At the Boundary of Snow and Sand Page 2

  I really don’t know how many months we have lived underground together, but we have etched out a pattern for our days and learned to communicate quite well. The lizard is easily as intelligent as a human and now understands most of what I say. It can even answer simple yes or no questions; a talon scratch on the floor means yes, and a snort means no.

  Our lives are peaceful, and I practice my fire spells to my friend’s delight daily. Each time I use my power it grows. I have learned to melt down rocks to make new shapes, to make fire crawl across the cavern, up the walls, or dance in the air while flickering a rainbow of colours. The lizard likes green fire best so over time I have lined the entrance to the tunnel in the flickering emerald flames. These green flames are almost sentient. They will not harm either of us, but ward off anything or anyone else that seeks to venture farther into our domain than the river cavern.

  ~*~

  The chief’s first wife leads me to our Shaman’s tent, her two sons flank me on either side. There is no escaping. The Sun God is angry, it has been bearing down on us heavily and shortening the winters a little more every year. So the tribe has decided to appease it by sending it one of its own. They are sending me. Mother always told me to hide the fire spells, but Father is too loyal to our tribe and clan. He told the elders because his duty is to protect the clan as a whole first, so here I am, in possession of the chief’s kin. The Shaman’s tent looms before me, beautifully and ominously decorated in a pattern of reds, violets, and blacks on bleached white hide.

  Inside his other wives strip me down, then bathe and oil me. After the oil has soaked in they paint my face, arms, legs, and torso. The paint is gold and white; it's a pattern that mixes my family’s markings with that of the tribe and the Sun God. Then they leave me. Only a couple of hours remain until sunrise; until they tie me to a totem and set me on fire.

  The drumming outside the tent grows more insistent, it is almost time. I am going to burn alive for no greater crime than that of my birth. They think this will appease the Sun God so he will send them long winters once more. It won’t work; they’ll only succeed in bringing the full force of the Gods’ wrath down on their heads. Fear spikes in my heart, my skin grows clammy, and my breaths become short.

  I have to escape. I can cut the back of the tent open if I find something sharp enough, but they must have put something in the paint, some poison that’s slowly leaching into my skin and paralyzing me. I can’t move. My heart races faster as I fight against the invisible weight holding me down…

  ~*~

  A soft keen wakes me. I’m in the cavern and I’ve upset my companion. The lizard’s smouldering head is pillowed on my stomach and it keens softly at me again. I realize tears are running down my face. Echoing down from the world above I can hear the sound of sacrificial drum beats. They have found a new woman to burn. I shiver despite the heat radiating from my friend.

  Before the Sun has risen we will hear more than the beat of the drums. The wind will also carry on it the sound of screaming…

  ~*~

  I am back in the cavern. If I let them, the haze of memories filled with blood, snow, and fire will wash over me like the tides of the Great Sea to the West. So I push the memories away and keep working over my friend despite how futile we both know it to be.

  The woman did not survive her injuries, we didn’t reach the tribe in time to save her. The woman had already been set alight, and worse, the clansmen filled my lizard with poison arrows.

  I’ve done everything I know of to draw the poisons out, and for a time it seemed to work, but there was just too much. I knew we were finished when my lizard refused to eat. Bit by bit its temperature began to cool, and then more dramatically; nothing I can do now is helping. The cold is killing it now. It lies with its head in my lap, gives a last soft keen, and the glowing eyes close forever. The numbness I’ve wrapped myself in cracks open and a storm of grief rises up like an avalanche to take me.

  ~*~

  I lay against my lizard’s head and tears trickle down across the now dull green-black scales. This creature had shown me more warmth and understanding than my own kin. For a long time I lean against it, exhausted with grief and emptiness. Eventually my senses clear and I come back to myself, or what is left of me. My friend’s scales are almost the same temperature as my skin now. I look to the woman who lies as still as my great lizard; I will burn them here together so that my friend won’t travel to Elysium alone.

  Rising, I settle my companion’s head in the soft mass of furs from my bed — the large curving pelvic bone from some long dead creature — and then walk a circle around the great scaly body and the woman it died trying to protect. A trail of emerald flames follow my steps. Once the circle is complete I will the fire inward so that it engulfs both lizard and woman. Then I restore the fires along the walls and turn the rock around the tunnel entrance molten, sealing the cavern off. Nothing will disturb my friend’s home and collection.

  Everything I need to survive is packed in a sack. Several hours after I begun, the funeral rite is finished. I leave only the still burning fires in my wake, and take only food, water, my tools, and the long-discarded talon strung around my neck.

  I take the route to the surface that the lizard showed me and start West. This time when the drums echo there will be no sacrifice. There will be no others except for those that I carry out. One way or another I will bring the clans to heel. With each use my power grows stronger and more deadly. Our Gods are angry. They hunger for the blood of those who transgress against my kind, thirst for the souls of those who would harm their children. The wintery life of the clans is about to change permanently. I will bring them a new era…

  ~*~

  COMING SOON

  ~Kaeta~

  I clutch at my throat the way he did so many times. Free, I am free. I don’t feel free. More than ever it feels like I am in a cage, locked up and on display so that the tribe can watch my suffering.

  The night air is calm; quiet. A storm approaches and both people and animals have taken cover. Fat snowflakes fall and the soft powder of them mute my footsteps. Before me the western mountains rise up in silent witness. They are calling me again, calling me away from the sorrow and emptiness that lie in the East. Tonight my feet heed the call the way they have every night for the past two moon-turns. The Gods want me to leave this place, perhaps tonight I will not come back.

  My skin begins to prickle as I walk towards those mountains. Unbidden, a memory of him springs forth. He always used to tell me that I made his skin crawl with the feeling of hundreds of spider legs on his body. Someone is out there, someone like me. My feet carry me with purpose now and as my strides lengthen across the snow, I keep to the shadows of the towering trees as much as possible.

  Her voice, when she speaks, comes from behind me. “Do you walk to? Or from?”

  The woman I turn to is wrapped in heavy white furs and bleached white boots embroidered with a pale pattern of glistening flames. Her blond hair hangs in many thick, rope-like braids, and her eyes are the deep blue of the great river. Power exudes from her, I can feel it. It is her that I’ve been sensing.

  “I was looking for you.” I answer honestly.

  Surprise crosses her features, and then she smiles. “I was not expecting that.”

  “I could feel you, and I knew you were like me, so I started looking for you.”

  “Why?” She looks curious.

  My existence these last two months has alternated between numbness and grief. Now both recede in the wake of an urgency I don’t understand.

  “I wished to meet you.”

  “Why?” She asks again.

  “Because I have never met another like myself.”

  That brief smile flutters across her lips again, a smile that gentles the lethality of her stare. She raises a gloved hand before her, palm to the moon, and as I watch a globe of fire materializes in the air above her hand. It is bright red but gradually flickers through the other colours o
f the rainbow until it becomes blue.

  “Is that what you can do?” Her eyes dance playfully.

  I shake my head and my lips threaten their first smile in months. At a wave from my hand a rush of powdery ground snow flows towards her. It rises, spiralling and weaving in a column as tall as the woman herself. Slowly the flittering flakes form a mirror visage of the other young woman and cool into solid ice. She looks me over and then strokes the creation before her.

  “You are a rare and beautiful creature, snow girl.”

  Her soft words are the key to the lock that has been holding my smile at bay.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “East.”

  The word reminds me of my tribe, not an hour East, and steals the smile from my mouth.

  “You have no love for the East.” She observes.

  I shake my head and the silence of the forest steals over us.

  “My companions have their own… special talents. I know they would welcome another. Especially one with a gift such as yours.”

  “And what of your men?” I ask.

  “We have no men. Only boys, too young to be without the care of their Mothers.”

  Urgency fills me again, “And you would take me with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” It is my turn to ask.

  Her answer is long in coming. “Our kind are not safe among our brothers and fathers. They see our abilities as a curse and not the gift from the Gods that they are, and we are spread too thin to protect ourselves or each other.”

  “You would bring us together. You would… liberate us.” The words taste dangerous on my tongue.

  “I would see a day when our safety is no longer threatened by the ignorance of our men.”

  “If I go with you, my tribe will come for me.”

  “Let them come.” The woman smiles, only this time, her smile enhances the danger burning in her blue eyes.

  I glance over her shoulder, in the direction of my tribe. “If we go now the storm will cover our tracks.”

  “Let us go home then.” She says and turns us West once more.

  Silence overtakes us again and we walk toward the lines of mountains that stretch West from the great sea all the way to the desert in the East. We walk with purpose and put distance behind us quickly, but I don’t worry about discovery. The snow on the ground swirls in our wake, covering our tracks at my will. Everyone in my tribe has taken cover; the storm will hit by morning and buy several days to place distance between us.

  “You leave nothing of importance behind?” My companion asks suddenly. “No husband or children?”

  “My husband has been gone for two moon-turns.” I answer quietly. “My son also.”

  “I hear steel in your voice.” The woman says. “But very little sorrow.”

  “I gave my son to the God’s during his third month. My husband was gone to another tribe, looking for a second wife.”

  “You sacrificed your son?”

  “Better to place him in the hands of the Gods than the hands of my husband.”

  The woman falls silent again for several moments. Her words, when they come, are soft and filled with pain.

  “The winters have grown shorter in my home territory. Many years the snow no longer stretches out to cover the river.”

  I sense where this is going and have to force my thoughts away from the memory of my husband.

  “My father turned me over to the elders. They thought to bring the long winters back by giving me to the Gods. The fire was ready, my body was painted, but I escaped and brought death on them. During the fight I lost my closest friend.”

  Her eyes are haunted, as mine surely are. “Men do terrible things when they are afraid.”

  Her eyes flick to mine, and her mouth stretches into half of a bitter smile. “Perhaps it is time we give them something to truly fear.”

  “I would like that.” I tell her.

  Her eyes are hungry and flicker like blue sparks. “Can you fight? Or hunt?”

  I shake my head, “I can preserve food, or the dead. And I can tame wild animals. I can fish, and build shelter.”

  She nods. “You will learn to hunt, and when we get through these mountains you will teach the others your skills. In the meantime you can help us build shelters.”

  “I will set to work at camp. I may be able to keep the worst of the storm at bay.” I answer.

  She regards me curiously. “How will you do that?”

  Another unexpected smile stretches my face, “You will have to wait and see.”

  “I look forward to it.” She says with an answering grin.

  The rest of our walk to her camp is quiet, yet pleasant. I find her presence comforting. For the first time in months I truly absorb what my senses bring to me, the soft glow from the snow-covered forest floor, the cold crisp air, the wetness of snowflakes on my cheek. The numbness that has smothered me for months is receding slightly. I feel alive again.

  A faint green glow colours the snow as we near the encampment. There is a central fire pit where emerald flames burn on nothing but snow and leap high into the air. Women sit around the fire, talking quietly. Each has a bow or spear at her side. They appear neither surprised nor alarmed by our arrival.

  One of them, a woman about my age with flaming hair looks up from the spearhead she is sharpening. Her hard eyes rake over me for several moments before she speaks.

  “I see you’ve found another stray. What can this one do?”

  The woman who led me here raises an eyebrow at me. “Should I tell her? Or would you prefer to show them yourself?”

  I can’t hold back from another grin, and neither can the fire woman. It takes only a moment to trace the outline of a snake in the soft snow before my feet. A moment more and the snow takes form to slither across the frozen ground toward the red-haired woman in the likeness of a snake. She stares at it with an expression between fear and awe as it rises and dances before her like the hooded snakes of the South.

  The woman at her side, an older woman with white-blond hair, chuckles. “Welcome to our camp little one, I am Naja and this is Evania.”

  Her smile warms the empty hollowness of my soul, so I smile back. Then I wave my hand to release the snow from my command and the hooded snow-snake falls to powder at the red-haired woman’s feet. She pushes her boot through the small pile, and grins a menacing grin.

  “What is your name snow-girl?”

  “Kaeta.” I tell her.

  “Kaeta.” She repeats.

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