The Hunted

by Jaid Black

  “Uyabak Nuurvifmiu,” Ben said quietly in his native tongue. “Stone dwellers.” He swallowed a bit roughly, his dark eyes acutely scanning the surrounding tundra as the dogsled made its way through the bitter wind and harsh snowfall. “I spotted one a few minutes ago.”

  Peggy stilled. Stone dwellers. What the hell does that mean?

  The situation just kept getting weirder and weirder. Not to mention more alarming.

  “What are you saying?” Peggy murmured. She swiped a spray of snowflakes from her eyes with the back of her wrist. “Ben, I don’t understand. What’s a stone dweller?”

  The endless barren tundra broke, giving way to the beginnings of Barrow village. The occasional ice-coated hut dotted the landscape, ice fisherman scattered about every so often. Benjamin visibly relaxed, a telling sigh of relief escaping his lips. Peggy’s gaze never left the teenager’s profile.

  “Do not worry yourself over it,” Benjamin muttered. “There is nothing to concern yourself with now.”

  Because the threat had passed. For now.

  Peggy’s eyes narrowed in speculation but she said nothing. If Benjamin wouldn’t tell her what was going on then hopefully his sister would.

  On a sigh her eyes flicked away from the teenager and toward the village they were fast approaching. An elderly indigenous woman wrapped in wolf furs inclined her head toward Peggy as their dogsled passed by and Peggy absently smiled back.

  She hoped she could get Benjamin’s sister to talk to her about the stone dwellers—whoever or whatever they were. Perhaps they were only some bizarre species of predator that the Eskimo people revered and therefore would not gossip about, she considered. Or perhaps not.

  Whatever the case, she had to know what she was up against before she and Benjamin found it necessary to travel to one of the outlaying villages next week for more supplies.

  A chill raced down Peggy’s spine, inducing the hair at the nape of her neck to stir. She swallowed a bit roughly when it occurred to her that something—or someone—was watching her.

  And that the gaze belonged to an intelligent being.

  Chapter 2

  That feeling of being watched faded within an hour of arriving in the village and didn’t resurface again that day. By the time Peggy nestled into the polar bear furs in the tiny hut and laid down to go to sleep that night, she was certain she’d imagined the entire thing. Her senses had probably been paranoid from the fright Benjamin had given her earlier—a fright that the teenager never did fully explain to her.

  It was probably just as well, she decided. The stone dwellers were no doubt some sort of myth, some Eskimo legend as ancient as the people themselves. Nevertheless, Peggy was a scientist through and through and because of that fact, she would make certain she got to the bottom of the story. Not only because that’s what a scientist did, but also because she realized that no other anthropologist had ever written of a stone dweller myth. It was possible, she thought excitedly, that she could very well be the first in the field to have ever heard about it.

  And that would look impressive indeed in a dissertation paper.

  She bit her lip. She would definitely get to the bottom of this. Not just for the dissertation paper, but to satiate her curiosity as well. Peggy had been born with a case of inquisitiveness ten miles long and an ocean wide. She knew herself well enough to realize that she’d never just give up and let this go. Besides the fact if there really was something to be reckoned with out there, she needed to know what that something was for security purposes. She and Ben traveled about too much, were out on the naked tundra far too often, for her not to know.

  On an exhausted sigh, Peggy turned over within the bed of furs, used her elbow for a pillow, and closed her eyes. First things first, she needed to get some sleep. Tomorrow she would approach Benjamin’s sister Sara and hope against hope that the twelve-year-old girl was in a chatty mood.

  And that she’d heard of the stone dwellers her brother had spoken of.

  * * * * *

  “Stone dwellers?” Sara glanced away, turning back to her work outside of the familial hut. It was snowing briskly, so she saw to her task quickly and efficiently. Raising a knife and slashing downward, she beheaded the still-quivering fish with one fell swoop. Her shiny waist-length black hair glimmered from reflections cast off by nearby torches. “No,” she said weakly, “I’ve never heard of them.”

  Peggy’s aqua-green gaze narrowed speculatively. She absently tucked a copper-gold curl behind her ear as she considered what to do next. She didn’t want to upset the sweet girl, but she simply couldn’t get yesterday’s events out of her mind.

  Last night Peggy had tossed and turned, unable to sleep. Hunted. Benjamin had said she was being hunted. A thought that had plagued her to the point of inducing the first nightmare her unconscious brain had entertained in ages.

  Somehow, through the course of the restless night, she had realized that the enigma of the stone dwellers and wanting to unravel who or what they were went far and beyond the desire for glory, or the desire to bedazzle Dr. Kris Torrence—her dissertation advisor—with her discovery. Instead it loomed on the horizon of had-to-know-the-answer-for-self-protection-purposes.

  “Sara?” Peggy murmured. “I know you don’t want to talk about it. And I know I’m breaking every rule in anthropology by affecting your life rather than merely observing it, but I…” Her voice trailed off on a sigh as she glanced away, her arms coming up to rest under her heavy breasts. “I’m frightened,” she whispered.

  Sara’s body stilled, an action Peggy caught out of her peripheral vision. Peggy’s heartbeat soared as she allowed herself to hope for just a moment that the twelve-year-old girl might open up to her. She hadn’t lied about her fright. She didn’t want to go through even one more sleepless, worried night. She just wanted to verify that the stone dwellers were a myth so she could breathe easy and put it from her mind for the time being. She could find a way to explore the myth later.

  “Father says if a girl speaks of them, they might hear, and take her so she speaks of them no more.” Sara said the words in a whisper as she set the knife down on the cutting board and slowly turned in her home-stitched leather boots to face Peggy. Her almond eyes, Peggy noted, were wide with anxiety. She lifted the hood of her parka and bundled herself in it. “He says never to speak of them, for the wind has ears.”

  Peggy’s gaze clashed with the girl’s. “Do you believe that?” she murmured, her heartbeat picking up again. Her brain told her she was letting herself get freaked out by what amounted to ghost stories told at summer camp, but her body reacted to the child’s nervousness as though she spoke nothing but fact. “Do you believe the wind has ears?”

  Sara simultaneously sighed and shrugged, looking more like a wizened elder of her people for a moment than a naïve twelve-year-old girl. “I’m not sure. But it’s true that my auntie spoke of them once, then disappeared not even two days later.” She shivered from under the parka, turning back around to slice and dice quivering fish. “My mother misses the sister of her heart deeply,” she whispered. “As do I.”

  Peggy’s eyes gentled in sympathy, though the girl couldn’t see that for her back was to her. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. What was her name?”

  “Charlene. We called her aunt Chari.”

  Peggy smiled. “A very pretty name.”

  “She was a very pretty lady,” Sara said bitterly. “Which is probably why they took her.” The knife whistled down, severing fish head from fish body in a precise, clean kill.

  Peggy’s smile faded. She pulled the hood of her parka up, then shoved her mittened hands into the pockets. “Who took her?” She knew what Sara was going to say, but for some perverse reason she wanted to hear the girl say it. Perhaps if she could get her to voice the words aloud then Sara’d tell her a bit more…

  Sara sighed, setting down the knife again. She whirled around on her heel to face Peggy, then quickly glanced away. “I’m not trying to be contrary.”
<
br />   “I know,” Peggy said quietly. And suddenly she understood that no matter how many times she asked the girl, Sara would never open up. Not about this. “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

  Sara’s almond-shaped eyes flew up to meet Peggy’s turquoise ones. She nibbled on her lower lip as she quickly glanced around, then cautiously inched her way closer to the anthropologist. “I’ll say this and no more,” she whispered, gaining Peggy’s undivided, wide-eyed attention. “Stay away from the tundra or you’ll be as easy to pick off as a fish is to the white bear.”

  Peggy nodded, but said nothing. Her heart rate went wild again as she fought within herself to remain silent. She prayed that the old adage would ring true and that silence would turn out to be golden, or at least golden enough to keep the girl talking. Psychologically speaking, nobody likes awkward silences, which Peggy was trained enough to know. When faced with awkward silences people had a tendency to prattle, trying to fill up the void. She just hoped Sara would choose to fill this particular void up with the words she needed to hear.

  Sara sighed, glancing away again. “They steal women,” she murmured. “Women of breeding years.”

  Thank you Psychology 101.

  “But who are they?” Peggy breathed out. “Where do they come from—”

  “Sara!” Benjamin shouted from the other side of the hut, inducing Peggy to mentally groan. She loved the kid to distraction, but of all the rotten luck…

  “Sara, where are you? Father’s calling you!”

  Sara let out a breath, obviously relieved that she hadn’t been caught speaking of things she’d been warned never to discuss. She politely nodded to the anthropologist then turned on her heel, quickly fleeing toward the other side of the hut.

  Peggy drew in a deep tug of cold, crisp air and slowly exhaled. Unlike Sara, she was feeling anything but relief. She had gotten some answers, true, but the answers she’d been given only begged for more questions.

  And there was something else.

  As much as she hated to admit it, as much as she was loathe to even give the idea credence, for the first time since the incident on the tundra yesterday Peggy was beginning to doubt her initial supposition that the stone dwellers were based on myth.

  She bit her lip. What if Ben’s fears yesterday had been based on cold, hard facts? What if, she thought anxiously, someone really had been hunting her out there?

  They steal women. Women of breeding years.

  Peggy shivered from under the parka, suddenly not wanting to be outside of the hut alone. Just to be on the safe side, she decided in that moment, she’d make certain she was always accompanied by at least two others from this moment forward until her time in Alaska was done.

  She sighed. The situation was getting weirder and weirder.

  Chapter 3

  One week later

  By the time Peggy and Benjamin left the outskirts of Barrow in order to dogsled into a remote village, over a week had passed since their last excursion. More than enough time for the memories of the fright she’d been given out on the tundra to wane in significance, if not die out altogether.

  Not one oddity had occurred over the course of the past week. No bizarre feelings of being watched, no worries of being stolen by what had to be mythical men. No nothing.

  Peggy had come to believe that Benjamin’s family had invented the legend of the stone dwellers as a way to keep Aunt Chari’s memory alive. If they believed she’d been kidnapped, when in fact she’d probably been attacked by a hungry wolf or polar bear, then they could believe she was still alive, still able to—hopefully—find a way back to the village one day. Without the legend of the stone dwellers, they had nothing. Just a missing, beloved woman who was no doubt long dead. Sad really.

  This hypothesis was the only one that made sense to Peggy for she found it a bit odd that no other anthropologist had ever recorded any Inupiaq legends about the stone dwellers. Nor had she heard any other indigenous person speak of such, with the small exception of Benjamin and Sara.

  Peggy smiled up at Benjamin as she took his extended hand and allowed him to help pull her up onto the coach of the sled. “Brrr,” she grinned. “Looks like another freezing cold journey.”

  Benjamin’s eyes softened. “You should stay behind. I’m used to this but you—”

  “Need to get used to this too,” she interrupted. She smiled warmly, but firmly. “Besides, I enjoy our conversations when we ride over the tundra together.” They were trekking back to Chakuru today in order to trade precious whale blubber for homespun parkas. She settled into the cab of the settee-like contraption, nestling into the polar bear furs Benjamin’s mother had packed for her. “You never did finish telling me that story about your reindeer herder of a great-grandmother.” Her eyes squinted a tad. “What was her name?”

  “Sinrock Mary.” He grinned, a boyish dimple denting one cheek. “She caused quite a stir in her day. Women didn’t own property back then, of course. But granny not only held onto her herd, she did it better than any man.”

  Peggy chuckled at that. “Sounds like my kind of woman.” She smiled fully at Benjamin, causing him to blush and look away. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized the teenager had developed a small crush on her, a fact that made her oddly proud. To a sixteen-year-old boy, after all, her twenty-nine years must sound rather old, she mused. “So tell me all about Sinrock Mary.”

  Over the course of the next five hours Benjamin told her all about his great-grandmother, as well as countless other familial stories. The Inupiaq, she knew, relished a good tale in the same way a chef relishes good food. Indigenous people told their stories with exquisite care, thereby preserving their verbal lore from the taint of time and from the tarnish of contact with outsiders.

  They arrived in the small hunter-gatherer village of Chakuru during the sixth hour, none the worse for their ware. The dogs were tired by the time they arrived and Peggy’s backside hurt from prolonged sitting, but other than that everything was as it should be.

  Peggy smiled at the indigenous children who rushed up to excitedly greet the sled, breathing deeply of the brisk wind while she ruffled the hair of one slight boy. She loved visiting this village for when she looked around it felt like she’d taken a step back in time. And in many ways she had. This village was so remote that it wasn’t even on the official Alaskan map.

  Benjamin politely inclined his head toward the elder female who’d been speaking to him, then turned to Peggy. “She says her son and his new wife are off visiting family in Nome so she’s taken the liberty of fixing up their hut for you.” The old woman said something else in a tongue Peggy was not well versed in. Benjamin nodded, then translated. “She hopes you will find the privacy enjoyable and the warmth of the home agreeable.”

  Peggy smiled, ignoring the nagging voice that told her to keep close to the others and forsake her privacy as she usually did on these trips. Not wanting to offend the old woman, she ignored the voice and nodded. “Thank you,” she said, modestly inclining her head. “Your hospitality is very generous.”

  * * * * *

  Wearing a thin white shift Benjamin’s mother had stitched together for her, Peggy rolled onto her back from beneath the polar bear furs, a wrinkle marring her brow. From within the throes of deep sleep, she recognized on some surreal plane that something was slowly pulling her out of the world of dreams and into the world of semi-wakefulness. She had that feeling again, that bizarre feeling of being watched…

  Peggy’s eyes flew open. Her irises immediately tried to adjust to the pitch-black darkness. She could see very little, almost nothing in fact, but she could still make out a shadowy shape on the far side of the hut. She gasped as she sat straight up, her heartbeat accelerating. Oh my God, she thought in a panic, I never should have slept in here alone.

  Her chest heaving up and down from the adrenaline pumping through her system, her heart pounding in her ears, she threw off the polar bear furs and scrambled to her knees. She squinted at the shadow
y shape on the far side of the one-room hut, trying to discern what the shape was.

  Oh my God. Oh my God! What is it?

  Peggy’s hands balled into nervous fists as she shot up to her feet. Her breathing was heavy, labored, as if she’d just run a two-mile sprint. Preparing to turn on her heel and dash—anywhere—she gasped when a pale beam of moonlight hit the hut and the shadowy shape turned into…

  A parka.

  A harmless, lifeless parka sitting on a log chair by the hut’s small kitchen table.

  Peggy half laughed and half cried. She closed her eyes for a brief moment and exhaled the breath she’d been holding in. Relief—she’d never felt so damn relieved in her entire life. “I’m losing it,” she muttered, her fingers threading through her hair and smoothing it back. “I’m a step away from being escorted out of Alaska by the men in white coats.”

  Taking a deep breath and shaking her head at the mistake, Peggy smiled at her own stupidity. “Get a grip, girl. It was just a…”

  Her smile faded as comprehension slowly dawned. A tremor of terror lanced through her as it occurred to Peggy that the parka she’d worn today was hanging near the crude fireplace/stove to dry out. It was not, nor had it ever been, placed on the chair by the kitchen table. She swallowed roughly, her turquoise eyes widening.

  Get out of here! Now!

  Her heartbeat racing like mad, Peggy prepared to run from the hut when a heavily muscled arm snaked firmly around her belly. She gasped, opening her mouth to scream. A large palm slapped over her mouth before she could get it out, all but muting the wail of fear that erupted from her throat from behind the hand.

  Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.

  Peggy felt a pinch to her neck a threadbare moment before her body went limp into the awaiting arms of what she assumed was a human predator. The world spinning, her head lulled onto her shoulders and her eyes closed. She fell backwards, passing out.