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Behorra paid the hunters little attention, likely viewing other humans the way I viewed the wild herds. Rocks skidded underneath my feet as I ran.
One of the hunters stood up and drew his bow.
I gave a piercing whistle and crashed into his side. I didn’t know where the arrow went. Behorra whinnied and took off. I rolled in the dirt and sprang to my feet. A hand curled around my clothes and jerked me. Someone was cursing.
I twisted, scratching at the hand and kicking one of the men in his lower region. A searing line of heat ran across my upper arm. I punched one’s nose. A shout in my ear.
I bit something, but then hands were off me and I stumbled away and I took off running.
The men shouted. An arrow flew over my head. I ran, following Behorra’s tracks, and kept running. It wasn’t until the hunters were small shapes behind me that I whistled again.
After the third whistle, I could see her up ahead. She’d stopped running and was looking in my direction, ears pricked.
When she saw me, she began to trot over. I slowed to a walk. My arm burned, and I could feel blood running down it. Behorra sniffed at me, sneezing when she took a breath full of the scent of my blood.
I stroked her face. “And this is why I’m trying to teach you signals. Do you get it now?”
She didn’t make any sign of acknowledgment or agreement, she just continued to nudge me with her nose. “Okay, okay, stop.” I pushed her nose away and inspected my arm.
It wasn’t a deep wound, just a cut line across the width of my upper arm. A small blade point protruded from it. I yanked it out and tossed it to the ground, and the blood dripped from the wound thickly. Just moving my left arm made it hurt.
I sighed and pressed my hand over it, scanning the ground. The pressure gave it a welcome burn. Behorra followed me closely as I wandered about, searching for a plant with wide, flat leaves. Eventually I managed to find ones that were passable and layered them on over the cut.
I used the little bit of spare cord I had to keep it on. It was awkward and messy and unpleasant to tie, holding one end in my teeth and having only my right hand to make a knot with. It was a lopsided knot, but it kept the leaves on.
My heart ached with longing for my mother and sister, both of whom had deft and clever fingers that had patched up many injuries over my life. If they were here, they’d tell me exactly what I was doing wrong and fix me up and my arm wouldn’t hurt nearly as much.
Behorra stuck her nose in my face, and abruptly I realized how close to watering my eyes were. I took a couple deep breaths and spread the almost-tears over my face. “I’m fine,” I told her. “Probably hurts less than yours did.” I stood up. “Come on, let’s find some water.”
The two of us struck off in a direction, going at an easy pace. I kept glancing back over my shoulder, thinking I’d see hunters chasing us down, but I never saw a soul.
I found a small pond, and the two of us settled down to rest.
The next morning I slept to well past sunrise, and was roused mostly by an angry throbbing in my arm. My joints felt thick and stiff from my elbow to my fingers. It sent stings of pain whenever I moved it.
I felt around where I’d tied the leaves, and my arm didn’t seem particularly swollen, so I figured I was okay. I submerged my hand in the cool water of the pond for a minute, which made it feel a little better. Behorra took a long drink next to me, and I decided we should continue on.
It wasn’t long before a series of offshoots from the pond spread and widened and turned the area into a mucky marsh. It pulled at my feet. I pushed Behorra over to the edge where the ground was firmer.
The marsh was noisy with bugs and birds and frogs. They called and sang and splashed and filled the air. I enjoyed listening to all the sounds of life.
There were so many sounds, I didn’t think twice about them until Behorra, who was walking ahead, abruptly stopped and snorted, prancing on the spot.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What –”
I stopped, staring down at the hunter standing chest deep in the mud. It looked like he’d been struggling and stuck there for quite some time. He stared up at Behorra, then looked at me.
He was younger than I’d originally thought, being around the same age as me. The bead strands braided into his dark hair still had clean colours and good edges, so it couldn’t have been more than a few years since he came of age. His eyes were dark and soft, and the thick eyebrows were raised quizzically. He had a splattering of mud on his cheeks.
“Hello,” he said.
I stared at him, then looked around anxiously for the other hunters in his party.
“They’re not here,” he said. “They went back to get some more men.”
I glanced up and down what little I could see of him. “Are you stuck?”
“Annoyingly.”
I gave a small nod, then walked past him on the shore.
“What, you’re just leaving like that?”
I glanced back at him. “You tried to hunt Behorra.”
“Be – it’s a horse! Horses are food! You can’t blame me for that. It wasn’t even my idea.”
I shrugged. “And it’s not my fault you’re stuck.”
“The ground looked solid, okay?” It sounded like he’d tried to convince people of that already.
“Uh-huh.” I crouched down and studied him. “How long have you been stuck in there?”
“. . . I’d rather not say.”
I looked at the ground. “Your friends left a couple hours ago, at least.”
“So you can track, then.”
I studied the young man some more. On closer inspection, his skin looked a little pale, and the colour faded, like skins left too long in the sun, or a child out too long in the cold. “You can’t hunt Behorra when out,” I said.
“Don’t touch the horse. Got it. Figured that out after yesterday. Though I’m guessing you’ll be long gone by the time I’m pulled out.”
I rolled my eyes. Maybe, I thought, he wasn’t always the brightest.
I stood up and wrapped my hand around Behorra’s head to pull her close to the marsh’s edge. On the ground were a few things the other hunters had left behind, including a long length of cording. I pushed Behorra into position, which made her stamp her feet and toss her head.
The young man watched me quietly as I fiddled with the rope. It took me a couple tries, but I found that if I tied a loop around her belly, and then used another length to connect it over her chest, it was reasonably secure. I had to keep stopping her from nibbling it.
I used the longest length of rope and attached one end to Behorra and tossed the other to the young man. He wrapped it around his hands. “Ready?” He nodded. I clicked my tongue at Behorra and encouraged her forward.
She balked and danced a little at the heavy resistance, but after a minute she calmed and grew used to it and walked forward steadily, if slowly. The mud made great squelching and sucking sounds as, bit by bit, it loosened its grip on the young man and he moved closer to shore.
It took several long minutes, but then he was almost at the shore and I was able to help drag him out. He was coated in mud, and shivering, but free.
“Thank you,” he said, as I undid the ropes I’d tied around Behorra. She picked her feet up high and danced around once free of them.
I gave the young man a shrug. I could feel him watching me.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Yes there is.” He stood up suddenly, spooking Behorra. He grabbed my left arm and pulled it towards him before I could react. I hissed.
“What kind of binding is this? It’s terrible!” he exclaimed.
“I did what I could!” I jerked my arm free.
“That doesn’t make it good. Here, let me –” I stepped back from him and his hands, my nerves on edge. He gave me a look. “You’re just asking for it to get worse, you know. The least I can do is tie on something properly for you. You did pull me out, after all.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. He was still shivering a little, and he swayed a tad on his feet. He probably hadn’t eaten all day, either. Even if he wanted to try something, which seemed unlikely, he was in no state to be a threat.
“Do what you want,” I said.
The sunny smile was at odds with the pale complexion. He gestured for me to sit down somewhere, and started rummaging through his gear. Surprisingly little mud had gotten inside. I glanced at Behorra, who was watching me with twitching ears.
I found a good dry spot and sat down, legs crossed. The young man sat down next to me and I let him undo the wrapping on my arm. The knot came undone embarrassingly easy.
Behorra came closer, then backed up, snorting and tossing her head. She did that a couple times, then danced around to the other side of me.
“What’s she doing?” the young man asked, as he opened a pouch.
“She doesn’t like you,” I said.
He pulled a face at that. From the pouch he drew what looked like a mushy cube of herbs. It had a strong smell that made me wrinkle my nose. “What is that?”
“Some healing herbs my clan traded for. You put them on a wound under the wrappings, and it keeps evil out,” he said.
“Oh.”
Behorra tossed her head and flared her nostrils as the young man smeared some of the herb mush on my arm. It felt cool. He tied a strip of scraped-thin hide over top. “There,” he said, “all done.”
I stood up and backed away from him, rolling my arm in a circle. Behorra nudged at me nervously, and clearly didn’t like the smell. She sneezed. The young man continued to watch me, the look in his eyes strange. “That horse . . . I’ve never seen one act like it.”
“Okay.” I picked up my things.
He stood up. “Where are you going?”
“On my way. Your people are coming for you. You’ll be fine to wait here.”
“That’s not – are you out here alone? Did you get lost? You could come back with us, we could get you home –”
“I am not lost. I am fine.”
“Are you sure? What clan are you from? I didn’t think any other clan had out camps in this area.”
“I see no reason to tell you.” I gave Behorra a quick whistle and started walking along the shore.
“Can I at least get your name?” he asked.
“No,” I said over my shoulder.
“Please?”
I kept walking, picking up the pace to leave him behind.
“Won’t you –” I hopped down over a few stones, a little run off babbling away into the distance. “I’m one of the Oin Zuria!” he shouted. “I’m Kemen!”
I distractedly waved a hand to shut him up, but I didn’t look back, and Behorra and I continued on our way.
-
FOR A FEW DAYS THE two of us wandered west and south, chasing game and looking for clues of Zaldi. I found plenty of food, but nothing else. I didn’t see any more people, which was good. I didn’t want to put Behorra in more danger, and I certainly didn’t want to explain myself to anyone.
I knew moving around in the wild, alone, was dangerous. Deadly. It was a sure-fire way to get myself killed.
But someone from another clan wouldn’t understand. I was the last of the Bizkor Oiloa. The souls of all my people rested on me. I had to set them free.
At some point, I started to think that maybe I’d been travelling so much that my mind was getting confused, because things began to look familiar. Had I somehow gotten turned around? Was I just retracing my steps?
A chill began to settle on me, one that went through to my heart and bones.
I knew this landscape. I recognized the rolls of the land, the curve of the river in the distance, that tree with – yes, a broken arrow in one of its upper branches. I’d, somehow, managed to find my way back to the area my clan had settled in for the summer.
Things swirled inside me, and the crushing feeling was back, threatening to squeeze me out of existence. I had to stop and bend over and force myself to breath. Behorra sniffed my hair, but otherwise seemed at ease.
“Okay,” I said to myself. “You can do this. Besides, you need to find clues to the Zaldi. You can do this.”
I straightened and bravely forged ahead.
Thoughts pushed at me as I drew closer and I pushed them back. I had to focus. Focus.
I stopped when I could see the settlement.
It was worse than when I’d left it. I knew it would be, but it still made something in me tear. More homes had collapsed, and plants were growing tall and thick through every space they could. The clan idol was the tallest thing, now standing at a tilt.
It was a desolate place, where the wilds were overtaking the pitiful stake of humanity.
I scrubbed at my face repeatedly as I walked down the slope towards it. My hand drifted to my father’s atlatl, fingers running over its familiar form.
I told myself that this wasn’t home anymore, that I needed to keep myself grounded in reality, lest I find myself walking amongst the ghosts of my ancestors. Still, something in me twisted and cracked and I could hardly breath or walk.
There really was no one here.
Much of the damage of that day had been obscured, scoured away by nature. The tracks were practically gone, and I wasn’t sure what else I could find.
I sifted through a few of the homes, just in case there was . . . something. I didn’t know what I was looking for, or what I wanted to find. I just wanted something.
I found nothing of the Zaldi. Just the pieces of our lives, from homes to clothes to baskets to arrows . . .
Arrows.
I stopped and picked up an arrow lying in the grass. There was nothing odd about finding an arrow on the ground – we dropped ones all the time, or misplaced them with bad shots – but something about this arrow stuck out to me.
Oh.
It wasn’t one of my clan’s arrows.
We tied the arrowhead on by crossing, not wrapping, and the fletching of this one spiraled in the opposite direction. It was an arrow made and used by someone not from my clan.
Someone, or something.
Humans didn’t attack other humans, generally speaking. Sure, people fought, and sometimes those fights got physical, and on occasion someone wound up dead. But no one set out with the intent of killing another person. At least, no one alive did.
Other creatures, on the other hand . . .
That wasn’t to say that this arrow couldn’t have come from a Zaldi; the tip had old blood, so if the Zaldi had been shot in the past, it could have fallen out as it thundered through here. We told stories of ghastly hunts, of souls who chased prey even after death and had little care for what type of creature the prey was. This arrow could be from such a hunt, though it felt to solid, to real.
Or perhaps, someone else was also hunting down these Zaldi, and that’s why there was an arrow here.
The Zaldi had taken my entire clan; it seemed likely this wasn’t the first time they’d dragged off groups of people. The question was, where had this arrow come from? Our world, or the other?
I studied it. The arrowhead shape was undistinctive, but the stone had some dark veining in it. The fletching was from common birds – understandable, since that was replaced most often. The shaft, though, was from a wood where, one year, the tree had been dyed.
It wasn’t a common practice, even less so in recent generations, as the art of it had dwindled to live in fewer and fewer clans. Certain trees had importance – ones that grew where our ancestors had done great things that restored the balance between our world and the world of demons. Some of our ancestors had chosen to mark those trees by dyeing tree rings. That way, no one would cut them down by mistake.
Such trees were few and far between. Why would someone make an arrow from such a tree? Had something happened? What required a sacred arrow?
A human had definitely shot it. Its touch was fatal to demons and spirits.
Right. First, start with the source.
There weren’t many such trees to investigate. In fact, I was only reasonably confident I could find one. My father had told me about where one was. Far to the north, on the shore of a lake where the waters were clear and the bottom was sandy. If you followed the stars and passed the carved stones, you would reach it.
It wasn’t an easy journey, but it was the only lead I had to figuring out what exactly had happened, and why, and how to avenge my people. Perhaps, if I was lucky, I’d find an ally in my quest.
I straightened up and tucked the odd arrow away with the others in my quiver. Behorra was happily ripping up the tall grasses. To her, this place was the same as any other. To me, it made pieces of myself break off.
Something was burning inside me. “Come on,” I said thickly to Behorra. “Let’s get out of here.”
I walked north, and eventually Behorra followed. I felt like I had an itch on the back of my head, between my shoulder blades, and I forced myself to not look back. If I did, I wasn’t sure what I’d do.
-
BEHORRA AND I WERE forced to turn east for a little while by the waterways, but at night I’d track our position by the stars, and I was sure I could get us going in the right direction again. The constellations burned bright, both in the night sky and in my memory. Reading the stars was something that’d always come to me naturally.
As the days passed, I thought we were making fairly good progress. As much as I wanted to rush ahead, Behorra got tired if she ran for too long, and I had to be mindful of gathering food and water. Unlike a horse, I couldn’t find something to eat anywhere on the ground.
Then I woke up one morning feeling like my lower gut was about to rip itself apart.
I’d gotten cramps.