Split Feather

by Deborah A. Wolf

  On the second day… probably… after a cold breakfast and hot tea, Grandma said she was going hunting. When she made the announcement, I opened my mouth to ask—hunting what? And how? And—but she gave me such a look that I found myself shutting up and washing the dishes instead.

  Seriously, don’t mess with Grandma. She took her walking stick and Mister Fuzzykins, of whom I was growing rather fond, not that there was a lot of company in the Underworld to choose from. She was gone all day—or at least, she was gone until the dreary pale sky was a dreary dark sky—and I was bored. So I poked around her hut a bit. There wasn’t anything too obviously weird or mysterious, besides a pretty good stash of fuzzy socks, a flask of very good whiskey—I stole a sip or three, you bet I did—and a cheap golden locket with a curl of dark hair inside. When I found that last bit of treasure, shame rolled over me like hot steam.

  This was my grandma, and she’d saved my life, or my afterlife, or whatever, and here I was poking through her things like a common thief. I put the locket back on its little shelf and decided to quit being an asshole.

  Besides, I had my own treasure hidden away, didn’t I? I peered out the window to make sure Grandma was really gone. I opened the door and stuck my head out, just to be doubly sure. Old women can be full of tricks and surprises, you know, and one can never be too careful. I didn’t feel like explaining to her where the golden collar had come from, or why I’d kept it hidden. I just wanted a look. Just a short look, and then I’d put it away again. It was mine now, wasn’t it?

  Lifting the corner of my heavy bedding I slipped my hand beneath it, and a thrill of anticipation tingled from my fingertips to my heart when I felt the touch of cool gold. Just a quick look. I drew my treasure out, wincing as a splinter drove into my finger. Then I sat on my bed, feeling more like a magpie than a raven, holding my treasure cupped in both hands. I admired the warm golden glow of the collar, the shape of it, the weight in my hands.

  It wasn’t a collar, not really, I thought… stiff and solid, a torc, maybe. Made all of gold, as far as I could tell, it was thicker than my thumb, braided and twisted, and the ends were capped with two finely wrought bears’ heads roaring at each other, their ruby-chip eyes glittering and fierce. It was a beautiful thing, precious, and it glowed warm and cunning in the firelight.

  I wondered how you’d put such a thing around your neck. The opening was so small. I wanted to wear it, I wanted it with the same heat you’d want a good kiss to turn into something more, but it obviously wasn’t meant for me. Nothing so fine, I reminded myself, would ever be for me.

  But oh, I wished it could be.

  The door banged open, and I stuffed the torc back under the edge of my bedding. Grandma staggered in, arms full of white fur, long hair flying everywhere. She was bleeding profusely from a scalp wound, her parka was torn all along one side, and she was kind of hopping one foot forward as if she couldn’t put much weight on it. I stood so quickly that I almost brained myself on the low ceiling.

  “Grandma—”

  “Shut the door!”

  “Are you—”

  “Shut the door!” she yelled again. “Shut the door!” She hobbled over to the table, dropped the bundle of fur on it, and collapsed into a chair. “Shut the fucking door!”

  Something slammed against the side of the hut, and I heard Mister Fuzzykins barking, or bellowing or roaring or whatever you’d call that noise, and the window rattled as something tried to beat its way through the walls. Wings, my mind gibbered at me, giant goddamn wings…

  I shut the fucking door.

  The noise stopped, and eventually my heart started beating again. My hands were shaking, and I realized I had to pee, but there was no way in this hell or any other hell I was going out there. I’d pee in a teacup first.

  “Wait,” I told Grandma, “If I’m dead, how come I still have to pee?”

  She stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

  “Never mind, I know,” I sighed. “Hutlani.”

  “Hutlani,” she agreed. Then she put her head down on the table and laughed till she cried.

  I think that’s when I really started loving her.

  * * *

  Grandma let me clean her wounds up and bring her a cup of sugary tea, all with an air of amused tolerance, and then she got to work. The bundle of fur turned out to be a white bearskin—head, claws and all—not fresh-killed, but clean and sweet-smelling and tanned soft as warm butter. It wasn’t white-white like snow, or like a polar bear, but a rusty cream-white as if the animal that had worn it wasn’t supposed to be that color at all.

  Oh, and it was huuuuuge. It would have rolled off the table and onto the floor, probably all the way to the walls if Grandma had let it, but she was very careful not to let any of it touch the floor. Neither would she let me help, but sweated and muttered under the weight of it, favoring her bad leg.

  “What happened to your—”

  “Twisted my ankle,” she snapped, slapping my hands away when I tried to take her torn parka. “Quit, now! I’m busy.”

  “Never meddle in the affairs of Grandma, for she is grumpy and quick to swat you,” I muttered, and heated water for my own tea. I pretended I didn’t feel the look she shot me.

  When she had arranged the skin to her satisfaction, fur side down, paws and head all rolled in toward the middle, she limped over to her corner of the room. For a moment she hesitated, and then scowled at me over her shoulder as she picked up a little wooden box.

  “Nosy, aren’t you?”

  “I was bored.” I shrugged, and felt my cheeks flush hot. “I’m sorry.”

  Her raised brows and flattened lips told me I hadn’t heard the last of that. She opened the box and took out a spruce needle. The one I’d stolen from Puyuk, I guessed, though it still didn’t look special to me. If it really was a soul, shouldn’t it have looked, I dunno, sparkly or something?

  Then again, Grandma had said this was my soul. I probably should have been happy that it wasn’t all black and shriveled.

  She held my spruce-needle soul cupped in her hand, and blew on it, and then she put it in the middle of the bearskin and…

  That was it. She turned away, shrugged off her parka and then hobbled closer to the fire. Held the torn parts up to her face, muttering and scowling.

  “Bring me my needles and floss,” she said, and plopped her bony old butt down into her chair. I fetched her sewing basket, shaking my head. Dental floss in the Underworld.

  “Grandma?”

  “Hm?” she responded. “Thread this for me, would you?” I stabbed the floss through the needle’s round eye on like my fourth try, and handed it back to her.

  “What’s that… what’re you… are you done with whatever you were doing there?” I gestured vaguely toward the bearskin and the spruce needle, fully expecting her to tell me hutlani.

  “Course it’s not done,” she said, and she sighed a long deep sigh that came from the bones. Her face looked old—well, she always looked old, you know, but just then she looked, I dunno. Frail. Tired. Older. “It’s got to sit for a while so your soul gets used to the idea of being alive again.” Curious, I edged over for a closer look.

  “Ah-ah,” she scolded. “You stay away from that, now! Don’t you be touching it yet, or you’ll scare it away, maybe for good this time.” I gave the skin and the spruce needle a dubious look, but edged back away.

  “Do we need to do anything?” I asked. “We just let it sit like that? It seems so, I don’t know… anticlimactic.”

  “We don’t have to do anything.” She chuckled. “You go to bed.”

  “You should go to bed, too, Grandma. You look tired.” And I felt myself blushing again, though I couldn’t have said why. I was really bad at this people stuff. But she looked at me, really looked at me, and I saw it there. It was like looking at a hundred-year-old painting of the woods, a painting that you’d looked at every day of your life, and noticing for the first time that a bear was peeking out from behind one o
f the trees.

  It was a shock, a shift.

  “I love you, too, Siggy,” she said, and her voice was soft as old leather. “Now go to bed. You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

  I did. I went and lay down.

  She started singing.

  Bye, Baby Bunting

  Grandma’s gone a-hunting

  To fetch a pretty grizzly skin

  To wrap my little Siggy in…

  On the third day, the Giyeg came. I know it was the third day because she’d promised, and she’d come. A Giyeg never breaks a promise, though the promise she makes and the promise you hear might not be quite the same thing.

  On the third day, the Giyeg came.

  And all Hell broke loose.

  31

  When I saw the Giyeg, terror dripped down my spine like meltwater. Nope, I wasn’t used to this whole afterlife-and-monsters thing yet. As we stood outside of the hut, her wide nostrils flared and she smiled at me, displaying her tusks.

  That wasn’t all she was displaying, either.

  “Aren’t you cold?” I asked.

  She glanced down at her nudity and shrugged. “This flesh keeps me as warm as any.”

  I blinked. “So that’s not your…”

  Yellow sheened across her eyes, her smile widened. She hadn’t been displaying her full set of teeth before, after all, and I decided that I really, really did not want to know any more about the Giyeg.

  “Whatever.” I tossed my hair, just to show how scared I wasn’t. Nope, I had absolutely no desire to run screaming. Didn’t have the sudden urge to pee, either. Nope. “Did you bring the, ah, the weapon?”

  Her smile disappeared. “Do you doubt me, human?” Mister Fuzzykins lifted his heads and growled, and the Giyeg lolled her red tongue at him. “This does not concern you, pet.”

  I held up both hands—yeah, this was me, pleading for peace, but I did not want to get caught between these two.

  “We’re cool. I don’t doubt you.” And I didn’t. I didn’t doubt for one minute that she’d strip the flesh from my bones and eat me like bacon if she had the chance.

  The Giyeg stared at Mister Fuzzykins for a moment longer, but when he didn’t move she leered and reached both hands up, arching her back and displaying her fine rack of ribs as she dug both clawed hands into her hair. Damn, she was skinny.

  “You need to eat more,” I told her.

  “Are you volunteering?”

  “No.”

  “Then be silent.” She pulled her hands free, and held them out to me. Balanced upon the palms of her hands was a weapon unlike any I’d ever seen. She looked down at it fondly, and then shifted her sly eyes toward me, waiting for a reaction.

  It was a knife, a beautiful knife chipped from… opal maybe? Pale and cloudy and brilliant, as if it held the northern lights trapped within its stone heart. The handle had been fashioned from the fish-jaw comb, and it looked as if the whole thing had been tied together with a braided strand of silver. It was a pretty thing, I guess, but the blade itself was no longer than the palm of my hand, and so delicate. This was a weapon fit for a hero? I had expected something… well, more.

  “Is that Puyuk’s hair?” I tried not to sound horrified. I tried very hard not to say, You have got to be fuckin’ kidding me.

  “Hair of the witch,” the Giyeg agreed. “Does it satisfy?” Danger licked between her words like dark flame. Mister Fuzzykins growled again, but she ignored him.

  “Yyyyess,” I said dubiously, slipping one hand free from its mitten and forcing it to reach for the knife. It didn’t obey me at first, perhaps remembering that the last time I shook hands with the Giyeg she’d turned me into a foul-mouthed bird. “It’s just, ah, not what I expected.”

  She held the knife above my hand, and her face shone with such unholy glee that I knew, I knew to the core of my heart that I’d been right. This was so not a good idea.

  “Well then, human.” The Giyeg grinned and clacked her tusks at me. “You should have been more specific.”

  And she was gone, like that, between one breath and the next, just gone. The knife seemed to hover a moment midair, as if it were no more sure of me than I was of it, and then it dropped smack into my outstretched palm. I flinched back, waiting to be burned, or doomed, or turned into a raven maybe, but nothing happened. The knife was heavier than I’d expected, but it felt… ordinary.

  I stared at it and frowned.

  “Well, huh,” I said at last. “That was easy.”

  “Wuhurrrrf,” agreed Mister Fuzzykins.

  And then my grandmother screamed.

  * * *

  I crashed through the door of the hut, knocking it half off its hinges and holding that ridiculous knife in front of me—as if it would be of any use against anything that could make my tough-as-roots grandmother scream like that. What could possibly threaten the woman who kept Mister Fuzzykins as a pet? What monster in the Underworld could possibly be horrible enough to make her cry?

  It was me, of course. I’d been the monster all along.

  Mister Fuzzykins had completely lost his shit. He was freaking out, trying to bust through the doorway from outside, and howling like… well, like a hound from Hell, as he tried to get to Grandma.

  She was kneeling on the floor beside my bedding, curled around the object she clutched to her chest, rocking back and forth and keening in pain. I saw a glint of gold and my first thought was that the collar had been a trick, a trap, a weapon that I’d been meant to take all along, and now it had hurt her. I should have known better, I should have known.

  I can’t love anybody without destroying them.

  “Grandma!” I shouted. “Grandma, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?” I was at her side, tugging on her clothes, wishing with all my heart—like a stupid little kid—that she would magically be okay. If she would only stand up she’d be okay, we’d hug, we’d have a cup of tea together, and laugh about how I’d broken down the door over such a silly little thing.

  But she didn’t get up.

  “Where did you get this, Siggy?” she cried from the heart, holding the golden collar out. An accusation. A condemnation. Like a death sentence for both of us. “Where did you get this?”

  “I… it was… at Puyuk’s,” I stammered. “This girl, I think she was a slave…”

  “LUCY,” she screamed, raw and torn, and the sound brought tears to my eyes. “Lucy! She has my Lucy!”

  Then it hit me…

  …Lucy…

  Lucy.

  My mother.

  I staggered and fell to my knees beside my grandmother; I reached for her but she shoved me away, screaming in grief and rage.

  I met her, I thought, numb. I met my mother.

  Grandma stiffened, her eyes went wide, her mouth opened in a surprised “o” and her back arched, and then she toppled over onto her side. The golden collar slipped from her fingers and rolled away. I snatched it up, not thinking, not feeling, shaking from head to toe.

  I’d met my mother, and I hadn’t even known it was her.

  The hut shook.

  I’d met my mother, and I’d left her behind. I’d left her to die.

  A shelf fell from the wall, spilling its contents. The table toppled sideways and I grabbed at it, remembering how Grandma had been so adamant that the bear’s skin not touch the ground. “It will stain your soul,” she had explained, which was no explanation at all. Grandma was curled on the floor, and her eyes were closed. She was asleep, just asleep, and she was frowning.

  I dropped the Giyeg’s knife and reached for Grandma, but my fingers just brushed her back. She was too far away. I couldn’t save them both.

  A chunk of ceiling broke loose and fell, an explosion of dirt and ice and wood, and it put out the fire.

  I couldn’t save them both.

  Mister Fuzzykins howled.

  I let go of the table, felt it fall away from my grasp. Let my soul fall onto the floor, staining it forever, and reached for my grandma instead.

&n
bsp; I couldn’t save them both.

  In the end, I couldn’t save any of us. The hut collapsed, the world went dark, and I died.

  Again.

  32

  A wild howling filled the air—the choking, smoking, blood-thick air—and the world shuddered in fear. I shuddered with it, wondering what new horror was about to be unleashed. Whatever was coming, I no doubt deserved it. Only I could go to Hell and make things worse.

  The ground shuddered a bit and pressed closer. Dirt ground against one cheek, fell into my eye, and I reached to wipe it away… or tried to. My arms were pinned by my sides. That jolted me awake, and I screamed in panic.

  One of the mothers, when I was quite young, used to tell me that some night she’d come in while I was sleeping and smother me with a pillow. I suffered from insomnia for years, terrified that I’d go to sleep and never wake up. When I did sleep, I’d dream of being smothered, drowned, buried alive.

  I coughed, and spat blood and dirt, and screamed again. The dirt shifted—I shifted—as a great weight pressed down on me, collapsing the small pocket of air in front of my face, crushing me. The earth pinning my legs buckled and heaved, and some thing, some monster, clamped its jaws about my lower legs. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t even squeeze out one final scream. I was done. The thing’s teeth dug into my flesh and it began to swallow me whole.

  My legs jerked and burned as the thing tugged at me, and then pulled, wrenching my arms and shoulders, tearing the exposed flesh of my hands and face as I was dragged from the grave and spat back into the Underworld.

  I was alive—or whatever—lying full upon the cold ground beside the ruins of my grandmother’s hut.

  “Whurrrrf,” Mister Fuzzykins said, and he released his hold on my legs. I sat up—not on the first try, but I sat up—and then wished I hadn’t. My everything hurt everywhere, but my heart worst of all.

  “Good dog,” I told him. Dog, thing, whatever. “Good boy, Mister Fuzzykins. Come on, we’ve got to find Grandma. Find Grandma!” I wobbled to my knees, and then to my feet. “Come on, boy. Uh… sniff. Find! Seek?” How did I tell a knitted demon-dog to look for Grandma?