Snow-Walker

Six

It was with pain that the powerful spirit

dwelling in darkness endured that time.

Sleep was a new thing. Obeying the heaviness in its stomach and head, the rune creature had hidden all day in a cleft on a fellside, and the strange darkness had come down inside its eyes and taken its mind away.

When it woke, the daylight had gone. All the stars looked down at it. For a moment the thing lay there, still curled. Then the voice came out of the whiteness and spoke sharply, and coldly; it uncramped its limbs and staggered up, stiff with frost.

Outside the cleft was open land, far below. This was a different country. There were trees, yes, but among them open smooth slopes, white and untrodden. The land folded into valleys, running south.

The creature began to trudge. It had come through long weeks of weariness and ice, and there was a long way to go yet, but the desire inside it was sharpening. Somewhere ahead, there was something it must have. Yes, said the voice quietly. The voice ruled it. She would never let it go, let it escape—dully, the creature knew this. She … when had it first known the voice was she? Recently. Memories and thoughts were confused, stirring into being like a pain.

Half sliding, half tumbling down the smooth slopes of snow, the spell-sending watched the moon with pale eyes. The silver ball bobbed high, out of reach. Angry, the creature tried to climb a tree, a tall pine, but the lowest branches snapped under its weight and it tore at the trunk with its claws in wrath, slashing the bark into deep parallel gashes. Again and again it struck, tingling with peculiar pleasure; not stopping until the tree bole was flayed bare, its fibrous clots of bark littering the snow.

After that it went on, lumbering through the dark, crashing through branches, dim thickets, the long blue shadows of the arctic night. It had eaten well in the last days. Hare, stoat, marten; the rich juices of the reindeer herd. It murmured at that memory, floundering through the steep empty slopes, through drifts as high as its chest, tearing a long scar through the dim ghostly snowfield. Above it the moon hung, a perfect silver hole in the sky.

When dawn came, the creature paused under a bush heavy with red berries. Shaking the snow off, it crammed them into its mouth, sharp bubbles of taste that burned and hurt and burst. Then it stopped, sniffing the air.

Something was coming.

Something so strange, so deliciously and muskily scented that the rune beast dribbled red berry juice and swallowed without thought.

Cautiously it drifted to the edge of the trees.

On the snowfield a thin, gangly thing was moving. It had long flat feet, and it slid them over the top of the snow. In its muffled paws long sticks splayed to each side. A scrawny, biped thing, heavily furred, laboring up the slope.

The creature watched with ice-pale eyes. Then it moved out of the trees and stood up.

The skier turned his head. His lips moved soundlessly.