INTRUSION
The moon is a cold, silver weight, decorating the world in shades of grey. My siblings walk beside me, but their stares are hollow, fixed on a horizon I cannot see. There is a weightlessness to our stride that confirms it: this is not the waking world. We are moving through the dreamtime.
We reach the place where we left the guts and bone of our kill. A she-wolf stands over the red gore, her coat as dark as a cave. Her eyes are flat, reflecting nothing, yet I feel no instinct to reach for a blade. There is no snarl, no scent of musk or heat. She is a shadow given shape, a spirit keeping watch over what we left behind. I stroke her furry head as I pass by. She does not challenge my approach to the carcass she guards in death.
But someone is already here. It is not Qan or Xagu, for they stand behind me. Instead, a figure squats by the side of the Bearded Bull, stealing his gifts.
I holler out, ‘Who are you?’
The thief turns to face me. He is a young man, one of the barbarian sort, his features broken and desperate. I see something deep in his eyes, though I cannot discern what it is.
Then the moonlight pours into the remains of the Bearded Bull. The bones fill with a silvery light. The bull rises from his grave, and I see the stranger fall back in horror as the bovine skeleton resurrects to stand before us. I am drawn to stare into the darkness of eye sockets pecked clean by eagles. The darkness grows until I am engulfed back into the emptiness of sleeptime.
I cry out once more, ‘Spirits, why have you summoned me here? Who is this thief? Why does the wolf guard your grave?’
I cannot find any understanding. The spirit has a prophecy or a warning I fail to comprehend. Something is coming into my life, some great change. Distraught, I beg for an explanation. Come back, I don't understand!
I scream out loudly.
With that scream, I wake to the daylight world. Droplets of cold water fall from a chilly sky onto my face. Evidently I failed to close the hatch last night, and the rain has arrived, carried by gusts to land upon my cheeks. Xagu’s limbs are wrapped around mine; we are tangled together in our nest of furs. My head throbs, and I stick out a furred tongue to catch a few drops of rainwater. I am so parched.
I rise from the den to boil a birch-bark kettle on our hearth. Qan joins me to enjoy a hawthorn tea. He is pensive, so I ask him, ‘Brother, you seem thoughtful this morning. Did you not sleep well following our feast?’
He looks at me as though asking a silent question, then replies, ‘You and Xagu were both in my dreamtime. We visited the grave of the Bearded Bull…’
I finish his statement for him: ‘You saw the wolf and the stranger?’
Before he can answer, I hear Xagu stir from our nest. She staggers out, sees us staring back at her, and exclaims, ‘You were both there in my dream!’
We talk excitedly about our collective vision until the conversation grows as cold as our brew. Only now do I recall my trance from the previous night, when the spirit of the Bearded Bull granted us permission to join the game.
I ask my siblings about this earlier dream. ‘The barbarian witch, and the stranger who spied upon our celebration—have you also seen them?’
They look at each other, their faces blank.
Qan asks, ‘Witch? A spy? All that I felt was the spirit of O A’killao as he entered our campsite. I saw no people.’
Xagu waves her hand to express agreement with her brother.
Perplexed, I rise from the hearth and wander to the edge of the camp, right where I had seen the eyes of the stranger reflecting our fire. Qan and Xagu join me, looking concerned and puzzled as we step into the treeline. I see ferns that have been trampled, and point them out to my brother.
Qan squats down, prodding at the ground before he looks up. ‘These shimmers are not ours. Someone else has visited our camp, just as you saw in your vision. We are not the only folk in this paradise.’
In response to a sudden chill, I pull my furs closer to my neck. ‘We should return to the corpse of the Bearded Bull to look for further signs of this spy and thief.’
My siblings respond by fetching their birch-bark boots.
We jostle our way down to the wild meadows where yesterday we had slain the bison. On reaching the spot, my jaw drops. Alongside the ruined carcass of the Bearded Bull lie the skinned remains of a wolf.
I stare across at my brother and sister, but the words refuse to leave our lips. We are too stunned by what we are seeing.
Qan points down to the bloodied stones left beside the beast. ‘These are not our tools,’ he announces. ‘These are the stones of the barbarians.’
I am flabbergasted. This poor wolf, the very one I had seen in my vision and whose furry head I had stroked, has been rudely scalped. I kneel down and offer my prayers to its spirit.
Qan trots off to the diminishing remains of the Bearded Bull. ‘Here too,’ he calls back. ‘I see the fat bones cut free by stone.’
Xagu searches the surrounding area, looking for tracks. She soon finds the clumsy marks of a barbarian and beckons us over. Holding our weapons tight, the three of us move with stealth into the undergrowth.
