Way back when, although not so long ago, only around a half-century, which isn't that long in the great scheme of things, Grandfather Raven sent for one of the children. There was no point having children, Grandfather always said, unless you intended to put them to good use. Fortunately Raven agreed, and so it was that the young man arrived at Grandfather's house.

That day Grandfather's house happened to be no more than a large kitchen containing little other than a massive wooden table with a top as thick as your arm and legs like small trees, but that's by-the-by.

The young man frequently ran errands for Raven and Grandfather, indeed he sometimes thought that this was all he was good for and certainly they did nothing to encourage him to think differently. He was not surprised by Grandfather's house even though the last time he had visited it had been a small clearing in a damp forest. He was quite used to things changing.

His name was Traveller's Moon, and there is a story behind that too, which will perhaps be told some other day. He was part Indian, and his mother made more of a fuss about this than he did, even though she had no Indian blood in her at all. His mother was a romantic, and several decades early. Traveller's Moon was nineteen years old, and he preferred his friends to call him John.

Grandfather Raven only ever called him "boy."

"I want you to fetch something for me, boy," Grandfather said. He showed Traveller's Moon a picture of a sea shore, where a cliff had crumbled into the sea so long ago that the rubble had settled or washed away and there was now a sandy beach around the base. Traveller's Moon kept his eyes closed, because the pictures were easier to see that way.

"You will go there now," Grandfather said, showing Traveller's Moon how to get there. The way was long and complicated and frightening. "You will go there and you will search amongst the rocks when the sea retreats until you find a clamshell."

"A clamshell?" Traveller's Moon asked, still thinking about some of the perils on the journey.

"You will know it when you see it. I want you to open the clamshell and bring me what is inside," Grandfather told him.

"Inside the clamshell? The clam?" Traveller's Moon asked.

"Quiet, boy. You will need a basket and a blanket. You will go alone. Do not speak to anyone on the way. Do not speak to anyone you may meet when you arrive. Do not stray elsewhere, do not become distracted. This is the only thing that you are given to do at this time. No harm must come to this thing that I send you to bring. I will be waiting."

With that, Traveller's Moon knew it was time for him to go.

It was a strange request, a strange task, but by no means any stranger than some of the other things he had been sent to do. But he had to find a basket. He knew his paternal Grandmother had a basket that had been given to her by an Englishwoman. He fetched it. He also fetched an old blanket that was lying next to it. He did not know what he was going to find at the end of his journey, but he thought it best not to take one of his Grandmother's best blankets. He stopped briefly to eat a little bread and drink a little water, for he did not know how long he would be gone.

Traveller's Moon stepped sideways.

The journey started in the Borders, as it always did. Not to the Sanctuary this time, for Grandfather had said to go alone and not to speak to anyone. When running errands, Traveller's Moon always did as he was told. Then, up a bit, and through and squeezing a little so as not to be seen, in to the first place through which he must pass.

Green grass and the smell of salt. Traveller's Moon had never seen the sea. He had only ever seen dust and scrub and hard, tough bushes. The sky was endless, vast and blue, but not the blue to which he was accustomed at home. This blue was deep, aching, his eyes seemed to swell and sigh with the movement of breath in his body, the blue filling them, the breath of the world entering his body through his vision of the sky.

It was so big.

Traveller's Moon tore his gaze away from that sky and looked about him. A section of the Dreaming, this. He could taste it, feel it in the subtle sussuration and vibration against his skin. A Dream of a Memory. Its song breathed against his hair and his lips. A Raven Dream. The green of the grass also threatened to overwhelm him. Each colour a deeply felt emotion that was too alien for him to experience. He shifted, instinctively, shaking himself out into feathers and beak. Claws grasped the handle of the basket. Raven eyes saw the world differently, saw the story behind the memory, the words of the song, and thus could see the doorway to the next stage.

Wyrm dreams. Traveller's Moon retained his feathered form as he passed up and out through a pinpoint of blue. Inside he was cold and shaking, trembling with fear. No form he could take would allow him to comprehend the vastness of this place. No shape he knew would protect against the cold. The fastness of space, echoing and empty, stole through the quills of his feathers and the hardness of his beak, invading his eyes and his heart. The loneliness that came of being incapable of untruth. Traveller's Moon now knew why Raven did not create the World, and also why the AllFather paid no attention to him saying that he had.

Traveller's Moon wanted to cry out, but Grandfather had said not to speak to anyone, and in this place the AllFather heard everything. How was he to pass through here? In the blindness and incapacity of total imperception, he did not know how to move, how to speak, how to be.

The fastness changed, slowly, in the way rocks move in time. A stream of consciousness. The warmth surprised Traveller's Moon, a single ray of sunshine on a blind man's face, carried by an almost imperceptible breeze.

"Child." That was all. And a dog howling in the distance. Then Traveller's Moon was quaking and trembling on some grass, damp and naked, cold to the marrow but with the memory of something unfathomably warm in the depths of the cold. His raven form had gone, but the basket was still with him.

Now by foot. An arduous trek, but he knew that he did not have to go back the way he had come. Finding his way home was much easier than finding his way to his current destination. Still naked, and cold, Traveller's Moon picked up the basket and began to walk.

After a short time he came to the outskirts of a small village. He recognised the style of the houses, decided that the likely inhabitants would at least be people like himself, and hoped that none of them would see him. He walked on, a little hurriedly, looking up at the hazy sky to see what time of day it was, hoping that all would still be sleeping.

Just as he passed the village and it was dropping out of sight behind a rise in the land behind him, a voice spoke from a tree on his left.

"A long way from home, boy." A raven hopped down and stared at him. It was not Grandfather, although Traveller's Moon heart jumped and startled at the voice. "And naked. You have seen things you should not see. Do you yet live?"

Traveller's Moon could not answer. He had been bound not to.

"What's your name, boy? Which one are you? I know to whom you belong, of course. But which one?"

Traveller's Moon still could not answer. He stood, unable to move, still shivering.

"Do you know where you are going?" the raven demanded. Traveller's Moon felt pressure in his head. He did not know exactly where he was going. He knew only that he must walk the last part, and he had been walking in the way his mind had been pointing. He did not know, could not think.

Traveller's Moon opened his mouth to speak, unable to help himself, then caught a glint in the raven's eye. He shut his mouth again and looked at the bird more carefully. There was something not quite right about it. It was almost as if Raven was pretending to be a raven pretending to be Raven.

"Very well," the bird said. "Follow me."

It launched itself into the sky and glided on ahead, and Traveller's Moon followed it.

After another long walk, during which they passed several people who looked through Traveller's Moon blankly as if they could not see him, although they took steps to avoid bumping into him, they left the track, joined a barely worn path that crossed the moor and left all sign of the people behind. Traveller's Moon was very, very cold, and he wanted to wrap himself in the blanket, but he knew, somehow, that the blanket was not for him. His feet hurt and were bleeding, and he was hungry and tired and frightened. Thoughts kept running through his mind of what he might meet at the end. He felt the vast Dream of the AllFather still seeping through him. He wanted to go home, knew he could, with a thought. Knew that he could be anywhere he chose, that he knew, with a mere change of will. Knew that he could be anywhere else and be able to be warm and to stop and to have his feet fixed and be soothed and comforted.

Only he could not really, for he had been charged with a task. So Traveller's Moon walked on, following the raven.

Eventually Traveller's Moon realised that he could smell the same salty air that he had smelled in the first place, the Raven Dream. His heart quickened. He had not trusted himself to look at Raven's dream of the sea, but now he would be able to see it, to be near it. He walked faster, felt brighter, and his feet no longer felt sore as he crossed moorland grass past gorse bushes and bent and twisted trees.

There, at the edge. The beginnings of the place he sought. The raven alighted on a rock and looked at him.

"There is a path over there, boy. You will have to wait. The tide is high, the currents fierce. When she begins to pull back, you will not have long. A few hours. Be quick in your search. Do not hesitate."

With that, the raven seemed to settle down and go to sleep.

Traveller's Moon could not sleep. He was too cold, did not want to lie on the damp grass with nothing to protect his skin. The remaining humming of The AllFather's Dreaming was preventing him from assuming a more comfortable form, and Traveller's Moon thought that this was, perhaps, necessary. A distant melody of something yet to come, echoed in his actions now.

Instead he approached the edge of the cliff with great caution and looked over the edge. A wave smashed against the rock, sending spray flying up into his face. He retreated rapidly, surprised, then slowly edged his way back, tasting the mineral salts on his damp lips. The crashing of the water against the cliff sounded like the beating of a immense heart, a deep thudding boom. The whisper of the waves peeling back from the rock sounded like thousands of ghostly voices, or perhaps a sighing breath. The smell was sharp, penetrating. He felt the very essence of the sea, captured in the air so close to the water, condensing against his bare skin. He was enraptured and also terrified by the enormity of it.

In response to the age old pull of the moon and sun, the sea began to move back from the cliff. Slowly a small strip of sand was revealed, and strewn black rocks with sand between them. The sea still sucked and gurled in patterns of white and green where larger rocks, black and glistening, jutted out from the sand.

The raven had gone, and so Traveller's Moon walked along the cliff edge until he found a crumbling and treacherous path downwards. Mindful of his Grandmother's basket, which he wished to return undamaged, Traveller's Moon picked his way towards the sand.

Something stopped him walking into the sea. Some uneasy, unknown fear, as if it could do him great harm, and so he started searching immediately. He looked amongst the rocks, brushed sand aside, peered under clumps of seaweed. He found many shells, but no clamshells. He found bits of dead crab, a decaying seagull, shiny stones still sparkling from being wet, the skeleton of a very large fish, a glass bottle, scratched and turned irridescent by age. But no clam shells.

Traveller's Moon searched and searched. He looked in holes and ventured close to the sea edge to see if it was there. He stuck sticks in the sand to see if he could find one that way. Finally, with the sea starting to come back in, he began to climb across the rock piles, making his feet bleed even more, wincing as salt entered the broken flesh and barnacles scraped more skin.

Then, in a sandy inlet amongst the rocks, some distance from the path from where he had come, he found it. No ordinary clamshell this. With both arms outstretched he could just about reach from one side to the other, and Traveller's Moon was the tall, skinny sort. The hinge was a deep, deep black, and it looked very old. It lay in the sand, the sea already encroaching against it, the hinge facing away from the shore. It was firmly closed, and Traveller's Moon could not see how to open it. He had only the basket and the blanket.

He approached it with some sense of awe. There was something very special about this clamshell. He could see some of the same colours of the Raven Dream in the patterns upon it, and the glistening black of the hinge reminded him of the AllFather's Dreaming. With trembling hand he reached forward and touched it, just to feel it, and to his astonishment it opened.

He leaped back, lost his balance, scrabbling, wet sand and water against his skin. Inside were things that could not be human but looked like they were. Demons, he thought, masquerading as children.

Inside the shell were two babies. They wriggled and kicked a little, the movements revealing that they were still attached to the umbilicus, and that the umbilicus joined them together. One of them started to mewl, faintly, but quickly settled. Identical facial expressions of disturbance flitted past on both faces simultaneously.

Traveller's Moon quailed. He had been told to take the demons back, to take them to Grandfather, but he was not sure he could bring himself to touch them. The sea was coming in quickly, and he realised that if he did not take them soon they would drown. He held his breath, scooped up both in his arms, surprised at how heavy they were for such small things, and laid them in the basket. He now had a use for his blanket, and wrapped it round them completely so he did not have to see them on the way back.

As the sea began to lap against his feet, almost reaching the basket, Traveller's Moon finally was able to shift. He took raven form, grasped the basket by the handle, and flew immediately to Grandfather's house. He did not want to be near the demons longer than he had to be.

It was impolite to visit Grandfather in raven form, so Traveller's Moon returned to his man shape when he arrived. He knocked on the door and went in to the kitchen. Grandfather was sitting contemplatively by the window smoking a pipe. From the feel of the place, Raven had been recently and had only left shortly before Traveller's Moon had arrived.

"Ah, there you are boy," Grandfather said. Traveller's Moon had clothed himself on shifting back to his man shape, but he was still cold, and gratefully accepted the mug of hot liquid that Grandfather pressed into his hand without comment or interest. "Set the basket on the table."

Traveller's Moon did so, uncomfortable that he could not yet leave. He stood several paces behind Grandfather as the Old Man unwrapped the bundle in the basket. To Traveller's Moon's surprise, he was smiling affectionately. He could not see how he could do that in the presence of demons.

"These are not demons, boy. They are your siblings. Very new, these two."

Traveller's Moon saw that Grandfather had a ball of twine on the table, and watched as he took an old, horn handled penknife from his pocket. With gnarled hands and infinite gentleness, he grasped the umbilicus and cut it.

Both babies screamed together, the same pitch, the same sound, the same abrupt, piercing terror and pain. One voice, one mind, that gradually faltered and split into two separate wailings. Traveller's Moon stood with white face in shock at what he had felt from the two infants and watched as Grandfather tied off the bleeding ends of the umbilicus and made them tidy. The babies continued to wail, kicking wildly, until, accidentally, their hands touched and instinctively grasped. The wailing subsided into distressed mewling. Grandfather tucked the blanket back around them.

"Now boy, take your brother and sister to your Father. He is waiting for them. You will see them soon enough, if you wish."

Grandfather gave the basket back to Traveller's Moon. He carried it, with shocked reverence and continued discomfort, to Raven, who was waiting for him in an old farmhouse. Traveller's Moon handed over the basket and never, ever, saw the two infants again.

But sometimes, in Autumn, when the nights were cold, he would dream of them.