People of the Nightland(2)

“Please, my brother, I’m starving!”

He chased Raven over the icy shells, his snowshoe-clad feet slipping and sliding. He made a mad leap, arms out, his body thumping in the snow. He caught a foot, pulled, and got a grip on a partially extended wing.

Raven squawked and pecked at Ti-Bish’s fingers when they went tight around his black body.

“Forgive me, Brother,” he said as he grasped Raven’s neck and twisted, surprised at how strong the creature was. The feathers were warm against his chilled fingers, and for a moment, Ti-Bish marveled at the life pulsing under his grip. Then, with a final wrench, the vertebrae snapped.

Raven’s body twitched and jerked, the wings desperate for the air. The feet kicked, and the long black beak clacked woodenly.

Ti-Bish sighed, sinking back on the snow. For a moment, all he could do was stroke the sleek black feathers. Glancing at the village, he half expected to see people ducking out of the lodges, hear dogs barking, and calls on the night.

The world had turned suddenly silent; even Wind Woman held her breath.

Raven is a Spirit Bird!

That memory sent a shiver up his spine. What would come of killing a Spirit animal? He could imagine the look of consternation on the faces of the Elders, see the horror reflected in their eyes.

But they dismissed me long ago. He stared down sadly at the raven, carefully stroking the feathers, marveling at the warmth beneath. He had never liked killing. The destruction of beauty had always upset him.

“Isn’t there a better way, Raven? Do we have to kill to live?”

He unwound his bolo, stood, and carried his prize back to the forest. Behind the screen of trees, he nestled in the lee of the snowdrift, partially sheltered from Wind Woman as she resumed her relentless blow.

“I’m sorry I had to kill you, Raven,” he whispered as he continued to pet the feathers. “But I’m starving, too. Thank you for your meat.”

Drawing a stone knife from his belt pouch, he slit open the bird’s belly and cut out the internal organs first. The heart, liver, and kidneys he ate in single gulps.

Ti-Bish drank the blood that had pooled in the stomach cavity and then peeled back the skin—feathers and all—and gently laid it to the side. Using his teeth, he tore the meat from the bones as fast as he could and swallowed it.

When he’d finished, he tucked Raven’s bones into the empty skin and carried it to a nearby tree. When he found the right branch, he placed Raven in the crook where the bird’s soul could see the sun rise. His people—the People of the Nightland—never left the bones of animals they’d hunted on the ground. To do so was disrespectful. If animals were killed with reverence, the creator, Old Man Above, would send a new body for them, and their Spirits would enter it and fly away again.

“Thank you, Brother,” he said softly.

He leaned his forehead against the trunk of the tree and took a deep tired breath. He’d been scavenging this shell midden for several days, but had found little to chase away his hunger.

Yesterday, one of the Sunpath women had brought him food. She’d been kind and beautiful. He’d been hoping she would bring him more today, but she hadn’t. He would linger in the area for perhaps another day, then move on.

Lethargic from the feast, he felt too tired to return to the lean-to he’d constructed far back in the forest. A raven had a lot of meat, and his belly was filled to bursting for the first time in several moons. The taste of it lay cloying and musky on the back of his tongue. He placed a hand to his belly as the first pangs lanced through him.

“Shouldn’t have eaten so fast.”

He walked back into the pines, found a big drift, and began scooping it out to create a snow cave. When he’d finished, he crawled through the narrow doorway and curled on his side. Beyond the entry, snow whirled and gusted across the ground.

He pulled his pack close, wondering what he’d do in case Grandmother Lion or Brother Short-faced Bear also came to scavenge the shell midden. With the strength of Raven’s blood warming his belly, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

The Dreaming crept up from the cold ground and twined icy fingers around his body … .





In the Dreaming, he and Raven flew side by side over jagged ice peaks that seemed to go on forever. Deep crevasses rent the ice in places, and long cracks zigzagged away from them like dark lightning bolts. Here, in the Dreaming, he was no longer a weak man. He flew behind Raven with his own black glittering wings.

“Look!” Raven said, and tucked his wings, plummeting downward toward a gaping hole in the ice. “Do you see it?”

Ti-Bish dropped toward the cavern and floated beside Raven on the cool currents that blew up from the darkness. The air smelled of moss and algae. Water gushed from the mouth of a tunnel, carrying sand and gravel out in a black stream that ran along a fissure, only to be swallowed by the ice again. Groans and squeals could be heard, as though the Ice Giants were being squeezed and crushed.