We, all the Creche kids, had known what was going on since before dawn. Lem, who was the littlest of us and still doing her Following, was sweet on Kressle, the Teller’s apprentice, no matter that she was at least ten years his junior. So when tried to sneak into the woods before first light, he had a tiny pig-tailed shadow. That meant the rest of us got shaken away ten wheels later to hear all about it. Over the next twenty-wheel, we took turns slipping out past the sentries, who were still squatting around the outskirts of camp even though we hadn’t seen a Silver Bone in three days, to go check on Kressle. Each body had to see for themselves that Lem wasn’t yanking their reins. A Crecheling is always certain and all that.

We needn’t have worried. When I went out, I saw what everybody else said they had seen too. Lanky Kressle cussing and worrying about with Matron Makot’s hacksaw. Of course, we had suspected all along but this confirmed it. The apprentices always got stuck with the jobs their masters didn’t want to do and, even though it was the biggest part of the ritual, not one body ever wanted to make the Needle Torches. A couple of the younger of us, Lem included, had never been to a ritual but they knew about them and knew there was only one reason why someone would be making Needle Torches. And, even though we were all Creche, they started getting excited.

Hiding a gang of half-trained, sparking kids was impossible so it wasn’t long after we knew that the adults knew that we knew. With the spokes already spinning, they gave up all pretense of secrecy and at about noon, Kressle dragged his bundle of saplings into the center of camp, flopped down on a stump in the center of camp next a bucket of pitch and began his grueling work, swearing and throwing hex bags at any of us who got close. Well, the ones he saw get close.

Who could have stayed away? Even I, who had seen two rituals before, wasn’t immune to the buzz of energy that started with the youngest of us then spread to the Overfolk kid a few twentywheels later and kept going up from there. Even the adults were smiling at each other and exchanging inscrutable looks. Master Poplos figured out early on that we would be useless today, so he let us have the day off from whatever we were supposed to be learning in our Firmament. But it him that gave Kressle all the hex bags, so it wasn’t like Poplos had actually given up on teaching us anything today.

Anyways, the older kids, me indluded, didn’t stop at just watching Kressle work. No, we had a bet going on who could take the most branches from his pile. Poplos caught us pretty quick though so nobody won anything more than a swat and a promise of extra chores tomorrow. Despite our meddling, Kressle was done preparing the pile before sunset. Half of the grown-ups had disappeared into the woods tenwheel ago and this time we older kids stopped the little ones from following them. Now they reappeared, dressed head to toe in the brightly colored cloaks of the ritual with nary a patch of flesh showing. Some of the little ones shrieked in delight or terror or something and I think a peep might have escaped me too as they filtered back into camp and grabbed one of the finished torches to take to a place in the camp. Whenever everybody had a spot and a torch, I didn’t know who was who but I counted the bodies, some unspoken command must have gone out because, with what sounded like one voice, they all invoked at once and the torches about the camp sprang into blazing light.

The flash was nearly blinding in the gathering dark, or would have been if we hadn’t been prepared for it, and I caught myself thinking that it was a good thing we were three days out from any Silver Bones because so much magic would have drawn them down like flies to rotting meat. While all the Overfolk kids were still blinking around, we saw Yemtz, Kressle’s mast, the Teller, unfold his spindly limbs from one of the wagons and move, quickly for a man his age, to the center of camp. To anyone who had been caught by the flash of light, it would look like he appeared out of thin air. ‘Course he could have actually done it with magic, but something were about tradition and no one had known how to move something that big when this one started. From the collective gasps that went up from the Overfolk, it seemed like some people were still impressed by it.

Yemtz raised his hands for silence. When all was quiet save for the buzz of insects, he began “No one knows how long there was the darkness. In those days, no one knew anything. Sky was black as pitch and what lived on the land were small, dumb things that crawled in the gloom.

No one knows how long the gods had been travelling for either, or how many planes they walked across before they came to this one. They aren’t in the habit of sharing such things with the likes of mortals.

No one knows when the beginning was. It doesn’t matter. Thing started going when Feteikam, may we ever keep it guessing, chewed its way through the darkness. Now Feteikam filled the whole it’d made with light so that it could see what kind of plane it had come across and made the sun. Feteikam had to see because its purpose it to know and to catalog all that is across the great expanse of all that can. It set to work right away, spinning the worlds around the hole it made so it could look at all of them from all sides in the light it had made.

Then Zhotgef, may we never let it finish, chew its way through after its sibling. Zhotgief hated what it saw on this plane, as it had hated everything it had seen before, so it filled its hole with nothing and left it to suck up all the light and life that there was. When Feteikam turned its gaze away, there was Zhotgief to take back what its sibling had given and return things to stillness.

In this the siblings found balance and peace as that which was destroyed would not change and Feteikam could have knowledge while Zhotgief could have ignorance.

But there was a third sibling, Eikorot, who did not want this balance or this peace. It had grown tired of its sibling’s patterns, the dull planes which they surveyed then destroyed. It was bored. And a bored trickster god is a dangerous thing. Eikorot had been planning his prank since the true beginning and it was here, on this plane, that it pulled it.

Eikorot created life and laughed at its siblings’ confusion. Life always changed. It could not be cataloged, Feteikam would have to keep the planets spinning forever if it was to see all of it. And to stop Zhotgief from devouring them, Eikorot gave them fire that they might make their own light to fill the hungry darkness.

One by one, Eikorot made the peoples of the world and with each attempt its skill grew. And when it felt as if it had mastered the art of making life, Eikorot made us, its favored people. But you see it played a trick on us too because that is its nature. Eikorot made us best, yes, but it also made us last and all the other lands had been given out and we had no home. Eikorot made us slight and quick and few so that we could not take others lands by force. Eikorot made us in its own image, as much as that which is not alive could. It made us tricksters, just like itself, forced to survive by relaying on our wits and our families.

This burden is the gift of the gods upon us. Thus we hate them. And are grateful.”