It was spring. The sun was low, and the morning was cold. It hurt to breathe in April, and the bite in the air frosted my lungs after the long, winded sprint. Paco remained quiet at my side as we crouched behind Bloodroot bushes, cloaked in bearskin and fur. Watching, waiting, poison surrounding us.
The forest was quiet.
The morning made no sound. The deer made no sound.
It was tired from running, and exhaustion was what we had intended.
Three souls occupied this space, yet there was not a stir in the forest.
Paco’s chances were dwindling. If we did not return with something, his father would be disappointed like many times before.
I could not understand Paco’s struggle.
It was only a few years earlier that I found comfort in hunting.
On mornings before a hunt, I prayed for the gods to provide. I made offerings to Mother Earth and Father Sky before asking Spirit to unite me with the animal. With every kill, I felt it internally.
As the years passed, I simplified my ritual. It wasn’t necessary for me to show my spirituality externally; I knew what I was doing. Whether it be fish, snowshoe hares, pheasants, or buck with velvet-wrapped antlers, they were a part of me as much as I was a part of them.
Paco’s face was pinched as though he was in pain or fighting a queasy stomach. He wore that look each time his eyes were set on his kill. Nerves gripped him as he tightened his fingers around the blade in his sweaty hand, watching the deer push her wet black nose across glossy leaves.
The top layer of snow melted, slipping beneath my frozen snowshoes as I waited. “Go on, Paco,” I whispered at his side in his native tongue. “Do it.”
Most boys, including myself, knew how to hunt. However, while other thirteen-year-olds tracked rabbits and squirrels, my sights were set on animals that could feed more of us for longer than a day.
To me, no challenge was out of reach. Killing with precision would ensure a painless death. But what if Paco could not give the animal the deserved peace? How much suffering would the innocent creature endure before surrendering to their death if Paco could not do it right?
I had taught him many times before and showed him how it was done. A single puncture in the wrong place could cause the gentle mammal insufferable pain.
With sweat beading on his brow, Paco stepped forward, and snow crunched beneath his shoe. The deer snapped her head at the sound, and Paco froze. Then the deer froze.
Silent seconds passed, and then—“I cannot,” he whispered as though the thought pained him.
My gaze drifted back to the deer, sensing it was about to sprint through the trees again. Without another second to risk, I snatched the blade from Paco’s fist.
With the carved wood end clutched in my naked palm, echoes of the place it had once resided flashed in my mind. My throat swelled. A thick black stain spread behind my eyelids until a single memory remained.Wolfish looks inscribed into strange faces as a spirited tribe passed; hunger and fear held in the palms of their eyes.The cold around me quivered, winter rushed into my ears, and the memory flickered before breaking apart and falling to pieces.
Now.The single word collapsed in my brain, my thoughts dispersing.
I charged after the deer, the Hemlock branches creaking as they bent to clear a path from me to her.
The first time the past came to me through the touch of an object, I knew there was something different about me other than the mask I wore. Mother had said not to think of it, not to speak of it. It was neither normal nor a gift, the same as how the Earth guided me. The same as the stretch of darkness carved into my face.
In a swift sprint, my breath and heartbeat pulsed in my ears.
I lunged forward and wrapped my arms around the deer’s body. I used my strength and speed to take her to the ground. Like many times before, I grabbed her nose, pulled her head back, and sank the sharp blade into the space below her ear, slicing across vital blood vessels and splitting her throat apart.
“May your body nourish ours, and may your memory nourish our souls,” I whispered in the native language, finishing the deer with a deep jab. Her lifeless brown eyes stared up at the gray morning sky. “Nos omnes connexae,”We are all connected,I whispered, lying with her in my arms, chest heaving, staring up at the same gray morning sky as her blood drained over my skin.
I could not kill an animal and not have it affect me.
I could not kill and not have it take a piece of me.
Only later, after consuming her meat, would I feel whole again.
Paco walked beside me as I carried the deer back to the village, knowing the remains of the animal would be respected. We passed a tree where a buck’s head from the day before sat in the crotch so its spirit could watch the sunrises and sunsets. This was a message to other animals and a reminder to yield their bodies to what the gods have planned for them.
Paco’s father approached with a proud smile. “Oh,very good, Paco.”
