Chapter Twenty-One

The Stranger

The wolf was a large beast, weighing well over one hundred pounds. Its mask was white interspersed with streaks of tawny brown and gray. Black eyes, cold and merciless, stared at me with a lethal gaze. No steel fence protected me this time.

I scanned the ground immediately ahead for a stick or weapon of some sort and hope flashed through me when I spotted a thick, pointed branch of white ash no more than five feet to my left.

“I would not do that if I were you, Fire Walker,” a menacing voice called from behind me.

I turned my back to the wolf to confront my stalker. His angular face bore the emotion of fieldstone, and he stared passively at me with cold green eyes. With an economy of movement he walked toward me. His long black hair was made blacker by the contrast of occasional streaks of gray. He had a solidness to him as though the darting shadows of this wood would dare not cross his path. He was as tall as me but leaner.

His left hand gripped a long staff of tightly grained wood. He looked like a seasoned soldier entering his fifth decade of life, but something about him was more feral than militaristic. His calf-length deerskin coat appeared handstitched and well worn. I imagined he hunted with no more than a buck knife.

“Do you know what haunts these woods?” His voice hinted of cold steel. He moved silently over the damp marsh grass, his lithe gait doing little to mask the tension of a great coiled spring. He interspersed himself between our lupine visitor and myself and turned his back to me briefly as if I posed absolutely no threat to him.

“I’m sorry if I wandered into your hunting territory,” I stammered. I watched in awe as the thickly furred creature walked gracefully up to the stranger and rested alongside him. The solitary hunter faced me again but gave no reply.

“I didn’t know wolves could be domesticated,” I observed, more to fill the awkward silence than to continue conversing with the strange man.

“They can’t.”

The great beast snarled at me as if in response to my comment. Tall trees surrounded us, some groaning like the masts of invisible ships. I was reminded of the schooner from a part of the day that now seemed quite distant. I was far removed from that place and time.

“Few are unwise enough to walk this path,” he explained.

The wind rustled dead leaves everywhere around us, filling the woods with the sound of footsteps and innumerable whisperings. The corners of his lips lifted into a smile, but the expression on the man’s stony face was far from reassuring.

I sensed I was in as much danger with this reclusive hunter as I would be with the unseen inhabitants of the forest. I needed to find a way out. I resumed my hike, but the two hunters followed.

“You didn’t answer my question,” the stranger stated calmly. He passed his staff in a fluid motion from right hand to left, the bleached ash an extension of his body. My stomach tightened in knots as I wondered whose funeral lay at the end of this path.

“Whaa, what question?” I shoved my tremulous hands deeper into my coat pockets but found no warmth. The sky had quickly grown dark as dusk descended. Clouds of black and charcoal swirled in a frenzy overhead. A great storm was coming our way.

“Do you know what haunts these woods?”

I suddenly realized the hunter addressed me as “Fire Walker” several moments ago. Images of the baleful Miskenupik filled my head, images of fierce hunters filling Dark Woods with blood and death. I thought I had followed the True Path but realized at that moment that I might have taken a wrong turn.

A shadow passed overhead followed by the shrill cry of a bird of prey. In a serpentine blur of motion the green-eyed stranger flung one arm outward toward the origin of that cry. His eyes never left mine, even as the choked scream of the black raven pierced the stillness ahead of us. I followed the direction of the hunter’s extended arm and spotted the impaled creature against the trunk of a black cherry. The smooth wooden handle of a bowie knife protruded from the slain creature’s chest. “Hateful things,” he hissed in disgust.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“Are you prepared to kill me?” he asked emphatically, ignoring my question. His lupine companion stood sentry at the hunter’s side, taking no notice of the black-winged meal impaled several feet away.

“I didn’t come here to kill,” I told my assassin, “but I didn’t come here to be killed. I have a job to do, and you can either help me or fuck yourself with your wooden staff.” There may have been a hint of contempt in my voice. If I was going to suffer a senseless death at this killer’s hands, I was not going to grovel or beg.

I watched the stranger run one hand through thick hair while balancing the ash staff in the other. His lips lifted at the corners, giving the hint of a smile, but his green eyes remained glacial. A low-pitched, guttural growl bellowed out of the wolf’s jaws.

“You are not as weak as you seem,” he told me without condescension. “Isabel would not have named you Fire Walker without clear cause.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

The hunter laughed. He flashed a genuine smile causing the lines of his face to also reveal a life of hardship and loss. The black-eyed beast gave his companion a quizzical look as if seeing him for the first time.

“My name is Jean Baptiste,” the strange man said after a rapid decrescendo of laughter. “Isabel was my friend too.” Together we followed the dark trail onward.

As we walked the white muzzled wolf mercifully ignored me in pursuit of more interesting smells. He sniffed at the air in the direction of the brook to our left, upwind of the autumnal gusts.

“How did you know Isabel?” I asked Jean.

“She found me much the way she found you.” The crunching of pine needles and fallen leaves underfoot appeared only to emanate from my shoes. Both hunter and wolf walked silently over the forest floor. Neither shivered nor complained despite the plummeting temperature.

“Isabel named me ‘Torch Bearer,’” he said as we negotiated the irregular forest path. In a flash of recognition I recalled one of Isabel’s Kesemanetow. I had seen it briefly when we last met. It depicted a white-haired man with a blazing torch. The emotion of the card suggested vigilance. Militaristic vigilance. I wondered how many warriors were represented by Isabel’s tarot. Hopefully more than just the two of us.

“Does your friend have a name?” I asked. The wolf eyed me suspiciously, and I wondered if he understood the spoken word.

“Light,” Jean answered. “He, too, was named by Isabel.” Three warriors. I wanted to inquire about his relationship with Isabel, but he touched me on the shoulder to stop my footfall. We listened as Light growled a warning. The wolf’s hackles rose while his tail and muzzle aligned into an arrow. I followed as the two hunters moved with stealth toward the hidden creek.

They slid gracefully through the ancient wood while I tangled myself in burrs. Church bells tolled a solemn song from somewhere far ahead of us.

I followed the hunters to the edge of the brook and cast my eyes on their intended prey. A violent unkindness of ravens disturbed the stream fifty yards downstream of our position. The birds themselves vanished, but they left behind a cacophony of harsh squawks to violate the soothing sound of the water. An eerie tar slick formed and moved against the stream’s flow. It coalesced most unnaturally into a demonic shape.

“Many generations of fishermen have seen these things,” Jean told me excitedly. He sensed an imminent battle. “They were called ‘Rock Spirits’ by the first settlers. Priests used to hang rosaries along the trees where the creatures were spotted. Rosaries won’t help, though. It comes for you, Fire Walker.”

My heart raced when I saw the dark creature for what it was.

The dreadful black mass shifted until I saw the shape of a man’s head and neck moving just above the surface of the running stream. The unholy darkness ascended above the cold water until it became an aged, hunched figure. It waded against the stream, toward us. Toward me. As the shadow neared, its shape straightened. When it reached our position the darkness had become something else entirely.

“Fire Walker,” the creature hissed as it climbed effortlessly up the near bank. The skin of its face was like ancient leather drawn tightly over a misshapen skull. The hood of its gray cloak was pulled up but not far enough to mask its diseased and hairless scalp. Its garment was tattered as if ravaged by the grave. Dark eyes locked on mine in a death stare, made more repulsive by the peeling flecks of black parchment that hung from the creature’s lips. It pointed a bony finger toward my throat as it spoke.

“How are the dead spending the night? They embrace the darkness and speak, each syllable filled with fright.”

The demon’s words, I knew, were ripped from a poem that haunted my memory. It violated my mind without effort, without pity.

The creature approached me with venomous intent. It stood taller than a man, with bony shoulders and an air of arrogance. I had seen this thing before somewhere in a distant time, or perhaps a different life. Its baleful eyes were like a shark’s—dead and soulless.

“You should not have come here this day, Binder.” Jean’s voice was heroically calm, and he once again conjured the faintest hint of a smile. He lifted his staff like a spear, pointing it directly toward the Binder’s neck. The two were almost within striking distance of each other. Light’s growl became more violent as he coiled his body into a tight spring.

The eyes of the Binder, initially black disks of hatred and contempt, squinted into crescent shapes of anger. It breathed in noisily, its chest heaving as it filled itself with a deep, agonizing wheeze. With great ceremony the creature exhaled putrid air as it drove its staff into the riverbank. The earth beneath us shook mightily, sending Jean and Light down the eroded slope into the running stream. I watched in horror as my protectors were carried helplessly downstream, toward broken rocks and the trunks of fallen trees.