The Walk to Adilvun

"What do you do if you see Mahaha?" Violent gusts snatched at the taut caribou hide, the reverberations lending wordless echoes to Hanta's deep bass. Stitched wolves hunted elk across the rippling membrane, running rings through the twitching shadows.

"Ask for a last drink, then push it into the water," Nukak replied absently. His eyes followed the sharpening stone as it sprang from his fingers again, and he sighed. The spear clacked against the sled as Nukak bent to retrieve the tool once more.

"How about Keelut?" Hanta plucked the stone from his younger brother's hands, running it in smooth, practiced strokes along the edge. Nukak offered no complaint, trembling despite the warmth radiating from the supple hides.

"Shout its name." A wet cough wracked his thin shoulders, leaving a crimson stain on his palm. Nukak scrubbed his hand against the snow soaked dirt, and Hanta pretended not to notice.

"You sound stronger today, a little better maybe," he tried for a smile, but it couldn't reach his eyes. The knot in his throat threatened to choke him, finally smother him in expectant panic. "Are you-," he swallowed, readjusting the lump, "are you sure you want to do this?" His eyes found Nukak's, and impotent grief burned his throat like acid. "We're far from the village if-".

Nukak stood and laid a bony hand on his brother's shoulder. "Hanta, this is my dream. Since the first time I watched you drag a caribou home, this is all I've ever wanted. To bring back a bear, even at the cost of my life, would be the greatest gift I could ever receive." He smiled at his brother and gestured toward the wolves and elk. "The circle continues, and I will take my place in Adilvun." Nukak swayed and sat down hard, sweat glistening on his face.

Hanta nodded, head lowered to hide the tears that muscled past his eyelids. "I'll help you," he grit his teeth and forced the words out, "even if it means losing you."

"Thank you, Hanta. Thank you for everything." Nukak gave a wan smile and leaned against the sled. "I think I'll rest before we continue." He shot Hanta a wink and said, "I'll need all my strength to wrestle that bear."

Hanta chuckled half heartedly and took a step towards the exit. "I'll check the storm and see if those tracks are still there." Nukak nodded as fatigue roiled and billowed within him, smothering his consciousness. Somewhere far off, perhaps in the caverns of his imagination, a faint chittering giggle rose and fell with the wind.

Nukak jolted awake, and the smoldering flames guttered a forlorn greeting. Hanta hadn’t returned. A wet cough wracked his gaunt frame, leaving a crimson reminder on his palm. No time to waste. Nukak smiled without humor at the thought. There was no such thing as extra time for him.

He staggered through the tent flap, and the crisp air threw needles down his throat. Nukak’s eyes fluttered against the abrasive wind, stumbling over the outline of boot prints in the snow. “Where did you go?” He wondered aloud, and the forest did not concern itself with answering. Nukak glanced at the tent, then back at the prints. An image of Hanta returning to find his corpse flashed behind his eyes, and guilt took the first steps for Nukak.

Hours shambled by in malaise as the trail twisted and wavered through the indistinct landscape, and his curiosity curdled into disappointment. Had Hanta broken his promise? Nukak considered turning back, or maybe even just laying down in the snow to rest. Just a brief rest and then he would catch up with Hanta. But he knew that would be it, and his brother would never see him again.

The burble of gushing water crescendoed as the river peeled itself from the horizon. Beside an isolated cluster of boulders, the trail vanished. Acrid copper clogged his nostrils, driving torpid feet to fall in time with the fluttering in his chest. Nukak cleared the jagged edge and halted.

Hanta sat against the rocks amidst a circle of crimson stains. Long, ragged gashes littered his torso; the claret stained faces of ribs stared apathetically through the voids. Blood splattered stone and face alike, fat droplets that crouched like maggots beneath eyes now white as snow. Hanta smiled, despite it all. Spots of viscera flecked his teeth, and Nukak bent to release the tide of bile and blood.

“No,” his moan mixed with the directionless screech of the wind, “no, no, no.” Cradling his older brother, they rocked back and forth to his lamentations. “How could this happen?” He shuddered and coughed, fresh blood dripping down Hanta’s face.

How would Nukak find rest in Adlivun now, knowing their mother would be alone? Why hadn’t Hanta woken him, or sought help? Nukak looked down at his scrawny arms and shuddered. Hanta couldn’t. They had strayed too far; no one was around to help. It’s all my fault, my last wish killed Hanta; the thought stole feeling from his fingers.

As he wept, sending pleas to Anguta to trade places, an ugly question wedged itself in his mind. He studied Hanta for a moment, then slowly stood and backed away. Why wasn’t the body devoured?

Adlivun will wait until I return for you, Hanta, Nukak swore as his feet pounded into the thick snow. His lungs writhed in agony; he imagined them pooling with blood, but his legs churned on.

What had taken half an hour to traverse flew by in minutes, then tens of minutes. Then an hour. His knees crumpled, and the ground bit his cheek and palms with glacial fangs. Somewhere behind him, a chittering giggle floated on the wind. “Mahaha,” the name burst unbidden from his throat; his fingers clawed at the icy ground, and his flesh screamed in agony.

Waxing and waning, the horrid ululation chased him through the taiga, drawing nearer with clacking teeth and mad cackling, then subsiding into an insectile chuckle. Uncounted years passed in that hour, his progress faltering as the searing pain faded to cumbersome numbness. Blackened fingers wrenched him forward, unrelenting in desperation.

Silence fell for a second; the hideous laughter ceased abruptly. Then it erupted from his own throat. Crimson leaked from his lips as he fought to breathe through the blood-curdling howl. Nukak writhed on his back, dead digits clawing at his neck as the laughter poured outward.

Hard crunching overlapped his torturous cacophony; something came shambling through the shadows. It was Hanta. No, it couldn’t be, wasn’t, there was an inviolable wrongness to the shape. Bare legs emerged from the darkness, flesh and cloth hewn away to reveal atrophied and sinewy limbs. Long, scrawny arms erupted from his brother’s elbows, tipped with needle-like fingers that hung almost to its bare feet. Blood and snow slushed off his naked chest with each uproarious guffaw, unveiling mottled patches of umbral purple and necrotic black.

Their laughter mixed in a grotesque symphony as it shuffled closer, savoring each step. The snow filled eyes burned into Nukak’s with all the brumal force of a blizzard. It bent over him, bathing in the precipitation of Nukak’s blood filled chuckle.

Bony fingers grated together as it gathered a fistful of Hanta’s hair and tore upwards. Skin and muscle, veins and bone and tendons, the underpinnings of anatomy stretched and broke like taffy, giving a glimpse of the demon’s face. Emaciated cheeks and sunken eye sockets flashed by as the oily curtain of hair fell, leaving only a single snowy eye peering at him.

“Wait!” He screamed through the insidious laughter. “Wait, please, Han-” the wretched chuckling filled the cracks in his voice, but he started again, “please, don’t kill me. I can’t die without at least a final drink.”

Its fingers paused a hair’s length from his heaving chest. Greasy hair spilled over itself as the head tilted, revealing a tenebrous pit filled with rows of needle thin teeth. They clicked and clacked against one another as it chittered to itself. Mahaha took a pace backwards.

Then the demon scooped up Hanta’s head, chittering louder and giggling. It winked and drove its hand into the stump of Hanta’s neck. Cartilage squelched and bone cracked, until, impossibly, Hanta’s head perched neatly on its wrist. His lips moved, and in a groaning voice like the creaking of wood before it snaps, it said, “that’s what he said.”