The boy's eyes widened with fear as he peered into the gaping mouth in the hillside. The darkness seemed to loom out into the sunlight, swallowing up the trees around it. He looked back, down into the glen where he knew his mother stood, looking back at him, her hands on her hips, as she always stood. They would never speak again, so the boy drove the thought away before sadness swept over him. He climbed further up the slope, towards the blackness. Around him, the men walked in stillness. The boy stepped up into the hole and felt the Earth's cold wind on his face. The smell of dead stone and darkness woke fear in the boy's small heart. Wanting with all of himself to turn back and race down the hill, back to his mother, the boy found he couldn't. His eyes were stuck staring into the dark crack. He was dimly aware of the men to either side, but their fires were like stars in the night, far away, light for some other world. Fingers trailing along the walls, he stepped deeper in and further down, knowing with some other mind where to go, following the paths of his forefathers, his feet in the shadows of their footsteps. In dreams, the boy always had run boldly into the hill's mouth, his eyes shining with youthful life in the torchlight as he strode towards the Innermost Land. Now, awake, the boy went under a shroud of sleep, his legs stumbling and his eyes unseeing. For a long time nothing happened. Only walking and breathing. No one would speak until they reached the Innermost Land, and they were not there yet. The four men and one boy sought the very deepest paths. After many heartbeats, they found it. The roof of stone came down to the floor, and the boy dropped to his knees feeling for the gap, knowing not why he knew it to be there. Squeezing his whole body into the crack, he crawled through the tunnel that led to the Innermost Land. Another forever went by with the boy on his belly, sandwiched between the stone above and the stone below. Crawling out, the boy caught his breath, as the icy wind whipped his hair into a crazed dance. This was the hidden home of the wind. When the men came in, the firelight flickered, showing a pitted roof far above, and then went out with a hush. Nothing again, until as softly as stars, the men began to hum. Shapeless, formless, their song floated through the Innermost Land. Without words, the worship blossomed in the inky black. After timeless singing, the boy felt something stir. Faster and faster the humming swirled around him, as a deeper, darker, older thing filled the Innermost Land: a ghost from the timeless reaches. The spinning quickened, and the boy lost track of himself in the song. The humming was so strong that it shook the very stones of the Innermost Land and the boy was one with the quaking storm of Earth. For here was the home of Earth herself, in the Innermost Land deep inside the hill. And Earth danced with the boy, eating up the boy, and the song that ate him grew louder still. Then, as softly as a morning breaks the humming stilled. The wraiths of ageless reaches fled back to their sleep. Nothing was heard in the Innermost Land. Then a man ran strongly up through the hill and set his eyes on the stars for the very first time. The whirling heavens shone white light on his skin, and kindled a man's fire in him. But as morning broke onto the world, the shadow of night still clung to his brows.