Speak, White Dog

The Hills were full of monsters, my father told me. In the rolling white that surrounded our town, vast and littered with frosted trees and frozen grass, were said to live all manner of horrible things.

Fades and Fellows, he said, were the ghosts of murdered women and men, eternally bent on vengeance. He told me of towering, spindly creatures called Tremors, who were felt but rarely seen, moving as quick as light and disappearing among the trees. Shifters called Likenlies could take the form of anything they killed.

But no monster was quite so feared by the people of Sawaset as the White Dog.

Perhaps it was because we knew so little of the creature, and understood even less. All we knew was that death came to every man, every woman, every child who laid eyes on the White Dog.

No one knew when death would come for them. Sometimes it was moments later, as they ran and raked in breaths, lungs pierced by the icy cold of winter, collapsing there on the hill sloping down to Sawaset. Or perhaps they made it back and hid in their home for days, believing themselves to be safe, only to drop dead at the table or be wrenched from the world as they slept.

However it happened, the creature was an omen to rival all omens. It was a death sentence.

_____

When I saw the White Dog, I was as frozen as the grass beneath my feet. Snow was falling softly around me. And there he was, on the crest of a hill, beside a tall pine, as though he’d always been there.

If it had been any other day, I might have screamed, I might have run. I might have fallen to pieces and begged whatever gods there were for mercy. But it was the day my brother ran me through with a knife, and all I could do was laugh.

It was a quiet laugh, little more than a breath. I clutched at the crack in my side, a useless gesture meant to hold in the tide of blood I knew could not be stopped, and I laughed.

This terrible thing I had feared all my life now stood across the clearing, blinking at me with impossibly bright, golden eyes, and I felt no fear. I was already dead. A searing sense of triumph coursed through me. Misplaced, perhaps, but warm.

I had beaten the White Dog. It had come to kill, but it came too late.

_____

It is in our nature, when someone is taken from us, to relentlessly and ruthlessly seek out another on whom to cast the blame. It is a fault, to be sure, but one that very few of us lack. A universally understood flaw of being human.

And so I could hardly begrudge Iqahi for casting the blame on me when our mother died. The morning after I was born, my brother found her lying cold in her bed, my swaddled body clutched in her arms. He was eight years old at the time.

Iqahi had loved our mother with all his heart. But he never punished me for the part I had played in her death, no matter what he may have thought in his mind or held in his heart. Growing up, he was the one who took care of me. For a time, my father was lost in grief, and if it hadn’t been for Iqahi, I would never have taken my first steps out into the world. I would have died there in my mother’s arms.

It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized everything he did for me was not for me, but for the memory of a woman I had never known. It hurt to realize that the person I loved most in the world didn’t love me at all. It hurt more than the knife he stuck in my gut so many years later.

The morning of the White Dog, we were hunting. Three white-tailed does moved through the trees ahead of us, and I looked to Iqahi, the profile of his face just visible past the trunk of a thick pine. His eyes shifted to mine, and he nodded gravely, the way he did everything.

I pulled my bow taut, and trained my arrow on the prize ahead. The doe was peacefully grazing, the earth feeding her family as she would soon feed mine. Everything was silent around me, and perfect in its own way.

Then a sound ripped through the air, like the crack of a tree falling. I lowered my bow as the white tails bounded away from me, and I looked towards Iqahi, who was not there.

Another crack pierced the quiet, and I ran.

There were lines like rakes in the snow, and blurred footprints, and my eyes searched every twig and shadow like someone mad with fever as I moved through the wood. My chest burned and my mind whirled, thoughts of my brother bleeding, skewered through by a tremor, invading my vision like a spot from the sun.

Then, all at once, we collided. I saw my brother’s eyes, wide with terror, before I felt the cold steel in my stomach, and the warm blood pouring out over it. He released the dagger and stumbled back, unblinking. His clothes and skin were torn, and his face was ashen. He said my name, but I could not hear it. I watched his lips move like a dream, slowly and silent, the only sound the whisper of snow.

I craned my neck to look up, because I couldn’t face what I would see if I looked down. The tops of the trees pointed to the white sky like arrows, and the snow clung to my lashes. There was a dull, distant ache where the knife had broken into me, but it was also like something from a dream, and I thought for a moment that I would wake up in my bed to the fire burning low in the hearth, and Iqahi breathing peacefully across the room in his sleep.

Instead, I woke in the woods, with my hand on the knife in my gut, and my brother was gone.

_____

My vision swam, and the warmth left me. Suddenly I could feel the cold that had been seeping slowly into my bones through the long hours or days I had walked. I could feel my back bowing with exhaustion, and my toes and fingers losing all sensation. My breath came out in ragged, white gusts, disappearing like a beautiful and terrible Fade into the harsh winter air.

And still the White Dog stared.

The world was quiet between us. If you have spent time in the snow and among the trees, you know exactly the kind of quiet I mean. Quiet like a lullaby. A faint and whispered song, deceitful in its own way, lulling you slowly out of the world you never asked to be in, but have come to love.

The White Dog broke through the quiet, with a shake of his head and the huff of his breath. He turned his body to the crest of the hill behind him, shook the snow from his fur, and looked back at me.

Before I knew what I was doing, my foot stepped forward, softy crunching the grass under my feet. I kept my eyes locked with his as I took another step, and then another, my legs teetering beneath the weight of me.

The white dog nodded, releasing another breath, turned and trotted over the crest of the hill. Content, it somehow seemed, that I would follow.

_____

I collapsed at the mouth of a cave. My legs couldn’t muster another step through the shallow snow. The wound at my side dripped bright and crimson onto the ground, and I crouched there like the wounded animal I was, my breath labored and wet, my arm trembling as it held the cold, inviting earth below me at bay.

I looked up. Its golden eyes stared back at me from the dark of its den. I nodded and spoke, my voice coming out raspy and weak.

“Don’t let my father find my body,” I said. And then I fell into darkness.

_____

I heard my name like the call of a raven over the trees, and I thought perhaps the gods were leading me away from this cold, stark world and into the lush, green and golden forest of the next.

I pried open my eyes, but there were no gods and no golden woods. Only the dark stone of the cave hovered over me, lit dimly by the purple of dusk outside.

I turned my head to the cave’s door, and the White Dog looked back at me.

He lay on the threshold, half in shadow and half in the waning light, and his eyes glowed, warm and soft like embers. There was a space between us, and in that space I felt both comfort and emptiness.

The cave, it seemed, was shielding me from the bitter cold of the coming night, otherwise I surely would have been long dead. I barely felt anything at all as I lay there, and I had to wonder upon how thin a precipice my life was balanced, and what measure of wind would send me over, falling into the abyss below.

I heard my name again, on the wind, and the White Dog turned its head. It was the voice of a man and not a god, and when it called again, it rang out clear and close.

The White Dog rose to its feet, and tilted its head towards the sky, breathing in the scent of the night.

Then he looked back at me, and in his silent stare, he spoke. Not with words or any known vessel of meaning, but surely and softly as the falling snow. As I lay there with the solid ground beneath my back, I knew The White Dog did not bring death, but only caught its scent on the winter winds and followed. He’d found me, dying, just as he’d found countless others before me. An omen still, but of a different kind. Not a killer’s threat, but a guardian’s warning.

“Keani!” Came the call, Iqahi’s voice cutting through the growing dark. The White Dog blinked and turned back to the cold world outside, disappearing into the twilight like the wind itself.

Moments later, Iqahi appeared at the mouth of the cave, a dark silhouette again the violet night.

“Keani,” he whispered, crouching over me. He put his hands under my neck and my knees, and lifted me from the earth. Suddenly, all sensation came scorching back into my body, and I cried out, closing my eyes against the pain.

“Stay with me,” he said. I felt my body jostle in his arms as he carried me into the cold, and swung me carefully onto his horse’s back. He climbed on behind me and held my chest to keep me from falling. “Stay with me,” he said again, his voice now quiet and echoing in my ears. “Please.”

_____

I dreamt I was a raven, flying over the dark green trees. I saw the White Dog down below, running through the snow as swiftly as I moved through the sky. I dreamt I was perched on a windowsill, watching as Iqahi held my mother’s hand, kneeling at her side, tears burning his cheek like fire as they fell, leaving charred black lines on his soft, perfect skin.

“Stay with me,” he whispered. My mother shook her head sadly, squeezed Iqahi’s hand, and closed her eyes. “Stay with me,” he cried, as I turned and flew from my perch on the windowsill. “Please.”

_____

I woke in my bed, and the fire burned low in the hearth. Iqahi sat in a chair beside me, breathing softly in his sleep. I tried to sit up, and cried out as a thrumming pain shot through me. Iqahi stirred, and leaned forward with urgency, his brow furrowed in concern.

“I’m all right,” I said, startled by the fear in my brother’s eyes.

“I thought I killed you,” he said. His voice was quiet and grave, the way it always was. But it was different. Tremorous. About to break. “I thought…”

He blinked and a tear rolled down his cheek. I lifted my hand to touch the tear, stopping it in its tracks and wiping it from my brother’s face.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Iqahi’s face wrinkled in confusion.

“Sorry?”

“That Mama left when I came here.”

Iqahi stilled. His eyes held me, searching. After a moment, he shook his head, and smiled sadly. “She didn’t leave,” he said. “A part of her stayed here. With you.”

I furrowed my brow, my head swimming still with pain and exhaustion. I closed my eyes and the dream flashed on the back of my eyelids.

I saw Iqahi kiss my mother’s cheek as tears fell like rain from his bloodshot eyes. He turned his gaze on the babe swaddled in her arms, and his face changed. A tear fell onto the babe’s face, and he stirred, cooing softly. Iqahi smiled and ran his thumb across the babe’s cheek, wiping away the tear. He lifted the child gingerly into his arms, and looked down on him in wonder. “Welcome home, little brother,” he whispered.

I opened my eyes and looked at Iqahi, who stared back at me with that same look of wonder.

“I’m glad you’re still here,” he said. Then he smiled, took my head in his hands, and rested his own against it. We closed our eyes and opened them once again, and he stood and smiled down at me. “Now, get some sleep.”

He walked to the hearth and stoked the fire, and I looked to the window, where I swore I saw the black wings of a raven disappear into the trees.