Shadows in the Cave

by Caleb Fox

Aku flushed. Caught. He juggled thoughts, possibilities. “No,” he said, “I … I have to go see my great-grandmother.” He rearranged thoughts in his mind. “I don’t know where Salya is. The witch and shaman, if they were telling the truth … If my sister is a body without a spirit, where is she?”

  She eyed him warily. “When will you leave?”

  “Tonight.”

  “Tonight? You haven’t even seen Oghi.”

  “I have to.”

  “At night?”

  “It’s safer that way,” he fudged.

  Iona put his hands on her hips and stared at him.

  All right, evasion wasn’t going to work. “The truth is, there’s things I can’t tell you yet.”

  “You …”

  He raised a hand. “Not yet,” he repeated.

  With a canny edge in her voice, she said, “Let’s go see Oghi.”

  “No!” he said too loud and too fast. Oghi would give away his owl secret immediately. “I need to leave.”

  “You want to make me really mad?”

  “Iona, there are other things going on here. I can’t talk about them. I’ve got to go see my great-grandmother.”

  Iona studied his face. At last, with the wisdom of generations of women who watched their men act bone-headed, she nodded. “I’ll pack you some food, so you can go out and slay the world’s demons.”

  16

  All day Shonan and Yah-Su crouched in the shadows of the cave and listened to Brown Leaf warriors walking up and down the hillsides, searching for the Red Chief who cut a swath through their people.

  Shonan supposed he was safe. The enemies were damned unlikely to find this camp. It crouched far back in a corner of the ravine, and on both sides the rock walls were overhanging. Anyone peering down would see that the muddy bottom showed no tracks. Clearly Yah-Su had camped here for years. If the Brown Leaves hadn’t found his camp in all that time, they wouldn’t find it today.

  Shonan hated hiding. He wanted to do something. He wanted to find Aku. He wanted to fight. He put more fat on his raging belly burn.

  At full dark Yah-Su motioned that they should go. They moved out by stealth.

  It was impressive, in the Red Chief’s mind, that a man the size and shape of a buffalo could weave through the forest with less noise than Tagu made. The fellow had survived for a reason. By the time the moon came up, they were tucked deep in another cave, this time with few supplies and no water. The next night they traveled until dawn and came to a cave behind a waterfall.

  Yah-Su grinned broadly, jumped behind the curtain of water, jumped back out, grinned bigger, and with a hand invited Shonan in. With a couple of deft steps, you could get in without getting wet.

  This looked like Yah-Su’s main camp, if he had such a thing. A lovely, liquid light gleamed through the falling water and showed a room that got wider as it deepened. Yah-Su had stacks of rolled hides, all protecting dried meat. The man clearly was a good hunter, and he must have learned to tan hides himself. Against the walls leaned weapons—clubs, spears, spear throwers, all with well-flaked heads nicely lashed to the bodies. He had a pile of knives of flint and obsidian, with handles of everything from wood to a bear jawbone.

  Shonan looked around curiously. Because of the water-reflected light, this was a remarkable home.

  He realized they could talk—the water would cover the sound. “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  Yah-Su smiled sweetly and said something in the Amaso tongue. Shonan resorted to signs—he hated it when people didn’t speak Galayi, as right-thinking people did. “Good place.”

  “Thanks.” Tagu came to Shonan, who rubbed his ears.

  Awkwardly, he told Yah-Su with signs and gestures what was what. “I want to go back to the Brown Leaf village and kill the shaman.” He spoke aloud the shaman’s name, Maloch.

  “No,” signed Yah-Su.

  “I’ll do it alone,” signed Shonan. Signing cut speech to the basics.

  Now Yah-Su was stumped. After a few minutes he fingered, “Big want to?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maloch is also the Uktena.” He spoke the name of the dragon. Evidently the two tribes called the monster by the same name.

  “Yes.”

  “We die.”

  Shonan sighed. He would be glad to have the man beast as a war comrade. He fixed Yah-Su with his eyes. “A warrior dies maybe any day. A warrior, okay to die.”

  Galayi tradition said that two kinds of the dead were quickly reborn onto the Earth, warriors who were killed in battle and women and children who died in childbirth.

  Yah-Su looked at Shonan with huge brown buffalo eyes. “They stop looking for us. Then we go.”

  That simple.

  They talked. It was damned awkward, in Shonan’s mind, to talk with your fingers. But they were stuck inside, they were safe, they had nothing to do, so they talked.

  Shonan told about his war exploits. If he read Yah-Su right, the young beast was fascinated. He was another man of action, he understood. You come to situations that have to be faced. You clear your mind for moments of pure action, without thought, in a way moments of pure beauty. If you kept things simple and true, if your actions were bold and quick, you probably lived. And you felt real. The rest of life wasn’t like that.

  Those meanings underlaid Shonan’s tales. He had the impression that Yah-Su understood.

  But Shonan didn’t understand Yah-Su, so he asked him, “Why do you live alone?”

  “I don’t like to be alone,” said the buffalo man. “I plan to get a dog like Tagu.” He turned the dog over and rubbed his belly.

  The beast was evading. When Shonan pressed him, he wouldn’t answer, not really. He fingered a lot of things. He threw out quite a few words to go with them, but the words were in the Amaso language, and Shonan didn’t understand them. Shonan did learn for sure that Yah-Su was from the Amaso village.

  Shonan got the picture that Yah-Su had been mocked by other boys when he was an adolescent because he was humpbacked. Yah-Su felt humiliated, probably thought marriage would be impossible for him, and for that reason he could never truly be part of the village, one of the people. So he ran off and started living by himself.

  “That was before you got so big?” sighed Shonan.

  “Yes.” Yah-Su always seemed polite and considerate in the way he conducted himself. The people who thought he was a beast had the wrong fellow.

  “You learned to hunt, make lamps, everything else by yourself?”

  “I saw it around the village. And my mother’s brother, sometimes I would go see him at night. He helped me get good at making weapons.”

  “You still go there?”

  “One of my relatives trades things to me. For meat. But she … she doesn’t want anyone to know.”

  There were more details, but that was the story.

  Yah-Su wanted to know the particulars of what happened when Shonan and Aku were captured, more than he’d been able to see from the distant shadows. Shonan told him how a creature tricked up to look like his daughter lured them into a trap, how the “daughter” taunted them with whorish talk of what she did with Maloch. She was no daughter, but a false creation of Maloch shaped like Salya. Then the two of them did an obscene dance and melded themselves into one creature, Maloch.

  Then he told how Aku shape-shifted into an owl and escaped.

  Shonan asked, “You don’t think we can kill Maloch?”

  Yah-Su shrugged the most massive shoulders Shonan had ever seen and shook his shaggy head.

  “Then why are you going with me?”

  “Maybe you’ll be my friend.”

  On the second afternoon Shonan asked Yah-Su if he wanted to leave that night. The buffalo man shook his head no. Shonan thought the man’s reluctance was odd. He knew Yah-Su was not afraid of a fight. Bluntly, he signed, “What is it? What are you afraid of?” He didn’t believe such a warrior had a great fear of being killed.

  Yah-Su shrugged.

  “Do you like M
aloch the Uktena?”

  “I hate him.” The buffalo man’s eyes flickered with fire. Then he lowered his head. “He took over the village. He kills the pretty girls.”

  Shonan nodded. Yah-Su had watched what happened. He saw the warriors go to neighboring villages and steal girls. He watched as Maloch the Uktena ate their life-fires.

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “No one can kill the Uktena.”

  “He has armor,” Shonan agreed.

  “No one can kill the Uktena.”

  “He has teeth like knives.” Shonan didn’t think the dragon’s short arms and small claws were a big factor.

  “No one can kill the Uktena.”

  “He has that diamond eye. If you let it blind you, you’re dead.”

  Yah-Su said nothing.

  Shonan regarded Yah-Su. In this world everything could be killed—everything died. Death made Earth different from the world above and the Underworld. He liked it that way. Battle, the risk of life, death right in your nostrils—it was exhilarating.

  “Let’s wait one more day,” he said.

  “I want to practice with your spear throwers.”

  Yah-Su nodded.

  Yah-Su had a place for his own practice. You could hurl a dart into a mound of dirt twenty paces away or arc a dart to the far end of the meadow a hundred paces away.

  The weapon was a kind of spear given the speed of a shooting star. You used a lever with a cup on the end to hold the dart, a slimmer, lighter spear the length of a man. With this thrower, which increased the length of your arm hugely, the dart became the deadliest of weapons.

  Shonan knew damn well that a spear-thrower dart would kill any living creature.

  Yah-Su had three spear throwers—he was a real warrior—but Shonan didn’t know them. He needed to throw with each one, feel its heft, test its balance, learn which one suited his arm and style. He practiced at twenty paces, not a hundred. He intended to drive the dart head clear through the dragon.

  He knew by noon, and chose one. The dart was heavy for his arm, but it was the lightest of the three.

  Yah-Su signaled that he would carry the others.

  Shonan smiled, clapped the buffalo man on the shoulder, and they walked back to the cave behind the waterfall.

  They had three shots. He would need only one.

  Shonan was amazed by Yah-Su’s strength and agility. Not only did he have trouble keeping up with his comrade on the way back to the Brown Leaf village, they wore Tagu out. In the dark Shonan couldn’t figure out the route Yah-Su was taking. Like any good fighting man, as he and Aku walked the trail, Shonan had made a clear picture in his mind of the creeks and ridges. But he couldn’t puzzle out where Yah-Su was headed. He shrugged and followed. This was Yah-Su’s territory, and he was its master.

  The second night they camped in sand. Since the moon was dropping behind the mountains to the west, Shonan couldn’t see the ocean, but he could hear it and smell it. When he crawled into his blankets, he was comfortable. He liked the soft shush of the sea on the sand.

  At dawn Shonan saw nothing but the rocky point above him and an infinite ocean. Yah-Su led the way up the point, and from the top Shonan got a look across the bay at the Brown Leaf village. Their hiding place was tucked behind rocks opposite and jutting into the sea. Did Yah-Su mean for them to make their move from the ocean side? Did he have a plan?

  Yah-Su signed, “Let’s watch.”

  Watch was what they did all day. They saw nothing out of the ordinary—men, women, kids, dogs, people doing the ordinary tasks of life, others crossing the village common to visit friends or relatives, adolescent boys playing the ball game. Assuming they had quit searching for Shonan, the men were mostly out hunting deer. Dried meat, parched corn, chestnuts, acorns, and seeds would get them through the winter. A few old people wouldn’t be able to chew the meat well enough to get enough nourishment, and some of them would dwindle away. That was the way of the world.

  Shonan intended never to reach such a point. He wanted to die living, to go out in a glorious fight, all juices pumping, and then receive a warrior’s honor, quick rebirth.

  Maloch came out of his house three times, wandered around, and talked to a few people. Mostly, though, he stayed inside. The smoke flagging out of the hole showed that he had a good fire and probably a cozy home. Shonan got a kick out of that idea—a dragon comfortable by the fire. Since the old stories said he was male and female at once, maybe he was having sex with himself.

  Yah-Su pointed out the tide several times during the day. When it came in, some of the sandy tidal flats were covered, and the bay was deeper. Though there was an outlet, it was like a saltwater pond fed by the river at low tide and the sea at high tide. Now, at high tide, the ocean came into the bay and up the river. The stream might be hard to cross. When the tide receded, the river turned into several braids of shallow water. One of the braids fed the bay, and bay water flowed out to sea.

  Shonan wondered why Yah-Su was so keen about knowing the tides. Maybe he was afraid the river would cut off their retreat.

  Right after the sun came down, when the tide was all the way out, Yah-Su got very excited. He started pointing and kept signing, “Watch.” Maloch came out of his house, strode to the bay, took off his clothes, and bathed in the bay. Not only bathed but lolled, splashed, and played. Unarmed.

  Shonan signed, “Every day at sunset?”

  Yah-Su nodded yes.

  “How long does it take him to change from a man to a dragon?”

  Yah-Su signed, “Underneath he is a dragon.”

  “Beneath his human skin?”

  A nod yes.

  Shonan considered. He considered longer. Then he said, “We’ve got the bastard.”

  They watched another entire day. Shonan wanted to see everything again, soak it all up, make sure of his plan. He liked it. It was bold and decisive. Best of all, it wasn’t to be executed by the mixed bag of a war party but just two good fighters.

  That night, before the moon came up, they walked upstream, found a place to tie Tagu by the river, and left him enough meat. Then they roamed the coastline in the dark looking for flotsam. Shonan wanted a hunter’s blind. Finally they found a thick log as long as two men. One on each end, since the tide was against them, they slogged their way toward the bay on foot. Before long Yah-Su snatched the log, slung it onto his shoulder, and stalked forward bearing the entire weight. They slid it into the bay well away from the outlet and crept back to their hiding place. The next tide would wipe out all tracks.

  From first light on they watched the village as fish-hunting birds watch the sea. All the normal things happened, including a catch-as-catch-can ball game without the full number of players. Shonan thought it was odd that the Brown Leaves played the same game as his people, a ball thrown with long-handled rackets, very rough, a way of preparing boys for the violence of war. Though he observed scrupulously, nothing happened to change Shonan’s plan.

  At midafternoon, they walked upstream behind their ridge of land. Shonan carried the one spear thrower he was familiar with, Yah-Su carried two. Shonan was confident that his single dart would do the job.

  At the spot he’d picked out, they eased up to the top of the ridge and watched. Normal village activity. When the two were sure they wouldn’t be seen, they slipped down the hillside and into the river.

  Yah-Su signed, “Success or failure, we stick together afterwards.”

  Shonan answered, “And go to the Amaso village.”

  Yah-Su pursed his mouth and gave a reluctant yes.

  They floated downstream. This was the dicey part. Mostly the riverbank hid them from the village, but not always. They stayed in the water up to their eyes and floated their weapons like sticks. Where the bank got low, they turned onto their backs and floated downstream with only their noses above water. They slipped into some river cane and squatted in the dense foliage, heads above water, to get a break from floating. Shonan fingered the cane, remembering that
he needed to make weapons when he got home—knives, a couple of war clubs, a couple of spears, a couple of spear throwers, even a blow gun. The damn Brown Leaves had taken all his weapons except the little blade that saved his life, the knife in the cleft of his bottom.

  They floated.

  The river braided, and they eased into the left-hand fork, toward the bay. This braid was closest to the village, but it was also the deepest and brought them to their prey.

  Shonan motioned toward the left bank. When they beached, he signed that he was going to take a look at the town. He crawled up a short gully in the bank, raised his head behind some weeds, and peered toward the village. Everything as usual, even another ball game. Some villagers were watching the boys play, which was good—it held their attention.

  He crawled back down the gully and nodded at Yah-Su. They slipped into the water and floated on. Shonan thought, I’ve never gotten a ride to a killing before.

  Around the bend a young man stood waist-deep in the water cutting cane.

  Damn!

  Shonan kicked his legs silently and eased to the far side of the narrow stream. Maybe the young fellow wouldn’t look up. If he did, maybe he wouldn’t see them.

  Shonan saw that Yah-Su was swimming quietly closer to the Brown Leaf. The Red Chief yearned to scream, but noise was exactly what they didn’t need.

  The young cutter got a piece he wanted and raised up. He put one end on the river bottom to measure it. Just right, his own height. He put it to his mouth to blow through it. Then, terribly, he swung the cane upriver, as though to shoot at something there.

  Two steps away the cutter saw the face of a beast in the water. He screamed.

  The beast rose up hugely—now the young man’s lungs froze—and plunged a knife deep into his chest.

  Shonan swam like the devil for the village side of the river. He scrambled up and looked.

  No one was disturbed or excited. The ball game was in full swing, and some spectators were cheering. As Shonan watched, one team scored a goal. The players tucked their rackets under their arms and talked idly with each other.