A Bad Kill

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. It mattered little now, but the elders liked to lament that fact. Then again, as far as Harjo could tell, that’s just what elders do; lament the past. 300 years ago, she heard Waketseh preach, before the Year of the Cold Sun, the Four Winds had kept their great sky snakes from straying past the Crying Mountains. Now, slithering along the vaulted tree line of the Forest of a Thousand Hollows, they loomed above all the creatures of the Crooked Sky Valley. Fallen Roots, just as every chief before him, said they served the spirits as punishers; and the chief said it, so it must be true.

The sun fought its way through onto the forest floor as it did every day. The thick emerald canopy of towering sycamore, pine, and hemlock sealed out nearly all light for miles in every direction. Only along Turtle Creek, in the sliver of open sky cut into the forest, where the Creek Spirit kept the dragons at bay, was the sun welcomed into the endless green. Yet no animals greeted the dawn along the creek banks. None dared near it; for strange dens of lumber and tanned hides infected the creek all along the valley. A few pale deer and rabbits would brave the small fields nearby, so strangely uniform in the layout of the squash, beans, and maize. Never in the daylight, though, or they’d never return to their own dens. If game was to be found, you had to venture into the forest, where spirit and sky snake lurked. And so, as dawn gave life to the gardens of her village, Harjo had been deep in the dark wood for hours.

The tracks were fresh enough that she should've moved more quietly, but the cicadas were deafening. Even the birds were drowned out by the unending storm of carapace and wing. Molted shells covered the close-grown trees like a second layer of bark. She barely had enough space to squeeze through without disturbing them and choked on the stench of sap in the air from their feedings. The elders muttered that they only came in such numbers every 17 winters, shaking their heads as though their presence was oh so terrible. But Harjo only tied her hair back and smiled. Not only did they shield her from the slithering dragons above, they did half her work for the hunt. She needed only to track the beast and stay downwind. If she could barely hear the world, what hope did the deer have?

Daylight pierced through the canopy, sparsely dotting the hills and bluffs with branch-thin spears of light. The rays flickered in and out as some moving thing above blotted them out. The constant juxtaposition of light and dark could blind a person; hiding the entire land in shadow. Harjo focused only on the signs before her. The bent weeds, a sapling’s broken branch, and a trampled bush all showed her the path without ever needing the light. The branch was still green, and the bush had no dew where it was trampled. Harjo nocked an arrow and made herself small. Her breath was forced to slow. A thousand times and her blood never learned to quiet. She willed herself to focus on the sounds around her, cutting through the unending buzz and lingering on the origin of every noise. Buried deep underneath the cicada choir, birds twittered in front and to the side, but not behind. Behind and far above tree limbs groaned under the weight of a hissing reptile not meant for perching. Twenty feet ahead, the sound of crunched leaves echoed along the ridge. Harjo raised her bow forward.

Her prey stepped slowly into a shaft of light, only its neck fully shown. Its bearer stood just below her at an incline. She exhaled in a slow steady stream and drew back the string. The neck stiffened and twisted, presenting the head of a doe. The world died around her. Only her heartbeat was heard. Deep brown eyes stared straight at her from within the light. Her arms tensed. Its nostrils flared cautiously, tilted ever so slightly up. Her fingers forgot their function. Their eyes would not blink. Its ears twitched. For a moment, they held each others soul. The arrow loosed.

It didn’t yelp, not quite. A strangled noise blurted out as it twisted and leapt into the dark as the world howled back into the present. A dirge of snapped sticks and crushed plant life skipped through the cicada sounds like a stone over water. The blood trail disappeared with the light, but she knew the path all the same. Her legs went where the undergrowth gave no resistance. Thirty yards to her right something crashed into the shallow ravine. Another strangled snort came with it.

The sound of cicadas whimpered away as she approached. The thin rays of light faded from the world between them. The broken arrow shaft drew in her eyes as they adjusted to the dark. It stabbed out into the air, like a defiant fist, right in the center of the doe’s gut. A bad shot, one that would spoil the meat if she didn’t act quickly. The young animal’s eyes met hers again, screaming agony silently at her. Breath came frantically. The forest was still. A bad kill; she couldn’t be over two years old, more fawn than doe. There wouldn’t be much meat to save. She would need to work fast, for both of them. At least she wouldn’t need a stretcher for the carcass.

The humid air chilled as she knelt before the doe. Goosebumps ran up her arms, and Harjo knew the Spirits of the Forest of a Thousand Hollows were watching. Their breath came ragged in unison. Wordless whispers crept into her. Creaking wood stretched, unseen, closer and closer as her knife drew. The fawn stared up, almost pleadingly. The ground beneath them burned like hot sand. The frozen air around her felt angry. Something above them smothered what little light lingered. Invisible talons caressed the back of her neck. Reptilian noise filled the void. Harjo gasped her words as her knife sank into the fawn’s throat.

“I am sorry for your suffering, sister. Forgive me for my flawed eyes and arms. Take pity on my judgement. I thank you for your mercy. Through your pity, you have given me your life. Through your life, you have given me my own. When both our bones are dust, we shall run together through the trees.”

Her words fell on already dead ears, but they needed saying. The doe's eyes gazed up with apathy. The frozen air warmed, and the ground cooled. The doe had not known it was hunted, yet it died all the same. The whispers faded and the cicada song grew. The world no longer closed around them. The reptilian noise remained but echoed from above the tree line where it belonged. With her words, the spirits and fawn had been appeased. The dragons would need to find other game. Harjo set her blade to field dressing, her breath steady once more.

*

“You’ve made a fine mess,” grunted Makhe. “I thought your father taught you how to hunt.”

“He taught me to track,” Harjo grunted back, struggling to keep her breath level as she tied the doe’s hind legs to the top of the rack.

It had been small enough for her to carry, but thirty minutes with another animal on your back wasn’t exactly a leisurely stroll. She’d be damned if she let Makhe see her sweat, though.

“I never claimed to be a good shot. The meat should still be good, once you clean it.”

She had removed the insides quickly enough, but only so much can be done with a gut shot deer. Fecal matter from the pierced intestines tainted the meat. Even you weren't a hunter, the stink was enough to know her error. In all likelihood, most of the meat would have to be tossed away. Makhe grimaced, shook his head, and separated the pelvic bones with his big knife, splitting the carcass wider on the rack with the grace of a professional. Dark specks of staining dotted along the ribs and abdomen. His movements were fluid, but with enough force that Harjo jerked away from the rack immediately.

“Oh, so I’m supposed to just clean up after your mistakes, now am I?”

“A good butcher should know how to salvage meat from such light tainting.”

“Light, she says,” he snorted, “My father taught me how to cut, I never claimed to be magic. I swear, it’s like you want life to be hard. How’s your sister?”

“Too good for you.”

A single note belly laugh burst out as the knife leapt from his hand onto the table and a slender, curved blade flashed into his hand in the blink of an eye. The pelt was halfway off the carcass before Harjo even made it to the doorway of the hut. It was more spacious than the other huts and houses of Nikokega. Unlike the rest of the riverside village, Makhe’s smokehouse had window frames to let out the stench of the butchered meat and smoke. Thin waxed hides were pinned over the frame when the meat was smoked, but beyond that Harjo had never seen a home that took in so much sun. It seemed a silly thing to have. If you wanted to see the outside, why not just go outside? Yet she could not help but wish her own home had windows beyond the smoke hole in her roof. It was a shame she knew nothing of architecture.

“Here.”

The pelt, somehow already off the carcass, nearly knocked her over the threshold. She caught herself, of course, but a barking laugh still burst out from Makhe’s mouth. His chipped front teeth scarring the otherwise pleasant vista of the morning. Someday, she’ll have to knock what’s left of them out.

“Y’know, this won’t be enough, even if I can clean it completely.” Said Makhe as he ran a soaked rag over the stained meat. “The other hunters are still out, and I’ll be moon cursed if they find anything full grown. Fallen Root will demand you go out again before the sun leaves.”

Harjo spat out the doorway. By the winds, the only thing she hated more than listening to Fallen Root’s sanctimonious droning was being reminded of things she already knew.

“Mocum's great stag isn't enough to feed us all? The way he was talking, you'd think it was the size of a longhouse."

"Hn. For someone who talks a lot, your boyfriend doesn't say much. I'll bet you my knives, when he gets back, it'll turn out his great stag is just a overfed goat come down from the Gnawed Mountains."

"He's not back yet?" Harjo's shoulders tensed, "he's been gone, what, 10 days?"

"12," the butcher threw out as if it was nothing.

It probably was nothing. Great hunts were more a rite of passage than a food gathering. It was a pointed expedition to prove the hunter's skill. Yes, 12 days gone was probably nothing, except that Harjo had been hunting long enough to know that the Crooked Sky Valley was a six day journey across. Unless this great stag was leading him in a circle, Mocum and his hunting party should have been back by now. Unless, of course, they followed the stag out of the valley.

"Probably just taking his time," she said with forced nonchalance, "enjoying the nature of the hunt."

"You'd know," the butcher smirked as if it was terribly clever. "So, like I said, chief'll be wanting you to get back out there."

"Yeah, yeah, I’ll head out soon. I want to check on Chepi first.”

That chipped tooth smile again.

“Tell her I said hello.”

It couldn’t have been earlier than midday, but Nikokega was already alive and restless. Children weaved in and out of the huts and tents as she walked along the creek. That Torazi trapper that set up a permanent shack last year, Salazaa, showed off a beaver pelt worth 10 copper, convincing one of the rice farmers to pay 15. Bhachi slept through a salmon catching his line and breaking free. Grey Eye threaded the beads Chepi had carved the day before. Harjo threw the usual platitudes as she passed. Dozens of others went about their morning; washing, cooking, and tending to their homes. A playful little thought danced in the back of her mind. How fixed their routines were; as easy to track as a deer.

The blanket that covered their house’s door frame hadn't moved since she left. She called out for Chepi as she threaded the pelt onto the tanning rack, as if that would make her go outside. To call it a house was being generous. A cabin it certainly was, and one of the first and finest when her father had built it, but years of neglect had worn it down to a two room shack with walls that kept the snow out, and little else. Building a new one would’ve been nice, but the lumber would have to be imported. It was wrong to fell a tree of the forest. That’s what had brought ruin to her family; everybody knew that. Fallen Root had said so, and he was chief now.

“Too small.” muttered Chepi over Harjo’s shoulder.

The left side of her head stuck halfway out from the hem of the flap; her tangled raven hair mingling with the dirt. Her pale green eye lingering on the pelt that begged to be tanned by someone who knew their craft.

“It’s what we have.”

The pale green eye flitted and froze on the jagged hole in the pelt not quite on the edge. Chepi’s voice sounded far away from behind the flap.

“It was gut shot. It's death was painful.”

“Most deaths are.” Harjo stood with a sigh, and stepped over her sister into the tent. There was no getting work done when she talked like this.

The daylight blasted through the dust and smoke of the cabin. The embers in the fireplace were as cold as the air was stale. The only things that seemed to have moved since Harjo had left was the blankets on Chepi’s bed and the smoke from her recently discarded pipe. Harjo fell down cross-legged beside the hearth and set to building the fire all over again. Chepi skittered upright like a spider onto the nearest chair –a Torazi one with armrests- and looked at her with naked concern. Their mother had bargained it from Salazaa back when he still lived in that southern port city years ago; what was it called again?

“Too small.” Chepi repeated, “No horns. It was a she. Dead fawn before her time.”

“Makhe asked after you again.” Harjo threw out.

“As he should.” She muttered, ignoring the bait. A small quiver formed in her voice when she spoke again “Too small. You gave a bad death to a fawn.”

“You say that like I meant to.” She growled back.

Chepi shrunk down as much as she could in the chair, and all too familiar shame crept into Harjo. They might have been twins, but Chepi came out small and grew smaller. Their mother used to joke that Harjo must’ve stolen her size while in the womb. As it was, Chepi could pass for someone five years younger at a glance. It didn’t help that she acted so childish when she’d been smoking. Her big green eyes could well up with tears in an instant, and that little whine in her voice somehow always came out cute. By the winds, she wielded guilt like a blade.

There was something strange in her expression, though. It was accusatory, but not like one who caught a friend in a lie. Her eyes carried the look of a teacher willing a student to give them an answer the student should know already.

“She didn’t suffer long.” Harjo reassured, Chepi’s eyes kept still.

“Doesn’t matter.” She whined, dramatically dropping her head into her arms, “Bad death to a child of the wood. Spirits will have marked you. You’re doomed.”

“Oh, is that all? I apologized before she died. There’s no curse here.”

A condescending smirk lit Harjo’s face as she struck sparks into the tinder. She had grown so used to the hunter’s prayer, she had almost forgotten its purpose. Her father had taught them both how to hunt, but Chepi never had much skill. The hunter’s prayer let the spirits know that the hunter was no invader. The prey had fallen to just another beast of the woods. Leave it to Chepi to take in the superstition, but forget anything useful. Still, the grin felt forced. The memory of the Forest’s silence consumed her for a moment. Had she chanted the prayer more urgently than normal? She could hear her sister stir in the chair behind her.

“You said the prayer? Were they coming before you spoke? Did you see them, what did you feel?”

Before Harjo could answer, Chepi was on the ground next to her, pale green eyes brighter than the tiny flame in the fireplace.

“Did they come for you?”

The memory of the chill in the woods crept along Harjo’s skin, even as the fire finally took hold. The tinder cracked and the embers renewed their glow, but all she could hear was the grinding rumble of the outstretched trees. Her heartbeat quickened as the guttural hiss of dragons above ran through her. Her sister’s stare unnerved her almost as much as the Forest when she prayed.

“I, I think maybe?”

It felt strange in her mouth, giving such a half-hearted answer. What she felt around her, kneeling before the fawn, could hardly be written off as nerves, but she prided herself on being sensible. The sound of a dragon above might not have even been directed at her. Surely, there were things above more interesting than a pair of critters on the forest floor. Still, the intensity of her sister was enough to reconsider.

“Yes.”

“Yes!” Chepi repeated, “I knew it!”

A manic grin took over and she jumped up, hopping all throughout the cabin. Harjo watched dumbstruck as Chepi bounced and barked everywhere. Words and laughter came faster than she could breathe.

“I knew it! I knew it! The visions! Not the pipe, they’re real! they’re real, Harjo! I saw them come for you! Last night! My dreams! In my dreams, I saw them coming. The spirits painted you red and scales swelled, and then you breathed, and the red was on them and they fled! By the sun and moon, I’m a prophet!”

That was at least partially true. Chepi had always been good at intuiting which spot in the river had the best fishing and she had a knack for guessing the sex of the unborn. That hardly made her a prophet though. Shouldn’t there be some kind of proper sign to determine that? Harjo shrugged. No point denying that she had felt the spirits close in on her for killing a deer before its time. If they could be real, and Chepi could predict it, well…

“Wait, if you saw it, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Had to know,” Chepi grabbed Harjo’s hand and pulled her up, forcing her to join in the spinning dance. “They come here and there, but always in riddles! Always indirect, like, like a song! Many almost nothing! This was the first that was obvious! About who, about what! If I had said, might not happen, or worse, you might not believe!”

“So, you let me almost get got by angry spirits and dragons to prove to yourself you’re not crazy?” Harjo broke free, dizzy. “I think you failed.”

Chepi stopped abruptly. The wide toothy grin was gone but the feverish eyes remained.

“We have to leave.” She grabbed Harjo by the shoulders, panting. For such a tiny thing, she sure had a grip. “We have to leave. Nikokega will burn.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Have you not been listening? I’ve seen it! Dreams of a forest swallowed by the Moon and the earth scarred. Our village burned by panthers with gold for eyes. We have to leave.”

A shadow darkened the doorway before she could respond.

“You’re back early, Harjo.” Sneered the shadow. “Fallen Roots wants a word.”

“Hello to you too, Wind Legs. I’m sure he does.” Harjo stepped around Chepi with a sigh, turning to her as she followed the warrior out the door, “We’ll talk more later. Would you mind finishing the pelt? I probably won’t be back before it rots.”

“If you come back at all.” Chepi breathed, but she was already gone.