Excerpt from The Long Dark -

A Gentler Fire

The smoky air hastened night’s arrival, and Keela’s surroundings had darkened into charcoal tones when the spectral girl reemerged from them. How she had found her way back in the dark even on the small island surprised him, but he said nothing as she dropped a bundle of driftwood nearby from under each arm. Unsure of what to do with himself in the presence of his strange companion, he listened to her through the dark, ashy air as she set something on the ground between them and began to labor at something as she moved back and forth. Before long, a spark jumped forth from the dark and soon another, and the igniting tinder revealed a spinning spindle and puffs of rising smoke. In the notch of her fireboard she had conjured a fire elemental, and she placed her tools aside to fan the tinder. The small puffs connected into a billowing trail that carried flickering light upwards, and the witch’s face appeared from the dark as she leaned forward to feed the burgeoning fire a piece of driftwood. An orange glow crept outwards across the ashen ground into the achromatic world, reaching into the night like when Raven had stolen the sun and brought it into the dark world. The steady firelight revealed the spindle and fire bow she had used to start the fire, then it spread outwards to the log that had tripped Keela earlier and then on to the dark wall of the forest surrounding the two.

Bathed in firelight, Keela’s unrelenting phantom was at last revealed in high definition. She arrested his eyes once more as he studied her intimate details in the dancing orange and yellow light. Her eyes weren’t black but brown, though her corneas were tinted amber in the firelight and remained ghastly. Keela realized a mannerism as she rested one hand in the other with the palm facing up again, though this time he saw the evidence of a hard worker in the calloused skin of her palm. Her fingers were held in a claw-like posture as if their natural movement was to clench, prosecute, restrain something, and Keela wondered if they had ever soothed, caressed, loved. “Who arre you?” he asked as his gaze continued down her. She was thin in her dress, which loosely hung off her as if it were not her own, or, as Keela expected, she had lived through hard days in it. Wherever she had come from, she had not emerged unscathed, for she carried a sickness within her, like part of her had rotted.

“My name?” The question reanimated her and her brow lifted. She closed her eyes in introspection and her countenance changed. Without leaving the fire, she traveled to some distant unknowable place, as if to search its memories, before returning to Keela and opening her eyes. “I had a name once - Neeyahshii.”

“Why arre you herre, Neeyahshii, if you know wherre the bone is?” asked Keela.

“I can’t leave. The ash keeps me here.”

Keela looked at her sideways. “The ash… keeps you herre?” Spiritual mechanics were far beyond his understanding, but it made sense that the novel type of grey spirit could exist only within ashen and misty realms. “You’re bound to the ash and mist then?” he asked.

“Wha… what?” her brow furled. “It helps to see where you’re going, doesn’t it?”

“Ah.” Keela looked down at his paws and then off into the dark forest. ‘Shit.’ He wished he could swallow the air and take the words back. His glib commentary deserved her truism. He looked away at a few scrawny saplings huddled nearby that cast shadows onto the forest as firelight spilled past them. The lee of the elderly trees held most of the river’s wind from the fire, but every now and then a draft swept around them and incited the flames to flicker and stray, sending shadowy limbs stretching and writhing and darting into the forest. They moved like their creator, the ghostly girl, stealthily and fluidly as if they were extensions of her. She must have felt at home in the realm bordering death where a few autumn colors lingered, surrounded by unending black. The silence mushroomed into the stifling air and started to dig its claws into Keela as he eyed the menacing light show.

“And your name? What do they call the likes of you?” asked Neeyahshii.

Keela looked up at her. That she’d ask that showed some measure of cordiality. “Keelaaaa.” he announced proudly, holding his muzzle high and sweeping it from one side to the other to show all of himself. Neeyahshii remained silent and still, and Keela sensed his momentum falter. He collected his thoughts with haste to fill the quiet before it became disagreeable. “Yourr instincts led you herre, but your bone is elsewhere. So, arre you lost in this confusion, too?”

Neeyahshii’s slumbering hands woke and pinched the fabric of her dress, adjusting it downwards from her waist. “This land feels like home - certain elements familiar – the bend of the river, the whitecapped mountains on the southern horizon, parts of the forest. But there is a strangeness, an unfamiliarity to this place… something is off about it all. The curves of the river are too pronounced or not pronounced enough, or the height of the forest before the fire was too tall or not tall enough. I feel I’ve spent a lifetime here, yet I’ve never been here.

“What arre you?” Keela blurted out. He couldn’t hold the question back any longer.

“A hunter.” she replied crisply.

Keela shifted uneasily on his moss cushion at the self-confessed predator’s haunting words.

“Something has happened to me, and I can’t remember what it was.” Neeyahshii elaborated with the best answer she had.

Keela looked at her sideways again. She had found a way to add to his confusion by explaining further. “What is the last thing you remember before coming here?” he asked.

Neeyahshii’s eyes darted from side to side as she probed her befuddled thoughts. “The White River had finally broke, and we traveled it on a new boat, one unlike any we had seen before.”

Keela’s brow lifted. Not only did the poor girl not know where she was, but she didn’t even know what season it was.

Neeyahshii perceived the change in his countenance. “It’s not spring anymore.” she added, though her words sounded like an inquiry and not a statement.

Keela nodded. Their roles had reversed, and now she was the one searching for answers.

“My memories are foggy… like I only have pieces of them.” said Neeyahshii. “I don’t know how I came to be here, but I remember everything before… this.” she gestured around the charcoal island.

“Maybe if you starrt there, you’ll remember the rest.” offered Keela.

Neeyahshii chewed her fingertips as a tear streamed down her ashen cheek, staining itself the color of the White River. Her countenance became sullen and somber. “I did something terrible, Keela. I wish I could take it back.”

A rain drop fell on Keela’s muzzle and he looked skyward. The lone drop seemed to be all the clouds could muster. “Tell me what happened?” asked Keela. They weren’t going anywhere, so they might as well pass the time. “I’m not the best with words, but I’ll listen.” He qualified his abilities. He had already earned one pointed truism from the girl, and he knew his solitary lifestyle and social ineptitude made him liable to earn another. Dispatch any notion that he was a genius or need to hold himself to the standard of such, and he’d be free to have a conversation without reservation.

Neeyahshii shifted on the log and dipped her hands under her shawl as if to warm them. She remained silent, and Keela wondered if they had exceeded the boundaries of their initial conversation.

“Talking can be medicinal, same as a good piece of fry bread.” said Neeyahshii, leaning forward and raising an eyebrow at Keela. “Perhaps troubles should be shared like them, too.”

Keela’s ears perked up at the sound of her crisp enunciation and intonation, and he looked at her sideways again. He had suspected many things to come of this encounter, but a well-spoken monster wasn’t one of them.

“We lived on the bank of the White River” said Neeyahshii, “though lived doesn’t describe my story.” Keela sat on his hind legs and assumed a spot along the fire. “I brought my people to their end on that river.”