People of the Moon(5)

Ripple, a man of the Blue Stick Clan of the Black Shale Moiety, sat before a small crackling fire. Muscles slipped under the smooth skin of youth. His face was composed of angles, a high forehead, and flat and wide cheeks. Under full lips his chin lowered to a point. Ripple’s nose might have been sculpted, thin and slightly hooked. The firelight gleaming on his black eyes reflected a young man tormented by memories; they had etched lines around the corners of his mouth.

That morning Ripple had surprised a yearling elk with a perfect cast. He had driven the stone-tipped dart into the young cow’s chest. She’d no more started to run than she tumbled into a pile, kicked grooves in the grass, and gasped out her soul through bloody nostrils.

His day had been a hunter’s: blessed and challenged. The flush of success had been tempered by the hollow sense of sorrow every hunter feels when he walks up to a dying creature. Life comes at a price. Coyote had seen to that when people first entered this world. Life was the prize sought by all.

The young hunter cast a glance at the piles of spruce bows that protected his kill. Then he stared nervously at the timber. The other hunter was still out there.

Vigilance can be maintained only for so long. Braced against the reassuring stone of a boulder, fatigue lay warm on his bones. The muscles in Ripple’s neck relaxed as he drifted, his head sagging. Eyes, anxious the moment before, clouded under heavy lids.

As he nodded on the fringe of sleep, the whistling memory of a stone-headed war club arced through a blue sky. He awoke with a jerk before it could land. Blinking, he stared sleepily at the fire, yawned, and shifted anxiously.

Ghosts. I am haunted by them. Is this, too, a place of ghosts?

He turned his attention to the stars that spilled across the black moonless sky like a frosty mist and wondered: Do ghosts make the man, or does the man make the ghosts?

Ripple forced the memories from his souls. He was here, now. Alive. Let the dead rest, no matter how unjust their fate at the hands of the Blessed Sun’s warriors.

He shook himself and picked up another piece of smooth gray aspen to place on the fire. As flames licked around the weathered gray wood, he stared at the four piles of cut spruce branches. Bad Cast and Wrapped Wrist should be coming. His two friends must have seen the signal smoke he’d raised earlier that day and be on their way up the mountain. A man didn’t just throw an elk over his shoulder the way he did a deer or—

Something stirred in the grass.

Ripple tensed and traced his fingers over the sleek wood of the atlatl and dart he cradled on his lap. Small feet skittered across the forest floor. What? A packrat? Perhaps a weasel drawn by the scent of fresh blood?

He reached up to rub his tired eyes. A cone fell in the forest, clattering from branch to branch before it thudded on the duff. A distant wolf howled; then came the hushed moan of wind through the conifers.

Ripple had been engaged in the process of skinning and quartering his dead elk when the bear arrived. Drawn by the scent of blood and offal, the bear was long of body, old, with a muzzle scarred by encounters with long-gone rivals. He had watched warily, prowling around downwind, sniffing, tearing at the ground with his claws, and making muffled groans of irritation.

Grizzlies and Ripple’s people had an ancient relationship; over the years, each had learned to be cautious of the other. People who treated bears disrespectfully were lucky to escape with a severe mauling. Bears who acted too aggressively around people rarely managed to get away without being eaten.

For his part, Ripple had figured that the bear was just as hungry as he was, so he had grudgingly left the gut pile after shuttling the last of the quarters away from the kill site.

Now, as midnight neared, he hoped the bear had understood the agreement. But you could never tell about bears. The scent of fresh elk meat might be tempting after having had a little time to digest the first offering. For that reason, Ripple had resolved to stay awake, keep his fire going, and guard his meat.

He hadn’t anticipated how long the night would stretch, how soothing the sound of the little brook could be, or how the soft sigh of the high-country wind in the trees could relax strained nerves.

Weary, he didn’t feel his head wobble. Wasn’t aware when his heavy eyelids lowered. In his mind, he was still staring at the leaping fire, though it only reflected on the backs of his eyes.

The soft fabric of sleep settled gently over his tired body and eased the strain in his taut muscles. His breathing deepened, and flickers of Dream tugged at the edges of his souls. In that between place, the souls were most susceptible to Power and the call of the Spirit World … .

The sound of steps brought him upright. The fire now burned brightly and cast a yellow light that shimmered in the trees. The melodious trickle of water began to repeat a cadence, rhythmic like the hollow clack of sticks. Where it sighed in the branches, the wind muted to flute music that rose and fell with each of the approaching steps.