High Taiga

Before the first snowfall, the sky darkens over Hartengrath. The sun falls into hibernation, curled beneath the shelter of the horizon. In its absence, ribbons of rainbowed light paint the sky, offering little but faint light to the people.

Under these dim, rainbowed lights, a shepherd boy saw it.

A bear, he said, bent sheep from the flock once, twice, thrice only to kill and not to eat. Their wool, white like the snow, was left bogged with blood and pooled by entrails. It was an impossibility. The villagers did not believe him. The bodies were gone by the time the boy had crossed the snow drifts and brought back his people.

“How could this be?” they asked. “Nature exists in balance.”

Then, a horse of noble breeding was drug from the village Warden’s pasture and was left near the edge of the high trees. The horse was disemboweled, but uneaten. The body was seen by the people. Here was their proof, and it was an insult upon their leader, upon Hartengrath’s heart.

But why? Whispers rumbled within the wooden walls and beneath the thatched roofs. Families spoke mirrored conversations, the same words uttered again and again from different lips. This beast was wrought by an imbalance within the village. This beast was born because a villager was not behaving in nature’s accords because a woman was not behaving womanly. A woman was not behaving in the image of the gods. The accusations flow from the parents to the peers, and then from the home to the campfire, from the inner circle to the street.

“It is because of Wulfrun,” the repeated words mold a nasty wail in Wulfrun’s mind. “It is because of Wulfrun.”

The Warden and his six advisors gathered in the village’s mead hall. Stories of their ancestors were recorded in bold, deep engravings along its walls and great quilts of their generation’s accomplishments are hung from the ceiling. The men sat beneath these quilts, cross-legged, in the hall’s center. They are dressed in the skins of animals and wear hollowed amulets crafted from the wood of the high taiga.

The first of the advisors to speak was Adalbern. His homestead produced more cattle than any other in Hartengrath. He had a mighty dog and a great bull to protect his cows, and so had seen none of this violent bear. “This is the time of the long sleep,” his voice is deep and rough, worn by his days spent hollering to the working men strewn across his fields. “Perhaps it is tormented by nightmares and acts poorly.” He had before seen his dog accosted by bad dreams.

The next advisor to speak is a broad-shouldered hunter named Dudda, his name meaning “round” as he was at birth, cleared his throat. He wore a heavy bearskin, and his amulet had a great hole in the center where a piece of strong rope thread.

“This is not the way of nature,” his strong voice rattled against the walls of the mead hall. “And this is not the way of bears. Never before have I heard of a bear roaming so late into the winter,” he said, choosing to ignore Adalbern’s childish theory. His stone-gray eyes swept across the other men in the mead hall, he sought looks of disagreement but found only heads downturned in respect. “This is no bear. It must be some other beast, if any.”

Gerulf, a wanderer of great renown, now spoke. His silvery voice rang through the halls. “In all my travels, I have never encountered a creature of such violence.” He wore the coat of a white wolf, and before him, he had laid a fine blade sheathed in cowskin. Gerulf’s wrists and neck were adorned with jewelry from faraway lands, lands mirroring their own, made inaccessible from the ice floats wrought by winter. “But creatures of such violence I have encountered in story,” he said, nodding his thinly skinned head to one of the quilts.

The men look. The quilt depicts Dudda and Helmo, the only thin-figured man on the Warden’s council, slaying a pack of monstrous, blood-red wolves, their muzzles twisted into demonic snarls.

“Perhaps,” Gerulf continued, a smile formed along the arch of his mouth. “We are experiencing a story of our own.”

Dudda sighed quietly, too quietly for the other men to hear, but Adalbern groaned.

The sound of discontent earned him a sharp glare from the Warden, who had sat in silence since the men had formed the circle. His head had been dipped, deep in thought, but now he had been roused. The hall fell silent when he rose, and all eyes were downturned.

“Regardless of tales and the nature of bears,” the Warden’s prose was simple, but his voice was strong. Like Dudda, he wore the skin of a bear on his back. “This is a threat against nature’s balance, against our gods. We must dispel it

A new voice, belonging to the thickly boned Ulrich, a great warrior, followed after the Warden’s. “We are being punished,” he said, eyes wide with excitement. Ulrich loved to speak of punishment and the divine. “Because the world is out of balance.” His blue eyes flicker to the thin-figured Helmo.

Helmo’s soft eyes lowered into a nasty glare, “Why look to me?”

Hate makes a thorny nest in Ulrich’s gaze. “Because you have raised your daughter as a man and not a woman. The world is out of balance because a woman is not behaving womanly.”

Helmo and Dudda both groaned, but Helmo spoke.

“Perhaps, Ulrich, you should be seeking useful meanings instead of pursuing village gossip.” He looked around the mead hall, no heads bowed for him. His fellows observed him like the blood-red wolves, eyes starving for confrontation. Helmo took a deep breath, “My daughter is a hunter,” he began. “This is true. But being a man does not make one a hunter.” He looked to Gerulf, who eagerly met his gaze. “Gerulf is a blessed storyteller and a brave wanderer,” he looked to Adalbern, whom he proclaimed as a great cattleman, and then Dudda, whom he described as a powerful hunter. “And you, Ulrich, are a warrior.”

Ulrich’s eyes narrowed, noting Helmo’s lack of praise.

“So I have raised my daughter as a hunter. I find that to be fair if it is her wish.”

“The gods made men first, and women second,” Ulrich said. “Men are to hunt and fight and lead women are to serve them, not their own wishes. My observations are not formed by idle gossip, they are truth. Monsters form from imbalance. This monster is formed from Wulfrun.”

“How can you be sure?”

Ulrich ignored Helmo’s question. “Do you truly believe her to be a great hunter?” he asked, raising a thick brow.

“I do.”

“Then perhaps you should produce her,” his white teeth flashed like the red wolves showed their fangs. “Have her slay this bear!” he looked quickly to Gerulf, and added, “Or whatever this beast may be.”

Helmo’s thin lip curled. He spoke with an animalistic snarl and wondered for a moment if he, too, could be one of those red wolves. “Ulrich, you have told me before that your sons are the best hunters and the best warriors in each of their rites. Why not produce them to kill the bear?”

Ulrich's heavy eyes settled into a glare, “I cannot waste them on such a quest. It is unlikely they will both be here when I am gone, and I need someone to fill my place in the mead hall.”

Helmo opened his mouth to respond, and Dudda began to interject, but the Warden waved a hand over the flame, silencing his council.

The Warden’s voice was resolute, “You have said enough, Ulrich. A quest upholding the will of our gods is no wasted quest.”

The Warden paused, and Ulrich murmured an apology, adding, “I will produce my hunter son to prove the weight of my apology.” He cast his eyes to his fox-fur-lined boots, his mind already working ways to keep the warrior son out of battle. His sons, he secretly knew, were not the best in the village.

“No, no,” the Warden pointed a strong finger to Helmo. “You shall produce your daughter. I am allowing her–and you–a chance to prove yourselves to the village. Displease them and you will be removed from the hall and her from the village. I will not allow the prevalence of this discourse, be it in nature, or–” he gestured in an arc to the hall: its quilts, its engravings. “within the village.”

Helmo stiffened. The discussion of his raising of Wulfrun, his hunter daughter and only child, was a popular one. He had always known he would face such scrutiny, but for her to be threatened with exile–no, he stilled his mind. “It will be done,” he said, dipping his wrinkling head. “I will produce her.”

The men stood and dispersed, Helmo exited slowly alongside Dudda. They came to stand outside the hall, beneath lightly falling snow.

“Our forefathers crossed frozen oceans to get here,” he said, his words punctuated by clouds of breath. “To escape a brutal king, only to find a land just as brutal.” Helmo turned to Dudda, who had thoughtfully narrowed his eyes. “Dudda,” he said, stress causing his voice to tremble. “Was I wrong to raise my daughter as a hunter?”

His friend shook his head. “No, no, it would have been wrong of you to keep her unprepared,” he looked at the engravings, then at Helmo. “Wulfrun can hunt circles around my Hrafn,” he said, smiling at the thought of his own child, a son who had once tracked himself for hours in the high taiga. “But you have prepared her well, she will succeed on this quest.”

“You may be right,” Helmo said, waving over his shoulder as he walked west from the mead hall, his mind wild with worry for his daughter.

Wulfrun could see her father coming from the town’s center; she had very good eyes. Even from many strides away, she could make out his forlorn expression. She straightened from her slumped seat on their front steps. She had grown restless due to the bear and had sat every evening before their front door, sharpening her short blade.

“What plagues you?” she asked when he stood over her, keeping her attention on the blade. She rubbed a sharpening stone on the metal, methodically scraping shrieking, ringing noises into the frozen air.

“The Warden has requested I produce you for a quest,” he spoke simply, though his heart hammered in his chest. Should he tell her the stakes, or would that weaken her? Looking at her now, broad-shouldered, muscle rippling even beneath the layers of animal skin and fox coat, he wondered if anything he could say could ever weaken her.

She looked up at him, gray eyes dull. “To kill the bear?”

“Yes,” his words, he was surprised, came shakily at the sight of her dim eyes. It was the look of a bored predator, of a hunting dog kept kenneled too long. He thought he may have seen this look in the eyes of Adalbern’s dog a time or two.

“I will take your horse,” she stood with a huff and turned toward their stable where Helmo’s noble-blooded horse, gifted to him by the Warden, lay in layers of warm straw.

“My horse?” he had never seen her so severe.

“I wish for this to be done quickly,” she said and then fetched the gelding.

Helmo walked beside her as she rode to the mead hall where the Warden stood, watching them until they grew from dark flecks on the horizon to full figures. He raised an eyebrow at the fine horse, but Helmo only shook his head. He had no time or energy for quarrels, not when his home was at stake.

“Should she lose this steed, I will not give you another,” The Warden said, looking the dark bay gelding over, his eyes lingering on the fine saddle strapped to the animal’s back.

Helmo nodded.

Wulfrun ignored the comment. She was busy with Dudda’s son, Hrafn, who was thoroughly inspecting the silver emblem on her horse’s crosspiece. He had always been more interested in crafting than hunting. He had offered to craft her a lantern to hang from the saddle horn, though she had declined him. Her eyes were better in the dark than the light.

“I could go with you,” Hrafn offered shyly.

She knew it was manners and not a genuine offer, not that she much wanted him with her anyway. He was a poor hunter. Actually–he was poor at any violence. She politely declined him.

Wulfrun did not acknowledge the Warden as he announced her quest, or to the townspeople who came to the hall, gathered by the ringing of the town’s bell. They listened to the Warden’s announcement silently, though their faces creased in satisfied lines. This was fair, they thought, allowing the problem’s source to correct it, wasting no innocent blood.

Wulfrun said goodbye to her father and thanked Dudda, who had collected for her a waterskin and a sack of supplies now tied tightly to her saddle. She bid farewell to Hrafn and thanked the Warden for the quest, all the while carefully keeping her gaze from the ensemble of villagers. They did not deserve her attention.

Then she was off, pressing her heels into the horse’s flank as she headed for the mountains and high taiga, leaving the yellow lights of Hartengrath far behind her.

When she arrived at the forest boundary, she found that it was silent. The only sound was the tandem breathing of her and her horse. She looked over the gelding’s shoulder and found signs of the bear’s steps and slick, scarlet drops of blood spotted against the snow-covered forest floor. The light of the Borealis was strong tonight. She took this as a sign of her gods’ favor.

She followed the blood trail into the forest, avoiding the trees and their tangled roots. Even as she moved deeper and deeper in the forest, further and further from the intrusion of Hartehngrath, no noise arose. Wulfrun began to speak softly to her horse, who she could tell was unnerved by the forest’s silence.

She followed the trail for hours, traveling until her horse was darkened with sweat and clouded with steam. She stopped him by a well-known pool near the forest’s center and dismounted, tying him to one of the high trees. Her gelding would need to rest if he was to stay spry enough to catch a bear.

Using the materials Dudda provided, Wulfrun made a small fire and sat wearily beside it. Having been born in such a desolate climate, she had no use for the heat. She wondered if this bear, if it did not function by the rules of nature, would be attracted by the flames rather than dissuaded by them.

She looked up at the sky, peering between the thin holes in the tree coverage and upon the familiar constellations doting the navy, night sky. She could see the curve of the Borealis far to the west, but it provided little light this deep within the taiga. Wulfrun did not worry over the darkness. She could see perfectly fine, even if the fire wasn’t burning.

Without the fire, she still could have seen the bear.

She did not hear it approach. It seemed to appear out of the sharp, cold night air as if born from the shadows. Even with her fine eyes, Wulfrun could not see the face of the bear. It was shrouded in darkness. Still, she could tell this bear was diseased.

She could smell the sweet, sticky scent of infection as it lumbered towards her, closer and closer until she could see its wide, blood-rimmed eyes shining bright white like two little moons.

Wulfrun took a deep breath as she slowly moved her hand to the cold hilt of her short blade. Any sudden movement she worried would agitate the bear, though she had an inkling it may be blind if the moony eyes were not a trick of the firelight.

But her horse could not keep still. He was silent, but struggled against the tie, tossing his head with wild eyes. Wulfrun could not concern herself with the horse now. If he broke his neck struggling she would be cursed with a long walk, but she could still make it back on her own. Running to her horse now may trigger the bear.

She drew the short sword from its leather sheath, flinching at the way the bear’s fly-bitten ears flickered at the sound. Her breaths came fast and shallow. She had not expected to see the bear so soon. This creature, as Gerulf had proposed, was one worthy of story. Despite its weak appearance, it still moved with the strength of a bear but strolled with a catlike agility she had never before seen possessed by an animal of such size. Tentatively, she began to creep to the right side of the fire, her heart pounding to her ears as she placed herself between the bear and the horse, who was nearly free of his tie.

The bear breathed deeply, inhaling the smoke of the fire and the scent of Wulfrun and her horse. Wulfrun bent low to the ground and readied herself, peering at the bear through the flames. The bear paused, black nostrils flaring, and then took a discerning growl and charged.

Its great paws battered the ground like war drums as it galloped towards her, closing the distance between the shadow’s edge and the fire in a few, leaping strides. Its scarred muzzle burst through the tall flames, assaulting Wulfrun with its vile, death-scented breath.

Wulfrun let herself fall flat to the ground as the bear charged through the fire, praying to her gods that the bear was blind and would not be able to detect the sudden movement. Its bloody, slobbering jaws locked on the cold air above her as she slammed back against the hard frozen earth. The breath was knocked from her lungs, but she still held tight to her short blade. Before she could even take a breath, instinct guided her hand up and she thrusted the blade into the bear's matted, white stomach.

A shocked rush of air rattled through its massive body before it collapsed upon her. Wulfrun pushed herself back, digging into the frozen dirt with her heels and grunting with effort as she pushed away from its stinking body.

Though shaky with adrenaline, she rose to her feet and stood over the bear’s corpse. Its body had swallowed the flames, but the Borealis had come to be centered over the forest pond, the light illuminating the sparkling flakes of snow on the ends of the bear’s dull fur.

She was still too excited to feel any pain from where the bear had fallen on her. She stared at its body in shock, tracing the rotting lines of its massive shoulders and the protruding bones in its back. When her eyes had traveled the length of the bear’s body she blinked out of her trance. She had succeeded. She had completed her quest.

Satisfaction flickered but did not linger. Proof, proof. She needed proof. The head would do.

Stepping forward she kicked the massive animal over to its side and yanked her short sword free of its charred, still-bleeding chest. She wiped the blood off on her dirtied, fur sleeve before she tended to her horse, who she knew would be too anxious to stand near the dead animal.

She undid the tie and then led the horse several stretches away and tied him again out of sight of the bear. There was no reason to force him to stand so close. Wulfrun could think of no animal big enough to drag away the corpse of the bear, and scavengers would know the smell of an infected carcass and be dissuaded. Even a starving animal would not bury its muzzle in rot.

As she walked back to the body she allowed herself a short pause to thank the gods for the ease of her quest. She had killed the imbalanced bear and, when she returned to the village with its head, they would accept her. They would no longer discuss her right to hunt but would instead discuss her abilities as a hunter. She would be proven to them. Gone would be her nights watching the hunters’ lanterns disappear into the high taiga. No, she would be with them. Her mouth curved into a small smile but fell when she returned to the fire site.

The body was gone.

Had someone come and stolen her kill? Surely she would have heard horses. No one man alone could have pulled this bear away so quickly. Her heart sank. Could it have been Ulrich’s sons? No, they were poor hunters and surely poorer thieves. They would have left signs.

She looked down at the white snow and was able to discern a flattened trail leading to the woods. Someone had taken the bear.

She still held her short sword, and her grip upon it tightened. She had no choice but to pursue the thief. If she brought no proof of her victory, how, then, would her people see that she was worthy? When she looked at the empty space left by the bear, she could only see their disappointed looks, and could only hear their demeaning chiding.

Quickly but quietly, she walked along the trail left by the bear’s great body, keeping her eyes ahead of her as the tread led her around the steady bend of the icy pond. The pond was small, and its bank was scarce but twenty strides all around. The bear had been pulled around half the bank before the track abruptly jerked opposite of the fire and into the dense trees, back to the same place the bear had come. Wulfrun began to doubt herself: maybe she had not killed it, only wounded it, and it had dragged its bleeding body back into the taiga. She could see a dark, red ribbon striping the center of the path, so fresh it still shone rather than stained.

She raised her head now but kept walking into the trees, walking until the shadows swallowed the shine of the blood trail and the tread ended in front of a cluster of shadows hunched over the body of the bear. Wulfrun stopped, staring with wide eyes as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

Wulfrun thought the shadows must have formed an animal, but she could not place any of this beast and her mind raced to fill in the blanks. The legs of a bird, a wolf, a cougar. The ears of a lynx, a fox, a horse. The mouth of a man, a bear, a dog. The beast appeared to have no beginning and no end to its physical being, only a vague outline of existence. She could only see the bear disappearing, dissolving into the beast’s form as it devoured the carcass.

This, she knew like an instinct, was the source of their strife. The knowledge wormed deep within her, and she thought it must have been instilled by the gods.

Wulfrun must have gasped or stumbled, because the beast’s indescribable head turned to her, and its endless mouth contorted into an imitation of a woman’s smile. It closed the distance to her quickly, reaching her in a single bound. The creature was so swift it had an excellent chance of disemboweling her had she not acted just as fast and thrust forth the short blade, bursting through the beast’s shadowy hide. Her blade burst through as though it was made of parchment, and cold blood spewed from the wound. It wailed in agony, and the sound shook Wulfrun’s teeth.

But, in all its impossible appearance, it crumpled in death and fell before her. She stood over it for a long while, so long she lost track of time. She was shaken from her shock by a gust of strong wind, chilling her through her clothes.

The wind echoed through the trees, thrumming against the strong branches. She could hear the trees, full of animals hidden from her, rustling against the gust. They were watching her.

“Remove this,” she swore she heard them whisper. “Remove this.”

But she did not want to see the full body of this beast the long way back to her village. She crouched beside it in the frozen grass, steeling her mind against the panic of being so near its uncanny visage. Still, she had to bring back proof. One look at the bear’s mangled, consumed body told her that the head of this monster would have to do. She pressed her knife behind the lump she thought could be its jaw, and cut. The head severed easily. Just as with the hide, it was much lighter and weaker than its appearance suggested.

With little effort, she carried it back to the horse and set the head down several strides from his place by the tree. The horse eyed it with white eyes, huffing smoky clouds of breath. He would not carry it, he seemed to say, though she did not expect him to.

She emptied the rest of her supplies into the quiet forest. Her belongings knocked against the frozen ground, rolling over the jutting roots and towards the bank of the pond, but she had no desire to recollect them. She shook out the sack and quickly covered the beast’s head. Dark liquid pooled at the sack’s base but did not leak.

And then the sound of the world rose and fell upon her like a great wave.

She could hear rodents snuffling beneath roots, the hooves of deer deeper in the forest, and her audience in the trees ruffled their feathers and fur in a great, unanimous sigh. She had done as she was told and removed the presence of this beast.

It was clear to her, then, more than an intuition could have said, that this beast had been the true monster.

The walk back to Hartengrath seemed shorter than the departure. The head of the beast was light, and Wulfrun did not have much soreness where the bear had collapsed on her. Her horse walked dutifully behind her, his head held high and ears swiveling. Sometimes he would stop and peer into the darkness, startled by the sudden recurrence of forest sounds, and she would have to stop and lead him a ways. This added much time, but she did not sense it.

When she saw her village, the light from her people’s windows seemed to wash the ache from her tired body. She was able to move with as much strength and grace as she did when she had left them half a day ago. They saw her coming from the tree line and gathered as they had when they saw her off.

“She returned,” they had said, “this must be a sign of success.”

It was the Warden who first approached her, as was his right. Privately he saw the head of the beast, whose shadowy visage threatened to tear his mind in two. It was a dark, impossible thing. One he could not conceptualize even when it was laid clearly before him. Wulfrun, to his dismay, did not seem perturbed by it. She looked upon it simply, as if it was the body of a rabbit or a deer. The Warden did not like her response.

He left her and the head and took his place before his village. “Wulfrun has succeeded on her quest,” he said. “The imbalance in the forest has been cured. She has slain the bear, wrought from her own imbalance. Nobly, she has righted her wrong and brought the world back into balance. Now nature is equal again, and because of Wulfrun’s choice the gods are pleased.”

And the people, too, were pleased. Wulfrun had held herself accountable. So long as things stayed in balance, they would be amicable to her.

The head of the beast was burned before Gerulf could observe it. “This story,” the Warden had said, “will not be one materialized.” Wulfrun’s efforts would be forgotten in time, but her generation would accept her. With this, the Warden said, she would have to be satisfied.

The Warden watched the head burn while Wulfrun sat in the mead hall, speaking to her Dudda, Gerulf, and her father. She sparsely spoke of the monster. Her thoughts were dominated by her rage for the Warden. How could he vanquish the memory of her quest? How could he blame her for the beast, even when he saw the face of the monster? How could her hunting have wrought such an evil?

Gerulf agreed. The Warden should not have such a right, and he was not wise enough to make such a claim.

With Wulfrun’s description of the beast, Gerulf did his best to inscribe her newly crafted hunter’s amulet with its face. He did not get the image right. Wulfrun was not surprised. It was simply unimaginable.

The Warden’s wife approached her husband as he stood straight-backed, watching the shadowy face melt in the flames. She knew he was secretly an agnostic man, and so she asked him: What did he truly think of this beast? How could it have appeared? How could it be that Wulfrun, the female hunter, had come to slay it?

He shook his head and his posture softened as he looked to her, but then he shook himself back into discipline as he again turned the flames. “Unexplainable things,” he replied. “Are often best left forgotten.”

***

Kelsey Griffith is a 19-year-old college student from the foothills of piedmont North Carolina. Growing up queer and country in rural NC has led her to explore the darker corners of the south in her writing, especially religious and gender issues. Though currently studying communications in Appalachia, she has been writing stories since she could hold a pencil.