Over the Darkened Landscape (25 page)

He snatched his hand away and sat down hard on the mud beside the creature, rubbing his ribs until the ghost pain died away. When he finally thought to once again pay attention to his surroundings, he saw that Fanny Alice was bending over and had her hands on his face, trying to get his attention.

“I’m with you,” he said, and gingerly he stood again. “Sorry about that. I don’t know what happened there.”

Now, it was widely accepted that Fanny Alice was not the best-looking woman to ever practice her trade, but it was also well known that she had some conjuring skills and that some of those skills involved activities in the non-marital bed. But other skills of hers had nothing to do with physical bliss, and she was often useful that way, seeing the magic in life when others might have completely missed it.

This, Samuel was sorry to realize, appeared to be one of those times.

“Somethin’s reached out and touched you,” she said, and she herself reached out and put a hand on his side, where he’d felt the sharp pain. “I don’t know that I recognize it, but I can tell you that I don’t like it. It looked like very old magic, and very powerful as well. Certainly different than the magic in that tooth I gave you.”

Samuel’s own experiences with magic had been low-key and usually from a great remove. He was disinclined to think that this had been anything other than sheer imagination, him working himself to a state of great agitation and excitement over such a discovery. At worst, though, it could only have been an echo of something from thousands of years before, long dead and forgotten but still hanging in the fabric of the world, like ripples at the edge of a large pond long after the rock had been dropped. So he smiled and shook his head in disagreement. “I’m just fine, Fanny Alice, and you can be assured that there was no magic involved. Only me being overwhelmed by the idea of reaching across millennia and touching flesh that could as easily have been alive only days before.” He walked away from her and from the corpse of the mammoth, stepping gingerly even though the pain had long since faded. “I’ll tell Ed he should get down here and take a picture for the paper. And maybe we should consider getting word out to some scientists somewhere.” Suddenly completely and mind-numbingly exhausted, Samuel raised his hand to bid them all farewell and shuffled back to town and to his cabin, fighting the urge the whole way to look back over his shoulder in case he was being followed.

No, not followed. Stalked.

*

The herd is in a panic, spread out across the open land, any hope of working together defensively gone, that hope scattered to the cold winds as effectively as each member of the herd. He runs, terror crushing his heart and his breathing ragged and punctuated by desperate pleas to his mother, to any of the aunties, but none of them answer.

He risks a turn of his head and sees that the two-legs are still after him, coming up the side of the hill. They raise their sticks, and some are thrown at him. He feels a horrible pain in his side and stumbles and bleats in fear and pain but regains his feet and continues running. But then one of the aunties comes to his rescue and heads off the creatures running hard on his heels. A toss of her head sends several of them flying through the air, and he is free of them, still running, still feeling that agonizing pain in his side but unwilling to stop while fear remains.

The ground gives way, and he first stumbles and then falls and falls some more. Pain returns, but after a few moments that fades away, as does everything else.

Weird dreams plagued Samuel’s night, and he awoke with the pain in his right side renewed. He lay there for a spell, unwilling to jump from his warm cocoon of a bed and dash for the stove to rekindle the fire before having to make an even madder and colder dash to the corner to piss in his bucket. Staring at the ceiling, though, all he could think of was that dead animal and the fact that he was likely the only one in town who knew just how significant and important it was.

Having an interest in things prehistoric, Samuel fancied himself as pretty knowledgeable about fossils and such. But he thought it pretty obvious that you didn’t need to have even a marginal interest to know that a find such as the frozen body of the baby mammoth would be of vital importance to scientists and to newsmen. Pretty obvious often didn’t cut through the fat up here, though, since you could never tell just how capable any one person was at recognizing what was required of them in a social situation.

And so with a strangled cry he threw back the covers and jumped out of bed, the cold floor clawing at him even through his woollen socks, the air working quickly to find its way to his skin through his undergarments. The embers were low, but some dry kindling and a few choice gusts from his lungs got the flames hopping again, and after adding a small log he ran to the corner and did his morning business, desperately happy to tuck things in when he was done and run back to the stove to put on a pot of two-day-old coffee and feel the tenuous curtain of heat reach slowly outward from the fire and find its way to the farthest corners of the cabin.

Once his fingers were warm enough and the jolt of tar-like coffee had re-ignited his brain, he gave the juvenile mammoth more thought. Obvious as it was to him, he knew he couldn’t rely on anyone else from town to do the right thing about the animal. He’d told Ed to go down and get a picture, but wasn’t sure if that would translate itself to an attempt to get the news out to the world at large. If anything, he feared that instead it would result in someone contacting some two-bit circus impresario, and there would go any chance for any true science to be done. Or worse, someone with magical powers, either real or imagined, would make some wild and bizarre claim about the creature that would lead to some freakish hoodoo rites being performed as its body was burned at a makeshift altar.

He had a quick breakfast and then got dressed, all the while working through his mind how he could word a telegram to make the most impact, convince people to come here at this time of year rather than them asking for the corpse to be packed in a railroad car full of blocks of ice and shipping it on to Skagway and then south by boat to California. And hour later he found himself at the telegraph office, pen and paper in hand, dashing off a note to his sister’s husband in Toronto. The fellow was a teacher and was smart enough to know who to approach and how to do so.

Unfortunately, Fanny Alice’s words kept drifting back into his head every time he made to write his message, and several fits and starts were only able to produce sad attempts such as “Mystical find of great value, send help” and “Dead baby mammoth. Frozen. Of interest to someone warmer” and “Frozen mammoth body dug up nearby, how did it die?” This last was moderately conversational but not at all useful in getting across the main point, which was of course that someone with a modicum of expertise needed to come north forthwith and be here to supervise any investigations into the former life of this extinct creature.

He shook his head to clear it of all of Fanny Alice’s nonsense about magic. Finally, he decided he needed to splurge for a few extra words, and soon enough the message was sent. “Frzn baby mammoth found whole. Get news out. None here qualified. Hurry.” Satisfied, he left the office and headed over to see what Ed had for photos and how he intended to run with the story, perhaps even talk him into allowing Samuel to write something about the beast and what he knew of its former life.

Ed was at his desk wearing his shit-eating grin when Samuel walked in. “You done good telling me to go out and get a picture of that beast, Samuel!” He jumped up and ran to the darkroom and hurried out with a handful of pictures he’d taken of the mammoth, all but one with Mick and Temple posing beside the body, the miners who’d found the creature. The exception was a picture of the baby mammoth with Pete Marliss, doing his best to look important as only a town father should. Even in a moderately out-of-focus photograph he managed to look like a stuffed-shirt blowhard.

“Glad it worked out for you,” said Samuel. “Bet you one of these pictures ends up in a big paper down south somewhere.”

Ed grinned again. “Just about guaranteed, I’d say. I sent a telegram first thing when I got back from taking the pictures yesterday. Pretty sure there’ll be some newsmen coming up from Edmonton, or maybe across from Alaska. And my pictures’ll be the only ones they can use!” He sounded positively gleeful at this.

Samuel scratched his head but couldn’t help smiling in response to Ed’s infectious good humour. “Hell, Ed,” he responded, “there’s no guarantee that they won’t bring along their own photographer or at least send along someone who’s capable of using a camera.”

“Yeah, but the body won’t be here by the time anybody arrives. Just bones by then, I expect.”

This bit of news brought Samuel up short. “How’s that again?”

“Jesus, Samuel, what’ve you been doin’ all morning? It’s practically all anyone in town has been talkin’ about. You even walked right by it when you came through the door.” He smiled again and puffed out his chest. “My printing press, and I did the layout for it, too.”

Samuel blinked away his momentary rush of confusion and looked over to the door where Ed had waved his finger. On it was tacked a small poster with the words at top big enough, all in capitals and bold type, that he could read them from across the room:

SPECIAL TOWNWIDE PREHISTORIC FEAST!!!

“Holy shit, Ed, no,” said Samuel in a low and worried voice, and he rushed over the read the rest of the poster.

Come celebrate the amazing mammoth discovery this Saturday night, 7pm, at the Klondiker Hall. $5/head gets you a
THREE
course meal
INCLUDING STEW
made of choice cuts from 6
THOUSAND YEAR OLD
baby
MAMMOTH
. Don’t miss this once in a lifetime opportunity! Tickets from Pete Marliss.

Without another word to Ed, Samuel ran out the door and down the road to the Klondiker, blood rushing in rage through his head, keen to find Pete and give him a piece of his mind. At the very least.

“Marliss!” shouted Samuel as he slammed through the doors into the hotel lobby. His target looked up from whatever he was working on at the front counter and smiled, but before he could say anything Samuel proceeded to tear into him. “What the blue blazes do you think you’re doing, offering up that fossil for a fuckin’ banquet?”

“I bought the body from Mick and Temple,” replied Pete. “It’s mine now, and I get to do with it what I like. And since it cost me money, I aim to make back that investment and then some.”

Samuel was beside himself with rage, and for a moment he had trouble finding any words. This was a travesty, a crime against science and reason and humanity. Finally, unable to think of anything else but needing to say something in response to the smirk that had formed on Marliss’ face, he said, “But you can’t! The body should be preserved for the scientists to study.”

“I’m sure they’ll be happy with a complete skeleton, don’t you think? I expect there will be plenty of museums willing to pay for one. And maybe a different one to pay for the hide, too.”

Samuel’s hands bunched into fists, but before he could take a step toward Marliss the man had calmly placed a shotgun on the counter. Still smiling, he said, “Now, Samuel, you stay calm with me, and I just might have a present to give you.” Seeing where Samuel’s eyes were looking, he chuckled and said, “No, not a rear full of buckshot.”

“Then what? What the hell do you have that I could possibly want?”

Marliss reached under the counter and came up with something small that he tossed across the room to Samuel. It looked like a stone, but just before he caught it he saw that it was a spear point. As his hand closed over it the sharp edge bit into his palm, and for a brief second he could feel his blood spill over the artifact.

And then everything faded away.

There are precisely a hand of them able to hunt, not enough to hold off starvation much longer. This will be their last attempt before they again have to run from the ice and snow, and the shaman knows that the magic for this hunt has to be especially strong.

He starts with a dance that represents their prey, one of the hairy long noses that are still in the valley, eating the last of the green before they also escape the oncoming wall of ice. The five hunters sway in time to his chants, skins and furs dangling loose from scrawny bodies. Outside of the small circle, the women and children and elders watch and wait for him to finish, only the oldest of them able to conceal the desperation and hunger that crosses the faces of the others.

Or the anger. He knows that a ruined hunt this time might indeed do worse than damage his reputation as the holder of the magic, that failure will, at best, result in banishment from the tribe, at worst bring about a demand for his sacrifice, either to feed the tribe through the strong magic that would come from his death or by a more direct and hideous route.

Once done with the dance, but still chanting, he grabs the spear from their strongest hunter and slashes his palm, then takes the hand of each hunter in turn and does the same, intermingling the blood of each of them. He then takes the spear to the outer circle and cuts in turn the palm of each tribe member’s palm, until that one spear is imbued with the power of the blood of the shaman’s entire tribe, now truly glowing with the strength of their unity of purpose and desire. His words grow stronger, calling down all the magic he knows and much more than that, magic he can sense and see but magic whose full capabilities he is unaware of. Everything in or nothing out. He repeats this ritual with four other spears, although only with his own blood and that of the other hunters, and then presses his bloody hand to the ground beneath his feet, feeds some of his life to the life that surrounds them, an offering in return for the upcoming life that he and his tribe plan to take.

It is all he can do. All five spears stand high above the heads of the hunters, sharpened edges crusted over with their blood, power shining from each and every one of them. After a short nod to his young assistant, he shouts the finality of the ritual to the tribe and to the sun and the earth, and they go. The hunters casually wave aside all the calls of goodbye and the imprecations and pleadings, stern and strong and anxious to prove that they can still provide for the tribe, and yet cautious not to show any break in their masks, for fear that they might be seen as weak or afraid.