Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  A neigh fluted from Blind Side, and the roe deer perked its head and leaped the brook in one bound. Hamr dashed after it, Timov directly behind him.

  They splashed across the brook and barged through a bosk of slender ash on the far side and into a maze of thorn bramble. Thrashing blindly, they pursued the fleeing white rump among wends of bramble, shouting and cursing at the sharp, lashing branches.

  Hamr pulled up short, Timov slamming into him. Ahead stood a lanky, sinewy man, narrow as a shadow, with a mask-like face that peered at them from between long shocks of white hair and a stringy beard. This face had long understood pain: The slash of mouth and lump of nose twisted to the left around a raw, jagged splash of purple skin. The left eye slanted almost closed under the purple, while the right eye glared vindictively. At his thonged feet, the roe deer lay twitching, a short lance piercing its throat. The stranger yanked the lance from the deer, and brilliant blood gurgled out.

  Timov pulled at Hamr, wanting to run to the clearing, where they could dart and hide. Hamr stopped, turned his spear aside, and raised his left hand in greeting. "I am Hamr of the Blue Shell." He spoke in a bold voice. "This is my companion Timov."

  The stranger, content that the two facing him presented no threat, knelt and plugged the deer's wound with a wad of grass and held it there until the animal lay still. Then he looked up with a fierce squint. "Get away from here or I'll kill you."

  Timov tugged at Hamr's arm. Hamr, stunned by the hatred in that crooked face, backed off. Anxiously looking over their shoulders, they crossed the brook and returned to Blind Side.

  When Timov told Duru what had happened, she said, "That is Yaqut. I know it."

  Hamr mounted his horse and scowled at her. "We'll follow the brook and go around him."

  Blind Side waded slowly upstream, while Timov and Duru followed, hopping among cobbles, occasionally glancing behind. At the first bend in the stream, the narrow man waited. His short lance held in both hands across his wiry thighs, he blocked their way.

  "I warned you to get away from here," he said in a voice thick with menace.

  Hamr stopped Blind Side and leaned forward, eyes narrowed. "We are leaving."

  "You are going the wrong way. Turn around and take your runts out of here. If I find you anywhere east of this stream, I will cut off your limbs and leave you for the wolves."

  Hamr's nostrils flared. "We are going east of here," he said through his teeth. "Get out of our way."

  The twisted half of the stranger's mouth bent in a stiff smile. Hamr drove Blind Side of Life forward, spear raised. The gaunt hunter did not move. As soon as Hamr approached close enough to see the veins twisted at the stranger's bony temples, he pulled Blind Side up to strike with his hooves.

  In that instant, the spindly man neatly sidestepped close to the horse. With one hand, he grabbed Hamr's knee and shoved, sending the horseman toppling from his steed.

  Hamr splashed onto his back, thunking his head on a cobble. Through scattering pinpoints of hot light, he watched the stranger's grimacing face loom over him. Sharp flint pressed hard under his jaw and despair forced a whimper from him.

  "Don't kill him, Yaqut!" Duru shouted from the bank.

  The stranger held the tip of his lance firmly against Hamr's throat while he looked hard at the girl, then at Timov, who raised his spear tentatively. "Put your spear down, boy. Come over here."

  Timov dropped his weapon and swashed into the brook.

  "Sit down."

  Timov obeyed.

  The hunter gazed down at Hamr's anguished face, and his hard grin returned. He looked again at Timov, then Duru, and his grin slipped away. "How do you know my name?"

  "I heard it in a dream." Duru held her breath. The sight of this scrawny old man atop big-boned, muscle-shouldered Hamr terrified the girl. "Please, don't kill him."

  "Why shouldn't I?"

  "We are hunters like you," Timov blurted. "We mean no harm."

  "You attacked me."

  Hamr struggled briefly, and the point of the flint pressed sharper against his jugular until he lay still.

  "You would be dead now but that you know my name. Who are you?"

  Yaqut looked to Timov, whose eyes could not hide his horror. "We are the last of the Blue Shell. From the south."

  When the boy finished his story, Yaqut pressed his face closer to Hamr's. "With one stroke, your life's blood runs with this stream. No man attacks me and lives. Do you want to live?"

  Hamr nodded, and the blade bit him under the jaw.

  "Say it," the man insisted.

  "I want to live," Hamr muttered.

  Yaqut smiled his distorted grin, exposing teeth worn to brown stumps. "Now you owe your life to me. For the sake of these children, I will spare you, Hamr the Arrogant. But if you raise your hand to me again—" His good eye hardened with the promise of death.

  Then he stood up, sheathed his knife. "So, you are Panther people." He spat into the water. "I hate Panther people. They are weak and hide in the Forest like squirrels." He put his hands on his hips, playing out the moment, and studied the strays before him. He surprised himself that he had thrown such a large man, had actually dominated him—and he felt even more amazed that he had not killed such a dangerous one when he had the chance.

  But the girl had known his name, had heard it in a dream. What manner of child is she? He had heard of seer-children who possessed such powers of knowing from their dreams. He had never met any before. Might she be one? This opportunity must not be squandered.

  Four moons, Yaqut had crawled among brambles and slept in trees, stalking the monster that had killed his clansmen, and he had yet to see more of the creature than the thing's day-old droppings.

  Maybe these simpletons from the south might flush out his prey. If the girl indeed proved a seeress, then the priestess among the Panther people could very probably use her to track the ghost dancer. He shrewdly looked over the trio, then said, "The Thundertree are not far from here. I will take you to them. They need hunters—and they will be proud to show off their skills to men weaker than they."

  Hamr sat up, rubbing his throat, and Yaqut waved him and Timov to the mudbank. "Get out of the water, you dolts." He picked up their spears, walked over to Blind Side and led him to where Hamr and Timov stood dripping on the bank. "You are the saddest horseman I have ever seen," he told Hamr, handing him the rope and his spear. He shook his head with scorn. "And you—" He turned his disdain on Timov. "You with the spear in your hand—why were you just standing there?"

  "If...if I'd attacked, you'd have killed Hamr," Timov ventured nervously.

  "If you would have bothered to attack, maybe I wouldn't have gotten to him," Yaqut derided. He heaved the spear's haft into Timov's hands so hard the young man almost collapsed. "Your fear will kill you, boy."

  Yaqut stepped close enough to Duru to peer down into the small holes of her eyes. "Now, tell me the dream that showed you my name."

  Duru stared back frightened yet unflinching. She observed the whipstroke of purpled flesh that seared the man's face and told him her nightmare.

  With an amazed laugh, Yaqut blessed himself for his restraint in not killing them. "Aye me—you beheld the ghost dancer. You actually spied him. Few people have seen one and lived, you know. You are lucky he visited you only in a dream."

  "Ghost dancer?" Duru repeated.

  Yaqut paused to see if she dissembled, caught the sincerity in her open stare, and felt his wonder kindle. These far-traveled strays had not even heard of ghost dancers. "He happens to be your salvation." He waded across the brook and came back with the pack of stitched pelts he had dropped. "He knows my name, and that knowing saved you. He knows my name well, because I am hunting him." He pointed upstream and swept his arm toward the marshy terrain downstream. "I've tracked him from the mountains where this stream began and through the bog where it ends, and I haven't seen him once. The Forest is big, and he knows how to hide. But before winter, I will have his head." From the pac
k, he lifted a large skull and regarded it smugly. "Here's one I took last year. Behold the size of it."

  It was a human skull yet far bigger than any they had seen. The blockbrow, thick above wide apart orbits, edged a long cranium, capped at the back with a knob of bone. The jaw displayed molars broad as thumb knuckles and incisors truly fangs.

  "Imagine the flesh this skull wore," Yaqut said. "Imagine the strength that strapped these jaws." He laid the skull down and lifted from his pack a long bone, the radius bone of the arm. It looked like a club. "Can you see the power this bone held in life?"

  "He must have been a giant," Timov marveled.

  "This was a female." Yaqut put the bone aside. "She belonged to a tribe of giants, whose smallest stands a head taller than our biggest. They are enormous and powerful. Their strength—their real threat—is not size or strength but that they carry fire. Not the earthly fire we spark from flint and rub from wood. They carry the sky fire that spears down from the storm and splits the oak."

  Yaqut grinned at the shades of incomprehension in the Blue Shell's faces. "You don't believe me. Yes, how can people carry lightning? Understand—these are not people. They are beasts that do not fit our imagination. And this one whom you have seen in your dream—he is old and cunning, eager to murder and defile and too wily to get caught."

  He put the skull and arm bone in the sack, then nodded to Hamr. "Go get the roe deer. And you—" He pointed to Timov. "Make a fire. We will prepare enough meat for the next few days. The ghost dancer already knows we are here. Pointless to hide now."

  Duru went with her brother to gather kindling, and Yaqut stopped her. "Have you had other dreams?" he asked, after Timov and Hamr had gone off.

  "No, but my brother did. He saw the ghost man in a dream, too."

  Yaqut nodded and dismissed her with a backhanded wave. These young ones are more than seer-children. Elation flared in him. Their dreams, so precise and vivid, are not dreams at all. Surely they are seeing this ghost dancer, exactly as the priestess has described him. Surely they are linked with him in the unique way that only blood can bind.

  Though they did not realize it—though they had not heard of ghost dancers—he felt certain that one of their ancestors, perhaps not so long ago, had shared kinship with this breed of monster.

  )|(

  Hamr stood over the dead deer, noticing the precision of the puncture that had killed it. His own neck still ached where the flint had nearly severed his pulse. He rubbed his throat absently while he stared down at the dead animal, considering the expertise required to kill so efficiently.

  At first he had seethed inside with the indignity of such a scrawny and aged man besting him. For a while, he had considered betraying his life-debt to the stranger and goring him while he showed them the giant's bones. The Beastmaker had not led him this far simply for him to kill vengefully. Such was not the way of a Great Man. And now that he contemplated what had happened, his humiliation faded. He realized that, in truth, he recognized the work of the Beastmaker.

  Hamr examined the clean wound at the exact point of the animal's jugular and remembered how swiftly the deer had been running when Yaqut stabbed it. Here, obviously, they confronted a master hunter and fearless warrior, whose spirit defied his advanced age and small body. Hamr felt no shame for being bested by him. The ferocious degree of the man's burned face only heightened Hamr's regard for him.

  Surely, the Beastmaker had sent Yaqut to lead them to the Thundertree, after they had come so close and could go no farther. What further sign did he need of the Beastmaker's presence?

  Swans whistled in the sky, confirming this truth. With a silent prayer of gratitude, he bent to tie Blind Side's rope to the deer's hind hooves.

  )|(

  Yaqut touched the tip of his lance to the space between the deer's eyes, intoned: "The Beastmaker gave us your flesh and your bones to sustain us that our flesh and our bones may fulfill the Ways of Wandering. Great is the Beastmaker."

  Hamr shared a look of pleased surprise with Timov and Duru: This strange hunter recognized the Beastmaker. He closed his eyes and thanked the inward darkness for finding them this leader whose bond to the hidden world they could trust.

  After the deer had been butchered, marrow devoured, heart and brains seared and divided among them, and the haunches skewered for roasting, Yaqut mixed the blood with brook water in the ghost dancer's skull and passed it around.

  How primitive these Blue Shell appeared to him, with their faces and limbs smudged with crude bodypaint, more like greasy ash than pigment. They seemed as likely to dash off senselessly into the woods as to eat the food he offered them.

  He decided then to hold them with stories, beginning with his own. That seemed the easiest way to keep them close until he could figure out their usefulness in the hunt. While they sipped and ate and cooked the legs of deer, he told his story.

  "I am of the Longtooth. Unlike the Blue Shell and the Thunder-tree, we have not forgotten the Ways of Wandering. We follow the herds across the tundra in summer, and we winter in the taiga, falling back to the Forest only when big storms roar from the north.

  "Many summers ago, when I was a boy younger than Timov, a band of ghost dancers attacked my tribe among the rocky fields to the far north. There the glaciers had piled boulders atop each other taller than trees. The great ice had strewn them across the land like shattered mountains. The ghost dancers knew the land better than we, and they trapped us there. By day, many of my people were killed by thrown rocks. At night—" He paused, his crooked lip trembling. "Do you know what happens to ghost dancers at night?"

  The Blue Shell shook their heads, staring at the livid ugliness of the skeletal hunter squatting beside the fire, the flesh around his slanted eye hot as an ulcer.

  "At night, they carry fire from the sky." Yaqut lowered his head like a bull, paused a moment to control the ancient rage impacted in him. "More! They become that fire. The spirits that rage in the night don the bodies of the ghost dancers and walk the land. Can you grasp what I am saying?"

  Timov had stopped turning the spit over the fire, and Hamr reached over and rotated the haunch. "What are these spirits of the night? The Blue Shell have never seen them."

  "No one sees them. I tell you, the spirits wear the bodies of the ghost dancers. Otherwise, they cannot be seen, anymore than the deaf can hear sounds, yet the sounds are there." He nodded knowingly. "The Longtooth have a saying, 'Beyond the shadow is the ghost.' The spirits are like ghosts—less than shadows, yet real."

  "And these spirits inflame the ghost dancers as barley-sours inflame us?" Hamr queried, fascinated.

  "Far worse. Barley-sours inflame us with passions of the blood. But these night spirits inflame the ghost dancers with murderous lust more wild than the yearnings of the blood. They kill simply to kill. And so they killed us in a frenzy that night."

  Yaqut closed his good eye with grief, stared sideways at the Blue Shell wanderers through his scar-hooded eye. "I hid when they came down from the rocks. I found a cranny, and I hid. But I saw them. Fire speared from their arms like lightning. Lightning! Can you see that?"

  His good eye snapped open, and he looked fiercely at them, daring them to doubt him. "The lightning blasted our hunters into smoking corpses before they could throw their spears. And worse—far worse for some of them—the lightning did not blast but lifted them into the air and burned them slowly, while their suffering howled out like wolves."

  Timov and Duru turned their amazement on Hamr who sat unstirred and reached over to turn the spit again. "How is it that the ghost dancers are not burned themselves?" Hamr asked.

  Yaqut jutted his lower lip, shook his head. "That I do not know. But each bolt they flung wearied them. I remembered that, and it saved my life years later. On that terrible night, the last night of my childhood, I was ignorant of this fact. There were many ghost dancers, almost a dozen of them, males and females. When some fell back exhausted from throwing lightning, others attacked, and with t
heir bare hands tore off the heads and limbs of the remaining men. And then they danced with the corpses. Mired in blood, they danced." He whispered the last words, stared into the flames, and fell silent.

  After a while, he peered up from under his one silver-flared eyebrow joined to a crust of scar where the other had been, and forced a dark, one-sided grin. "You do not believe me. How could you? This is more evil than anything you have known. And there is more to tell. They did not kill all the women—some became sacrifices to the evil spirits' lust. That is right. They did not kill us all. By dawn, when they had departed, a handful of our women remained, and myself and a few other children who had also hidden. We wandered south till we found the other bands of the Longtooth." He stopped, rubbed the pain of remembering from the skull-gleam at his temples. "Ach, you have heard enough. Now tend that meat before it is all ash."

  Timov obediently turned the haunch and Hamr fed the fire.

  "You said the ghost dancers are wearied by throwing lightning," Hamr spoke, "and that saved your life years later. What did you mean?"

  "Just that." Yaqut drained off the last of the blood from the skull. "You see my face, do you not? What do you think did this to me? I have been hunting ghost dancers since I became old enough to know what revenge is. I know all their wiles. And I paid a dear price to learn them." He ran a brown thumbnail along the purpled side of his face. "Ghost dancers not only throw lightning, they throw dreams. They appear to be where they are not. And when you attack them, they are behind you." He passed a ghastly smile to Duru. "Very like your dream, child. That happened to my first hunting party, after we had tracked down one of those bonesuckers by moonlight. We fell on her ghost—and she blasted us from behind, killed the other three and burned me as I was turning. Other men would have fled, half their face on fire, fearing more flames. But I knew she could not throw lightning again right away, so I dared to attack."

  Yaqut turned over the leather straps he wore across his chest and revealed a row of thick fangs. "Ghost dancer teeth. One from each kill." He flipped the straps so the teeth were hidden again, then tapped the gut-bindings, where the straps criss-crossed over his chest. He parted the bindings and exposed another fang embedded in the binding. "I wear this one closest to my heart. It is hers. She made me wear my pain outside for all to see. So I keep hers in sight."