Winter Prey

by T. M. Simmons

  Opposite the windigo, colored pictograms decorated the wall, illuminated by the rising sun shining in the mouth of the lair. She recognized a few of the ancient figures Adam had taught her: a mitigwakik and bagaakokwan, the drum and stick used in ceremonies; an asinipwagun, the stone pipe that held the sacred tobacco; the flute, a bibigwun. They were all holy items, drawn in the miskwadusigun, ozawa and mukude dyes used so long ago.

  Someone had also taken the time to include a Midewiwin Path of Life diagram, with the death symbol, nibowin, beneath it. Another symbol tugged for recognition, but eluded her. This had to mean something, but she didn't have time to analyze it through the fear and dread coursing in her mind. Fear and dread she sensed she must staunch deep enough to keep the creature from identifying it.

  Adam's voice again rang in her mind:

  Nanaukinumowidauh matchi-dae/aewin

  Zhaugootchitumowidauh matchi-dodumowin

  Defend our hearts against evil.

  Against evil prevail.

  With the help of Adam's spiritual guidance, she pushed back her terror. “Your vision may be excellent, but even after all these decades of life — or half-life, whatever you want to call it — even after all these years, you're still on the same over-walked path.”

  Over-walked? the thing roared. I have lived more lifetimes than you could even perceive!

  Her ingrained training assured her keeping the animal talking was best for her safety — for now. At least, if her training had any pertinence in reasoning with this once-human beast. Terror loosened its hold on her slightly.

  “No,” she disagreed. “You've lived only one lifetime over and over again. Each waking period has been the same, hasn't it? The same actions, the same mistakes, with no wisdom gained, only continued stupidity.”

  The creature lunged for her, but Kymbria had nowhere to go. Nonetheless, she refused to cringe. She glared straight back into the laser-beam eyes and said, “You think I should pity you. What you are.”

  I don't want your pity, human. I am a warrior!

  “You used to be,” she said with a sneer that drew another howl of anger from him. He hovered over her, arms poised to strike, and though terror nearly immobilized her, she held out a forestalling hand. “You told Nodinens that you wanted release from this existence. You believe I hold the answer.”

  You do!

  “Perhaps,” she acknowledged, breathing a silent sigh as the windigo backed away a step. “But I have no idea what it is. I'm not the one who made you what you are. You are. Your own actions turned you into what you became. You chose the various destiny paths during your life. You, not anyone else. And what you have done during your waking periods each season since has continued your punishment.”

  I did not deserve this punishment!

  “You did. You ignored the laws of our culture and our customs.” She staunched her distaste and continued, “You ate human flesh, and the spirits punished you by turning you into a windigo.”

  They also punished the woman I loved. Nimiwin, who loved me.

  Nimiwin — the name of the woman he’d loved. Her conversation with Keoman in the casino filtered into her mind. The symbols on the wall, at least some of them, clarified.

  “No, you punished her,” she said, knowing immediately she’d stepped too close to the line — maybe over it.

  The beast bellowed. Razor-sharp teeth exposed, it threw back its head and allowed the agony her words had fostered to escape. The wall behind her reverberated and small stones cascaded off cracks and ledges.

  “You punished her,” she repeated. When the creature swiped her up in its paw and thrust her toward its gaping mouth, she screamed, “You ruined the love between the two of you! Threw away the love by your actions. And instead of atoning for what you had done, you continued to wreak vengeance on the Marten Clan members, people who, after that first waking season, had nothing to do with what you and Cingusi had set in place.”

  The beast hesitated, and Kymbria's fingers curled into the matted fur on its wrist as she stared into that mouth full of meat-rendering teeth. Words deserted her in face of the overwhelming horror. One bite could wrest her head from her body.

  The beast dropped her to the floor, and the padded snowsuit and pile of discarded clothing saved her from more excruciating pain. Still, her legs crumbled and her head hit a sharp outcrop as she fell sideways. Blackness hovered, but she shook her head and, with a supreme effort, gathered her senses.

  A warrior is nothing unless he seeks vengeance against those who harm him or the people he loves!

  Kymbria stifled the pain and stood to face the beast. “Those who harm him, yes, a warrior must retaliate against them. You had the right to punish Cingusi for his abuse of Nimiwin. But after that first season, your kills were not people who actually did you or her harm!”

  The kills fed me, the creature said. They fed the power until I had enough. Until I could sleep and await another season. I had no control over it. Do you not think I would have left this existence time and again if I could have? Only when your mother's destiny crossed mine did I even think there might be an end to it. And when that did not happen — when she shunned me — I knew I could not escape. That there would be another season. Hope woke me up early this season, and my thoughts were confirmed when you came.

  Kymbria had no idea where her words were coming from, but she followed her instinct and spoke them aloud. “You still don't understand…accept your wrongs. You didn't think on that long ago day when you first succumbed to eating your fellow warriors. There are reasons behind our customs and laws. Reasons that make us what we are, who we are. Allow us to live with others, love them. You alone broke a law. No one forced you.”

  I wanted to come home to Nimiwin!

  “Was she better off with your return? Or did your return set her destiny on a path of suffering? You could have lain down with the others and found peace. Instead, you chose evil over good, selfishness over selflessness.”

  I was wrong, the beast growled, and for an instant, Kymbria thought maybe she was making him see reason. His next words deflated her optimism and told her exactly how wrong she’d been to confront this evil.

  I thought you would help me leave this existence. But you are here to judge me. Instead, you will feed the hunger and I will look for hope again next season. Eating you will give me comfort for what I have lost, what I did not find this season.

  He grabbed her and she felt a rib break. Gasping in pain, she fought, but her struggles were ineffective against the thing’s strength. He tossed her into his other paw, lips drawing back from those horrible teeth as though sneering at her useless defiance.

  I can linger with you — or end it all at once. I think it will amuse me to toy with you for a while. I have not been amused for a long while.

  He grasped her legs and dangled her upside down. One large rip in the back of her snowsuit gaped open and she felt the icy air on her skin.

  Ummmm.

  He slipped a huge paw under her belly, and Kymbria felt the beast’s tongue slide over her back as he licked the blood from her wound.

  “Risa, I love you,” Kymbria murmured, sure these would be her last words before she died a horrible death. She steeled herself for the pain, wishing she were already unconscious.

  Suddenly the beast gagged and dropped her to the floor. As she fell, Kymbria instinctively wrapped an arm across her rib to protect it. Still, pain surged through her at the impact, and she couldn’t fight the darkness this time.

  She battled back to consciousness, somehow knowing she’d only been out for a few seconds. Fighting the agony her movement caused, she twisted around, gaze searching for the windigo.

  The monster sat a dozen feet away, breathing heavily, the look on his face telegraphing his puzzlement. Immediately she realized what had happened. She scooted up against the cave wall. Bracing herself, she tried to stand. But that was beyond her ability for the moment.

  “Do you remember what you asked me when you hu
rt Caleb out on the trail?” she managed to say.

  I have said many things to you.

  “You know what I’m talking about.” She forced a sneer to her tone. “You asked me if I knew who I was.”

  Understanding dawned in his expression, and he nodded his head.

  “That’s right,” she said when the beast refused to vocalize what they both knew. “I’m a many-times great-granddaughter to you. I carry your blood. You can’t eat me!”

  Roaring his displeasure, he lunged to his feet.

  That doesn’t mean I can’t kill you! You are useless to me!

  She never saw him move, but the next instant she dangled in his grip again.

  “And what if you do?” she screamed when he lifted her high in preparation of flinging her to the ground. “You hate your existence now. An existence that came about because you broke the laws of our tribe. How much worse do you think it will be if you actually kill someone of your own blood?”

  For a long instant, the beast held her in the air. Then, slowly, he lowered and released her. She staggered when a small rock rolled beneath her right foot. Before she could regain her balance, the windigo threw back his head. The sound of his cries filled the cavern, one after another. Kymbria steadied herself against the cave wall, then slid down to crouch and cover her ears. Still the cries she had heard in the sweat lodge reverberated against her senses.

  The pain. The evil. The heartrending cry for understanding.

  She curled her arms around her head and buried her face on her knees, gasping as the ends of her broken rib clashed inside her. The noise caused fissures in the cave walls and rocks rained down. The air filled with eons-old choking dust.

  Some sense warned her, and Kymbria forced her head up, her eyes open, in time to peer through the dense fog of debris…just as the windigo disappeared out the cave entrance. She bit back pain and rose to her feet, bracing against the wall as she tried to escape before she was sealed in.

  One last boulder crashed across the mouth of the lair, probably thrown by the windigo. Forgetting her injuries for a distracted second, she threw herself against it, certain it would be immovable. Still, she had to try. The huge rock didn't budge even an inch when she shoved. Though no light entered the cave, she felt around the edges of the stone to see if she might somehow dig out some loose dirt. The boulder was compacted tightly over the entrance.

  Slowly, she sank to the floor. No one knew where she was. She would die a lingering death of thirst and starvation. She would never see Risa again. No one had been able to find the windigo’s lair in over three hundred years. No one would find it now.

  Unless…

  Her head snapped up. Len. The windigo had found Len in the lair. Someone had killed the maintenance man and left him nearby. Entered by another entrance.

  Kymbria searched her pockets and found her flashlight. The welcome light helped overcome the pain of her injuries. Watching her step so she didn’t fall and perhaps jam her broken rib into a lung, she headed deeper into the cave. Her feet crunched over rocky gravel and disintegrating bones, but she forced back the bile in her rising gorge. There was another exit, the one whoever killed Len had used, and her only hope lay in locating it.

  Or would she wind up lost in here until the smell of her own rotting body led the beast to her once again?

  The smell wasn’t a foreshadow of her own rotting corpse. The windigo waited around the third bend amidst dense layers of skeleton bones. Kymbria skidded as she tried to halt before she ran into it. The flashlight bobbled in her grasp. She tightened her fingers desperately and managed to hold onto it.

  The beam illuminated the windigo and the area around him. On a shelf beside him lay a mummified body. Kymbria couldn’t stop herself. The light feathered over the gray, wrinkled face of the corpse, the wisps of black hair still clinging to the dried scalp, the tattered doeskin dress and beaded moccasins.

  Then she turned the light on the windigo's face.

  “That's my many-times-great-grandmother,” she said. “The woman your actions left behind to suffer.”

  The windigo turned to gaze at the shelf. That is Nimiwin, the woman I love. Your mother told you the story — the same one I told her just before you were born.

  Making a quick decision, Kymbria turned off the flashlight and scurried back around the bend by feel alone. For a few seconds, the deep blackness enveloped her as she pressed against the cave wall and tried frantically to decide what would be her next move.

  Light flared from around the bend. The creature's eyes, it had to be. She even heard a faint crooning sound. My god, it was standing there singing to the body on the shelf.

  Kymbria felt for the spirit bundle, but it wasn't there. Foolish, she told herself as she remembered she’d deliberately left it behind. She could return to the snowmobile and retrieve it. She should. It might be the only thing between her and death.

  Instead, she took a deep breath and unzipped her snowsuit.

  ~~~

  Caleb followed the tracks left by Kymbria’s snowmobile until he had to admit defeat. The snow that started falling barely a half-hour ago had thickened into a whiteout more dense than anything he’d ever seen before. If he hadn’t known better, he’d call it a paranormal phenomenon. Hell, perhaps it was.

  He couldn’t turn back. He had to find her, even if it meant ending up lost out here himself.

  Skippy.

  His son was alive. Damn it, he couldn’t sacrifice his life and never see his son again.

  He’d never make it back to Kymbria’s cabin in this whiteout either. Hell, he might already be on the road to death. If this were a paranormal happening, maybe he was one of the actors in the play. But…a survivor or a meal for the beast?

  He halted the snowmobile as a large shadow loomed in front of him. Climbing off, he stumbled over to examine it and realized where he was: at the deadfall where he’d been injured the previous day. He dug in the luggage pack on the machine and retrieved the survival tent he’d seen in there when he checked the supplies before he left the cabin. It would have to do.

  But even the survival tent wouldn’t keep him safe for more than a few hours.

  ~~~

  Shivering and dressed in her doeskin garment and moccasins, Kymbria stepped around the bend in the cave. She could see the windigo in the reflected glow of its eyes, now a dim glimmer in the darkness. The animal knelt by the shelf on which Nimiwin lay, still crooning to her and gently brushing a huge paw across the forehead and top of the skull, claws safely threaded away from harm or damage. Kymbria didn't recognize the chant the creature sang, but she assumed it was an ancient love song.

  She had no idea if what she planned would work, but she had to try.

  I love you, Risa.

  She clicked the flashlight on and shone it on her face. “Look at me,” she whispered past the lump of fear in her throat.

  The windigo paused, and its voice died. Even with only a profile visible in the reflected light from its eyes, Kymbria could see the upper lip draw back, a gleam of teeth. She gulped, but held her ground.

  The beast turned his head, and the next thing she knew, he was in front of her, without her having seen any movement. She instinctively shone the flashlight beam in his face, and the light outlined the monstrous head nearly three feet above her, mouth agape as it descended…then halted.

  “You forgot,” she sneered through her fright. “You can’t eat me!”

  The beast stumbled backwards, and she followed him with the flashlight beam. His mouth dropped, but not in anticipation of a meal. The eyes possessed a look of stunned astonishment, and the mouth opened and closed as though trying to speak, but no sound emerged.

  Then he managed three syllables: “Nimiwin?”

  At first the actual sound of the name rather than the words mentally telepathing to her shocked Kymbria, but she hurriedly gathered her senses.

  “I do look like her, don't I?” she said. “This story has come full circle. My great-grandmother
tells me she wants it to end now.”

  “You are as beautiful as always,” the creature whispered. “You have not changed.”

  “I have changed,” Kymbria told him, deciding to allow the windigo to believe she was Nimiwin. Perhaps reminding the animal of the woman he loved was indeed the right thing to do. She continued, “I want you to stop now. You have exacted more than enough vengeance for the wrongs done us.”

  The windigo sank to the cave floor and buried his face in the huge palms. “I want to!” he said with a sob. “For so long, I have wanted to….”

  He dropped his hands and gazed back at Kymbria, a frown that dissolved into a look of pleasure on his face. “But…now you are here with me! I do not have to join you in the odjitcag land. You have returned to me here!”

  He advanced a step, looked back at the shelf where Nimiwin's corpse lay, then at Kymbria. “How have you done this? But it does not matter. Now you are mine again.”

  Desperate, Kymbria said the first thing that came to mind…or was it actually something someone nearby suggested? “I only come back to accompany you to the land of odjitca.”

  “How?” The windigo held out its huge arms. “I have tried many times to join you, and it does not work. Come to me now. Let me at least hold you.”

  Repugnance curled in Kymbria's stomach as she stared at the windigo. She dredged up every bit of courage she could find inside herself, hoping her fear and disgust didn't show on her face. Then she took one step forward…another. What would happen once the beast touched her again? Would he crush her in his arms? Throw her to the cave floor? Try to…?

  She took another step, and the beast waited patiently, his expression now begging her to continue. Barely four more steps separated them.

  How could she avoid letting him take her?

  Something touched her mind, and the entrance to the lair visualized. She remembered the drawings on the wall, drawings something told her Nimiwin, her great-grandmother, had made. One stood out, though, the Path of Life drawing. More so even, the death symbol gleamed, and suddenly she knew what the symbol below it was — the wavering line crawling through what she had at first taken for waves on a lake. Instead, they were….