Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  "Why am I tied?" she asked, sitting up with the rope of creepers in her hand.

  Baat stared silently, his pale eyes watchful, alert, hard as stars. The simple caring she had seen there before had gone, the dumbstruck look gone, replaced by an unflinching stare. Cold touched her spine.

  "I saw the ul udi, Baat," she said, trying to evoke some emotion in his stony face. "I heard their music. And I saw the People dancing—thousands dancing."

  Baat stood up, and Duru's piping voice, even with its few recognizable syllables, fell mute. He no longer stared at her. He peered up into his head. His eyeballs rolled up under the rock of his brow.

  Fear grew in Duru. She pressed her back against the tree and pulled her knees to her chest. The demons still occupied him, the Dark Traces who had tried to kill her last night. The Bright Ones had not repelled them.

  When Baat's eyes swung back into place, they glinted with tears. They showed no warmth. Shining with the tears of someone who had gazed into the wind, they locked on her. He pushed a rock closer with his toe, and she observed that it had been smashed to an edge. He was giving her a tool to cut herself loose from the tree. As she reached for it, he turned away and loped into the morning's rags of mist.

  )|(

  The spicy scent of a river rose with the haze, thinning to the sweet char of dead leaves and a twang of deer musk. No evil woodsmoke odors tainted the day. The smallheads had slowed in their pursuit. Yet, they moved nearby. Even if he had not yet closed upon them near enough to smell their fire, he knew they sensed him. The Dark Traces told him so.

  After his hunger music had called the ul udi into his body—after they had gone from him into the Lion to kill his enemies—they had sunk their menace deeper into him. He could not shrug them off. Last night, they had tried to kill the girl. The Bright Ones had stopped them but could not drive them off.

  When he had woken in a sprawl with the girl asleep on his chest, the Dark Traces had woken with him. He had been afraid they would make him kill her. The Bright Ones' influence had muted the killing madness in him, and he had had enough clarity to twine a leash from creepers and tie Duru to a tree. Then he had chipped an edge in a small rock so she could eventually cut herself free after he had gone, because he did not expect to return.

  A grandmotherly fragrance crossed Baat's path, and he paused. Some gnarly hawk-nut tree dangled its aromatic burrs, its boughs coiled like giant serpents. He husked several of the yellow nuts, popped the juicy meats into his mouth, and rubbed the oily insides of the burrs against his beard, perfuming himself with the odor of autumn.

  This had been a favorite pastime of the People. The nuts yielded lamp oil, too, whose incense had flavored all his childhood winters. Smelling this again, he remembered the People and how every day had its own ritual, every rock and all its pocks their names. How much he had forgotten.

  Shame weakened his knees, and he sagged under the hawk-nut tree and leaned his brow against his knees. What anger would spit from the old ones if they could meet him in the flesh and see how he had abused the hunger music.

  Every dark calling had to be countered by a bright calling. How could he have forgotten that? He had thought only of killing his enemies. If the Lion had succeeded, he would have left the Dark Traces there and gone on his way free of them and the smallheads. The Lion's death had turned the ul udi back on him, and now he had no one to perform the bright calling that could free him. At night, the Dark Traces would wake in his body and use him. Eventually, they would kill him, and his soul would become the plaything for their horrors.

  Baat wrenched his head back, and his mouth opened around an inaudible cry. The door of the mountain awaited farther than he could walk in a dozen days. He knew he could never reach there on his own. And the girl was doomed if she went with him. Why not just die here?

  The sweet smell of the hawk-nuts cloyed him with their memories of a painfully lost time. He jumped to his feet and barged, heedless, through the tortuous undergrowth.

  If the Dark Traces raged in him, he would not let them have the girl. He would turn their fury instead on the smallheads. They had driven him to use the hunger music. They had deprived him of his People, his deathward journey to the north, and now his very soul. He would find those smallheads. He would hunt down his hunters, and he would make them eat darkness.

  )|(

  Yaqut sneered. The bonesucker coming for them no doubt thought he could surprise them, not realizing they had the tracking stone. Or maybe realizing it: The ul udi had supernatural knowing. Either way, he closed on them. He was already here, somewhere in the violet light of dusk. The long waiting had ended.

  The poison Yaqut had boiled from lethal toadstools—the black syrup condensed to deadly tar that he had offered to the Beastmaker and had cursed with the names of all the Longtooth clanspeople slain by bonesuckers—that toxin gleamed on his lance-tip. It needed only one cut to kill, one doorway into the blood. For that, Yaqut prayed to the Beastmaker as he peered into gathering darkness.

  At Yaqut's command, the fire had been left burning and the four of them had separated into the night shadows. The ghost dancer would have to come for them one at a time. The witch and the boy were useless, Yaqut knew, and he had sent them to the more open corners of the clearing, with instructions to cry out if they spied the bonesucker. Yaqut was not sure they would. But he could see them, though they thought they lay hidden. If the bonesucker took out either of them first, he would have a clear shot with his lance.

  Hamr knelt in a holt of tall ferns. He watched Kirchi across the clearing, crouching alongside a fallen tree, arms hugging her knees to her chest. Timov stood in a thicket of switches that had sprouted from where the tree had fallen. His sling hung from his hand, though Hamr knew he could not use it. The crowded saplings would not permit him to swing it. Hamr kept his gaze close to those two. The bonesucker would not steal anyone else from him.

  Timov hefted the stone in his sling, to show Hamr he was armed and ready to fight. He would stand by his clansman even though his dreamy memory of the ul udi inspired awe in him for the ghost dancer. To give himself more room, he edged over sideways, toward Kirchi, and stopped, catching his breath. Blue fire glimmered in the chest-high bracken beside Hamr, flashed abruptly closer, and then bounded through the ferns.

  Hamr caught it too, and immediately turned the other way, remembering how the ghost dancer had deceived them when he kidnapped Duru.

  "He's behind you!" Yaqut shouted. "There—by the ferns! It's not a ghost!"

  Hamr was still looking away when the ghost dancer reared out of the bracken beside him, flames spinning from his body, swirling around him in the dark. With blazing hands, he seized Hamr's head and wrenched hard. A sharp crackle sounded, and Hamr's arms jolted stiff, then went limp.

  Baat snatched Hamr's spear and leaped over his slumped body. He ran right through the fire, scattering sparkling ashes in a blustery cloud and kicking chunks of flaming wood into the air.

  The sight of Hamr so abruptly fallen under the fiery attack of the ghost dancer shocked Timov, and he stood numb, motionless, until the giant burst through the fire. With a mad scream, Timov leaped into the clearing, whipped his sling and let fly. The rock whizzed over Baat's shoulder. The ghost dancer stopped and raised Hamr's spear.

  The opportunity Yaqut craved had come, and he bounded out of the darkness, lance held high. Before he could throw, Baat spotted him, and twisted about with such vehemence that spits of blue fire jarred off in pinwheels. His spear hurtled at Yaqut, and thocked into the maple beside the hunter.

  Yaqut's scalded face split into a malicious grin. His lance had sagged before the hurtling missile, and he raised it again. Baat hopped sideways, abruptly hit a knobby beech tree, where Yaqut aimed to impale him. As the hunter flung his weight into his throw, the ghost dancer reached behind and pulled with all his might, ripping up the misshapen tree by its roots from the soggy ground.

  Yaqut had let his lance fly before he realized the giant had to
ppled the big tree toward him. With a startled cry, he danced backward. The falling beech groaned out of the earth and collapsed atop the hunter. Yaqut's lance had glanced off the falling trunk and swerved, gashing Baat's left arm below the shoulder.

  A gush of silver fire sprayed like spitting voltage from Baat's wound, and he yelped from the sting of poison. His blue fire flushed bloody red, and the Dark Traces bawled in him, Burn them! Burn the smallheads! You are poisoned! You are dying! Burn them!

  Baat swooped up a burning stick from the fire and pressed it to his cut, inhaling the stench of seared flesh.

  You are dead, Baat! Kill the smallheads! Burn them!

  Lightning seared his arms, crackled in asp-tongues from his fingertips. "No!" he yelled. He pulled the fire back into himself and felt it retreating behind his eyes in a spasm of pain. Yaqut and the beardless one were dead. The hunt for him had ended. No longer would he let the Dark Traces use him, no matter the suffering. He reeled across the clearing, scarlet fluorescence billowing behind.

  Yaqut's spear had dropped beside Kirchi. Her eyes had locked on where Hamr had fallen, and she had not seen it. Her blurred gaze fell on it as the giant turned away. Numbly, her hands closed on the weapon. Her eyes followed the glowing hulk of the ghost dancer, rapidly listing away from her, and she raised the lance.

  As Kirchi threw, Timov collided with her, and the short spear fell short of the giant. Looking over his shoulder, Baat glimpsed Timov hugging a weeping woman. Pain closing in, Baat shambled off.

  "You gawk of a milkless mother!" Yaqut cursed from where he lay under the beech. The branches had broken the massive force of the tree, and he scowled, unhurt, from under the thick boughs. He had kept silent, knowing the Dark Traces would have killed him if he had shown any sign of life. Now, with a grimace of rage on his warped face, he pulled himself out from under the tree. He leaped to his feet and threw himself at Timov. "Why did you save him?" He grabbed the boy's lion-skin and shook him violently. "He killed Hamr!"

  Timov wrenched free, and stared into Yaqut's broken face with defiant tears. Words balked in him, could not get past the crammed hurt in his throat. Hamr is dead—

  Any explanation required more than his grief would let him voice. He glowered at Yaqut, his lips trembling.

  With a frustrated cry, the hunter slammed his fist against the boy's ear, felling him to the ground.

  Kirchi shouted angrily at Yaqut, and knelt over Timov.

  "Don't yell at me, witch! He should taste my poison for what he has done. You could have killed him! Here and now, we could be done with that bonesucker!"

  Kirchi shot a harsh glance up at Yaqut. Then, her eyes went wide. Above the hunter, the canopy of the Forest blazed. Sparks from the campfire that Baat had kicked into the air had ignited among the autumnal leaves. All at once, sheets of flame dropped from the treetops. The fire spread quickly, shriveling the underbrush in its wake.

  Yaqut picked up his lance and ran to where Hamr's body lay. Reaching under the dead man, he plucked the tracking stone from beneath his pelt, and dashed away.

  Behind him, Kirchi helped Timov to his feet. Together, moving too quickly to talk or even reason, they carried as many of the pelts and satchels as they could gather and fled into the night under a wall of fire.

  Part Three

  Masterings of the Beast

  I create evil: I the Lord...

  —Isaiah 45:7

  For the Dead, Who Live Us

  Shooting stars glinted like needles in the north. Baat watched them briefly while he examined his pain, assessing how badly he had been hurt.

  You will die!

  The wound felt numb. Poison! His left arm tingled, as if going to sleep. Surely, if the toxin reached his heart, he would die. His heartbeat pulsed irregularly. Is this panic—or death?

  Staring at the precise lines of the shooting stars, Baat confirmed that he suffered no blurred vision. The cold fire of the ul udi steamed red from his flesh, as it did when the Dark Traces swarmed over a dying body and took the soul within for their own.

  You are already dead, Hollow Bone! We are eating you!

  Baat's heart bucked loudly in his chest. To calm it, he reminded himself that the hunger music had invited the Dark Traces into his body: The poison and the killing had simply excited them. He decided his wound was not mortal.

  Die, Hollow Bone! Curl up and die!

  Baat shouted at the night, "Dark Traces, I will never obey you again!" Defiantly, he began to run. If the poison had soaked deep enough to kill him, this would mercifully hurry his death; if not, the exertion would cleanse his blood. "You hurt me—you do not have me."

  Baat ran back through the woods he had crossed before dusk. He found his way in the night by moonglow and the red light misting off his body. Silver hollows gleamed among the trees, where the lunar fire penetrated the treetops. "I did not burn the smallheads," he huffed as he ran, feeling a sudden chill stagger him. "I killed them with my hands. You did not use me."

  You killed only one.

  "Yaqut and the beardless one are dead. I killed them. Not you."

  Yaqut lives. He will take your head after his poison drops you.

  Baat pressed his run harder, though he had lost feeling entirely in his arm and could not seem to draw his breath deeply enough. "Yaqut is dead."

  No, Hollow Bone—your spear missed. His did not.

  "But the tree—I dropped the tree on him."

  The smallhead is too narrow to crush with a tree. He is no bison to be blindly smashed. You misjudged—twice, Hollow Bone. And now he will have your head for a trophy.

  Ahead, the hawk-nut tree jounced into view. The numerous feathery burrs hazed in the moonlight, like the vision of atoms he had once shared with the Bright Ones. Or like an island of stars, a galaxy he had seen once on a journey to the upper air.

  No more flights to heaven for you, Baat. Your body will become mud, your atoms scatter among the roots. Die, Hollow Bone!

  The air would not reach all the way into Baat's lungs. The poison slowed his circulatory system, famishing his blood. Now, vision did blur, and the moonshot tree ahead wobbled, doubled, spun before him. His good arm swam. His legs shimmied, and he went down on his knees, straining upward.

  Chill! Shiver! Spasm!

  The air felt molten in Baat's gasping throat. The beat of his heart throbbed wildly, and dizziness seemed to tilt his whole body. He dug the fingers of his hand into the ground, holding onto consciousness. Overhead, birds veered against the wind, away from the flaming shimmer in the west.

  "Fire," he muttered to himself. "Autumn burn." He knew he should get up and move on. The webwork of creeks farther east, where he had left Duru, would stop this burn. He pushed with his legs and inched his back up the trunk. Sickening weakness dropped him again.

  From the cavern of twisted conifers, Duru watched. She feared to approach, seeing the bloodfire wisping off him, not sure if he would recognize her, or try to kill her. Swirls of red energy flared around him, fluttering like butterflies.

  She absently picked at the remnant of vine still tied about her waist. Magpies and jays flashed through the murky air, and Duru turned to see what they fled. The glow she eyed in the west startled her. She stared at the brightening a long moment, baffled, thinking the auroras had fluttered to earth or that somehow the sun had climbed down, backward—before she realized what she saw.

  A group of elk galloped across a clearing and into the dark, escaping the fire. Far off, she watched Baat trying to rise and then sink back to the ground. Wingbeats of flame danced around his head.

  Spasm! Convulse! Die!

  Baat tried to breathe deeply, to draw strength into his limbs, to stand and escape the approaching fire. The taunting curses of the Dark Traces punished him for his awkward efforts.

  He screamed, "Leave me be!"

  His anguished cry jolted Duru to act. She had danced with the People. She had stood alone with Baat inside his mind and had felt his losses—so like her own, the sorr
ow no different. With a cry, she ran through the dusty moonlight between the tall trees. "You're hurt," she whispered, kneeling beside him. "How? What happened?"

  Her words came to him as a breeze, delicate as pollen with its promise of life. "Doo-roo."

  Duru pointed to the convulsion of flames just visible above the trees. "We must get away." She looked around for a fallen bough that could brace the giant, and found nothing suitable. "Use this." She placed her crutch in his good hand. "I don't need it anymore. It's short for you, but, well, come on. I'll help you."

  Kill the smallhead bitch!

  Baat swung the spruce pole up.

  Do it! Brain the bitch!

  He hooked the curved end of the pole to a lower branch of the hawk-nut tree and pulled himself upright.

  Duru helped support his hurt side, and the crimson haze on the ghost dancer's skin filmed over her. Dim, baleful voices pulsed in her: You will die!

  Duru trembled and looked up fearfully at the giant. The gash in his upper arm crawled with bloodfire sparks. The energies whirling in the air exploded slowly into clouds, that looked like fanged beast faces.

  The girl shuddered and pulled away. The look in the ghost dancer's large face appeared hurt, not threatening. She fought her fright, ignored the small, cruel noises from the rat faces flapping in the flames.

  "Doo-roo." Baat grimaced through his pain. His long eyes opened wider as he gazed down at her. Where she held his numb arm, the red shine of his flesh gleamed blue.

  )|(

  From a hillcrest nave of high-arched oaks, Yaqut sat upwind of the burning forest and looked down on the flight of flames. A web-work of creeks to the west and south had already contained the fire there, and to the east, the Big River gleamed like red snake-skins as the conflagration approached. A few more hours of frenzied fire destruction remained. By dawn the blaze would have retreated into ash.