It had been a long time since that wise woman, the first of their clan, had moved on to the Goddess’ world, but the younger wise woman still told her stories, and would teach them to an even younger woman someday, perhaps one that sat in front of the warm fire now. The old woman thought she might know which one, the one with hair the color of the fire’s brightest flames, who always knew the answers to the important questions, and always helped anyone she found in need of it. She would tell the girl the stories of all of the Goddess’ worlds, each one a little different from this one, from one tiny step away to so different they wouldn’t even recognize the land.
But those stories weren’t for everyone. Nor for every time.
She tucked the statue back into her top, which was made of soft deer hide, fuzzy and warm. She continued, “The world mother herself taught it to us long ago, and you must remember…”
Sssthht…..This is the story. Shh. Be quiet. Hear.
“There is a Darkness that wants to take us. Hungry and angry, it gathers wherever there is rage and war and violence from those who would take everything with the sword and the blade.” She stared out at the crowd, seeming to look each one in the eye. “This…. is why we, the people of the chalice, bury our people together, in deep beds of the earth, sleeping next to their loved ones and wrapped in our finest soft deerskin covered with beads. When we are alone, especially alone in death, that Darkness tries to get in. Tries to steal our shape and consume all the hate and pain and the energies of life.”
“The Darkness is out there.”
The children shivered at this, and some of the younger ones stifled tears. They didn’t want to seem like babies, but this was the fear that ate at their hearts and sometimes made them cry for their mothers. Even still. And would continue to do so, as long as there was life in them.
“The Darkness can take any shape, and it can bend others to its ways,” the wise woman continued. She knew that the story was scary for some of the young ones, which was why it had to be told. Because every bit of it was true. They needed to know, to stay with each other, and to avoid the places of death and war. Follow the true path of peace.
Hadn’t she fought off the shifting Darkness countless times herself, and seen a man eaten by its swarming rage? She decided to include that detail, which she didn’t always, but the Darkness felt close tonight, and the chill in the cavern where the Clans made their winter homes felt like more than the mere touch of winter.
“Once, I saw a man in his last moments of life. He was angry, and had turned away from family, away from the Clans, turned away from our ways, and as his eyes opened to see the Goddess’ light beyond, they grew black, black as the sticky pitch that pulls the largest beasts down into it, where even now you can find the bones of giants. He had turned away from the Mother’s loving arms, and so the Darkness took him.”
One of the boys in the crowd, about ten years old, scoffed at this to his neighbors, doubting any strong man would abandon the Mother. The other children next to him shushed him, pushed him, and he quieted, but the stubborn look didn’t leave his face.
The old woman smiled at the boy. She knew how to work the interruptions and pauses, and to use the gentle rise and fall of the story. The boy wiggled in his seat, uncomfortable with the attention he had craved. The Baba continued her story:
“The Darkness swarmed up the man’s legs, and his arms, and finally covered him, like a spring mud near the lake, but sticky and cold. He squirmed, and then his spirit came loose. It stayed still for a few moments and then it turned into the shape of…”
And here she stopped and crouched low to the ground, her hands touching the earth. She knew she had them all because the ones at the front had a look of fear and desire on their faces—they wanted to know what, but they were terrified, too.
She stood with one swift motion and tossed a handful of some plant that sizzled and sparked and smoked into the fire. As she did, she yelled: “A wolf!” She yelled it as loud as her voice could go, and it echoed off the cave walls. The older line of parents and unmarried adults that circled the children at the front yelled it with her, but her voice was clear and above the crowd. The smoke rose, curled around the people, and seemed for just a moment to thicken, as though it was about to form some … shape. Perhaps a wolf in the air, perhaps a snake, perhaps a bird of prey. Then it fled, slithering up into the corners, blown there by the wind and the people’s movements.
The children screamed. They screamed in fear and delight and pleasure at a story well told. Some of them had heard it before, of course. This story was told every year. They whispered it to each other sometimes, remembering. The surety of the tale made it seem less real, and they felt safer knowing that this Darkness was far away. The expected climax to the story done, the crowd broke up into the darkness beyond the fire, ready for bed, chattering and loud.
The wise woman laughed as they scattered. The brief but intense fear made them feel all the more safe afterwards, and the parents gathered up their broods, took them back to their corners where the warmth of thick mammoth hides and fuzzy elk skin waited. All families slept nearby each other, the warmth of their bodies beneath the soft hides sometimes so intense that one had to stick a foot out, uncovered, to touch the chill and cool down a sweaty sleep.
The fires were tended by older teens all night, to be sure they stayed warm but safe. If some of those teens also spent time kindling other more private fires, well, that was the way of the Goddess too, the wise woman thought as she went to her own spot. She clucked and thought of babies yet to be born, and smiled. On the way to her bedding, she paused near the opening to the clan’s large cave dwelling. The cave went way back, large enough for multiple clans to share and grow. Far back, there was a space for dried meat and gathered gourds, plants, dried berries, and nuts. An entire summer’s worth, to keep them full in the dark of winter. They would have to break the ice on the lake in front of their encampment, scoop out fish frozen and stunned by the cold there but also alive, but it was nice to have a storage area too.
In summer’s heat, they ranged widely, using hides and long wooden frames to build moveable tent dwellings as they followed the herds. But winter’s snows were fierce, and they collected supplies and settled in here by this calm lake every year, had done so as far back as anyone could remember. Her predecessor, the most powerful shaman wise woman of these Clans, had told her that the People were brought here by the Goddess herself, and told to grow the Clans in this spot. That they would be safe here, as long as they remembered. The wise woman knew of places where the worlds were out of sync, where the people didn’t remember who they were. She fought to keep this one, her world, balanced. Calm.
As she thought this, she looked out over the cold night.
Yes. There was something out there tonight. It was hungry, the way it always was.
She wasn’t afraid of it—she wasn’t afraid of anything on this side of the curtain of life—but she knew it could hurt those she protected. She reached into the small bag of herbs, special rocks, and powders that she kept on a loop around her neck and drew out a pungent-smelling bundle of plants that she lit with a flint. The smoke garlanded the opening, flying up and out of the cave, and she murmured a chant of protection over the whole area. She made a kissing motion, as though blowing kisses to everyone in the Clans. She thus blessed the people, and the animals, and the food they needed. The spell snapped into place. If you could see its energy, it would look like a sparking blue and white wall of lightning that sealed the doorway. It was her power, and it was her job to guard the doorway. As soon as the spell was active, the cold anger that wanted in flew away, an almost silent howl in its heart at being banished, yet again. Even as almost invisible as it was, the woman could hear it, just barely.
It hated the woman.
It knew her and her kind and knew they kept it away from the meat and souls and companions of anger and Darkness that it craved. Needed.
The wise woman smiled, and went back to her
own softly lined spot, close enough to the doorway to monitor it but still near the fires, too.
She knew that there were more worlds than her own, some of them nestled just a step in time away from her own. More echoes of her own decisions, branching off in either direction, people different in just the slightest way. This was the magic of the Goddess’ realms, all the rooms of her worlds interconnected. But this one, the one where she stood right now, was hers.
For tonight, all was well. The rumbles of families settling into sleep, snores of men already there, and giggles and gasping of two near the fire (who might need her services as a midwife sooner rather than later) were all musical to her, and she slept.
* * *
The Darkness, which was ancient and cold and hungry, fled the woman’s spell. They were old enemies, and the Darkness knew that it could get nowhere tonight here. Angry at the meddling, it ranged further than usual, seeking out new paths, seeking out pain and anger.
Time passed differently for this old entity, which couldn’t even remember where it had come from, only that it had always just been. It left the grounds of the mammoth hunters, moved across the lands. Moved through time.
In the meantime, the Clans grew, unhindered by the Darkness. They remembered the stories. The wise women kept the tale alive, although the new ones did not encounter the Darkness personally, and some believed it was only an old woman’s tale to scare the children by the fire into behaving. Long after the first stories, the Clans forgot the fear, moved into new patterns. The old women, though, they wrote them down in books made of soft mammoth skin. Shared them with women who copied the stories over and over and over.
Sometimes the Darkness slept, dreamless, tucked into cold lonely places. Sometimes it possessed birds or other wild small animals. It couldn’t grow bigger until it fed, and it needed to feed on pain, especially that of war. Small skirmishes kept it alive, and in the shape of a raven it picked the eyes out of the bodies of the dead lying unburied. Their souls were long gone, and the Darkness never lingered there. It knew what it needed most. It knew it couldn’t grow larger, not without more, not without companions and much stronger Darkness.
For that, it eventually felt drawn to a place further inland, away from the ocean, far away from the mountains where the Clans of the Mother ranged. It flew, a raven swirling on the coldest winds. Deeper into the forests, past pointed peaks. It squealed and sighed with delight when it finally came upon a field full of spikes and the scent of rot.
Those spikes were the size of mature saplings, had been whittled with axes to a sharp point and then anchored in the cold snows and ground. Preparation for this war had been long coming, and the machines of hatred spun on. Bodies hung impaled halfway down, some still twitching. Men, women, and children were in various states of undress, and evidence of suffering before death hung all around. Scattered on the ground there, also, were the bodies of warriors who had fought.
The place cried out in pain and anger and rage, and the Darkness loved it.
Still in a raven shape, it swooped down, and it found the body of a strong warrior who had fought fiercely against the Impaler’s forces but lost his way. The Darkness fed on the body, taking the last bits of warmth and light from its skin. It pulled out eyes and cawed with glee. The warrior had been gutted, and the Dark Raven hopped about in the lower stomach area, gorging on entrails and blood. As it fed, it grew larger, began to have a new shape. The shape firmed, and the Darkness heard a sound it realized it loved…
There were wolves. Nearby.
It flapped, larger than a bird, shape a bit amorphous, but not yet fully anything else. It concentrated its smallest parts and willed them to find a solid shape, sheer anger and hunger giving it force.
It wanted to shift, but needed an example nearby to perfect its form. Then it found the wolves, who were tearing brutal chunks out of soldiers who had only recently grappled with each other and now grappled only with themselves, their pain, their deaths. One of the wolves looked up as the Darkness came near. It growled a challenge, and the Raven Darkness smiled. The gathered wolves’ eyes flashed bright green, a warning to any bird no matter how large it seemed. But the Raven Darkness pulsed and solidified its shape further, smoky features slithering and shifting into a larger wolf, and then a pop of air displaced and the Darkness became a solid canine form, bigger than the wolves it had found. It stalked, stiff-legged and low-growling, towards the Alpha of the wolf pack.
The Alpha wasn’t sure what this new challenge was, or where it had come from, but it knew there was meat that it wanted and didn’t want to back away. It also knew that the dark wolf in front of him seemed a true challenger. Larger, younger, angrier. The Alpha wasn’t sure it could win, so it turned its belly up, surrendered.
The Darkness wreathed in wolf shape joined the gathered wolves. It soon led the pack. They ripped at bodies, tore out the tender soft bits from the middles, still steaming in the frigid air. They nipped at each other in pleasure of a warm, full belly. The Alpha had given way to the Dark Wolf, and so every other wolf in the pack also treated it as leader.
As the pack ranged across the battlefield, sniffing at the bodies strung up on the spikes in wonder at the wasted meat too high to reach, the Darkness notwolf felt something new. Something it had been seeking.
A spirit hovered over one of the bodies. It was the spirit of the man who had lived in the husk beneath its feet, and it didn’t understand yet what had happened. It should have moved on, joined its ancestors elsewhere, but it had stayed here instead. It tried to grab at itself, but its fingers passed through the body, lost, confused.
The notwolf stalked over to the ghost, brushed its muzzle into its center.
The ghost could feel this and started, looked at the notwolf shape. The other wolves also clustered around the shape, seeing this manthing but not smelling mansmell. They whined. They wanted to get back to the eating, but they waited, impatient. The notwolf pressed its new larger body against the shape of the lost ghost warrior, and the warrior’s face seemed aware of itself again. The ghost smiled—and it was the smile of a man who has unexpectedly found his darkest wish fulfilled.
His body shifted, spurred by some unspoken prompt from the dark notwolf, and that pop of displaced air happened again. The warrior was now also wolf shaped. Shifted into a form perfect for eating, for destroying, for running as far as it wanted. The man inside was lost, his human thoughts buried in pain and rage and Darkness. This dark magic had waited a long time to finally form a solid shape, away from the meddling of the wise women who had kept it at bay. It howled its delight, its rage and anger, and the wolf pack, its wolf pack, joined in.
The battlefield, its bodies impaled on spikes and warriors fallen in red snow, was only the first such place this wolf pack, now emboldened by its two supernatural leaders, would find home. It was very far from the last.
Hedgewitch
A long time later, in a place not far from a river, an old woman wandered. Not aimlessly—she had a specific goal. She was peering at the bases of trees, poking thick mossy growths with her pointed and gnarled walking broom/stick. She was looking for her favorite mushrooms, morels, for their pointy-headed wrinkled bodies hiding deep in the woods on the north-facing slopes. Earlier in the year she would have been looking on the edges of an ash grove she knew, but this far into the season, there were better spots.
For some reason, she was thinking of a passage in one of the oldest books about the many rooms that the Goddess had built that stood near each other, but never overlapped. And how a clever witch could travel between them and see that they were almost the same, just a step or two different. She wished she had something like that for her travels in the woods because she was always afraid of turning an ankle.
She was looking for deadlier friends in addition to those tasty morels. She remembered her grandmother teaching her the old saying, “Every mushroom is edible, but some only once.” She wanted some of the ones you would only eat once for a powder she cre
ated for special occasions. She’d rarely had to use much of her powder—but she liked having it in stock, just in case. The dreams and visions the right little ‘shrooms could bring sometimes helped her find the answers that those who visited her small home in the deep woods needed. And that kept her in fresh eggs, creamy cheeses, and all the sausages women needing midwifery could make. It also helped the nearby women who whispered to each other that she knew secrets of childbirthing or how to bring a child to life or even of preventing such when the time wasn’t right. Even how to make that man she longed for look her way with the right placement of the right herb.
She sought the tiny elf-capped mushrooms clustered together, nippled tips glistening and wet with the dreams they would provide. She carried two different baskets for such gathering—important to be sure you got the right one in the proper basket. Wouldn’t do for the night’s lamb stew to make you go all swivel-hipped. Well, not by accident. She chuckled to herself at the thought of such a thing, and moved a clump of leaves out of her way with her stick.
There! Just under that clump, a cluster of tiny brown elf-caps! Her lips tingled in anticipation. She had felt a need to search her dreams lately, that there was something coming, something important. She needed to be ready for it.
Then she heard, and felt, a change in the forest, as though some new energy had just arrived. The slight shift of air being displaced, and all the hairs stood up on the back of her neck. Something was here, and the woods seemed almost imperceptibly darker, and ten degrees colder, the way it did when a storm was brewing. She had read the runes this morning and the weather was supposed to be fair, so this shift from what she had expected made her frown. She didn’t like abrupt changes in her woods. She gathered her thick shawl tighter, grabbed the bunch of elf-hats and tucked them into her basket, and looked around with caution for her escape route. She wasn’t far from her home, but far enough on rough terrain that the sudden feeling of danger was concerning.
The Shapeshifter Chronicles Page 17
