Ghost Spell: The Ghost World Sequence, #4

By Susan Price

Under a freezing Arctic sky, a wolf carries a baby to a remote village.

Taken in by the villagers and named 'Vulchanok' or 'Little Wolf', the lost baby grows into a happy little boy.

But night after night, his dreams are walked by his rescuer, the wolf-witch. She leads him to the Ghost World and makes him a shaman.

The villagers begin to fear him and he grows into a lonely man -- until he sees a vision of a lovely girl as lonely as himself, imprisoned in a small room. Shrugging on his falcon skin, he flies to find her.

When a falcon drums its wings against her window, Kristiana opens it -- and is astonished when the hawk lights on the floor and turns into a man. She and Vulchanok are soon in love.

But Kristiana's brother, Glev, will never allow her to marry a dirty northern huntsman -- and Vulchanok's wolf-wife is fiercely jealous.

Can the lovers survive the hatred and jealousy surrounding them?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Price
• Release date: Jan 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215464410

Book preview

Note

THIS FIGURE, WHICH is repeated through the text, is a character from a ‘ghost drum.’

It means ‘one who is under an enchantment.’

1

Cradled in Snow

FAR, FAR FROM WHERE you are now, there is a lake, and in the lake there is an island, and on the island grows a tree; and tethered to that tree by a chain of golden links, is a cat, a wise and learned cat.

All day long, the cat walks round the tree, winding its chain about the trunk, and when the chain is all wound up, it turns and walks the other way, unwinding it.

As the cat walks one way, it sings songs; and as it walks the other, it tells stories.

This is one of the stories that the cat tells....

FREEZING DARKNESS, (says the cat), and burning cold.

Iron cold, striking hammer blows on flesh.

Endless darkness, glimmering with snow-light.

Lost in darkness, hammered by cold, lay a baby.

A pouch of warm reindeer skin enclosed the baby, fringing his face with reindeer fur. He was as warm as any baby could be, cradled in snow and sung lullabies by the north wind.

How, (asks the cat) did the baby come there?

His mother carried him.  He lies where she dropped him, and she lies beside him, dead.

How did she die?

Sorrow, hunger, weariness, cold: each one sharpening the edges of the others.

She had gone hunting with her man. Each of them had a long ski on one foot and a short ski on the other, and poles in their hands to push themselves along. So they skimmed over the snow.

On their backs, divided between them, were snares, arrows, bows and poles and reindeer skins to make a small tent. On a longer trip, they would have brought a sled, loaded with food and gear and hauled by a team of dogs.  But they meant to hunt for only a few days, and would travel faster without the heavy sled and hungry dogs.

The woman had one more burden strapped to her back— her baby son, in his reindeer pouch.

The huntsman shot a deer. His arrow in its side, it bounded away, vanishing into snow-lit darkness. Its hooves clattered on the ice, and then there was silence of a kind— the silence of an endlessly blowing wind.

They followed the blood-trail, black against the snow. Their skis hissed.  They knew they would find the deer where it had fallen, too weak to go on.

The deer lay on its side in a snowy hollow, its blood black around it. They watched, and it didn’t move. Eager for its fur and meat, the huntsman skied down to it. When his knife touched its throat, it leaped up, desperate to live, though it was almost dead. Staggering, it floundered in the snow, and knocked the man down.

Deer and man flailed in the hollow. The man had his knife. The deer had antlers with fierce points, and cloven hooves edged like razors. It kicked and butted, goring the huntsman, slashing him. His blood spattered and poured, black, on the snow.

The woman, pack and baby on her back, plunged into the hollow, screaming, waving her ski-poles, throwing snow.

The stumbling deer tossed it head and tore her leg with an antler-point. A kick from its hind-leg sliced through her sleeve and flesh. She fell and the deer scrambled from the hollow, though it soon fell again.

The huntswoman crouched in the snow, pressing her hands to her man’s wounds, trying to hold back the blood. But he bled and bled, and she saw him die. She sat on her heels and thought: What shall I do now?

Get away from the blood! The smell of fresh blood would bring animals other than deer.

Her baby on her back, her bow in her hand, she scrambled and struggled from the hollow. She had no strength to carry her man, and left his body where it lay as she skied away. His spirit would find its road.

Her left arm and her right leg bled. More than that— the wind blew through the holes in her clothes and sucked away her body’s heat.

She stopped, the baby on her back, and tied her wounds and clothes closed with bow-strings and lashings, holding the strings in her teeth. But when she moved on, the wounds opened again, and bled.

She reached the reindeer-skin tent that she and the huntsman had put up together, and there it was warm. There was food to eat, and she fed the baby.

Outside the tent, leaning on it, was darkness, fierce cold, and loneliness. The wind hissed and groaned around the tent poles. ‘Are you cold, child?’ the wind whispered. ‘Are you cold?’ Out in the darkness, with the wind, were wolves and bears, gluttons and lynx; but no people.

Soon, all too soon, the fire would burn low and go out. Then cold would come inside the tent, to freeze her and the baby.

She had to find more fuel for the fire, and more food. So she had to crawl from the tent into the cold and dark... But she had lost blood, and was weak. Gathering fuel and checking snares would be hard.

She sat in her small tent, warmed and lit by her fire, while the cold and darkness circled it tight. She held her baby and looked at him. The nearest village was three days travel. The people there, though not her own people, would help her if she could reach them.

That night, while she slept curled about the baby, the huntsman’s ghost crawled into the tent. He sat cross-legged beside her, and told her that she must forget the snares and the furs, and go to the village. Save our son, he said.

When she woke, she was happy, because if the huntsman thought she should go to the village too, then it must be the best idea. She took down her tent, loaded it, her baby, and what food she had into her pack, and skied away into the darkness, carrying it all. Already she was weary.

Three days’ travel for a strong, healthy woman is not three days travel for a sick, weak, cold, hungry one. Half-way through the second day, which was as endlessly dark as all winter days and nights, she knew she would never see the village. Though she wearily pushed herself over snow, and through winds spiked with ice-crystals, she was hotter than if she stood in a fire. Her head pulsed with heat and pain, yet she shivered in the heat, and her teeth chattered, so she knew it was the heat of fever. The pack on her back was heavy as boulders. She ached to lie down, to stretch out in the cooling snow and rest her sore and heavy bones. But she would not, because of the baby on her back.

At the last, she stopped and took him from her back, and clutched him in her arms, so she could see his face and kiss him. The wind crooned to her, ‘Are you cold?  Are you cold, sweet?  Lie down and rest, then, lie down and forget...’

She knew her baby would die with her if she rested. Hunger, weariness, cold and sorrow have sharp edges, though, and they sharpen with use. She fell, at last, cut down by them all, and her baby fell from her arms. He cried, and she reached for him, but her eyes saw nothing but white, and though she stretched her arm, stretched her hand, stretched her fingers into the whiteness, she could not find him.

The cold crept into her, chilling the fever-heat. Cold crept up from her feet and in from her hands. Cold wrapped around her ribs and crushed and froze her heart.

Hearing is our last sense, and the last sounds she heard were her baby’s cries.  She saw the Ghost-road ahead of her, and knew the huntsman already traveled it. She took the Ghost-road, though her steps were heavy and trudging, and she often looked back towards the sound of a baby’s wailing.  But, from ahead, her man called her name, and then her steps quickened, and the baby’s crying faded away behind her.

SHE WAS BRAVE, (SAYS the cat), she was strong, she was determined— but none of it kept her from dying.

If she’d known that she would die before she reached the village, would she still have tried? Why, yes.

That, (says the cat) is how the baby came to be cradled in snow. Cold nipped him, even through his reindeer-skin pouch. Hunger pained him. His angry, shrill cries demanded that his mother help him. Beside him, the snow covered her body, hiding her.

Still, his cries were heard.  His wailing called wolves to him.

2

Ghost-Tracker

WOLVES HATE MEN, AS men hate wolves, (says the cat). It has always been like that. Men hate wolves because wolves kill their animals. Wolves hate men because men kill them and tear off their skins.

So what will happen, (asks the cat), when the wolves come jogging over the snow, fading in and out of the shimmering snow-dusk, and find a baby?

Will they be kind, and leave it to freeze?

Or will they tear it in pieces between them, and eat it?

Listen, (says the cat), and I will tell you.

THEY WERE PUZZLED WOLVES.

They scratched the snow from the dead woman, and sniffed at her, and at the baby in the reindeer pouch. They circled them, jumping back when the baby shrilled. The ears of some pricked up, while others laid their ears flat. Some raised their tails high, others dropped theirs low.

At a yip from their leader, they drew back, sat or lay in the snow, with snow settling in their fur, and talked over what they should do.

Men think that wolves cannot talk, because they use no words; but wolves have their own language, made of growls, snarls, yips, barks and howls; of ear positions, and tail positions, of crouches, springs, eye-brow twitches, and raised hackles. A wolf understands the meaning of the tiniest flick of an ear or tail-tip— a movement so tiny no man would notice it.

There, in that wilderness, they held a wolves’ council.

Easy food, said one wolf. Let’s eat!

Men! said another. Eat them, and packs of men will hunt us. Bad meat. Leave it!

The oldest female of the pack rose stiffly from where she lay in the snow. Her name was Ghost-Tracker. She stepped into the centre of the circle. Leave the woman to the birds, she said. Don’t touch her. But the baby, we must save.

There was an outbreak of yipping. The wolves shifted, circling, standing, or