Page 25, Paragraphs 2 - 5

Wow, this was really challenging - it took me almost an hour to figure out this one little passage.

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Page 25, Paragraph 2:

"Why, if a path like this is made," she says, "even more good times will come by the village here than will come to other villages, because the river bridge is here - journeying men have no way to go other than to come by here, and many good times will come here with them."

Paragraph 3:

I turn onto my belly now, with the hay prickling my penis. I lie with my ass and legs in the little branch-hut and my head and arms outside of it. I turn my head to look into the sky, where I can tell that the sky-beasts have all shut their eyes because I don't see any lights. I think about the path that the girl's been talking about, but I can't really picture it fully. I say to the girl, "How would the path be made if a lot of people don't walk by it? How can people walk along this path if they don't know the way?"

Paragraph 4:

Now her talk becomes strange and hard to understand. "There's a way that a man can know of the path even if the path is so long that it goes all over the world, and the way of it is this," she says. "In all of their many villages, there are antler-headed men that make a strange and long description that tells of many things. It tells of the village where the antler-headed man is, and tells of the hills and routes nearby, so that people who come from other places can find a way to him. Now all the many descriptions by the many antler-headed men are set in a line, to make one big description even bigger than them, that tells of the way from the southern coast to the northern forest."

Paragraph 5:

"Why, how is this?" I say. "If a description is that long, a man can't understand it all at once!" "Ah," she says now, "this is where the strange part comes. The antler- headed men make their long description in such a way that a man can hear it one or two times and then know it forever. The saying of it is made with noises that are like each other, that is, in a form of speaking that is unlike any other, so you can remember it better."

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That's the most complex explanation of a song I've ever heard!

Page 24, Paragraphs 6 - 8; Page 25, Paragraph 1

Page 24, Paragraph 6:

She says, "Hob was here with his son by the river for a long time, where the settlers come so Hob can counsel them and do a lot of things for them. For all he does, the settlers find skins and food and many things for Hob, as is his due."

Paragraph 7:

"Of all the things there are for Hob to do," she says, "there's one thing that's bigger than the others." She says, "There are many villages across the world, from sea to sea, and all of them have antler-headed men like Hob. The antler-headed men all come together in one place, to talk and to counsel one another, after which they all talk about a big task that they've thought of together. I sit the other way around in the grass - I'm glad I can hear this."

Paragraph 8:

She says, "The antler-headed men's plan is to make a path, bigger than any path that's ever been made, which goes from the sea in the south to the forest in the north. The path is to run by the hills and the high places, and by the valley's edge."

Page 25, Paragraph 1:

This is a longer distance than I can imagine, because I've never seen the sea - I've only heard of it. "How would it be good to make this big path?" I say to her, as she sits in the dark and plays with her hair. She says, "The path would be there for many people's travels, so that people from one village could journey to another village far away and take stones and hides with them and trade them for things from the other villages. This way, all villages will have things they haven't had before, and good times will come to everyone that lives along this path."