Beneath Ceaseless Skies #72 Read online

  When I slept, I dreamt of human children, one for each pup, and it stung how they reminded me of my own. Without thinking, because it is what you do with children, I taught them things over the following weeks: the basics of figuring, how to tend simple wounds, how to write in the Alorean common tongue. And so my nights were thoroughly occupied with this gentle fantasy, which sheltered me from thinking overmuch about my poorly spent life or strange and dubious future.

  * * *

  The weeks stretched past counting, and I measured time by the growth of the pups. They had given me purpose, and their mother had given me the ability to survive in the forest. I suspected that they had been behind the destruction of my camp, but I did not know what had caused the mother’s mortal injury. This was my only remaining anxiety—not for my own sake, but the pups’, who could not yet survive unguarded.

  I woke that morning as I had every morning for the past several weeks, surrounded by three balls of fur. The fourth perched between my shoulder blades. He was rapidly growing too big for this to be a good idea, but I hadn’t the heart to convince him so.

  We’d eaten well last night. My new traps had caught two rabbits, and one of the pups had brought down a third, more by chance than skill, but a kill nonetheless. And so the pups were stuffed to their necks and I woke before they did. I dared not stir—their late mornings were painfully rare—and at length slipped back into sleep.

  The pups were not there when I woke again into dreams. Since that first day with the mother wolf, my dream life had taken on new sharpness, not just with fancies of children, but in all other respects as well. The children’s absence did not trouble me; they often went adventuring into dreams of their own.

  I was exploring the Other Forest, the place I always went to in the strange steady dream world, when the father wolf found me.

  The silver pool I had found, as things often were in the Other, was still as glass, and impossibly clear. I saw his reflection first.

  Unlike the mother wolf, and the puppies, he was a wolf here as well as in the waking world. His coat was coal-black and silver-tipped, as the dark fourth pup would surely be when he was grown.

  You are not supposed to be here, he said. You are not.

  “What kind of greeting is that for one who raises your children?” I folded my arms, hands clenching.

  The fur lifted on his neck and his mouth parted with surprise as he forayed into my mind and saw that I spoke the truth.

  “Where were you?” I accused him. “Where were you when your cubs were born? Where were you when their mother died in the dirt?” A hot anger lit the air around me, a living red glow.

  He took a step backward. They say the gate has been opened, he said. They say the dawnsingers have returned.

  “You’re not talking sense.” His strange words took some of the heat out of my anger, replaced it with uneasiness.

  I went to watch the Pack, he said, and the cloud of ideas around his last word told me several things about them. There were many, beyond counting, and they were frightening. And—

  “They cast you out,” I said, now with the soft celadon light of sadness and unpleasant satisfaction.

  I left, he said. We left. My wife and I. We have no Pack. The Pack is mad. Humans—

  “But you have pups,” I interrupted. “And you have me now.” As if summoned, the children came, emerging from the forest. They gathered around me, and this time they flickered between wolf and human children, as if not quite sure what they should be.

  You are not supposed to be here, he said again.

  “Your name,” I said. I ruffled the fur of the dark grey pup, whose tail waved gently in answer. “What others call you.”

  There are no others.

  “What she called you. What your children call you.”

  Without warning, he flooded my mind with images. Birthsight, he said, halfway through the storm. There was high sunlight, a great stone, black-trunked trees, climbing shelf fungus. And near the end, a feathery, yellow-flowered herb that I knew.

  “Rue,” I said. He stood awkwardly near the pup-children, the tip of his tail twitching, as though he didn’t quite know what to do with them and wasn’t especially interested in finding out. The name seemed appropriate.

  * * *

  When I woke from that dream, the wolf was there and the pups were awake, warily sniffing him. As it had been with the lady-wolf, his mind was further from mine now, pushing me to wonder if the dreams had only been dreams. But the suspicion with which he regarded me was more intelligent than any mere animal could be, and when I said his name, his left ear twitched with recognition, and annoyance.

  I reached out to him with my mind, not knowing quite how I was doing it, mimicking what the pups’ mother had done to me—and he danced away, his lip curling to bare a long yellow fang, but not before I had touched his thoughts.

  His mind, like the minds of his children, was a sea of sensation, a titanic wave of scent and sound. Much diminished but present was sight—and I understood suddenly the disconnect between the waking and dreaming wolf-selves. He and the puppies were far too aware of the physical world while they were awake; in sleep, they could speak, figure, strategize—in sleep, deadened from sense, they were like me.

  Front-mind, now-mind. That is the wolf. And it explained, perhaps, part of why I remembered so little from my days now. In my close contact with all of them I was becoming just a little less human, a little more like these wolves, who sensed by day and thought by night.

  I went out to begin the day’s hunting, and the puppies followed me, as they did every morning. The father lingered, his tail twitching, but at length he followed also, realizing—whether he liked it or not, I thought—that his destiny now lie with his children, and with me.

  * * *

  That night we ate well again, better than we ever had, with a young doe the father wolf brought down. It was partly my kill; I startled it, and its own ill luck made it bound practically into the jaws of the waiting wolf. And so it was that we all went to our dreams that night well-sated.

  The Other Forest was dark. It had its own day and night, its own seasons, that came and went in no pattern I could identify, with no connection to the waking world.

  Defying the dark, the children filled the wood with the sounds of their play. They were still intimidated by the presence of their father, but one at a time—eldest to youngest—they flickered into their human child selves and played, jostling with a loop and stick game I had taught them. Here in the Other one’s focused thoughts could summon simple objects, and the little female, the youngest, was particularly adept at this.

  The father wolf watched them in silence for nearly an hour. When he spoke at last, I jumped. Thank you for taking care of my family. He never seemed to question that I might have been lying. For all I knew, lying might be impossible here, or for the wolves altogether.

  “They are a joy. But there is a danger to them in these woods,” I said. “Whatever killed their mother.”

  To his credit, when I showed him my memory of the mother wolf’s injury, he drew back with a keen of sorrow. It was good to know that he had loved her. That he could.

  The keen had been sorrow, sharp and pure like winter rain, but beneath it there was fear, and recognition.

  “You have seen this kind of injury before.”

  He is the king of this forest, he said, uneasy at acknowledging his own inferiority, but matter-of-fact. She should not have stood against him.

  “Maybe he threatened your children.” The truth was neither of us knew, but I preferred to call her injury heroic, especially as it made Rue uncomfortable.

  In spring, his antlers will have blood. He will be weak.

  “Tomorrow, then,” I said.

  * * *

  The notion of hunting the deer-king was not one I relished, but I liked much less the thought of sharing the forest with him, ever-fearful of his attack. We discussed the hunt throughout that night, and if anxiety pulled my eyelid
s open long before dawn, purpose filled my veins with warmth and energy.

  I spent the morning lashing my hunting knife to an old ash branch I’d harvested for firewood and then saved, noting its unusual straightness. A rude thing, to be sure, but it stood me a greater chance of usefulness than trying to stab a creature twice my height with a blade the size of my palm.

  We set out with morning still pale in the sky, heaping the puppies with distractions to keep them from following us. I emptied my recreated larder and taught them a new game—but very likely, the father-wolf’s stern threat of doom should they follow was what kept them in the camp.

  Rue threaded through the forest on soft, silent paws, and I followed as quietly as I could. We came first to the rose meadow, then bore northwest through the broadest side of the wood, places where I had never gone. Perhaps I had instinctively avoided the deeper territory of the deer-king, or perhaps I unconsciously attempted to remain close to Astralar, which the deer had learned to avoid.

  He would attack with his hooves, Rue said, which was only very slightly less dangerous than if he should come after us with full bone antlers. And he would attack us alone, which was a small blessing, but a blessing nonetheless.

  But we could not go after him alone. If we pursued only the buck, he would flee, compelled by instinct. We would have to threaten one of the does. And not just any doe—his queen.

  At first the evidence of their domain was subtle: nibbled leaves, short-cropped grass, saplings stripped of their bark. Then less subtle—trails through the underbrush, piles of dung like small black berries, delicate half-moon tracks in the mud.

  The first doe I saw was two wolf-lengths away from us, surprisingly close, her head bent to the soft spring grass. She was so silent I knew we must have passed one or two others without realizing. My heart picked up speed, and when my foot came down on a rock it turned my ankle. I managed to stop the yelp that wanted to fly from my throat, but the thud of my misstep reached the doe’s twitching ears. Her glistening black nose flared, and then she turned, leaping through the brush.

  The closer we drew, the more there were, their black eyes shining softly through the leaves, beautiful faces flat and haunting. They watched, only, despite the predator in their midst, as if they knew their numbers gave them the upper hand. If they all turned on us, we would surely die—a thought that pulsed panic through my veins as I imagined the puppies left alone to starve.

  I hadn’t known how we would recognize the queen doe, but in the end it was obvious. She held court in a glade with the finest grass, selecting daintily which she should eat. She was also the single most beautiful creature I had ever seen in the waking world, tall and slim, each turn of bone and pelt a carefully considered perfection.

  Rue felt no such admiration. He growled once, well back in his throat—ears turned from all directions toward us—and he leapt for her elegant throat.

  The deer-queen screamed high and clear, like the rabbit had done but ten times as loud. She did not move, and Rue hurtled toward her—I cried out, sure he would find his target, suddenly heartbroken at the idea of destroying so beautiful a creature.

  A shadow passed immediately over my head, massive, and struck Rue, knocking him away from the doe.

  The deer-king screamed, a strange high-pitched cry, but for all its reedy thinness there was nothing of weakness in it. He stomped, tossing his head—brandishing antlers that, as Rue had predicted, were small still and covered with velvet.

  The breath stopped in my throat as I marveled at his size, his majestic build. As we stood there, taken aback, the more awe-inspiring he seemed to grow. Surely this was a creature built by the goddesses themselves. Who were we to think we could bring him down?

  He stomped again, with both front hooves this time, daring us to charge. Rue snarled, a sound of nightmares and bloodlust, and advanced, snapping his jaws.

  The doe fled, a flash of dove grey against the green, and the deer-king loomed large before us. Incredibly, as he reared, the wave of emotion that radiated from him matched Rue’s—a terrible hunger, a thirst to destroy. I took in the contour of his muscles, the size of his hooves, and my grip on the spear slackened in fear.

  Rue’s ears dropped, only for a second, but I knew he felt it too. Then he rallied, snarling again, and his thoughts were so clear that they reached me without either of us intending it. Without words, he was imagining his mate being brought down by this buck, by his slashing hooves. The memory of it—my memory, reflected through the wolf-mind—filled him with rage.

  The deer-king lowed again, deeper this time, and spun, lashing out with his hind hooves. And with his attack came a wave of fury that not only equaled but exceeded our own.

  Rue gave a cry, and, without so much as being touched by the buck’s flying hooves, fell to the ground. He moaned and then whined, high, sharp, like one of the puppies when injured. The buck did not lunge, as I expected him to, but reared again and stomped, posturing. As he did, Rue’s pain—his own rage, amplified, made crippling—doubled back over us.

  The spear fell from my hand and I clutched at myself, broken down by despair. The buck’s tempest-rage was like a storm around us. My despair doubled, amplified by the beast’s contempt.

  I fell upon the spear, and as I hit the ground, the impact struck twice—first my body, and then a second shock, echoing from the buck. And I realized his strange animal magic.

  “He’s mirroring us!” I shouted, and even as I did so the wave of my anger bounced back at me, pounding in my throat, obliterating thought.

  And Rue continued to writhe, uncomprehending. His wolf-mind, consumed with the sensations around him—his own, and those that emanated from the king-buck—could not make sense of my words.

  Now the buck was bearing down on him, razor hooves flashing high, preparing a stomp that would end Rue’s life. Fear sizzled through me—first my own, then again—and I fought to force my unwilling hands around the haft of the spear.

  I rolled, and as I pushed myself to a kneel I wrapped all the will I yet possessed around my quivering, faltering mind. I seized myself, dug deep for the core that had carried me through, pitiful though my life had been. I had been born unwanted, had grown an orphan, had married, had been abandoned. I had survived. My children had survived. And I seized now on that survivor’s gut, and I willed strength at the monster. I willed vengeance. I willed protection.

  Rue rolled and leapt to his feet, jaws wide. His anger flared back, roaring up like a flame that has found new fuel, and I fought again to keep my will dominant over his in the buck’s mind. I drowned Rue’s ferocity with my surety.

  Wolf jaws snapped around the buck’s tender neck, dragged him down—and as his hooves touched the ground I lunged, driving the spear between his ribs, aiming for his heart. He bellowed, a choking sound as Rue’s jaws clenched harder, and then he fell, yanking the spear-shaft from my hands.

  I scrambled out of the way, and Rue’s jaws closed completely, tearing flesh with a sickening sound. The deer-king’s blood flowed around us, still hot, and I fought to keep down the gorge that bubbled up my throat.

  As I lay on the ground, gasping, wracked with the aftermath of near-death, Rue paced around the clearing, snarling, snapping, barking at the remainder of the herd. They’d gathered around us, and cried out as the deer-king fell—but now they dispersed, turning, white tails high as they fled.

  When they were all gone, and long minutes had passed while I lay there thanking the goddesses for my survival against all seeming reason, Rue’s growls subsided, and he panted, sitting back on his haunches. Later, we would drag the buck’s carcass to the puppies, and feed—but for now there was only life, only gratitude.

  Rue’s dark eyes turned toward me, the hunt faded from them. Change, he said, and I started, not realizing he could speak at all in the waking world. Change coming. You. The Pack. There was exhilaration in his bearing, a kind of welcome he had not given me before this moment.

  Some part of me that remained h
uman mourned that it came at the cost of such an animal as the deer-king, even as I knew he’d been a danger, even an inevitable destroyer, of our small family. There would be another deer-king—the herd was hardly thinned—but that day was far away.

  I thought of the puppies, and I sent my thoughts to Rue, who chuffed with agreement. Perhaps I would see his Pack one day. But for now, there were children to raise and teach. There was a life to live.

  Copyright © 2011 Erin Hoffman

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  Erin Hoffman is the author of Sword of Fire and Sea, the first book of the Chaos Knight trilogy, which debuted from Pyr Books in June 2011 and is set in the same world as “Stormchaser, Stormshaper” in BCS #14. She is a professional video game designer whose credits include Dragonrealms, Shadowbane: The Lost Kingdom, Kung Fu Panda World, and FrontierVille. She also serves on the International Game Developers Association’s board of directors, writes for the award-winning online magazine The Escapist, and has had fiction and poetry in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Electric Velocipede, Clockwork Phoenix, and more. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and lives with her husband, two parrots, and two dogs in northern California.

  Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

  THE MORAL EDUCATION OF A MAD BASTARD

  by Joe L. Murr

  I was twelve when I, like my father before me, was sentenced to transportation to Sutterland. My crime was the theft of a leg of lamb. I stole to feed myself and, if Governor Bidwell was to be believed, because I could not do otherwise.

  I was greatly impressed by the governor’s demonstration of how a man’s character can be read from the structure of his skull. He examined all us new arrivals of the Thirty-fourth Fleet at Botany Bay, not out of concern for our health after our six-month passage but to pursue his amateur studies in the new science of criminal anthropology.