The woman was carving arrows. That was what she was doing when she felt it, the tremble along the taut cords of the Earth. And the instant she felt it, she was already up on her feet— before she’d even felt it, even, she was already moving, up the mountainside. She wasn’t moving herself. She was being moved. For the second time in her life, the woman felt her first mother’s touch upon her, the Half Moon above reaching down to take hold of her limbs and lift her up from the bank of the river, start her walking, push, push, push her along, faster, faster.
“What’s happening? Mother, why are You doing this?”
The Moon did not answer, except to say “Go!”— and so the woman went. She had been taught to always do as her mother told her.
“Thoom-thoom, thoom-thoom!”— rumbling up through the ground— something was coming.
“What’s happening?” asked the woman again. “What is that? What’s coming?”— but this time, her first mother did not answer at all. The woman was running now, running up the mountainside, as fast as her legs and her enchanted belt could take her, as fast as the wind could outrun itself, as though a hurricane were at a standstill, the woman ran, up and up and up the mountainside. She was not so small as she had once been, and the cold did not so easily turn her back now. More than once, before, she had climbed to the very peak of the mountain and stood there, gazing out upon the world, the other mountains and the forests, the villages. Her bow was strapped tight to the back of her belt, but her fawn-skin head-scarf dangled loose from her shoulders, and her shining hair streamed out free behind her as she ran, like a comet scampering up the rocks.
“Thoom-thoom, thoom-thoom!”— she could hear it now, too, not just feel it. And she could smell it. Her nose was sharper than any other person’s, across all the Earth, and so she could smell it so vividly and completely, the sour, bitter, boiling-dead smell, and it made her wretch. If it weren’t for that belt around her waist, her legs would have given out beneath her and she would have collapsed, vomiting, on a small outcropping of stone.
“All the way to the peak!” urged the Moon. “Do not stop until you have reached the very summit of the mountain, and do not leave that place! Do you understand Me, child?”
“Yes, mother, I understand,” answered the woman, and she promised the Moon that she would do as she had been told, just as she always did as her mother told her.
“Good. Good.”
The woman carried on running and running, running and running to the top of the mountain. There, she would be safe, the Moon thought. There, the shadow would not reach her— would not even notice her.
The old she-bear was running, too. She’d been running even before the woman, the Moon had warned her even sooner. It was all the Moon could do, give a warning. The old she-bear knew already that it would not be enough, no amount of warning could have been enough. There was no such thing as enough to stop what was going to happen tonight. Nothing had ever been enough to stop it.
But still, the old she-bear was running. Not as fast as she’d been able run once, younger, stronger, less tired. But still, the old she-bear was running. And still, there was a point to it, maybe. It was all she had left to her, now that this moment had finally come, running, running around to the other side of the mountain, running on empty lungs and aching legs away from the bush of berries she’d been picking.
When the woman reached the top of the mountain, she stopped, and she turned to look behind herself, back down the way she’d come from, and that was when she saw it. There, at the foot of the mountain. She saw what the people of the village had seen— and again, she wretched. It was a vomitous thing. Nearly half the size of the mountain itself, hulking, lumpen, garbled and twisted and writhing, parts of itself coiling and uncoiling, opening and closing, unraveling and joining again and clinging and clinging, horribly, like oversoaked clay
“…mother… what is that?”— again, she asked, and again, the Moon did not answer. The Moon did not hear her. The Moon’s attention had gone from her. It was to the shadows now, that the Moon’s eye had turned. It was to the shadows, now, that the Moon spoke.
“Turn back. Leave this place. Do not return,” She commanded. “You do not have My permission to approach these mountains. Leave, and contaminate some other part of the Earth with your dismal presence and your foul intentions. I will not have you here. I will not let you violate this sanctuary.”
The great shadow slowed. It stopped, at the foot of the mountain. But it was not because of what that the Moon had said. The great shadow stopped, and it sat on its haunches, shaking the Earth as it lowered. The smaller shadow dropped down from its back onto the dirt. For all of the great shadow’s horror, it was no more than a mere tracker, tonight, it was here for its noses, however many it had. The smaller shadow continued, now, on foot, alone. In defiant arrogance. Or indifference. There were no words that had ever stopped it from violating anything. And no force, either, that could stand against it, not even the Moon. For all Her warnings and commands, She knew that it would be meaningless for Her to try and reach down into the world and change things as they happened, here. These were events that Her hands could not touch. Other hands would not allow it.
The smaller shadow was in the shape of a man, or what could be called one. The woman could see him from the mountaintop with her sharpest eyes, even just as darkness upon darkness, the outline of him, moving. How was he moving so fast? It seemed impossible.
All the creatures of the mountains scattered as they came, dove in a panic out of his way. Mice and squirrels and rabbits went scampering into their burrows. Deer and wolves sprinted all about like splattering dewdrops. The birds took to the skies, and off into the distance; the shadow was death itself— but they needn’t have bothered. He hadn’t come here for them. There was an order to this. An order to follow, an order to be kept. Their place on the list hadn’t come yet.
He was here for the bear.
The woman was captivated. This was the nearest to another person she’d seen since those two strangers with the infant so many years ago, and he was as like them and unlike them as they had been like and unlike her. The man was much smaller than the shadow he’d been riding, but even so, he was a giant, with enormous, muscled arms and a back like a tree. He was wreathed in inky fog as he moved, dead black. She couldn’t make out any details beneath that, his skin, his hair, his eyes, his face, what he was wearing, none of it.
He was wreathed in raw power.
He was wreathed in the opposite of moonlight, the enemy of moonlight. Other hands had worked upon him.
The woman had never seen any sort of creature quite like this, before, she was captivated, captivated— was he truly a person? Did he just appear to be? Without even really thinking about it, she began shuffling slowly down from the peak, towards him— but the Moon caught the movement out of the corner of Her eye and sharply rebuked Her daughter— “I have told you to stay in place, right where you are, and so stay in place you shall! You shall not budge! You shall not defy Me!!”
The moment the Moon said it like that, She wished that She hadn’t. The woman hadn’t been defying Her, the woman hadn’t even been thinking of it. Nothing but curiosity, that was all it had been, and there was no one to be blamed for that aside from the Moon Herself. There were so many questions that the woman was asking now that she wouldn’t have been asking if only they’d been answered before the fact. The Moon had had so many years to answer so many questions before they’d been asked, but it was too late for that now. It was too late for so many things. It was too late for innocence, or patience. It was too late for the she-bear. Even if the Moon hadn’t warned her, the old she-bear would have sensed the shadow coming from miles and miles and miles away. He made no attempt at stealth or guile, he didn’t play at any sort of pretend that anything wasn’t what it was. There was no need for any advantage. Advantage was weakness, advantage was for the weak. He simply raced like an arrow through the forest, around to the other side of the mountaintop where the old she-bear was running, running, and she’d had just enough lead time to just barely get where she was going to when at last, he was upon her.
“Do not do this,” commanded the Moon. “I forbid it. For the sake of anything that ever existed in your heart, simply turn around and leave this mountainside. Leave at least one part of this world unstained.”
The smaller shadow slowed. He stopped, at the edge of the clearing. But it was not because of what the Moon had said. The chase was over. Here he was, and here was the she-bear, on the ground ahead of him— laid out on her side, afloat upon a pool of Moon-white flowers, gasping, panting. Even as old as she was, there was nothing living on the mountainside that would have dared to face her head-on. She was larger and stronger than anything— and even if she hadn’t been larger and stronger, she was kinder than anything, and there was nothing living on the mountainside that would have wanted her any harm. Even the birds she frightened out of her trees when she went climbing for honey, even the bees whose honey she took— for everyone living on the mountain, living on the mountain was a bit better with the old she-bear around. She was not at all used to having to fight, certainly not for her own life. But even so, she began to lift her exhausted self again from the ground, get up onto her back legs, brace her claws.
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And then she stopped. No. This was pointless. This was a joke, her trying to fight him, as she was, as he was. Instead, she would beg.
“Mother, please… I’m sorry… I did not mean to stray from this mountaintop,” swore the woman. “I meant You no defiance, and I will not move again from this spot.”
She could not see anything that was happening now. She had lost track of the shadow, and the trees around the opposite side of the mountain were much too tall and thick for her to catch sight of him again, certainly not while he was standing still. She did not know where he was. She did not know where her second mother was. She did not know what he was, or what he was doing, or why he was here. She did not know why her first mother had commanded her to flee to this mountaintop and remain here, away from it all. She did not know why her first mother would snap at her like She had. She did not know why her first mother would not answer her questions, so many questions, and she did not know anything, anything. She was helpless. She was frightened. She needed to know. She begged.
The old she-bear begged and begged. She did not have words, in the way that human mouths have words. But she had other things, half-shared memories and what used to be words and her old, dark-brown eyes, shining in the desperate Half Moon’s light— oh, how the Half Moon sent Her light pouring down onto the old she-bear’s face there in the clearing, that clearing that she’d come trotting off to so many times, for so many nights, for so many years, pouring and pouring came the Half Moon’s light.
“It doesn’t have to happen this way,” begged the Half Moon with Her light. “You don’t have to be like this anymore.”
“Please, mother mine, I need to know what is happening!!” begged the woman. “Please!!”
The old she-bear begged with her eyes to the shadow, and with the damp ache of her breathing, and more than that she begged along the taut cord of the Earth’s soul stretched between them, her and the shadow, her and the hunter, she begged along the cord that had connected them before, and the shadow, the hunter, even without words, he knew what she was asking from him, begging from him. She was begging him, at the very least, please, to put her in the same place.
It was the only thing she wanted, now. It was the whole reason she had come running here. This was where the shadow had come before, this exact spot. This was where the she-bear had stood, watching, helpless, wishing that he would have just killed her, too. But no, there was an order to things, and order to be kept. Her place on the list hadn’t come yet, then. Her place on the list was now. And now, here she was, in just the same place— and so surely if this was where the she-bear died, too, down here, then she would end up in just the same place up there. Simple, desperate logic.
For a moment, the shadow considered denying her, only because she had asked. It was weakness to ask, and only the weak asked, and the weak were deserving of nothing. It was strength to take, and it was strength that would have led him to give her what she begged— if she had reared up, if she had fought back. But no, perhaps he would give it to her anyways, in honor of that taut cord between them, the half-memory of before he was him and before she was her.
“Fine, then, Callisto, Forced Upon By the Thunder,” spoke the shadow, in a voice so soft, so flat for what he was. “I shall put you where you wish to be.”
He pulled a mighty weapon from his back, wreathed in the same unreadable darkness as himself. He raised it towards the she-bear.
“No!” shrieked the Moon above. “NO!!”
Callisto’s last thought was that she was fortunate to an old she-bear, now, instead of a human woman. Being forced upon once had been enough.
It was bitter fortune. Sour fortune. Wine made with spoiled grapes and poisonous berries. But even so: wine and fortune. A quick end to things. A clean end to things. A little dignity left over. The Moon decayed into sobs and howls, rage and sorrow— threats and laments. The light above flickered. The shadow turned on his heel without a thought, without a notice of all of it, and he simply went rushing back the way he had come, back around to the front of the mountain.
The woman’s eyes could catch him again, now that he was moving. And more than that…
“Is… no…”
More than that, her eyes could catch the new stars that had appeared overhead, to the North. Four legs and a tail.
There could be no mistaking it. You could not spend your entire life falling asleep cradled in a pair of arms, or with your head against a thigh, you could not ride as a child upon a hunched back, or tug a little too hard on a pair of rounded ears and not recognize them in the stars. The woman knew, instantly, what those were. She knew, instantly, what had happened.
Instantly, fury— fury, she had met before, fury was an old friend, fury is the friend of everyone who has ever not gotten her way— but then, something new. Vengeance. A cold heat, a burning chill. A bile, rising, from her gut, from lower than her gut, rising higher than her head. Vengeance was a strange traveller, arriving now in the woman’s heart— she had never felt anything like this horrible thirst, this gnawing, burning, agony of something so wrongly undestroyed— the shadow was a thing undestroyed when he should have been just dust. How dare he exist? How dare he exist?! The chittering night itself seemed to whisper to the woman to obliterate him, he who had stolen her mother from her. She let out a terrible shriek, she could not hold it in, but no matter how much of it she let out, it just kept coming and coming and coming, and there wasn’t any less of it inside of her, not even the slightest bit less— vengeance!— vengeance!!— VENGEANCE!!!— fury and vengeance, she could not hold it in, she could not keep it inside of herself, the howling, wounded howling, dim, black, moonless blood from the torn-off vessels of her heart, she could not hold it in any more than she could hold her feet in place, where they were on the mountaintop. She was moving, moving, she could not stop herself.
The Half Moon remembered her daughter, then, when She saw her running. “Stop!” She said. “Do not do this! Do not pursue him!”
But the woman, like the shadow, ignored the Moon. She just carried on running, running down the mountain like a typhoon gale. There was nothing in her head but vengeance, vengeance! She ran and she ran, by the power of her belt— and from her belt she reached back and drew her silver knife with the moonstone handle. It flashed with eager violence. She would catch the shadow and she would gut him with this, she would kill him, but slowly, she would whittle away at his body with his knife a little at a time, like carving an arrow from his flesh, and it wouldn’t be until there was nothing left that she could do but kill him that she would finally kill him.
The shadow, though, it was fast unlike anything she had ever seen or known before— he was as fast as she was fast, the shadow, or even faster. She wasn’t gaining any ground on him, a third of the way down the mountain, halfway down the mountain, she wasn’t getting any closer to him. But she wasn’t falling behind, either. She wouldn’t fall behind him, no matter what happened. She would run and she would run and she would run, she would chase him and she would chase him until he slowed, until he stopped— he had to, everything had to, and when he did… she gripped her bow tighter. Vengeance! Her second mother was stars above her, now, nothing but stars. Gazing down? Maybe. Who even knew if that was true, anymore, but if she was gazing down at the woman tonight, she was going to see herself avenged. Simple.
“No!” shouted the Half Moon. “Turn back! You must not continue!”
But— “I shall not turn back! I shall chase him down and I shall tear him to shreds, and then I shall tear at the shreds until there is nothing but air!!”— the woman did not slow, she did not stop. There was only blood for her, tonight, pounding in the veins of her neck and wrists. Blood pouring from the torn-off vessels of her heart. Only blood, or whatever that shadow had for blood, waiting to meet the air and the dirt. His blood would be hers, tonight.
“You are My daughter!! I command you!! You shall stop where you are!! You shall go no further!! You shall obey Me!!”
“I shall obey no one! I shall meet that shadow and I shall make him beg me for mercy, and I shall give no mercy onto him, and there is no force in all the heavens or down upon this Earth that can change my course!!”
By now, the shadow had reached the bottom of the mountain. He had reached that larger shadow, that had been sitting this whole while, quietly, waiting for him. A terrifying thing, a tame thing, a strange contradiction. It lowered its great body for him to leap up onto its back, and then it turned, and it started away.
“Thoom-thoom, thoom-thoom!”
Its legs were longer than the tallest tree, and it lumbered along at a reasonable trot, but even so, it was not nearly so quick across the Earth as its master— or as the woman. It was here as a tracker. The hunt would be impossible without it. The list, the order would be impossible to follow without it. But it was not nearly so quick as the woman. If she kept up after it now, she would surely catch it, and the shadow, the monster, whatever he was, riding atop it.
“STOP!!” howled the Half Moon. “YOU WILL STOP!! NOW!!!”
But no. “I shall not stop!! I shall not! I shall not!! Not for You, not for anyone!!— there is no one who will save him from my wrath! Let all upon the mountainside and across the whole of the world; do not stand against me, or your fate shall be as his!!”
The woman carried right on running. She did not hesitate. She did not falter.
The Moon had been defied enough for one night. She cried out across the whole of the mountainside, to every living thing that could hear Her, She called them, She commanded them to come, come and do Her bidding, fulfill Her purpose. She called them, all of them, to one single stretch of forest, three-quarters of the way down the mountain, where the woman was headed now, faster and faster.
“Thoom-thoom, thoom-thoom!” trembled the Earth below.
The animals were frightened and uncertain. Not a single one of them wanted to put themselves between the woman and whatever she might be chasing. They knew of her. They had seen her before, they had seen what she could do. They had heard her shouted threats, echoing far and far and far, all around.
But who were they to protest against the Moon? And so they came racing, running, rushing, scampering and flying. All the countless creatures of the mountainside, young and old, large and small. There were squirrels and mice and rabbits, there were deer and wolves and horses, badgers and wild boars and birds— sparrows and eagles and geese. There were no bears. All of them, hundreds of them, they crowded the path ahead of the woman. They took up all of the space upon the dirt and roots, all of the space upon the tree-branches— ahead of the woman, and all around, to the left and to the right, they blocked her, a living wall answering the call of the Moon.
There was no clean way for the woman to get through. She would have to kill them. She would have to kill all of them. Or—
“HOW DARE YOU?!”
She turned, in such a rage, such a rage, she turned and she hurled her knife to the dirt and she pulled her bow from her back— she hardly even paused to untie the blanket, she very nearly tore it as she pulled forth her bow and she nocked an arrow and she drew back the string and she aimed up, up, up, dead-on at the Half Moon, the woman aimed her shot. And she held it. And she held it. And she held it— eyes cutting sharper than the arrowhead, she held her shot, trembling against the stiff bowlimbs, and she glared at her mother above.
Nothing would have happened if she had released the arrow. The Moon was much too far away in the sky, and the woman was only a woman, only a person. The arrow would have gone up as high as it would have gone, it would have slowed, it would have stopped, it would have turned and made its way back down, faster and faster, until finally thumping from nowhere into the soil, or into the flank of some poor creature, caught unaware. The arrow was no threat to the Moon, not truly.
But if the woman had had the strength, in that moment, that instant, she would have shot an arrow straight through the heavens into first mother and shattered Her, just like that.
Just for that moment. Just for that instant. And then it was gone. The woman relaxed her bowstring. She lowered her arms. But there was no going back, now. The ghost of an arrow had already gone sailing into her mother’s heart.
Silence.
Silence. That certain sort of silence after something horrible has happened in a forest. All the gathered animals hung their heads, eyes averted down into the dirt— all the animals, they plodded off in all directions, back to wherever they’d been before, whatever they’d been doing before, or somewhere else to sit alone and wait for the shudder of everything that had just happened to fade from their bodies.
The woman watched them go.
The two shadows were long gone, now, lost in the night. The stench had already faded, the ground was still and calm. It would be no easy thing, finding them again.
But what else was she to do? Vengeance. Vengeance. Vengeance.
The woman tied the bow back onto her belt. She left the mountainside, stomping her feet. She vowed never to return.
