The day their meat ran out, they found the Storm Riders again. The horsemen, seven of them, sat mounted on steeds that had knelt into the gale winds and frozen. Crusty with snow, they had become one with the earth.
Timov dislodged two more haunches of meat and dragged them through the snow as the storm grew worse. Swirling snow blinded them by day. Night closed in with no shelter in sight. The force of the wind had sharpened, and numbness became burning pain.
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The sky opened, enormous and blue. Neoll Nant Caw gazed into empty space from a snowy glade in the Forest. Her mind loomed empty as those cloudless reaches. The death of the Moon Bitch had taken all her power, and she had spent an entire moon period staring blankly from a cold place inside her skull.
The witches she had called to help build the Moon Bitch had all fled back to their tribes before the snow. They had taken her crystals with them. In homage, they had left her three days' food and firewood and commended her to the care of the Great Mother. In the spring, they would return to honor her bones.
Neoll Nant Caw had wandered from her burrow days ago, tired of waiting for death. She had walked into the woods to give herself to the Beast and had surprised herself by living among the rotting leafdrifts for days without food.
She walked through dark hollows and briar groves, where the Beast lurked. Bear already slept, and Lion and Panther had gone to the herd trails. She lived for days with only sleep and sips of stream water.
Now she stood, wispy from hunger and distracted. She stared at the shining sky above white spires of the Forest.
A cry startled her. At first, she recognized a hyena. The Beast had found her at last. When the cry came again, she knew it for an infant’s distress. The unlikeliness of that helpless sound so far from the nearest tribe lured her back into the Forest.
She followed the child's wailing among the trees, past twig-snags that showered her bedraggled head with clumps of snow and through a frosted thicket. In a clearing trampled by footprints to slush, she found the baby.
Naked, smudged black from ashes of the fire where he had been placed, he lay beside his mother. The snow glowed crimson with her blood loss. She lay on her side under a gore-stained pelt. Mouth slack, hapless eyes open, she stared lifelessly.
Neoll Nant Caw gasped at the sight of her. She recognized even in death the haughty countenance of the Longtooth priestess. Without thinking, the witch charged into the clearing and swooped up the child.
The ash felt warm. She removed the pelt covering the dead priestess and swaddled the baby, while casting around a harsh-eyed search for those who had abandoned them here.
The witch spied pug marks in the snow, smelled the musk of Cat. Shadows flitted beyond the icy hedges. "Thundertree!" she cried out, and her voice croaked. "You are cowards!"
Shadows slunk away. Neoll Nant Caw turned to all sides, searching for beasts that might have smelled the blood and heard crying.
Wind shed a glitter of snow-motes from high trees but otherwise, nothing moved. The witch held the infant close in her trembling arms and stared into its screaming face—the ghost dancer's issue.
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In the black belly of the night, without fire or shelter, Duru, Timov and Kirchi slept. When they woke at dawn, they found the snow melted around them in a large circle. Their breaths smoked, yet the land felt warm, a mire of sunken stones and dew-glinting bramble. Beyond the perimeter of the thaw, snow blanketed the land to the horizons under a saturated blue sky.
Ul udi, they all knew, though no one said it. No one had spoken since they had found the frozen Storm Riders. Duru got up and walked to the edge of the thaw-ring. She took two steps into the knee-deep snow and stopped.
"We've been here before," she said, her voice too thick to be understood. She turned to the others, with astonishment. "Hamr found the black knife here."
Timov and Kirchi looked around at the smothered landscape, bewildered, amazed to be in the world at all.
Climbing to the top of a nearby slope, Duru cried out, "The Forest!"
The others scrabbled after. When they reached her side, they gazed south at a horizon glistening with the veils and shrouds of the Forest.
Timov shouted out loud, laughing, and waded through the snow with Duru. Only Kirchi paused, fitting the muted terrain to her memory of the trance-time, moons ago, when she had witnessed evil here.
"Duru," she called. "The Moon Serpent."
Duru understood and drew the black-glass knife from her satchel. She had not seen it used since Timov had cut down his lion-skin to share with them. She regarded it soberly.
It had not really been a knife at all but an emblem. Of what? Of all that had been cut away? Of all that cut?—Time's fang? It belongs here, she realized. It belongs here, where the journey to the land of the dead crosses its own tracks.
She held it up for the others to see. Their ice-burned faces nodded consent, and she placed the knife in the snow.
Timov looked south to the treeline, where their fates awaited. From his tattered bag, he removed the tortoise shell and spun it on its reed axle. The hunt had completed its circle. Yet the sky continued to turn—or the world turned under it if the Invisibles were to be believed.
Either way, new journeys had already begun. He held the spinning wheel over his head. And the bearded trees watched, secretive and wise under the blue blast of heaven.
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Squinting into the ice-light, Neoll Nant Caw stared north across the flat terrain. A herd of woolly mammoths milled around in the rocky bed of a frozen stream. They probed with their tusks and trunks for lichen under the snow.
Slowly, they began to move away, and the crone watched them until the baby beneath her mantle squirmed. He flexed awake yet did not cry out. A grin relaxed the witch's squint. Yesterday, she had gone to the Beast to die. Today, she moved through the world, a mother.
Without milk or tribe, Neoll Nant Caw could give the child only fire for warmth and maple sap to quiet his hunger. A dream had led her to this spot. She had seen Baat dancing on the spine of this ridge, at the edge of the Great Forest and the tundra, and she had come to show him his son.
Now, she found herself squinting against the snow-glare again, wishing her eyes were not so old. The mammoths had lumbered off, and three figures moved slowly along the stony margins of the stream—a man, a woman, and a girl.
In a moment, the witch recognized them. She stared harder, gaping until certain that hope had not tricked her. A gasp of laughter shook her bent frame, and the baby startled, and wailed.
The crone smiled down at the child and opened her mantle so he could see the cold world.
"Cry, little one. Cry to the wind, and your song will be heard." She lifted the screaming infant to her shoulder and carried him up the rock crest, to where the wanderers below would see her and surely hear him.
In a burst of lucidity, the witch understood that Baat's ghost had danced on this ridge for these wanderers. Her time was done. The Great Mother had sent the baby, the dream, and the wanderers to grant her last acts power.
With exhilaration, she recognized that she would give the child to them, to the young strangers from the south and to wayward Kirchi. Timov, who had soared with ul udi in the celestial sphere, could parent the ghost dancer's boy—and Kirchi would have her chance as a simple mother, at last.
Another laugh coughed its way through her: The pattern of her life had come clear so abruptly that now death seemed welcome. She would die. Yet, her work with the Invisibles would have life. The child of spirits—Baat's last companion—Duru would take her place. Enough time remained to show her how to make and use the crystals—time and hope for the future, for capturing more fire from the sky and setting it ablaze in the minds of the people: time yet to light up the whole, wide, motherly world.
Neoll Nant Caw lifted the infant above her head and held him with her quavery strength. She wanted the wanderers below to see how tiny and powerful the future really was. And she wanted the
child to see.
"Look, little one," she called to the wailing baby. "Look below at those young people! They are our family—these few who have found their way to us through every grief."
* * *
A. A. Attanasio
Thank you for reading my Paleolithic fantasy, Hunting the Ghost Dancer.
The botanical and zoological details of Europe fifty thousand years ago required extensive research. That groundwork astonished me with Paleolithic facts about giant sloths, cave lions and migratory herds of woolly rhinoceros.
My story also dramatizes the electromagnetic intimacy of the Neanderthal with entities of cold fire, who dwell in the ionosphere. That entailed no research, of course, only imagination. Yet, in this reverie, we fall back into an intuition as old as humankind, about the relationship of the soul and the sky—and where the reality of our being begins and ends.
Storytelling blends facts and fancies and creates a kind of prayer to our common soul. The grace it prays for opens us to wonder—to the dream journey of unmaking and remaking the self. I feel so privileged to share my stories with you. I hope we will meet again in my other ebooks, which I have closely revised from their original print editions.
[email protected]
http://aaattanasio.com/
eBooks Available from A. A. Attanasio
(newly revised by the author)
Killing with the Edge of the Moon
Mama’s boy Chester Hubert drums up the courage to ask a witch’s granddaughter to the school dance – and finds himself hurtling through a modern, demonic fairy tale.
Quiet, elfin Flannery is not like other kids. She has caught the attention of the faerie, beautiful evil creatures from a mysterious Otherworld. They seduce their victims at midnight raves, then feed them to a dragon. For sport, they hunt souls with a black dog of prodigious evil. And they have taken Flannery for one of their own.
Thrust together in the Otherworld’s dark enchantment, Flannery and Chester discover they know each other better than they know their own hearts ... but can they sort things out before the black dog finds them?
And what was that about a dragon?
http://goo.gl/p4mEzc
The audiobook edition of Killing with the Edge of the Moon narrated by Destiny Landon and Lee James available at Audible.com.
http://goo.gl/VWhHKz
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Wyvern
A bold escapade with a young soul-catcher from Borneo kidnapped by pirates in 1609.
Headhunters, sorcerers, pirates and Indian princes thrive in this adventurous, poetic tale of a young outcast in Borneo. Born in 1609, son of a native woman and a Dutch sea captain he never knew, Jaki Gefjon grows up in the jungle as a sorcerer's apprentice. Later kidnapped by pirates, he befriends his captor, Trevor Pym, notorious for his dreaded man-of-war, Wyvern. The scientific marvels on the European privateer become the young soul-catcher’s passion—until he falls for Lucinda, the headstrong daughter of Pym's sworn enemy. Propelled by intrigue, pirates' battles, curses and visions, this seafaring saga takes Lucinda and Jaki from the South Seas to India—and to a bold, unforeseen destiny in the New World.
http://goo.gl/QZBxHo
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Hunting the Ghost Dancer
50,000 years ago, three young friends band together for a perilous journey to find a new home after plague devastates their coastal tribe. Accompanied by a blind horse and armed with meager weapons and their own elusive courage, Hamr, Timov and Duru defy savage odds to survive in the strange and brutal realm of Ice Age Europe. This incredible quest takes them through primeval forests stalked by cave lions and across vast glacial moraines of thundering woolly rhinoceros—to the Thundertree clan. These forest people accept Duru, the girl, for her magical powers. But the two young men must prove themselves worthy by hunting down a giant Neanderthal—the last of his line—who has been terrorizing the tribe.
World Fantasy nominee.
http://goo.gl/nNwOIy
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Servant of Birds
Set in the 1190s during the rule of England's Richard the Lion Heart, this historical romance explores the raw experience of love: romantic, sexual and spiritual. The dramatic action moves from Wales to a tumultuous Europe unsettled by the Crusades to intensely colorful Palestine and back. Arrogant Guy Lanfranc assumes control of the family castle by sending his hated mother, the old baroness Ailena Valaise, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Wily Ailena vows revenge and finds the means in the person of Rachel Tibbon, a Jewish girl who survived the butchery of her family and other Jews after Crusader losses. Ailena's plot to regain the castle built by her father propels Rachel into a perilous adventure of vengeance, faith – and true love set against impossible odds.
http://goo.gl/6Wpr2h
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The Conjure Book
Life is lonely for 13-year-old Jane Riggs in the historical New England village that is her new home — until she discovers a four-hundred-year-old book of spells that really works. Guided by the ghost of the witch who wrote the conjure book, Jane embarks on a terrifying but glorious quest for magical power. Her ambition is to contact her mother, dead these ten years and remembered only in photographs. For such a great prize, Jane is willing to risk much among the weird creatures she conjures out of the spirit world. But she will need more than courage when her magic follows her to school. After an evil spirit-fox steals her classmate's soul, life suddenly gets very complicated. Coming of age among dark, elemental powers while not missing a day of seventh grade is not easy. And the answers Jane needs for growing up don't seem to be in the conjure book.
http://goo.gl/IDjQKW
The audiobook edition of The Conjure Book narrated by Laura Rubin available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/P9kga1
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Brave Tails:
The Moon’s Prophecy
Summoned by a vengeful sorcerer snake, an army of malevolent boars has invaded the peaceful haven of Riversplash Mountain. Only a few humble friends from the swamp dare to believe they can prevent the invaders from ravaging their fertile mountain. Farmer mouse Thrym, wise hedgehog Muspul, a father-and-son team of shrews, and the beautiful mouse maiden Olweena dangerously assume the masked identities of the Brave Tails. Those legendary, sword-wielding heroes of yore originally rid their land of predators. But these small defenders will need more than masks and swords to stop this brutal onslaught – and the magic they seek is even more dangerous than the boars!
http://goo.gl/N04DE3
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The Radix Tetrad
The volumes of this series can each be read independently of the others. The feature that unifies them is their individual adaptation of science fiction’s sub-genre: “space opera,” which the editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as "colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."
Radix
A saga of a young man's odyssey of self-discovery on an eerily alien Earth thirteen centuries in the future.
Rich in detail and filled with beings brought to life with intense energy, this strange and beautiful world reveals its secrets as Sumner Kagan changes from an adolescent outcast to a warrior with god-like powers. In the process, we accompany Sumner on an epic and transcendent journey.
Nebula Award Nominee
The audiobook edition of Radix narrated by Sergei Burbank available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/ojf3qX
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In Other Worlds
One star-chained evening in a Manhattan bathroom, Carl Schirmer, a sweet, slightly defeated bar manager, spontaneously transforms into energy and finds himself transported to the farthest extreme of the universe, 130 billion years in the futur
e. Turned loose in time's last world, the strangest of all – the Werld – Carl discovers a domain of indescribably beautiful islands floating in a sky contoured by gravity lanes. These skyles are inhabited by the Foke, nomadic humans, who struggle for survival against the zōtl, a spidery intelligence that eats the pain of sentient beings. Among the Foke, Carl meets and wins the lovely Evoë, and their life together offers a blissful future in this kingdom that knows no aging or disease – until Evoë is captured by the zōtl. In order to save her life, Carl must return to Earth – 130 billion years earlier – where he is shocked to discover that the world he has come back to is not the one he left...
The audiobook edition of In Other Worlds narrated by David Gilmore available at Audible.com
http://goo.gl/Ds6CPw
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Arc of the Dream
An alien from a higher dimension has fallen to Earth, trapped within a continuum too small to contain it. In its quest for freedom, this hyperspatial being touches a handful of lives: Filling a frail Asian man with unimaginable energy. Freeing a middle-aged American from the chains of time. Wrenching a lonely French girl out of the depths of madness. Opening a bitter young Hawaiian punk to hope and love. Together, they join in a visionary quest to save the Earth from destruction.
"A kaleidoscopic adventure, a potent piece of storytelling pulsing with menace, yet thoughtfully and gracefully rendered." -- Roger Zelazny
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