Hunting the Ghost Dancer

by A. A. Attanasio

  Baat gestured toward Yaqut sprinting toward them, and Duru dropped the juniper bough beside Baat and hastily began gathering rocks.

  Baat stopped her and waved for her to flee. He struggled to his feet, pushed her off when she came close. Tottering dizzily, he scanned the ground for a suitable rock. When he bent to lift a large, flat rock for a shield, he nearly toppled.

  "Die!" Yaqut yelled.

  The smallhead's screech made Baat flinch behind the rock he clasped in both hands.

  Yaqut did not throw his lance. He stopped and stared at the bonesucker. Wrath chilled him as he caught his breath. Looking upon the monster that had defied him so long, he stood surprised by its age. The thing appeared older than he had assumed, its large face and splotchy beard haggard.

  It could easily have been among the monsters that had killed his family.

  Gut the bonesucker!

  Baat heard the echoing voices of the Dark Traces squeaking around Yaqut. And he squinted with malice at the smallhead.

  Yaqut's half-face smiled. The twisted side of his mouth grimaced with delight. "You hate me, do you not? I want you to die hating me. I want you to die knowing that I killed you. I, Yaqut." He thrumped the haft of his lance against his chest and pointed it at Duru. "Before I give your eyes to the crows, bonesucker, I will prop your head on my lance so that you can watch me take my pleasure with your women—the witch and the girl."

  No more talk! Kill the animal!

  Baat did not comprehend the smallhead's words. He did recognize the noise of the Dark Traces and Yaqut's lewd stare at Duru.

  "Yes, yes," Yaqut said when Baat lurched in front of the girl to protect her. "She will suffer. Her anguish is the song she will sing for your ghost."

  Baat shambled forward and dropped to one knee, with the weight of the stone in his hands.

  Duru moved closer, and Baat shouted, "Stand back!" The girl hopped backward, startled by the venom seething in Baat's voice. She snatched up a rock and threw it at Yaqut. He ducked, and the rock clattered behind him.

  "Hate me, bonesucker." Yaqut gasped a laugh. "Hate me for killing you. Hate me for killing the witch and little Duru—for, surely I am going to kill them both."

  In mid-breath, the hunter flung his lance.

  With a mighty heave, Baat lifted the flat rock to protect his heart, and the flint blade smashed against it. The force dropped him to his side, where he floundered. He stretched feebly to reach the lance. It had fallen too far away.

  Spry as a spider, Yaqut pounced. Duru tried to block him, and he flung her aside and slashed at the ghost dancer with his knife. The sharp flint tipped with poison scored Baat's upper arm. Yelping a victory cry, Yaqut snatched up his lance and bounded out of reach.

  Baat cried out. He rocked upright, a clod of earth in his hand. He smashed the earth against his wound and glowered at the evil smallhead.

  The tip of his lance shattered, Yaqut cast it far out of reach. Then, one pace closer to his prey, he sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. "Feel my poison biting your heart. Feel it rotting your insides. Die. Chill, spasm, and die!"

  Duru recognized that sinister voice from a nightmare. "The Dark Traces are inside you, Yaqut!" she called out.

  The grizzled head bobbed and grinned. "I gave myself to them—and they gave you to me."

  "They will kill you!" Duru knelt beside Baat. He would not look at her. He listened inwardly, past the pain congealing in his wound and the poison already lacing his heart with ice. He listened to the unbodied vastness within, from where the Bright Ones spoke when they came.

  Yaqut sneered. "He is the one the spirits want. The bonesucker is the one they will hurt forever."

  "You, too, Yaqut," Duru spat. "The evil spirits are in you now!"

  Yaqut frowned impatiently. Eager to take this head and be on his way before the wind came and drifted the snow, he chanted, "Die. Spasm and die!"

  Baat meshed his teeth and sucked hard at the air. His lungs tightened, and pain redoubled with his effort.

  Hopping from foot to foot, stabbing the air, too wary to step any closer and deal the death blow yet too excited to walk away, Yaqut shouted with glee. He ranted with spiteful merriment, "I see the shadow in your face, bonesucker! I see death widening the holes of your eyes! Your tongue is too numb to curse me now. Every breath stabs like my lance. I am stabbing you again and again! With every breath you suck, I am killing you. Spasm and die!"

  Yaqut leaped forward. "More poison, bonesucker!" He slashed again with his knife, cutting Baat across the backs of his hands. "Die!"

  Baat swung out his huge arms to protect himself. Too weak from throwing fire and from the poison, he slumped to the ground.

  As Yaqut spun away, chortling, Duru swung at him with the juniper bough. The bough snapped across Yaqut's legs. He lost his footing, scrabbled hard on the flying gravel for a moment, then misstepped and snagged his foot in a crevice. Jerking himself sideways, he tripped and sprawled before Duru.

  She struck him fiercely behind the head with the broken bough until he reared up furiously. He grabbed her throat and would have torn out her windpipe but for the amazement on her beautiful childish face.

  He glanced down at where she gazed so intently and spotted blood in the crook of his elbow. Fright pierced his heart, as he comprehended: He had stabbed himself in the arm with his poison-tipped knife.

  He spat a curse at the knife, still fisted in his right hand. He sheathed it quickly, not taking his eyes from the puncture wound. The blade had gouged into the crease of his elbow. Already, he could feel the poison moving upstream, up the blood-ways of his arm.

  Wildly he tore off the pelts covering his torso, and snapped free the chest-strap studded with the teeth of the bonesuckers he had killed. Weeping sweat, he wrapped the strap about his upper arm and, with his teeth holding one end in a panic, jerked it tight.

  Baat regarded him coldly. Duru backed away to the ghost dancer and crouched beside him. Together, they watched Yaqut tighten the tourniquet frantically around his arm. Too late. Muscle after muscle froze in deadly rictus.

  Yaqut whimpered. The unmarked side of his face trembled with his effort to save himself, the ruined side locked in terror.

  He looked to Baat with despair. Black deepened in his eyes, and his mouth widened around a scream that never came.

  )|(

  Baat watched him until the poison in his own body blurred his vision. The sky darkened, chill deepened. He squinted for clarity, discerned Duru gaping at him in alarm, and tried to smile—to show her he had no fear now that she was safe from the Beast.

  Her small hands urged him to rise. He felt frozen fast to the gravel. The altar stones seemed far away in the swirling snow.

  Duru shouted angrily at him, then turned away and gazed across the moraine to where her brother lay beside the witch. Baat, too, wondered if they lived, or if Duru stood completely alone out here on the tundra in the snow.

  For her sake, he had to get up and eat enough pain to reach the Bright Ones. Only their strength could avail her now.

  Poison constricted his heart with thorns. His effort to rise pierced him cruelly, and he sat back down and rested his sick head in his hands.

  Duru spoke close to his ear, her small hands on his arm, coaxing him to rise. Her meaningless words carried the softness he had loved in his children and he had come to love in her.

  Meshing his teeth against the hurt, he wrenched upright. Pain-weeping and dizzy, he staggered two steps and almost fell down before Duru braced him. He listed to one side, afraid of falling on her, and she clung to him, gummy with his blood.

  At the heap of orange rocks, the fire had died, clearing a wide enough space to hold Baat's full length. He toppled onto the altar shards and rolled to his back. The vertical river of energy sluiced through him, carrying away his pain and leaving him glistening with strength. He sat upright—and found that he squatted atop his body.

  Duru had stepped back when Baat fell, and she stood at the edge of t
he updraft. Her hair stood out from her head. "Baat—I see your spirit!"

  Baat smiled and lifted his hands. The gashes of his wounds glowed silver as lightning. From above, the voice of thunder spoke his name, and he gazed up through a vortex of shining power and blinked into sun-blinding joy.

  "Baat!" Duru called. "You are fading!"

  Baat's wraith looked back at her, eyes straining. In the dark of the world, she grew hard to see. Beside her, in the world of light invisible to her, Timov and Kirchi stood.

  "Don't be afraid, Duru," he said. His body of light brightened as he spoke. "Your brother will wake soon. And the witch. Go south with them, quickly as you can."

  Duru understood and stepped closer, against the buffeting force of the spirits. Her black hair swam in the air and sparkled with blue motes of static. "I want to go with you!"

  Baat shook his head benignly. "Go south. The others need you. Go south and live."

  "The others do not need me," she pleaded. "You need me. Only you have ever needed me."

  "I still need you, to lead the others back. I do not want them to die for me."

  Her shadow bled into night, and he distinguished only Timov and Kirchi on either side of her darkness, guiding her backward. "Will you help me do that?"

  His head lolled, too heavy now to move, and he swallowed with difficulty.

  Come away, Hollow Bone.

  The call of the Bright Ones came to him as seraphic music he remembered from childhood. He began to slip, to float into radiance that had its own shapes.

  "You're fading," Duru cried weakly. "Baat—I ... I can't bear to lose you too."

  Baat whispered to the darkness. "Do not be afraid for me, little Duru. Everything passes. As my people have passed on, so will yours someday. And the Old Ways will pass and pass again, till nothing of this earth will remember us. Yet nothing living is destroyed. We all go on. We all go on as light. Remember that."

  "Baat!" Duru reached for his hand. Already it had grown cold, and when she called out his name it reverberated in the emptiness above the ghost dancer's body. She breathed desperately on his fingers to keep them warm. "Baat—I need you!"

  Baat wanted to answer, to tell the child to let him go. Nothing to fear threated, even in the world of shadows. The light continued indestructible, immortal. The inconceivable truth of that widened in him with the upsurge of the ul udi's music, and he soared toward the brilliance of the sun.

  )|(

  The world's edge gleamed blue against the night. Baat rose effortlessly as an air bubble from the sea's bottom. He sensed himself expanding, his body of light becoming more diffuse. Far off, he observed little Duru weeping over his body.

  Ravenous cold penetrated him, and by that he knew he trespassed the savage domain of the Dark Traces.

  Bonesucker!

  Dazzles of freezing energy stymied Baat's ascent, and fear crisped in him again and with it the pain of his wounds as he recognized Yaqut's voice.

  Ghost dancer! Help me!

  "Yaqut? Where are you?"

  I'm here! Right here before you. Can you not see me?

  Baat searched. Against the azure glare from the Earth, he barely discerned a sullen green spark. "Yaqut?"

  Your light, ghost dancer! Touch me with your light! Hurry! I am falling apart from the cold. Help me!

  The emerald spark zipped closer, and a gust of blizzard force shook Baat. In the freezing energy that cut through him came evil voices: Now you are ours! And we are going to bake you in our cold—cut you with our knives—and eat you, eat you, eat you!

  Yaqut's scream shattered.

  Baat reeled away, and the icy pain went with him and the voices, booming like drums.

  You grew out of the dirt. Light touched you, and you rose from the mud. But you turned your back on the Light and rejoiced in your shadow.

  Bone-needle pain stabbed and ripped, again and again. Baat and Yaqut screamed as one. Cold clamped tighter, sharpening and expanding their anguish.

  Baat looked for the stars, found them cringing in the darkness. One of them shone brighter, and he rose toward it, leaving suffering behind. The grotesque voices of the Dark Traces dimmed too. Yet, Baat still heard Yaqut bleating: They are eating me! The stars are eating me!

  Baat gazed back at the Earth. He marked the auburn crusts of land, sapphire sea, and long fleeces of cloud, all turning, slowly, majestically, beneath him. He perceived no sign of Yaqut's green mote or the tortuous realm of the Dark Traces.

  He must stay below, a gentle voice spoke. He belongs to our dark brethren. Remember, they are ul udi, as we are, and so, too, do they occupy a place in this world. While we thrive on the solar wind, they listen to the grinding of the continents and the immense electrical storms in the mantle of the planet.

  The Bright One's soft voice layered into echoes, and sleepiness spun through Baat. Behind him, the blue shine of the Earth shrank away, tightened to the dimensions of a distant star. Darkness tunneled ahead to where all the stars clumped. They fused to one lucid star, a dewdrop shining in quivering darkness.

  Peacefulness amazed Baat. He flew serenely toward the most radiant light he had ever seen. And something like homesickness healed in him, comforted by dim figures appearing out of the tranquil glare, the frail shadows of those he loved.

  Empty of all grief, calm as the dark silence that held the stars, Baat flew into the light at the end of the world.

  South

  The vertical river disappeared, and Duru's hair fell limply to her shoulders. Dull heaviness pressed down around her, and she staggered back from where Baat's corpse lay, not wanting to see the ghost dancer this way.

  From the glacier, an etheric wind flowed and set snowfall roiling. Duru darted across the moraine to where Timov lay, and crouched over him.

  With her warm breath in his face, he came around groggily. He still dreamed of floating in the sky, staring down at the blue turtleshell of the planet. Then, he remembered Yaqut's murderous stare, his last image before the blow that knocked him unconscious. Timov sat bolt upright, and Duru clasped herself to him.

  When the stiffening wind finally unlocked them, they found Kirchi sitting up, blinking with astonishment. Timov's head ached from Yaqut's blow. Otherwise, he moved neck and limbs unharmed. He wanted to see Baat.

  Kirchi, too, felt sound enough to walk with him to the altar stones. Duru followed reluctantly. Baat's last instruction still rang loud in her ears: Go south, quickly.

  They weaved drunkenly around Yaqut's stiff corpse and hurried away from it, against the mounting wind.

  Baat laid on his back in a sprawl, snow already half-covering him.

  Timov regarded the face intently for some time, then reached under his lion-skin and took out Cyndell's calendar bracelet. "From the last of the Blue Shell," he said softly and placed it in the giant's hand.

  "To the last of the Old People," Kirchi murmured.

  A green spark whirled among the snowflakes, and the three huddled together before the fallen ghost dancer. In the distance, a lunatic voice squeaked: Treehouses fall—dungpiles rise. You will die!

  The three shared startled glances and bolted from the broken altar. They did not look back or glance again at Yaqut's corpse. They ran for the door of the mountain. Tumbling through a rock crevice, they clung to each other, exhausted. And the wind cried about them.

  When the gust quieted, they crawled out and clambered over granite blocks and stacks of shale. By the time they reached the far side of the rock wall, the western sky had cleared. There, the gaseous sphere of the sun bleared crimson among citadels of boulders.

  Timov, Kirchi, and Duru stood irresolute before the snow-blotched expanse of the tundra. No inner sight gleamed with direction, and no Bright Ones shimmered, speaking out of the wind to guide them, as Baat had promised.

  Timov considered—he knew they wanted to go southeast. What was the best way through the jumble of erratic boulders and snow-drifted trenches torn into the earth by the herds?

  Duru
frowned, trying to recall the land she had watched while Baat had slept. To her relief, the images came. "I remember the way Baat traveled here," she announced.

  So, Kirchi and Timov followed Duru south, as she followed her memory backward.

  Everything she had seen on her way to the door of the mountain had been changed by snow, altered in dress as if for mourning. They picked their way slowly, in stunned silence.

  They had seen Baat's body of light, had heard the lovely vaporous music of the ul udi. Yet, already, each felt subtly changed, muffled in their senses like the landscape, as though what had happened that day had occurred long ago and to someone else.

  )|(

  The snow began again that first night. The travelers huddled among the rocks. They found enough brambles to burn through the long cold darkness.

  Mice and voles zipped through grass-jammed crevices and provided an ample meal. With the obsidian knife from Duru's satchel, Timov cut the oversize lion-skin to make leggings and headgear for the women and himself.

  The next day, few promontories offered landmarks. Duru guided them by the sun's shadow in the overcast.

  Storm Riders appeared from behind a boulder and came crashing toward them through the snow. Their horses huffed jets of snowy breath, laboring under riders, pelts, poles, and the butchered haunches of caribou. None of the three attempted to hide. Two days in the bone-penetrating cold had readied them for slavery to the Storm Riders.

  When the horsemen drew closer, they stopped. Perhaps finding three people alone on the snowy tundra presented a baleful omen. Or perhaps the fierce serenity with which the wanderers faced the horsemen seemed unfamiliar and eerie. The Storm Riders approached only to stare, then threw down a haunch of caribou and rode off.

  The caribou meat lasted several days. Each night, they found shelter among rocks piled high by older icesheets. They thawed the meat over twig fires and flares of dried grass. Blizzard winds bellowed through the crevices, and they slept clutching each other for warmth. At dawn, they had to burrow through the snow to get out.