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In the beginning, there was the void, and in the void, the god. Already you know this, I trust; it is a truth our people hold close, even if others have forgotten. In Ahiranaya, they make the outlandish claim of all life springing from a colossal egg; the Dwarali pretend two great celestial horses beat the earth into being beneath their star-shod hooves.
(Yes, yes, too well I know what your friends in Parijat believe, that the world was born from fire and ash. Hush now, and listen!)
As I have said: the god was there, waiting. All time is one to Him, past and present and future combined, and He had only to open His eyes, lotus-like, long, and lovely, and speak for the very first time. There was nothing and no one to hear, and so only this once He spoke freely, without needing to care for the frail minds of his listeners.
He looked at the nothingness below, and said: You Are, and at the nothingness above, and said, You Are Not. He looked before him, at those trees and animals and seas that had not yet come into being and said, You Are; and at those deceits and illusions that turn souls from their destinies and said, You Are Not. He spoke with the assurance his visions granted him, his memory of the future.
To humans alone of all those he called into creation he gave the gift of voice, if only a feeble shadow of His own; to the beasts He did not. You will have heard impudent barnyard stories speculating why: those that joke that the tigers must have terrified Him, or the bats betrayed His trust, or the birds earned His ire by waking him before the dawn. They are sacrilege, to a one, and told only by naughty souls--like your brothers--trying too hard to prove themselves unafraid before the Nameless God’s mysteries.
(You have no idea as to what I mean, not even a little? Good.)
Voices He gave us, and something more precious still: the names he ordains at our beginning. Need we any more reason to be confident we are His chosen?
*
Of course we did not always listen. There are those who will tell you, little princess, that this was due to arrogance; but I do not hold with such harsh interpretations. In fact they must not have known how. It is a shivery thing, to listen to the voice of the god—even after all these years, it never grows easier.
So while we may not know exactly how it first happened, we might guess.
Perhaps it was a hunter, caught in his own trap; perhaps a careless adventurer who stumbled into a rain-swollen river. Go on, close your eyes, and imagine with me: the night settling in, lean-bellied animals howling their triumph, waters closing over your head. Imagine the echo of the void, or as close to it as any of us might know.
(Stop sniveling, and give thanks for this--that you are no temple dedicate, and that imagining will be all that is ever asked of you.)
What better instructor than despair to teach one how to truly surrender?
They will have done just that then, squeezed their eyes shut and thought only of relishing each breath remaining, so that all was left was the voice of the god.
He Will Sing My Word, it told the hunter; and She Will Die and Live Thrice to Bear Witness to My Word, it promised the desperate swimmer.
What are their stories, you ask? Not mine to tell, nor yours to know; but the god's alone to hold. Only their names they left behind, to reach us across centuries; no greater wonder can there be.
(That those doomed to die still proceed through life as though they are immortal, as the wise king told the yaksha?
Impudent child.)
*
You wish for a simpler, sweeter tale. So be it.
Once there was a priest of the god whose devotion was matched only by his pride in his infant son. I do not know that it interfered with his duties; but I know too that nothing is concealed from the Nameless God. So one day when he had taken the newborn daughter of rubbish-sweepers in his hands, the god spoke to him and said, She will marry her priest's only son and they will remember him only for her sake.
Of course he had not forgotten himself to report the god's words incorrectly, but it rankled his soul to think of his bright child bound to this filthy urchin. It stung his pride that he and his line should be nothing compared to her. In those days, they had not yet learned to keep their names close, to wait until the moment when discovery would do the most good, so that the priest could hear that loathsome promise called about whenever the village children were at play, whenever the sun rose low and mothers called their offspring inside for dinner. At last, when the girl's parents passed away from plague, the priest had had enough.
(That's a lesson to remember: that even the sweetest and sturdiest of jasmine vines may conceal the worst of vipers, and that no one, not even a priest, is above corruption.
Not even me, or your foster-home in the imperial mahal. Never forget.)
I think he meant well when first he offered to raise her in his own household, so that she might grow accustomed to her future husband. I think too that as he returned home by way of the lonely forest, with its carrion-birds circling overhead, the temptation was too much to resist. He had been set upon by bandits, he claimed later; fought valiantly but overcome.
His family wore mourning-clothes for all of a year and then thought no more of her.
But the girl--well, the forest is not so deserted a place as the priest imagined. Eventually, even in the deserted clearing where he had bid her wait for him, a woodcutter came across her. Now, this woodcutter had been named She Who Comes Upon Motherhood Unexpectedly, and thought the discovery of a new daughter the answer to her prayers. They lived together, mother and daughter, and grew strong in their own ways. The girl set aside her name as a sign of her past life, and did her best to wait for another from the god; but He, it seemed, was not inclined to answer. Instead her mother grew to call her Sweet-one and Darling and a thousand more endearments, and so she became known.
She went into the woods, day by day, and once when a yaksha stole her mother's best axe away, she thundered and threatened to uproot the trees entire if she must return home empty-handed. And then the yaksha came before her, sly smile intact, and offered to find her lost goods. He held an axe of silver before her, and asked if it were her own; but the girl, taught to respect even the least of the god's truths, said that it wasn't. Then he held an axe of gold before her, and asked if it were her own; but the girl replied that it wasn't. And so he was caught in his own lies, as the yakshas of that age always were, and he had to return all three axes to her. The girl took them home, and presented them to her mother; but her mother only locked them away, and offered coconuts and milk to the god for her daughter's narrow escape.
Eventually there came a day when the king of the land called for help, since a demon had besieged the tower holding his young wives. The girl rose to the challenge, brandishing three axes that her mother had given her just before she left. With the strength of her mother's blessing, the yaksha-magic did not betray her. With the golden axe, she blinded the demon's keen eyes; with the silver, she lashed at his tusks and tail; and with the iron, she cut off his head. It took her three days' time, but she did it.
Now the king of the land saw her power, and feared her; and the admiring looks his wives cast upon her, and resented her. He told her he would send her back to the village of her birth with all honor, but that she must deliver a message to the local priest for him. In it, he wrote orders to have her executed on sight--and sealed it with his great ring and bade her not open it.
The girl was loyal and well-bred, and so she followed his instructions exactly. She returned to the house of the priest--the house that should have been her own--but of course they knew her only as Sweet-one, Darling, and so on. The priest was away on service to the god, but his son was at home; and one look at the girl was enough to steal his heart away. He bade her come with him to a guest room, and lay down her dusty head. He bade her undo her thick braids, and wash her rose-soft feet. He waited until she slept, and then--curiosity having overtaken him--opened the letter that she bore, only to find the dire tidings it promised.
It seemed to him a terrible pity that someone so brave and lovely should die. So instead he changed the script he found there such that it instructed the priest instead to marry his son to the King's champion, and sealed it up once again.
So it came to pass, and with the wedding rites, the new bride was called upon to proclaim her name. When she answered with the only true name she had to give, you can imagine the commotion that followed! This is why they say it is an unlucky thing to reveal a name too close to a wedding. The priest was aghast, his son delighted to hear that he had not defied his fate, and the villagers sated with salacious gossip to last the next few seasons.
The girl, though, had only learned that it was a dangerous thing, to have your true name bandied about too soon. When she raised her children, in between many adventures in the service of those charming queens who had been so pleased by her, she called them only by pet names; and in awestruck imitation, so did all her friends and neighbors. With time it became the way of all Alor.
*
You liked that, did you? It does make for a charming story. But consider this: how much unhappiness might have been avoided if the priest had only accepted that what the Nameless God promised would come to pass?
(Don't remind me that if so, the king and his pretty queens would still be tormented by the elephant-demon without hope of rescue!
Child, you are too clever by half.)
What I mean to say is this: the future is a terrible thing, as is fate. We all of us wish to run from it. But you, my dear one, you must remember that the future is never quite what we expected, and so never something to be feared.
You have received your name today, daughter of Alor, and trembled at it, as so many others before you. I tell you, though, that it will bring you courage and calm--someday, if not today--and that it will make sure you are never forgotten. You know the ways of our people as well as we all do. You will not disgrace us when the day comes.
For we blessed make no complaint, not even when the Nameless God breathes his bleak visions into our eyes and ears.
Through it all, we hear the truth he repeats to the world he named and created: My darling. I love you so.