Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  By the morning after her death, two more children and three adults among the Panther clan had also fallen ill—Duru and Biklo among them.

  Timov crouched over the old slave, where he lay under an acacia bush near the kindling pile. He had thought he would still be able to do his chores during his illness. Illness had visited him before and he had worked. Not this time.

  His body felt like a winter tree, empty of ambition, rattling in a wind reaching down from the cold heavens.

  Timov tried to soothe him with a twig-fire and a wad of gum from the poplar, to dull the pain in his joints. The fire's warmth gave to Biklo no more strength than moonlight, and his jaw ached too sharply to chew the medicinal gum.

  When Biklo struggled to rise, to gather the day's kindling and string the water-gourds, Timov laid him back down. The boy sorted the firewood in sight of the slave, so he could correct Timov's blunders, keeping the sweet wood for braising, slow-burning hardwoods for the night fires, various barks with differing scents separated to grace the unique stations of the day.

  With palsied fingers, Biklo showed Timov the correct way to string the water-gourds, and Timov's eyes clouded with tears at the slave's eagerness still to serve. While Timov hauled water from the rill, Biklo stopped resisting the snow-wind churning in him. He convulsed violently, shaking new budded leaves from the acacia. When Timov returned, Biklo had died.

  None of the women wailed for the slave. Only Timov wept, remembering how often he had relied on the old man's spirited willingness. He wanted to go to the cliff-edge and shout the man's death to the tribe. But Duru lay dying. She needed the water he had hauled.

  Had the spirits of the war dead, whom he alone had washed, come back to kill those he loved? Then why not kill him? And why had a girl died whom he did not know that well? Clearly, something evil had come upon them.

  In the summer, Timov slept outdoors with the men. When the old women wanted him to pleasure them, they made a place for him in the bushes. He never entered the thatched huts in which the women dwelled during the warm months. Now the women needed him to fulfill Biklo's chores, and one of those required carrying water into the huts.

  Soon as he entered the hut where Duru lay, he smelled death, like scorched feathers. He put the water-gourd down, wanting to back out right away. The sight of his sister fixed him. She gleamed like a spring toad, naked body glossed with sweat, shivering though the hut sweltered from a spitting fire.

  Mother handed him a wad of poplar bark, and he noticed, with a flicker of alarm, that her hands shivered. With her chin, she pointed to the stone mortar beside the fire. For a moment, Timov could not move. The squalid heat, the child's slick thrashing, the illness already in Mother—

  Cyndell, Duru's nurse and Mother's friend, stopped swabbing the sweat from the girl's wrung hair. "Biklo is dead," she said, softly. "We need your help."

  The quiet words penetrated him as sharply as the death wail, and he jolted forward and knelt before the mortar. Mechanically, efficiently, Timov arranged the fibrous bark in the mortar, picked up the pestle and mashed the poplar with the strength of his grief.

  The amber color of nightfall glowed in the west when the next death wail echoed from the cliffs. Two Panther men had died.

  Immediately, the Pantherfolk built a bonfire on the edge of the sea cliff and sacrificed all the pelts, feathers, and shells retrieved from the Eyes of the Bear. Everyone believed that the Eyes of the Bear had cursed them.

  The men heaved Biklo's body into the flames, thinking he would explain the offering in the afterworld if he arrived with it. As the fire ate him, he twisted, as he had in dying, and sat up, arms extended, embracing what no one could see.

  Before dawn, a Panther woman died, convulsing and vomiting blood. Mother, who had tended Duru without sleep since she fevered the previous day, succumbed to the illness herself.

  Soon thereafter, several of the Tortoise clan fevered, among them Gobniu's two wives and his eldest boy-child. For them, the drums throbbed, and, hour by hour, everyone in the tribe knew what they endured.

  Bonfires blazed on the beach that night, and the heads of the slain Forest men burned along with all the seal-fur and mussels that the Blue Shell possessed.

  Hamr and Aradia built a lean-to behind Mother's hut and helped Timov gather water and kindling, mash the bark and steep the brews. When more of the Mothers fevered, Aradia took over the cooking and Timov and Hamr foraged. Happily, mice and hares abounded and provided meat for the cooking pot.

  Cyndell tended both Mother and Duru, and when she nodded with exhaustion, Aradia took her place. The drum throbs from the Tortoise camp matched the pulse of the sick, and by that they knew that the same evil spirits attacked both camps.

  More sacrifices had to be made. Hamr burned his boar-skin vest, Timov his feather-cape.

  The sacrifices proved futile. Mother died in the night, delirious, not recognizing her children. Aradia wept and worked harder to make Duru drink the bitter root broths.

  Timov sat on his heels in Mother's hut, sobbing in big gasps like someone who had run a long way, staring numb-eyed at Mother's torqued body.

  The death wail for Mother blended with echoes of other death wails. Many of both clans had fevered and curled up by the fires, shivering as if winter blew through their bodies. Spretnak lay among them and died the first night of his fever.

  That same night, the drum throbbing stopped. Gobniu's eldest son had died.

  Hamr returned to the Tortoise camp for the burial of his sponsor. Six other bodies waited on the beach to be carried to the sea caves for burial. Hamr draped them two at a time on the back of Blind Side of Life and carried them to the cliffs.

  The Tortoise Man himself, the tribe's soul-catcher, lay among those dead, leaving no one to sing sacred songs over the corpses and lure their souls out of their corrupting bodies.

  The Tortoise Man's two disciples did their best. Though they had learned all the words, they lacked the power of their teacher. The people knew, numerous ghosts would wander the beaches as souls struggled to free themselves from decaying bodies.

  Fire would damage the souls and impair their journey to the afterworld. Soul-catchers deemed cremation suitable only for slaves. And as none of these clan people had died in battle, they did not merit the death raft journey over the sea. The ghosts would have to be left to wander—and that meant they would lure many more to their deaths.

  "This is Hamr's fault," Gobniu declared at the emergency council meeting called after the Tortoise Man's death. The council's three circles had been reduced to two by the many deaths, and quite a few among those who attended appeared ill. "He defied the Eyes of the Bear. He has brought evil spirits upon us."

  "Killing our enemy would never call evil upon us," one of the Tortoise Man's disciples spoke up.

  Gobniu glowered at him. "I did not say that," he quickly replied, making the mental adjustments in his argument to meet this challenge. "It was how he killed our enemy that has drawn this evil to us. The Beastmaker is enraged with us for using one of His beasts to kill our enemy."

  "What do you know of the Beastmaker?" Hamr shouted from his place outside the circle.

  Angry voices shushed him.

  Gobniu smiled grimly to himself. At last, Hamr came to grief, trapped by his own greatness. "The Beastmaker favored you with a horse for the hunt—not for battle. To the Beastmaker all tribes are one. You affronted the Beastmaker by using his animal to kill men. Are not all tribes one to the Beastmaker, Tortoise Man?" Gobniu looked to the disciple who had not challenged him, conferring the coveted title on him with a solicitous nod.

  "Men are simply men to the Beastmaker," the new Tortoise Man replied.

  "That is why we are being punished," Gobniu continued, conviction compressing his voice to a near whisper, "why so many of our own are dying. Don't you see? So long as this one"— he gouged a thumb toward Hamr—"is among us, our people will die."

  Hamr's insides fisted. He had lost Spretnak. Aradia's mother,
too. Duru lay fevered. Certainly the Beastmaker, who had inspired his bravery, would not do this to him. He closed his eyes, seeking a sign. Only darkness and anger flexed in him.

  "Hamr is a Great Man," one of the Panther men said. "He saved our women and children. They would be slaves now had he not killed the Eyes of the Bear. The Beastmaker would not punish us for saving ourselves."

  "Not for saving ourselves, surely," Gobniu conceded, "but for misusing his beast."

  "Then what is to be done?" one of the fisherfolk asked.

  Gobniu gazed steadfastly into the fire-painted faces. "Hamr and his horse must leave us," he said loudly. "Let him leave the Blue Shell at once and not return."

  Fear floated through Hamr, while his face showed only defiance. "I will not return."

  )|(

  Timov followed Hamr as far as the sedgegrass, where Hamr had killed the boar. The whole way he pleaded with him to stay. "Gobniu's afraid of you," Timov told him.

  Hamr rode Blind Side of Life slowly, as if wanting the boy to keep up with him. Actually, the sightless horse could go no faster on this uneven terrain.

  "You were born into the Tortoise clan," Timov went on. "You could be chief. That's why he's afraid of you. I saw that the day you killed the Eyes of the Bear. He made me wash the bodies. He was angry. I saw it in his face. As Biklo says, anger is never itself—it always hides in something else, hurt or fear. For Gobniu, it's fear."

  "I'm a Panther man now," Hamr said, without looking at Timov. "The Panther men can't be chiefs."

  "You could."

  Hamr ignored the flattery. Exhausted from several sleepless days, from grief for Spretnak and dying Duru, and the shared grief of his wife for her mother, he just wanted to go back to the fern holt where he had been happy with Aradia. And sleep. When he woke, the world would be new.

  "You're running away," Timov said to Hamr's back, trying a new tactic. "You're afraid of Gobniu. You're afraid you're not a Great Man and he'll prove it."

  Hamr stopped his horse and cast a weary look over his shoulder. "If I stay, Gobniu will come with his men to kill me and with me, Aradia—and you. Go back to camp and help Aradia. She's alone with Cyndell in that hut trying to save Duru. Help them."

  "Duru is going to die," Timov said. "Don't leave us."

  Hamr turned and continued on his way. Timov walked after him. Where was the Hamr who ate spiders, who defied the omen-casters and smiled at death? He began again: "Gobniu's afraid of you. You must see that. If you stay, you can sway the men. You're still a Tortoise man. The Panther men haven't initiated you yet. The tribe will follow you. You're the first Great Man in memory."

  At the sedgegrass, Timov stopped. To go any farther was dangerous. Boar, Snake, and Panther haunted these tall grasses.

  "Don't go," Timov called after Hamr. "Don't leave us."

  Hamr hurried Blind Side as fast as he would go through the switching grass with its wild blend of odors. From behind, the sea wind luffed, salty and aromatic. Ahead, the pungent stink of the bog carried the sweet fragrance of blossoms and grassheads.

  Mouse scents flourished and hare, as usual. No dangerous beasts, not yet, anyway. Blind Side obeyed Hamr and trotted forward, testing each step just enough to keep balance, his ears and nose constantly running errands for his absent eyes. What strength had grown around that absence.

  Once Timov's angry cries dimmed away in the plangent breeze from the bog, Hamr slowed. He was in no hurry. His heart felt too heavy to hurry. He tried to forget his grief by stroking the horse under him.

  Hamr remembered the old emptiness in his young life, the absence of a father, the fullness of dreams, which is no fullness at all, and how that emptiness had become the hole at the center of his life, around which his destiny had turned. And that was why he rode now, as no man in memory had ridden. And to what did he ride?

  Sleep offered the only answer he could understand. He rode on without thinking, watching the horse, watching the world.

  At the fern holt on the far side of the bog, the bower still stood. Vines speckled with tiny white flowers shrouded most of it, and a patch of mushrooms gleamed like bones in the shade at its north side. No animal had taken up residence within. The air there smelled damp and sweet.

  After tethering Blind Side to graze among clover, he lay down on the white moss mat inside the bower, and in moments he slumbered.

  )|(

  Hamr woke deep in the night. The sky across the bog shone faintly red with fever fires from the Blue Shell. Bats squeaked and tumbled in the black air. Huge stars shimmered with insomnia.

  The wind carried exhausted smells of the bog and a dangerous scent of cat. Rumbling rhythms from toads told him that the cat prowled far away, and he got up and lumbered to the edge of the bog to empty his bladder.

  Blind Side whinnied a greeting, and Hamr went over and stroked his neck. He had hoped that a dream would have come to him while he slept, but he remembered nothing.

  The faraway glow of the fires inspired fear. Of what? Not death, not his own, at least. The boar had killed him. And he had died again before the Eyes of the Bear. He knew with chilled certainty, death opened to freedom.

  Yet he was afraid. Of what?

  Staring at the fire-glow beyond the bog, where the tribe suffered, the outline of his fear came clear, and he stepped back from Blind Side of Life and sat down in the wet grass. He was alone. Forever.

  He despaired, with Spretnak dead, no longer there to guide him to greatness, and Aradia gone with the rest of the Blue Shell, who had sent him away—forever. The truth of that frightened him.

  At first, his anger had been enough to cover his fear. If the Blue Shell exiled him, so be it: He would live on the fringes of the tribe until they needed him again and called him back. Then Timov's pleading for him to return had been enough for him to believe he might return. Now, alone in the night, the truth bore down on him.

  Maybe Timov had been right. He feared Gobniu and had run away. He feared how the chief had made Hamr's greatness seem evil. And so he had run away, here, to figure it out—no, more than figure—to confront the Beastmaker Himself and find out for sure if his destiny attracted evil to the Blue Shell.

  He returned to the bower and sat in darkness. He would sit here until sleep or the Beastmaker came for him. He began a chant, a soft dirge for the dead and dying, those he had left behind.

  As he chanted, he heard night frogs splash, a snake slide through the debris of last season, and an owl talking nearby and no one talking back.

  )|(

  Timov returned to find the water low and kindling gone. Without Biklo or Mother and so many ill, too many chores occupied those who could still work. Cyndell wanted water for Duru right away, and Timov grabbed the gourds and hurried out to the rill.

  Scooping clear water in the narrow-necked gourds went slowly, and Timov had time to grieve. He missed Mother and Biklo and could not imagine life's routines without them. Yet mostly he felt anger that Hamr had abandoned Aradia and him. Not for a moment did he believe that Hamr had caused the killing illness. He had seen the rage in Gobniu's face, and he knew the truth of Hamr's exile. How could that oaf think otherwise?

  With the filled water-gourds strung over his shoulders, Timov paused to pluck sticks of kindling from the edge of the alder grove on his way back to camp. Most of the sizable kindling knocked down by the winter winds had long ago been cleared from the beaten path to the rill, so he detoured through bramble, following a gap the deer had nibbled out in the winter, and found a jumble of tree litter. He stooped to pick up two large branches when he spied through the underbrush the figures of men.

  A dozen Tortoise men clung precariously to the goat steps of a narrow cliff-trail. Pebbles snicked into the void from around their handholds and toe-grips.

  Timov sensed something wicked. Tortoise men, spears and axes strapped to their backs, would not ascend a dangerous goat path unless they wanted to reach the Panther camp unseen.

  He spotted the eagle-fan crest-feathe
rs of the chief. Gobniu, royal red fishing spear at his back, huffed and wheezed as he clambered among the rocks.

  Crouching backward through the bramble, Timov retreated to the rill. He dropped the kindling but clutched the water-gourds tightly as he ran along the path to the camp.

  Several women chaffing oat grass and one whom he had often pleasured stopped to wail some grief toward him. He ignored them and ran on, looking for men. Most had set out on the day's hunt. Among the huts crouched boys, a few his own age, catching mice. He found only three men, all fevered. He ran up to one, who lay curled on his side in the shade of a hedge.

  "The chief and his men are coming. They climb a goat trail by the rill." He had to repeat this while the man rocked out of his doze.

  The afflicted hunter blinked into the sunlight. His pale, cracked lips trembled, and he gasped, "Hide ... Aradia."

  Timov recognized one of the great spearmen, the best of the hunters, though now he looked aged, emaciated.

  Timov stepped back, too shocked at first to comprehend the warning. When he understood, he whirled about and dashed for his hut. Not satisfied with Hamr's exile, Gobniu intended to destroy all that was Hamr's.

  )|(

  Aradia and Cyndell knelt beside stretched-out Duru, who looked dead, eyes shut, unmoving. "Men are coming!" he cried.

  "Hush," Cyndell frowned. "She sleeps. Give me the water."

  "No—listen. Gobniu and his men are coining up the goat trails with spears, axes. They're going to kill us."

  Cyndell shrieked, and Aradia rose calmly. She brushed past her brother and looked out the door.

  "We must hide," Timov said.

  "They are here," Aradia answered, quietly. "And we cannot hide Duru."

  "They don't want Duru," Cyndell shrilled, hurrying to Aradia and clasping her shoulders from behind, pulling her back from the doorway. "They want you, and the child you bear. Hurry, we must hide."