The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year - Volume Eight (19 page)

I call this wide expanse of water Bais des Cedres, but it may yet prove an interior sea. If I do find an outlet, it will not be until spring. And then I will know at last that I have charted the rumored Mer de l'Ouest – that great bulbous basin of the sea which Nolin marked on the map he stole from De l'Isle, and which must be the last leg of my two years' wanderings, the terminus of what will prove to be a Northwest Passage, which will lead me finally out, to die, on the Océan Pacifique.

M
oments later, the loon called several times more, rapidly and angrily, her voice sounding strange in the shifting curtains of mist – first near, then far, then near again. I have never heard a loon cry with such alarm, save once when my canoe chanced to separate a mother from her young, so I peered from my lean-to out into the biting air of the night, watching for intruders.

There was nothing save the dim white tops of the low waves as they rolled in from darkness and obscurity. Wave after wave, lapping in regular beats, just as it has always done, in all the months I have stopped on this beach.

But then there was something else.

On the tip of a prominence to the west of my camp, something moved. At first, it was barely visible through the screen of trees that crowded the spit. But soon, it had rounded the point into open view, and was sliding down the near side toward me, following the contour of the beach where it met the waves.

I could see it clearly enough now, but still it had no form or shape. It was simply a glow – simply the glitter of the sand and the mist where some light or energy passed, bright and eerie enough to raise the hairs on my neck as I watched. On and on, the patch of light crept along, cold and quiet, rapidly spilling across the flat beach and up toward the treeline above, until even the sand at the opening of my lean-to began to glitter, a mere arm's length away.

Then, with swift suddenness, a sharp ray of light pierced my eyes from the inky bosom of the bay, dazzling and half-blinding me.

Dark again, the sharp ray gone – but its echoes still blotting out everything in the darkness. I could not be sure of what I saw, could not be sure of the long black shape that seemed to pass in the water below my lean-to, trailing close after the light. But my ears were not dazzled, and plainly I heard the faint dribble of water as a paddle broke the surface of the water – then the creak of a bowstring, and the soft low hiss of a hunter who spies his prey.

The light had moved some distance down the beach, and had caught the yellow-green glow of a deer's eyes. There it hung as the animal stood transfixed to the spot, a silhouette in black shadows and red fur above the still-glittering sand.

Then something dark and thin shot through the light, and the animal staggered suddenly as if struck by a blow. Foundering to its knees, it disintegrated into thrashing hooves and arching neck. Splashes followed and something dragged the dying deer out of the lantern glow toward the bay. For I understood everything now – the light was a lantern on a canoe, shined by hunters to dazzle deer and wapiti that strayed close to the shore.

For an instant only, I saw the hunter himself as he bent over the stiffening legs of the deer – a black shadow, hunched and distorted in the dim yellow glow, but the shape plainly, incongruously visible all the same.

And as I watched, I knew – whatever it was, it was not a man.

Instead, my eye followed the lines of the shape, and clearly I saw the head and neck and wings of an enormous prowling heron, seven feet tall at least, towering over the carcass of the deer amidst the flickering lamplight, and glaring down the beach – head and eyes leveled coolly in my direction.

Then the deer was pulled away into the water, and the lantern blinked out, and all was dark again.

* * *

I
n the first light of morning, I followed the waterline and saw none of the splay-toed marks of heron's feet I expected. But instead, cut sharply into the frosty sand, I found a single smooth oval – unmistakable for what it was, the fresh and clear print of a man's leather moccasin.

DECEMBER 1761

I
f my reckoning is true and December has now come, then it is now the second winter since I shook the wretched dust of Lac Supérieur, the canting voyageurs, and the Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson all from the soles of my feet.

For had I not come back from laying the company's traplines to find my wife, a Salteaux Chippewa, fled into the forest with my infant son? Did I not follow her along the trail that led to her father's village among the Anishinaabeg until I found her bones strewn among underbrush, where wolves and worse had thrown them?

But enough. That memory does not bring her back. And here, though I have fled far enough from the lying tongues of men, I fear I may have found things even more damned instead.

I made the discovery as I entered a wide clearing, at least two hundred yards across, empty of all trees except a sparse collection of ancient thick-trunked oaks. A carpet of dead, brown ferns as high as my knees covered the ground below, dried leaves bowed under the light falling of snow that dusted them.

The place was charming in its way, or at least different from the endless woods of wrinkled red cedars and lichen-spotted hemlocks that otherwise ringed the bay. Rattling my snares loosely in my hand, I crossed – eyes alert for the million little disturbances that mark the trails of hares, of foxes, of mink.

But only ten yards across, my foot kicked something under the ferns, and it rolled end over end to stop among the roots of an oak. Bending to pick it up, I found myself holding the ribcage of a small deer. Smooth white ribs showed through the accumulated dirt and patches of stillclinging fur. Carelessly, I threw it aside.

The woods are full of such things, and more than once I have squatted on a trail, only to slowly realize that the last remains of some animal are splayed horrifically about me. It all eventually blends with the earth itself – dirty bones, patches of fur, hooves, antlers, teeth.

But there, in that oak clearing, I was not squatting on the remains of one deer. Instead, looking about, I saw there must have been a hundred animals slain there – a thousand – more! I had only to put my foot into any clump of ferns to turn up some grisly remnant of the slaughter.

I kicked up beaver skulls and shattered turtle shells, far from any water. Then disintegrating rabbit skins, the fur falling out in great tufts. The parts of small deer were everywhere – the usual leftovers after the crows and the ants have done their work. And then there was what, with a sudden flash of horror, I realized must be the still-articulated bones of a human child's arm.

I dropped that with a cry, waves of shock suddenly transforming the place around me. Then I looked up to the sky.

My eyes followed the trunk of one of the oaks up to the bare branches that spread against the white winter sky like cracks in the firmament. And there, silhouetted in black, I could see the loose ovoid webs of nests balanced precariously – herons' nests, in tree after tree, everywhere surrounding me, two dozen of them in the clearing or more.

But the nests were wrong. They were large – much too large by an inconceivable factor. Where there should have been four or five in each tree, only one or two seemed to fit.

By now, all charm had drained from the clearing. It felt instead like some ceremonial place, with the litter of sacrifices strewn about my ankles. No living bird could have built those nests – they must be the handiwork of depraved men.

I loosened my rifle and unscrewed my powder horn, but nothing stirred in the woods around me. There was no sign of men. Then I saw, at the base of an oak, a huge contorted shape. It was a feathered neck, as thick as my own upper arm, curving up from a crushed riot of feathers and then back down to earth again, where lay the terrible head – the long slashing beak, the hollowed and rotten eye sockets, the obscene bulge of its gullet.

Shivering, I stepped closer, but the bubble of the nightmare refused to burst. With trembling hand, I plucked a feather from the wreckage. It extended the length of my forearm and longer – and this was a baby, some fledgling that had fallen from its nest above before it was able to fly. I stepped back and looked again from tree to tree, then at the remains of the dead animals around me.

Instinctively, I crossed myself – but the evil-feeling chill only deepened.

FEBRUARY 1762

T
hough I had hoped never to see them again, the hunters of last November have returned. Indeed, I would rather never have thought of them at all – or of that terrible oak clearing. I had hoped to spend the winter minding my traplines in quiet solitude, and then to depart alone again in the spring.

It is February now, I think – not yet spring. And in the past months, even I could not escape noticing what I know is wrong about these woods. It is nothing definitive, and all easily ignored by a pigheaded man who wants to be blind. But there is the profound emptiness and quietness, the absence of so many smaller game animals, and the strange scratchings on stumps that I know are not the work of bears or cougars.

Having seen all that, it should have been no surprise to me that the hunters would return.

They came by canoe, and my first sight of them was out amid the mist of the bay – that same great heron shape, head cocked in hunting stance, standing terribly in the prow of the canoe as it silently glided past the tip of the prominence in the golden glow of sunset. And the unnatural size again – man-sized or more.

My heart turned to ice but still I looked, and I saw the canoe was paddled by four other figures – apparently herons themselves. It was in looking at those four, who moved so much like men, that finally the illusion was broken and I saw that the heron was not any real heron at all, but rather a man in monstrous bird dress, worn for God knew what reason.

* * *

H
ow long had it been, before today, since I had seen another man? Six months, at least – but for two full years now I have avoided all as much as possible. That I knew now I had to deal with humans and not some monstrous birds was not, to me, much of an assurance or improvement.

If my rifle had been at my hand and charged, I would have shot over their heads at once. But it was in my lean-to, and I sat on a stony hillock above my camp. All I could do was watch as the canoe come to rest against my beach and the man in the bow leaped nimbly out.

The intruder called up to me, his voice sounding strange after so many months of hearing no talk. He spoke some jargon unknown to me, very different from the Indian languages of Haute-Louisiane. Grudgingly, I called back in Spanish, French, and Chippewa. I tried fragments of other languages I had learned, but by the time we stood face to face at the foot of the hillock, it was clear we could not understand each other.

My relief at this remains immeasurable.

N
ight has fallen and the canoe has departed, but the man is with me still. Despite all my signs of indifference and even unfriendliness, he insisted on teaching me his name, which is seemingly Ololkolt, and then in interrogating me by signs.

At first, I merely ignored him, and instead stole glances at his strange costume. I am no longer surprised that I was deceived by the night hunters into thinking they were not men, for even in daylight the illusion is very convincing. These men wear gray tunics and cover their arms and faces with streaks of silver mud. They carry heavy capes that they can throw into a remarkable semblance of wings, and affix long wooden carved herons' heads to their own shaved skulls.

But more than all this, these heron-men also have a curious way of standing that causes them to disappear almost entirely into their costumes. As soon as they strike the correct pose, the human melts away and the monstrous avian appears.

With this evidence before my eyes, I wonder now if the creature I thought I saw in the oak clearing was not really some such fabrication as well. Tomorrow it seems I will have a chance to find out – for Ololkolt insists on my accompanying him to that cursed place. Or so, at least, have I gathered from his signs.

I regret to say that I made the mistake of recognizing a sign he showed me – a circular collection of overlapping sticks that I knew at once must be a heron nest. But no sooner had he noticed my understanding, then he began making sign after sign. He had guessed what I had seen, and he inquired about their size, number, distance, and location. Now he will not leave me, staying even after sending the canoe away, and it is clear he means me to take him to see the nests tomorrow.

G
od preserve me. That dead creature in the clearing is real, and more horrible even than I had thought.

MARCH 1762

I
gave my wife all the money I had when I left to lay the company's lines with the voyageurs. This was two years ago at Lac Supérieur. I want to write this in case I do not have another chance.

As I said, I left her my money, and it should have been enough. But while I was gone, the wild rice turned spotted and feeble, and the knockers could harvest no berries, no matter how they brushed the grass. Then, one of her lying neighbors swindled her out of half the money. Another pressed collection of an old debt. A third refused her credit, even against my salary. A fourth promised to help, then left the village without doing anything. A fifth demanded offensive terms.

I learned that she fled into the forest on the trail back to her father's village – hungry and friendless as she found herself at the trading post, it had seemed the only course. As soon as I heard, I followed. But all I found were half of her bones, and none of my son's.

It is a mysterious fact that in any village or settlement there is always one going hungry, one shivering cold, one dying alone, one rotting in prison. Yet, despite all of this, there is never anyone found to be responsible for any of it.

And so I left and came west, looking for this Northwest Passage and death. Coureur de bois, the woodland runner, no longer having to do with any other man.