The Spirit

Under the Indian’s running feet, the ground began a slow steady rise up a slope. The Indian paused only long enough to empty his medicine bundle of the accumulated garbage it contained—chicken foot, corn kernels, clay pipe, the worthless crucifix, even the medal—while following the plowed-­up snowdrifts the running giant had left. From time to time the wind shifted, bringing down the thing’s smell. It was frightened. Good.

He lost the trail in the sparse, tangled trees and rocky ledges of the higher slope. He leaned against one of the pines pushing up through the tangle of broken rock terraces to catch his breath and plan his next move. The driving wind made his eyes water, and he rubbed away tears until the flesh was sore.

Smoke.

The Indian sniffed the freezing wind. Again he smelled the lightest delicate touch of wood smoke, coloring the blizzard as gossamer-­pink colors the air. There were no houses up here.

The smell led him to a cave higher up on the slope. It was like a mouth concealed under shelves of rock. Mixed with it was the odor of the giant. The Indian pulled himself up to the entrance and strung an arrow onto the bow. He stepped just inside the cave, out of the wind, and listened.

He was in a narrow passageway connecting to a mine shaft. Light shone in a faint smoky glow down this tunnel. The miners had broken into this cave.

The Indian crept forward to the shaft entrance and looked down it. The light came from rudimentary candles made of animal fat poured into rock depressions on the walls. The wicks were pieces of brush that sputtered and hissed. These smoky flickering lights lined the walls all the way down to a corner. Mixed with the acrid smoke and giant smell was the overpowering one of spoiled meat.

Lying by the opening between cave and tunnel was a neatly stacked, roughly human-­shaped pile of rocks. The smell came from it. The grave was surrounded by a circle of carefully arranged acorns. It was a small grave, signifying the death of a child.

The spirits went when the world changed. The white man brought his own spirits. Let his spirits protect you, John, otherwise you’re as naked as a child.

Don’t think about it. The Indian skirted the grave and stepped into the tunnel. In doing so, he walked into a horror that nearly made him faint.

Several cubicles had been blasted out of the rock by miners and used for storage areas. Some were still in use. There was an ancient pile of pickaxes, pitons, and old candlelamp hats stacked in one, along with a fiberglass helmet stamped with the name Jameson. Some of the cubicles had also been used as graves, but of a different type from the one on the floor. Here the bodies had lain exposed. All that was left were bones, complete skeletons like none the Indian had ever seen in his life.

The bones belonged to infants so deformed that they could not have survived a single hour after birth. He turned up one tiny skull with a single eyehole set on one side, a misaligned jaw with huge incisors and a thinned layer of bone where the other eye should be. He found spines looped in circles, legs that articulated backward, doglike crouching demons with little human heads, and one skull fused tightly to a breastbone without a neck. They were tiny, pitiable bones.

His spirit was a monster. The white man had been right. The Indian had seen deformities before, mostly misbred dogs and horses, weak and sickly and crippled. Those were one-­shot accidents. This nightmare had taken generations to produce.

The smoke thickened against the ceiling, flowing its silent way upward. There were cracks in the roof, through which it disappeared. The tunnel had careful, constant ventilation. The Indian followed the lights. He passed a cubicle whose roof had been chipped to a cone with a smoke hole in the center. Hickory branches smoldered on a rock shelf. Sides of meat—deer, bear, squirrel, even fish—were stacked and hung from branch crosspieces.

Around a corner was a vaulted room with a light that painted the opposite room. Upon this wall the Indian saw the shadow of the giant, elongated and wavering with each flicker of flame. He drew back his arrow and stepped in front of the entrance.

The giant was standing by a large candle. He had been waiting for the Indian.

A small niche had been carved into the wall at floor level. Surrounding it was a pile of acorns. Within the niche was a human skull propped on a metal miner’s spike that had been rammed into the rock.

For a moment the only sound was the crackle of the burning hickory branches and the beating of their own hearts. The Indian looked squarely into the giant’s face.

“Natliskeliguten,” said the Indian.