Wendigo Wars (2 page)

The girl looked around the teepee. She wasn’t afraid of the dark but she was now frozen with fear at the lithe, skeletal shadows cast on the walls by the figures running past the settlement fire. The little girl looked at her sleeping sisters and wanted to wake them but she couldn't move. Her feet were lead, her spine turned to stone, her head in a frantic, petrified state of half conscious terror. Suddenly the girl could hear a panting. It was close and the pants came faster and faster, louder and louder. After a few moments she realised that the pants were coming from her. She finally found the feeling in her legs and crawled out of bed, leaving her sisters asleep. She desperately wanted Mummy. Though she was scared she knew that Mummy would keep her safe and make everything better. As her feet hit the floor the door of the teepee was sliced open by long, claws. The force of the slice ripped the hide which made the teepee door flutter in tattered shreds from its frame. A thin, grey snout thrust through the door. The creature sniffed and snarled as it licked and snapped at the air, tasting for the next victim.

The little girl began to shiver uncontrollably. She wanted to hide her eyes, to smell the sweet smoky scent of Mummy's hair as she whisked her away from this monster but her mother didn't appear. As her sisters slept on the creature erupted into the teepee in a sudden frenzy. Gnashing and snapping its jaws with a hyena smile the monster was almost wolf-like but it stood like a man. Its ribs protruded against leathery skin as if it had not eaten for a century but the blood around its maw and the flesh dripping from its teeth told a different story. The creature saw the girl and its human eyes, set deep in blood rimmed sockets, took in the sight with gluttony. It leapt at the girl, going from standing to being on top of her small plump body within milliseconds. The girl tried to twist away. She rolled her hips to the side to try and throw the beast off but, despite its skeletal form, the creature’s weight was immoveable for such a small child. As the girl thrashed her head and shoulders to try and dislodge the long talons of the creature it pinned her head to the floor with one sharp claw. The claw dragged down the girl's face creating a searing, frost bite pain from eyebrow to chin as her flesh tore. "Stay still" the beast seemed to be saying as it rasped at the girl with a hoarse growl. Freezing cold air with an iron tang blasted at the girl's face as the beast licked the blood that flowed from her cheek. The little girl sobbed and lay still, hoping for the ordeal to stop but it was not yet over. The creature lifted its snout to the sky and grinned as it let out a triumphant screeching cry. The girl closed her eyes and hoped for someone to rescue her, her small heart still hammered out a drum beat
Mummy, Mummy, Mummy
.

Mathilde awoke with a start. She wiped the sweat from her face, feeling a familiar frozen throbbing pain in the scar which ran from her left eyebrow to her chin. She knew that it was not real pain, just the power that the dream always had on her, bringing the memories back. She could hear the panting again but this time knew for sure that it was coming from her as her heart beat triple time. She reassured herself that the monster was not there. That it was not real and that this was a dream she had dreamt over and over for the past fourteen years. She had been saved by the Protector Superior of the tribe, her father Jean Louis. He had killed the monster and saved the village and his three year old Mathilde without her sisters even waking up. She was the only one of the triplets to see the wendigo. She was also the first to find out that the monster had slaughtered her mother and brother.

Mathilde lay on her sleeping mat in the training room as she waited for her heart to slow down. Seb had offered to take the fireside shift for the night, keeping watch over the tribe and control of the night shift lookouts, so that Mathilde could get some privacy. After a long afternoon of flashbacks and guilt Mathilde was exhausted. What little sleep she had managed to grasp over the past couple of hours had been filled with dreams of the past.

As Protector Superior she should have been able to protect her group better. Perhaps Jack hadn’t been ready for his first hunt. She should have seen that he was not yet strong enough, that he was still suffering, even after all these years, from the loss of his mother. Mathilde mentally shook herself to clear her head. She had been torturing herself all day and felt the need to talk to her sisters. They were far more spiritual than Mathilde and never failed to calm her when she needed them most.

It had been thirteen years since Mathilde last saw her sisters in the flesh. The three of them had remained in Canada with the Plains Cree tribe and their father until they were four years old,  but Jean Louis had decided to separate the triplets, as much for the prophecy as for his love for them. The prophecy that dictated their lives and the paths they had been forced to walk. The prophecy that said the girls would save the world. Mathilde had been sent to the Suceava settlement in Romania to train as a Protector. Violette, the second born triplet, had been sent to Bucharest, over 200 miles away from Mathilde, to train and work with one of their father’s old friends as a Carer. Fleur was the most spiritual of the triplets and had inherited her mother’s skills for healing and working with the spirit world. She had remained with their father and the Plains Cree tribe in Canada to learn from the tribe’s spirit walkers and healers.

Mathilde splashed her face with cold water. If she was going to have a dream commune with Violette and Fleur she first needed to clear her head. They found it easier than Mathilde. Even if they were in the middle of something they could hear each other’s voices and talk back but Mathilde found it far more difficult and needed to reach a meditative state to enter the dream plains. Mathilde returned to her sleeping pad and tried to find a comfortable position, lying on her back. The large falconry was lit just by a single candle which she had brought with her. She began to meditate in the way she had been taught. To concentrate on everything that was registering with her physical senses in order to cast her physical distractions off and allow her mind to enter a dream state and journey to the dream plains.

Mathilde dealt first with sight. She listed the things she could see. Dust motes, the falcons high up in the rafters, feathers drifting down each time a falcon shook out its wings, a sliver of moonlight and stars through the high window, her own eyelashes. She closed her eyes to concentrate on what she could smell. Sawdust, feathers, hay, old bird feces and newer, more pungent feces, the oil she had rubbed into her cold, wind cracked hands. She listened for the sounds surrounding her; a gentle wind and the noise of the caribou, the odd cry from the falcons and a rustle when they moved their wings, the sound of her own breath. Mathilde slowed her breathing to slow her heartbeat. She counted to four as she took breaths in through her nose and to eight as she exhaled through barely parted lips. As her breathing slowed and she could see nothing but black on the inside of her eyelids, Mathilde concentrated on what she could feel. The cool of the air creating a slight draft over her face as it came through the windows, the hardness of the floor under her thin sleeping pad, the aches and pains of the day in her knotted shoulders and over exercised thighs, the warmth and slight itchiness of the wool socks on the soles of her feet and, as she concentrated harder, a slight warmth coming from the candle which sat near her right hand.

Mathilde took a few more controlled breaths and let all of these things slip away from her. As she concentrated on not concentrating the black of her eyelids became brown and then a light swirling blue and white mist like the moonstone she wore around her neck. As Mathilde entered the dream plain she could no longer see, feel, hear or smell anything of her physical world. She felt as light as air. After a minute of silence a figure came out of the mist. It was soon joined by a second figure, both so similar to Mathilde yet both so different.

The first figure to have appeared was Fleur. She was both taller and more adult looking than Mathilde with curves, long, dark curls and full lips. Fleur wore a brightly coloured full skirt and a long sleeved blouse. Her wrists and ankles jangled with the charms of the Romany tribes that she lived with. Violette moved forward to join hands with Fleur and Mathilde. Her dark brown hair flowed straight and long with intricate braids coming down from each temple. Her skin was a rich nut brown like their mother’s had been. She wore a hide, long sleeved tunic, long pants and fur lined snow boots. The triplets formed a circle and sat down. When they smiled at each other their violet eyes glittered and their straight teeth shone from under their different lips to create identical dimples.

“I’m so glad to see you,” said Mathilde. She never noticed her English accent until she spoke to her sisters. Each had adopted (or kept in Fleur’s case) the accent of the people they lived with but, despite living in Romania, Mathilde had grown to speak with the English accent of Protector Superior Henry, her now deceased mentor.

“What is the matter Mathilde?” asked Violette in a thick Romanian accent. “Is Amelie not looking after you well enough? You need to eat more, you are so pale.”

Mathilde smiled. Violette always assumed the mothering role when the sisters met. “No Violette. Amelie is feeding me well. She rarely stops trying to fatten me up!”

“You saw a death. You are feeling guilty.” said Fleur in a French accent layered with touches of Cree. Fleur had a knack for that. She was very attuned to moods and her time dealing with the spirit world had given her a sixth sense just short of being psychic.

“Jack, our newest Protector. A wendigo got him on today’s hunting trip. He died.”

“You think it was your fault,” said Violette

“Yes. We trained hard and he was a good fighter, but I can’t help feeling that I could have prepared him more psychologically, or seen that he wasn’t ready.”

“You couldn’t have known. You have such a responsibility for a teenager. We all do but you most of all.” Violette gave her hand a squeeze.

“Forgive yourself” said Fleur, breaking out of the trance that she had temporarily retreated into in order to reach the spirit world of the dead, just a breath away from the dream plain in which they sat. “He has already forgiven you. He feels there was no wrong to forgive. He’s made his way to the spirit plain and is reunited with his mother.”

The girls sat in silence for a while, each in their own thoughts, their hands warming each other’s and their pulses beating in their fingertips in perfect synchronicity.

“How is Father Fleur?” asked Mathilde wearily, making a forced effort to shrug off her negative thoughts.

“He is well. He’s on another journey, in search of a man in Prague. He thinks that he may have some new knowledge on the wendigo. He has been studying the poison from its claws. We have been working on something in the settlement too which may help.”

“That’s excellent. That could really be something.”

“I’m not so sure. This is his sixth trip this year to follow a lead and each time he leaves excited only to arrive back at the settlement distraught. He disappears in a rage for days. No-one dare talk to him. Then he comes out of hiding and begins the search again. I just hope that one of the things we are working on will turn out the way we hope.”

Suddenly Mathilde noticed how quiet Violette was being. She was usually the most talkative of the three of them but had sat in silence almost as soon as she’d been reassured that Mathilde was indeed eating enough.

“Violette?” said Mathilde looking at her more carefully then looking at Fleur to see if there was any indication that she might be able to read what was going on in Violette’s mind.

Fleur stared more carefully at Violette as she lifted her head to look at her sisters. She stared for a bit longer before gasping in horror.

“What? What is it?” asked Mathilde. Her head whipped between Violette and Fleur. Sometimes she wished she had inherited her mother’s ability to see what people were thinking so that she wasn’t always the last to figure out what was going on.

“I can’t see clearly but I see that the Bucharest settlement is scared. They are terrified that the wendigo are not what we thought they were. What has happened Violette?”

Violette sighed then began to talk. “I wanted to hear how Mathilde was before I said anything. I’ve been waiting for you to call for us to meet. I know you can’t hear when Fleur or I call so I had to wait for you to get in touch.”

“What is it? Why didn’t you send a falcon?”asked Mathilde, trying to ignore the feeling of inadequacy which threatened to crawl into her mind, as it always did when she was reminded of her lack in spiritual skills.

“I didn’t want it to be caught, for our message to be intercepted.”

Fleur and Mathilde exchanged confused looks.

“Intercepted?” enquired Mathilde “Who by? We have no enemies. There have been no wars since the White came. The worst a wendigo would do is to eat the bird.”

The only benefit of the White, the second Ice Age, had been that it ended any wars between humans as they were forced to fight only for survival and the good of the small settlements of survivors.

“I fear there may be one approaching. Two weeks ago our settlement was attacked by wendigo but not one. There were six of them.”

“Six! But wendigo don’t hunt together. Any wendigo who travel together fight so viciously that they rarely both survive more than a day of pack hunting. You must be mistaken.” Mathilde shook her head in disbelief.

“We weren’t. The lookout saw just the one wendigo at first. It was early afternoon and it came from in between the derelict buildings that surround the Bucharest settlement. Then a few minutes later a second wendigo came from another side. Our lookouts thought that it was a co-incidence but then more wendigo appeared until there were six of them. They kept pouncing at the walls and trying to climb over them but our archers kept them back. They almost made it over the wall a few times. The fight went on for many hours but eventually the wendigo stopped attacking. They were all dead. We left them for a day before we made a move and then our Protectorate dragged them into the settlement to burn them”