1977

I often wonder what kind of a nerd I would have been without Star Wars. I mean, to be fair, at the time (at the tender and impressionable age of 7) I was a fairly die hard fan of Spider Man and had, around those months of the glorious summer of 77, I had just discovered that although Spider-man was in fact NOT an actual person (spoilers!) but was a construct of badly paid writers and artists in New York City, so I was already kind of leaning towards storytelling at that point.

But 1977 really put its foot in my stream of consciousness, and I may never truly know what kind of person I would have been had this movie not come around.

George Lucas was born in my home town of Modesto, California. In fact, he’d grown up a block over from where I had been raised; he had gone to the same high school I was later to attend, and when American Graffiti came out, we all reacted like he was OUR man, that Lucas chap. My father told me a lot of stories from his teenage years that had weirdly enough inspired the movie, and my dad’s second wife once bragged that George had asked her out and she’d turned that nerd down. I told her she was an idiot to brag about that, because she could have ended up marrying that “nerd”, to the sum of BILLIONS of dollars.

I really was a cruel nerd. But I was 11, so whatever, right? Ugh. 11 year old me. I don’t like remembering that.

ANYWAY.

My point is that I had already heard of Lucas before Star Wars, and when THAT movie came out, my little northern California town kind of went monkey nuts for it. It came out right at the end of the school year, so that freed us up to go see it at matinee prices, which, for a 2nd grader really is pretty much like a caste system delineation.

At some point, my siblings and I had begged and scrounged (there may have been some couch diving done at some point, I’m not proud) and we each had just barely enough to see it at that dramatically discounted price point.

I don’t even remember how we arrived at the Briggsmore Seven theater. I just remember that POOF we were there, and the line went all the way around the block. No lie, we waited for about 3 hours, all the way through an entire showing. And then, as we were mere bodies from the usher, he proclaimed that they were full and we would have to wait until the next showing. Except…. the next showing would be AFTER the cut off! We wouldn’t be able to see it!

So my older sister turns to me, the youngest, and tells me to cry. I’m not sure any pinching or threats thereof were necessary - after all, this was STAR WARS, and I had been waiting for three hours, only to be denied?!?

Yeah. So I cried. I wept like only a seven year old boy can weep at the prospect of being forever denied the showing of a movie that would probably change his life forever. Because it was the BEST MOVIE EVER.

Long story short (too late), the usher had mercy and let us in. I think we actually sat on the floor to watch it - legal (not really) in those days. Floor sitting was kind of like seat belts in those days, for those who don’t remember.

And so there it was.

On the screen.

Larger than the universe.

Seven year old me faced a life changing moment that would ultimately exist in the pantheon of Life Changing Moments with my parents divorce, my getting married, having a child, that kind of thing. Okay, I’m being dramatically sort of hyperbolic. But the truth is that seeing this film at that moment in my life made my entire comprehension of all things fantastic turn a corner.

Suddenly, I started to love science. And math. And literature. And filmmaking. And acting. And all those little parts that flowed from the film, both aesthetically and pragmatically. The idea of being a writer made sense, as much as finding life (or being found BY life) on other planets. The universe became….possible.

About ten years ago, I was volunteering at a local comic book convention - several years before the Emerald City ComicCon exploded into the mega-circus it has become today - and I got to work with Peter Mayhew - the actor who played Chewbacca. He greeted me with a handshake that literally dwarfed my hand and I was instantly shrunk back into that 7 year old boy. I chatted with him and his wife later and got the chance to personally thank him for the part he played in a film which had so completely transformed me. I thanked him for helping instill in me and so many others that sense of conscious and believable wonder which had led so many of us to pursue careers in the arts and sciences, and, really, just for being part of that touchstone of our childhoods.

I got a hug out of it (and yes, being hugged by a wookie is amazing, whether in or out of costume), and it somewhat generated a bridge to the 7 year old me and the adult me in a way I cannot entirely describe.

Which leads me to this current stage of my life.

I’m doing my own fictional trilogies now, and as I embark on this last chapter of the current series, I am once again replanted into that soil of my childhood wonder. Where retired wizards, farm boys and lost princesses take a jaunt through hyperspace with a cynical criminal and his loyal co-pilot, and a pair of too-long-since-they-were-memory-wiped droids, as they wrestle with the obligation of fighting against evil with a couple blasters, the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, and the force to guide them.

It’s a nice mythical tale, and it weirdly still holds up, so long as you don’t get blinded by the limitation of special effects back in that day.

Life is good, my friends. The empire may try to shut us down, but the rebellion will not be defeated.

May the force be with us.

Hope

The past few years have been hard for me to write. Like, harder than I can remember, ever. I have spent hours each week just staring at blank Word documents, or at the unfinished end of this paragraph or another and eventually wander off to read, watch a movie, play a game, go for a drive, or partake in any one of the little adjustment mechanisms I have used in the past to get my brain to refocus. But the usual tactics have not been as effective as they used to be.

I’ve been working on some short stories and other projects, but at the root of it all, it feels as if it takes so much more energy to put the words down as it once did. And if you’re one of these creative types like I am, I’m guessing it’s been rough for you too.

I watched an interview with Salman Rushdie a short while ago, and he admitted that even he has struggled to write. He explained that what with the current state of the world, he finds himself mostly bereft of the joy and hope he requires to write. He said it felt like running through water.

That, strangely, came to me as a comfort. And it shone a light on my own fuel; the reasons why I write. And the thing is, hope and joy are what push me to write as well. A hope that whatever it is I might put down might be picked up and enjoyed by someone else. That they might see in themselves the same struggles my characters have, that they might find a connection there, a shared experience, and an optimism for being able to overcome their own challenges. And the times I see that hope reflected in my readers brings me about as much joy as I think a person gets to imagine having in life.

Plus, just reading through some of the weird stuff I’ve put on paper just makes me shake my head with shock that this stuff came out of my brain, somehow.

I love these stories, I do. The characters feel like old friends of mine (and to be fair, some of them are), and getting the chance to tell you about their adventures, their struggles, their accomplishments - well, it’s an honor and a privilege.

I’m sorry some of these stories are taking longer than you’d like. But I promise, they’re coming. Book 3 of the Tales of the Dead Man is coming to life even now, and I am so excited to introduce you to the remaining inhabitants of the original Aesirium, as well as some of the inhabitants of New Aesirium, too. There are revelations, journeys, and discoveries to be had. New villains. New monsters. And we will learn just what risk the Dead Man himself holds for Aerthos.

It’s going to be a grand adventure, and I thank you all for coming along with me. I won’t let you down.

Shadow in the Valley, pt 5

Two weeks passed. The rider was relaxing into a comfortable rhythm: he laid out traps every three or four days after retrieving their catch, he fished, gathered, cleaned and prepared what he found in the sprung traps by cooking or drying the meats, preparing and tanning the hides, and using all the remaining parts as possible. He was content with how many ways all the parts of an animal could be used. Other than the meat, of course, the sinews and intestines made for a fine replacement for rope; the bladder was useful for storing extra water; the scrapings of the hide, mixed with the brains and ash from the fire was essential for the hide tanning process. There was an old saying he had been told from one of the trappers he had met, back when he was initially inspired to follow that path: “every animal has just enough brains to tan its own hide.” The memory made him smile. It was funny to reflect on the path his life had taken since those days. Just like the wild, it was generally easier to see the path you left behind than the one you’d take, no matter how much you tried to cover it up.

The rider was just getting back into his original pattern. Three nights ago, he had caught a deer – just a young buck, a two-pointer. He had been kept so busy caring for it, cleaning it and preparing its parts that he’d stopped laying out extra traps. He didn’t want to tap the area out, as well-populated an area as it was. Also, the stack of furs on his mule would be impressive at this point and he didn’t want to make himself a target for any thieves on the road. Few traveled out this far what didn’t mean to live shoulder to heel with the wild, but as one approached “civilization”, the truly dangerous predators lay in wait. There were trading posts only a week or two behind him, though, so if he chose to stay out the winter, he could always sell out for a smaller percentage of the money he might make in town proper. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his father’s mercantile voice counted the numbers out.

It wasn’t about the money, he reminded himself, trying to sound convinced. Well…. It wasn’t only about the money. Not only.

He held an antler from the buck in his hand as he slowly sawed it into button-sized discs.

“Killed that yourself, did you?” the shadow asked him.

“I did. Bow and arrow, knife through the neck to make it peaceful. Dragged it back, treated it respectful. Just one buck, too. I won’t take any more deer this season, and the venison will last me well into the trip… well, to wherever I decide to go for the winter.”

“It’s not too long, now, is it? The winter.”

The rider shook his head. “I’ll need to be off within a pair of weeks, I suppose. I can feel the wind changing already. Bit of a chill in the morning that wasn’t there last time we spoke.”

“So, do you know what you’ll do this year? Back to town, or wintering in?”

Shrugging, the rider offered little confirmation. “There’s an encampment, mostly miners, about two days southwest of here. Like as not, I could probably trade my haul here for a pocket of nuggets, assuming their lots haven’t dried up. Either way, they’ve got a share of cabins built up just below the snowline, if I don’t mind bunking up. That way I could stay here til the first flakes drop, and really stack up for winter. Or I could head back sooner and strike for St Louis or one of the other border towns, maybe even a trader depot.”

“St Louis no longer your favored destination?”

The rider chuckled at that. “Getting a mite big, I think. There’s others like me now, running into town with their mangy scraps and undercutting the trade. Gonna price me out of a job if they’re not careful.”

“Times change,” the shadow whispered. “We either change with them, or we fade away.”

“Nothing wrong with fading away. If nothing goes away, it gets a bit…crowded.”

He could feel the shadow staring at him. “Was that directed at me, son?”

He considered in silence for a pair of minutes before answering. “Not completely, no.”

“I suppose I deserve that. Here you are, out in the wilderness alone, and I come along and haunt you.”

“I didn’t come out here just to be alone, pa.”

“It would be fair if you had.”

“But I didn’t.”

“So tell me, then.”

“Tell you what?”

The shadow was standing in front of him now, between the rider and the fire. The rider could see the subtle contours of his face, the buttons of his waistcoat, the callouses on his fingers. He could almost smell the ink on his fingertips as the shadow reached down to the rider’s bearded chin.

“Tell me why you left,” it said. “Why you really left.”

“Why’s it matter? Why should a…spirit of beyond the grave give one whit about my reasons? I left! Isn’t that enough?”

“It doesn’t sound like it’s enough to you.”

He nearly cut into his thumb before setting the blade a safe distance away. “To me? What in the hell are you even talking about?”

The shadow faded slightly, allowing for an unsettling translucence in the center of itself. The fire sputtered and sparked, echoing the rider’s nerves.

“If you answer this question,” the shadow said softly, “you’ll answer all your other questions.”

“What other questions?”

Rather than answer, the shadow moved away from the rider and hovered near the rack where the most recent skins were drying. “What was it like, the first time you skinned one of these?”

It took a moment for the rider to process the question. “It was….it was….” He laughed softly, a much-needed and unexpected release of the tension he felt. “It was a mess, to be honest. My hands were shaking, and I pretty much ruined the poor thing. Ended up as scraps.”

“Do you know why that was?”

The rider nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, but it was because I set about to skinning too soon after I’d killed it. I was still shaking with nerves, and couldn’t keep my hands steady.”

“But you’re better now.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“Practice. Time. Age.”

“Peeling back the layers takes practice,” the shadow whispered. “In all things. Even looking into your own mind. The first times are hard, but it gets better as you go.”

“Looking into my own mind? What are you talking about?”

“Why did you leave home?”

The rider’s mouth dropped and he felt the usual rage rising in his throat, but this time, he caught it there and kept his words back until the anger faded.

“See?” the shadow said, its voice calm and gentle. “You were right. All things should fade.”

And like that, the shadow vanished again.

Every night, the rider peered past his campfire for the shadow’s return, but it was not until nearly a month later when it appeared again. The rider had stayed past his initial timeline, and he had already seen one gentle flurry and felt the first tentative bite of the winter. St Louis was no longer a realistic option. It was either east to a trading post, south to the mining camp, or struggle here in the valley. He could see real issues with any of the choices, however, and was still unresolved when he felt the shadow resume its conversational vigil at his campfire.

“You’re packed,” it said.

“Mostly. Just have to wrap up the rest of my tools and saddle up the horse and mule for the ride.”

“You’ve decided, then?”

“Not yet,” the rider said honestly. “I was kind of hoping you’d show up to discuss it with me.”

The shadow did not seem to have expected his answer, and was silent for several minutes before speaking again.

“I…appreciate that.”

With a shrug, the rider tended to the fire. “All my years out here, I don’t usually have guests. I suppose now that I’ve had one, I’ve kind of took to it.”

“You’ve spoken to others, though? The natives? Other trappers?”

“Other trappers like as to be left alone as much as me. And no native’s been my guest. If anything, I’m theirs. They put up with us trappers, but I expect they’d just as soon we did our business and left them alone.”

“I see. Well, then, I am glad if I have added something to your time here.”

The two remained silent again for several more minutes, until the rider thought the shadow might have left. But when he looked up, it was still there.

“I didn’t leave home to get away from you,” he said softly.

“Then why?”

Taking a slow breath, the rider gave his father the answer. “You made your life on your own, you know? You always told us kids that. You brought us here with nothing to your name but your name, and you worked until you had a business. And you built that business until you had a home for us and then some. But you always told us it was what you did – what a father did for his family. I probably never said thank you for that, I suppose. I was a shit son and never told you a thing about how much it meant to me. I just ran off because of a fight or something, and I can’t even remember what it was about.”

“It didn’t matter.”

“No,” the rider agreed. “But every year I’d think I should go back and apologize, and every year it got harder to think about it. Every year, the fight seemed further away, and the mountain of excuses just got higher and higher, and every year Boston got further and further, and suddenly I wasn’t a boy anymore.”

“And then I died.”

“And then you died.” The rider felt the words catch in his throat, as he realized it was the first time in more than twenty years that he’d said aloud the fact of his father’s passing. Had he even said it? He couldn’t remember.

“Too late to go back now and apologize,” the rider added, idly wondering why it was suddenly so hard to focus on the fire. “Too late for anything now.”

“It doesn’t matter, son.”

“Of course it does. You taught us that. Words matter. Truth matters. Your word matters.”

“Words aren’t the only thing that matters.”

The rider shook his head slowly. “No, they aren’t. Actions matter.”

Silently agreeing, the shadow stepped closer.

“Why are you here, son?”

A sharpness splintered across the rider’s chest, and a breath filled his lungs with a pleasantly flowing lightness. “To be a good son,” he said, his words coming out like a gust of wind. “To make you proud.”

The words bounced from the fire to the wall of stone that surrounded him, and spiraled up until they were lost in the night sky. His hands followed the drops of water he mistook for rain up, to the tips of his beard and to his cheeks, and then looked out to the empty air around him.

“I was always proud,” the voice whispered from the treeline. “You were a good son. And you would have made a fine father, as well.”

Wiping his nose on the edge of his sleeve, the rider chuckled softly. “We’ll never know if you were right.”

“We always know from our choices,” the voice echoed faintly. “The ones we make and the ones we don’t. It’s not just in the path we take,” it said, “but the reasons why we take it.”

And with that, he was alone – again – but somehow he didn’t feel the distance of life to his own. It felt to him as if he still shared the fire with others. Loved ones. Family. The familiar sounds of the wild returned as if they had never been silent, singing to him in a melody only those who left the bustling jostle of the towns behind them. A lightness came over him, and the coming winter’s chill fled away. The cold would return, but not tonight. Tonight, the world watched over him as one of its own.

As the sun was still making its leisurely way up and over the eastern ridges of the mountains behind him, the rider had his horse and mule saddled and packed, with only the packed ground and a scattered, cold campfire left in his wake. To his right was a still darkened horizon, and ahead of him awaited his next destination. He remembered talk of new townships being developed on the near coast, along the pacific ocean. He’d never seen the pacific ocean, and it sounded like something he’d like to see before he made the ultimate decision to settle down and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

Behind him, he knew he was no longer pursued by the shadows of lives lost, of family. The shadows and spirits of the departed now traveled by his side. No longer predators, they now accompanied him as his companions.

And together, they moved forward. Away from their memories, towards tomorrow.

End

Shadow in the Valley, pt 4

It was several days again before the shadow returned. The rider had three skins drying on the racks, just downwind of the camp, a beaver and two rabbits. The former was of a decent size, though he’d caught much larger in years past. Not bad for a first catch, he thought. Four more like that and he’d pay for the whole season. If he caught a deer or two before it was time to head back, he’d be in for a decent profit. He had taken a full extra day to rig up a separate fire some feet away from the main pit, deep and wide enough to fill with heated stones and surround with a cone of canvas to use as a smoker. The thought again came to him that if he had simply set up a cabin here he would only need to set these things up once, but he shooed it away like an irritant fly.

One of the afternoon’s efforts were curtailed by a heavy summer’s shower. It was refreshing and energizing to walk around in the altogether and feel the rains washing away a week’s work, but it also kept him from his labors. As he sat on his blankets to dry by the fire, he pondered the satisfaction of one’s efforts. Not two weeks ago, this had been a pristine valley, without the barest trace of man’s existence, as if a fragment of the blessed garden of eden itself. And now, here had come man, tools in hand to craft from its beauty the needs of mankind. By the sweat of his brow, indeed.

But in less than a month, he would be gone from here, and nature would reclaim that which was its birthright. By the same time in a year, a man could find his way here and believe himself to bring the first footsteps to happen upon this soil. Perhaps the rider wasn’t the first, in fact. As spins the world, how could a man know his place? The Nez Perce talked about their old spirits having walked this world for generations without number, long before the white man arrived. And the spirits would walk this world still when all traces of mankind had long since been washed away.

He thought of his father’s words, back in the town he had left so many years ago. “Make yourself a legacy, son,” he had said. “Build something to leave behind for your children.”

“But I didn’t want children,” he whispered back.

“I didn’t believe you then,” the spirit replied. It was standing, again, just across from the rider, looking as if he’d sprung right out of the rocks. “I thought you were just angry.”

“I was angry. But I wasn’t just angry.”

 “Angry enough to leave.”

The rider shrugged his shoulders, poking a stick at one of the new stones he had placed into the center of the fire. “There wasn’t much cause to stay. You made that plain.”

A moment passed before the shadow responded. “I never told you to leave.”

“Didn’t you?”

“I wanted you to stay. We’d planned for you to take over the shop.”

“You’d planned. Besides, Simon took over the shop, just like he always wanted.”

“True, he had more love for the enterprise than you had. But you could have stayed anyway.”

The rider threw the stick aside and sat forward angrily. “I never wanted it! I wanted this!”

“And what is this? What is it about this life that you loved so much more than your own family?”

“You wouldn’t understand! You never understood.”

“There you are,” the shadow whispered. “That’s the boy I remember.”

The rider wanted to scream, to throw something, to hit something, but he knew nothing would chase the shadow away. Though this was the first time they’d spoken, the shadow followed him every year from the outskirts of whatever westernmost city he departed at the frontier’s edge out into the wilds of the western mountains until he at last returned to the city. Strangely, he was only free of the pursuit when he found himself among the shadow’s home.

He breathed deeply, closing his eyes and covering his face.

“I’m an old man, now, father. I’m older than you were when you died.”

“You have a point to that? Do you think being older somehow gives you power over me?”

“No, it doesn’t. Just like you being my father gives you any power over me.”

“Doesn’t it?”

He remembered his father’s words. “Power cannot be taken; it can only be given.”

“Even so.”

“Why are you here, pa? Why do you always show up out here, when I just want to be alone?”

“I should ask you the same.”

“But you didn’t, so maybe you could answer me.”

“It’s the same answer, son, yours and mine. I could tell you the answer, of course, but…”

The rider interrupted him with the statement his father had made so many times before. “If you don’t work for the answer, I’ll never understand the question.”

“Yes.”

“I always come out here because it’s the only place I feel like I’m free to be myself. I can do what I can do, and I don’t have to answer to the will of another. I can breathe the air, I can live on the land, and I can make what money I need by the things I can do well. I can think, and I can rest, and I can dream. Out here, I can live. Out here, I don’t need anyone or anything.”

The shadow was silent, as if giving the rider enough time to amend his answer. Finally, he spoke.

“That is a good, clear, and well thought-out answer. What is the actual reason, though?”

The rider opened his mouth, his throat burning with an angry response, but the shadow vanished as he was staring into it. He couldn’t be sure if the spirit was angry, sad, or laughing at him.

To be concluded

Shadow in the Valley, pt 3

That morning, he searched the area for some decent game trails, leaving a pair of beaver traps down near the water’s edge and a few sling traps to catch a rabbit or two for food. Then he grabbed his net and pole and moved upstream above the beaver lodges that dotted the widened ponds dammed by the locals. He picked up a few trout in short order, cleaned them and fried one up for an early lunch, leaving the others to dry in the sun with a pinch of herbs and salt. It was all mindless labor to him; the necessities of his life, all performed by muscle memory. The unfortunate side effect of his life being so performed out of habit was that it left his mind to mull over the campfire conversation of the night before.

He didn’t quite know how to factor this new truth into the assumptions he had made over his youth, and resolved to hashing this out with his father’s shadow if he returned that evening. He spent the rest of his day walking the woods near his encampment, looking for new opportunities to lay traps and plucking edible vegetation to accompany his supper.

After supper was a memory of flavors on his lips, he set about sharpening his tools: an axe for chopping, a knife used for gutting the fish, and another for skinning the rabbits or beavers he hoped to find waiting for him in the traps he had laid out. He set aside a small pile of ash from the campfire to use in preparing the skins, as well as a cast iron pot for melting down what he’d need for tanning the hides. He even looked for indicators of other animals, including the possibility of bears to help. In a good season, he would need a fair amount of animal grease to help the preparation in the furs, and nothing beat a bear for grease.

It wasn’t the first time he considered the option of simply putting up a house out here in the mountains. He could have a nice room set aside for the sole purpose of the tanning process, which could put out a fair stink, and it would be nice to have a place to store the meat where he wouldn’t need to keep an eye out for the occasional critter. But that meant months of work he could otherwise be roaming and trapping and living on the land. A full season would be lost, just for the benefit of a building; and if the land ever got tired of him, there he would be with a pointless house to show for it.

No point in putting down roots, ‘less you’re a tree, he thought, unaware that he was saying the words along with his thinking them.

“Is that what you think roots are for?” the shadow said.

He hadn’t noticed the spirit’s arrival, and nearly cut his thumb open on the edge of the blade he had been honing.

“Ah, hello there again,” he said, attempting to behave as if he hadn’t been startled.

The shadow seemed to nod its head in acknowledgement of the rider’s greeting. “Roots, I said. You liken them to a prison, do you?”

The rider shrugged his shoulders, pretending to admire the lack of light along the edge of the blade before sheathing it and setting it aside. “Trees do seem to do well with them.”

“Ever wonder why that is?”

“Not as such, no. Just not really a thing for people as much as for a tree.”

“A person’s not a tree.”

“That’s my point.”

“But a person can be like a tree.”

It sounded like the strangest thing to be said, but it was certainly the kind of thing his father liked to say. The rider’s grandfather was a learned man, knew his letters and such, and had passed that learning along to his children. But arriving in this country had changed the inheritance of knowledge, and the rider and his siblings had spent more time learning about trades and earning a living than such as could be found between the pages of books.

“How do you figure?”

The shadow was taller now, reminding the rider of looking up at his father when he was a young lad. “A person can be like a tree in that it needs sunlight and water, and things to make it grow tall and strong. A tree and a person can be thick or thin, can branch out, can bear fruit and send its seeds off to grow in other places. A tree can perish, give shelter, be made to be useful, be a part of a group of others or grow up alone, all by itself. A person can be like a tree.”

“That’s fair,” the rider said, scratching his beard. The gesture was as much to soften the itch he was feeling there as it was to remind him that he was a man, now, and not the tiny lad of his memories. “But it doesn’t mean a man needs roots.”

“What happens to a tree that has no roots?”

“Rain falls, wind blows, the tree goes down. But a man isn’t a tree.”

“A man can be like a tree,” the spirit repeated.

“And that means a man can be unlike a tree, as well.”

“And what happens when the rain falls? When the wind blows, when the rains come?”

The rider was silent for a while before he answered. “Then the man leaves the rain and wind behind him.” When he looked up, the shadow was gone.

to be continued

Shadow in the Valley, pt 2

He restarted the fire with what wood and kindling remained, and set his small pot to boil while he packed up the rest and prepared to leave. An hour later, coffee and a handful of jerky later, he was back on the move, the sun at his back.

By day’s end he found himself at the mouth of a valley, a small river carving its way through a thick meadow. A few of the trees seemed fruit-bearing, and he noted a few patches of wild berries randomly mixed among them. Birds sang in the treetops, and more than one kind of track led between the treeline and the water’s edge. Likely beavers, judging by a few of the felled trees and gnaw marks he saw on the occasional trunk, and probably a mountain lion den close by to hunt them. Plenty to hear to fish and trap, and even a flattened rise up high enough to set up a sturdy shelter.

Just like that, he decided on his next few months of living. By week’s end, he had a functioning encampment constructed: firepit, horse enclosure, latrine, and even a rudimentary watercatch to gather the rain near the shelter. The rider had built a couple of drying racks for skins, as well as a frame to dry and smoke some of the meat he expected to catch while here. He had already laid out some traps and found good areas to fish, and felt generally at home here.

On the second week, a small band of the locals rode along the edge of the tree line while he was skinning his second beaver. He stopped what he was doing once he noticed their passing, letting them know that he saw them but that he meant them only respect. If they had any problem with him, they would be back to kill him, but he imagined they were only likely to come around with one of their tribal elders to arrange a trade in exchange for him working the land a while. In the twenty or so years he had been making his way through the west, he had picked up enough of their language that between that and his bad English and worse French he didn’t have a significant problem with communicating. When words failed, a stick in the dirt seemed to do the trick, too. Though maybe only another two or three dozen trappers worked this particular range of mountains, he trusted that his past interactions would be enough of a foundation to offer him good will with any concerns the locals might have.

As the small party moved on and out of the valley, he found himself smiling at the thought of their return. They had been the first people he had even seen in near a month, now; he nearly missed the idea of socializing with others. Certainly, the living had so much more to offer than the dead.

The following night, the voice found him once again.

And once again, it lingered just beyond the scope of his fire, calling to the rider by his Christian name.

The rider fought it off with the last of his flask, letting sleep claim him among the echoes of the dead. He could still feel the unanswered calls as he woke the next morning. By the time he chased the hangover off with a cup of strong coffee, he was again alone.

Another few days and nights passed, and the rider carried on as he had done. He woke to the lightening sky, broke fast, checked his traps, caring for whatever he might find there or fishing if the traps were still empty. He found a few rabbits, skinning them as well; they were too lean so he boiled them up with some wild onions and a few herbs he had gathered along the way. He had refilled his flask from his ceramic jug, but decided to leave it be for now. He could feel the voice waiting for the twilight, and he found himself resolved to squaring up against it, once and for all. It had followed him all these years and seemed like it was determined to follow him all the way through to the end. “Might as well face what you cannot flee,” he had heard. He couldn’t remember where he had heard it, but the old saying fluttered out and back into whatever faded memory it was borne from.

Sure enough, the voice came back that night as he readied for sleep, calling him as always by his name.

“What do you want?” the rider said to the voice. His own words sounded strange to him; he hadn’t used them in a while, now. “Can’t offer you much in the way of hospitality.”

He could feel it now, as tangibly as if someone was strolling into his camp.

“Don’t suppose you’ve just come here for the coffee.”

A slight breeze crossed through the fire, dropping one of the logs down into the embers and sending a small shower of sparks up into the sky. After another moment of silence, the rider chuckled to himself. Standing, he picked up a block of wood and set it on its side across the firepit from his seat.

“Apologies,” he said, nodding his head. “Take a load off, I guess.”

The shadow said nothing, merely slipping slightly closer and shimmering against the shivering light of the fire.

“Must be loads different, yeah, a dusty old campfire? Not quite the cast iron you had back in the back office?”

He noticed that the shadow seemed to fade a bit at that.

“Sorry. I know you were proud of that. I remember when they set it in, how much you liked to brag about how much it had cost but that you’d paid for it all in cash.” The rider poked one of the logs in the fire, causing another spray of sparks to snap off and float up into the sky. “Never really got why that was such a thing for you.”

“You never knew Ireland,” the shadow whispered.

The rider’s head rose suddenly. “What?”

“I said you never knew Ireland.”

Shaking his head, the rider reached for his flask, unscrewing it slowly with his thumb. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Your ma and I,” the shadow answered, “we saved up for three years to have enough to get the worst space on the worst ship to come to the colonies. Near two dozen of the others on the ship were lost, tossed over the side on the way here. Your older sister passed after we arrived, you and your brothers were sick the first year. Your ma passed when you weren’t more than six. And still we did what we could to give you a home to grow in. And all that… it still a damn sight better’n we left behind.”

“You’ve told me this before,” the rider grumbled, pausing to take a sip from the flask. It burned like a caramel flame down his throat, and rose back up like a gentle steam. “You always told us this.”

“I never told you what we left behind,” the shadow said.

“So tell me now.”

Flames crackled and the wind blew lazily through the trees. A coyote yipped to its pack, no more than a couple miles off, the rider guessed. At last, the shadow answered him.

“Your ma was only fourteen when our parents told us we’d be married, over a debt incurred and a means to resolve it. But there’d been another lad in the town, and they’d fancied one another. Without our parent’s arrangement, like as not she would have married him above me. Your ma never said as such, but I think she still loved him until the end.”

Several moments of silence filled the camp before the shadow continued.

“Even so, after our parents made the announcement, he left town and your ma and I courted, and we got married when she was sixteen. We were happy, and though I’d see her fall sad from time to time, we did do well together and, I think, we were in about as much love as a couple could be. A couple years after, the boy came back. He’d tried his hand in a few businesses in Edinburgh and ended up with nothing but his name. When we came across him in town, he’d cross the street and pass us from the other side, but I never saw his eyes leave her. I had no hate for the man, see, but I know what that kind of envy can do to a soul if it’s carried on too long.”

The shadow seemed to grow darker, its transparent feet looking to rise up from a pair of stones near the fire itself. “Not long after your sister had been born, your ma and I decided to leave not just our families and our town, but the whole of Ireland itself. We had our eye on a ship that would take us to the new England colonies, and, if we had saved for another year we would have taken it. But… we had to leave earlier than we’d planned.”

The rider took another sip and nearly offered the flask to the shadow before reason stayed his hand. “What happened?”

“We had a wee pub there in town – no more than a room with some chairs and a table, with a side room for Declan McGinnes who owned the building – and we’d settle in there from time to time for drinks. You weren’t more than a couple months old at the time, so I only meant for a pint or two, but after three pints, your ma’s former himself walked in with a couple of his friends and started laughing up the drinks, getting loud in their whiskey and such. I tried to keep my eyes in my beer, but then he said something his friends found particularly amusing, and he pointed right over at me as he said it, and I knew exactly what it was he’d been saying.”

The rider found himself clenching his flask hard enough to warp the curved metal.

“I told the man to mind his own drink and leave us be, but it was either the drink or his hate that made him cross over to me,” the shadow said faintly, as if wandering through its own memories. “He threw the first fist – a sloppy fist, just grazed my face. Our friends pushed him back but he came again hard. We took our swings – not an uncommon thing, and the others chose to let us punch ourselves out – but then he pulled a knife and tried at my chest before anyone saw the blade. He only got a button off my shirt, but I caught his arm and tried to wrestle the knife away. I remember someone screaming out, and I remember the expression on his face. It was pale, and there was this sound coming out of his mouth, like a little stream. He was still holding the knife, but the blade had gotten turned around and had come up into his chest. I can still feel that scrape it made when it pushed past his ribs. And then I remember him coughing, and the blood on his lips. He fell to the floor, still trying to hold on to me, but I remember my friends grabbing me by the arms, and running me home. I….remember them helping throw what they could into sacks and putting us all in the back of a wagon. I… I remember being on the ship – a ship, and not the one we’d agreed on. And I remember your ma, her face in tears. But I don’t remember why she was crying. I just remember her tears.”

“Did you tell her? What you did, I mean?”

The shadow was silent, and the rider imagined that perhaps it was shaking its head, having forgotten that such a gesture holds no relevance for a spirit.

“I never knew about that.”

“Why would you? It didn’t matter.”

As he thought about this, the rider’s mind floated back to the few memories he had of his mother; of her pale features, the darkness beneath her eyes he had always seen but not truly noticed. He remembered her kindness, her softness. At last, so many years later, he recognized her pain.

When he looked back up, the shadow was gone.

With a sigh, the rider closed the flask and laid down on his bedroll, peering through the dying flames until the sun awoke him.