Judith Berman - Lord Stink

Rumble brushed past her and called to his warriors. They gathered in a loose line, and headed out of camp.

Winter watched them go. She knew something was wrong. She had returned inside the camp house when she realized she was no longer afraid of what might happen to Rumble, but of what he might do. In the dark, she groped for an extra robe against the cold of the mountain passes, and then she set out after her brother at a dead run.

Thrush hurried her children through the snow, climbing down from the high country. At first her children thought it was a game, and ran alongside her happily, but then they grew sleepy again, and wanted to turn homeward. She drove them on. They were not old enough yet for human speech or human form, but she knew they still had more strength and endurance than she. Even though she was so much stronger than when she’d first come here…

She gave them a snack of dried salmon at midday, and nursed each one for a few minutes. They grew very drowsy, but she still would not let them sleep. She was hoisting her pack onto her back again when she heard Stink’s distant roar. A strange mixture of fear and regret surged through her at the sound, and then she was running through the snow again. The cubs loped after her, afraid of being left alone.

Running was useless, of course. Stink could race across the land faster than a bird could fly, and he didn’t even need the footprints in the snow to track them because he could smell his own children. In a few minutes she heard a crash on the hillside above her, and she twisted to see a huge dark shape bounding through the trees. He was almost upon her, roaring and snarling, when she remembered the old woman’s instructions. From her pack she pulled the first thing that came to hand, the bone comb, and threw it at Stink.

An impenetrable thicket of thorns sprouted from the snow and rose in a wall that ended high over her head. From the far side she could hear Stink’s baffled roars of rage, the futile crash of his body against the wall. She paused for a moment, gasping for breath, and then plunged onward.

As they descended, the forest grew taller and gloomier, until huge hemlocks and firs arched hundreds of feet over her head. Soon they left the snow behind, and the going was muddy, but much easier.

It was not long before she heard Stink behind them again. This time she had the hatchet ready, and when he had come into sight, almost upon her, she hurled it to the ground. The head fell into the mud and all of a sudden she was looking down into a deep, stony gorge cleaving the mountainside. The stream she had been following was a silver trickle at the bottom of it. On the far side, beneath the towering forest, the tiny figure of Stink reared on two legs, snarling ferociously.

They ran. Later on that terrible day he caught up with them again, and she threw the stone knife; it turned into an immense, glacier-topped mountain, with sheer unscaleable cliffs. That, too, stopped him for only an hour or two. When she heard the sounds of pursuit behind her once more, she felt a wave of despair. “I’m sorry, babies,” she said. “I think he’s going to kill me. I’m sorry. I should have stayed with him, for your sakes.”

He bounded into sight. Thrush poured out the entire bottle of oil, and the smell of seaweed and cold salt spray rose up from a vast arm of the ocean that now lay between them, so wide the mists hid its far shore. As she turned away, she saw the familiar shape of Feather Mountain rising to the west, and, in the distance, the forested point of land that guarded Oyster Bay.

Winter climbed Feather Mountain as fast as she could go, running up the trail until every breath tore her lungs and a stitch cramped her side, walking only until she had recovered enough to run again. The animal trails wound up to the first snowfield. Beyond that, the snows stretched upward into the low-hanging clouds, white dissolving seamlessly into grey, only the tracks of Rumble’s party across the snow giving dimension and direction to the world. When she reached the top of the pass, a thousand feet above Oyster Bay, Winter could see nothing but cloud and snow and rock. She sent the petrel soaring into the air, flying ahead of her body, into the valley beyond.

Her wizard’s vision showed her that a vast new fjord now lay on the far side of the mountain. Struggling up the mountainside from the steep shore of that fjord was an exhausted, grim-faced woman and four balky, complaining, weary children.

That woman was the goal of two onrushing forces. One, a dangerous, powerful, wild being, raced along the shore of the fjord from the east. He wore the form of an enormous grizzly, but his essence was that of a man. Or perhaps it was that he wore the form of a man, but his heart was that of a grizzly. He seemed to shimmer as he galloped, between these selves and still others, and through it all she could see something else, bright, dark and wild, the true soul of an immortal.

From the westward end of the long, steep shore came Rumble and his men. They did not have the wild spirit power, but they had dogs, spears, and knives.

Winter ran down through the mists and the stony cliffs and drifts of old snow, down through the high meadows, down into the tangled forest, toward the woman and the point where everything would happen. She knew this was her chance to atone for everything. But her body could not fly as fast as her spirit, nor see as clearly.

She had to cross thickets, rockfalls, ravines full of snow, and each time she seemed to turn the wrong direction, take the longest way around. Agonizing pain lanced through her side, and her breath came in enormous, useless gasps. In the distance now she could hear men’s shouts, and then many dogs barking viciously. At last she burst out of the forest onto a long, rocky meadow. Below her she saw the woman driving four bear cubs ahead of her. They proceeded at hardly more than a stumbling walk now.

Winter ran toward them with all the speed she had left in her. She had almost reached the closest bear cub when the huge grizzly burst out of the woods, roaring at the woman, rearing up on its hind legs. The woman cowered back. Dogs barked furiously, racing toward the bear. The foremost dog leapt snarling at the grizzly’s flank. With a swipe of its paw, the grizzly disemboweled the dog and sent it flying. The men and their dogs surrounded the bear. It reared up again with three spears sticking from it, bloody now, foaming at the mouth, and then it charged the men. And suddenly Rumble jumped in front of the grizzly, screaming in battle frenzy, spear in hand.

Rumble struck at the bear, and the dogs charged again, and for a few moments the scene was incomprehensible chaos with the woman and the cubs caught in the middle of it. The woman was screaming. Then one of the cubs bolted in a panic, pursued by barking dogs and warriors with spears, and Winter realized Rumble’s men were killing the cubs as well as the grown bear. The cub ran helter-skelter across the hill, dragging a spear from its shoulder, crying piteously. Winter flung herself over the cub, tackling it. It clawed at her in fierce panic. “Don’t!” she screamed at the men. The dogs growled and tore at her, trying to get at the wounded cub, and one of the men seized her arm, trying to yank her off. “It’s just a cub! Don’t hurt it, don’t hurt it!”

Then the man crumpled to the ground. Otter stood there, club in hand, beating the dogs back. Black-spotted Dirty launched himself, teeth bared, at a second warrior, who raised his club against the dog, but Otter struck first with a spear, impaling him.

The wounded cub struggled in Winter’s arms, bloody, still crying in panic. Otter yanked the spear from its shoulder, and it screamed, flailing wildly. For a moment Winter nearly lost hold of it again. When she next looked, Otter was running down the hill, spear in one hand, club in the other. But the battle was over.