Spirit and the Skull by J M Hayes

Author:J M Hayes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2014-05-11T16:00:00+00:00

Ice Eyes

Bone

The cold flames that normally flared along the hut’s roof were dark. Thin, perfectly round, and straight branches the color of dirty snow hung up there in a way I couldn’t fathom. This time, light glowed from a strange cone-shaped thing that stood on the flat wooden surface by my side. I couldn’t figure that out, either. Not that I ever understood much in this alien place.

I glared at Ice Eyes. “Why have you brought me here again?”

Ice Eyes raised his head. He had trouble focusing on me. He sat against the wall across the hut from me, on an artificial seat. Like everything else, what he sat on had been crafted with a level of skill I couldn’t imagine. Too perfect. Too even. Actually, I was beginning to find this continuous state of flawlessness boring.

“You’re back,” his voice said inside my mind. That made sense, I suppose, since I had no ears to hear. “I was beginning to think I imagined you.”

“A dream imagines me—a fleshless skull that speaks?” I laughed to myself.

He joined me with a crooked grin.

“What am I, then, oh dream? The spirit that once inhabited this skull? That somehow haunts it still?”

“Damned if I know.” He picked up another too perfect item from the floor beside him and lifted it in my direction. “Here’s to you, ghost, or whatever you are.”

He put the thing to his mouth and swallowed. It must have been a container.

“I’d offer you some of this but you’ve nothing to taste it with. And you probably aren’t familiar with this kind of drink, anyway. Besides, you can’t be real. I expect you’re a product of my imagination. Or proof I’ve finally lost my mind.”

“I might have said the same about you,” I told him. “Or maybe you’re hallucinating because you’ve drunk too much wine.”

Ice Eyes looked at me, surprised and suddenly more alert. “You know about wine?”

“Of course. Though we don’t have any now. The berries are just beginning to ripen and we haven’t had time to stop and ferment any.”

“Wine! In your time? Don’t I wish I had proof of that. It’d make my career. Next, you’ll be telling me you had bows and arrows.”

“Yes, we do have bows and arrows. I shot Enemies, who tried to steal our women and children, with them today. My today, anyway. And my woman was shot. I’m worried about her wound.”

He jumped to his feet and stumbled toward me. “War, wine, bows, tell me more. Tell me about your tools. Tell me how you live. Who makes decisions? Do you live with your father’s people or your mother’s? Do you have a god? Gods? Tell me everything.”

“No.” I stopped him dead in his tracks. “I need information, too. I need to make sure my woman’s wound heals, if I get back to her again. Tell me how I got here. Where you found me. Are you a witch, planting these dreams in my mind? Or am I really dead as I talk

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