Corridor of Storms

by neetha Napew

  That night the moon showed horns as the child moved with caution beneath its pale, silver light toward the man who had called to her. She came forward hesitantly because she smelled the rank odor of fear as well as blood and meat from the sprawled corpse. The child made a face. Had he killed it himself, one of his own? For her? She did not want to eat such meat!

  The man was smiling in the moonlight, waving her forward, murmuring to her in the low, soothing way that he did when his hands promised stroking and his body promised pleasure.

  Mother Killer.

  Hatred was alien to her kind, and she found it hard to hate him now. But she did, in a small, scabbed nubbin of her heart that, in her need for companionship and affection, she was able to ignore. He was her mate now, as her mother had once had a mate, long ago, in a far land. It was good to be mated, to be stroked, to be held close and joined to the man, even though he was not of her kind and sometimes the savagery of their joining frightened her. The ugliness of the howling man sometimes disgusted her, so she howled back to override the sound he made and closed her eyes, pretending that he was one of her own kind.

  Kneeling, leaning on his spear, Navahk offered meat.

  She crouched before him, watching him out of her mist colored eyes, her gray, furred body silver in the moonlight. Why did she hesitate? Why did she not eat? She must eat! The body of the youth must bear the marks of her claws and fangs if it was to terrorize the people. Once they saw what the wanawut had done, they would not wish to linger in the country of wind spirits; they would hurry forward to the Mountains That Walk, into the Corridor of Storms, and rush to kill Torka, whose bad magic had turned the wanawut loose upon them to slay one of their own living sons.

  He smiled and spoke to the beast gently, cajolingly. “Navahk has brought this for you! Eat! Tear the body apart. Gorge yourself. And while you are not looking at me out of those all-too-human eyes, Navahk will thrust his spear into your heart. He does not need you anymore: I have mastered your power and made it my own. I will fear nothing in the world ever again. You are a hideous, repulsive thing, and it will be good to bring your body back to my people, gutted and on my back, as I wear the skin of your mother. Then they will know that I am a man whose power they will never question again!”

  Her massive, bearlike head eased to one side. She was listening, trying to understand.

  Impatient, he pushed the body of the dead youth toward her. “Eat!”

  She knew the word. He used it often, each time he brought meat for her. Yet there was something in his eye and smile and the eager way he thrust the meat at her that caused her to back away, then hunker down, trying to understand.

  He was angry. With his bare hands he ripped open the youth’s surplice, and with his spearhead he stabbed deep, opening the upper belly, reaching in, drawing out innards, holding them out.

  “Eat!” he demanded. She made a soft, questioning sound and, to his shock, uncurled the long, massive fingers of her right hand to reveal a dagger. With it, she imitated him, driving the dagger deep, in and out, looking up at him now and again, repeating the soft questioning sound as though she wished approval from him.

  “No! Like a beast, not like a man!” Suddenly enraged with her, he struck the weapon from her hand.

  As it flew from her palm, she cried out, startled, and jumped back, holding her hand, rocking herself, making cooing, confused sounds as she frantically rummaged through the undergrowth to retrieve the blade. She snatched it up, clutched it to her heart, and stared at him, breathing hard.

  He righted his spear and held it out toward her defensively, knowing that even with his spear he had little defense against the beast if she chose to hurl herself at him. She was simply too big, too powerful. And in this moment, despite his bold talk, he knew that he was a man of fragile flesh and a heart full of fear. He had seduced the beast and mated with her. He had gentled her spirit. But he had not mastered her or understood her nature any more than he had been able to master or understand any other female in his life—except through pain and fear.

  But now he was afraid as he dipped the spearhead and prodded outward with the shaft, snarling at the beast, warning her away, hoping that his bluff would work as he advanced toward her. She mewed, shocked and frightened and confused by his behavior, and suddenly hooting like a deranged owl, she whirled and fled into the night, leaving Navahk alone in the dark with the corpse that he had made.

  No one dared to walk into the night in search of him. They built a smoky fire—there was little to burn in the soggy land—and cooked camel but had little heart to eat it. They called his name, and that of the youth Tlap, while Yanehva brooded, deliberately staring into the smoke so that his eyes would burn and he would suffer pain for having been so frightened that he had not stayed to look for his friend or to help the magic man fight the wanawut. He was sure that it had come to that, for otherwise Navahk and Tlap would have been back long before now.

  At last they appeared, the magic man carrying the body of the dead youth. Tlap’s mother threw herself to the ground and keened, and Yanehva felt sick with shame while the people listened solemnly as Navahk told them of how he had been unable to save the youth from the wanawut.

  “We must not linger. Crooked spirits follow us, and not one man, woman, or child will walk in safety until we have killed the people of Man Who Walks With Dogs and claimed his valley as our own!”

  But as the hunter Ekoh took the body of his son, his were not the only eyes to wonder at the shape of the wounds that had killed him. He looked at Navahk. “The wanawut did this?”

  “What else?” queried the magic man, daring the man to challenge him.

  “With teeth and claws like daggers did the wanawut slay your son!”

  The Mountain That Smokes lay ahead. In days that seemed like mere breaths of light, Torka and his people hurried forward, deep into the Corridor of Storms, anxious to reach the Valley of Songs before the time of the long dark was upon them.

  They had covered their tracks well, deliberately leaving false trails, walking across talus slopes wherever possible-even though this meant taking the longer, more difficult route—carrying the sledges when the ground was soft and certain to carry the scars of their passing, step-hopping across tussocks, building no fires, and leaving no discernible refuse. Still they were followed. Karana knew it, even though Torka was beginning to have his doubts.

  It had been many days since they had paused at the entrance to the Corridor of Storms and looked westward across the night to see the fire burning miles away in the country of twisted hills, and Lonit had wondered aloud if those who followed had not given up and were turning back. Why else would they build so great a fire unless they no longer found the need to conceal themselves from those whom they hunted?

  Karana had no answer for that, but he knew Navahk well enough to know that even if everyone who walked with him abandoned him, he would come on alone.

  Torka and his people walked under clouded skies. It rained again, but it was warm rain for this time of year, and when at last it stopped, the clouds remained and the temperature stayed well above freezing.

  As they proceeded onward under the shadow of the Mountain That Smokes, the peak made low rumbling sounds that kept them from sleeping well during the night, and Mother Below was restless beneath them. By day the entire face of the land was different from how they remembered it. It was as though huge sheets of molten rock had poured out of the smoking mountain and across the earth, solidifying to form dark, steaming, brittle barriers that were hundreds of feet high in places. They tried climbing over the lower expanses of the strange rock, but the stone cut into the soles of their boots and bruised their feet. Soon they were all limping, even Aar. The women were forced to spend an entire day contriving new boots for them all out of the skins that formed their bedrolls.

  “This will not do,” said Torka. “If we continue over the flows of stone, we will measure the distance in the number of boots we wear out.”

  �
�We have not enough skins for the making of so many boots,” Lonit told him, rubbing her feet.

  “Perhaps the land is telling us that we are not welcome?” Wallah’s suggestion was spoken softly. And ignored.

  “We will walk around the flows,” Torka decided. “The Valley of Songs is not far now.”

  They moved on, closer to the towering white massifs of the Mountains That Walk than they preferred to go. The mountains soared so high that they seemed to block off the clouded sky. They seemed to talk and grumble both day and night, and now and then avalanche mists rose from deep within dark blue canyons to cloud the ridges. Torka’s people walked quickly, in silence and fear, looking up, half expecting the great peaks to fall upon them It was with great relief when at last they put the lava country behind them and could stride out across the unbroken sea of grass again, with the Mountains That Walk miles away on either side of them.

  Game was plentiful. They hunted and rested and ate over a small fire built within the sheltering windbreak of a grove of willows. There was fresh, sweet water in a spring that bubbled nearby. And as night came down, Torka looked back across the way that they had come and allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction.

  “I do not think that Navahk will bring those who follow us beyond the flows.”

  They slept well that night, and although the dark was much longer than the day, they were in no hurry for the dawn as they lay bundled gratefully beneath their furs, dreaming untroubled dreams for the first time in many days.

  Yet when Torka awoke at last, it was to see Karana crouching on his heels, staring across the miles, his traveling pack rolled and ready at his side.

  “He will come,” he said, without turning to look at Torka. “In the Valley of Songs we can stand against him. Here in open country, we will be few against many. We must go on.”

  For two days and nights the child sat within the scrub lands of the twisted hills, holding the man stone close, rocking herself, sleeping erratically, trying to understand why Mother Killer had turned against her.

  There was no understanding; there was only loneliness and the terrible, aching need to be close to another of her own kind. But in all the world there were no others.

  There was only the beast. Perhaps if she followed him, if she called to him and presented herself to him, if she turned up her throat and allowed him to see that she was passive before him, he would stroke her again and join with her again .. . and then the loneliness would go away .. . and the hunger.

  She was ravenous. She moved out of the scrub, back to where the beast had left the corpse he had killed of his own kind, willing to eat it now. But he had carried it off. She followed the mixed scent of man and meat, sniffing the trail, following day and night and another day until those scents and the stench of rotting flesh led her through a dark, black walled canyon.

  A lynx lay stinking and bloated in the shadows. A chunk of disgorged meat lay within its gaping jaws. The child hunkered near to finger the dead animal, to peer close at the tiny skewers of sharp bone protruding through the vomited piece of meat.

  Bad and bony meat. The child made a face. The lynx must have been starving to eat so greedily of such bony meat. Her mother had taught her long ago to eat only of soft flesh and innards, to crack bones and grind them thoroughly before devouring them—as she now devoured the lynx, opening its skin with the man stone, eating only of the soft haunch, avoiding the belly and gut, which must surely be full of bad meat. She slept then, on her feet, and when she awoke, dawn was coloring the distant river of grass between white mountains that reached into the clouded sky.

  And then she howled a long, high, pitiable wail. She could see the pack of Mother Killer far below in the distance. Clutching the man stone to her breast, she followed.

  It was the cry of the wanawut that caused the people to follow Navahk. They had reached the lava flows and had paused, discouraged by Jub’s announcement that the valley of Man Who Walks With Dogs lay far beyond it.

  “This man will take his family and go back!” Cheanah said, and his woman sighed with relief. Then the cry of the wanawut had her on her feet, drawing her littlest boy to her side.

  “You said it would not follow us into this good land,” Zinkh prodded Navahk, and Simu, Cheanah, and all the hunters muttered in agreement.

  The magic man looked at the woman Naiapi as though the cry of the beast wanawut was somehow her fault. She shrank from him, her face white, until a slow smile of benevolent understanding came to the face of Navahk.

  “Go back into the world of the wanawut if that is your will, Cheanah. And you, Zinkh, take your people with him. Navahk has not forgotten the death of poor Tlap. He would not lead his people to that. No, Navahk will go on to the valley of Man Who Walks With Dogs, where the wanawut will not follow.” “You said that it would not follow us here,” reminded Simu.

  Navahk looked the young man up and down with contempt. “Man Who Walks With Dogs summons the wanawut so that it will feed upon his enemies. When Torka is dead, Navahk will kill the beast ... as I have killed its kind before. What man among you has done that? I, Navahk, walk now into this new land unafraid!”

  And so he did, and they followed to a man, as he knew they would, for he was certain that the unknown country that lay ahead was less threatening to them than the land of the wanawut, which lay behind. But as they strode out, Cheanah joined the hunters of Zinkh’s band, and as the little gap toothed man in the incongruous hat spoke softly, Cheanah nodded and gestured to his sons and his woman to walk beside him.

  As they walked on into the dark edge of day, it seemed the Mountains That Walk had done just that, for they were much closer than Torka remembered their being, towering on either side of the low hills that led into the Valley of Songs. Great rubble mounds of snow, ice, and boulders so obscured the entrance to their beloved valley that, had they not found the half-buried pit trap and the bones of the man within it, they would have turned back, believing they had come the wrong way.

  “Tomo ...” Karana spoke the name of the corpse.

  Torka knew that he must have recognized it through his gift of Seeing, because carrion-eating birds had stripped the bones of flesh. Lonit’s hands flew to her face to stifle her cry at what lay ahead, and Torka stared, stunned, at the fouled leavings of the twosome who had encamped and hunted in this sweet place of memories and dreams that he had found and made his own.

  It was not his own anymore. Bones of slaughtered animals were everywhere. The trees had been cut down and used as firewood. The pools were stinking quagmires filled with the refuse of the men’s kills and body wastes, and with the bones of a child who had been drowned before its abandonment.

  “We cannot stay in this place.” Karana’s voice was transformed by unspeakable anger and hurt.

  Torka stood in stunned silence. A storm wind was rising beyond the ruined little valley and within the man. “Nor can we leave it ... until the storm is over.”

  That night a sulfurous wind blew hard from the north. Navahk cursed the storm and his people. For days he had driven them; their fear of the wanawut was his prod. But now it was cold and snowing, and the foul-smelling wind was making them irritable. An equally exhausted Jub assured them that the way to the valley lay only a day ahead, but they moaned and dropped their packs, and not even Navahk’s threat of the wanawut was enough to force them on.

  All slept except Navahk.

  He stalked the camp, bent into the wind, and circled like a lion trapped within a dead-end canyon. Of all who followed him, Zinkh alone lay awake in his sleeping skins, watching, waiting patiently for Navahk to do what he did every night-leave the camp to test the route along which he would lead his people the next day. It was uncanny the way the man could see in the dark with his one eye; like a nocturnal predator, Navahk needed no torches to light his way, nor was he afraid to be alone with the wanawut. Sometimes he would not return before dawn.

  Zinkh hoped that tonight would be such a night as, rising to poke Simu into wa
kefulness, he crept in absolute silence to rouse Cheanah and his sons.

  “Hurry. The time we have been waiting for has come,” whispered Zinkh. “Jub has detailed the way that lies ahead. We must go now, before Navahk returns, or we will be too late to warn Torka. I will wake the others of this man’s band. Wake your women. Gag your babies if you must! We go to join the Man Who Walks With Dogs!”

  Torka and his people huddled close within their lean-tos, listening to the distant wind howling far beyond the valley. Above them the sky stirred restlessly and a dry snow fell, but there was little wind within the valley itself. Distant roarings rent the world beyond, and Mother Below shifted restlessly far beneath them. Through storm and wind and driving snow, they heard animals on the sea of grass crying, neighing, and trumpeting. Summer Moon buried her head in Lonit’s bosom, as lana held Demmi, and Mahnie comforted Wallah as though she were the mother. The men sat upright with their spears at ready, wondering what good their meager weapons of stone and bone would do against the forces of Creation.

  At dawn they peered from beneath their snow-laden lean tos. The world was unnaturally quiet and dark. It smelled of smoke and sodden, sulfurous ash. The snow that lay upon the land was black, as were the fine particles of ash drifting from the sky. Slowly they clambered out to look beyond the hills to the west, in the direction of the Mountain That Smokes, where roiling black and red clouds filled the sky and rained fire on the world. And, climbing over the tumbled glacial lobes of the Mountains That Walk, a group of disheveled, frightened people, covered with black ash, were coming toward them, led by the bandy-legged man in a huge and moldering hat.

  “This man comes to name himself as friend of Torka!” proclaimed Zinkh, striding ahead of the others. He took a moment to catch his breath as Torka, Karana, and Grek gripped their spears defensively and eyed him warily.

  “Put spears away. Put away, away!” demanded Zinkh, puffing out his meager chest as he looked proudly at Torka and his people. “Far has Zinkh brought people to stand with Torka against Navahk! Zinkh made big mistake to take up with that bad man. Many miles have we come ahead of a black and stinking wind to be away from him and the wanawut that follows him! Man Who Walks With Dogs will have need of men with spear hurlers to stand against Navahk and his many hunters! Zinkh’s hunters and Cheanah thought we would be those men! Our people would be Torka’s people, if Torka will forgive Zinkh for being less than a man in the face of his enemies.”