Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Priestess—" Teshuk called. "Look!"

  The ghost dancer had come clear of the Forest and crossed the open plain toward them. Unobstructed by trees, he blazed blue, a hot piece of noon-sky running toward them through the night.

  "Why does he burn?" Vran asked, transfixed.

  "He's not burning," the priestess said, watching intently. "The spirit-fire of the sky has seized him. The cold fire comes down from the sky and carries him. He is but an animal. The spirit-fire makes him something more."

  "Make brands!" Cort ordered, and the men began binding dried shrub to thick brush-limbs.

  "Yes, make brands," the priestess chortled and lay back to wait.

  When each of the four men had a torch in one hand and a spear in the other, they spread out, two to each side of the fire and shouted their battle cries.

  The ghost dancer advanced silently. Now they could discern his shape. His legs pumped, arms flailed, as he sped across the uneven terrain. The eerie light of his body illuminated the ground around him, flickering off the tundra grass and bramble bushes.

  Clearly, he would exhaust himself by the time he came upon them. The men's shouts echoed defiantly and their torches swung wide, waving the monster closer.

  The ghost dancer entered the gully beyond where the travelers had stopped for the night, and disappeared. Only his weird glow rose from the ditch like starlit fog.

  The hunters braced for him. "Don't throw!" Teshuk shouted. "Hold your spears. We'll stick him like a pig as he comes at us."

  The monster’s head appeared out of the gully—a boulder with a grimacing face bashed out of it, hair short, bristly as a hog's, and streaming blue fire. Giant shoulders followed, burnished like sunshot fronds, hackled with flames. Long glittering arms, a prismatic torso strapped with pelts, naked muscled legs, and fur boots tufting sparks.

  The ghastly apparition loomed over them, silent as smoke, and the Thundertree men moaned.

  Vran let fly his spear—and the projectile hurtled through the giant's chest and clattered among the rocks of the gully behind him. The men hooted with surprise and confusion.

  The ghost dancer lurched toward Cort. He touched flesh, feeling rage and fear, heat and cold competing in Cort's nerves. Cort jabbed with his weapon, and again the spear cut emptiness.

  The flames of his torch flapped green as they passed through the blue ghost. Then the wraith swept over Cort, and the Longtooth hunter cried in anguish.

  From out of the darkness behind the hunters, Baat slinked closer. While his body of light swirled about Cort, he advanced into the firelight, a rock in each fist.

  Shala spied him first and screamed. By then he had moved close enough to hurl a stone and strike Big Kell a crunching blow at the back of his head. Even as Big Kell dropped, Baat flung the second rock, and hit Teshuk on his temple as he turned.

  Vran attacked, obsidian knife held low. Baat snatched the wooden bowl by the fire and heaved it at the charging man. The bowl caught Vran full in the face, and he spun and crashed into the fire. Twisting swiftly to his feet with a howl, he stumbled into the ghost dancer who grabbed his head and shoulders and with one mighty twist snapped the man's neck.

  The ul udi capered with delight in Baat's mind, a chorus of chittering devil voices. Kill the smallheads!

  The stink of blood ignited the cells of his brain, making the inside of his skull a luminous pulp, an interior mirror in which every tremor of the dying smallhead, every swell of fecal stink and soft croon of last breath, reflected again and again. The Dark Traces' appetite for detail swelled, insatiable—and the killing, which had been terrible in its swiftness, went on inside him, repeating itself many times.

  Hot with murderous frenzy, Baat faced the last of the men. Cort stood transfixed. Numbing shivers coursed through his muscles, while his head whirled with crazy voices jabbering in a language he did not understand. Every effort he made to move creaked slowly. Vision belled, blurred at the edges, where he eyed the Thundertree men sprawled on the ground in graceless postures. And there, below him, even cunning Teshuk on his back, staring up with lifeless eyes in a blood-rayed face.

  Terror swirled through Cort, and the nattering voices flurried louder, so that he thought his ears would burst.

  Two spear-lengths away the ghost dancer stood, a head taller and a hand's span wider than the biggest man he had ever seen. He looked much like the other ghost dancers he had come upon after they had been poisoned—ruddy-haired, with long green eyes under bulging brows—an ugliness as if hacked from rock. Only this one was standing, striding closer until only an arm's reach away.

  Cort smelled the forest duff on him, spotted dried leaf-mulch in his stiff hair, a crescent-moon scar parting the whiskers on his right jaw. He gazed up into those long, slim eyes, met the fury there, and went cold in all his hollows.

  Burn him—burn him! the ul udi cried—and the scarlet pulse in Baat's skull hammered. He tore his attention away from the exploding voices and shouted, "No burning!"

  His shout sounded like animal noise to the smallhead, made the man's tiny eyes flare and quivering lips lift from his teeth.

  Baat opened his palm before the smallhead's terrified face, and the blue fire lifted up, balled in the air, and vanished.

  The inane voices vanished from Cort's head, and his muscles unlocked. Immediately, the Longtooth hunter drew back his spear. Before he could raise it, the ghost dancer grabbed his arm in a grip so ferocious that Cort's arm broke at the elbow. The torch in his other hand fell, and he crashed to his knees, mouth open around a soundless scream. Baat swung his fist hard against the smallhead's ear, and ended his suffering.

  Blue fire played briefly over the corpse, moved away, and returned to Baat. The ul udi voices bleated with rapture. The hot smell of blood, the crunch of shattered bone, the sharp apex of pain, and the fluting gasp of last breath reflected endlessly among the interior mirrors of his brain.

  He had not killed smallheads in a long time. He had forgotten the sodden joy it gave the ul udi.

  They gushed thickly in him, savoring the bloodsmoke and dreaming they had become flesh.

  He felt their unslaked appetite: He had killed these smallheads too quickly. They had given him no choice, but the ul udi would have relished more suffering, more bloodsmoke, more death.

  Kill the smallheads! Kill the bitches! Kill the sows!

  Baat turned toward the female smallheads. One had lifted her robes to show the white of her thighs, pink in the firelight. Her legs spread, exposing a large stone pressed against her genitals. The other cowered behind her, backing off into darkness as he approached.

  Kill them! Spill their blood! Let us smell again death heat! Kill the smallhead bitches!

  The fleeing one made the death voices wriggle louder in Baat's head. Kill them! Kill the sows!

  Studying the other, the one with the rock between her legs, overrode the hungry voices. This started a new strumming going in his head with its own body echoes. She murmured to him and seemed to be smiling in a sickening way. The other backed off deeper into night, frightened, and her fear fed the hateful violence in him.

  Baat knelt before the open legs of the priestess, summoned by the new melody of the ul udi. Only the fear of the other smallhead spoiled the strumming in his groin, jangled it with the competing need for bloodsmoke.

  Shala watched the giant kneel between the priestess' legs, his large, hideous face gleaming. The blue fire had almost entirely vapored away. The killing had ended. She retreated, heart banging, almost gagging her. Then she spun and sprang into the dark.

  The ul udi guided Baat's hands. He did not have to think, not even have to try. With wide-splayed fingers, he lifted the rock of fertility and exposed the priestess' slewed cleft.

  She whispered him encouragement, filling him turgid with the ul udi's new melody. He heaved the rock of fertility out of the way, and it flew into the dark with the ul udi's murderous accuracy. When it smashed Shala's skull, he heard nothing, the new melody resounded t
hat loud.

  )|(

  Kirchi startled awake, a cry widening through her body, too large for her voice. The cry had pushed out silently through her gaping mouth, right through the walls of her chest, and left her wrung and weak. The cry went on, beyond her, out through the cave wall into the night, through the Forest, out to the tundra, where, right now, the beast heaved his engorgement into the priestess—while in darkness Shala lay, brains naked to the starlight.

  "Wake up, child," a familiar voice spoke. "It is over. Tell me what you saw."

  Kirchi's eyes strained wide, locked in a stare bent on a small tallow flame before a crystal lobe big as her knee. It amplified and scattered the light into enormous shadows on the cave wall.

  In the shadows, she still beheld the beast, his broad naked back hunched over the priestess. And all the while those tiny, evil voices in his head singing shrilly in rhythm to the fire's elemental vibrations, as if the fire itself pushed and pulled the beast over the priestess. And with each thrust, her legs jerked straight up and a slurred cry flew from her—

  "Wake up, I say!"

  A thorn pricked Kirchi's cheek, and her whole body winced and curled on itself like a torched moth.

  The old woman who had jabbed her placed a knobby hand on the back of the young woman's neck, feeling through the bright red hair for the pulse behind her jaw.

  "There, there," the crone clucked. "You've had a fright. Remember what I've told you about frights. Remember, now. Feel your heart. Feel her drumming in you. Be the drummer. Be her—and slow the drumming. That's good, child. Good. Now sit up."

  The hag grabbed Kirchi's coarse hair and pulled back her head till she sat upright.

  In the tallow light, her pale skin reflected all the hues of the flame, and her gray eyes spun color like the lump of crystal on the moss-mat before them.

  Sensibility returned to her stare. Fright still showed in the small quivers at the corners of her slack mouth. A handsome not a pretty girl, she had a ferocious fox-keen face and lithe, small-breasted body braced by the proud bones of the seeress who had birthed her.

  The Mothers of the Longtooth had been happy to let Kirchi go to the witch, for the girl lacked the breadth of hips and fullness of teats to serve them. Yet, with a seeress mother, she belonged to a lineage too hallowed to spend her days digging tubers and mashing acorns.

  "Tell me now, Kirchi-girl, what did you see?"

  "A ghost dancer," she muttered.

  The hag's long, sullen face brightened. "Five moons in front of the scry crystal and you've found your first ghost dancer! Ha-ah! I was a full year staring before I found my first. Who is it?"

  Kirchi blinked, trying to remember the names and characteristics the witch had taught her. "I'm not sure."

  "Not sure? Child, there are no more than a dozen ghost dancers in our domain. You know all their names and traits. Think. Female?"

  "No. A man. Big, with bristly hair like red hackles."

  "All the men are big, child, and all, here, have red hair. But most are not tall and some trim their hair in odd ways. Come, now. Is it one-eyed Moruc? Or Toothless Talman? Gray Pindal with the black mole on his nose?"

  "He had a scar on his jaw, curved like the sliver moon."

  "Baat!" The crone sat back with surprise. "I thought him dead. He must be very old—forty or more summers. Nearly my own age." The witch thumbed her chin reflectively. "It's been almost seven years since I've seen him. That was the year after he lost the last of his tribe. It maddened him of course. I was sure the loneliness had killed him when I stopped scrying him at his ancestral grounds. He's the last of those that lived at this end of the Great Forest. Yes, they were tall ones. The others—Moruc, Talman, Pindal, Cark, all the rogue women—they're short-legged. They wandered in from the east. Baat, alone, belongs here. The Longtooth killed his people."

  “Our tribe,” Kirchi spoke absently, not listening. Her fright had dulled, and the weariness of the scrying-brew saturated her.

  The witch again pricked the young woman's cheek with her thorn, and Kirchi snapped alert. "Where did you see Baat? What was he doing?"

  "On the tundra. In sight of the Forest. He burns blue with kindled spirit."

  "Dancing?"

  "No. Not dancing."

  The crone's face creased with worry. "Not dancing? Then the Dark Traces have him."

  "Yes, they have him. They filled him with killing-strength and he has slain four men—two Longtooth men from my father's cult, Teshuk and Cort, and two Thundertree hunters, Big and Little Pell or Gell—I couldn't hear their names so well, the Dark Traces jabber so."

  "He killed them with his hands—or with the blue fire?"

  "With his hands."

  The old woman swung her face toward the black night in the mouth of the cave. "Bless him, Mother of Darkness! He tries to control himself. After all these years. Still trying. No wonder he yet lives."

  "There are two women—one a priestess."

  "Women!" the witch wailed. "What are women doing on the tundra at night?"

  "They journey to the Thundertree. The priestess carries a rock of fertility."

  The witch threw up her hands in despair. "Superstitious children! Politics, not wisdom, brought them here. Every priestess knows those rocks are useless. So now the Longtooth women are playing the silly games of their men and trying to influence the primitive Thundertree."

  "Only one woman is dead," Kirchi spoke, staring down at her lap, not wanting to look into the crystal or face the shadow wall and begin the trance again. "Shala ran. And Baat broke her head open with the rock of fertility. And now he ruts with the priestess."

  "Oh, Mother, Mother!" the witch cried out, and her outburst folded into echoes far into the cave. "Why do You give Your daughters to the beast?" She shook her head, weary with grief. "A moonless night. No crystal could have spared her this indignity. The Dark Traces will not be denied tonight. She is fortunate, at least, to be under Baat. Once he is spent, he will not let the Dark Traces kill her."

  Kirchi shut her eyes, wanting to blot out the horrid memory. The crone gripped her behind the neck.

  "Don't fall asleep yet, child. You must purge the scrying-brew or you will fly and not return. Go out to the spring. Drink a full gourd at least. Wait for the cat star to set. Then sleep. Tomorrow we must find Baat. The Longtooth men are too wise to demand a ghost dancer's blood for Teshuk and Cort, but the Thundertree will seek vengeance for their dead. They will hunt him now. Blessedly, they are sloppy hunters. Still, we must protect Baat. He has come back to meet his ancestors. He has come back for only one thing. To die in his blood land. We must see he has that dignity."

  Kirchi lugged herself to her feet and swayed out of the cave and into the night. Chill air cut through the drowsiness of the trancing brew. A breeze shuffled the branches of the giant firs with a sound like a stream of water, and the femur bones hanging on the skeleton-poles beside the spring clacked.

  She followed that noise under an enormous hive of stars until she came to where water sluiced from a fissure in a hillock. Mist soaked fern brambles around the spring, frosty against her bare legs. She knelt and felt for the drinking gourd, found it nestled between two smooth rocks. As she drank, the cold water hurt her teeth. She prayed to the Mother to be free of this, not to have to drink the bitter scrying-brew again and see the horror she had seen tonight.

  Never had Kirchi desired to be a seeress, or even an important mother. She would be happy, she knew, as one of the simple mothers in the tribe, foraging with the others, smoking meats, watching her children grow.

  She finished drinking and gazed at the crackling stars. Yearning burned harsh as malice after what she had witnessed this night. Her wordless prayer to the Great Mother spun in her, empty of hope. How could she ever get free of the witch? If she fled, the beasts would devour her within a night. If she stayed, in time she would become the witch herself.

  Cold tightened her flesh against her bones, and tears wet her cheeks, though she drifted far
past sadness. She wept in despair, not only for herself but for the young woman whose brains lay on the tundra nibbled by ants, and for the priestess under the beast, and for the beast himself, his people dead, alone forever now under the smoldering stars, enclosed by night black as venom.

  Part One

  Beyond the Shadow Is the Ghost

  Life's greatest danger lies in the fact that people's food consists entirely of souls.

  —Inuit shaman

  Blind Side

  An arrowhead of white cranes flew north through red air. Duru stood at the cavemouth and watched them wing overhead, carrying her heart joyfully into her ninth spring.

  Winter had seemed interminable, moaning outside the honeycomb of caves in the limestone cliffs, numbing the land and the people. Cold winds grayed the sky and peeled the ocean to whitecaps that made fishing impossible. No birds to hunt, no fish to net, no berries to gather. Duru had long ago wearied of eating stale acorn-mash and dried meat from autumn—and pecking the dust in the back of the caves for insects.

  Now there would be fresh food again. The sea mirrored blushing clouds, and already fisherfolk sculled onto the bay in dugouts, while their women waded among tidepools.

  Not long ago, the last of the great winter storms had thrashed the Forest more fiercely than ever and had driven numerous flocks of birds out of the trees and into niches of the sea cliffs, easily hunted, even by children. Meat abounded yet again. Spring had returned, and the honking of cranes chorused in the fragrant sea-air.

  Duru looked about excitedly for someone to share the news of spring's arrival. She waved to one of the fisherfolk far below on the beach, stringing his net between two limbs of driftwood, and he waved back from under wheeling gulls.

  To left and right fronting a white escarpment riddled with caves, a ledge-path ran, strewn with small bones the cats had dropped. One of the family's old yellow dogs slept at the juncture where the path bent upward over the scarp to the high fields above the sea cliffs. The animal waited, too tired for the climb yet still eager to partake of the mice and snakes the children brought back from above.