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It was the barest flicker of purple and white, the slightest swirl of cream and silver. Had it appeared in the midst of a market day, or even on stage at a great theatre, it was possible, though unlikely, that any normal person would have noticed. Maybe a Divine. Maybe.
But this was in the depths of a forest, miles from any human settlement. The tiny flicker morphed and shifted, twitched and shivered, pulsed and dissolved and reformed again.
The sun warmed it and it rose, the air cooled it and it fell. The rain drove it down and the earth sheltered it. But without life it faded, dimmed. Plants and insects were not enough.
It sifted through the layers of roots, loam and sand, into the hollows of a dug out den. It settled softly on the shoulder of a coyote. Maybe a single hair there turned white. Maybe that single hair was white all along.
The coyote sighed and lay down his head, the mice he brought were being played with by the three cubs. The mother of his cubs crawled into the den with a rabbit, and the cubs abandoned the dead mice to whine and paw for milk. The cubs settled down to nurse, and the father and mother ate and slept.
(((((*)))))
There was no self, only Coyote. Coyote learned that the whisper of chaos was useful in hunting. A swirl of white and purple and the prey would mis-step, zig instead of zag. But the hunger for chaos required caution. Untended, it collapsed the roof of the den, rotted prey beyond edibleness, and led a cub into disaster. Chaos fed chaos, made it stronger.
But Coyote was clever and cautious. He learned control and restraint. The next den was bigger, dry and sturdy. When the remaining cubs were a year old, the next set of cubs were just twins, but bigger.
Summer brought drought and the water place was brackish. Prey were few and small. The female lost her milk, the cubs died. Chaos could not supply water, could not support life. Life required order, death did not.
When the rains came, the female and male and the two adult pups were thin and hungry. The four tracked down a moose, also thin and weakened from hunger. Large prey was dangerous, and in the midst of the fight, a flicker of purple and a hoof lashed out and caught the coyote at the side of the head.
The dark clenched, pulled. Leaping, afraid, the moose bolted, escaped from the remaining coyotes, leaving behind the carcass of the father wolf. They sniffed the carcass, nudged and licked, the female howled.
(((((*)))))
Confusion. It was not coyote, it was not moose. It was separate. It was self. It was aware. But what was it?
It mourned the loss of mate, pack. This body moved differently, drank differently, hungered differently. Pack was not pack, it was herd, but mostly solitude. Different. Passive. Waiting for something, but not knowing what.
Deep forest, bog. Wading in cold clear water, grazing on pond weed and water lilies, the fresh green shoots of cedar and birch. Grass, lichen.
Strong urges bring him together with other moose as the leaves fall. The calves are born in early summer, and he drifts away again, to return in autumn.
Leaves fell. Cold cloaked the forest once again. Snow.
Rut makes moose ascendant, tenacious. Consumed. The sudden attack of dogs and humans brings the moose to his knees, falling, falling, falling.
Reach for life, power, sustenance.
(((((*)))))
Grosht stumbled as the moose collapsed, his vision tunneling and stomach heaving.
“Grosht! All right?”
He wiped the spittle from his lips. “Yah. Moose dead?”
“Yah!”
“Bring up the sledge. With luck we'll make it back to the hunting camp by nightfall.”
He levered himself to his feet, stumbling a bit but sight rapidly clearing, stomach settling. Breathing deeply, he examined the moose. One spear penetrated the chest, another pierced the neck. Bros and Jennet had already begun the field dressing, and the spear through the chest had hit the heart while the neck wound had split the jugular artery. He pulled the spears and checked the engravings as Solun brought up the sled.
“Solun, Bros, good hunting!” They both grinned at him as they all pitched in to load the sled while distracting the dogs with chunks of offal. The people shared out bits of the heart, cleaned out the stomachs and intestines, and shifted the carcass onto the sled before packing the useful organs back into the cavity.
Grosht settled a sledge harness across his chest, Jennet and Bros taking the other two, to pull the sledge together while Solun leveraged it from behind. Temporarily sated, the hunting dogs led the way through the forest. It was hard going, with nearly a thousand pounds of meat on the sled, and nearly 3 miles to the camp, just off the high road. Twice the sledge lines snapped, but Grosht had thought ahead and had extra lines to hand.
They made it there as the light was fading, but Joka, who had camp duty, had tea steeping, stew bubbling and pan bread frying
They hoisted the carcass up onto the storage platform to keep it safe from scavengers and predators, ate quickly, and exhausted, stuffed themselves into their bedrolls in a tent barely big enough for all five. It was cramped but warmer that way. They slept.
Grosht woke to dogs howling just before the tent collapsed. Swearing, all five hauled themselves out of the tent into the frigid night. A black bear was sniffing around the platform, pushing at it enough to make it lean precariously. While the rest of them yelled, Jennet grabbed a branch and shoved it into the banked fire.
“Light, damn you!” she swore at the branch. Grosht took his eyes off the bear to glance her way, and the branch ignited into a blazing torch. She ran at the bear , waving the branch, and the bear finally backed away.
The stars still shone but the moon had set. The hunting party sighed and grumpily set about righting the tent and building up the fire. The bear paced just out of the reach of the firelight. Grosht and Roka stayed up to guard the meat while the rest wearily regained their bedrolls.
The sun was just peeking above the horizen when the platform collapsed.
(((((*)))))
The only good thing about the journey back to their hamlet was the biting cold. The moose carcass froze solid and the road was snow packed and almost smooth. Everything else was shit, Grosht thought. The bear, loath to give up its chance at easy meat, followed until the hunters encircled him and killed him. The time it took to dress the bear set them back though the extra meat and fur was an acceptable compensation. One of Grosht's bone and leather crampons came apart, making his strides uneven. Jennet fell on a particularly slick area of packed snow; Grosht didn't think her arm was broken, but it was for sure strained. Another sledge line broke and they used their last spare. A sledge runner cracked, but they were just shy of the first house of the village when it broke completely, and the others came out to divy up the meat and carry it off.
It was well after dark by the time Grosht made it back to his sister's cabin, tired, hungry and wondering what was causing his run of bad luck.
(((((*)))))
By spring thaw Grosht was sure he was going insane. His neighbors believed he was cursed. Formerly valued for his skills with wood and knife, friends no longer asked for his help, and repairs he made on the cabin and holdings he shared with his sister and her husband unraveled. He began to sleep at the mapling shed, a mile from the village, to lessen the damage they had to deal with. Strange dreams plagued him less, sleeping where he wouldn't wake anyone with his odd howlings and grunts, as he dreamed of eating mice. Sometimes he dreamed of chewing a green mass,and woke with the taste of blood and a bitten tongue.
The worst was the children. His son's boy and girl, 5 and 7, had been his heart's joy, and his sister's three, 17, 16 and 12, had been his helpers and errand runners, and the oldest Jos, showed skill with his hands. Now he sent them away, worried his poor luck would endanger them. It broke his heart. Everyone felt sorry for him, but no one wanted him around. For the first time since his social and cheery wife died he was glad she wasn't there to see his shunning. He missed her still, and never had he been so lonely.
The upper passes opened and travelers began to move through. Jennet and Bros were organizing a trading foray down to the valley town, and were relieved when Grosht declined to travel with them.
Bitter, Grosht began to visualise his bad luck as a purple ball. Sometimes it was in his gut, sometimes his chest, and sometimes the back of his head. When he finished a job, whether is was a carving or a weaving or even cooking a meal, he would tell his bad luck “Now leave it!” He found he could light a fire or increase the heat to boil water faster. One evening, beset with gnats, he cursed the swarm and they all dropped. Horrified by the implications, he hid in his hut and shivered in the heat.
(((((*)))))
“Hey Grosht! Sum'un to meet cha!” Jennet's voice made him look up from his handwork. The older man was dressed far better than anyone from his village, with a black, grey and silver braid on his shoulder. He felt a jolt of fear as his vision swam and the world became sharp edged. A roil of purple and silver lurked in the strange man's chest.
“Who are you?” he asked, dry-mouthed, ready to run.
The man signed the Five. “A leaf on the wind.”