Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  "I want Duru back," Hamr stated.

  Timov nodded, wild-eyed.

  Yaqut showed his worn, brown teeth in a smile that was a grimace. "If you can take her, she is yours. I have been stalking this bonesucker all summer, and only saw him for the first time tonight. The Beastmaker made him a sly one."

  "Duru will slow him down," Hamr said.

  "Maybe not." Yaqut picked at his teeth with a splinter. "He will bind her and carry her like a satchel. Soon, it will be winter. He will disappear into the mountains, and the blizzards will make pursuit impossible. By thaw, he will be long, long gone. I think you should best accept it: You will never see your Duru again."

  Timov groaned and hung his head. Why had he tried to safeguard her behind the horse? Her dream had warned them of the ghost dancer's feint. And Yaqut himself had told them the same. Why had he not remembered? He pressed his fists against his eyes: His despair must not wrench uncontrollable sobs from him in front of the staring Thundertree hunters.

  "The crystal," the priestess spoke, her eyes brightening. "Maybe the boy can track with the crystal."

  "What is that?" Hamr asked impatiently.

  "The fire from the sky is a spirit," the priestess said.

  "Many spirits," Yaqut corrected.

  "Yes," she agreed, "there are many spirits in that strange fire that the ghost dancers wear. They live high in the sky. You can see them there." She gestured to the auroras wavering among the stars beyond the shreds of cloud. "They come down to live in the bodies of the ghost dancers. The witches catch those spirits in special rocks, the clear stone of crystal and amber. I have such a rock. When the moon is full, one can see shapes in it. If the boy has the long sight, he may be able to find the ghost dancer who took his sister."

  "The moon's dark," Hamr despaired. "We're a dozen days from full."

  "Take my crystal, anyway," the priestess offered. "Come with us to the Thundertree, and I will give it to you."

  Hamr shook his head. "That's another day's trail and another after that to come back here. By then the bonesucker's tracks will be cold. And maybe the crystal won't work." He looked to Yaqut. "At dawn, I’m going after him."

  Yaqut snorted. "You cannot even hunt a roe deer." He spat his toothpick into the fire. "You have lost the girl. Accept that and make a new life for yourself, here, among your Panther people." With a nod of his grizzled head, he indicated the sullen Thundertree men. They clustered on the far side of the fire, away from the strange priestess, the scar-faced hunter, and the Blue Shell with ghost dancers' blood.

  "I'm going," Hamr rasped.

  Yaqut peered deep into Hamr's dark eyes, gauged the cold certitude there. Then he turned to the Thundertree men and said across the fire, "Here is a Panther man. He traveled a long way to ally with the Thundertree. Who among you will join him in the hunt?"

  The pale-bearded men muttered uneasily and shrank back.

  The Longtooth hunter smiled wolfishly. "None of them will face the ghost dancer with you, Hamr. Not one." His smile withered, and he glowered contemptuously at the huddled men. "They hide like squirrels."

  "Duru is my clanswoman," Hamr said, as much to the Thundertree as to Yaqut. Somewhere in the huddle were the ones who had frightened and mocked him and Timov in the tall grass, with their mask and bull-roarer. Now they would see, he was a great man after all. Real pain revealed itself in his voice, "I will not abandon her."

  Yaqut heard his determination. He acknowledged it by gripping the youth's shoulder. "We will hunt the ghost dancer together. But you must obey me. If you want your Duru back, you must do as I say!"

  Hamr nodded.

  "I'm coming, too," Timov's small voice piped up.

  Hamr gave him a cold stare. "You'll just get in the way. Stay here. Make a place for us among these new people."

  "She's my sister—I can't just wait here. I want to help."

  "You can help by staying out of the way," Hamr said.

  "Maybe my dreams will help," Timov contended.

  He was afraid: He had seen the hulking creature snatch his sister, had seen by fire-glow the horrid face hackled with stiff hairs, the bison-humped shoulders and the limbs like tree boughs. He had also witnessed the terror on Duru's face, had heard her shrill screams.

  Afraid as he was of the bonesucker, he felt more frightened of doing nothing for his sister, of hearing her cries every time the wind caught in the branches, knowing she lived somewhere out there in the hands of that spirit-possessed beast.

  "I won't be in the way," he promised. "I'll do whatever you say! Let me come with you."

  Hamr looked to Yaqut. The aged hunter scratched his scar-riven beard. "Your dreams may help," he admitted. "I have had no success tracking this one. Too bad we do not have the crystal in hand."

  "What about the witches who make the crystals?" Timov asked, feeling expansive now and useful. "Maybe they can help us."

  Yaqut barked a laugh. "They would as soon cut off their thumbs. Witches love their bonesuckers. They will not help us kill one."

  "The boy has an idea," the priestess argued. "There is a witch not far from here. Neoll Nant Caw by name. A Longtooth woman. I promised her the weird child, when I drop it. She may want to help if you tell her your purpose is to get the girl back."

  "No witches on this hunt." Yaqut shook his head vehemently. "Their magic will baffle us. We have troubles enough with winter on our heels."

  The priestess clucked. "You have had all summer to catch your prey, Yaqut, and what can you show? Neoll Nant Caw is east of here, the direction you are heading anyway." She fixed him with a shrewd stare. "If you are afraid, send these two in to ask for help."

  Yaqut rose and shivered with disgust. "We will talk no more about it tonight." He walked off into the dark to make his bed.

  The priestess turned her proud face to the fire. "He will go to her. I taunt him, but fear has never stopped a man like Yaqut."

  )|(

  Fear filled Timov, however. He imagined Duru smothering in the huge locked arms of the ghost dancer, her despairing spirit hanging in the black branches, the bonesucker circling back through the tattered fog for him—and he tossed with fright before he slipped into dreamless sleep.

  In the chill of dawn he woke, surprised there had been no nightmares. He had slept at the edge of the clearing alongside Hamr. Both of them had tolerated the fresh stink of Blind Side's manure, wanting to be near the horse in case he warned of another attack. No attack came and no nightmares.

  Timov blinked away the grogginess of his deep sleep to observe the Panther men already moving about in the clearing.

  Eager to return to the safety of their abode atop their towering rock, the Thundertree men gathered around the stretcher they used to carry the priestess. She had them wait, while she held out the rock of fertility for the Blue Shell to touch.

  When Hamr and Timov put their hands on it, she whispered, "Bold hunters—beware. Every hunter of the Old People is himself hunted." Then she lay down in her litter, and the Panther men sent their cats running ahead into the Forest and carried her off.

  "She is right, of course," Yaqut told them, climbing down from the tree where he had lain all night between sleep and watchfulness. "Once he knows we are after him, he will come for us. We must stay hidden long as we can."

  "But won't the spirits warn him?" Timov asked.

  "The witch may help us with that, if you are brave enough to face her. But no magic will avail if we go blundering through the woods. You must learn the ways of traveling like true hunters."

  In the first shadowy hours of morning, Yaqut taught Hamr and Timov to move silently through the Forest, walking on root bridges between trees, varying their pace through leaf litter to mime the wind, reading birds' signals for what the feathered sentinels witnessed of other animals, especially Bear, Sloth, and Elk, whose large movements could mask the hunters'.

  "The horse we leave behind," Yaqut declared. "It belongs to the grasslands and draws too much attention in the Fore
st."

  They were sitting on a fallen elm before the last embers of their fire, and Hamr had been staring up at the fast clouds, keeping his mind free of distraction so he could absorb all that Yaqut had to teach. He glared at the hunter. "Blind Side of Life stays with me."

  Yaqut's mouth opened around a silent laugh, like a skull's. "In the Forest, it is Bright Side of Life, blundering through the shrub. The ghost dancer will hear us a day away. We leave it behind."

  "No." Hamr said this without expression, though a vein ticked at his throat. "The horse stays with me." He read the grim intensity of Yaqut's stare. "And if you're thinking of killing it, kill me first."

  Hamr had already placed his hand in the satchel at his hip, and Yaqut knew he held a knife. He sighed, disappointed that so much strength had joined to such a childish mind. "I have had my chance to kill you, Hamr the Arrogant," Yaqut said. "I will not kill you now unless you betray me." When Hamr's hand did not come away from inside his satchel, he added, "Keep the horse. But you will ride ahead of us. We will let the ghost dancer see you. The boy and I shadow as I direct. Understood?"

  Hamr nodded. He stepped out of Yaqut's striking range before relaxing his grip on the obsidian blade in his satchel.

  Timov had watched apprehensively, and shrugged. Now the boy visibly relaxed, and when Yaqut told him to bury the fire site, he stooped to the job eagerly.

  "That horse is your death," Yaqut warned Hamr.

  Hamr brushed away the insects buzzing around his head and ambled toward where Blind Side stood fetlock-deep in the thick grass of the clearing, grazing contentedly. Hamr's body felt sweaty with fear, and the bump at the back of his head from his fall two days before still itched. Maybe Yaqut was right—yet, he knew the Beastmaker did not want him to leave his horse behind. "Death is certain," he whispered in the animal's ear. "So how a man gives himself to life should be decided as surely."

  )|(

  Hamr rode Blind Side of Life ready for death, if the Beastmaker wanted that of him. Yet he remained keenly alert. The late-bearing summer trees, laden with nuts and fruit, hung their boughs low in the dells, and the horse chose the more open ways along the knolly ridges of pine and fir.

  Up here, Hamr could see the entire broken landscape, from the flat outwash plain of the tundra, through stream-webbed woodlands, to lakes among the lumpy hills, where they journeyed now. Looking down, he occasionally caught a glimpse of Timov among the dense trees. Yaqut roamed nowhere in sight.

  The startled cries of crows announced the horse and his rider as Blind Side clopped along. The birds' echoes flapped back and forth above the dark valleys. The crows clamored so persistently that in the afternoon, when a tribal site came into view, Hamr made no effort to hide.

  He sat high on Blind Side's back, surveying a gloomy dale below, where stone fences crisscrossed among enormous firs and bunkers of cobbles and boulders. Between steep hillocks, a black pool glittered with swans, and on near slopes of the approach from the ridge, sunlight gleamed off totems of animal and human skulls.

  "The glen of the witch," Yaqut announced, appearing behind Hamr out of nowhere.

  Blind Side started, and Hamr had to hug his neck.

  Timov waved from below. Hunched among a cluster of alders, he pointed through yellow dappled leaves at two men on a hillside above the swans. Kindling piled high in their arms. They gawked at Hamr and his horse. One of them yelled, and from a cobbled bunker, two women emerged.

  Yaqut signed for Timov to wait. "Hamr, you go down. Take the boy with you. But mind you—do not eat or drink anything in this place."

  "Aren't you coming with us?"

  The flesh between Yaqut's eyes flinched. "I hate witches. They love the bonesuckers. You and the boy go. It is your clan’s woman he has taken."

  Hamr peered apprehensively at the two women, who had stepped into a clearing among sombrous firs. Sunlight glowed like snow from the head of one and like fire from the other. "Will they help us?'

  "That is for you to find out." Yaqut kept the horse between himself and the view of the witches, and backed off into the underbrush. "I will wait up here. Do not tell them about me. Get out before dark if you can. And most important—do not eat or drink anything they give you!"

  Hamr nudged Blind Side of Life forward.

  "Where's Yaqut?" Timov asked as the horse picked his way down the hill toward him.

  "We're going in alone. Stay beside me. We may be leaving fast."

  Hamr wanted to carry his two spears like lances but thought that seemed too threatening. He left them crossed in his lap. When they came to the first stone fence, he opened his empty arms in greeting.

  The fence, a natural configuration of rocks and boulders, had been shoved into a long line by an ice-sheet long ago. Numerous breaks opened to the fir grove, where the witches waited. Only one appeared large enough for the horse.

  As Hamr led Blind Side through it, fierce growling and howling assailed them from among the clustered trees. In the shadows, a pack of wolves crouched.

  The white-haired witch pointed her longstaff first at the pack and then at the strangers, and one of the wolves broke from the pack and charged.

  Blind Side of Life, already anxious because of the howling of the wolves, panicked at the sound and smell of one hurtling toward him. He jerked his body upright with a startled whinny, and Hamr flew from his back and crashed among the rocks. Timov rushed to him and was brushed aside as the frightened horse clattered past, swerving blindly among the rocks until he found the gap and bolted through it.

  The attacking wolf rushed close enough for Timov to see foam threading its fangs as it snarled. He swung his spear up in time to block it, and it bit the haft. The force threw him off his feet. Its ferocious face pressed close. Its claws tore at the hide over his stomach.

  A shout shrilled out from the old witch, and the wolf curled away. Tail tucked under, it dashed back to where the others milled among the trees. Timov sat up, slick with sweat and shuddering. "Let's get out of here!"

  Hamr ignored the ache in his bruised back and staggered upright. He helped the boy to his feet, saw that he was unhurt. "Did you see that? The witch called off the wolf. Look."

  The white-haired woman waved for them to approach.

  "Hamr, let's go!"

  Hamr picked up his second spear. He wished he had his satchel with the obsidian knife in it. Grateful at least for the wood blade sheathed at his hip, he said, "Go to Blind Side and wait for me there."

  Timov watched Hamr walk toward the witches. He wanted to flee but could not. Yaqut observed from afar, and the boy did not want to face that stiff visage alone. He scampered after Hamr. As the witches came more clearly into view, his run slowed. He kept well behind the larger man.

  Before the darkness of the firs, the women stood like apparitions risen up in sunlight. Their bodies draped in plaited grass and moss, faces white as moth-wings, they looked ancient.

  The old woman, with her lichenous hair and flesh cracked every-which-way as bark, seemed a part of the fir gloom, more tree than hag. The younger one looked keen as a fox. The sun's flame in her tangle of red tresses fell past a throat as long as a water bird's. And something secret and dark smoldered in her gaze.

  The two stood like the very reflections of time that the old Mothers were fond of sketching in the warm ash: youth and crone, beauty and age, the cresting fullness and the drained end of life.

  Beyond them, the men who had been carrying kindling dropped the wood into a fire-pit between soot-blackened pines, and continued busily arranging the branches for that night's fire. They ignored the strangers.

  Only the witches watched them approach. The old one seemed to be staring through them, and the young one's eyes, green and slow, fixed them like a cat's. She flicked a glance at Timov, then steadied her stare on Hamr. A smile shadowed her pale lips.

  As the hag's eyes sharpened, the travelers stopped. Hamr leaned both of his spears in the crook of one arm, and raised his hand in salutation. "I am Ha
mr—this, Timov. We are the last of the Blue Shell and have traveled far. Are you Neoll Nant Caw?"

  The crone's taut gaze did not flicker. The young witch looked amused.

  "The priestess of the Longtooth sent us here," Hamr went on. "She said you could help us. Our clanswoman—"

  "Where is the third?" the aged witch interrupted.

  Hamr said nothing, and Timov looked to him, waiting for his reply. "We are alone," Hamr said, finally.

  "You lie!" The crone raised her longstaff, and the wolves howled from among the trees. "You will speak truth or not speak at all."

  Timov cowered, both hands on his spear, staring toward the fir darkness, where the wolves paced. Hamr leaned forward on his spears, and Timov's chest constricted to see anger throb in his jaw. He reached out to tug at his arm—to urge him away, back to the horse and their journey. Then Hamr spoke and surprised Timov with the composure of his voice, "Old Mother, you mistake me. We have come here, to you, alone. Our companion waits for us in the hills."

  The crone nodded, eyes aglare. "Yes, he waits. Who is he?"

  "Yaqut," Timov quickly said, before Hamr angered them with an ambiguous answer. "A hunter of the Longtooth, who—"

  The old witch cawed like a crow. "Yaqut of the Evil Face! I know that devil. So he is here in the Forest." She cocked a glance at her companion. "How unlike him. Much easier to kill his prey in open grasslands, where he can poison their water and watch them die from afar."

  Casually, Hamr glanced past the witches to where the men had finished arranging the kindling and now dragged lugs of nut shrubs from the treeline to the clearing of the unlit fire-pit. They seemed oblivious of him and Timov, and he decided they would pose no obstacle if he chose to use his spears on the witches. He shifted his weight so that he could more easily hoist his weapons.

  "Are the Blue Shell a horse clan?" the red-haired witch asked.

  "No," Hamr answered, noticing the softness of her voice, unlike the crone's harsh tone. The crone noticed it, too, and stared at the young woman as Hamr explained, "Before sickness destroyed our tribe, we thrived as fisherfolk. Tortoise clan, with a few who worshiped the Panther. We've come north to find the Thundertree, to—"