Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  Lowering themselves from one ledge to the next, Timov and Kirchi dropped quickly down the face of the rockpile. At the bottom, Timov paused to select a round rock for his sling.

  "Is that really Baat and Duru?" Kirchi asked, squinting through the snow at the strand of smoke rising from the glacier.

  When Timov did not respond, she looked behind and found that he had wandered to the edge of the basin and hunkered down to peer into the crevasse. "I can't find Yaqut," he said. "He must have seen us climbing down."

  Kirchi stepped to his side and gazed into the wide chasm of cluttered boulders. Nothing moved in the sifting snowfall.

  "He saw us," Timov breathed. "He saw us—and now he's coming after us."

  Kirchi tugged at his elbow. "Let's face him on the flat ground, in the open."

  Trembling with fear, Timov met Kirchi's composed glance. "You're not scared?" he asked.

  "I am scared." She took his hand and led him down the bank of clattering stones. "But the Bright Ones are here." She pointed toward the blue gorges of ice between the black mountains. "Baat has found the altar where the Bright Ones come to earth. We won't have to face Yaqut alone."

  Timov let Kirchi guide him down the rock-slope, while his eyes searched for Yaqut. A witch, she could believe the spirits would help her. What else could she hope for? But he was a man, and he had learned by becoming a man that the spirits sometimes helped and sometimes killed. Hamr had shown him that.

  To survive Yaqut and the Dark Traces, only the slingshot would save them. He gripped the rock in his sling. Hard and still, it, too, had been baked in a star, if what he remembered of the ul udi's music sang true.

  Light had fallen from the sky to become stone. And now it sat in his hand, listening for death.

  )|(

  Duru climbed down from her perch to warm herself by the fire. She had seen nothing living anywhere on the snowy moraine, and she had decided that she could just as well watch for Yaqut from beside Baat. She sat alongside his upright, slumbering form and warmed her hands in the glow from burning juniper branches.

  A large facet of ice had melted, draining through the gravel and gathering in shallow depressions nearby. Muddy pools like long dark fingers reached away from the fire, silvering at the edges where they had begun to freeze.

  The orange stones exposed by the fire seemed special only in their complexion. No carvings graced them, and no ritual objects seemed apparent.

  Duru touched the nearest stone. It felt lifeless under her hand. Neither energy nor music hummed in it. She looked about for the ul udi. They supposedly came down from the sky to these rocks. In the teeming snowfall, she did spy glints of star-sharp light.

  Memories of her first nights with Baat brought back vivid images of his blue aura blowing off his giant frame in hot billows. She remembered her vision of Baat's people dancing in teeming throngs to the ul udi's music, jammed together like hiving bees. She recalled his solitary dance—whipping cold fire around him like a cape: the blaze blurred to ghosts, to the spectral figures of his ancestors. That had awed her, had made her feel she shared in the presence of something holy. Where are those ghosts now?

  They are lost in the day-glare, she reminded herself. The power that had called them back remained.

  She put her hand on the fur leggings Baat had cut from deerskins and felt for the gash Bear had inflicted. Her fingers slipped through the seam of the leggings and stroked the smooth scar on her calf. The wound had entirely healed. Baat's blue fire had done that.

  Why does he not use that power to heal himself? Why does he choose to die now? He had never said to her he had to die. Maybe, she thought hopefully, he will use the ul udi's strength in these rocks to make himself stronger. Then, he will take me south with Timov, and we will live together among other ghost dancers.

  But there are no other ghost dancers, Duru remembered. Not like Baat. The ul udi have said he is among the last. Yaqut and men like Yaqut killed the others.

  Sitting taller, alert with anxiety, she scanned the far wall of enormous rocks for Yaqut's approach. She detected nothing baleful in the settling snow. The invisible threat bled into the landscape and transformed the sharp rock wall into ominous claws of granite. Its shadowy seams and corridors became staring skull-holes.

  Duru looked to Baat, whose chin pressed to his chest. His eyelids twitched. For the first time, she noticed his age. Until this moment, he had simply been Baat the Ghost Dancer, long-boned and thick-browed, the only one of his kind. Now she noted the squares of wrinkles on his cheek-ridges, where the skin had weathered to leather. She observed gray strands in his spiky hair, silver glints in the pink stubble along his jaw. Yes, he is old. The flesh hung loosely under his whiskery beard, and his shoulders, though broad, stooped with weariness.

  She reached out to touch him gently on his knee, and compassion saturated her for this old man who, like her, had lost his tribe. The spirits of the sky alone remained of clan and continuity. Though little enough to live for, the spirits, she realized after her own journeys out of her body, offered presence worth dying for.

  When Baat had danced the blue down from the sky at night and she had flown among the dancing ghosts of the People, she had heard the ul udi's music. The wailful, eerie beauty of their songs drifted out of memory, comforting as an imperishable blessing.

  Baat's eyes opened. For an instant, the momentum of his flight outside his body continued in him, and dizziness made him squint and grab his knees. The Bright Ones had carried him into the windless sky and shown him the spoke of clouds freighting the snow.

  Blinking, he stared up at the overcast and realized he had been out of his body for some while. That thought made him anxious. On his flight, he had viewed Yaqut nearby, across the moraine, in the maze of glacial erratics that comprised the door of the mountain.

  Duru put a hand on Baat's arm. "What did the Bright Ones show you?"

  Baat rubbed alertness into his face and regarded the child. Concern for her troubled him, muting the inmost music of the ul udi. Their drifting thoughts went on inside him, and he received their meaning: Come away. Come with us into the sky, into the music of the stellar winds, the immaterial winds of nonbeing, pure light, timelost light, free of flesh and the strangeness of flesh, free of the hungers and the pain. Come away.

  When Duru caught the abstract look on his face, she got up and took the burl cup out of their satchel. Baat watched her walk over to the glacier and chip ice into the cup. He could not leave her here to die. He had let himself believe throughout the journey that the ul udi had selected her to guide him and that they would watch after her when he had departed. He no longer believed that.

  Duru placed the cup beside the fire to melt the chipped ice. "You're afraid for me, I can tell. What did you see?"

  Baat noticed that the fire had cleared enough ice for him to lie down among the sacred rocks. An idea came to him that required a lie. "I saw Yaqut. He is very close and will be here soon. But I did not see your brother."

  Duru's face flinched. "Is he dead?"

  "I did not see him." Baat experienced a moment of regret that he had deceived her. Such a child, this Duru, ignorant of her own powers. Like the smallheads who had reared her, she thought herself locked inside her own mind. She did not know that if she tried, she could touch the ul udi. They would show her that Timov waited nearby, just as they had revealed to Timov her location.

  "What will happen now?" she asked anxiously.

  Baat held up his hand, showing her the mauve glow between the spread fingers. "The power is in our hands. Yours, too. Look."

  Duru opened her hands and saw nothing. Then, without her knowledge, Baat began drawing sky power through her, and her hands effused a blue shine. Her face brightened with recognition: This energy had healed Baat, had lifted her out of her body and had sent her flying through the night to visit Timov.

  At Duru's thought of her brother, Baat's hand closed around hers and his lustrous eyes forced her attention. He did not want he
r to use this power to leave her body—not yet.

  "Duru, the power is in your hands. If you want, you can come with me."

  Duru blinked, bewildered.

  "Your spirit can come with mine. I will take you with me when the ul udi carry me into the sky." He squeezed her hands gently. "Will you come?"

  "To heaven?"

  "To where the ul udi dwell."

  "Will Mother and Aradia be there?"

  Baat smiled sadly. She is just a girl. And that perception barbed him with memories of his own children. "No, Duru. The dead you know are not there. But there are many you don't know who know you, who live in your blood now. They are the People, your ancestors. They will welcome you."

  Terror startled her as she grasped what Baat intended. He wanted her to die now, here on the glacier's rubble.

  Baat acknowledged her fear and released her hands. "I would never hurt you. I want to save you from Yaqut. If he kills me—and he most likely will—he will hurt you. Then, he will kill you. And you will just be dead. I want you to live, free of pain, in a nimbus of joy vast as all creation."

  Duru dropped her gaze, not wanting to see his lips moving differently than what she heard. "Joy?"

  "Yes, more joy than you could ever know in this fierce world. That is what light is when we leave our bodies and rise to the music of the Bright Ones—inconceivable joy floating on the wind of the stars, drifting among islands of suns."

  "But what about Timov? Can we find his spirit and take him with us?"

  Baat stared over his shoulder for Yaqut. Through the roil of big flakes, he saw nothing at the door of the mountain. "Only you can come with me," he said softly, unhappy with his lie yet determined to get her away from Yaqut. Not just a smallhead girl, she could carry the cold fire. Why should she be left to Yaqut—or, even if she gets past him, why should I abandon her to a life of begetting and suffering? Never again will she have this chance to live as pure light, to go out into the immensities of life beyond the frenzy of animal cravings and wretchedness.

  He listened for the Bright Ones, for their assurance that he acted with clarity, asking her to abandon this wasteland. They kept the silence they had begun when he reached the altar. They conserved their power to free his body of light. The life of one small girl is theirs to witness, not control.

  "I don't want to be left alone here," Duru spoke, her voice reedy and small. The thud of her heart in her ears made her voice sound distant. "I'll go with you."

  Baat searched out her eyes and held her gaze. "Come, then. Our journey has just begun."

  Duru glanced nervously at the orange rocks. They looked glossy with snowmelt, like bones still wet from their meat. "How will we go?"

  From the satchel, Baat removed a leaf-pouch and opened it, revealing a cluster of white berries, dried to silvery pebbles. "Night-wort berries. Four of these for you, the rest for me, and our bodies will let us go."

  Duru took the four berries from the pouch and placed them in the palm of her hand to study them more closely. They looked pearly as teeth. "Will it hurt?"

  "No. The Bright Ones will carry us away from all pain."

  Duru closed her fist around the berries and nodded at Baat. She felt glad for this. Once she had gotten past the fear, this hope of becoming light—like the moon, the stars, like the sun—this story-song hope appealed to her. Everyone she loved in this world had joined the dead. Why not travel with Baat and the bright spirits? Why not give my body to the Mudman and my soul to the sky?

  She gazed down at the earth in prayer to the Great Mother and lifted the berries to her lips. Baat stopped her. He gazed past her, staring through the floating snow at the door of the mountain. Figures had emerged from the rock wall. In a moment, she would have noticed them herself. She dropped the berries and stood.

  The distant figures resolved to a red-haired woman and a man in a bulky pelt. The man moved awkwardly under the huge ruff, which hung the length of his back. Duru fixed him with tight scrutiny before she recognized the gait of her brother.

  )|(

  The Dark Traces circled Yaqut like strange dogs—whispering evil thoughts: The worms and grubs of this land ate the blood of your parents.

  He ignored them and put all his alertness into his waiting. The Dark Traces lurked there, too, inside his physical senses, watching the world with the glare of the Owl.

  From a crevice in the rock wall, Yaqut stared through the snowfall at the fire across the moraine. The bonesucker came into sight. Yaqut could see him standing with the girl he had kidnapped.

  The hunter did not move. Before he stepped from the shadows of the rock wall, he wanted all his enemies in front of him and none at his back. He waited, hand curled around his lance, pulsing with killing intent, until he sighted Timov and Kirchi walk out onto the flat terrain.

  Timov had spotted his sister and shot both arms up in greeting. At the same moment, Kirchi witnessed Yaqut slink out of a crawl-hole between the boulders.

  He came swiftly toward them—lance uplifted in his right hand. His left gripped a large skull through the eyeholes, using the cranium as a shield.

  Kirchi shouted in alarm. Encumbered by the lion-skin, Timov lurched around. Fright flushed him with power, and he whipped his sling till it sang. He released his shot right at Yaqut's broken face, and the stone hurtled with lethal accuracy.

  Yaqut blocked his face with his sheathed hand, and the skull took the impact. With a report that echoed from the rock wall to the glacier, the cranium splintered, and Yaqut rocked backward.

  Timov fumbled with another shot, fitting it to the sling as Yaqut bore down on him again. No time to whip the stone, he gripped it instead and hurled it at his attacker. Yaqut swept the missile aside with his lance arm, and Timov lunged.

  To keep him from lowering his lance to thrust, Kirchi pelted Yaqut with stones. Her shots struck, stingingly accurate, and he dropped to a crouch as Timov swept over him.

  Wielding a large rock in his left hand, Timov swung to brain him, and the hunter uncurled swiftly. One instant, the old man's head bowed before Timov's raised weapon and the next he stood upright, his lance blocking the boy's blow.

  Their eyes met. Timov had no chance to recoil from the murderous blue stare. Pain arrived from where the lance hit his left wrist just as the shaft slammed hard against the side of his head.

  Timov's long hair splashed outward and his eyeballs rolled white. Limbs jerking, he collapsed and lay unmoving under the dark mane of the Lion.

  )|(

  Duru shrieked. "Timov!"

  Baat stepped backward, closer to the sacred rocks and their vertical river of power. He felt the trembling updraft gusting at his back as the Bright Ones called: Come away.

  Eat the night-wort berries. Cross over into the light.

  Hurry. Leave the smallheads to their own furies. Return to the peace of your ancestors.

  Quickly. Eat the berries. Come away from the Beast.

  "The Beast," Baat whispered, violence coiling tighter in him. "Of course, it has come to the Beast. Will I feed this child to the Beast—as I fed it my own children?"

  You are thinking as the Dark Traces think, Hollow Bone.

  Baat cast the poison berries into the fire and strode away from the altar rocks, fists clenched. Blind, roaring anger filled him. He knew his rage had no root in the Dark Traces. Their punishing voices did not rise from the hot surge of force in him—yet, their strength filled him.

  He seethed for all that he had lost to the smallheads. The Bright Ones sensed that—sensed, too, the reservoir of black energy behind Yaqut.

  Come back! The Dark Traces are drawing you away. They want to kill you outside the updraft, where we cannot help you.

  "It's not the Dark Traces," Baat spoke defiantly, breaking into a lope. "This is the will of my blood."

  Duru seized a club of burning juniper and ran across the moraine after Baat.

  Stay here child, an alarmed voice spoke. He has gone to the Beast.

  Duru disregarded t
he spirit warnings. She ran hard, determined to spend all her strength attacking Yaqut. Already, though, the ghost dancer had moved too far away to reach. In moments, Yaqut would slay him. "Baat!" she cried in despair.

  Baat stopped running and lifted his hands over his head. He did not know that he could strike Yaqut at this range. A colder part of him willed him to wait, to sacrifice the smallhead youth to Yaqut for a sure kill. Anger choked him. He would not have Duru suffer the death of her brother if he could stop it.

  Transparencies of sky-fire flashed between his arms, and pain ripped him. With a blast, the air around Baat jagged with lightning, and a piece of the sun seemed to arc across the snow-hung moraine as he flung fire.

  Yaqut had pulled his lance back to stab Timov as Kirchi dashed toward him. She clutched a moonstone in each hand. She had thought to drive the Dark Traces out of Yaqut. The moonstones burned her fingers. She threw them into the air, and they tracked like shooting stars.

  Baat's lightning struck the flung stones with a peal of searing heat, hurling Kirchi to the ground, eyes blind, hair singed.

  Yaqut dropped his arms from his face, surprised to find himself unharmed. He noticed the witch sprawled unconscious before him. Seared by the heat of the blast, her face flushed red. The Dark Traces had diverted the bolt from him to the moonstones.

  Stick the bitch!

  Yaqut stepped over Kirchi and ran toward the ghost dancer, who had dropped to his knees. The hunter would not listen to distracting voices now, nor waste his poison. He had only one purpose. Kill the bonesucker.

  Baat grimaced with the pain of his miss. He pressed his brow to the stony ground. Futility immobilized him. As Duru rushed to his side, he waved her away. No power remained for another try. He barely had the strength to stay on his knees.

  "Go—“ He brushed her aside. “He wants only me. When I'm gone, beg for his mercy. Do this for me."

  Duru did not understand his thick words without the Bright Ones to translate. She looked for them, and they appeared nowhere in the ravelling snow.