Our Kind of Weather

“Where were you?”

That was the question Winnette was greeted with upon returning to the cave.

Wyna was lying down on her cot. She had her doll, a icy-white explorer wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat, tucked under one leg. She had asked the question.

Welga, the middle sister, was sitting up on her cot, working on the hat that she was fixing up for Wyna. She blinked her green eyes, which were the same glassy emerald color as tourmaline.

Winnette had seen a lot of tourmaline. Long ago, windigos had mined tourmaline, along with copper and other things, from the nearby mountains. As the population dwindled, everywone had been awash in the stuff until it became totally worthless. The back of their cave was overstuffed with tourmaline necklaces, earrings, bangles, and uncut gemstones, along with with all the other antique junk.

There were books back there, and tools and toys and games; precious orbs of lilac-colored crystal and monoliths of smoky quartz; mounds and mounds of copper from the old mines, and even a few nuggets of gold that had escaped a fit of paranoia that had seen their ancestors dump most of their gold into the dead sea. Every now and then Wyna went diving into the pile in the back of the cave for a different game or toy to play with, sending copper coins and chunks of tourmaline tumbling to the cave floor, but otherwise there was little reason to go back there. Winnette had taken the books she thought were useful and kept them on the ground by her cot. Wyna had her toys, and Welga sometimes played with Wyna; other times she read or went out onto the beach to stretch her legs.

Mom’s journal was sitting on Winnette’s cot, but not in the same position that Winnette had left it. There was a fourth cot that had a few quilts lying messily across it. There was nothing else to the cave, unless Wyna had somehow failed to consume any of the bones from the badger they’d eaten three days ago.

Wyna’s eyes were the same rosy pink that tourmaline sometimes was. That’s what Mother had said: “She’s as pink as the tourmaline.” Wyna’s eyes could be brilliant and faceted, in the layered, translucent, icelike way that the eyes of windigos often were. But to Winnette, Wyna’s pink eyes were a rabid pink, signifying danger.

“It’s dark out,” said Winnette, in response to Wyna’s question. “I can go wherever I want.”

“Go hunting. I’m hungry.”

Like that was news. Wyna’s bluish skin was so taut against her bony frame that her ribs bulged out every time she took a breath. The shape of the bones that made up Welga’s haunches were visible. Their pale manes were thin and the strands of hair that composed them limp, like melting icicles.

Winnette got exhausted just walking up and down the switchbacks. How was she supposed to hunt?

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Winnette said.

“You never catch anything anyway.”

“Shut up, Wyna.”

“Don’t tell her to shut up,” Welga said. Winnette shot her a look. Welga thought of herself as the peacemaker, but in reality, she just coddled Wyna.

“She doesn’t ever catch anything,” Wyna said.

“I caught that badger three days ago.”

“I should go hunting. I’d catch something.”

“When you’re older,” Winnette said.

“I’ll never be older because you never catch anything.”

“Shut up, Wyna!”

“I thought I heard you talking,” said Welga.

Was she trying to change the subject? “I talk,” Winnette answered guardedly. “The wind is better company than you two.”

“We heard your voice on the wind,” said Wyna, wiggling her loose upper tooth with her tongue.

“Wyna!”

“We did,” Welga said apologetically. “It sounded...like you were praying?”

“To what?” Winnette replied shortly.

“To Mommy,” snickered Wyna.

“SHUT UP, WYNA!”

Wyna’s rabid pink eyes taunted her. “I read your diary.”

“Wyna!” Welga begged. “Stop it.”

“It was Welga’s idea, she read it first—”

“It was not, you liar!”

“I believe you,” Winnette said to Welga. It felt so good to see Welga get mad at Wyna that Winnette almost forgave her for always taking Wyna’s side. “Wyna, shut up.”

“You can’t keep talking to her like that,” Welga whispered.

To a windigo, a whisper hid nothing; it only communicated tone and intent. Wyna sniggered and pushed her loose upper tooth with her tongue again.

“I’m going hunting,” Winnette said with strained calm. “Because somewone has to feed you, Wyna, even if you wished they were dead.”

Welga was stricken. “She doesn’t wish that!”

“Do too,” Wyna said happily.

“See?” Winnette spun on the heels of her hoofs. She moved to the mouth of the cave, where the stars blinked dispassionately at her in the dark sky.

“Teach me a game first!” Wyna shouted. “I’m bored.”

“So play with something.”

“I’ve played with everything.”

Go on, thought Winnette. Say something. Anything. Give me a reason. “Go into the pile and find something new.”

“There isn’t anything new! Just tourmaline and torn hats and copper junk.”

“Then make up a game with Welga.”

“She’s boring.”

Winnette had been waiting for this. She stormed back from the mouth of the cave and cornered Wyna against the moss-slick wall. Wyna backed up as Winnette pressed forward, but her pink eyes only grew more brilliant as they lit up with some dark, wild excitement.

“Welga puts up with you all night while I’m out hunting!” Winnette bellowed. “The least you could do is show some respect!”

Welga jumped to her hoofs. “Don’t bully her!”

“She needs to be bullied!” Winnette barked. “Don’t defend her, Welga, you let her get away with everything.”

“I do not!”

Wyna’s pink eyes danced. “Welga says you’re terrible at hunting and everything was better when Mommy was alive—”

Wyna cut off with a gurgle as Winnette pushed her to the wall with a cold hoof against her neck.

There was so little skin around Wyna’s neck that it seemed too small to hold up her head. And often it didn’t, when Wyna’s head drooped with tiredness from hunger and she slept most of the night. Those nights were the scariest, when neither she nor Welga knew if Wyna was going to wake up.

Winnette could feel the arteries in Wyna’s neck, could see them pumping as they struggled to push their cold, blue fluid to Wyna’s brain.

Welga might have shouted or begged, Winnette wasn’t sure. For a moment everything was searing cold in the back of Winnette’s head. Her vision tunneled; there was just darkness and Wyna’s wild expression and glowing pink eyes, her grin spreading maniacally across her face as Winnette’s hoof squeezed her neck harder against the cave.

Her smile grew fiercer until her expression changed. Her eyes rolled up and her legs kicked in panic. Winnette released her, and Wyna ran, stumbling, to Welga, collapsing against her as she sucked in huge, gasping breaths.

“She choked me!” Wyna sobbed as Welga petted her cold, white mane and whispered reassurances.

“I know,” Welga said, blinking frosty tears away. “Wait!—Winnette, don’t leave. I know she provoked you—Winnette!”

Winnette raced out of the cave. The last snippet of the conversation behind her that she heard, carried to her ears by the wind, was Welga saying to Wyna, “Why must you always tell lies?”

“SHUT UP!” Wyna shrieked in a chilling impersonation of Winnette.

Winnette’s hoofs carried up the switchbacks to the clifftop.

Damn Wyna. And damn Welga for encouraging her! It was always the two of them against her. Things had been better when Mom was alive—

Winnette stumbled over a rock and shook her head, tossing her thin mane out of her eyes. The exertion made her vision swim, and she had to stop for a moment, crouching her head between her forelegs.

—even if Wyna was too young to appreciate it. Winnette wasn’t the hunter Mom had been. So what? She was doing her best, damn it!

Stupid Wyna. Sitting around in the cave playing all night while Winnette did all the work!

Stupid Welga, for not getting it. She kept saying, “You have to understand, you have to understand, she’s starving, she lost her mother very young, she knows she’s the last windigo”—Blah blah blah blah blah! They’d all lost their mother very young! Even Winnette didn’t have her star sign yet!

And they didn’t know Wyna was the last windigo, it depended on what order they died in. And they were all starving, that was the problem, that was everything. It was why Mom had died, it was why there was going to be a last windigo, it was why Winnette got angry, but it wasn’t why Wyna got angry, because Wyna was a monster. She’d be a monster even if she ate a whole elk every day.

Damn Welga, for not understanding that.

Winnette took her head out from between her legs and trotted up to the top of the cliff.

Her eyes, which were an icy blue color, not tourmaline-bright like Welga or Wyna’s, didn’t need much light to see by. Windigos were adapted for the dark; the harsh, murderous light of day was blinding.

The rock became forest eventually. From the edge of the cliff you could see the shape of the jagged semicircle of vegetation that ringed off their home. It looked like some kind of creature had risen up from the dead ocean and taken a bite out of the forest, leaving a barren, rocky area where plants and animals wouldn’t go.

It meant she had to trot for an hour just to start hunting.

The night was darker when she reached the forest, and the trees caught much of the remaining light, but moonbeams made it through, and more importantly, the starlight. Thousands of years ago, the Sun and the Moon had been tiny, distant balls in the sky, and the stars had been brighter. There were supposed to be as many stars as there were going to be windigos. That was why each windigo had their own special star sign waiting for them when they reached maturity. When you discovered your special talent or destiny, it would manifest on your flank.

Mom’s star sign had been three little icelike stars, “For the three little girls I’m going to have,” Mom had said. “One and two,” she touched Winnette’s nose, then Welga’s. Then she touched her stomach. “Three. You’ll take care of her when I’m gone. Tell me you will.”

No, Winnette’s mouth made the motion as she walked carefully through the forest, eyes searching for something she could track.

“That’s my girl, I know you will,” Mother had said.

High above, the stars were like a million shards of ice spilled onto a vast black ocean. Winnette’s eyes and nose stayed close to the ground, searching through the grass for a trail to follow.

There was something. A thin, winding path of grass bent in a different direction from the grass around it.

She followed it. Occasionally it stopped, circled around, changed direction. But it kept moving deeper into the forest.

Winnette’s legs brushed aside snakeroot. She lurked in the shadow cast by the limbs of a spruce tree.

Very peculiar, for an animal to be so close to the edge of the forest at night….

When she spotted it, the explanation became clear. The shrew she had been stalking, its long snout twitching, was only an infant, probably recently orphaned. Confused and untaught, it had wandered too close to the cliff.

Winnette crept closer. A breeze flicked at her mane.

She wasn’t a bad hunter. Stupid Wyna. Stupid idiot Wyna—

“Hi!”

“AAAAAAAHHH!”

She screamed, and the baby shrew took off, diving into the brush. She charged forward desperately, but it had disappeared, and she could no longer find it.

“Sorry,” said the voice. “Did I scare you?”

Winnette whipped around, but no wone was there.

She took a deep breath. If she was starting to have delusions from hunger—

“Were you after that shrew? I’m sorry,” said the voice in her ear.

She jumped and kicked the air. “Get away from me!”

“Sorry,” said the voice in her other ear, “but you’re the wone who has a choice in the matter, not me.”

She slapped the air. “What are you talking about?”

“What,” said the voice, “are you listening about?”

She shouted at the air again, but there was no answer. The voice had gone, along with her meal.

Winnette began to prowl once more through the forest, but there was no scent to follow, no trail of crushed flowers or broken stems. Any chance she had of catching something tonight had been lost when she had announced her presence to the forest by shouting at whatever phantasm had spoken to her. The only thing that kept her from turning back was the shame of coming home without anything to show for it. Just the thought of Wyna’s taunting made her blood boil.

“Um,” said the voice.

She kicked hard, and whiffed. Scything around, she glared at a tree. It didn’t glare back, however.

“If you’d just—”

She lashed out with her forehoofs this time, catching only air. The sudden effort left her light-headed. Dizzy, she sank to her knees, ducking her head down low in the anti-nausea posture she had learned from years of hunger.

“I’m going insane,” she whimpered, while darkness swam in front of her eyes.

“You’re really not,” said the voice. “Or, well, you might be, but you shouldn’t think so because you’re hearing me. Of course, you might not be saying that because you’re hearing me. You might be saying it because you’re hearing somewone else who I can’t hear. Then you would be going insane. Unless I’m insane. Are you hearing somewone else? What are they saying?”

She groaned.

Then frowned. “Somewone?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Somewone?”

“Right. You know, when you mentioned going insane—”

“You’re a windigo?”

“I was a windigo. Now I don’t know what I am.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does it mean to you?”

She clenched her eyes shut. She still felt like the world was falling away underneath her, like she was clinging to a melting piece of ice, and all that lay underneath was the dead ocean.

“No riddles. Please.”

“I’m not trying to confuse you. I don’t have any answers. I think whatever made me this way was very sudden.”

“That’s helpful.”

“Is it really? I don’t think I’ve ever been told that I’ve done something helpful before. I only remember other windigos saying that I talk too much. Do you think I talk too much? I don’t mean to talk too much. It’s just so much fun, don’t you think? There’s so much variety: so many sounds, so many meanings. Isn’t that interesting? Do you like to talk much? You seem like the listening type. I like somewone who can listen for a long time. Good listeners are very rare. Not like good talkers.”

“Argh,” said Winnette.

A breeze tickled her ear.

“Are you all right?” said the voice.

“No.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Hungry. My sisters. I don’t know.”

“I’m not sure I can do much about the hunger,” the voice said sadly. “I seem to be having an, um, out-of-body experience. But maybe you can tell me about your sisters? I’m not the listener that you are, but perhaps if I talk enough about it a solution will come out. It’s never happened before, but that doesn’t prove anything, since everywone always tell me to stop well before I’ve run out of breath.”

“The hunger is the problem.” At least for her and Welga. Wyna was another story.

“Hm. Have you tried hunting?”

“I…yes.”

“I can’t feed you, but maybe I can help you hunt.”

Winnette’s ears swiveled up. “How?”

“You were following that shrew’s trail, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

The voice sounded smug. “That is not how a windigo hunts.”