Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Baat," she said.

  He startled when she spoke his name and stared at her curiously. When she said nothing further, he offered her more water.

  She shook her head and began to talk, words spilling out of her in a gush of relief: "Why did you take me from my people? I thought you were going to kill me. When I ran away from you, you came after me—if not to eat me, then why? And why did you save me from the Bear?"

  Baat understood not a word. The cadence of her speech, gentle though swift, conveyed that she no longer feared him, and he allowed a smile to lift the heavy muscles of his face.

  A spasm of lightning illuminated for a moment the large world beyond the thicket. Baat glanced at the writhing energy and thought of the ul udi. While the girl had slept, he had tried to reach them, to converse again with the Bright Ones. The storm had interfered. He had heard nothing but his own confusion. What to do now?

  He held up his left hand and willed some of the cold fire into it. The hand lit up with blue voltage: A wavery sheath of fire arced between his fingers.

  Duru gasped, pulled back.

  "No—don't be afraid," Baat said. He understood now that his voice reached her as so much gruff noise. He could not explain that this energy healed. Instead, with his right hand, he steadied her hurt leg and touched the wound with the blue energy.

  Duru tightened to cry out. But she knew no pain. The lightning in the ghost dancer's hand crackled over the bindings of her damaged leg. It pulsed coolly through her flesh. When he took his hands away, her leg hummed with strength.

  Baat laughed at Duru's amazement, and she smiled, at first tentatively, then more broadly as the good feeling suffused her torn leg. Timov and Hamr will never believe this, she thought—and her joy dimmed. Where are they in this storm?

  Surely they believed she was in danger—or dead. Taking a twig from the fire, she drew two stick figures in the dirt, one of them astride a crude likeness of a horse. The ghost dancer watched, then turned away. The flesh he could heal, but for her fear and her sorrow there was little he could do.

  In the fargone days of his childhood, Baat remembered the old ones gathering the clan together during storms and singing. The ul udi could not come down through the tempest, so the People would send songs up to them. He hummed a tune he recalled from that time, a lullaby he had once sung to his own children. The stabbing hurt of those memories startled to life with that song and astonished him. His voice trailed off, leaving him bewildered.

  Duru picked up on the music with a different song, a rain chant of the Panther people:

  Let the lightning flash—

  Riding into darkness—

  And the thunder crash—

  Riding into darkness—

  I will not be afraid

  Riding into darkness—

  In the world the rain made

  Riding into darkness—

  Baat smiled again. The girl smiled back. Outside, the Rain Master's lightning raged in surges, while behind the thicket, under the granite outcrop, the ghost dancer and the girl hummed storm music together with the thunder.

  )|(

  As the horizons exploded with lightning, Hamr and Timov crouched near the battered fire. Blind Side stood behind them, his large body shivering with fear.

  Yaqut fed the fire with juniper branches and glanced about for the young witch. She had gone into the bushes some while back and had not returned. He motioned for Hamr to seek her out.

  Hamr patted Timov reassuringly. The boy's gaze had locked on the jumping flames, and he seemed oblivious to all else. "Kirchi!" Hamr called, rising and stooping into the rain. Maybe she had fled, which would not be bad: one less to protect and feed.

  Kirchi had not run away. On her way back to the campfire, lightning stabbed overhead so close that the air crackled and sent her sprawling. When she looked up, the after-glare of the bolt still lingered in the sky like mist. Out of that misty patch, translucent and shimmery, Neoll Nant Caw's spectral image flew toward her.

  "You betrayed me," the crone cried, her haggard face vindictive with rage. "Four years I fed and sheltered you. I taught you the wise ways. You cannot run away now."

  Kirchi clutched her medicine-bag, felt the jangle of moonstones within. The power in those stones could dispel this wraith. She had seen Neoll Nant Caw use crystals to drive off spectral ul udi—but she had never actually done it herself. "Go away," Kirchi warned.

  Neoll Nant Caw's image swelled closer, her furious face a dense thicket of creases. "Come back now, Kirchi—or you will die with the others."

  "Get away from me," Kirchi whimpered and curled up tighter. "You know I never wanted your food or your shelter. I never wanted to be a witch."

  "You are a witch," the wraith spoke like soft thunder. "You can never be otherwise. Come back."

  "No. I'm not a witch. I'm not—and I'm not coming back."

  The wraith narrowed in. Her clawed hands glittered with punishing barbs.

  Kirchi clutched the charged moonstones in her bag and called the power into her. To her surprise, the power came. A rich, amazing, flamboyance of strength sluiced through her.

  Neoll Nant Caw sneered. "You would not dare! I taught you everything!"

  With all the vehemence of her fright, Kirchi flung the energy at the wraith. Lightning clapped, and the crone shrieked and disappeared.

  In the glare, Hamr's figure moved, silhouetted. "Are you all right?" He helped her to her feet. He felt the fear loosening her muscles and took her weight, thinking she had been startled by the lightning.

  Kirchi trembled in Hamr's grasp. She had driven off Neoll Nant Caw! She had actually dared—and had been strong enough to do it. She had defended herself with her own powers—and as a witch. For a brief moment, pride dazzled her against a black sky of fear.

  )|(

  Dawn broke in long rays of scarlet whose light blurred everything. Timov stared empty-eyed into slashes of red clouds, while Hamr leaned close, trying to stare past the glaze to the boy inside. "You sure this'll wear off?"

  "It will take several days," Kirchi answered again. She stood at the edge of the rimrock, staring in the direction of Neoll Nant Caw's camp. Her insides still felt the fright of last night's confrontation.

  She had told no one what had happened, for there was nothing they could do. The storm had protected them from the full brunt of the old witch's power. But how much longer before she came again for them? The moon was growing, and the crone would surely use that strength against them.

  Yaqut kicked through the embers of the bonfire, stamping out the hot ashes that remained. Though they had camped on a rock shelf with nothing nearby to burn, he did this out of ritual habit, not ever wanting the fire to follow him.

  After the tremendous bolts of lightning during the night, he had expected dawn to reveal several forest blazes. Joy touched him to see that the only flames in the Forest spread with the sun's rays fanning through fog and mist.

  "Don't leave me," Timov begged in a wilted voice.

  Hamr looked to Yaqut. "Let me take him with me."

  Yaqut shook his fierce face. "He goes with me. You have the tracking crystal. When the boy's head clears, I will have his dreams." He lifted Timov under his shoulders and stood him up. "The bonesucker escaped me all summer. With the boy, I have a last chance to track him. Is that right, Timov? You are going to find your sister for me?"

  Timov blinked, worked his mouth, but no sound emerged.

  Yaqut sucked a slow breath through his teeth, and nodded. "He will do it. A few days of walking will clear his head." He faced Hamr, noting the concern in the big youth's face. He liked this oaf and wished the lad were as bright as he was brave. "You did right to go back for him. No matter what I said last night. Now you must contend with the witch." The flesh between his eyes twitched at that thought. "The boy will be safer with me. If you survive the journey to the Big River, you will see him again. I will watch over him, be sure."

  Hamr placed Cyndell's ivory calendar bracelet
in Timov's hand. "I'll be back for you."

  Timov's mouth worked again, and from far away, he said: "I know." He looked down at the bracelet and his gaze lost itself in the swerves of its carvings.

  Hamr turned for Kirchi and found her with Blind Side, grooming him with a pine-needle branch.

  Yaqut, too, watched her, and he said out of the twisted side of his mouth, "Be wary of her. I want the bonesucker. You want Duru. What does she want? Mind that."

  Taking Timov by the elbow, Yaqut led him away from the stamped-out fire, down the slope toward the stream.

  Hamr looked after them until they disappeared in the sun-shot mists. He felt Kirchi watching him and wondered if she had deceived him and remained loyal to the old witch. Silently he asked the Beastmaker for a sign.

  "You were brave to come back for him," Kirchi said from beside the horse. "Braver yet to take me with you. Most men would have been afraid to trust a witch. But then most men wouldn't have trespassed witch ground."

  Hamr scanned the terraced slopes above them. "We better go before the Stabbing Cats return. They'll want the horse." He observed her sandals of plaited grass, already well frayed from last night's trek. "You'll need new footwear. Soon as we get away from these ledges, we'll cut some hide and fit you." He patted the pelts across Blind Side's back.

  Kirchi smiled gratefully. She would be glad to get out of the grass robe. She wanted to leave behind every witch-thing she had. After last night's visitation from Neoll Nant Caw, she dared not abandon what protection she had. "I better not wear animal skin for a while," Kirchi said, and when she caught Hamr's puzzled expression, added, "I'm still a witch—until we get away from Neoll Nant Caw. I may have to talk with the animals. They won't talk if I'm wearing their skins."

  "Talk to animals?"

  "They could help us." She realized he did not understand. During the storm last night and again at first light, she had heard him praying to the Beastmaker, and she had expected him to be receptive to her talking with animals. For now, though, he was more concerned about the Stabbing Cats and eager to get away from the ledges, where the big cats could pounce on them. But she knew the cats had left before dawn, when the rain stopped, moving up the slopes and west.

  Blind Side of Life had heard them. When everyone else had been sleeping, he had been listening with his deep ears, each moving independently, separating the noises of the stream and the wash of the rain from the stirring of animals. Each ear, filled with delicate hairs, could catch sounds no person could hear.

  At first, she had felt sorry that the horse had no eyes, but once she talked with him and realized how clearly he heard, how fully and deeply he listened to everything, envy displaced her pity.

  The paths that the rain had washed into the rocky slopes led down to the stream, glutted now with boulders, uprooted trees, and the carcasses of animals drowned by floods. At a bend where debris had silted a gravel bar, they forded a stream to put water between them and Neoll Nant Caw. On the other side, they stopped to gather some purple whortleberries for their pouches.

  "What do you want?" Hamr asked her bluntly at last. "You don't want to hunt the ghost dancer. And Yaqut says you can't go back to your tribe. You said you want to go south, find another tribe. Why don't you go?"

  Kirchi regarded him curiously. "You'd let me go?"

  Hamr shrugged. "You're a witch—how could I stop you?"

  "I thought you'd try. Yaqut said I had to help until the ghost dancer is taken."

  "Yaqut's not here. You can go."

  Kirchi smiled, a white-toothed grin that softened the sharp angles of her face. "Maybe I will."

  A warm feeling suffused Hamr's breast. He had hoped to get rid of her, despite Yaqut's command. At the least, he had expected her to be a nuisance. Yet now he felt inspired by the way she played the brightness of her eyes over him—green eyes.

  She struck him as the strangest woman he had ever seen, with her orange hair and fox-slanted eyes. She lacked the ampleness men wanted in a woman, which Aradia had carried so well. She appeared boyish, yet her expression held strength and directness, the look of someone used to facing challenge, who knew more than she would say, like an Old Mother. He liked her looking at him with esteem, making him feel he could be a great man.

  She had returned to gathering berries.

  "Maybe?" he asked.

  "Now that I can go," she said, without looking at him, "maybe I will stay."

  "Why? The Frost Moon is growing. Now's the time to go south."

  "I don't really want to go south. Strays are killed by other tribes or made slaves. Let me stay with you. You took me from Neoll Nant Caw when I'd thought I'd never get away. Let me help you."

  Hamr doubted she could help him, yet he felt pleased with the way she regarded him. He shrugged. "Which way do we go?"

  Kirchi smiled with relief, then quickly marked the sun and pointed a way through the shrubs. "If we hurry, we can get out of the hills before dark. Tomorrow we'll reach the taiga." She took Blind Side's rope and guided him.

  Glad that Kirchi knew her way, Hamr concentrated on looking for food. Among tangles of alders, willows, and dwarf birch, small mammals flitted, and Hamr whipped rocks at them with his sling and missed each time.

  Kirchi giggled with amusement. Then she knelt in the deep moss hummocks beside a creek, snatched a rainbow fish from the purling water with one hand and tossed the trout to an amazed Hamr. They ate the roe as they walked and wrapped the fish in river kelp to keep it fresh for that night.

  A shifting cloud of mosquitoes followed along the hill slopes. They swarmed louder in the depressions, until Kirchi found a milty pod of milkweed. She mixed the latex with bile from the trout's gut and dabbed it on their faces and limbs.

  Hamr recognized the repellent as a variant of the fish paste the Blue Shell used. Hers smelled less vile and worked as well. He admired her competence and her unhurrying way of doing things.

  When she paused by a swollen stream, Hamr waited patiently, thinking she would snatch another fish. Then the waters separated and a large shadow lifted itself upright—a giant beaver, taller than a man. It bobbed back into the stream, with only its big-toothed head, thick as a stump, breaking the surface.

  Kirchi held the moonstones in her medicine-bag tight to her chest. She let their energy stream through her and into the Beaver. In that way, the witch power in the stone soothed the creature and opened its mind to her.

  How quiet that mind felt, still as a snag pool. Kirchi shared the black water with the creature, watching mosquitoes dimple the surface. Pike poised like knives. Bolts of dragonflies flicked under basswood trees. And a black-haired girl in tattered hide hurried beside collapsed earth banks.

  "Beaver has seen the girl," Kirchi said in a sleepy voice. She viewed Duru's small body crossing Beaver's wicker dam and disappearing among the pale blades on the shore. Then Bear reared out of the slick grass, and Kirchi nearly lost her vision. She watched the girl flee, saw her swim the stream, toward the far side where Baat stood throwing stones at the Bear.

  Kirchi pulled back, and Beaver slipped into the amber water and vanished. "Duru was near here yesterday," she said quietly, her voice sounding loud even in a whisper. "I think she surprised Bear."

  Hamr, who had watched her communion with Beaver with an open mouth, snapped alert. "Bear would kill her."

  "Baat was there too. I think he saved her. I think she's all right."

  "You think—" Hamr looked with exasperation at the ripples in the stream, where Beaver had floated only a moment before. "What did Beaver tell you?"

  Kirchi shrugged. "That's all. I'll ask other animals as we go. Maybe we'll learn more."

  Hamr followed the witch lightly, alertly. He felt suspicious and nervous. Had she really spoken with Beaver? How? He watched her carefully as they moved, but no other animals came to her.

  Late that afternoon, at the end of their arduous walk through the hills, Blind Side of Life strolled off to nibble the last green shoots in the russ
et grass. Kirchi cleaned the trout while Hamr used a big rock to fell spruce poles for a lean-to. He asked her, "Can that crone really come after us this far away?"

  "Oh, yes." They had chosen a sandy bench above a creek that drained the hills behind and opened into the grassy flat ahead. Low, broad rays of sunlight spread through the trees, brightening autumnal colors: scarlet maples, yellow birches, silvery willows.

  "What is her power?" Hamr asked. He dragged the spruce poles from where he had felled them. "Is it the power to talk with animals, the way you did with Beaver?"

  Kirchi laid the fish she had flayed with a sharp rock into the creek water. She held up her hand to stop Hamr's feet, cleared the damp leaves from under the fir, which he trampled, and revealed a crop of mushrooms.

  "Will she send the wolves after us?" Hamr asked.

  "No. They guard the witch ground." She selected two handfuls of mushrooms and returned to the creek to wash them and continue scaling the trout. "Neoll Nant Caw's power is the moon. As the moon waxes, the witch's power grows."

  "What kind of power?"

  "The next few nights, she'll send wraiths."

  "Spirits?"

  "More like animal ghosts. I can't describe them. You'll see."

  "After that?"

  "The Moon Bitch. When the moon is strong enough, Neoll Nant Caw will come to us as the Moon Bitch."

  "As a dog then?"

  "Yes, a wolf-wraith—but it's her, her spirit. We'll be on the tundra by then. We'll see her coming."

  "What can this Moon Bitch do to us?"

  "Tear us apart if we give her the chance."

  Hamr looked skeptical. "A ghost? The fire-songs say ghosts are mist. They drive people mad but they don't tear them apart."

  "This is not a ghost. It's a power, a moon power. Neoll Nant Caw has trapped ul udi in her crystals. They've taught her how to shape the fire from the sky."