A fist crushes a skull and the clearing falls silent. Aloise lets her breath his between her teeth as the gore dips from her fingers as the red mist, sprung form the rents in mangled bodies, drifts silently to the soil of the killing ground. Three men had come to capture her, torture her until she revealed her secrets, and then sacrifice her to their gods. Aloise felt their blood soaking her hair and staining her furs darker still.

Seven hands and four spirits cursed and sent back to the mother. The man- and womanhood of a tribe for three generations. I told the bitch she would never learn the secrets of the Mountain from me, that she had to go onto its heart and speak spirit to spirit with it. And still she persists. Still they follow her. This must end. This will end tonight. One way or another.

Aloise didn't bother washing herself in the stream near her mountain home. There was no point when it would be only a few hours until she was coated in the red mist again. Aloise sets off with the tireless loping pace of a practiced persistence hunter. The winter solstice sun had just cleared to horizon. Aloise eyes it between the pine needles and judges that she will reach the winter camp of the Red Bison Clan by the time it sets. She doesn't understand time beyond the passing of days and seasons, nor distance beyond how long it takes to run from place to place, but by modern measurements Aloise will cover one hundred and forty miles of broken mountain trail in only nine and a half hours.

-... / -.-. / .

The sun is just setting as Aloise slows to a stop. The ocher daubed bison skull totem hanging at the cave entrance is all to familiar to her, as is the fist-shaped dent in the bone square between the horns. Aloise had put it there, stopping the bison's charge and taking it's life in the process, so many moons ago that she struggled to recall. Aloise stands still, her chest rising and falling in even breaths as she stares at the huntress beneath the totem. She watches as the huntress levels the spear in challenge, no words spoken aloud as was the Clan way. The angle of the spear, the huntress' loose grip upon it, the spread of her feet, the set of her face in the waning light communicated everything that Aloise needed to know.

'Who are you to approach the Winter Cave of the Red Bison Clan?'

Aloise could have bared here teeth in the deliberate challenge of the raider or spread her open hands as a hunter returning empty handed with weapon broken. She could even have given the intricate hand movements of a Red Bison Clan member returned from a long journey. Instead Aloise deliberately did something that not Clan person would ever willingly do.

Aloise unfocused her eyes slightly, looking at the cave entrance as if the huntress did not exist, and stepped forwards at a casual walking pace. It was known as 'unseeing the ghost' and was reserved only for those who the Clan has cast out with a death curse upon their heads. Clan people, the Red Bison Clan included, would use this to 'unsee' the un-person as they left the camp or cave for the last time.

It was also used by the death cursed should they manage to encounter another Clan before they died as a way of communicating that they were cursed, that they were an un-person, that to 'see' or touch the ghost would spread the curse to those still living. Aloise had just given the huntress a damning choice: attack and curse herself, sound the alarm and curse herself, or stand aside and let an un-person enter the winter cave of the Red Bison Clan.

The stench of urine from the huntress wetting herself in terror reached Aloise's nose but she ignored it and kept walking. The huntress let her spear fall to the ground as she scrambles aside. The noise is enough to cause a stir within the cave, other Clan people turn from the sacred cooking fire to stare at the unexpected sounds. They see what terrified the huntress and their eyes go wide. They to are presented with the same terrible choice of confronting a 'ghost' and contaminating their spirit or staying still and silent in the hope that the unperson would pass them by unscathed.

Aloise let them stay still and silent, noting as she stalks forwards that only the very young, the very old, and the crippled remained. They stare into the fire, steadfastly ignoring the woman that their shamaness had commanded them to cast out and destroy, whose powers the same shamaness had coveted for three hands of winters. Alosie knew only one person in the entire cave would have the courage to 'see' her, to stare at the dried red mist on her furs, skin, and hair and know it for the challenge and promise that it was.

Aloise stopped in the full light of the fire and stared across the ring of totems that denoted the private camp of the shamaness. Deliberately she bent down, careful to touch no other person, and picked up a single small stone. The shamaness stared at the stone, at Aloise's hands, and waited for her to speak. Aloise stood, stone in hand, with the infinite patience of the Mountain and casually committed the most unforgivable sin of the Clans: she let her eyes focus and stared at the the shamaness. The shamaness raised trembling hands to speak the words of warding, but a thrown stone smashed the bison calf skull totem from her trembling fingers. Aloise spoke then, directly to the shamaness, 'ghost' onto the 'living'.

“Remember me? The child of your womb?”

The Shaman's hands waver with uncertainty, “You words have no power here here evil spirit. You are cast...”

Aloise stamped a foot and interrupts the ritual again, “This ends this night. Dare you follow me? Follow me to the heart, where the Mother touches the Mountain, body as one with the earth, blood as the stone? Or does your path end here, your blood in the fire, red mist in the air, the Clan you have lead death cursed for your folly?”

Aloise went still again, knowing that the entire Red Bison Clan were watching without watching. They would pretend not to see, not to 'hear' her speak, but Aloise knew that they could not. And that they would cast out the shamaness as death cursed even if she did not follow Aloise. The shamaness had allowed a ghost to enter the cave and break one of the sacred totems. It was either cast her out and find a new shaman or allow the death curse and the anger of the spirits to slay them all.

The shamaness stood on shaking legs a bison leg bone cane in her hands. “Go back! Back from this cave and under the light of the winter moon!”

Aloise bares her teeth at the declaration and the sight of the cane. It was as much a walking aid for the ancient woman as a sacred totem. The shamaness would follow her. Aloise turns and stalks from the cave without glancing backwards. She pauses beneath the bison skull totem at the cave entrance long enough to speak.

“It is a winter moon and sun's walk from here. Have you the strength or will you need the aid of the spirits?”

The shamaness bows her head minutely in admission of a truth they both knew.

“I will carry you then, as you once carried me.”

Aloise picks up the shamaness in full view of the huntress and sets off into the night, her legs accelerating into the same effortless steady pace that she had run at all day.

The huntress hurriedly gathers here spear and staggers back in to the winter cave. She carries word that no one will ever speak but all will know. The spirit of the Mountain had come to take the shamaness to meet the Mother. Come the summer gathering of the Clans, they would all say that the shamaness had chased the spirit away from the cave and followed her to save the Red Bison Clan. All of the Clans would know that this was not the whole truth, for the Clan way of speaking left no room for lies, but also that no more would ever be said lest the death cursed spirit of the Mountain return to curse them all.

-... / -.-. / .

The long night moon hung high in the sky as Aloise and the shamaness enter a cave at the foot of the mountain. A pile of bones, human and animal alike, marks the entrance as a sacred cave; the province of shamans and spirits alone. The presence of a human skull at the peak tells all of the Clans to stay away, that this is the resting place of an unquiet spirit. Aloise stets the shamaness down and walks past the mound without fear. She had built it herself form the bones of a bison and the first hunter the shamaness had sent.

“Who?”

“You sent him Uda. Now you will find out if the death of your son, my brother, was worth it.”

“Uda died and you dare to speak her name?”

“Five and one hands of winters ago, when you became the shamaness. She came back to life when the shamaness died with the rising of the Long Night Moon. By leaves turning the Red Bison Clan will have a new shamaness. You know this to be true.”

“So I have died twice then Aloise?”

“And you will need to die once more if you want to attempt to walk the lands of the Mother as I do.”

“You have not aged a sun or moon since...?”

“No. My body is as one with the earth, my blood as the stone.”

“And all of the hunters?”

“Stone moves when angered. These furs were once the white of the winter bear. Now they are the color of the Mother's cold blood. There are torches here, and a fire-stone to light them. We must descend to the Heart before the sun rises.”

Aloise leads Uda deeper into the cave. She points out the pockets of obsidian, the Mother's cooled blood, as they walk ever deeper. The air grows hot and close. Aloise sheds her heavy furs without a thought, her modesty long worn away by years living alone. Uda soon follow suit save for a loincloth out of raw habit. Their torches burned out and were discarded, a red glowing light suffusing the air sufficient to light their way. Uda' breathing grows ragged and she grasps at Aloise's shoulder to steady herself. Aloise turns and picks her up without hesitation.

“We must keep walking, the heart is close, the sun rises soon.”

“Aloise this is...”

“We walk where the Mother's blood runs hot, and her heat tests your body. Only the Mountain can stand to hold the Mother's beating heart, and only when she is not angry. We will bask in that heat, take it into our body and we will become as the earth.”

“And our blood?”

“Soon. His was no wasted life. Open your eyes and see.”

Uda clawed her eyes open and beholds a sight almost beyond her compression. Aloise held her atop a jutting peninsula of stone. All around them surged molten stone. The heat made swat pour from Uda's body but Aloise's stood unmoved, unaffected by the environment.

“The Heart of the Mountain. I can feel it's strain and her rage building.”

“The Mountain will not hold?”

“The Mountain never could hold. Look up and see his throat and the stars in the sky above. The Mountain will give voice to the Mother's fury. You have had five and one hands of winters to prepare for this day, as have I. It will not be long now.”

Uda stood and let her bison leg bone cane fall to the stone. She was tired, thirst, wary, and desperate. She moved in the full formal dance to call upon the spirit of her Clan and all of the rest fo the Clans for aid.

“Red Bison, grant me your strength to...”

Aloise waited the dance out in stillness. When Uda was finished, Aliose spoke but briefly.

“You forget that you are not of the Clans any more Uda. Their spirits do not live here.”

Aloise's fist lashes out even as Uda realizes her error. Red mist fills the air as Uda's headless body falls into the magma and combusts.

Aloise, her sacrifice complete,begins here own dance.

“Earth and ashes heed my call. When I pass I will still remain. I fear not forever for I will wander the surface of Mother once again...”

The Moutain speaks, stone moves, and the Mother's hot blood erupts into the winter sky.