Free Transfigurations by Michael Bishop Page B

over the dying chieftain, careful to avoid the huri that eyed me with its uncanny, eyeless face. I looked down into the genuine eyes of its master.
    And experienced a shock, a physical jolt.
    The old man's eyes were burnt-out, blackened holes in a hominoid mask. Utterly dead they were, two char-smoked lenses waiting for the old man's body to catch up with their lifelessness.
    And then the diffused red light that signaled sunset in the Wild came pouring through the foliage, and the clearing emptied.
    Alone with Eisen Zwei and his huri, I knew that it would be during this night that the old man died. I tried to find some

    intimation of life in his eyes, saw none, and withdrew to the cover of the Wild and the security of my lean-to. I did not sleep. But my worst premonitions betrayed me, and in the morning I looked out to see Eisen Zwei sitting cross-legged on his pallet, the huri once again perched on his shoulder.
    And then, filtering through the jungle, the tenuous, copper-colored light signaling sunrise and rejuvenation on BoskVeld. The Asadi returned, once again taking up their positions to the north and the south of their dying chieftain. Day 125 had begun.
    I call the events of Day 125, taken as a cumulative whole, the Ritual of Death and Designation. I believe that we will never fully understand the narrowly "political" life of the Asadi until we can interpret, with precision, every aspect of this Ritual.
    The color of the eyes of every Asadi in the clearing—only The Bachelor's excepted—declined into a deep and melancholy indigo. And stalled there. Profound indigo and absolute silence. So deeply absorbent were the eyes of the Asadi that Denebola, rising, could throw out scarcely a single dancing, shimmering ray. Or so it seemed. The morning was an impressionist painting rendered in flat pastels and dull primaries. A paradox.
    And then the Asadi's heads began to rock from side to side, the chin of each individual inscribing a small figure eight in the air. The heads moved in unison. This went on for an hour or more as the old chieftain sat nodding in the monumental morning stillness.
    At last, as if they had inscribed figure eights for the requisite period, the Asadi broke out of their groups and formed several concentric rings around the old man. The members of each ring began to sway. The inaudible flute I had once believed to be in the Wild had now certainly been exchanged for an inaudible bassoon. Ponderously, the Asadi swayed, their great manes undulating with a slow and beautifully orchestrated grief. And The Bachelor—all by himself, beyond the outermost ring—swayed also, swayed in lugubrious cadence with the others. The rhythmic swaying lasted through the remaining hours of the forenoon and on toward the approach of evening.
    I retired to my lean-to, but thought better of just sitting there

    and climbed the tree in which The Bachelor had often perched. I forgot about everything but the weird ceremony in the clearing. I gave myself up completely to the hypnotic movements of the grey, shaggy-headed creatures that a bewildering universe had given me to study. . . .
    I nodded but I did not sleep.
    Suddenly Eisen Zwei gave a final sob, maniacal and heartrending, and grabbed the beast clinging with evil tenacity to his mane. He grabbed it with both palsied hands. He exerted himself to what seemed his last reserve of strength and, strangling the huri, lurched out of the dust to his feet. The huri flapped, twisted, and freed one wing. The old man squeezed his hands together tind attempted to grind the life out of the creature who had imprisoned him even as it did his bidding. He was not successful. The huri used its tiny hands to scour fine crimson wounds in Eisen Zwei's withered cheeks and buckled forehead. Then it flapped out of the old man's grasp and rose to tree level.
    I feared it would dive upon me in my borrowed perch, but it skirted tlie perimeter of the clearing, dipping, banking, silently cawing. Its