The white quilted pine fronds bowed with snow. Gray twilight hung heavy with oppressive thoughts of a coming storm. Dante and Shaman’s wide, furry boots swished over the deep snow, a wearing, tiring task, as sometimes they could plow above a drift and sometimes they plodded through. Their breath iced into the air, the cold leaving untouched the lozia fur that created their bear mouths but forming frost that stained the edges of Dante’s beard. Their magic puffed away the trail they left behind. The black wraith wafted along beside, untouched by winter; murmuring, whispering, wooing.
"Shut the Hell up!" hissed Dante. "Leave me alone. I know what I am to my biological family -- a few bits of DNA that got away. I know what I saw. Yevgeny, Dedalus, Baba Yaga, they’re all ripped from the same cloth. Shut up or I’ll trap you in your cloak so you’ll never come out. Ever. And don’t you tell them where I am. I’ll kill anyone who follows. I damn well mean it. And if you show them where the hita, where Friend and little Blueberry live, Great Seth, I’ll dedicate my life to finding a way to destroy you and all the Shine. I’m betting, since it stops magic, that you don’t like lead much, do you?"
"Lead shadows the material," said the wraith in its patient emotionless tone. Dante thought he detected a hint of condescension "I’m bound to you. I wouldn’t lie."
"Bound to me." Dante snorted. "I’m onto you. You don’t know the meaning of the word. Only use it because you know it means something to humans. Fay seraphim, a good name. Coming and going, obeying only if it pleases you or furthers some unknown plot of yours. Now it pleases you to repeat the lies of a woman who calls herself my mother." Dante’s voice rose, thick and furious. "Get it straight. I have no mother. No father. No brothers. No friends. Do you understand? No one. Not one human in the universe gives a shit if I live or die, other than my magic’s a threat. If my so called relatives could figure out how to use my powers without me, they’d kill me, the misbegotten bastard, on the spot. At least from the hita I get the love and kindness shown a stray, but useful dog. And, by Gaia, I will be useful to them." He fell into a fierce silence, burrowing his anger into the exertion of the snow.
Shaman imaged the end of the magic district that had disguised their powers and showed Dante making a gun appear for himself, since the hita carried Yvonne’s gun.
"Good idea," said Dante. For the first time, he became specific on the person the object was taken from. No need to steal a farmer’s only protection. "Rifle come from one of Dedalus’ guards."
He succeeded. A belt of ammunition and a repeating rifle bearing a gilded Mage’s Coat of Arms, slightly altered for the non-heir son, appeared in his hands. Dante gave a thin smile, remembering the many times he had examined the Arms on labels of Special Lemon and how, if Nanny wasn’t watching, he had taken his finger nail and scratched what he thought were his emblems into the shield.
"By appointment to his Excellency, the Mage’s Bastard," he murmured, his smile growing slightly to a crooked smirk.
He took out his knife and carved through the top right of the Arms, two rough bars sinister, the sign of illegitimacy found in a heraldry book on days long past, when relation to a ruler was a source of pride, no matter how begotten. Next he carved an ankh of Gaia below the crown and over the field of stars shield, between the mythical lions rampant. Maybe one day he would change the lions to hita, they had helped him more than any imaginary symbol of power. Now the gun belonged to him. A fine leather strap hung down from the butt. He slung the gun over his shoulder, then the clip, imagining himself, Rashamon, the strong, lone terrorist of comic books and videos, his bullet spraying vigilante justice defending the weak and powerless. Dante narrowed his eyes. They’d soon learn that they shouldn’t have messed with him.
Shaman tore two fronds from a tree and the travelers swished them behind as they moved from the magic shielding forest to the edge of a hard packed field sharp with brown grass stalks. They scanned the sky for planes, the bush ahead for soldiers. Nothing. The boreal forest kept an oppressive silence, leaden under the approaching storm. Small hard bits of snow raked their furs.
They crossed the hardened field at a run, vanishing into the gloom of the forest. The trees snapped and groaned with the cold. Somewhere, faint and faraway, a rapote howled.
Hunger gnawed and thirst dried Dante’s mouth. A sudden tiredness overwhelmed. Shaman flashed annoyance at his human weakness, making the depression that had haunted in the background, buried under his fear and anger, turn full blown. He sighed, and slowed down to an uncaring plod, his tired limp dragging through the snow. What did the damn hita think? He brews up a storm to hide their escape, fetches their packs and the guns, runs for hours through the snow using his magic to hide their tracks and then he’s supposed to remain strong and unbowed, like some kind of super hero.
He couldn’t. What did they say? Fall asleep in the snow and you never wake up. Thick and soft and plump. Martha appeared, cuddling a comforter in their deep bed, beckoning him to join her in the dead white.
He stumbled down a slope to the edge of a small gully carved by a greasy gray stream. Shaman knelt and pushed its snout into the water. Dante shivered as the hita’s icy cold sensations stabbed his mind. Shaman drank a little and pronounced it good, gritty but free of fever or bad magic.
Dante pulled off his mitten. His naked hands ached with real and phantom pain as he cupped the water to his lips. He remembered the danger of magic sniffers. The water dribbled through his fingers as the invisible hand disappeared. Dante filled his water pouch, drinking a few slugs before fastening his stopper.
The hita imaged the large conifer at the top of the far bank as a good shelter for the night.
They climbed up and pushed through the huge, thick fronds at the tree’s base. Inside lay a dark natural room, the floor covered with translucent, dry pine quills.
Dante stumbled inside and collapsed in a heap, cold and exhausted, inside and out. Into his mind crowded torturing memories of human things: hot stew and biscuits, warm cookies in a warm kitchen, toasting his toes before a fire while a woman fussed over him. Not much chance of any of that, ever again. He stared into the gloom. Yvonne’s precise voice mocked that the Goddess caused all his troubles. The blizzard’s arrival swished and shook outside. If he followed her thinking he lost his faith. He lost everything.
"Oh Gaia, Gaia. I don’t ask for much," he whispered. "Just it would be nice to have some small comfort. A hot cup of moccatine, say." Two steaming cups appeared on the ground beside him, the deep blue mugs familiar from Yvonne’s kitchen. He sat up with a start, almost knocking them over. "Damn my magic. Now they’ll know we’re within a day’s walk."
Shaman imaged Dante talking to Yvonne and shook its head.
"Right," said Dante with relief. "I never told her I can only fetch within two days walk of an object."
The hita dipped its snout, sipped the hot brew and indicated that perhaps he was useful after all. Dante warmed his hand around the mug, slipped his fingers through the handle and took a long sip. It warmed him right down to his toes.
He thought about a slug of whiskey in the cup or a chew of bliss, he could fetch them, then with a great effort dismissed the longing. That way always ended in disaster. Besides any more magic could attract unwanted attention.
Shaman pulled off some of the dead under-branches of the tree, cleared a spot clean of quills, and built a small, smokeless fire. Dante pulled the two gutted rabbits and quillbirds from his pack. They skinned and plucked then spiked the game on sticks, roasted it and devoured the meat. As they sucked on the bones, Shaman brewed a vitamin rich tea from fresh green conifer quills.
The shine plastered its cloak over the inside of the shelter to keep out any sudden gusts.. The wind shrieked far and high above, only a quiet swish of snow whispered down into the forest around the snug shelter. Man and hita piled their furs over and around themselves then entwined together for warmth, each ignoring the alien smell and feel of the other. Dante and Shaman passed out exhausted. Outside, the blizzard blew away any signs of their existence.
They crawled from the shelter to a gray dawn filled with slow downy flakes that conspired to hide them. The wraith, perhaps defeated by Dante’s refusal to return had disappeared, leaving only its cloak which Dante rolled up into his pack. Man and hita turned their steps to the south-west and home.
Weeks of hard slogging brought them to the end of the snow belt, to a hilly country with the weather cool, the trees and barrel plants flowerless and winter bare, the grasses lifeless and yellow. Still, it was mild enough for them to stride along with their hoods back and coats flapping open.
Dante and Shaman followed a hita trail; the whiff of certain fruit pods, an arrangement of leaves, the bend of a twig, a scatter of stones leading them towards a village hidden in the shrouded hills. They came to the edge of a small cliff over looking wilderness surrounding a shining lake. Below, a plume of greasy black smoke writhed up from the middle of the forest. Telepathic terror shot from the fumes through Shaman to engulf Dante. He covered his ears with his arms, as if screams echoed off the rocks. They scrambled down the scree strewn bluff, scraping and sliding to the bottom, then rifles cradled in their arms, Shaman in the lead, ran along the overhung path, branches and briars grasping to hold them back. Shots rang out, men shouted, fire crackled.
The trees opened to devastation. A longhouse burned. Shouting, laughing men picked off hita one by one as they stumbled from the hut with eggs and young clutched in their trunks.
"Rain!" shouted Dante. Water thundered down on the longhouse, as if from a huge bucket, quenching the fire.
The rag tag band of hunters froze in amazement. Two turned towards him and their faces changed to bewilderment. One opened his mouth as if to speak.
"Die, murderers! die," screamed Dante. His words flew black and hard down the hunter’s open mouth, exploded outwards from his throat and sheared off his head in a whirligig of blood.
"Duck!" imaged Shaman to the hita who threw themselves to the ground.
Dante and Shaman opened fire, Dante spraying his repeating rifle back and forth, the man weeds blossoming red and collapsing, some faces amazed even in death. The guns silenced, the hita descended. Shaman rushed forward and joined them. The clearing echoed with grunts, ripping and tearing. Then came the eerie quiet scraping as they scalped the humans.
The air reeked of wet charcoal, blood and burnt alien flesh. Broken eggs congealed in puddles of yolk and dying chicks. A few juveniles sat stone passive beside their dead mothers, their telepathic anguish beating through the air.
Dante revived, hot and sweating, from his robot soldiery and watched detached as the hita dismembered the humans. He felt nothing but the lightheadedness and slight queasiness remembered from helping William butcher a pig. So that’s what books meant by the heat of battle. Dante calmly pulled out the gun’s empty clip and slammed in a new one. The hita stopped their work and looked up, a wave of anger and hate hitting him. They turned and crouched as one, ready to spring. Dante felt no fear, just patient resolve as he leveled his rifle at them.
"Get the idea of attacking me out of their heads, Shaman," he imaged, aiming the weapon at his companion, who squatted over a pile of unrecognizable human flesh, vengeful jaws and teeth clotted with blood. "Remember, I brought the rain, got you your gun, shot most of the hita slayers. And I kill with words as well as bullets."
"Not human, shine child," imaged Shaman.
The hita backed down but remained suspicious. Their revenge finished, they ignored the alien as they comforted the juveniles and gathered up the broken eggs and their dead. Shaman worked herbs and magic healing on the injured.
Dante wondered if he should pray over those he had murdered. It didn’t seem right. He must dig a grave, it turned his stomach to think the creatures might feast on the dead men, but he couldn’t bring himself to go up to the torn bloody remains, let alone touch them. Dante imaged as much to Shaman who consulted with the other hita. A couple of them set to work carrying the bodies into the jungle.
Dante stood watching the hita toil, their eddying hate stopping him from helping. His pack weighed on his shoulders. He struggled out of it, plopped it at his feet and crouched down with a sigh, balancing his rifle on his knees.
"We leaving soon?" he imaged to Shaman. "I’m not exactly welcome here."
"Soon. I consult with the others."
Images and emotions flashed back and forth among the hita. Some wished to stay and rebuild, some Shaman convinced to travel with them to the caves. They all wanted guns.
"That much magic will bring a magic sniffer and my enemies, if the rain hasn’t already," pointed out Dante.
Shaman showed him Friend and Blueberry protected with rifles. Dante sighed and agreed. He stayed in a crouch, staring at the ground before him. Why bother with the raised arm drama and mumbo jumbo of a wizard? Who would he impress, not to mention that he’d never end up accepted into the ranks. These creatures only wanted the job done. The hita stopped their work and watched.
"From the nearest Mage’s armory," he said in an toneless voice. "Machine guns. A couple of shoulder bazookas and anti-aircraft guns. Hand grenades. Ammunition."
First one rifle, then another, then a rapidly growing pile appeared at his feet. It rained weapons instead of water and Dante hopped back to avoid burial. The storm died and the hita ran forward with glee, picking up and pawing their booty while Shaman attempted some order. Dante yawned, he felt as if he had carried every one of the arms the long miles from their depot. He laid his head on his knees and fell asleep. A grasp of his shoulder woke him with a start. Two half-grown juveniles examined him as if he was an odd living statue. They jumped back in fear, stumbling over the remains of the pile. The other hita stood a little way away in a small group, concentrating and examining their rifles as Shaman instructed them on safety, loading and aiming. Dante rose and stretched, exhausted and famished, his magic worn out.
"Anything to eat or drink around here?" he imaged for some unknown reason, unable to face the idea of hunting and killing a meal.
The juveniles stared up at him, outwardly emotionless, inwardly fascinated and fearful. The monitoring adults, after a short consult with Shaman, sent them reluctant permission to show Dante the now empty hunter camp with its alien human supplies. The young hita sniffed around the shrubs at the forest edge then led him through the bush to the edge of the lake.
They slipped out of the trees behind two domed pop-up tents sitting on the sand. A camouflaged flat-bottomed boat rested drawn up on the beach. Dante told the youngsters to move with silence, a human might have stayed behind. Tiny waves lapped at the shore, a waterlizard cried out on the water. One of the tents flapped. They froze and listened. Dante imaged the hita to stay where they stood then walked casually around the tents. A table with a lantern, camp chairs, a large cage and several boxes rested in the middle of the camp. A tree near the shore held a large cooler, large canvas bags and a net bag of beer and soft drinks in its branches, protecting the food from wandering animals.
"Hello?" he called. No answer.
Remembering a war video, he eased aside a flap of the first tent with the barrel of his rifle. The empty space revealed a jumble of sleeping bags, scattered clothes and empty beer bottles. The next tent revealed the same. The camp waited for owners who would never return. The juveniles wandered up behind Dante, having telepathically watched through his eyes.
He unwound a rope hanging down from the storage tree and lowered the containers.
The cooler opened to fresh caught fish that he gave to the hita, a quarter ham, salad greens, tofu and bottled dressing. The canvas bags snapped apart to reveal canned goods, bread, buns, uncooked rice and oatmeal. He found some little packaged cakes in the canvas bag and threw a few to his companions. A sniff and a taste and the sweet treat disappeared into their mouths.
He left the ham, it looked like hita – or human. A flayed rib cage loomed in his mind and his hunger vanished. Dante took a beer out of the net. Dare he drink it? Alcohol tended to end in disaster, but surely one drink couldn’t hurt. He twisted off the cap, raised the bottle and swallowed. The taste brought mixed feelings. A few more swigs and the light-headed feeling returned. Dante pulled apart a round loaf and ate it to sop up the beer. More drink helped wash down the bits of sand that had somehow managed to find a way into the dense soft holes of the bread. He sat down on the sand and watched the lake as he ate a cake and drank another beer. A cool breeze shivered in from the water.
Dante told the juveniles to return to the village and report to Shaman. They left, trunks stuffed with packaged cakes. The alcohol called for sleep. He dragged a pillow and blanket from a tent, found a safe hiding spot in the underbrush and collapsed in an exhausted heap.
Dante woke to darkness. Strange moans and hoots sounded back in the bush. The tents groaned and flapped in the night, the sprinkled moons painting restless shades throughout the camp. He shivered, drew the blanket over his shoulders and headed back up the trail to the village. The booming turned into the familiar sounds of a hita mating dance.
He stood at the edge of the forest and watched the creatures swaying, partners clutched together, their manes woven with swatches of the hair of their enemies, his own curls among them. It annoyed him, how they shared his hair with no idea that it belonged to him, that it might bother him to see it plaited in with the strands of the dead.
Shaman danced with partner after partner, belly red, eyes half-closed as it rocked to the rhythms. If the hita noticed Dante watching, none gave a sign. He sighed and, the remains of his tiredness bringing back his long forgotten limp, shuffled back down to the abandoned camp and the beer. He picked up a few bottles and wandered away from the ghosts, down the beach to a narrow outcrop, climbing to the top and sitting looking out over the water. A sea serpent dipped and writhed out on the moonshine lake. Dante pulled his blanket around him, opened a beer and took a few swigs to clear his fuzzy headache, thinking that he couldn’t say that this was his loneliest moment, so many of them existed in his memory, but it ranked near the top. Shine child, alien to the aliens, doomed to feel, act and look human yet not a part of humanity. A golem, an experiment so untrustworthy with his magic that they must turn him into a zombie.
Yes, he had murdered with his magic, this time on purpose. Nanny’s long ago lessons on forgiveness, turning the other cheek, watching his words as some day they could hurt and kill, it all sounded hollow now. He knew what William would have said.
"You have to treat animals with respect, even kindness, lad. Or they’ll turn on you. Cows’ll kick, dogs bite, lizards peck. And you and me, we know all about what can be done to men, don’t we?"
Dante downed another beer and stared at the stars and moons. The faraway boom of the hita music seemed to echo over the lake. He thought of Adonis Night, must be around this time. The day when Adonis returned to Gaia from the underworld, the beginning of spring, though at the farm, snow had still gripped the land and only the peeps and flutterings of the quill sparrows spoke of new life. On that night, all the world fell in love and lust. The married and lovers celebrated their union; the nuns visited their Adonis; the tea ladies welcomed nervous teen-aged boys to their first time, though that never happened to him. Some slaves met clandestinely or like William went alone to a once a year with the village prostitute or like Reba ... Dante realized with a guilty start that in his grief over William and Martha and the baby, he had not thought of Reba at all. They must have raped and murdered her too. She hated him, later tried to use him, but at least it sat out in the open not covered with false love like his supposed relations. She didn’t deserve her fate. The ghosts of the hunters nudged, he pushed them away with a vision of dead hita. Like Rotten, they deserved to die.
He sighed. Adonis night with Martha. His memories always came back to her. Sitting in silence beside her as the two of them listened, transported, to the great opera from the cathedral in Botany. Then the one night, when they made love as they listened, Martha gentle with her kisses on his wired jaw, passion overcoming the pain each time he moved his head.
Unloved, unwanted, alone in the dark with the ghosts of the dead, Dante stood and raised his arms, crying out to Gaia. The blanket slipped from his shoulders to the ground. Grief welled up and burst into the Lamentation of Adonis. The words echoed and reechoed off the hushed cliffs and the lake, his broken heart pouring into the song. A wind sprang up. Dark fingers of mist blocked the moons. Silent lightening flashed from cloud to cloud. The air hummed deep music. The horizon burst into color, a dancing, shimmering aurora borealis of light that waltzed with the ripples of the water.
A clamor of images and emotions invaded Dante’s mind. He broke off the song and looked down. All the hita stood beside the rock, staring out at the lake. Shaman sent him a vision of planes and boats crammed with guns and scowling soldiers.
"If they didn’t know where I was before, I guess they do now," imaged Dante with a wan smile.
A thought struck him. His power had grown, and the hita owned an arsenal. He knew how to kill, with weapons and magic. Not tonight, not tomorrow, perhaps not in the next month, but soon, he would strike back.