T'aakshi

Hunger. It coursed through him as unyielding as the tides themselves, cavernous and never-ending. It never stopped, and neither did his hunt. He loped through the deep snows with a lithe ease that belied his size. They were close. He could smell them. Feel them. They would struggle, he knew. Resist with biting iron, resist with every ounce of their meagre strength. It would do them no good.

His eyes found the first of them before they noticed him, the howling winds impairing their vision and cloaking him behind a wall of cruel white. But he could see them clearly, and even if he couldn’t, their scent would be enough. He surged forward, already half-tasting the warm tang of blood across his tongue, and lashed out with his claws.

His father’s face contorted, fear and pain and betrayal etched across it as he fell into the snow. He froze, hunger overtaken by nausea even as his prey, now aware, struck at him in their panic. Father? The unfamiliar concept rolled around in his mind. There was only prey and himself—there had never been anything else. He reached out, scooping his prey from the snow and bringing it up to eye-level.

Grey eyes stared back. Eyes he knew. Its mouth opened and closed, slick with blood, but instead of the unintelligible bleating of the other prey, another sound left it.

“T’aakshi, why?”

He lurched back, prey falling from his hands. The world spun but the sounds persisted as though the prey was right beside his ear.

“How could you—“ He felt the icy touch of the snow as he sank to his knees. “—Kill—“

His hands were warm, slick with some kind of liquid. T’aakshi looked down, only to be met my his father’s severed head, eyes empty and mouth twisted in shock.

It moved.

“Why?”

❖

T’aakshi bolted upright in his bed, slick with sweat, and immediately hissed and clutched at his bandaged side as broken ribs reminded him of their presence. Scant candlelight flickered against the pinewood walls of his part of the family home, and the deep shadows it cast twitched and jerked like fresh-hunted game. The stern-faced master of herbs had instructed him to stick to bed rest for the first few weeks of recovery from his injuries, and T’aakshi wasn’t in any kind of mood to disobey the man.

The last two weeks had been a haze of reliving the Beast’s attack in his mind, everything he had done and worse, everything he hadn’t. How many children would still have both of their parents had he done more? Had he been better? It didn’t bear thinking about, yet he could think of nothing else whilst he was awake.

Sleep was worse. He spent his dreams covered in blood that wasn’t his, staring into the black, hollow eyes of the Beast or the accusing eyes of his father. Often, they were the same. Other nights, much as in the dream he had just woken from, he was the beast, savouring the smell of fresh meat as he swept his claws through prey with familiar faces until he finally met the eyes of his father once more.

He had left his family’s hut only once since his return, gingerly stepping outside the door for some fresh air. It was as though folk had been waiting for him or his mother to emerge—at least a dozen people were half-feigning productivity in the street surrounding their home, and a dozen more seemed to arrive as word spread that they had seen him. He had expected the guilt. His father had been loved, and where he hadn’t been, he had been respected. He’d even been prepared for hatred—given what had happened, how could they not?

The only thing he hadn’t been prepared for was sympathy, and when it came, it had blindsided him. T’aakshi had staggered back inside, mute, and retreated to his room. He couldn’t face that again. Not yet.

A trio of harsh raps at their door broke T’aakshi mercifully free of the wanderings of his mind. Nobody had visited since the first time he’d been outside, and he felt his mouth go dry at the thought of having to deal with anybody. He heard his mother’s footsteps on wooden boards, and the creak of the door as it swung open. The voices on the other side of it were all-too familiar.

Cursing softly, he pulled himself up from the bed, hauling himself to his feet with only a little difficulty. He pulled a fur coat from the battered stool in the room’s corner and put it on, trying and failing to ignore the sharp, piercing pain in his side as he thread his arm through the sleeves. Nerves set in as he made for the hanging deerskin that separated his bedroom from the rest of their living space.

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T’aakshi paused for a moment before pulling the cover aside, daubing sweat from his face and taking several slow breaths to calm his still-racing heart. There would already be more pity on the other side than he could bear — he didn’t need to add any more by looking as though he’d just woken from a nightmare. One final breath passed his lips with only a slight tremor, and he pulled the curtain aside and forced himself into the living area of his home.

S’aahiri and Mura knelt on one knee before his mother, heads bowed and fists pressed to their hearts. It was strange to see S’aahiri in anything other than her hunting clothes, but he had never seen her in formal dress as she was now, clad in robes a deep blue, her auburn hair tied back tight. She had wrapped cream beads around the fingers of her hand, and had it pressed into her heart so tight, he could see where they dug into her skin, cutting off the circulation. Mura’s similarly formal attire did not surprise him, however—they had always been a stickler for tradition.

“Honoured Mother,” S’aahiri began the words T’aakshi had heard his father say a dozen times over when speaking with families of those lost on the hunt, her eyes fixed intently on the floor. T’aakshi clenched his jaw to hold back the stinging of moisture in his eyes. This — all the formal clothes, the traditional words. It was too real. Too soon. “We—”

Just as T’aakshi was thinking no sound could be worse, a sob escaped his mother before S’aahiri could continue, and in one smooth movement she had crossed the distance between them and engulfed the two in a deep embrace.

“Fool children — when you’re under my roof, you behave as the family you are. Piss on ceremony.”

Any response made was buried in wool and fur, and as they drew apart, the eyes of his friends found him standing only just inside the room, more than a little awkwardly.

“Shi!” S’aahiri said, rising from her knee. “I wanted to ask you how you were holding up, but I don’t think I need to. You look like shit, brother.”

Mura aimed a playful cuff at S’aahiri, who had to duck out of the way, grinning, and T’aakshi felt a smile of his own tugging at the corners of his mouth for the first time in what felt like an age.

“At least I have an excuse. Your looks are all natural.”

S’aahiri’s grin grew for a moment, but almost immediately a silence fell and her smile faltered as both of them struggled to find something to say without acknowledging the grim reality of why they were all here. Mura stepped forward, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

“All jokes aside, Shi, you really do look awful. When was the last time you ate something proper?”

T’aakshi shifted his eyes away from theirs, hoping to dodge the question, but his mother was having none of it.

“Long enough ago that you’re right to be concerned. Truth be told, neither of us has been much up to leaving for food. We could probably both do with a good meal — folk have been kind enough to bring what they can, but even that we’ve only really picked at.”

T’aakshi lowered his head, matching the shame he could hear in his mother’s voice. Food was hard earned for his people, and every morsel was dangerous to come by in the frigid plains of Tagaya. For he and his mother to have wasted any, when it had required one of their number to risk their lives to get, was a substantial source of guilt and shame — two things that he had more than enough of already.

Mura smiled awkwardly, pretending they hadn’t noticed the way he and his mother were behaving. “Well, hunts have been fewer out of respect, but a group left a few hours ago in search of some seal. S’aahiri and I can head to the shrine and bring you back a share.”

“You are both too kind,” his mother started, smiling warmly, “but I think it would do T’aakshi some good to get out of this house.”

T’aakshi’s mouth felt suddenly dry, and he took a step back before he could control himself, his head already shaking in denial. “Mother, I—“

“I know, Shi,” she said quietly, cutting him off with a sad smile. “But you know what is coming. It’s been two weeks already — I’m surprised the summons haven’t arrived by now. It’s better that you cross this bridge now, while you don’t have the weight of that upon your shoulders.”

He swallowed hard. She was, as usual, completely correct. S’aamu’s death had left them without a Chief, a situation that couldn’t be allowed to continue. Soon, messengers would leave the capital of Tagaya, Kuchisoto, bearing a summons to the members of their tribe who might replace his father as Chief.

T’aakshi didn’t deserve to be receiving any summons. He had proven he was not fit to lead on the hunt that had killed his father, and had he not been S’aamu’s son, they would almost certainly be requesting audiences with several of the veteran hunters of his tribe.

But he wasn’t somebody. He was the son of the previous chief. That alone gave him a right to try to prove his worthiness for the position if he desired it. Most importantly, however, he was the first wielder of Self among his tribe in generations. For him, there were expectations from outside as well as inside of the Su’roi about what he would do with his life.

“Fine,” he said, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “You’re right, of course. I just—“

T’aakshi sighed, unsure how to get across the dread that gnawed at him when he thought of the people outside his door and their reactions, and when he thought of the hunters who had come back with him. The ones who had seen what had happened first hand. How could he ever face them, let alone the families of those who hadn’t come back at all?

A soft touch against his cheek broke him from his thoughts and he flinched, jerking back from it. S’aahiri was quick to hide the hurt that flashed across her face, but not so fast that he didn’t catch it before her hand fell away.

“We’ll be with you every step of the way, Shi. You’re not alone.”

“Thank you. Both of you.”