World of Warcraft

by Steve Danuser

  Onaaka was one of the people who wanted to help with the tow. Taruka allowed this and did not boast to him about her catch. He watched very quietly from his boat, with an expression on his face she’d never seen before. Then, just loud enough for her to hear, Onaaka said, “That is a good … a very good catch.”

  The catch masters of all the clans who had gathered in Kamagua were waiting along the jetty. Behind them were dozens and dozens of tuskarr, all come to see a fable come to life. Taruka saw Makusha and Unka and waved. Everyone waved back.

  Taruka lifted a foot onto the blowhole rim and climbed up, holding the mast. She looked down at the catch masters, singling out Kattik. He looked smaller somehow.

  “So, Kattik!” proclaimed Taruka Beastkiller, as she was already being called. “I do not think whatever this is has gills or gill rot. How many knots for my catch?”

  he night I stole the Wailing Bone, I waited until the rest of the caravan was asleep, lying in my bedroll and pretending not to hear the steady drip, drip, drip of water on the wagon canvas. My parents snored at one end of the wagon, their whiskers fluttering with every breath. They slept with their backs turned to each other, their large, soft tails curled angrily away, pulled tight against their bodies. They’d fought again, just like they had every night for the past few weeks.

  I slid free of my blanket and crept past my pile of sleeping younger siblings, careful not to wake them. There were five of them, all still kits, with giant paws and oversize, pointed ears. Looking at them made my heart hurt. As the eldest, just a year shy of adulthood, I spent much of my time watching over them. Even now, in the dark, they looked exhausted. No one had slept well in ages, not with the constant sound of dripping water in our ears.

  When I parted the linen flaps and gazed up at the sky, it was clear and bright with stars. The desert sand beneath the wagon was dry.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  My ears twitched.

  The wet, persistent sound followed me to Elder Kulen’s wagon, which rested at the head of the caravan. It was easy to quietly undo one of the heavy side flaps, now more patchwork than hide, and even easier to slip inside. As Elder Kulen shifted listlessly in her sleep, I padded toward the carved wooden trunk along the far wall. Most objects in the caravan had multiple functions, shifting easily between uses. This trunk was a rare exception, crafted for only one purpose. Gently, slowly, I lifted the lid.

  There, nestled in a bed of gauzy fabric, lay the Wailing Bone. Our caravan’s only heirloom, older than the oldest wagon. It was the length of my forearm, as thick around as my wrist. Its surface was carved with an ancient poem, written in a script that few vulpera could read but all could recite by heart:

  Wander, roam; bring me home,

  Down paths at my behest;

  Among the stones, lay down my bones,

  So I, at last, may rest.

  As I looked at the Wailing Bone, my stomach twisted. Not even the dark could hide the fact that the Wailing Bone had been snapped in half. The two halves had been pushed together, but there was an ugly, jagged crack between them.

  Elder Kulen snorted, and I froze, my paws hovering over the wooden chest. But she rolled over, lightly snoring, and I was able to breathe again. I leaned in and, after a moment’s hesitation, touched the bone.

  The gentle, persistent dripping was gone, and suddenly I was being sucked under a river’s surface, the breath ripped from my lungs. My head was filled with the roar of rushing water. My throat closed up. I fought to breathe, choking on nothing. I felt as though clawed hands gripped my shoulders from behind, and a phantom voice snarled in my ear:

  NO REST. NEVER REST.

  I managed to yank my paw away. The moment I did, the chilling grasp vanished, and the roaring sound was gone. In its place was the soft drip, drip, drip that had followed the caravan for the past month. I shuddered. Clearly, handling the bone was a bad idea. But tonight was already full of bad ideas. What was one more?

  I carefully avoided touching the Wailing Bone again as I rolled its halves up in their gauzy cloth. I shoved the parcel down my shirt and slid back out of the wagon. From there, I snuck a riding hyena—my hyena, Isha—and her tack out of the dens, and together we loped across the sands, out into the wilderness of Vol’dun.

  The dripping sound continued to echo in my ears, even as the caravan grew small in the distance. Beneath my shirt, the Wailing Bone knocked against my ribs like a warning.

  No one believed in the Wailing Bone, not really. It was a silly tale told to kits, the kind of tradition that adults played along with to make the caravan elders feel important.

  Elder Rivu was the first to tell me the story of the Wailing Bone, back when I was little. “The first vulpera was born from the desert’s magic,” he said, crouched before the campfire with all the young ones gathered close. Rivu’s story times were a highlight of a childhood spent on the road. Sometimes he would even do shadow puppets with his claws. “Our people roam all our lives, but when we die, the desert calls our bodies back to where we began. To help our spirits find the end of their journey beyond the veil, we follow the Wailing Bone.”

  “Follow it where?” my favorite cousin, Siy, piped up. He was two years older than me, already starting to grow gangly, while I remained short as a barrel cactus. We would wrestle and laugh and play as often as we could. Siy was clever and mischievous in a way that I aspired to be, and I was glued to his side like a shadow.

  Rivu smiled kindly. He had led the caravan for decades, guiding us safely through the Vol’dun desert. “We go wherever the Wailing Bone guides us, Siy. Sometimes the journey takes a day. Sometimes it might take weeks. The journey is hard and takes great patience, but when the Wailing Bone begins to Afe cry, we know we’ve found our loved one’s final resting place. Someday, it will be your turn to hold the Wailing Bone and send my spirit home.”

  “What if the bone doesn’t cry?” I asked quietly. Both Rivu and Siy glanced at me. I didn’t speak up often, but this time I raised my voice. “Do we have to wander forever?”

  “I hope not, Hava,” Rivu replied, amused. The campfire cast rippling light across the sand, reflecting in his bright eyes. “Forever is a very long time.”

  “You’re late,” Siy hissed. My cousin waited for me at the edge of the canyon, gripping the reins of his hyena. His paranoid gaze darted past me as if he expected to see the rest of our caravan hot on my heels. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his golden fur was ragged. Siy was usually vain about his fur, but he looked like he’d gone tracking prey across the dunes for a week and had forgotten to bring a comb.

  To be fair, I knew I didn’t look much better. Lack of sleep made me feel slow and stupid. “If you’re so pressed for time, maybe you should have stolen the Wailing Bone,” I snapped, hopping off Isha’s back. The sand underfoot was cool. At night, the desert heat gave way to cold stone and dry winds. It was the best time to travel when speed mattered more than safety.

  Siy approached. “Did you get it?” he asked in a low voice.

  I pulled out the cloth-wrapped package. Siy seized the Wailing Bone and began to tear at the cloth. “Siy, wait,” I said, trying to grab his arm, but he shook me off. “Siy! Don’t touch it! It’s—”

  The moment Siy grabbed the Wailing Bone, his eyes flew open wide. A strangled scream left his mouth, but it sounded wrong: garbled, like he was howling underwater. His body froze up, claws curved in a rictus around the bone. I tried to shake him, but he didn’t move.

  There was no time to think. I slammed into Siy with my shoulder, knocking us both to the sand. The Wailing Bone flew past us, its two broken ends bouncing in opposite directions.

  “The journey is hard and tafees great patience, but when the Wailing Bone begins to cry, we know we’ve found our loved one’s final resting place.”

  Siy gasped for breath, rolling over on his stomach. He struggled to his hands and knees and vomited a torrent of water onto the ground. It was more water than I’d ever seen Siy drink in one si
tting, or even a day. It poured out of him like a river, studded with little pebbles and silt. Finally, with one last heave, the water ran dry. There were a handful of tiny silver fish, minnows, flopping in the mud between his front paws.

  Siy was still choking. There was something hanging from his mouth, limp and corded. I grasped it and pulled, and length after length of slimy fibers emerged from his throat. It was river grass, enough to circle my waist several times over. Fresh and wet, still vibrant green, ending in stringy, spidery roots. Siy looked at me with terror in his eyes.

  “I told you not to touch it,” I said shakily. I got to my feet and gathered the pieces of the Wailing Bone, trying to ignore the strange, awful sound of dripping water all around me, a sound with no source. The sound that had followed Siy and me home three weeks ago and never left.

  Drip. Drip. Drip.

  “We have to make the dripping stop tonight,” Siy said. His voice was hoarse. He spat on the ground, and another pebble clattered out to join the others. “I can’t keep living like this, Hava. It’s going to kill me. I can barely sleep, and when I do, I have nightmares.”

  I did too. I heard that dripping sound all hours of the day and night, wearing away at my nerves like a stream carving an indent in a cliff. I even heard it in my sleep. When I dreamed, I dreamed of water, rising up around my ears, pouring down my throat until I choked and drowned. I dreamed of Elder Rivu, his corpse soft and river-rotted, howling my name as he chased me through the desert. In those dreams, Siy ran at my side until his paws bled, gasping for air. Every morning, I woke more exhausted than the day before.

  As much as I hated to admit it, Siy was right. I used my claws to cut the soft, gauzy cloth in two strips. I wrapped one fragment of the Wailing Bone in it, covering the jagged part and creating a makeshift handle. I held it out to Siy, who stared at it like I was handing him a live snake.

  To be fair, this was worse.

  “Take it,” I said impatiently. He wrapped his fingers tentatively around the bone encased in the thinnest armor in the desert—we both held our breath.

  Slowly, Siy shook his head. Nothing. No water, no drowning, no voices.

  The tightness in my chest loosened just a bit. I quickly wrapped the other half of the Wailing Bone, holding it tightly. Its jagged, broken edge bit into my palm through the fabric.

  Together, Siy and I turned to face the canyon up ahead. It cut a giant gash into the desert, an open wound in the face of the rock. Somewhere in there, a river wound through the rocks like the crooked tail of a scorpid, glistening beneath the moon, still swollen from the spring rains.

  We left the hyenas behind and began our descent, picking a path down to the canyon’s throat. As Siy followed me, the Wailing Bone in my hand began to shiver.

  Elder Rivu had been right about one thing. When he’d passed away, the caravan had entrusted Siy and me with the Wailing Bone. Since Rivu had no kin and we were on the cusp of adulthood, we had been tasked with carrying the bone at the head of the caravan. We perched on the driver’s seat of Rivu’s wagon and traded off Wailing Bone duty, pointing it out toward the desert and slowly moving it back and forth, ears cocked for the slightest hint of a sound.

  At first, it was exciting. It was our first time seeing the Wailing Bone outside its shroud, and the responsibility made me feel important. But no matter where or how far our caravan roamed, the bone refused to cry. Everyone was exhausted and impatient, including Siy and me, our arms achy from holding them outstretched for weeks. Elder Rivu’s body lay behind us in his wagon, wrapped in an oiled canvas sheet with desert flowers and herbs, slowly decomposing in the blistering heat. The smell was awful, try as the plants might to dispel it.

  When a flash flood struck, sweeping through the dry, cracked land, I half hoped it would sweep Rivu’s wagon away too. No such luck; our wagons were sturdy and cunningly made, able to withstand the torrent of water. I’d never resented them more.

  When I voiced my complaints to Siy, he narrowed his eyes in consideration. “There’s a canyon not far from here,” he said. “The riverbed’s usually dry, but the flash flood will have filled it up. If we put Rivu’s body in the river, the current will do our job for us. It’ll probably carry him to his final resting place, and no one will be the wiser.”

  I glanced back at the closed wagon flap, dread and hope building in my chest. “The bone will know.”

  “Will it?” Siy countered. “It’s a bone. We don’t even know if it works.” I must not have looked convinced, because he drew himself up, his tufted ears pointed forward. His fluffy tail flicked arrogantly behind him. “Look, Hava. Even if the river can’t take him to the right spot, it’ll still carry his body downstream every rain. It’ll trick the Wailing Bone into thinking he’s still wandering with the caravan, searching for his resting place. Trust me, it’s brilliant.”

  Of course I trusted him. Clever Siy was always right, even when he wasn’t. I had my doubts about his plan, but I was so tired of wandering the desert, and I just wanted to be done. I’d spent my whole life following Siy, so I followed him to the canyon that night with Elder Rivu’s body strapped to my saddle. Only the stars witnessed us haul him to the river’s edge and throw him over.

  But the moment Elder Rivu’s body hit the water, the Wailing Bone screamed. This was no low, wrenching sob; it was a horrible, piercing sound that tore through me, standing my fur on end. Siy and I turned just in time to see the Wailing Bone crack in half. Our caravan’s precious heirloom lay in two pieces on the riverbank, its halves aimed at us like accusatory fingers.

  The rest of that night was a blur. I remember scrambling back to the caravan, telling my parents that we’d followed the Wailing Bone to Elder Rivu’s resting place on our own, that we’d buried him out among the bluffs. Siy made a big show of explaining how we’d done it for the good of our kin, seeing how tired they all were from our long journey. I remember wrapping the broken Wailing Bone up tightly and stuffing it back into its trunk. The rest of the caravan sighed with relief, and we all laid down for a well-deserved rest. But the quiet comfort of night would be lost to us when the slow, malevolent sound of dripping water began. No one could find its source or make it stop.

  Only Siy and I knew that our crime had followed us home.

  Tonight, things would be different. Tonight, we were going to fix everything.

  I stared at the back of Siy’s head as we followed the familiar path into the canyon. I was so tired that it was hard to focus; I gritted my teeth and kept my eyes on my cousin.

  The canyon’s red sandstone walls rose up around us as we approached the river’s edge. Another flash flood had washed through the canyon recently, and the water level was still high. I lifted the tip of my Wailing Bone fragment and pointed it at the water. “Did you feel that, Siy?”

  He glanced at me, one ear swiveling back. “What?”

  “The bone hummed when we got near the water.” I stepped closer to the river, just short of the shoreline. Even from here, the current looked deadly fast. Was it fast enough to rip an abandoned body from the riverbed and wash it downstream? “Come here and listen.”

  Siy came to join me, waving his piece of the Wailing Bone slowly over the river like a dowsing rod. “I don’t hear anything,” he said, gazing out toward the rocks on the other side. “I don’t think my half of the Wailing Bone is making any noise.”

  Of course it wasn’t. Neither was mine. I gripped my side of the Wailing Bone with both paws and stepped up behind him, out of his line of sight. Then I swung as hard as I could.

  The Wailing Bone smashed into Siy’s head with an ugly crunch. He crumpled to the ground, gasping. I stood over my cousin, gazing down at his face. My closest friend. The one who had come up with the plan to throw Elder Rivu in the river and, in doing so, had cursed us all.

  “Hava,” Siy gasped.

  “Don’t,” I said shakily. I raised the bone and slammed it down again. Siy was bigger than me, but by the time I was done, he couldn’t move. He couldn
’t even fight as I grabbed him under the arms and dragged him into the river.

  He did fight me when I pushed him beneath the surface, his bloodied claws scrabbling at my wrists. But I pressed the Wailing Bone against his throat and shoved him deeper into the water. My arms burned and tears poured down my face, but I held on. It felt like forever until the frantic bubbles stopped and Siy went quiet.

  When I let go, Siy’s body should have floated. Instead, it sank quietly into the water, his blank eyes staring up at me until they disappeared into the depths. I stood panting, waist-deep in the river, trying not to cry or throw up. I held both ends of the quiet Wailing Bone, one in each hand. For the first time in ages, I didn’t hear the dripping sound—and even more powerful than the guilt and horror in my heart was my utter sense of relief.

  “There!” I screamed. “Are you satisfied? Are you satisfied? It was all his idea! Take him and leave us alone!”

  For a moment, there was silence.

  And then the Wailing Bone laughed.

  Claws grabbed my ankles and yanked me off my feet. I plunged beneath the surface of the water, flailing; something else caught my wrist, and a pale, wizened face pushed into my vision. Elder Rivu, bloated from three weeks underwater, bared his teeth at me. I tried to scream, but all I got was a mouthful of water.

  The halves of the Wailing Bone burned in my paws. For generations, your caravan has given themselves to me. I could hear its voice in my head, clear as the air after a rainstorm. It was the same one I’d heard when I’d lifted it from the trunk, mere hours and yet a lifetime ago. They performed their duty—I know how burdensome it is. In return, I granted their spirits peace. I found their journeys’ end. Thousands of vulpera followed my cries, but you abandoned your elder and left him in this river, where his body can never know rest, fighting alone against the current.