Corridor of Storms

by neetha Napew

  The child trembled, frowning against the now familiar smell of smoke on snow, which tainted the evening wind. The beasts were making day-end fires and building their odd shelters against the stormy night to come.

  Cowering within the meager, ice-rimed protection of the willow grove, the child instinctively knew that the beast was hunting it. For days it had been so. The child could see him clearly now, walking slowly, head up, scenting the wind, then stopping, bending, checking the earth for sign, finding it, and moving forward. Closer .. . ever closer.

  Trembling with hatred, the child wished that it could break from its hiding place within the willows and run forward to pounce upon the beast to kill and devour him, but even if it was brave enough to do so, it was still too small to inflict enough damage.

  Yet.

  Again it trembled, this time not so much against cold and hunger but with the frightening knowledge that it was growing. Slowly, inexorably, despite the ravages of hunger, the child sensed bewildering changes within itself. Its head moved to one side as its hands rose to lay open upon its chest. Not only did its body ache with hunger, it seemed to be transforming itself, sprouting two hot, painfully tender lumps that were forcing its once-flat nipples outward. Its hands seemed bigger, its limbs longer, and often it whacked the top of its head upon branches that it could have walked under with ease only days before.

  Now, staring through the ice-rimed branches of the willow grove, the child hunched forward, one hand pressing its breasts, the other resting upon the top of its bruised head. It shivered violently against the cold, confused by it. It was too soon for snow; the luxuriant, downy undercoat of thick, silvery fur that kept the child warm through the long, brutal storms of the dark times was only halfway grown. The wind combed through the shaggy gray guard hairs that covered nearly all of the child’s emaciated body. It parted them, found the child’s pale, delicate skin, and made no concessions to its youth or pitifully weak condition. Again the child shivered, this time so violently that the spasmodic movements actually warmed it a little.

  Its body’s battle against the cold brought a sudden, overwhelming surge of exhaustion. The child slumped to its knees in the thick, resilient layer of faded, crinkly leaves and deep orange moss that carpeted the floor of the grove. Because the trees grew so thickly, there was only a thin veining of snow despite the driving wind. Impatiently the child whisked the snow away and, moving quietly, dug itself a burrow within the insulating blanket of vegetation. Its work accomplished, it scooted gratefully into the nest, covering itself entirely as fatigue allowed it to forget that it had sought the grove not only for shelter against the impending storm but as a place to hide from the hunting beast. It dozed blissfully, then came up abruptly out of sleep, sitting upright, shaking leaves from its shoulders as it remembered that it was in danger.

  Groggy, dizzy with fatigue, the child stared out of the grove. The beast, although a good distance away, was still there. It had paused, scanning the rolling hills that were rapidly losing their color to the thickening snowfall and ebbing light. Above, wind-driven snow clouds skeined across the darkening sky, now and then revealing the full, staring face of the moon.

  The child looked up just as it disappeared behind a thickening bank of swirling cloud from which snow hurled itself vengefully at the earth.

  Snow. The child had loved it once, and scampered through it at its mother’s side. Together they had rolled and played in it, savoring its coolness against their bare faces and chests and the thick, callused padding of their feet. They had lifted great handfuls of it and tossed it high.” hooting with delight.

  Mother!

  The child’s longing was almost unbearable, until it realized that the snow had caused Mother Killer to pause. The beast had evidently lost all trace of the child’s sign. He stood like a stallion, with his head raised and nostrils wide, drawing in the wind.

  The child, confused by its emotions, salivated. It wanted the beast to come, to kneel, to stare into the willow grove, to make eye contact, as he had for the past five dusks, and then to go away, as he had also done, speaking low and leaving tiny morsels of meat before turning away. The starving child was always transfixed with terror and bewildered by his behavior, while thinking of the miserable stalks, leaves, berries, insects, and occasional rodents that had formed its diet since its mother’s death.

  Better to go hungry than to eat the leavings of Mother Killer, thought the child stubbornly. But it was not easy to go hungry; it was painful and weakening and frightening. And each time the beast looked into the child’s eyes and then turned away, the child was filled with a strange, half remembered, oddly calming recollection of a star-strewn night, of being carried across the world as an infant at its mother’s breast while others of its kind paraded silently ahead ... of staring into eyes that observed it from the tangled blackness of the earth—eyes that it knew now were the eyes of a beast—frightened, awe struck, filled with the wondrous reflection of the night; and in those dark, starlit eyes there was no threat, no threat at all. Not like the eyes of Mother Killer. Not like the eyes of the beast that had eaten its mother’s heart and danced in her skin.

  Or were they? Mother Killer brought meat. Mother Killer walked alone out of the encampment of its fellow beasts, hunting the child and finding the child, not to kill it but to feed it. Why?

  Confusion, coupled with exhaustion, muddled the child’s memories. It lay down onto its side, assuming a fetal curl as it worked itself so deeply under the leaves that only one side of its head was visible. It was warm under the leaves, and the child relaxed a little, still watching the unmoving beast, as though he were somehow a man of ice, frozen solid. Frozen beasts were no threat.

  The child’s eyelids drooped. Far off, wolves howled at the storm-veiled moon. Sleep filled the child, and in its sleep it moaned and cried softly, longing for its mother, drifting into a delirium of dreams .. . images of its mother hunting, killing, savaging, leaping out of the shadows at unwary travelers.

  Its stomach contracted, lurching with hunger. It awoke, listened to the wind and the wailing wolves, and stared out of its lonely bed of leaves and moss—into the watching eyes of the beast.

  Navahk smiled. The mist-gray eyes that stared at him out of the tangled scrub did not smile back. They were wide, filled with fear and hatred. Navahk’s smile deepened. Above and behind him night absorbed the last pale glow of dusk. Now the world, lit solely by the rising moon, was silver and black with deep, rive ring shadows. Other hunters would have turned back for the comfort and firelight and company of an encampment. Men did not hunt the tundra alone at night. But Navahk was a magic man, and unlike other men, fear was a food to him. He felt emboldened by it.

  The wind was gusting from the north. Hard, thin pellets of snow stung his face as the nocturnal animals of the tundra began to stir. He listened, his senses alert. He was one of them now, and only his concern that the creature that cowered before him might bolt away kept him from howling with pure, animalistic pleasure.

  Navahk looked down at the half-human face buried amid the leaves and shadows. His smile faded. He saw a double image of the moon swimming in the twin lakes of the creature’s eyes, and within those moons he saw himself—a part of the beast, a part of the moon and the night, a part of the savage storm wind. It was a startling vision—absolute beauty held captive within the eyes of a creature of absolute ugliness.

  Instinctively Navahk’s hand tightened upon the haft of his spear. His smile returned. He could hear the shallow rasp of the creature’s breath; he could smell its fear and see that its hideous, hairless, bearlike face was gaunt and haggard. Yet as it moved uncomfortably under his scrutiny, he caught sight of its furred shoulder and arm and knew that, despite its obvious near starvation, it had grown since he last saw it, and that was only yesterday. Navahk frowned, envious of the power within its musculature. Soon it will become a beast like its mother. Soon! It does not mature like a human child. In one summer it has grown as much as a man would
grow in half a lifetime!

  He stared at it, enraptured by the thought that had driven him to find the beast at the end of each day. Hunting had not improved since the ceremony of first blood. Although he had led his people down all the old, familiar game trails, along none of them had they found the game that he had promised: enough game to provide meat for a winter camp, enough to guarantee his people’s survival through the coming time of long dark. So it was that they were slowly traveling toward the place of the Great Gathering.

  Navahk knew from Grek’s continuing, thinly veiled hostility that the older hunter would never forgive him for killing Pet, and that if hunting did not improve, Grek would remind others that Navahk had broken tradition by becoming their headman as well as their magic man. He would say what others were already thinking: If Navahk is strong in the favor of the spirits, why do the life spirits of the game not come to die upon the spears of his people, and why does the wanawut follow us to howl in the night in mourning for the one of its kind that Navahk has killed?

  Navahk trembled with frustration. “Why?” he hissed to the terrified thing that crouched within the shadows. The sound of his voice caused the creature to stiffen and widen its stare. Its eyes were opaque with fatigue. “Wah? ...” it mewed pathetically.

  Navahk sank to his knees in shock. It was the magic man who stiffened now. The beast had spoken! It had echoed him, the way an infant echoes its parents. For days now he had heard it howling beneath the midnight sun, always the same dirge like “Wah nah wah .. . wah nah wut ...” And for days it had followed his people across the tundra, had run from him when he had sought it, and had refused the food he secretly offered. He had wondered how his people would react if he simply killed the thing and dragged its corpse back into their encampment to prove to them that it was no phantom but an animal that could be meat for them, to be feared no more than any other predator. But that would lessen the murder of its mother. He had held back, thinking of its power, wishing he could possess it, control it, and bend it to his will while it was still a small, weak child. What would his people say of his magic then? No men would dare to challenge his powers, or he would bring forth the wanawut and command it to feed upon their flesh! The concept inspired a radiant smile. Now, from the leather sack that he carried wrapped in a larger sack of oiled bison intestine, he drew a handful of bloody antelope meat and guts.

  “Wah nah wuh .. . wah nah wut ...” Navahk whispered, slowly extending his hand, holding the meat toward the half human thing, repeating the sounds softly, encouragingly, lovingly, as a parent might have spoken them.

  The thing mewed pitifully and edged back from its nest into the deeper shadows that filled the grove. As the gentle lulling of the magic man whispered on, the beast hugged and rocked itself, making weak, fretful sounds of confusion and indecision. Its senses were obviously dulled by malnutrition. Navahk knew that his voice was both soothing and befuddling it at the same time. Was it Man or Mother who offered it food and spoke to it in its own tongue?

  “Wah nah wuh .. he repeated, then ate of the meat himself, slowly, pausing to smack his lips. He offered it again, making low sounds of invitation. This time the creature’s need for sustenance outweighed its caution. It sprang forward, snatched the meat from the hand of the man, and began to eat ravenously.

  Navahk could have roared with triumph. Instead he remained absolutely still—watching and smiling. The beast had eaten from the hand of the man! And when the meat was consumed, Navahk offered all that was left within the sack.

  “Wah nah wuh .. . wah nah wut .. he whispered.

  This time the creature did not echo him. Nourishment had brought clarity back into its eyes, and Navahk, meeting its gaze, was startled to see tears of frustration brimming over as, with a grunt of self-revilement, the thing grasped his offering and began to devour it, hating the magic man for putting before it that which hunger would no longer allow it to deny itself.

  Tears? What kind of animal cries? he wondered, incredulous.

  And as he watched the creature finish the last of the meat, he saw the moon in its eyes again, and his own image, shining and white and beautiful, and knew that in all of his life, he could not remember ever having shed a tear for anything, or for anyone.

  Two days after a thin, driving snowstorm left the tundra as white as the grizzled beard of an ancient musk ox, Torka led his people and Zinkh’s to the place of the Great Gathering. The dry snow had been followed by a day of severe cold, then by clear, windy skies and a brazen sun that melted the snow in less time than it had taken it to fall. It was on this day, beneath this sun, that Torka and his women and children, with Karana and Aar’s pack, and the hunters of Zinkh at his side, walked across broad, well-traveled land toward the great encampment.

  They walked with purpose, lengthening their stride as their destination came into sight .. . and sound .. . and scent. Beneath their traveling packs, they were dressed in their finest ceremonial attire. Lonit had donned her gray elk skin dress. Torka was clad in his parka of golden, black maned lion skin. Around his neck he wore his neck let of wolf fangs and paws. The clatter and jangle of their traveling gear, their women’s bone jewelry, and the stone-beaded fringes of their own garments would have been audible for miles had it not been for the cacophonous din of the vast encampment they were approaching.

  They paused, transfixed. Completely encircled by a massive windbreak of mammoth bones, it occupied the entire western edge of the plain. The air trembled with the sounds of song and whistles and lap drums, of laughter and argument, of haggling and baby cries. The smoke that rose from over a hundred fires fogged the sky and imbued the wind with the rich smells of roasting meat, charred bones, burning turf, and human refuse. “Bigger camp than last time this man winters here!” claimed Zinkh, nodding with such enthusiasm that his headdress slid to one side. Only hasty adjustment kept it from falling off. He grinned up at Torka from beneath the scabby looking fox head. “Here for certain, Zinkh says, we will find healing magic for Aliga, and maybe even lana will find her tongue again, yes!”

  “Bah!” Pomm snorted rudely from where she had paused next to Lonit and lana at the front of the line of women. “No one make better healing magic than this woman!” she insisted under her breath to Lonit. “You see soon! Pomm will have great rank in this camp!”

  Bound securely inside lana’s pack frame, little Demmi made baby noises that, under different circumstances, would have told Lonit that her infant daughter’s swaddling of moss needed to be changed. But Lonit was so overwhelmed by the enormity of the encampment that she neither paid heed to her infant nor heard Pomm’s boast. She held Summer Moon tightly. The child’s slender, trousered limbs encircled her waist. Lonit could feel the excitement of the little girl as she strained forward, pointing to the scene that held Lonit’s eyes.

  “Look! Big bones! Stinky smoke. Many people! There be children there?”

  “Yes, little one. Many children.”

  “We play?”

  “If they are good children.” She could see them now, coming out of the encircling wall of bones with their mothers and fathers. So many people! Never in all of her days had Lonit imagined that there were so many people in the world!

  She felt ill and longed to be far from this place where there might be a man in white who had danced before her one flame-lit night and held out his hand to her and told her that she was beautiful.. .. No! If he were at the Great Gathering, she would not allow herself to see him. She would stare at her feet and not lift her eyes from the ground. She was Torka’s woman. Always and forever.

  And now Torka, frowning as he stared at the wall of mammoth bones and tusks, was urging his people onward. Beside him Karana shook his head dubiously. “This place has too many people, all surrounded by the bones of our totem’s kin. We are sworn not to kill mammoth. This is not a good camp for us.”

  Without slowing his step, Torka cut him short. “This is the last time that Torka will hear those words. This man has come to think that
there is not an encampment in all the world that Karana will ever find to his liking!”

  The youth shrugged. “The Valley of Songs was a good camp.”

  “This will be a good camp too. You will see.”

  Through a haze of eye-stinging, drifting camp smoke turned orange by sunlight, Torka led his people closer to their destination, then signed for them to stop in front of the many people who had come out to meet them. He gripped his bludgeon in one hand and raised his spear upright in the other in the sign of peace. Those who first saw him striding boldly at the head of the respectably sized band, with a pack of ferocious, burden-carrying dogs running alongside his women, made gestures of awe and wonder to the spirits they most feared as they spoke in many dialects of a root language that had once been universal.

  “Another man of magic comes to gift the Great Gathering with his powers!”

  “Eh yeh! The weatheh chenges as he khums!”

  “Look! Dogs walk with him as though they were his brothers!”

  “Not brothers—slaves. Man speaks .. . dogs listen .. . dogs obey!”

  “See there, hey! Animals carry women burdens!”

  “Impossible!”

  “Man khum .. . sun khum .. . and snow melts beneath his feet!”

  “Great must be the magic of that man!”

  “Great yes!” affirmed Zinkh, seeking and finding a few familiar faces in the crowd that surrounded them. “So great that even Zinkh—and many here know how much great hunter Zinkh he be—has said: Man Who Walks With Dogs, his band and Zinkh’s band be one band! Together, we have much magic! Together, Torka and Zinkh we journey far to Great Gathering. We share our magic and meat and furs with many there!”

  “This is so?”

  The question came from an old man who headed what was evidently a contingent of magic men, for all were elaborately dressed and carried themselves with an air of condescension. The speaker was easily the eldest of the lot; perhaps the oldest human being Torka had ever seen. Judging from the crenelated escarpments of his craggy face and from his oddly flattened, grotesquely high-veined, twisted hands, Torka guessed that he had lived to lament the passing of at least fifty summers. He was gray of hair and skin and dressed entirely in the pelts of birds, with layers of dried, outstretched wings cut from varying small raptorial species arrayed along his sleeves. His face, eyes, and mouth were hard. Even though he squinted up at Torka, he seemed to be looking down at him from either side of a nose that was as beaked as a tera torn and the query that he had directed to Torka had been every bit as sharp.