Pale Hunter

By CJ Sellers

Set in 1666, a pair of European traders make first contact with something unexpected. Terrified, they attempt to flee back to the forts of New France. Even if they make it, will they be safe there? Can anyone protect them from the wrath of the manitou?

• Language: English
• Publisher: CJ Sellers
• Release date: May 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311306241

CJ Sellers

Cynthia Jean (C.J.) Sellers spent her early childhood in Toledo, Ohio, USA, a place like so many in The Rust Belt around the Great Lakes, that suffered disintegration of their vital core due to a dependency on manufacturing, first during the Great Depression and again after a production shift to China and the southeastern US.Her family--forced to choose between layoff and continued employment in a new area of the country--left behind the nucleus of several generations rooted in the Toledo area, to relocate to the wilderness of rural Virginia.This isolation from roots and family support, friends and community, combined with pressures from corporate culture, led her parents to a meltdown that ended in divorce. CJ later lost her closest family members to illnesses of the brain.Loss of identity/self, family, and place were the impetus for CJ's decision to lampoon the dynamics of society and family gone off the rails through means of the horror genre.That said, no family history plays out in her fiction, no characters literally resemble any persons living or deceased. Situations presented are metaphors for how life feels at times of great emotional disturbance and loss--normal life warps into the surreal.

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PALE HUNTER

A Novella by C. J. Sellers

© 2014, Cynthia Jean (C.J.) Sellers.

Published by, Cynthia Jean (C.J.) Sellers at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

"His blood did freeze, his brain did burn,

'Twas fear'd his mind would ne'er return;

For he was speechless, ghastly, wan,

Like him of whom the story ran

Who spoke the spectre-hound in Man."

— Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (c.1805)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Epigraph

Chapter 1 - People aren’t always what they seem

Chapter 2 - Between the dog and the wolf

Chapter 3 - Lies to get by, lies to profit from

Chapter 4 - Warning: caveat emptor, i.e. buyer beware

Chapter 5 - The unexpected feast

Chapter 6 - Fallout

Chapter 7 - A gift from the manitou

Chapter 8 - Back and forth

Chapter 9 - Tilting at windmills

Chapter 10 - Reconciling for grub

Chapter 11 - Fleeing & foraging

Chapter 12 - Old Red Eyes

Chapter 13 - A thief in the night

Chapter 14 – Eating

Chapter 1 - People aren’t always what they seem

March 28th, 1666, New France

Standing at the brink, with a seemingly unending span of water before me and miles of snowy forest at my back, I could easily forget all the blood that must have washed down creeks and rivers into this bay since Europeans had arrived.

Were it not for the scraping sound that jarred me to the defensive.

That sound had no right in the wilderness except to signal the approach of men, or, in this case, boys staking their claim upon it.

Perhaps my sense of foreboding was a defense against the onslaught of wind come across the water from frozen tundras or blown down off the peaks of distant glaciers.

Perhaps it was triggered by the smile on Bernard’s face when he saw those two runaway boys drag their birch canoe onto the icy bank of James Bay, scraping their way inland.

I rather think now, in retrospect, that my immediate sense of dread was a premonition of the terror and devastation that awaited down the road as a result of this chance encounter. I was not given to baseless or irrational feelings, therefore I determined to understand their cause.

I knew immediately that something was not right about this pair. One was apparently Cree by the style of his rectangular, moose hide parka. A Cree was normal to find in these parts — it was historically Cree territory. As for the other one...

Look at the pointy coat — that’s Chipewyan, I whispered to Bernard, who in turn peered an eye around the edge of the outcrop of snow-laden rock that we’d hastily hidden behind.

And..., he said. His breath puffed into the frigid air like smoke signals.

Chipewyan are enemies of the Cree.

Not this one, apparently, he said, smiling wryly. The Chipewyan boy had caught his interest as well, but for wholly different reasons. I guess he’d recalled what little he knew about them — in particular, their strategic position as an untapped resource for the beaver pelt trade.

Hail that Cree, he said, We better warn them about Iroquois encroachment. And again, that smile.

Ice crystals had formed in his recently graying mustache. Aged almost twenty, I hadn’t the faintest hint of a mustache or beard and never would. But then, neither would these boys when they grew into men.

I always felt apprehensive in encounters with other indigenous youths. They were too nosy and interested in physicality. But I guessed he’d taken pity on them. Whatever he was thinking, though I had grave reservations to counter my curiosity, I knew better than to argue. So I just went on and approached them, intentionally slipping and sliding down the hill with comical effect.

Bernard always played the straight man, whereas it was my job to break the ice, and I’d found through trial and error that slapstick was a fairly universal language.

Since I spoke Cree fluently, yet no Chipewyan (I’d never even seen one before now), I mainly interacted with the Cree boy while clinging to an icy poplar trunk as if to steady myself from slipping again.

The Chipewyan seemed smarter but obviously only spoke only Chipewyan. I really did not know what to expect from him. The only information we had about their culture we’d gleaned from the Cree around the Hudson Bay region, so that prior information was likely prejudicial. I was very curious to know the facts, as was Bernard.

The Cree boy gestured at his friend to follow him and approach me, but the other argued. Finally, the Chipewyan slung his bow over his shoulder and pulled out a copper dagger from a leather sheath, strung around his neck. He thumbed at the sharpened edge and made threatening eye contact with me, then sheathed it back. I nodded respectfully. In close quarters, a bow or arquebus was useless, especially against a knife.

I wasn’t worried — it would never come to that.

I think