“And after a few years, these kids had kids, and then their kids had kids, each generation farther and farther from the Gone Time until what they are is what you see, true natives of the land.” Five of the dancers gyrated in a line in front of Eric now, another one a woman. Eric thought they were scrawny, all muscle, limbs as lithe as coyotes. The first woman continued to lock her eyes on Eric, as if trying by force of will to get inside his head. The rest continued running and jumping, weaving patterns, sometimes touching each other in passing, a hand on a shoulder or the top of a head. The eyes were unnerving, the feeling that the woman knew him. Eric said, “How do they live? They must freeze at night this high in the mountains.”
A log popped in the fire sending an ember onto Eric’s arm. He flinched, and it sizzled for a second, but he didn’t want to knock it off, sure the sudden movement would end the boisterous ritual.
“Mostly they stick to the mine shafts. Mountains here are full of them, or natural caves. Pure hunters, too. Don’t believe they raise a thing. If they can run it down, they eat it.” Teach’s voice stayed low and even, almost as if he were chanting. The dancers either didn’t hear it or ignored the sound. “My guess is their homes are deep where the cold can’t get them. They store food for the winter and don’t come out. Sometimes the boys’ll kill an elk or deer, dress it and leave it hanging in the woods. It disappears. Bear might have got it or the Earth Dancers. Don’t matter much to them. I’ve never seen smoke from fires they might make, so I guess they don’t use it, which might explain what we’re watching now.”
Another voice from the fire said, “I dream about them Teach. Women Earth Dancers, like that one.” The two women, both tightly muscled, small-breasted, narrow-hipped, moved sinuously in the firelight. The voice continued, “They’re, you know, those kinds of dreams.” Someone else chuckled.
The voice snapped, “You never had a wild Earth Woman dream?” Whoever laughed didn’t reply. “I have a dream like that and I figure whatever I do the next day is sort of… I don’t know… blessed.” The wind shifted. The tops of pines creaked as they leaned slightly in the new direction. The dancers stopped, looked about as if aware of some danger. None of them said anything; he saw no gesture, but all except one woman turned and fled across the road and into the forest. Eric thought of fish in an aquarium, changing directions at the same time with no visible way of communicating. The woman watched the others leave, then she crouched, her knees wide apart, arms between her legs, hair covering her face. She smoothed the dirt at her feet, concentrating, unaware, it seemed, of the crowd of men staring at her from the fire. Eric could see them from the corners of his eyes, all intent on the young woman powdered in white.
She traced a figure in the dirt with her finger, shrugged her shoulders, looked at Eric like a portrait artist, smoothed the figure out again and retraced it. Eric shifted position—his back was cramping—and the woman glanced up, like a bird, half rising from her crouch. Her eyes, reflecting fire light, met Eric’s and he shook his head, no. Please, he thought, please don’t go. There was something inspiring and beautiful in her, some primal element that made her seem more tree and stone than human. He couldn’t place it. Scratches covered her legs; her hair was matted and tangled, but the line of her arms and legs, the strength in her thighs. In this position, her muscles bulged, and Eric decided “scrawny” was a wrong word to apply to her. Hard was better. He remembered women who worked out in the Gone Time—he’d had a poster of some on the wall of his room when he was fifteen—aerobic instructors with smooth, rounded muscles, tanned skin, beautiful hair. They were… buffed. The Earth Dancer’s musculature looked efficient, not showy, pure animal. He imagined her grandparents or great-grandparents in the Gone Time, driving to work, probably in a Volvo, stopping for breakfast at—what was that place?— McDonalds, having an Egg McMuffin and drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup. Eric remembered a friend of his in school talking about a schoolmate of theirs, a pathetic, fat girl who waddled down the hall, the butt of jokes. He cringed at the memory. Undoubtedly both of them were dead now, gone in the plague. Old friends and bad jokes all lost. His friend had said, “She’s built for comfort, not for speed.” The Earth Dancer looked built for speed, like she could take on a mountain lion.
Teach whispered, “We find signs of them in the woods: cairns of stones arranged in circles, and animal bones carefully stacked.”
“How many of them are there?”
The woman sidled around, looking at whatever she was drawing on the ground from a different angle. Teach said, “The land can only support so many carnivores. A hundred and twelve people live in Highwater. I’d guess their tribe might be half that size.”
She stood, hands resting on her thighs, and waved her hand at Eric, a beckoning. He looked behind himself at the fire and the men around it, then back at the woman. She waved again. He pointed his hand to his chest. “Me,” he mouthed. She waved a third time, more emphatically.
“She wants you to follow her,” said Teach. “I wouldn’t.”
“God,” someone said. “It’s a summoning. It’s like a deer asking you to dinner.”
“More like a dream.”
“I wish she’d ask me,” said someone else wistfully.
She walked a few steps away and motioned to Eric again.
Eric faced Teach. He felt a swelling in his chest. The woman, he thought, for a moment there was like Leda, intent and focused. “I’m going,” he said. He thought, What am I doing? But she stood, her hand outstretched to him, and everything felt right. Her dancing, the ceremony to moon light and night, the nakedness and vulnerability of it all, felt right, mystical. He would go with her and he would be safe.
“They must know you,” said Teach. “Maybe they watched us following you, or maybe they’ve always known you. They’ve never tried to communicate with us.” He sounded a little jealous. Eric brushed dirt from his pants and walked into the darkness. A few strides into the clearing he looked back. Teach and his boys stared after him. A couple waved. He turned and followed the woman. For the first few hundred yards, walking was easy. The Earth Dancer stayed ten feet in front of him on a faint trail that started on the other side of the old highway. A bright moon provided enough light to see his step although he couldn’t tell if shadows on the ground were holes or safe places to set his feet. Then the trail grew steep, and the woman, her skin the color of moon, used her hands to brace herself as she climbed.
Sandy soil and rip rap skittered beneath Eric’s shoes, and he grabbed tree roots, weeds, and rocky outcrops to keep from slipping. “Where are we going, young lady?” She shook her head impatiently and kept moving up. The trail was steep, and several times Eric got close enough to smell her. He wrinkled his noise. She was rank, but it wasn’t really an unclean smell, he decided. She smelled like… deep caves, moist and warm and close, and like crushed leaves. Aggressively female too.
The trail quit climbing. They’d reached a high ridge that sloped away to either side. In the valley to Eric’s right, the fire flickered through the intervening trees, and the highway shone like a pale ribbon. Now that his eyes had fully adjusted, he walked as confidently as he would in full daylight. Ahead, the rest of the Earth Dancers waited, squatting by the sides of the trail. They gazed at Eric as he passed, faces white and neutral, eyes aglitter with the moon. None looked over thirty. He wondered if their life-spans were short, like medieval man. Did they have any kind of doctoring, or had that disappeared too? “Do any of you…” The sound of his voice breaking the silence startled him. “… speak?” Far away, a coyote yipped and a host of others joined in. No Earth Dancer replied. Eric said, “I’m feeling over-dressed for this party.” One of the men walked beside him, casting quick glances from the corner of his eye. Eric felt like he was being measured in some way. He sighed. “Lots of nights I’ve kicked my clothes off too.” And he had. Since his house was a couple of miles from his nearest neighbor, on hot summer nights he would sit on his porch and watch the stars slip behind the mountains one by one. A wink and they were gone, and after he’d sat long enough, he’d feel a part of the revolution of the Earth, a speck on a plate, tilting, tilting ever up. After hours on the porch, he had no illusion that the stars moved, and he wondered how anyone could have ever believed that they revolved around us.