TO LIVE AND TO DIE
By Samuel Sullins
=
Only one of the babies was there.
It crowed at her, gently, and clamped tiny teeth on her finger. She laughed and tugged her hand away. Its teeth had left two tiny red dents.
Where were the other five, she wondered?
The vittok took a little hop toward the nest. Its fur was already starting to come in, in patches, here and there. Kanna remembered when she’d first found the nest—the eggs had just hatched. It was getting hard to slip out and visit it, too. Mother didn’t want her going past the stream anymore.
The little vittok crowed again, looked at her, hopped into the nest. It peeked around the corner, waiting for her to come closer, one big innocent eye cocked at her in the sunlight.
She reached her hand into the nest to pet the baby. It hopped in further. She reached deeper into the opening—
Little claws attacked her arm from all sides.
She’d wondered where the other babies were. She drew her hand out again, laughing. They’d been in there, waiting for her.
They came out, one by one, blinking in the sunlight. They wobbled around, hopping almost rabbit-like with thick hind legs. Kanna picked up a piece of blue eggshell and held it in her hand. She wanted to bring it back and keep it at home, in here nook, but she didn’t dare. If anyone saw it they’d find this nest and kill all the babies and the mother, too, if they could find her. With their gold-edged swords and torches lit from Father’s fire-amulets.
She remembered him, still. Remembered how he’d sat next to her and held her hand and guided her brush, painting the ashgar ink in delicate traceries on a stone that he held in the palm on his hand because it was too big to fit in hers. Watched the lines darken and sink into the stone.
She hadn’t known what they were, then. But she had helped him make them. It broke her heart, knowing what those stones would do to animals like these.
Why did they do that? Grown-ups hated the vittok, hated them utterly. Would not even listen when she said they were harmless. Wait until the War Season, Kanna. Wait and see the vittok, truly.
But she had seen the War Season. She remembered waking up one morning and going out to get the fish and finding the bodies of the vittok, heaped in horrible piles. Remembered the fresh blood that ran along the lines between the cobblestones.
They want to kill us, Kanna. They are the enemy.
No. You want to kill them. They’re just animals, that’s all they are, and you kill them without mercy, without even waiting to see what they do.
She saw it, then, the face above her, between the branches of the tree. The red eyes and fanged jaws of a vittok, its fur the same color as the trees and the rock. She hadn’t heard it approach. Hadn’t seen its shadow, hadn’t smelled it.
Maybe it had done that on purpose. She watched the creature, standing, motionless, on four padded paws.
Kanna breathed in, softly, and breathed out again. The creature’s eyes snapped to meet hers, and she realized that it was moving, just so slowly that you couldn’t tell.
Kanna didn’t move either. It wouldn’t hurt her, she knew. The babies chirped at her, jumped in her lap. She felt the tiny claws rake her arm.
Then there was a shout and a flash of golden metal and a blur of robes. Somebody slammed into the creature’s side and the beast screamed its horrible cry, then grunted, then moaned, again and again.
Kanna buried her face in her hands and screwed her eyes shut but she could still hear the sounds the animal made as it died. The sounds stopped and Kanna felt tears in her eyes, in her hands.
She felt a hand on her head, stroking her hair. It was Mother, then.
“It’s ok, baby.” She felt Mother’s arms around her, tight.
Kanna swallowed. “Why—why’d you kill it?”
Mother let go, stood up. “It could have killed you, Kanna. It would have killed you.”
“She knew I wasn’t dangerous.”
“Go back to the village, Kanna.”
“I’m not hurt, Mother.”
“You don’t know what you’ve done.” Mother’s face was dark. “You almost got killed. You’re not supposed to be out here.”
She wasn’t angry. Why wasn’t she angry?
Kanna watched her, saying nothing.
“Go, Kanna.” Mother bent and picked up the eggshell and held it. “This is bad news for all of us.”
“She wasn’t going to hurt me.”
“Kanna—“ she stopped a moment, her gaze flicking toward the dead animal, to the nest. “Kanna, you must understand this. The vittok, they’re monsters. They live to kill us. They will hunt us down, always. They will always be hunting us and we must always fight back.”
She’s wrong. They don’t live to kill us. We live to kill them.
“This one didn’t hunt us.”
“No,” said Mother. “These are stragglers. They live here all year long, and when the War Season comes they guide the others to our village.”
Kanna didn’t believe her.
“Go home, Kanna.” She struck the flat of her knife against the fire-amulet on her wrist, once, twice, three times. It sparked, red sparks.
The sparks caught on the woven grass of the vittok nest. The grass caught fire, burst out into flame. Kanna looked down to see where the babies were and realized they’d run back into the nest.
Kanna ran, looking the other way so she wouldn’t see the dead vittok. She heard the burning nest crackling behind her and she covered her ears with her hands so she wouldn’t hear the strangled yelps of the babies.
She ran all the way back to the village, uphill, the wind pushing the tears back on her face so they rolled down her neck, cold.
=
The council hut was long and dark with a long dark table down the middle for serious people to sit at and talk in low voices. Torches hung in iron rings along the walls behind the people so they cast long dark shadows across the table that met in the middle.
Kanna sat on a stool to Mother’s side. She’d never been to the council because children weren’t allowed there.
“You brought the girl.” A dark-voiced man across from Mother.
“Yes,” said Mother. She was going to continue but she made a choking sound in her throat and stopped and the man across from her looked down.
“It is wise,” he said, finally. “There has always been an ashgak at the council.”
He was talking about Father, Kanna realized. He didn’t dare mention the name before Mother.
“The War Season is here,” said Mother. She gave them the piece of eggshell. She didn’t say anything about the vittok she’d killed or the nest and the babies and the fire.
They passed the shell around, each one turning it over, looking at it.
“Truly,” said someone. “It is as you say.”
The man across from Mother, tall and lean and robed, bent his head. “It will be our first season without Karu.”
Karu was Father’s name. Kanna hadn’t heard anyone say it for a long time.
Mother only nodded.
“Yes,” said another. “Without the Barrier complete, the season finds us unprotected.”
Kanna heard the voices in a blur, a faraway rumble. She couldn’t think about what they were saying. She just say the baby beasts, playing happily in their nest. She looked at her finger and saw the little bite-mark and it made her want to cry. The little vittok, with their fur just coming in, were gone now. Blown away in white ashes on the wind.
“Without the Barrier, we will suffer greater losses than ever before.”
Kanna knew about the Barrier. She’d watched Father paint it, working on it almost every day. Complex, intertwining lines of ashgar ink that encircled the entire village. This protects us, Kanna, he’d said. One day, you will make the Barrier. That is why you must watch me, must learn. This projects the village. We protect the village.
But he’d never told her how.
One morning she’d found out. One morning three years ago when she was only seven years old and it was the War Season again.
She’d left the courtyard. And seen the animals, the vittok, heaped and scattered in great piles along the barrier, furred and gray and bloody there—she’d not come outside again for days.
Any living thing that tried to cross the barrier would die.
The thin man bent forward. His eyes flicked toward Kanna and back to Mother again.
“Karu was training your girl, was he not?”
Kanna looked up and her eyes met his. His eyes were blue and he looked tired or worried.
Mother nodded. “He always brought her along. He knew something—like that—“ She was quiet. The other people at the table started talking, a low hum of muttered voices.
She knew what the man was asking, why he was asking. They wanted her to finish the barrier. They wanted her to kill the animals, the vittok, wanted her to complete the barrier, draw the line that’d leave the vittok heaped and scattered and dead.
Mother put her arm around her. “Kanna, we need you,” she said. “We need your help.” She smiled down at her. “The vittok will be here in greater numbers, soon.”
Kanna felt the tightness in her chest again, the anger, the injustice of everything. She’d seen the dead beasts, smelled the blood.
Her heart still ached at the thought. All of them, all dead, all the work of the Barrier.
“Yes, child,” said the thin man. “They must die. We must protect our village.”
Kanna looked at him. Gathered the courage to speak.
“…Why? They have done nothing to us.” Her voice sounded small, suddenly, in the inky air, and saw that the rest of the council had fallen silent and were all looking at her now.
The thin man looked at her for a moment. He didn’t know what to say so he looked at Mother, then down at the table.
“Kanna,” Mother said, “the vittok, the beasts, will kill us. They are coming.”
Maybe, Kanna thought, they are coming. But they’re not really there to kill us. They’re simply moving. They were only animals. You hate them. You want them all dead when you’re not even going to eat them.
Why couldn’t Mother see? They were just animals.
“Please, Kanna,” said Mother. “I need you to do this for us. You are the only one who can. The vittok will get through if you don’t complete the Barrier.”
Kanna didn’t say anything. But she got up from her stool, suddenly, and she didn’t know why, and suddenly the stool tipped and fell over and everyone was looking at her. She ran, then. Faster and faster, out of the hall, into the dark gravely pathways between all the houses. Remembering this morning, running away Along the edges of the buildings and around the corner to their house, Father’s house that he’d built with his own hands a hundred years ago.
In through the side door so nobody’d see her. Into the little nook where she slept, a ledge built into the wall, above the ground. She pulled herself in, into the very back, and felt her blankets around her and peeked out and watched the stars through the open slats in the roof above her.
The stars winked down at her, silent. The roof slats made a pattern against the sky and she turned her head from side to side, hiding one star, then the other. There, and gone. There, and gone.
When her breathing slowed down she could think again. She wouldn’t complete the Barrier. Couldn’t.
She shouldn’t just kill them all. That wasn’t protection, that wasn’t a shield. It was pure death, bloody and awful. It wasn’t up to her. She was just Kanna, Father’s daughter, and Father was dead now.
He’d been a peaceful man. Just as she was peaceful. Father wanted peace. She, like him, wanted peace. She’d always believed it, too, that he wanted peace and believed in it. Until she finally saw it, what he’d done, all the creatures that he’d killed. She’d hidden away for days, not wanting to go outside, not wanting to walk on the ground where she’d seen the blood run in rivulets and pool on the ground.
She felt her ashgar brush with its ink in the pouch at her side, pressing against her. She’d never be able to do the things Father had. Never be able to build so much from so little, never be able to change things and heal things. She’d sit beside Father, learning, watching, every day.
She didn’t understand how Father, so peaceful, could make the Barrier to kill all of the beasts like that. Couldn’t understand. And she knew she wouldn’t complete the barrier. SHe’d watched Father paint it, across the rocks, winding between tree stumps and grassy stretches. He’d shown her every movement, every motion. She’d copied his movements, while he painted, with a stick on the ground. It had taken almost an entire year, all that painting, all those lines and shapes and flowers.
She’d watched in horror as the barrier grew, day by day, month by month, toward the day when it’d kill so many beasts.
They’d never finished the last stretch of the barrier. There was one last stretch, along the rim of the south pond. Father had gone out to paint, that day—
Kanna slept fitfully.
She woke up when she heard the bells ringing. The stars still twinkled above her and her nose was cold from the night air.
She laid in her nook, breath pounding in her chest, listening. She heard running, clanking, pounding, silence. A hand on her forehead—Mother.
“Stay here, Kanna.”
The sound of the door, then nothing. She opened her eyes sleepily and saw the stars up above her, again, different stars than the ones that had been there earlier.
All through the night she lay there. She didn’t sleep. She heard sounds in the darkness, frightening, terrifying sounds. Footsteps, quiet animal footsteps, stepping softly. The footsteps came closer, paused, came closer—
A grunt, a clank of steel and an animal grunting of pain. Clanking, snarling, growling, shouting. The clank of chains and the creaking of ropes, the scrape of swords against vittok claws. She heard rapid speech, the sounds of weapons.
The voices and sounds faded into the distance. They were fighting.
A few moments later she first heard the sound. It was a soft sound, a quiet, animal sound, and it made her blood run cold. A soft footfall of a padded paw on the stone. A gentle clink of claws.
Another soft sound.
Kanna sat up, looked around the room. There was a dim glow from the dying coals of the fire.
The room was empty. Nothing there, nothing moving, nothing.
Creak.
Kanna saw it then, a beast, a huge monstrous form in the tiny room, its head projecting through the open doorway from the next room.
It crept forward, softly, so softly!
Kanna’s heart dropped. The beast was danger, danger and peril. Like Death in the old tale Father would tell them, all those years and days ago.
A beast. A beast, a monster, not simply an animal. An enemy, seeking her out. An enemy that knew who she was and where to find her. The beast moved forward, again, slowly.
The door opened and Mother burst in, a knife in her hand. She looked at Kanna. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she said.
Then the beast sprang. Softly, silently, crushingly, it flitted forward in a sudden brief bound toward Mother. Kanna heard Mother’s breath, exhaling, a thudding on the stone. There was a soft grunt and the beast’s shape blocked the embers in the fire for a moment and sprang forward through the door Mother had just left open.
Kanna screamed.
People came, running in, running fast. Weapons rang, blades flashed. Kanna felt detached, in an echoing world, locked in a broken place away from it all.
Someone picked her up in strong arms, carried her away. Behind her, an echoing scream died and began and died and Kaan didn’t know if it was her own scream or the animal or anybody else.
=
She woke with dry tears in her eyes. She was lying on the ground, wrapped thickly in blankets. Dishes clanked dully, pottery on wood. A smell filled the room, a smell of meat, a smell of—
Blood.
She remembered, suddenly. The night. The vittok, the beast, coming in.
“Where is my mother?”
A fur hanging pushed aside. Claws hung up on strings tinkled gently. A man came in, one of the hunters, she thought. He wore a brown robe. “Peace be with you, little one.”
“Where is my mother?”
“What is your name, little one?”
Why wouldn’t he answer?
“My name is Kanna,” she said. “I would like to see my mother.”
“Your mother is dead, Kanna,” said the hunter, softly. His eyes glinted, softly. “We will be sending her away, soon.”
He bowed his head, a little, but his eyes stayed fixed on her face. On her forehead, where the tattoo curled in gentle spirals on her brow. The ashgar symbol of the flower.
The hunter left.
Kanna didn’t move. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. She sat there. She’d found Father, once, sitting like this, with his brush in his hand, painting flowers into the rock.
I cannot think, Kanna, he’d said. There are so many things I need to think about but right now, I cannot. When I cannot think, I paint, and watch the flowers, and eventually I can think again.
Kanna painted. Painted a flower in gentle swirls on the rock floor. Watched the paint sink darkly into the rock, watched the flower that sprang gently up from the middle of the swirling shapes and blossomed out in dusty peach. She plucked the flower, held it, then watched it wither away, dead.
Mother was dead, she thought. Dead. Gone.
Somehow, she couldn’t cry. Because she couldn’t make herself believe that Mother was dead.
She thought about Mother, bursting in. The last thing she’d ever said.
Everything’s going to be all right.
It was all real, then. Mother was dead and she was alone and no one was coming to help her, no one at all. Nothing was going to be all right.
And the beasts, the monsters. The vittok. The vittok had killed Mother. She looked at the tiny bite-mark on her hand. It was almost gone now.
She thought about the babies, the little vittok, that she’d played with, and felt a shiver of disgust. How clear it was, now, what those young were, what they were doing, how scheming they were. The way they jumped on her with their tiny claws. Cute, she’d thought, but only because they were tiny.
Mother had saved her. But no one had been there to save Mother.
That was wrong, too. Kanna had been there. Kanna, the ashgak, daughter of Karu the Elder. The only one who could have finished the Barrier.
It was her own fault that Mother was dead.
She cried then, cried for a long time.
=
She cried through the burial ceremony, cried her way up the stone steps to the top, cried as she placed a last flower on Mother’s body, wrapped in yellow mourning silk. Cried as they pushed her forward and cried as Mother faded down into the abyss, cried because she could hear Mother’s voice in her head. Please, Kanna. We need you.
The hunter was in charge of her, now. He was told to guard her and she wasn’t allowed to leave his hut. She sat by the fire wrapped in a yellow silk and didn’t touch the food and held her ink in one hand, the brush in the other, familiar things in an unfamiliar place in an unfamiliar life.
“Sleep, Kanna,” he said. “You will feel better.”
=
Kanna didn’t sleep.
She had to finish the barrier. Had to kill the vittok. Had to be the one to destroy them. They did not get to live after what they had done. Would not get to survive. They were deadly and cunning and cruel, vicious. They’d planned that attack, she thought. The same way they knew to walk so you couldn’t see their shadow or smell them. They knew that Mother would leave the house and they knew not to attack Kanna but to wait, wait…
She walked out of the hut. The hunter was standing out there and he followed her with his eyes and she looked back at him, for a moment, saying nothing.
She had reach the south pond before dark, before the vittok came again. Kanna ran, again, with sunset sun on her face, her hair streaming back in the wind, thinking again about the baby vittok and how Mother had killed them.
If we don’t kill them, they’ll kill us.
It was true. Every word of it. Peace didn’t mean simply sitting there, hoping you lived. Peace meant guarding yourself and waiting and watching and when something came to destroy peace you killed it before it could.
Father had loved peace. He had done well, preserving it.
She reached the south edge of the lake, panting. She climbed up the rocks where Father’s lines flowed over the shapes like water, melted and seamed into the rock. The complicated twisting and twirling and swirling was beautiful, beautiful because it looked like peace would look if you could hold it and lay it out on the ground.
Kanna took out her brush, set her ink on a rock. She started painting. Dipping the brush in the soft red ink and spreading it across the rock, copying the patter the way Father had taught her. Dip, stroke, stroke, dip.
The sun dropped, slowly, drawing lines of red sun through the flakes of cloud.
Dip, stroke, stroke.
Kanna kept weaving the lines, using the ink sparingly, threading the lines together and watching them drip away into the stone.
The sun dropped further, leaving a last orange edge glowing above the horizon. She was almost done. There was not much left to paint—only a few strokes more. She glanced at the ink. She’d have enough.
That was when she realized that the vittok were there, staring at her, moving forward, slowly. Their eyes gleamed in the shadows even though the sun wasn’t all the way down yet.
Kanna didn’t watch them.
She didn’t realize how close they were until she saw one, silent, only feet away, coiling for its spring. She ducked, rolling to the side just as it sprang.
She screamed because she couldn’t help it. She felt the claws rake her arm with a searing bolt of pain and saw her inkwell fall and spill out on the rock and sear away.
Kanna rolled over, the brush still wet, still in her hand.
Behind her, she heard the sound of blades and fighting and metal against vittok claws and groans of pain. She didn’t look.
She had to do it. Had to finish the barrier. Mother had asked her to help and she had done nothing, nothing. She would finish it. Finish it, even if she died, so that no one else would die but the vittok would.
She drew a stroke. Across, over, woven under and into Father’s lines, completing the circle.
The Barrier was complete.
Two vittok sprang, in the same instant, charging through the barrier. They fell and twitched and died where they lay with blood rimming their eyes. More came behind them, running madly, angered—
Kanna looked at her arm and saw the blood there where the vittok had cut her. She touched it with her hand and it was slick and wet and sticky and she fell over, for some reason.
She felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Kanna,” said the hunter. “Your mother would be proud of you. Your father, too. We are all proud of you.”
Kanna didn’t say anything. But she thought about Mother and Father, how everything they’d told her had always been right, and how she’d thought they were cruel, to kill the vittok.
Peace. Peace for the village was death to the vittok.
But not peace for her.
=
THE END
I don’t think I’ve ever done a story quite like this.
When I outlined this story, I tried to work a theme into the plot, to give the story more meaning.
I think it worked.
Thanks for reading.
Have a great weekend.
— Samuel