My twin brothers, Akmuo and Medis, hung from the tree branches above me.

  “Climb!” Medis said, waving his hands and holding on through leg strength alone.

  I grabbed the tree but couldn’t pull myself anywhere. Try as I might, I only scraped my hands on the tree’s rough bark.

  Akmuo laughed watching Medis use momentum to sway back and forth, letting his hands fall lazily towards the ground. I jumped to grab him but couldn’t reach. Akmuo let go with one of his hands and let it fall. His face strained by concentration, he forced laughter anyway.

  “Help me!” I said.

  Medis closed his eyes and yawned theatrically. Akmuo laughed and mimicked him even though his body was anything but relaxed. He finally let go with his other hand and sucked in breath so loud that Medis opened his eyes, startled. Akmuo’s hands didn’t fall towards the ground but remained at his side, tensed. Fists clenched, but he smiled, fighting through his anxiety.

  “It’s not fair,” I stamped my foot. “Help me, Muo.”

  Akmuo looked to Medis who still swung back and forth. His swinging became more aggressive until he unhooked his legs and flung himself into the air.

  He hung there while time dilated. A scream grew from deep in my stomach as he flipped his body sidewise, arms and hands stretched out, making his revolution appear slow and his body long. I could feel my eyes open wider and my heart trying to jump out of my mouth. His feet hit the ground and he stumbled but put his hands out to catch himself.

  Akmuo cheered and clapped and laughed.

  Medis wiped his hands off and said, “You gotta use your feet, Lulu.” He walked to the tree trunk to show me but I only stared at him, the echoed image of him flipping flickering in my head.

  “Lulu,” Medis turned and waved me over, so I followed. Akmuo tried to build momentum by swinging back and forth. He used this to grab the tree branch with his hands and unhook his legs, letting them fall. Then he dropped to the ground.

  “Put your hands here,” Medis said. I followed his instructions as he spoke. “You gotta get a good grip. It’s gotta be a little above your head so you can pull yourself up. Yeah, like that. Now you gotta put your foot up here. A little higher. Right, now push off with your other foot and pull up with your hands together.”

  I tried and tried but we made no progress.

  Akmuo said, “She’s too little.”

  As I pushed off with my foot again, Medis squatted down and put his hands in my armpits and pushed me up.

  “I did it!”

  “Not yet,” Medis said. He held me up and then shifted his hands to my bottom and pushed up, trying to get me into the lowest branches. But I didn’t move my hands, which were now below me and I was too afraid of falling to let go of the tree. My hands clung to it and my feet pressed against it while my butt got higher in the air.

  Akmuo laughed and Medis brought me down slowly.

  “I did it!”

  Medis and Akmuo laughed. Akmuo said, “You can do it when you’re bigger like us.”

  HoPa came naked through the trees holding a towel. He towered over us. One of the biggest men in the clan. Built like a mountain, his limbs thick and long, his shoulders wide, and his muscles carved from stone. His voice rolled slow like ocean waves, deep and sonorous. “Time to wash. Come on.”

  Akmuo and Medis held hands and ran off east to the river, their tiny black bodies imperfect mirrors of one another. Born together as one, they shared almost faces and bodies and a language of touch none but they could understand.

  “Where’s mother and LoPa?”

  HoPa put his big hand on my shoulder and smiled, “Coming.” His fingernails were tiny moons at the ends of his thick fingers. Chewed so often they barely even existed. Even still, somehow, they were always dirty. Always full of dirt or caked with mud and clay. Or—when he was cooking—blood and spice.

  LoPa and mother came naked through the trees talking in harsh whispers, carrying towels. LoPa’s eyebrows were low and his lips thin. He was the same size as my mother but with a skeletal frame. Delicate and thin, he was like a leaf barely clinging to a tree. When my mother saw me, a smile burst over her face.

  “I once knew a little moon who blew with a wind too soon,” she sang as she lifted me up and threw me into the air. I was laughing, weightless and free, too young to care for anything but this moment of flight I couldn’t achieve with even my brothers’ help. She caught me and kept singing while I sat on her shoulders, reaching towards the leaves.

  The path to the river was well beaten by our family’s daily trips. The river had no name for us. It was simply the river. The only one that mattered to the clan. It was wide and flowed slow, a source of food and clean water. We swam in it, fished in it, bathed in it, played in it. South of us were dozens of clan members. They all bathed together, their laughter traveling over the surface to us.

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  We bathed separately, a quarter mile north of the rest of the clan. It’s funny to think about now, how they kept us separate but washed in the same water. Not only the same water, but the water already used to bathe us.

  Akmuo and Medis were already splashing at the ducks and shouting laughter as they flew away when we arrived. Mother put me down and took off my clothes and told me to join my brothers.

  I could have trudged through the water but I swam instead. Weightless again, my tiny arms and legs pumping, propelling me through the shallow water. Akmuo and Medis danced through the water imitating bears. Medis stood tall with his arms high and his face wearing a mask of rage. He growled and jumped onto Akmuo, pushing him beneath the water.

  Akmuo, smiling, grabbed Medis’ foot and pulled it out from under him. Medis’ mouth opened wide in surprise and he held his nose closed with his hands as he closed his eyes and fell into the water.

  “Do me! Do me!” I said.

  Akmuo and Medis ignored me and fell to wrestling.

  I sat on a stone in the water watching them.

  The suns were at their highest. The red and blue blurring in the sky, turning it a deep purple. Bright blue and orange birds flew down and landed in the river. They shook their bodies and dipped their heads in the water. They flapped their wings and chirped to one another. I floated towards them, holding my breath. Afraid to even breathe onto the surface of the river in case it disturbed them.

  I got within a dozen spans when a stone splashed into the water near them, causing them to collectively take flight. Medis cheered and I turned to see Akmuo flexing his arms and laughing.

  “Muo, Medi, come here!” HoPa’s voice snapped the laughter off. My brothers shared the same face of terror. Slowly they trudged through the water back to my parents.

  LoPa was hiding a smile but mother stood beside the bank. Her body motionless and straight, her arms folded over her stomach, and her expression was cool steel. It chilled me, so I turned away and swam.

  I floated in the shallow water on my back and stared at the purpling sky. The suns were so high and so close together that they almost melded into one. My ears below the water, all I heard was my own body pulsing. My heart beating, my breath flowing, and the lapping of water against my ears.

  Then everything quieted. Everything stopped for a moment. I let my bottom hit the riverbed and I put my hands down to brace my body as I stared at the suns. The scolding my brothers received ceased but I couldn’t pull my eyes away to see. Even the distant laughter and talking of the clan ceased. Every insect stopped chirping, every bird stopped singing. Even the babbling of the river became like a muffled whisper.

  A shadow on the sun. A shadow like a giant bird. A shadow that circled once in the air before being joined by another shadow. The shadows came together and then flew away as one. Their shadows disappearing into the sky.

  The image struck me in ways that I still can’t describe. My body felt too small. As if it were a bottle and someone was trying to fit a mountain or the ocean inside of me. It felt like bursting. But with love. Or something like it.

  “Luna,” my mother shouted and pulled me from the sky. It jolted me, and I fell back into the water before standing up. I exhaled for the first time since the shadows silenced everything. HoPa was running towards me but stopped when I stood and stared at him. He stretched his huge hand towards me.

  I trudged the distance to him, my mouth dry and my eyes wet with tears. His hand was soft as clay and warm. He picked me up and I cried into his huge chest.

  We walked back to our home in silence, tears still shuddering through my chest.

  When we sat later round the fire, HoPa massaged mother’s back as she lay on the ground while LoPa massaged her feet and legs. She complained of cramps and hoped the massage would help.

  “What was that?” Akmuo’s voice was soft, his eyes still puffy and red.

  LoPa kissed mother’s feet and then came to us. He sat between my brothers and I crossed the fire to sit on his lap. His body was hard and bony but it felt right. He smelled like flowers. His delicate fingers wrapped round my pudgy stomach and his musical voice came softly. “That was an Angel,” he said.

  “Like from the stories?” Akmuo’s voice full of hope and awe.

  LoPa laughed through his nose, “I remember the first time I saw an Angel flying. I was out gathering berries with my father when I was you and your brother’s age. My father was telling me which berries to pick and why but I couldn’t pay attention. I was like you, Medis. My eyes were always off somewhere else and my head rattled with dreams of far off places. I wanted to be a warrior poet, like Petaliske from the stories I’ve sang for you. I thought that if I was wise enough and strong enough, I could do what no other has ever done. I dreamt of holding a sword and leading warriors. Dreamt of singing songs that would be remembered forever. I thought I could even be emperor or a god, if only I proved myself.”

  He lifted me off his lap and stood before us, acting out the movements of the Angel as he told the story. He said, “That’s when the Angel flew over us, much closer than today. It was just a bit above our heads. It seemed as close as the low branches of that tree over there.” I gasped following his pointed finger. “The most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was shaped like a man but with huge wings. Wings larger even than your HoPa. The Angel could’ve picked up HoPa and carried him like a baby.”

  We laughed.

  “It’s true.” He nodded. “The Angel was enormous, but it was alone. The sight of it knocked my father and me to the ground. It struck me with waves of sorrow. I cried so hard my nose began bleeding. Even my tears were blood. I cried for a full day. I didn’t even sleep. I just cried and cried.”

  “Why?” Medis’ voice only a breath.

  LoPa sat again and I climbed on his lap. He breathed in so deep his stomach expanded and pushed against my back. He let it out and I felt the cool air from his lungs on my neck. “I’ve wondered that my whole life. It was alone. I think it was lonely. Lonely in the way that only a god can be lonely. Its sorrow hit me like a falling tree. It wasn’t just sorrow—it was a storm of pain and sorrow. I think we all felt something today but it was far enough away that it didn’t overpower us. But it wasn’t just sorrow today.”

  HoPa said, “It was love. A broken kind.” His huge hand was on mother’s neck and the look she gave him was full of so much affection.

  “Are they always so sad?” Medis said.

  Mother’s voice was modulated by HoPa’s massaging hands, “Not always. Sometimes Angels are so happy that it’s unbearable to look at them. They shine and batter us with their happiness. It can even drive people crazy. The happiness hits them so hard that they never recover. It can even hit us so hard our hearts burst or we kill ourselves. Your HoPa thinks LoPa’s experience with the Angel is why he’s so small.”

  Medis laughed but Akmuo’s voice was breathy, “Really?”

  HoPa grunted a laugh and LoPa wrapped his arm round Akmuo, taking his other hand from Medis and holding onto me with it. “HoPa’s just joking. The Angels didn’t change me and seeing one today won’t make you stay a child forever. You’ll one day be big as your HoPa but you might sing as well as your mother.”

  Mother said, “If he’s lucky, he’ll sing like you, Dain.”

  LoPa’s laugh was like a birdsong. “Flatterer.”

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