Chapter 18

Circa 1000 BCE

After Saennuz was gone life continued fairly quietly, at least for a while. The chief, Manniz, was only mildly irritated at the turn of events, cementing my certainty that he had been looking to be rid of his overbearing mate and would not be inclined to question me too closely.

My own position within the clan was still somewhat precarious, however; I had some skills as a shaman, but the shaman woman, Oskuz, viewed me as a competitor in this area. She had also been close to Saennuz and I believe she suspected me.

Worse still, everyone—men and women alike—viewed game caught by a woman as an affront to the men of the tribe. Normally I would not mind for I still enjoyed gathering and preparing foods and tending to animals, and the men in the tribe were kind to me. But it was challenging to make myself be seen as truly valuable and trusted and I found myself despondent again, wondering why I should care about anything.

As spring wore on into summer, things began to come apart. The women in the clan were busy trying to place either themselves or their daughters at Manniz’s side. The men were maneuvering to replace him altogether, particularly his eldest son. And while all this was going on the day-to-day rhythms of clan life were slowly but surely eroded to the point where little was being done to prepare for the next winter. As the factionalism grew fiercer, the rivalries more bitter, Oskuz began to campaign against me, blaming me for all that had gone wrong since Saennuz’s death. That she had success with this was simply more indication of how badly things were deteriorating.

Manniz retained his place as chief by taking Saennuz’s youngest sister as his mate, but by then it was too late. The clan was in disarray and his mate was not half the power broker her sister had been. Instead of attempting to bring parties together to try to prepare for winter she instead joined with Oskuz against me. Manniz was not inclined to hear their plotting, but as winter bore down and famine loomed very large in the future he finally began to yield.

One morning the old Shaman bitch came for me, and took me to see Manniz. They both led me out into the wild as the skies were growing an ugly slate gray. None of us had eaten since the day before, and the air was cold and smelled of a coming storm. I had been expecting this turn of events and had done what I could to prepare against need, but I could sense something in the two of them that made me uneasy. I was prepared to run, but I was uncertain there was any real danger; it was merely Oskuz’s unconcealed glee at her victory that had me on edge. At least, that was what I told myself.

“Far enough,” Oskuz said, and I looked to Manniz, then gasped as Oskuz’s wiry arms seized my own, drawing them up and back behind me, “It’s time to be done with you and your ill luck!” she cackled in my ear.

“I don’t understand!” I cried, but then I saw the blade. I looked into Manniz’s eyes; saw his unhappiness, his determination as he reached for me, pulling open my cloak and my tunic to expose my chest.

I gasped slightly, then smiled at him. “Yes, it’s better this way,” I whispered. “Strike true.”

He paused a moment, and I could see his confusion, so I nodded a little and looked to the sky. I could almost feel Oskuz’s disappointment, for she wanted to hear me beg for my life. Instead I merely trembled a little in fear and excitement. An intensely sexual thrill coursed through my body as I lifted my head, arching my spine to offer a clear target. I could feel the conflict rising in him, but Oskuz broke the spell.

“Do you expect me to hold her forever? Do it!”

“Slekanam!” he cried, and his fist lunged forward, plunging the blade into my chest, the edge perpendicular to my breastbone, entering inside the curve of my left breast, seeking and finding my heart in an expert stroke. It did not even hurt; rather it drove the breath from me, my chest collapsing inward from the force of the blow. Breath would not come and my knees buckled as Oskuz released me, letting me drop to my knees as Manniz stepped back, drawing the knife from my chest. Vision wavered as I saw crimson stained snow, then I could support myself no longer, falling forward into the cold and darkness, a throbbing, pulsating roar filling my ears as their voices receded. I embraced the darkness, welcomed it, invited it to envelope and consume me, erase me, make an end to this, to everything…

And it was here that I learned the most horrid truth of all about myself.

Cold and pain and aching pressure in my chest dragged me from the embrace of the nothingness I craved. My body shook and I could feel the thin stream of air torturously drawn into my lungs, slowly filling me with breath, then a wracking, agonizing coughing exhalation; thick, vile goo spitting from my throat, fouling my mouth, forcing me to full awareness. Hands sought purchase, trembling arms lifted me and another breath entered me, much easier now that the clotted blood and mucus had been expelled, then made its exodus in a despairing sob. On my knees, I probed at my chest with numb fingers; the wound was barely perceptible.

Had I simply been fooling myself? I had been injured before in frightening ways. A fall once from a tree. A time when everyone who had eaten from a certain animal had sickened and died but me. A blow to the head with a hammer. But never once an injury so dramatic, something so obviously beyond surviving: a knife straight to the heart.

The wound was healing as I watched.

Still on my knees, I leaned backward, and a scream of rage tore from my lips. I hurled my fury at the gray, uncaring sky, my body shaking as I ached to destroy the Gods who had cursed me, for now I knew the full truth: It was not just that I did not age, it was not just that illness rarely touched me.

Truly, I could not die.

Cold, starving, and betrayed I tried to stand, but slipped and fell back, landing across a frozen hump in the snow. Rolling over I struggled to my knees, feeling fur under my bare hands. Uncomprehending I swept aside the snow to reveal… Oskuz? She was on her back, but her head was twisted, her neck quite emphatically broken, shock frozen on her face. In my state I was unable to appreciate the irony of it all. I began tearing at her clothing, stripping the furs from her frozen body, wrapping myself in a desperate attempt to shelter myself from the biting cold. And through it all the gnawing ache in my belly grew stronger, more insistent, a scent touching my nostrils through the dry, frosty air: tantalizing, intoxicating. Raw meat.

“I don’t think so!” I shrieked into the coming darkness.

Forcing myself to my feet I sought my bearings and set out west… but stopped after only three steps. I could not think, could not force my feet to move, my body trembling violently as the hunger became like fire within me, warming me even as it sapped my strength further. I felt under my garments for the knife I had secreted there what felt like an age ago. I drew it out and turned.

I stared at Oskuz’s body as it lay stretched out in the snow. It was not that cannibalism was new to me: it happened, on occasion. With this weather the chances of finding food on my own were slight. But Oskuz, and uncooked?

But after all, what difference did it make? He had left us to be food for beasts. I sank to my knees beside the body. Once the decision was made I wasted no time. The knife bit into the frozen meat of the thigh, cutting, tearing at the tough flesh until a strip came free. The first mouthful was the hardest. The meat was grainy and tough, and so cold it was tasteless, at least at first. After that it did not matter what it tasted like: I fed like a starved animal…

After I calmed, as darkness surrounded me, a small cave came to mind. It would be easy to seal off from the wind, if not terribly roomy, and far enough from the village to avoid being detected. I dragged Oskuz’s carcass behind me, my mind fixed solely upon my destination. I finally reached it in moonlit darkness, the sky clearing enough to make the last leg of the trek possible, though the temperature plummeted.

The cave was southward facing, really just a depression in the hillside, but I had spied it during the summer and as was my habit by now I had marked it, as well as a few other random places, as a bolt hole. Any time I had had a chance I had done my best to prepare it against need: there was wood and flint and soon there was a fire.

Oskuz’s frozen, colorless eyes regarded me from the edge of the circle of firelight.

“You don’t know how lucky you are, old woman,” I told her. “And how did you wind up dead, anyhow? Did you gloat too much?”

I started going through what I had: Manniz hadn’t bothered to strip either of us and Oskuz had been carrying a very nice bronze knife as well as her medicine pouch. As I went through her things I could feel the glazed, sunken orbs of her eyes upon me.

“Don’t be jealous, you certainly have no need for these things… and winter is just beginning. Strange, isn’t it? Here you had it all figured out, but you didn’t see this coming, did you?”

The fire shifted as I poked at it before adding another good-sized log.

“I didn’t see it either, and I’ve got no excuses. I’ll bet you just laughed a little too loud, and now there you are and here I am. Hardly seems fair, does it?”

In my cave I had enough long straight pieces to set up a roasting spit, so I got that together then took the bronze knife and started working it with the sharpening stone I’d found tucked in her pouch. I would have to butcher as much of the carcass as I could easily manage, then drag the rest far from my camp. Being alone I could not afford to be attracting any predators. Once the knife was honed to perfection I moved over to the body and dragged it closer to the fire where the light was better.

“You know, if I could give you back your life and take your place, I’d do it. But since I can’t… if it’s any consolation, you taste terrible.”

The fire snapped and muttered at me, only just blunting the bitterness of the winter night. I was alone in a way I had never truly allowed myself to understand before. When Manniz had produced that knife I was so certain that finally, finally this would end. Oh, there had been other times, other injuries, but this time, this way… I should have finally had peace. Instead here I was, with only flames and the dead for company.

I set to work with a will.

Chapter 19

Ann Arbor, February 2005 CE

“I’m not sure I could do something like that,” I said. She looked at me and then graced me with that all-knowing smile of hers.

“That’s your oh-so-civilized conditioning talking. Cannibalism for survival is not viable as a wide-scale strategy, but in smaller scale, and amongst people whose lives are nearly hand-to-mouth, it is sometimes unavoidable. Trust me, if you were faced with it you would likely choose to set aside your qualms. Dying due to squeamishness is likely the most foolish thing one can do.”

“I don’t think I could do it.”

“It is rather comforting to believe that, I am sure.”

She said it in a matter-of-fact tone that might have been a jab, but I didn’t see any point in arguing over it. If I ever had to consider roast leg-of-Larry for dinner I’d deal with it then.

“Yeah, anyhow… it sounds like you were kind of weirded out by that whole experience?”

“Hmm, and you accused me of avoiding uncomfortable subjects? Yes, well, I spent a pretty miserable winter in that cave, though I was able to improve things a bit here and there. By the time spring arrived I was ready to move on. I had to, actually, because I was still well within the territory of my old clan.”

“You found another clan to live with?”

“No… not right away. Really, for the first time I chose to remain on my own for a prolonged period. I’d had my fill of people. The murder… and its aftermath…. they soured me on being with others.”

“How long were you alone?”

“Oh, fifteen years or so. It was appealing because I had no charade to maintain. Even after I joined up with people again it really was only temporary. As time went on I spent less and less time attached to any family or village. Eventually I was alone for very long stretches.”

“You preferred solitude? Yet here you are now…”

“Solitude is… seductive. It allowed me to explore who and what I believed I might be without the distraction of mundane interaction.”

“You didn’t get lonely?”

I wasn’t sure what she was feeling, but suddenly she reached for her purse and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes. She’d been smoking much less since coming back from Pennsylvania, despite her ongoing worries about whatever was going on there. But now she tapped an unfiltered Camel into an ivory cigarette holder and snapped her Zippo to life.

“Not exactly, no. Enough solitude, and it becomes easy to slide out of any truly rational relationship with reality.”

“You became irrational?” I asked, prodding for more information.

“You could say that, yes,” she sighed, exhaling a cloud of blue smoke toward the ceiling. “It was not sudden. I spent a couple of centuries in and out of villages and families, mostly hanging on to the shaman or the smith, if they had one, but eventually I cut myself loose completely. After that I was on my own for more than six hundred years.”

“Six hundred…?” I couldn’t even imagine.

“You can’t even imagine, can you?” she said, grinning faintly. “But yes. I wanted no more to do with people. It was during that time that things became rather… unsettled.”

“How so?”

“Oh, everyone carries on some sort of internal dialogue as they go though the day. One also often has little delusions that can turn into bigger ones when no one else is around to bring you back to reality. So when you are alone for prolonged periods of time, and perhaps somewhat driven by grief, doubt and anger…”

She stopped then and just sat, quietly smoking her cigarette as I tried to imagine being isolated for decades or centuries. She finished, tapping out the remnants of her cigarette into the ashtray, then fixed me with her eyes, waiting for me to ask her the obvious question.

“How bad did it get?”

“Very bad,” she replied. Then she reached for another cigarette.

Posted on August 26th, 2007 by Zsallia
Filed under: The Novel