by J. D. Lakey
Cheobawn had never done this before. Not on this scale. Her mind filled with confusing sensory input that she had no time to decipher. She lost track of things. She lost track of time. She lost track of the Pack behind her. Too much slipped out of her control so she fought for the one thing that mattered. She clung to the idea of the bright place in the ambient that promised survival.
Her feet danced over the ground. Was she stealing the mountain’s energy or was she infusing it with her own? She could not tell. All she knew for certain was that every motion moved the world under her feet and gave her what she needed. It was a dance she was powerless to stop.
She did not want it to stop. She would let the mountain use her for its own purposes as long as it danced her all the way back to the dome
Connor chirped like a pine cricket. She ran on, having forgotten what that meant. He chirped again. Cheobawn came to a halt, her hand up, stop on her fingers. She let go of the ambient and turned.
Connor scowled at her, anger having replaced his fear. Alain bent over, trying desperately not to throw up. Tam had a tight grip on Megan’s hand. Both of them looked ill and pale. Megan glanced quickly up at the sky and then looked away, shuddered.
Cheobawn followed the direction of her gaze. It was not the setting sun that concerned their Alpha Ear the most. Something in the sky above the rise of the mountain had become a more pressing danger.
Yes, did I not say it, Cheobawn thought to herself. All the mountain moves against us.
Drink. Eat. Very little, Cheobawn signed. She drank, sipping from her waterskin but she did not eat. The energy of the mountain was all her body craved.
The mountain pressed at her mind, reminding her that they had no time to wait for Alain to recover. Stowing her waterskin, Cheobawn made a sharp motion with her hand and then turned.
She ran.
The terrain sloped gradually upwards. It was not steep but it was enough of a rise to tax her leg muscles and make them burn. Cheobawn sucked down great draughts of the mountain’s power to ease the ache.
Towards the top of the ridge her heart began to pound in earnest. She could not tell if it was from exertion or fear.
The things in the sky had seen them.
She put out one last bit of speed and then skidded to a halt under the twisted branches of an ancient scrub pine that grew on the edge of a ravine. The hand signal she flashed at the Pack coming up behind her was half warning and half a command for absolute stillness.
Cheobawn lifted her face to the sky and listened with all her senses.
Sound became brittle and unnaturally loud. She could hear the shift of every needle as the light breeze caught at the boughs of the tree above her head. One of her Pack coughed softly behind her. The sound berated her and her ruthless heart. It hurt them to run, that sound said. Cheobawn pushed that thought from her mind.
Somewhere high overhead, a pair of sky hunters circled lazily, waiting for prey to do something fatally stupid. Cheobawn thought she could hear the sound of the wind and feel the wind as it flowed across the vast spread of their leathery wings. She shook her head, half expecting to hear the long spines along their chins clack together as if they were her own but surely that was her imagination. One called to the other, telling him of the children hiding under the pine tree. For a moment, Cheobawn could not breathe.
Megan moaned in fear. Cheobawn looked back, not at her friend but at Tam, reminding him of his one job. Tam scowled at Cheobawn as he took the older girl’s hand and tried to redirect her attention, whispering something in her ear. After a moment, Megan calmed.
Cheobawn knew better than anyone what that must have cost in effort. Megan’s psi skills were highly honed. She surely must have sensed the forces that moved against them, exposed as they were, here on this rocky ridge.
Steeling her heart against her friend’s pain, Cheobawn glanced to the west. The sun was settling inexorably towards the horizon. She wanted to keep moving. Time was slipping away from her.
Wait, whispered Bear Under the Mountain.
Cheobawn tried to stay calm but the sky hunters knew they were here. She could feel the weight of their attention. This scrub pine would not keep the Pack safe if the sky hunters decided to take them.
Wanting to be ready, she turned to studying the way in front of them. The slope was steep and treacherous. Low growing brush covered what scree and rock outcroppings did not. When it came time to move, they would have to take it at high speed.
It was going to take the agility of a bennelk. Pulling her hook from her belt, she grasped it just below the blade before turning to look back at Tam. All three boys had their eyes riveted to her. She pointed down the slope then signed her instructions.
Use your sticks for balance. I will take this fast. Follow. Copy me. Do not slow down or you will die, she said. The boys pulled their bladed sticks off their backs. Even Megan complied. Cheobawn looked from one worried face to the next. Her Pack did not protest. Cheobawn nodded in satisfaction and turned, stepping to the edge.
Taking the slope was suicide with the sky hunters watching but worse things waited for them down in that valley. Cheobawn drank deep from the mountain until everything took on the bright, hard-edge glow and then waited for their fortunes to change.
The monster moving down the valley met a herd of grunters. Squealing in terror, they scattered. The sky hunters spotted a small calf. Chittering in anticipation, they flattened their wings against their sides and dove.
Cheobawn was already leaping off the valley rim onto the first rock outcropping. She did not pause, leaping again almost instantly to clear the stone for those coming behind her. One stone to the next. She hit a scree patch half way down. The loose stones slipped under her feet. She rode them, dancing from one to the next, down to the bottom before leaping clear to land on a downed tree trunk. She did not turn around to check on her Pack. The sound of shifting stone reassured her. The tree trunk acted as a bridge that took her over the impassable wall of dense brush that marked the edge of a cedar grove.
At the fractured base of the tree, she leaped clear, landing on the soft duff under an ancient giant. She allowed herself the luxury of one quick glance over her shoulder. Megan ran down the trunk, Tam following close, then came Alain and Connor.
Satisfied, Cheobawn turned and sprinted through the massive trees. The dark thing was so close she could almost smell it. But surely this too was her imagination.
In the heart of the grove a giant cedar, old and rotted at its core had fallen recently. It had not gone down easily. The tree had torn a great hole in the earth and half the stones it had counted on as anchors for its immense weight still remained lodged in its roots.
The minute she saw it, Cheobawn knew why she was here and what she had to do. She skidded in the duff at the top of the pit and let her momentum carry her over the lip and down into its depths. At the bottom she tumbled towards the dark cave formed by the overhanging rootball. Scrambling on hands and knees for the last few feet, she turned and pressed her back against the wall of the hole, her hook clutched in both hands.
Tam made it to the bottom of the pit in three great leaps before he turned and caught Megan as she ran down the slope in a barely controlled fall. Tam pushed her behind him and caught Alain, whose fall from the top threatened broken bones. Connor danced down the slope behind him, his descent almost delicate in comparison.
Her Pack crawled into the cave and mimicked her stance, crouched, backs against the damp earth, blades at the ready.
Do not breathe, she signed, with a snap of her fingers. Tam glared at her. Cheobawn had no room in her mind to care.
Something was coming. Cheobawn watched the small bit of forest outside their cave and tried to prepare herself. The ambient filled with images of teeth, claws, and insatiable hunger. Run before my awful power, it declared into the forest gloom, as if it owned all the world. Perhaps it did. The mountain’s ambient colluded with the monster’s psi and lied to her senses. Every particle of h
er body wanted to run away. The need was irrational.
Irrational. She realized suddenly that she knew of this thing. Bhotta. She tried to recite the bhotta lesson to herself but terror scrambled her mind, a terror she could not shake. The lessons said that most of this terror was the construct of a psi predator at the apex of the food chain but no lesson could prepare you for the way the tendrils of its manufactured terror seeped into the mind and made the heart race.
Cheobawn felt something else bleeding into the ambient. Unguarded emotions. Bhottas received as well as they sent. The Pack was betraying their own hiding place. Cheobawn snapped her head around to glare at her friends.
Quiet! Do not think! she signed furiously. She looked at Megan. The older girl had her hands over her ears, her eyes squeezed shut. Cheobawn glared at Tam.
Quiet her, she signed forcefully.
Tam hissed, his fury at her lack of mercy apparent but he obeyed, reaching out to pull Megan close. He curled his hands around her neck, burying his fingertips in her hair as he pressed his cheek against hers, whispering a mantra in her ear, though the sound came to Cheobawn’s ears as nothing more than the hiss of the wind in the treetops.
Cheobawn’s eyes widened in surprise. Tam’s thumbs hovered over the arteries in Megan’s neck. The hold, while disturbingly intimate, was logical and well considered. If Megan did not quiet, Tam could press his thumbs into her neck, cutting off the flow of blood into her brain, inducing unconsciousness with little effort. Surely this was not intuition on Tam’s part. Someone had taught him that hold. In a remote corner of Cheobawn’s mind, she wondered if the Fathers kept secrets that even the Mothers had not discovered.
Cheobawn tore her gaze away, returning her attention to the dark monster that was busy turning their minds into nightmare. The lessons said this was how a bhotta hunted but classroom lessons had not prepared her for the power of the psi wave that preceded it. It was a ploy meant to flush the lesser creatures from their dens and into its jaws. She closed her eyes but that only made the urge to run worse. She opened her eyes and stared at the ground beneath her feet, shuddering under the strain of trying to keep the bhotta out of her skull.
Suddenly, the ambient went numb. Cheobawn’s head snapped up, her eyes wide. This could mean only one thing. The bhotta was close. Too close. Surely it must smell them. The void in the ambient was its trap, the lie to entice the unwary to leap in the wrong direction, into the massive jaws full of deadly teeth. The prey, fleeing the terror in the ambient, ran towards the dark promise and died.
Cheobawn brought her hook up and waited for the lizard to find them. She could feel Megan shielding her mind with every ounce of her ability and was thankful for that but doubtful that it would save them. The emptiness pressed in on them, crushing the will to live. Cheobawn felt her heart flutter, as the bhotta’s psi field caught at her mind.
Unaccountably, she felt rage ignite inside her. She had followed this thread, this version of one of their futures, because it had promised survival. Was it a lie, that bright spot in the ambient? Had she misunderstood its message? What was the point of coming here, if they were to die as a bhotta’s supper? What was she missing? This was stupid and unfair. She grit her teeth, angry with the bhotta, with Bear Under the Mountain, with herself.
No, she thought furiously at the ambient, no, I will not go quietly into your jaws. The rage bloomed, leaping up to burn away the bhotta’s version of reality and replace it with her own. Cheobawn lifted her face to the unseen sky and snarled silently.
Two could play this game. She set her mental fingers into the fabric of the world and radiated nothingness with all her might. She lied to the ambient. She told it that the cave was full of darkness and nothing else and at its core lay something so powerful it could eat the world. She built the illusion in her mind until even she believed it.
Something massive moved through the underbrush almost directly over their heads. She heard it with only a corner of her mind. The rest of her was locked in the illusion of being something terrible hidden under all that Nothing.
It took forever for the sound of its long body to slither past them. Huge. This explained the excitement of the sky hunters far overhead. A bhotta this big was sure to flush out more than it could catch. The sky hunters merely had to wait and pick the animals off as they fled in panic. Not today, she thought at them fiercely. You will not feast on my bones this day.
The sky hunters ignored her, moving down the mountain in the bhotta’s wake.
Chapter Nine
They did not die. This surprised her. She waited, listening, her fist held up to hold her Pack in place. The bhotta moved slowly downhill. Eventually, the sky hunters moved out of range. When it seemed that the time was again right, she signaled to her Pack to follow and clambered out of the hole. The stink of bhotta hung heavy on the air. She pressed her hand to her nose to keep from sneezing and ran on, the Pack on her heels.
The warm valley air flowed up the mountain, taking their scent away from the bhotta’s nose. She counted on that flow. It was one of the key pieces in her strategic game of hunter and hunted but she knew that the wind would begin to shift, on towards dusk and betray them. Time was her enemy.
Wait, whispered Bear.
Cheobawn skidded to a halt, confused. The overwhelming need to race towards home was an excruciatingly painful feeling. Once again the next bright place lay just beyond her reach, dark. She stamped her foot in frustration. Wait? Wait for what?
One of the children clicked a query behind her. She held up her hand, wishing them silent as she put all her energy into listening for the moment that would tell her it was safe to move.
A bull fenelk bugled somewhere south of their position. Cheobawn found it in the ambient and tasted its mood. Nervous that the sky hunters circled high overhead, it headed downhill towards the southern forests where it would spend the night. She followed it in her mind as it strode beneath an ancient blackoak, its horns laid flat along its back, its tusks up and ready for anything that would be so foolish as to attack it.
A dubeh leopard lifted its head from where it rested on a blackoak branch, watching the elk. The giant cat was on its way up to the needletree forest where the grunters grazed in the evenings. Cheobawn’s heart twisted painfully in her chest. She and her demi-Pack stood in its path.
The leopard was in no hurry. It rose to its feet and stalked the fenelk along the high branches. If they hurried, they would avoid the leopard. She turned towards home but the bright spot in the ambient was not in front of her. It was somewhere uphill. Cheobawn peered up the slope but saw nothing, felt nothing. She did not understand the need for the detour.
Tam clicked another query.
Cheobawn looked back at him. Dubeh leopard, she signed. Wait.
Tam’s eyes widened.
She checked the dubeh once more. It had grown bored with its game and now paced the trees in their direction.
She looked towards home again and took a step in that direction. All the threads in her mind died and turned dark.
Fine.
Cheobawn flashed Tam a grim look and turned to face up the slope. Her first step told her she was going in the right direction. She began to run in earnest. Alain groaned behind her. She did not pause or slow her speed. A dubeh was not something any of them could face.
The tracks of many grunters crossed the slope just below a vast expanse of scree. She stopped and turned. Her friends staggered to a stop. Pointing towards the deep hoof prints, she signed. Do what I do.
Then she ran alongside the hoof prints for a hundred paces before leaping away downhill. Tam danced over the grunter trail, following her lead.
When the dubeh turned to go hunting in earnest, it would find their scent trail and follow it. The grunter spoor would remind it that it was hungry and that humans were a poor meal, by comparison.
The next bright place in the ambient pulled her onward. Cheobawn did not slow her pace. She gradually worked her way down the hill, mindful of h
er exhausted companions.
The roosting tree of a flock of carrion lizards blocked their way south. She turned west and ran on.
The black water bogs lay in that direction. She did not want to cross the bogs. She tried to veer north and west, hoping to take a path between the cliffs and the vast pools of stinking black water but the threads of their future died inside her mind. Cheobawn tried to sense what blocked the way. A hive of stinging nasties infested the rocks there and a fenelk mother and her small calf stood dozing just beyond that. She backtracked and found another way around the pool, picking her footing on ground that oozed black mud if you stood too long in any one spot. They were now in the heart of the bogs, a place not even the most experienced trackers ever went.
Bear Under the Mountain danced around her, enticing her on. She snarled at him, tired of his games. She did not want to be here. She wanted to veer north, away from the sucking mud and the clouds of tiny biting flies, but rock slides blocked that retreat. She thought about heading south and west towards the well traveled South Road where they would have been unhindered by rough terrain and thick vegetation but black water blocked every turn.
Life on the mountain was in motion, pressing at her psi sense. She pressed back, pushing with all her might at things that threatened to cross in front of them and cut off their only route, wishing them to pause, as the dubeh had done, to stay, to turn and find another direction.
Sight and psi sense began to blur dangerously. Reality twisted inside her head. She moved the world by running. Running was all she could do.
Cheobawn tried to stay focused by making it into a game. Pluck the threads of their future, pick the strongest, and follow it until it ran out. Choose another. She would adjust direction, run for a while until the thread ran out in her mind, then she would change directions to follow the next. It was like navigating in a pitch black room. She knew this game. The Mothers played it with their daughters as soon as they could walk. Find the dolly. No coming out until you found dolly. Cheobawn really hated dollies.