A Shroud of Ink and Stars

Gaiur the Valdunite encounters "The Suff."

Wood blackened in the fire, then whitened as it snapped, sending embers floating and ash falling into the shallow makeshift pit. Gaiur sat cross-legged beside it, bathed in its warmth just outside its circular border of stones. Her axe rested in the crook of her shoulder while her companion, the gray furred greatwolf Varro, lay snoring at the edge of the bonfire’s light.

It was a chill autumn night. Cloudless, but still dark, without so much as a sliver of the moon hanging in the sky. The breeze rustled through the nearby bushes and grasses of the southern Stenisian plains, an expanse of rolling hills and low mountains that seemed a world apart from the icy crags, dense forests, and colossal snowcapped peaks that spanned the northern half of that sprawling land. She’d gone off the beaten path again, turning away from the long trodden trade roads that stretched the vast distances between Stenise’s far flung settlements. Necessity drove that decision, as it did most of her choices. In this case it was the need for game, ideally reindeer or elk, so she and her predatory companion could remain well fed for some time.

Ideal wasn’t what she received today, but that wasn’t to say the day was a loss. Varro caught a wild hare earlier, and that would be enough to hold him over at least until tomorrow. For herself, Gaiur made due with the last of her pemmican and a small handful of hjortron¹ from a bush nearby. This late in the year, they’d be among the last of the wild crop. As such they were small and a little sour, but still welcome against the greasy fattiness of the pemmican.

The fire was starting to dwindle. Gaiur took up a long stick that lay in the dirt beside her. She’d taken it from the hjortron bush, too. Trimmed bare, it made a suitable prod for her bonfire. Carefully, she shifted the largest of the still burning logs to let the core of the fire breathe. The flames drew up almost instantly, refreshed by the cool air they now better fed on. Humming quietly to herself, Gaiur set the makeshift prod back in the dirt, then tilted her head back to look up at the starry firmament above. In a few more minutes she’d lay a fresh log on the fire then lie down for the night. For now, she was content to sit, listen, and watch.

Stars shimmered between the blackness. Green and blue and sometimes red, they flickered like the tiniest candles and were joined by the swaying, swooping embers from her fire. Jubilant in their appearance, the little orange sparks danced upon the breeze until they winked out in the chilly night air. That very same breeze provided the music for their dance, rustling through the foliage in time with the percussive cracks and pops of the fire.

Crack. Pop. Sssssuh…

Snap. Pop. Hufffff…

A shiver ran up Gaiur’s neck. The breeze wafted against her skin, a needle sharp bite of cold against the warmth of the fire. It gave her gooseflesh, making the hair on her arms stand on end. She’d felt that bite before, months and months ago while fishing on a northern river. Slowly, her hand closed around the haft of her axe and she began to look around.

Nothing but darkness beyond the light of her fire. A trick of the mind, perhaps, old paranoias creeping up amidst the dark of night. She huddled in, bundling her woolen cloak a little tighter around herself. Then she closed her eyes, focused on the warmth of the fire, and felt her breathing slow as the breeze continued its song.

Ssssssuh…

Hufffff…

She jolted awake. Nearly falling on her side, the dark haired young woman caught herself with her palm. Pebbles and small stones pressed into the toughened skin of her hand and she brushed them off, looking to her left for the source of the sudden sound that startled her from her near sleep. Sure enough, Varro rustled in the grass, snorting and grumbling as he dreamed. With a shake of her head, she once more bundled her cloak and turned to the fire.

Sssssuhhffffffff…

Her ears tingled and once again she felt that chill bite on her neck. No question now, something was out there, watching. Standing upright, she gripped her axe in both hands and gazed across her surroundings. First she turned left, then right, then she checked behind her. Again, naught to be seen but darkness outside the bonfire’s glow, and within it just the rustling of bush and grass and Varro’s restless, dreaming body. Lack of sight often meant little, though. She knew that all too well, for night and day alike could hide much beyond the bounds of human sight.

So she looked, and she felt, and she listened. To the breeze. To the bushes and grass. To the fire. To the night itself.

A hiss lingered on the air, long and low. A gravelly huff followed behind, froglike in its nature and quiet enough to hide amongst the rustle of leaves and the breeze’s natural hum. Then came the bite, again at her neck. Multiple pinpricks of cold that were sharp against the warmth sank into her skin and spread into a chill that crawled along her spine. As before, it raised the flesh and hair on her forearms, but when she looked behind, she saw nothing there. No reaching hand with icy fingertips to match the chilly feel. No face or mouth to utter the hiss and huff. Just grass and bush and dark beyond the firelight.

Sssssuhhffffffff… went the wind, breathed out by whatever it was the night hid. As before, it came from behind. As before, it was joined by the chill, even with the fire warming her back. But this time, she didn’t turn to see. This time, she closed her eyes and waited.

The cold expanded, grew. From the pinprick points that pressed into Gaiur’s neck, long tendrils of it stretched across her skin. Eight spots along either side of her spine drew out in narrow trails that slowly curled around to her throat. The closer the drew to her trachea, the more solid they felt. The more solid they felt, the tighter she gripped her axe. Soon the fingers took form. She could feel the press and pinch of spindly, skeletal joints.

They closed.

With a swift twist of her arms, Gaiur caught those skeletal limbs with the hook of her axe and wrenched them away from her throat. The move pulled the creature off balance, letting her feel its weight. Light, feeble, with no real girth to speak of. She confirmed this when she opened her eyes and saw the thing stumble into view. Shrouded in inky, almost liquid blackness, the thing stared at her through eyeless sockets that were set into the gaunt and drawn face of a long dead old man. It stood on stubby legs and its lanky arms, which were nearly twice as long as it was tall, squirmed free from the sharp hook on the back of her axe. They bent with unnatural liquidity as it drew them back in. Then it raised them up and spread them wide, as if to threaten her with the illusion of greater size than it truly held. Indeed, it looked almost like a predatory bird with its arms held out like that, the inky shroud that draped it appearing like tar soaked wings.

“Sssssuffffff,” it hissed, raising its arms even higher.

Gaiur stepped forward. Axe once more at the ready, she stared into its empty eyes with a steel gaze. This thing was no natural being, but it appeared to lack the power of similar entities encountered in the past.

“Sssssufffffff,” it breathed again, stretching its arms further and further as it backed out from the firelight.

Again Gaiur advanced. She raised her axe higher and growled in threat to the thing. She’d already shown that its unnatural form wasn’t strong enough to claim her.

Then everything shifted.

“Sssssuffffff,” went the creature as its inky shroud suddenly expanded. As it did, the world seemed to fall away around her, ending at the limits of her firelight.

Varro took notice as well. Awakening with a yelp and dashing over to Gaiur’s side, he growled and barked at the bizarre entity that sought to entrap them. As its shroud expanded, finally enclosing them at the limits of the bonfire’s light, tiny little flickers started to appear within it. Some were green. Others, blue. A scant few, red. They flickered in the ink black shroud, and at first they were few and far between. Soon, though, they were joined by others, and yet more still.

Before very long at all, Gaiur found herself staring through the creature’s veil at stars without number. Stars that banked in long, sweeping tendrils. Suns that were sucked into patches of inky darkness. Colorful spheres of varying sizes and colors. Some were black, gray, brown, or red. Others were white or blue and seemed to be frozen, while others showcased vibrancy of color. Some were small, and others massive, and many had smaller stones spinning around them. All shrunk as they drew further out, revealing colorful clouds, twinkling disks of light, or vibrant spiral forms that tapered off into tiny scatterings of stars.

Out and out these visions expanded, and Gaiur’s mind and heart raced as they did. Was this the firmament? Had this thing, this pitiful skeletal wraith, truly the power to draw her into the furthest reaches of night itself? All around her she witnessed it in motion. Colorful dust swirled and coalesced, then burst into brilliant motes of being. They burned in bright yellows and blues and greens and whites. Then they grew, and some turned red and burnt out. Others expanded in burning brilliance, while others still erupted with explosive force, leaving naught behind but the purest blackness or the tiniest specks of perfect white. The colorful spheres grew much the same way, starting as formless clouds before coming together to freeze or crack or, in the case of the largest of them, burn like suns.

It repeated ad nauseum, all in silence save for that haggard sound.

“Sssssuffffff…”

“Sssssuffffff…”

But the sound wasn’t the only constant. The ground beneath Gaiur’s feet remained, as did the light and heat of her fire. The grass touched by that light still lingered, and the hjortron bush, and Varro as well. Ensnared though they were, this huffing, suffing thing either couldn’t or wouldn’t breach the light of the fire. Why this was, Gaiur couldn’t say. It was willing to venture into the light earlier, when it reached for Gaiur’s neck. But she had her eyes closed then. Now she looked on it directly, and all that it tried to show her.

Illusions? Tricks of the mind? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Either way, she had a feeling she might know how to test the limits of this inky entity.

Keeping her eyes on it, Gaiur bent down for the branch she used to prod her fire. It scraped hollowly against the ground, marking another element of certainty among the strange - recognizable sound. Then, without breaking her gaze, she dipped the end of it into the center of the bonfire and waited for the branch to catch. Once it did, she stood, then held it in front of her and stepped toward the huffing, suffing creature.

It didn’t move, and neither did she. Standing face to face with it, she could see it was shorter than her, and see just how hollow its gaunt little body was. Impossibly dark as that inky shroud appeared, a fire held close revealed just how thin it was. She could all but see through it, and not just the skeletal shape of its lanky little body. She saw the grass and the berry bush and the disturbed patch of dirt where Varro had been sleeping. She saw the silhouettes of the rolling hills and the low mountains. And, cresting above them, she saw the earliest rays of dawn.

“Suff! Suuuuufffff!” the creature whined, finally turning its head away from the light of her fire. Then it drew its long arms in, and the limitless night it showed disappeared inside its inky shroud.

Gaiur lowered her torch as it slunk away into the dark, its eyeless sockets fixed on her all the while. What it was and what it wanted remained a mystery to her. A bale specter hungry for life and soul? A celestial emissary bearing an ancient truth? A lonely spirit that feared light and dawn?

It was impossible to know, yet whatever its yearning - be it bane or bliss - and whatever its secrets - be they truth or illusion - the suffing thing left with the waning night. Would this world see its like again? None could say, certainly not Gaiur. However, come the very end of her long and troubled destiny, she’d at least be able to say she’d never seen its like again.

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1. Hjortron is another name for cloudberries, a yellow-orange cold climate fruit similar to blackberries. They generally ripen in mid to late summer.