Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  "You lied!" Hamr shouted.

  "The chief has not lied," the Tortoise Man declared. "He has spared the Panther people slaughter. He has spared you and lifted your exile. And now he imposes a new exile, upon the whole of the Panther cult. What he does is just and good in the eyes of the ancestors. Now go. Tell your people to leave."

  Timov, who had been watching from the edge of the camp, not daring to enter the space of the Tortoise people, reeled with sudden nausea. Exile for the Mothers and children meant almost certain death in the wilderness. The terrified look on Cyndell's face and the throbbing fury on Hamr's confirmed his fear.

  Hamr slouched toward his horse. Instead of mounting, he placed his arm on the steed's neck and walked him between the dunes. Timov wanted to go after him, to query him about what would happen next. Cyndell clucked for him. He followed her up the trail, wanting from her the comfort of something said, even in anger. She only clicked her tongue disconsolately when he tried to question her.

  At the top of the trail, Cyndell began her danger trill, modulated with mournful, wailing tones. The Mothers appeared and clustered. The men stood in doorways, the children behind them. Timov had never seen the likes of this, and his insides frosted.

  He went with Cyndell to the center of the camp and stood to the side as she related to the Mothers what had transpired. Then the dirgeful trilling began in unison.

  Timov turned away, watched Hamr leading Blind Side of Life up from the cleft. Alongside the scarp at the cliff's edge, the horse found a patch of broad-blade grass to his liking and began to nibble at it.

  Hamr dropped his hand from his animal's neck and walked on, past Timov, past the wailing Mothers to the charred site of Aradia's hut. He recognized the stone ring, where the daily fire had burned, the slumped shapes of moss matting, where they had slept, and the ashen nest that must have been the drying racks for his wife's plants.

  In one corner, not completely burned, was her bride's wallet. He stepped through the ash and kicked it over. The flap opened, and he stared down at the Mother's Hair, the bundles of medicinal herbs that could not bring her back.

  Among the crisped plants Hamr noticed a disk of tortoise shell. He bent over and picked it out. He held one of Spretnak's wheels. It still had the stick pushed through the hole in its center.

  What was she doing with this? He spun the wheel on its axle and watched the markings of the shell blur. Had Spretnak told her the significance of this device, this master symbol of Hamr's life—or was it simply given as a toy for the children they would have had?

  The Panther men gathered behind him, a respectful distance from the ash heap. They made disgruntled noises but did not dare address him directly while he mourned, fearing the spirit of his wife, who certainly still resided in the house and who would not want to be interrupted.

  Presently, the presence of the unhappy men became less bearable than his grief. Hamr turned to face them. "Gobniu has exiled the Panther people," he announced.

  "Because you returned," one of the men shouted. "Why did you return?"

  "Why should we suffer for what you've done?" another asked.

  "Gobniu lied to me," Hamr muttered. "He said I brought the evil spirits upon us by using my horse to kill our enemy. I believed him. I was wrong—but I did not see his lie until he killed Aradia. I returned only to slay him."

  "Then why does he live? Why are we driven from the Land?"

  "If I had killed him, the Tortoise men would kill you."

  Angry noises blew among the men as they loudly discussed their options. Some wanted to attack the Tortoise clan immediately, others thought to wait in ambush for them to come, a few suggested the elders go to Gobniu and petition him for mercy, and one wanted Hamr killed and sent down as a peace offering.

  The discussion blustered into an argument, and the Mothers stopped their wailing. The eldest among them approached the men, her arms raised, face scowling. The men fell silent at her shout.

  "The Blue Shell are doomed—Panther and Tortoise alike," the crone told them. "Have you no sight in your heads? Have you not seen the war tokens that the Eyes of the Bear have nailed to the trees at the edge of the Forest? Have you no hearing in your heads? Have you not heard their drumsongs, noisy with wrath? The evil spirits have not built fires in their blood. Their strong men have not died. Their wise women have not died. Their hearts are not broken with grief, for their children have not died. The fires burn in our blood. Too many of us have died. We are weak—and the Eyes of the Bear know this. They have seen our sacrifice fires. They have heard our funeral songs. They have watched us from the Forest, and soon they will come to destroy us all."

  "What can we do?" a man wailed.

  "Gobniu has driven us out," the crone said. "We cannot flee. Where would we go? Into the bog to live with the swamp creatures? Into the mountains, to be hunted by the Eyes of the Bear? We have no choice. We must go to the Eyes of the Bear and live with them—as their slaves."

  Shouts burst from the gathered men but soon subsided. The women did not protest. The crone spoke for them.

  "There is another way," Hamr said to the stricken men. "We can follow the sea past the bog. Eventually, the beach turns north. If we journey far enough north, we will find other Panther people, the ones you remember in your firesongs, in your histories. What do they call themselves?"

  "The Thundertree," Timov piped.

  The men moaned with disapproval. North, the direction of darkness, source of the cold, and home of the evil wolf spirit, terrorized all. "The journey is too difficult," one explained. "We're too weak from our losses. And, besides, even if we were strong, even if the Eyes of the Bear were not eager to kill us, would we find the Thundertree? The last we heard of them was in the time of the Grandfathers, long ago. What if they have moved on? What if their enemies have destroyed them? We will wander with nowhere to go."

  "Is slavery better?"

  "As slaves, we will live, our children will live," the crone answered. "North lies the wind of winter and death. Which, then, is better? Life—or death?"

  Hamr left the men to debate their future. For him, no other choice opened. After what he had done to the Eyes of the Bear, they would kill him on sight. He pushed past the wrangling men and met their glowering stares without flinching.

  The crone spoke truth: Whether he had returned or not, the Blue Shell faced doom. Their enemy would know of their terrible sickness and would eagerly use it to crush them. His return, if anything, had helped them to look up from their grief long enough to realize the danger they confronted. Now, if they wanted, they could go with him or become slaves. They did not have to die.

  Blind Side of Life had wandered away from the camp, following the patches of broad-blade grass he favored, and Hamr went after him. The horse whickered a greeting at the familiar scent of him. Hamr sat down on a flat rock nearby and twirled the wheel he still carried, watching the Panther people arguing among themselves.

  Overhead, clouds toiled from the sea toward the mountains, and in a short while there would be rain. A crow jeered from the walnut tree.

  The smell of approaching rain, the racket of the crow, and the wheel spinning in his hands helped Hamr to sort out his feelings. The anger that had driven him back from the bog had dissipated, replaced by weary futility. He had lost Aradia. The raw path through the blackberry brambles and hazelnut shrubs still led toward the sedgefields, and the fields still led to the bower, where they had made their first child, and the bower still squatted at the edge of the bog.

  He had not even seen her dead. His mourning felt all the more empty for that. And in the emptiness, around its own emptiness, the wheel spun, and a jay-crow squawked at the sweet smell of coming rain.

  Taiga

  Dawn looked frayed the day of the exile. Rain had pattered throughout the night and by morning still hung in gray veils over the mountains to the north. Sunlight filtered through tattered clouds and made the placid sea appear muddy.

  On the beach, the Torto
ise clan had gathered to witness the dispersal of the Panther people. The Tortoise women stood silently atop the dunes, a few waving. Their men had posted themselves before dawn at the top of the cliff-trails, axes in hand, faces smudged for battle.

  The Panther people put up no resistance. Many had died from the fever, many still shivered. In the night, they had gathered up their possessions and with first light had dragged their bundles of hides and carved bone toward the cedar forest—and the Eyes of the Bear.

  As soon as they had trudged out of camp, the Tortoise men advanced and set fire to the abandoned huts.

  Only Timov, his sister Duru, and their nurse, Cyndell, had elected to journey north with Hamr. Timov felt scared to go into the wilds with only grief-struck Hamr, a girl too weak to walk, and an old woman. Greater torment twisted his heart at the thought of living as Biklo had, ordered about by children and women. Better to follow the Great Man into the wilderness and face death there, bravely.

  For Duru, still drained from the fires that had blazed in her blood and the shock of her sister's death, the journey unfolded another fateful change she could not avoid. By custom, when a Mother died, her man passed to her sisters. Hamr now belonged to Duru. And she resolved to stay at his side and endure their journey as she had endured her fever and the horror of Aradia's murder.

  Cyndell would have preferred to go to the Eyes of the Bear and serve by the comfort of their fires. But she had known Duru's mother too well to abandon to the wilderness the child she had nursed. She packed her medicinal herbs, what dried meat she had, and her bone needles and scrapers in a satchel of sewn rabbit hides, and she stood with Duru and Timov as they bade farewell to their clan.

  Hamr waited impatiently at the cleft in the rock wall. He had thought that more of the Panther men would accompany him to find their totem brothers in the north—the Thundertree. Dejection flared when only Timov came to meet him at the cliff's edge.

  The boy meekly announced that Duru claimed Hamr for her own.

  Hamr accepted this news impassively. Inwardly, he quailed. How would they defend themselves in the wilds, just he, this boy, and two women?

  He had spent the night among the knolls, under locked branches of alders whose broad leaves offered some protection from the rain. With the strength of his anxiety and a flint knife, he had occupied his grief in the wakeful darkness by whittling a pliant sapling to a spear-shaft. He tipped it with a quartz blade given to him by Spretnak years ago, before his first hunt.

  After midnight, the glint of distant fires appeared among the cedars on the high hills. The Eyes of the Bear had camped closer to the forest fringe, perhaps anticipating the arrival of their new slaves or preparing for a further raid on the disease-weakened Blue Shell.

  Hamr wanted to be on his way long before the Panther people reached their new masters and could tell them of his decision to seek the Thundertree. Maybe the Eyes of the Bear wanted revenge enough to track him. Certainly, he and those with him lived in death’s shadow as long as they moved within sight of the cedar hills.

  To help them travel more quickly, Hamr had loaded their satchels onto Blind Side of Life. The horse fretted, because of the smells of pyre smoke, and stamped, eager to be going. The horse had little to carry, mostly the hides that the Panther clan had gifted Cyndell and Duru so that they could make clothes to stay warm in the north.

  If the child grew tired, she could ride. Her survival amazed Hamr, and he had not the heart to turn her away to a life of slavery. Who was he to say that the hardships of the journey ahead would outweigh the pain of serving the Eyes of the Bear?

  As for her claim on him, he would not strengthen her conviction with his acknowledgment until they had found their way to the Thundertree. If she yet lived and still wanted him, he would serve her to honor her sister. Aradia, his bride, owned him though now she slept with the Mudman. He envied the Mudman and would not release her entirely to him yet. In his mind, he held her as he had last seen her, dark-eyed, lovely face shining with health in the cove of her black hair.

  On the walk down the wide sloping path in the cleft of the rock wall, Hamr stared boldly at the Tortoise men on their way to torch the Panther huts. The younger Tortoise men, who thought him a Great Man for taming a horse and killing the Eyes of the Bear, looked away. The older ones, who remembered him for a braggart, leered to see him exiled with children and an old woman to care for.

  Among the dunes, the chief, the elders, the Tortoise Man, and their guards, whom he had thwarted the previous day, mocked loudly. The women hooted derisively. If the Beastmaker loved him so, where were the animal guides to lead him to the Thundertree? Surely pigs and deer would offer him their throats along the way! And what a noble entourage for a Great Man! Why did the Panther people not see that the Beastmaker favored him? Why did they prefer to live as slaves to the Eyes of the Bear?

  Hamr clutched his spear with one hand and rested his other on the back of Blind Side of Life, where the satchel lay that carried his wheel. Sooner or later, even this would turn around. He refused to panic at his freedom. And, to prove that to himself, he stopped when he reached the firm sand before the sea and looked back.

  In sun mist, the giant cliffs shone red. Above them, smoke furled from the burning huts. Women and children standing on the dunes watched him, pouring out a song of hatred directly at him, as if he intruded as an enemy.

  Not he, he had to remind himself to ease the pain of their song, not he but his greatness was their enemy. It had always set him apart—had set him to compete and win against their boys—had spurned their girls—had carried him above the ground they trod onto the back of a beast—and had lifted him out of their clan to another life. Of course they would hate him. He had eluded them. He had given himself to greatness.

  Without a sound or gesture, Hamr turned away. He patted Blind Side's neck, and his horse resumed his gait. Ahead, the beach curved about the promontory of the cliffs and widened into pebbly flats. Hamr kept his eyes on the morning-light simmering on the wave crests, with occasional glances ahead, into the baffling distances.

  )|(

  Once the familiar terrain fell behind, the travelers turned inland. Hamr sought the migratory trails: ditches cut into the earth by the herds' seasonal movements.

  Blind Side of Life recognized the horse trail, which the travelers identified by droppings hardened there. Blind Side, stimulated by the familiar smell of the herd, trotted north more quickly than the others could keep up. Hamr at first restrained him by riding him. Only after one end of a rope had been looped about the horse's neck and the other around Hamr's waist did Blind Side reluctantly slow down.

  Traveling went slow, since they had food only for the first day and spent much time leaving the migratory trail to forage and hunt. The hunting went even slower. Neither Hamr nor Timov could manage to stalk an animal close enough to use the spears, and all attempts to rush deer and antelope toward coverts where the others waited in ambush ended pitifully. Other than rodents and an occasional hare and squirrel, the men caught nothing.

  Duru had lost weight yet grown stronger than anyone's prayers had hoped, and she and Cyndell provided most of the food and kept up the daycount. The woods teemed with berries, nuts, edible grasses, and tubers. While Blind Side of Life grazed, tethered to a tree, the women foraged around him and prepared vegetable broths and mashes. When it rained, they knew which slick fronds to weave into makeshift lean-tos. And, with Cyndell's bone-needle kit, they kept their sandals in good repair, using bark and squirrel-hide to protect their soles.

  At day's end, after building the night fire, they counted the days on Cyndell's ivory bracelet. A priestess of remote ancestry had carved a meander into ivory, a square spiral whose zigzag pattern outlined the thirteen chambers of the moon.

  Each chamber contained twenty-eight days. Six chambers spiraled inward to the seventh at the hot, solar center of the year. And six more spun outward through the darkness of winter. Well into the dark turning now, the calendar warned th
at sap already seeped inward though the Forest looked robust.

  Hamr and Timov snickered at the ritual daycount and the women's compulsive marking of time. For them, time pulsed all around, as weather and the directions. To the west, beyond thistly tussocks, lay the sea, and to the east, dense Forest, where night seemed to lie in perpetual residence.

  The ravine country of the migratory trails boxed in the travelers and yet allowed them to move faster and farther north than they could have done either in the marsh or the Forest. At night, the culverts blocked the brisk sea wind that buffeted the great trees and sighed overhead forlorn with the night cries of Forest animals.

  Nine nights into their journey, Hamr took out his wheel and spun it in the firelight. The others stared in fascination at the spinning brightness. "What is it?" Timov asked.

  "A wheel."

  "What's it for?"

  "For nothing," Hamr answered. "You see, there's nothing in the middle." He stopped it and removed the stick from the hole at the center. Then he replaced the stick and set the tortoise disk spinning again. "It spins around nothing."

  "It spins around the stick," Duru said.

  "No," Hamr replied. "An ax-head is joined to a stick, too, and it does not spin. It is fixed by the stick. The wheel has a hole, and it is the emptiness of the hole that lets it turn. It's like our lives."

  The others squinted, perplexed faces gleaming in the fireglow.

  "At the center of our lives is emptiness," Hamr explained. "Do we remember from where we come?" He parted the antelope-skin he wore as a wrap and revealed his navel. "There's our hole—the emptiness cut from the Mother."

  Cyndell put a hand on Hamr's and stopped the spinning wheel. "We should not speak of these things."

  Hamr stared at her flatly, while inside, the fog of his grief for Aradia deepened, glowed like a smoke-filled hut. "Why not?"

  "These are mysteries for the tribe," Cyndell replied. "We have no tribe."