HUNGER
Mark Oshiro
The ice cared for no one.
He knew that each time he left home, many suns and many, many moons could pass before he had enough to bring back, enough to feed them all. Especially now, as he swatted playfully at one of the cubs that darted between his legs then stood before his father and roared, a squeaking sound that did not inspire fear as it should. It was a start. With more practice, more food, more growth, this cub would soon be just as terrifying as his father.
The two of them made their way up the long passage from the central chamber of the cavern. Without the knowledge they possessed, it would be easy to get lost down here. It was why he and his den-mate had chosen this place so long ago. Someone had once lived here, and the strange things they had left behind were proof of that. Hard objects, not stone or bone or ice, that he had never seen before were strewn about the caves, along with the rotting remains of whatever these beasts consumed.
But this home was well guarded from the cold and from others. To find such a place…well, he knew even back then that this was something permanent, the kind of home that his kind sought most of their lives. The few predators that had ever tried to invade their territory in the time since had become hopelessly lost in the twisting tunnels, in the caverns that all looked so similar in the terrible darkness. They were easy to hunt down then, when they were weak and afraid.
And now he had a clan. Three cubs, their mother, a den-mate, all of them his family. They would not exist if this cavern had not been discovered.
It was time to leave, though.
The den-mate would look after the others while he was gone, but there was little comfort provided by this, only because…well, the hunt was the hunt. It took as long as it did, and there was no guarantee once you were out there. Days could blend together without a single spotting of prey.
But he had to go.
He had to keep his clan alive.
And so the need pulled him forth, and the mother who bore his children and his den-mate nuzzled him, their way of showing respect for what he was going to do. The cubs yapped and squealed and didn’t really understand; they merely nipped at his feet. As he stepped out into the wind and the cold and the ice and the snow, one of them followed, swiping at his legs. He stopped and pushed her back, then growled. She understood. She remained in one spot to watch him leave, and soon, he disappeared into the unending whiteness of the tundra.
The hunt had begun.
He walked. He crested the nearest range, and his instinct guided him toward a series of caves far in that direction. He had once found a pod of his favorite prey there: the beasts who stood upright, had those useless horns on the sides of their faces. They were easy pickings, at least if you focused on one of them at a time. As a group, they could be formidable, but it was easier to separate one, to chase it down, to prey on its fear that it no longer had the others to protect it.
He feasted on smaller creatures to keep his energy up and slept rarely; he knew he was most vulnerable then. He rested just long enough to keep going.
And the hunt continued.
The sun passed overhead. Again and again and again. The moons, each with their own color and shape, appeared as daylight vanished, as night took over, as the terrible chill threatened to take him away. But he continued. He sought refuge from a particularly nasty wind, one that seemed to cut through his fur, by hiding under a cliff face until the sun came up again.
He did all of this for them.
He found the prey on the southern ridge of a crag, and it was easy to trap them in the valley below. Once he took out the largest of them as it swiped at him with those stunted horns it had, the others were easier to track down. He feasted on the smallest, devouring every part of it, so that he would have stamina for the long trek back. There would be no stopping nor sleeping; it was too big a risk with the carcasses he dragged behind him.
So he walked.
He did not note how many suns and moons passed overhead.
He did not care how frigid it felt as he crunched through ice and snow.
He did not let the exhaustion in his bones and muscles bring him to the ground.
He just kept going, one thing in mind.
Return.
He crested the last hill, and for a brief moment, he thought the light of the sun was playing tricks on him. It could be blinding, reflecting off the sheets of ice, but he dropped the carcasses. He stared. He brought his body low.
They poured out over the ice near an enormous structure: little things, walking upright on their hind legs, dark shapes against the snow. Some of them rode on top of the very same kind of creature he had just killed; others guided herdbeasts forward, screaming and shouting at them.
This would delay him, but it would not stop his return.
He made for the entrance to the caverns on the far side of the ridge, wondering if these new arrivals would make the hunt all the more challenging. Would they bother his den? Would they invade it?
The anger boiled in him. This was his home.
He thought of his clan as he sneaked down into the valley, down toward the cavern. There was another entrance—smaller, less effective—he could use. All the while, he watched these creatures. They did not seem to have packs, but there were so many of them. No matter. He could crush them with a simple swipe of the paw.
He squeezed into the opening in one of the rear caverns, falling to the ground of the tunnel and clamping his paws to his ears. There was an awful sound echoing throughout: something high, repetitive, and it pierced his ears, sent nausea in waves through his body.
This seemed impossible; he was so far from those creatures. Had they somehow broken through? Were they not even aware of who had been here first?
He left the carcasses there and ventured forth through his den. When he reached the far side of it, the impossible was true: There, burned into the wall of ice, was a massive gap, and the sounds that echoed out of it filled him with a terrible pain.
But he pressed on. He had to. He had to find them.
He searched. In the area where they buried their waste. (Empty.) In one of the caves where they fed. (Now occupied by swarms of the terrible things.) He was low to the ground when it came upon him, walking out of one of the small caves deep within the cavern. (Out of his home.) After just a glance, the creature screamed at him. Did it mean to frighten him? Or was it so afraid that it made the sound as an instinct? Sometimes they did that before they died. It could not be helped.
He roared and prepared to crush it to death.
The thing raised its arm up, and there was something dark in its paw, and then a blaze of light burst forth, traveled the distance between them impossibly fast, like the streaks he often saw in the sky at night.
He had never felt a pain as searing as this; it seemed to plunge deep beneath his coat and skin, stabbing into the muscles of his leg, and his roar this time was of his own pain.
And then he gave himself over to rage.
He had no idea how many he maimed or killed in those moments, but he struck anything that moved. He could not find them. Where were they? Where were his den-mates? Where were his children? He stumbled into the greatest cave of them all, saw the countless beings scattering about, screaming and yelling, and he roared again.
He could only smell the remnants of his family, only a faint wisp of what they once were. Where were they? What had these creatures done to them?
There was more of that piercing light, but none of it struck him. He scrambled out of his home, out of the entrance, smearing blood on the snow and ice as he stumbled forth, as these creatures shouted unknown sounds at him, and he made himself disappear into the hills above.
It was only when he was safe that he knew he had failed them. Surely his den-mate protected the others. Perhaps they had fled elsewhere?
He packed snow onto his wound, forced it to go numb so that he could travel.
Then he walked.
He did not find them in the caverns on the other end of the range, in the place they had made their home. Perhaps his den-mate had taken them to where they’d lived before.
But he did not find them in the home they had inhabited before this one.
He did not find them anywhere.
Something filled him. He had never sensed this before. There was now a cavern in him, one that ate at his gut, that seemed to grow bigger and bigger with each passing of the sun overhead. He tried to fill it with food, picking off prey here and here. But while his hunger was sated, the other sensation bloomed. He was empty without his clan.
He waited. He watched. He despaired.
More and more of these creatures came to his home. They came and went, sometimes venturing out onto the ice on the backs of other creatures, but always together. There were so many of them. How could they do this? What did they want? Were they hunters like him, too?
He hungered. He watched. He waited.
A small pack left the cavern one morning, all riding astride the upright, horned beasts. His instinct took over: He could deal with a group this small. Eventually, all living creatures lost to his kind. And with another upon its back, the horned beast could not maintain its normal speed.
Meaning it could not escape.
It would be too easy.
But the challenge did not matter to him. He followed the pack, watched them split up and spread out over the ice. He remained distant and quiet as he always did. He wanted the last thing his prey saw to be the whiteness of his fur, his ferocious maw cracked open, his sharp claws slicing at the softness of their neck.
He wanted that not for hunger. Not to satiate his need to feast.
No.
He needed to fill the cavern in his body.
And only blood would do that.
He chose one. There was no need to focus on the entire pack. It was the scrawny creature, the smallest of them all, that would be easiest to take down.
Would this reunite him with his clan? Would it reveal their fate to him?
No.
But it was a start.
He moved closer to the plateau, aware that there was not much cover, but there was only this chance. He stilled and observed. Watched the thing bury something in the snow.
He waited. The gangly creature climbed atop the other, and they moved forth.
Stopped.
He rushed forward then, keeping his body tucked in tight, and he closed the distance between them.
The horned beast twisted its head back, and he froze. It raised its snout in the air, sniffed a few times, and he was sure it could sense him, that the chase was about to begin.
It turned back. It remained unmoving.
He continued moving, his body hovering just above the snow, his breath even and steady.
Crash!
He stayed close to the ground, but he could not help turning his head to see the flash of fire and smoke off in the distance. It was not uncommon here; things plummeted from the sky all the time. One had once killed a packmate of his when he was a cub.
But the moment had arrived: the perfect distraction.
He glided over the ice. The creature aboard the other was making noise. Fear? Concern? Communication? He did not know. He just crept ever closer, stilling only when the beast cried out. This was it. If they spotted him, a chase would certainly follow. He would surely catch them, but he didn’t want a chase.
He wanted blood.
He rushed forward.
His massive arm was in the air, and he swung it down and roared as loudly as possible, so as to strike fear into their hearts, to freeze them in place. The smaller one’s body thumped on the snow after one slash, and then he grabbed the horned beast by the neck, snapped it with one powerful squeeze.
Neither creature moved.
And he would feast tonight.
But first, the preparation. He grabbed each of the creatures by a leg and dragged them back to the empty cavern he was now using. It was a long trek, and normally he would worry about other clans taking advantage of him. But many of them were gone as well, most likely frightened away by these strange beasts and the strange thing they had constructed out of the snow, that burst up into the sky.
He was alone out here in the ice and snow. He had been for some time.
He knew he would preserve the tiny one and consume the other. He needed the energy, and it would help him with what came next.
This would not be a lone act.
No, he would seek out the others. Pick them off one by one. Each time he took one of their lives, he would be closer to getting his home back. His den-mate. The cubs. The mother of his children.
He would get them all back.
And he had all the time in the world.
He strung the carcass in the rear of the cavern and focused on the other, the one that was still living. He examined its head. It only possessed a small tuft of hair there. He sniffed. It was wearing the fur of others. A strange thing. How did they survive in the cold of this world?
Well, this one would not survive a moon or two. He lifted it by its legs and used his breath to melt the ice at the top of the cavern. He licked the odd material at the end of its legs, spread as much saliva as he could over it, and then held it against the wetness above.
A small object fell from its body and landed in the snow piled on the ground. He thought nothing of it. Moments later, his prey hung solidly from the ice.
He studied it again. Its breath was shallow. It was built to be so frail, so useless. He did not comprehend how this thing had managed to survive; it did not appear to be a cub. Its arms were not suited for striking their prey, and it possessed no claws. Its legs were too short to run quickly across ice or snow.
He peered into its face. Did it have a family, too? A home? Did it know that it had taken everything from him? What did it think about? Did it hate his kind like he hated its kind? Was that why they had stolen his home?
It did not matter.
He would get back what was owed to him.
He ate. He tore at the flesh of the horned beast, devoured it quickly, then focused on the fatty insides. He wished that it was still fresh; there were few things more satisfying than warm blood in the throat. He ripped at the sinews and muscles in one of the legs, lost in the sheer thrill of the feast, and the frenzy was what kept him from noticing it sooner.
He froze.
Heard a grunt.
A small crack.
He looked up at the creature, and it strained against the ice, stretched its arm out, and the rage filled him again. Did this thing believe it could escape? That it could fight back? That it could conquer him? He roared, loud enough that the cavern seemed to shake, loud enough that the creature’s eyes went wide after it plunged to the ground. It stood and faced him and then—
A light. A beam of it. Again.
His kind never forgot. Their memories were what helped them track down prey, to remember which ranges give way to treacherous, deadly gorges. He remembered. His home. The scream. The flash of light that hurt so terribly, the blood, the chaos.
But this was different. Somehow. The beam was not moving toward him. It did not move at all, like the two of them in that tiny space.
This being could hold the light.
No.
It seemed to be wielding it.
He sniffed and caught a scent of the same sharp odor of the debris scattered around his former home. Was that what this creature held?
But he was not afraid. He couldn’t be. The anger rushed up and out of him.
He would not let this happen again.
He charged forward, certain that he would crush this awful thing with one blow, and then the beam cut through the air, and there was no pain at first, and then it crushed him, filled his every thought, and he had never heard a sound like that, of flesh being severed so quickly, had never looked down and seen his own arm resting before him.
He roared again.
No.
He screamed.
The creature escaped out into the snowy unknown. It would surely die soon; it could not possibly survive the ice and wind like that. But he could not think of it anymore as the pain raced through his body. He packed his stump with ice, much as he had done that day long ago, and it stopped the bleeding. His mind drifted, first to the pain, then his den-mates, then to the cubs he might not ever see again.
He slept.
He hurt.
The pain did not subside for many moons. There were times when he felt his arm was still there, as if he could tear at the flesh of another with claws he could not see. He continued to hunt alone—more poorly than he had before—until his strength came back. Until he believed he was ready.
He finally ventured down into the valley when he was strong enough, when he had adapted to his new reality. He had feasted recently, and his hunger was now for retribution. Perhaps this would be fruitless; not every hunt was a success, and he knew he might fail, that this might be the day it all came to an end. Still, he had to try.
But when he crested the ridgeline, his body curled in anticipation, he found himself relaxing, unfurling.
He saw no strange objects on the ground.
No strange creatures fluttering about near the caverns.
He still descended slowly, assuming that at any moment, those things could ambush him with their beams of light and drive him back. But he heard nothing. Saw nothing. There was no stench of their sweat or odor. He sniffed again.
Something had recently been burning.
There was more debris at the mouth of the caverns: twisted pieces of something hard and sharp. A smear of frozen blood. Charred remains of what was once here, what came after his clan.
He crept into the entrance, his body low, but there was no torrent of sound, no clinking or clanking, nothing that pierced his ears as it had before. It was not long before his wandering was not cautious. He had risen upright and slunk from one cavern to the next, all of them empty, abandoned, forgotten.
There were many more nooks he needed to search, more places to examine, but standing in what was once the home for him and his clan, he knew that this place had been returned to him.
And that cavern within him shrank, replaced by something new.
Hope.
Hope that a reunion was possible.
With his clan.
With his den-mate.
With his cubs.
With what they stole.
His home.