’s jagged edge, the sun belies my senses. Below are not ethereal whitecaps, but range upon range of corporeal mountains, locked in mantles of eternal ice. How high I must be to recast such giants into mere waves?

Yet along with truth comes beauty. Color ignites; air, ice, the blackest of rock flame. I soar, sailing over a dazzling plateau, the womb of Nagas, the life givers, then higher, among the seven ice-clad pinnacles, home to Mara, guardian of Beyond—a boundless realm of the unexpected and the unknown.

Instinctively I know that I belong to a more ordered world where Hunger, my master, draws me earthward from sky bound reverie. Skimming scree-covered slopes…movement? Yes! There is a line of those malevolent ones, so-called "humans." Why are they here? So weak, they always flee before the snow-bark leaves fall. Yet somehow these seem different, without the usual bleating, slavish hordes, stirring dust, and fouling water. These humans move quickly, purposively, each with a stick-like thing on his back.

Even with the sun so warm on my wing, I sense winter’s approach. The angle of the sun cries, "departure is near." No worry for myself! I’ll just fly some miles to the East, across the plateau that notches the mountain wall. But for these pitiful, flightless creatures…? What are they doing? It’s time to shelter in valleys, not climb mountains. Human ways are truly strange, yet something here is familiar. They must be hunting. But what?

From the vantage of my aerie, I catch sight of another some distance ahead. Different from those who follow, its hair long and body covered in colors of a dying sun. A night-dark forehead bears three vertical lines, like streams joining into a river. This solitary creature climbs quickly, but without sign of fear, as if knowing where it goes. Is this what the others hunt? How could beings, even ones as troublesome as humans, hunt their own kind?

Sudden gust! The world careens; earth transforms to sky, sky earth. I’m used to such disturbance and quickly regain balance. On the horizon dark clouds gather, confirming earlier foreboding. The clouds send warning.

Storm sign! Leave now!

Circling, I witness the scene below. The humans halt. One points at the sky, towards the same clouds that trouble me. They make a great noise among themselves. Some continue to point toward the clouds, others toward what must be their prey. Suddenly, one who seems the leader makes a loud, ringing call. All sink to their knees and bow toward the place where the sun sleeps, rising and falling in unison. Their cries, which begin separately, join into one. They finish, and the leader barks a command. There is a moment of silence, then a collective howl, growing into a horrific wail:

"AAALLAAAH-OOO-AAAKBAAAR!
AAALLAAAH-OOO-AAAKBAAAR!
AAALLAAAH-OOO-AAAKBAAAR!"

Not a sound of peace, it’s the cry before the kill.

In proof, they shoulder those sticks, pointing them at the hunted one. Many sharp popping noises erupt in a ragged volley; they join in a loud, thunderous roll that wells up the steep slopes. The mountains answer with a shattering explosion. Ice, snow, and scree tumble down, sealing the canyon, silencing forever these noisome creatures, no longer to disturb the peace.

What will the one no longer hunted do now?

Suspended in the wind, a perfect balance of time and space, I see from where this human comes and where it can only go. Retreat is impossible. Although the now-entombed hunters no longer threaten, a rising tarn seals the canyon. But from the human’s vantage, can it know there’s no retreat? Yet to go up over the mountain, in the face of the approaching storm, is sheer madness.

This horror recalls my own danger. Like all life, I too hear Mara’s siren song. But unlike the humans, who seem most susceptible to its call, I’ve other concerns. Mara is the Lord of Passage from this life to an unknown—a destiny I’ve no time to ponder as do idle humans. I’m born to be and will soar through that span of years the Gods grant. I’ll not look back to a lost past, nor fret over imagined future. Life is now. I know its purpose…to make more life.

An updraft seizes me; wings stretch to control the wind. My great frame wheels toward the rising sun, across the dazzling, snow-bound plateau, between the seven peaks, to the rain-shadowed lands beyond. Once there, I’ll be safe.

Gliding over the crest, I look back, hoping to catch sight of that one. But, all is veiled by Mara’s approach. The storm closes fast; an opalescent mist envelops the world. The one of many forms reclaims its realm, destined to rule till the life-giving sun again enters the northern sky. Only then will I return to learn of the hunted one’s fate.

The wind rises. Thoughts of flight fill my mind. Intently, I listen to the whistle of the wind, the beat of strong wings.