Whoso List to Hunt

A hunter, the last of her nomadic people, pursues her final quarry across the universe, while grappling with the weight of memory.

Whoso List to Hunt

Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting, I follow.
-Sir Thomas Wyatt

A hindshead talisman hangs around her neck, its base ragged and its red veneer all but chipped away. She grasps it tightly as she considers the beast before her, a living relic of the same breed. The ancient warpstag, twice the height of a man, the silver branches of its rack spreading as wide as a tree’s, seems like it would be impossible to contain by any mortal means. Yet here it is, just another exhibit in the zoo.

The stag returns her gaze with one equally dark and inscrutable. Around its own neck hangs the device that tethers it to this planet, a collar of some native metal whose inscription reads “None may touch me — Property of Qaesar.” Periodically, its tracking light casts a greenish tint over the stag’s white fur.

Perhaps it does not regard her at all, she thinks, but looks through her into a distant galaxy. Neither of them were meant to stay in one place so long.

“None may touch me”– on this planet, Qaesar, people respect such injunctions. Here, their laws are written in books and on signs, and where they are not, people remind each other with friendly smiles. They have been through enough to know what they want. Order and peace. Gentleness to one another and the world they live on.

Here, no one bears the burden of leadership. No one is called to make great sacrifices. And most of all, no one yearns to soar through the stars and explore distant horizons. They would rather stay put and appreciate the planet they have made their home. They spend their time walking in gardens and zoos, reading good books, sharing good meals.
They want her to join them. They call her by their name: human. But she is as alike to them as they are to the warpstag. 

She does not remember her birth-planet, or the planet after that. Her people migrated around her first year, and her memories up to her fifth are a blur, brief moments of clarity between stretches of feverish spasms.

She had caught the falling sickness, and they did not have enough tyne to treat everyone. The medicine was rationed and on the days she went without her dose, she would find the world slipping sideways, sort of like it did in a warp. But she would awake in the same place she fell, her father holding her, blood in her mouth.

That dire season ended in her sixth year, when they came to a splendid planet where mountains as clear as glass filled the sky with rainbows. They had plenty of tyne to go around, and her memories since then were vivid and coherent.  

When evening fell, the little ones would gather around the fire to hear the stories of the me-mos. The silver-tongued elders described the countless planets that had come before and how each had been suitable for life in its own special way. On one world the acorns glowed at night, filling the canopies like stars. On another, orange rivers wound through deserts of pink sand. The little ones’ favorite story was of seven-moon-planet. She could not understand it.

“But how did you know where to go?” she asked.

“We followed our ar-temi,” replied the me-mo.

This was a sufficient answer. The ar-temi was the leader of the people, each the eldest daughter of the ar-temi who came before, in a bloodline rich with special gifts. There was no going at all without the ar-temi.

“Mama is that old?” she wondered.

The me-mo laughed. “No, Lokeia. Your mother has only been ar-temi for a few seasons. Many have been ar-temi since the first. It was your grandmother Teron we followed to seven-moon-planet.”

The me-mo looked around at the little faces illuminated by firelight, and considered. Then he asked them: “Has anyone told you the story of the first ar-temi?”

The little ones, who had not had much time for stories in their short, sickness-riddled lives, all shouted “No! Tell us, Me-mo!”

The elder smiled at their eagerness, but shook his head. “That is a story only Po-tni Teron can tell you.”

As Lokeia grew older and stronger, her father taught her how to pitch their skene, how to determine what was safe to eat on a new planet, and how to remember a story. It was important that everyone remember stories, although only men became me-mos, so that the women were free to hunt and carry children.

Lokeia’s mother, Agotora, taught her how to walk in the dust, how to throw a spear, and how to carry what was heavier than herself. On Lokeia’s first trip to the moon, her mother showed her how to breathe the empty air and how to unfocus her eyes to watch for motion instead of shape.

Agotora had been ar-temi since before Lokeia was born. No one was better with a spear. And spear in hand, she delivered a second daughter in Lokeia’s eighth year. She was a strong little girl, moonfaced, loud, and free of the falling sickness. They all felt healthier that season, the feasts and the pleasant clime of two-sunset-world filling their bellies and warming their bones.

One night after the feast her grandmother came to sit with her. Po-tni Teron had seen nine seasons and led the people through five of them as ar-temi. Though her skin had grown pale and soft as moondust, her eyes were still dark and sharp. Sometimes the depth of that gaze frightened Lokeia. Staring into her grandmother’s eyes, she felt like she was looking into a vast galaxy, empty of stars. A wild and unseeded void.

“This season of feast will not last forever,” Po-tni Teron said to the girl, taking her into her lap. “Did you know, in ancient days people lived for hundreds of years. No one was ever sick, not with falling or any other kind.”

Sadness crossed Po-tni Teron’s face as if she recalled her own lost childhood, though what she spoke of happened millennia before she was born.

“In those days we still followed the first hunter, first mother Ar-temi. She who hunts the great warp-stag, Ak-teon.”

Lokeia paid close attention, for this was a story she did not know, the kind only a Po-tni remembered and only a future ar-temi could hear. 

“We always tell the tale of the first hunter, first mother, as if it is happening right now,” said Teron, “because it happens before time as we know it. There is no past or future when Ar-temi hunts Ak-teon. Only our people have a past and future.

“There are only the two of them, big as constellations, crossing galaxies in a single leap.”
The thought made Lokeia dizzy. She always emptied her stomach after they arrived at a new planet, and couldn’t imagine enduring such a distance at once.

“Now comes a time when Ar-temi is with child,” continued Po-tni Teron, “but she is so mighty, that she carries not one infant, but an entire people in her belly.

“And still she continues hunting Ak-teon across the universe. She begins to give birth, and her children follow after their mother, who does not pause a second. And from the stag Ak-teon comes a mighty herd for the peoples to follow.

“To this day, there are peoples like us in every galaxy, each following their ar-temi, and she following a warp-stag, although we can no longer cross the galaxies as our first hunter, first mother Ar-temi does.”

Po-tni Teron ceased speaking, allowing Lokeia time to commit her words to memory. Lokeia was too young to fathom the day she would need to pass the story to her own granddaughter, but she did the remembering as her father had taught her.

In her mind, she built a constellation, choosing the shape of a giant stag to represent Ak-teon. She gave each star an important image to hold: first hunter, first mother Ar-temi standing outside time; a people emerging from her belly; Ak-teon leading his herd.

When Lokeia had committed the story to memory, Teron continued. “Someday you will be the one responsible for carrying the people through the seasons,” she said. “You must grow strong enough to take your mother’s place.”

Lokeia knew that elders could see into the future. They had followed the path so long, they knew all its landmarks, its twists and turns, and its dead ends. Lokeia hoped her grandmother did not see a dead end in her.”I am already strong,” she said.

“With such thin arms?” Teron asked, pinching them. “Tell me, how will you carry a people with these?”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Lokeia said stubbornly, “and I will get even stronger, so I can carry you, and Mother and Father and Little Sister, and everyone else!”

“Ah, but an ar-temi does not carry only the people she knows,” said Po-tni Teron, lifting Lokeia off her knee. “The ar-temi must carry all the spirits of the ancestors who travel with us. If she is weak, she might drop them and lose them among the stars.”

“I will carry them too,” said Lokeia, “I won’t drop anyone.”

“That may be true,” said Po-tni Teron, but there was a sad look in her eyes. “Like every ar-temi who came before, the blood of the first mother flows through you. You will be called to pursue the hunt across the galaxy, and you will feel the urge to leap ahead of the others because you can, a lone hunter like the first. But like hers, your spirit will demand that you do not leap too far, that you carry your people with you instead of leaving them behind. A good ar-temi finds the balance between these two urges.”

Then Po-tni Teron reached into her hip-pouch. She pulled out a little wooden hind that hung from a strip of leather. The hind had two black dots of paint for eyes, and its skin was lacquered in a red pigment they’d found on a planet two seasons before Lokeia’s birth.
“You can start by carrying this,” said Po-tni Teron, smiling a little. “It is not so heavy.”


The gift became immensely dearer to Lokeia when, three days later, Po-tni Teron had a fatal falling fit. They buried her beside a lilac-scented stream and covered her grave in singing flowers. 

When Lokeia saw how heavy her grandmother’s spirit was for her mother to carry she stopped boasting about her own strength. After that, she carried the red hind wherever she went, and when she ran it ran with her, swinging heavily against her chest.

Lokeia had decided she would not go to the zoo to see the warpstag today. Instead, she had gone into the heart of the city and found a bookshop.

It had taken her longer to learn to read the local language than to speak it. Her people had never written anything down. Stories were just one more thing to have to carry, and the mind could bear much more than the hands.

But running her fingertips over their spines, Lokeia considers how much easier it would be to set down her burden in these vessels. Names of venerated members of Qaesar society line one shelf. Another bears the deeds of more common folk, their names lost but their contributions remembered. There are shelves of stories and histories, the wisdom of a thousand planets. To Lokeia, the books seem like planets themselves, their colorful surfaces flattened and frozen in orbit.

It would only take so many pages to lay down her people and their stories here. But then, her people had refused to rest for long on any real planet; their spirits would be outraged to find themselves in a paper one. And once she had set down the last letter, what would she be, if she was not the one who carried them? How could she rest, then, her spirit severed from its duty? 

When a kindly-looking store clerk catches her eye, Lokeia hurries out of the bookshop. The people here are all kind, and generous. They are always welcoming her, always asking her to stay, to make herself at home. Wherever she goes, they reach out with open arms. But she sees only empty arms, empty hands. They are generous only because they have so little of their own to carry, she thinks.

Despite her previous intent, she finds herself walking the familiar route to the zoo. It’s a cloudy day, threatening rain, and there is no one around when she reaches the warpstag’s enclosure. At first, the giant is nowhere to be seen. But then she lets her eyes unfocus as her mother once taught her, and eventually she spots the gentle rise and fall of its flank amid some man-made craters.

The warpstag stirs, as if sensing her presence, its head rising from where it lay camouflaged. Then it stands on six shaggy legs, shaking the dust from its fur.

Lokeia feels for the talisman at her neck. The choice is there. She looks around, and seeing no one, touches the fence of the cage. She’s afraid it will shock her, but it doesn’t. She suspects it only reacts to the collar the animals wear, which would explain why the warpstag hasn’t escaped the otherwise petty barrier.

She scales the fence and drops into the cage, and the warpstag turns toward her, lowering its head. The tines of its antlers bristle like a thousand spears aimed her way, and she freezes. But it is only pushing its nose against the ground to snuffle for food. Finding the carcass of a lunar adder, it crushes the serpent’s head with a silver hoof before lapping it up. As it chews, it watches Lokeia with minimal interest, even as she begins to creep closer.
When she’s only a few yards away, the stag surprises her by closing the distance, lowering its head not as a threat, but to present the metal collar for her inspection. Perhaps it thinks she’s one of the zookeepers.

Tentatively, she reaches up and scratches just under the metal. The beast gives an approving snort, and she thinks how absurd this is. Qaesar has made them both soft, it seems. She scratches until her fingers brush against raised, rough edges beneath the fur. Twin scars. She would rather not think about how they got there. Instead, she looks up into the antlers. She used to love watching the herds make the leap.

She remembers how just before they vanished, the warpstag would toss its antlers proudly into the air, and for a split second the next star system would be visible among the silver tines. This stag has not made a leap for many years, now. But even if it were free, would it try? With no herd left to follow it?

As Lokeia grew up, she came to understand there was no people without the herd. It had always been that way. In the ancient days, the herd outnumbered the people ten to one. Back then seasons lasted for centuries, as the herd seemed more content with the moons they found.

On the moons’ accompanying planets, the people built skenes of wood and stone instead of hindskin, and learned to cultivate crops so that they did not need to cull so much of the herd. Yet even after two or three hundred years on the same planet, the people did not call it home. As soon as the herd leapt, they followed, leaving behind their comfortable houses and fertile farms.

Over time the seasons became shorter, the leaps more frequent, and the people had to hunt more warp-harts to keep up. By the time her mother was born, seasons lasted only twenty or thirty years. By Lokeia’s birth, the shortest lasted a mere eight, and it was in that season the falling sickness struck, infecting the youngest and oldest.

At first it seemed fortunate that the medicine was already at hand. It had not taken long to discover the same substance that allowed them to warp after the herd also prevented the fits of falling: tyne, the powder made from grinding the antlers of a warp-hart.

But now needing tyne for daily use, not only for the occasional leap, the people were forced to hunt more warp-harts, and younger warp-harts, unable to wait for their maturation. Soon, only a few white heads raised their glittering racks above the sea of red hinds flowing like molten rubies over the moonside. And only a handful of hartful hinds could be counted, their coats turned white with the promise of harts in their bellies.

In Lokeia’s thirteenth year, tyne was rationed again, even more severely. Between her own fits she had to watch her little sister, who had been stricken since their last warp, writhe and foam at the mouth. Their mother would only give full portions to her hunters, who needed to be well enough to obtain more tyne.

After several unsuccessful hunts, Ar-temi Agotora limited the hunting party to only herself and three trusted spears. Left behind, Lokeia swore and kicked at the post of their skene until her toes bled inside her boots. Her father tried to soothe her with stories and corncake, but it was no use. She was the daughter of the ar-temi, destined to be ar-temi herself. She should be up there, helping find the elusive pair of harts they’d been tracking for weeks. And she couldn’t bear to watch her sister have another fit.

So when her mother gave her the next week’s ration of tyne, she saved it for the day of the hunt. When that day came, she inhaled the portion necessary for the trip, and in the blink of an eye she was skidding to a halt on the moon’s surface, sending up a huge cloud of dust.
It was a rough landing, but at least she had sense enough to keep both primary and lunar respiratory systems sealed until she broke free of the cloud. Looking around, she saw no sign of her fellow hunters or the herd, but she could smell fresh scent in nearby tracks leading to a distant crater. Though not yet ar-temi, some of the gifts were already beginning to unfurl within her, and she could catch scent with predatory precision.

She affixed her adze-head to the blunt end of her spear and hauled herself up the steep side of the crater. Cresting it, she was glad to spot her fellow hunters a few miles away in its valley. They were hunched over at the floor of the crater, already butchering several kills.
Her heart soared– they had found more than the pair of warp-harts they’d been tracking– she counted five carcasses below. In her joy she forgot that she wasn’t supposed to be there, and threw herself down the inner slope, bounding easily through the empty air until she came to a stop near the women.

“Five harts!” she exclaimed. She hadn’t seen such a catch in all her life– one for each hunter and another besides! She wished she had had a spear in it. Well, she could help butcher and carry the fifth, at least.

But as she approached, and caught the gaze of her mother, she sensed something was wrong. The hunters worked solemnly, in silence. The harts were small and slim-shoudered. 

“Where are their racks?” she asked, finally noticing the crucial missing part. The five bodies were bare of head.

Her mother, buried up to her elbows in the belly of one, looked both furious and ashamed. “What are you doing here?” she snapped.

“I came to help,” Lokeia said falteringly. “I’m a hunter too. I would rather suffer a week of fits than sit useless by the fire.”

One of the other women, a distant aunt, let out a bitter laugh. “There’s nothing left to hunt, ” she said. She also had her hands deep in the belly of a carcass. She gave a final jerk of her knife, then threw it aside. Reaching back in, she hauled out what looked like a huge, gelatinous pouch. “Nothing except this.”

One of the other women spat and the third looked away in shame. It was a great taboo to kill a pregnant hind. That’s what they were– hartful hinds, their snowy pelts stained with the gore of their cleaved bellies.

Lokeia could not bring herself to ask why they had done it. But her mother answered anyway.

“The teeth,” said Agotora. “The teeth of a hart are as good as its tines.”

Lokeia backed away, trembling. Five would-be harts slain in their mother’s bellies. Seasons worth of rack that would never grow. How could they butcher the future of the herd like that? The future of their own people?

“The elders have seen the signs,” her mother said brusquely. “You think you’re a woman now, ready to bear a woman’s burdens? Then carry this: the herd will be making their next leap soon. Even with these teeth, we won’t have enough tyne for all of us to follow.”
Agotora yanked the sac from her own carcass and ran her knife down its side. The fawn glimmered like a spirit within, already covered in wet white fur. Her mother grabbed the damp snout with one hand, and picked up a pair of pliers with the other.

“The only hart we’ve seen in a month is the warpstag,” she said. “He’ll breed more next season. But we must follow first. Those of us that we have tyne for, anyway.”

The sound of the fawn’s teeth cracking was like a spear through Lokeia’s heart.

In the end, they had enough tyne for almost everyone to warp. Only four could not follow, and four elders immediately volunteered. But then there was the question of what to do with them. They could not remain behind. If they did, their spirits might not be able to track the people when they died. They might be lost among the stars for eternity. So they were killed, and the people picked up their spirits and the burden of their murder and carried them.  

When they arrived on the next planet, so many were struck with the falling sickness that it took a week to set up camp. As soon as everyone had settled in, Agotora called her closest hunters to prepare for a moontrip. Hunting so soon after a relocation was taboo, but they did not have the privilege of upholding taboos any longer.

What was left to hunt?  Lokeia wondered. Warp-hinds bred fast, their fawns quickening in a matter of weeks. But Agotora’s hunters had culled the pregnant hinds just a week before. It would take more time, even if all they were looking for was more pregnant hinds.
  She would have her answer soon. To her surprise, her mother came to summon her.

“You will come with us this time,” said Agotora. “You will prove yourself worthy to carry that spear.”

Before they went, Lokeia stopped to see her sister. The little one could scarcely smile, she was so weak. The fits had shaken her to death’s threshold. If they did not fetch more tyne soon, she would likely not finish the season. Though she was just a tiny thing, her spirit was huge, Lokeia could tell. It would be almost impossibly heavy for her to carry.

Ar-temi Agotora could warp more precisely than anyone, so the group of seven hunters attuned themselves to follow her leap. But that trip, instead of finding themselves on the white blankess of the lunar surface, the hunting party arrived to total darkness.
“We are lost!” cried one hunter, and others joined her in assuming the worst. They had missed the mark, landed in a no-place, or died.

“No.” The word echoed, deep and thrumming, a single note.

In the herdlands, they had to speak through their lunar respiratory nodes, the bases of their throats swelling to emit sound. Agotora’s moon-voice was like a bull-frog’s, but smoother. “We are in a tunnel beneath the surface,” she clarified.

Lokeia spread her arms out, trying to find a wall, but only startled one of the nearby hunters. She heard the relaxing of breath and tentative steps as the others began to navigate their surroundings.

“A wall,” reported the voice of another, also perusing the darkness.

“Here as well,” came a second, much farther away. The tunnel must be huge.

“What are we doing down here?” someone asked, their moon-voice warbling with uneasiness. There was a moment of silence as they waited for their ar-temi to unveil her thoughts.

Years after, Lokeia would wonder what her mother had been feeling in that silence before she spoke. Was it guilt? Or had she already passed so far beyond the boundaries of taboo that nothing could shame her? Did she, ancestors forbid, feel a thrill to propose what had never been done before? To usher in a new season, in her mind, where the people were not bound to follow the herd, but the herd was bound to serve the interests of the people?

There was a thin rasp as Agotora’s lunar respiratory nodes trembled, whether in excitement or horror Lokeia would never know.

“We are going to hunt the warpstag,” said Ar-temi Agotora.


With her latent ar-temian gifts, Lokeia felt the shift in atmosphere as three of the seven hunters warped back to world immediately without a word. They understood Agotora was beyond reasoning with, having made such a declaration in the first place. If she were anyone else they would have slain her on the spot, so evil was the suggestion, except that it was almost as taboo to lift a hand against the ar-temi as against the warpstag. So they went to consult the elders.

It seemed Agotora expected this, for she waited a moment and then asked, “who remains with us?”

The inquiry startled Lokeia, who had assumed her mother’s senses would have adjusted to the darkness as well as her own– no, better. It was clear to her that only three hunters remained, beside herself.

Each made their answer, confirming her count. “Very well,” said Agotora. “Loyal hunters all. You will be rewarded.”

Of those that remained, only Lokeia dared to question her. “If we kill the warpstag, with no harts to take its place, the herd won’t be able to make another leap,” she said, “and if the warp-stag has not engendered any hart-fawns yet, the herd will perish. Then what will we do? Should we not wait to make sure that some young harts are delivered of their mothers first?”

“We are not midwives,” Agotora responded, “we are hunters. Soon, we will not have enough tyne to make any moontrips, and we will be grounded on world. There, we will perish. No one has ever killed the warp-stag, but its rack would produce enough tyne to supply our people for a century, and the stories say it might even be enough to allow us to cross into another galaxy. If there are no harts left, we will cross over and find another herd.”

No one, not even Lokeia, asked, “are you sure?” Agotora was ar-temi. She led and they followed. And they knew Agotora was a great ar-temi, one who they believed could lead them even to another galaxy, if she said she could.

“Ready your spears,” said Agotora. “We have wasted enough time talking. You may have wondered why we never see the warp-stag except when it appears to lead the others in the leap. That is because it hides underside, in lunar caverns like these. This is a story that has been passed down in secret to me through the ar-temis.

“Hush now, the stag is nearby.”

They followed after where they had heard her voice, and as she moved they followed her footsteps. After a short while, they entered an even greater cavern– they still could not see, but even the ordinary hunters sensed the expanse in their ears, the change in pressure and sound.

“Ready your spears,” came the ar-temi’s brusque command. “It lies before us.”

“We are to aim into the dark?” one hunter whispered.

“I am ar-temi,” she said, “My heart follows the stag. My spear shall follow it, too, and yours shall follow mine. Aim.”

They all drew back their spears and felt for their ar-temi in the darkness. It was something between wistfulness and desire, the feeling of following her. They let it align their spears with hers.

“Follow!” she cried. And four spears followed on the tail of her own, singing death into the darkness. There came a bellow ahead of them. At least one spear had found home.
Suddenly the cavern burst into blinding light. Before them, the warpstag was a rough outline, glowing like a star. Three spears had been knocked away by the massive antlers, but two bristled from its neck– Agotora’s and Lokeia’s. Still, it was not enough to take the stag down.

It bellowed mournfully, and Lokeia felt crushed with guilt. There was an accusation in the stag’s cry, a question of betrayal. The other hunters must have felt it too, for even they could not follow their ar-temi anymore, but warped back to world at the sight. Just the two of them left, Lokeia glanced at her mother, and was ashamed at what she saw. Agotora was smiling, her eyes wild with victory.

But not our victory… Lokeia realized.

She gripped the talisman at her neck as her grandmother’s words returned to her– that the ar-temi would always experience two urges –the one to leap after the stag alone, and the other to carry her people with her– that she must never let one overtake the other.

Her mother was not thinking of her people in this moment. She was consumed with the bloodlust of the hunt. It was not right. Lokeia did not have to be an elder to see that taking this path, the ar-temi would lead her people to a dead end.

So as Agotora moved in with her knife to finish the stag, Lokeia dove between them like a needle between warp and weft threads. She caught her mother’s gaze, and in it saw the woman’s strength sputter out like fire under kicked sand.

“Usurper!” Agotora gasped, stumbling back.

At the same time, Lokeia felt something tighten inside her like a tether on her heart snapping taut. Almost involuntarily she whirled to face the stag instead of her mother. She found she was walking toward it, and its bellowing subsided as she approached.
She reached out and pulled the spears from its neck– for all their throwers’ strength, they had not embedded far, missing any vital artery. But the stag’s blood welled thickly from the dual wound. The blood was not red like a normal hart’s, but a deep purple hue that shifted colors in the light; now bluish, now greenish, now gold, like molten bismuth. 
She let the stag go.

“On my old planet,” says the Qaesaran doctor, “a people like yours once came to visit– nomads tracking what they claimed was a celestial bison.”

The doctor is softspoken and kind. Hers is a tone of compassionate understanding. But it is clear she doesn’t understand anything. “But it was a foundation legend, you see. There was no real bison,” she pauses to gauge Lokeia’s reaction. “The technology required to warp couldn’t possibly evolve organically. These people, they mythologized their technology. This… ‘tyne’ as you call it, was perhaps a stasis fluid, ingested before your ship made the leap? And the ‘stag,’ was that perhaps the mothership’s warpdrive?”

Lokeia does not tell her that she can see for herself, that the warpstag is in fact being held in their very own zoo. She does not tell her about how it feels to swim through warpspace, giddy and queasy at the same time, to land with a sudden rush of entirely new smells and sights on another world. She does not tell her that the hindshead talisman around her neck is made of tyne. 

When she and her mother had returned to world empty-handed, the shocking news of Agotora’s act already heard throughout the camp, the elders convened to look into the future and determine what was best for the people. Seeing as they must follow their ar-temi no matter what happened, they could take no action against Agotora herself. Yet it must be understood that she had acted wrongly, and should not lead them that kind of way again.

So they decided to punish her through her eldest daughter: Lokeia would be left behind when they made their next leap. When the time came, her younger sister would accede to ar-temi instead. Agotora did not bother to tell them that she was no longer their ar-temi; that in refusing to follow her mother, Lokeia had come into power, however unwittingly.

“I am willing to make this sacrifice for the good of the people” was all Agotora had said, when the elders told her their counsel.

Lokeia was not alone in an unpleasant fate. All the female elders and most of the male elders remained behind as well, leaving only a few me-mos to carry on the people’s stories. Every child who had not been weaned was also left. But Lokeia’s lot was by far the worst.
All the others were killed right before the leap, so their spirits could continue following the people. But Lokeia was not permitted to follow, as punishment for her mother’s crime.

No one had ever been left behind alive, so that they did have a word for what they did to her. There was no one who was not with the people, either alive and present or carried in spirit.
So they referred to her as “with the first hunter, first mother,” existing outside the past and future of the people. 

They left the bodies unburied, to give her something to fill her time with until she died (they did not expect her to live long, severed from the people). With each thrust of the spade, the hind talisman swung against her chest, its chiseled hooves catching in the linen of her shirt as if trying to dig a grave of its own there.

She threw herself into the work, hoping it would distract her from the ravenous voice in her heart crying AR-TEMI! AR-TEMI! HUNT-MOTHER! There was no way to get to the herd she must follow or the people she must lead. Agotora misled them– she was mere po-tni now, no longer capable of tracking the warpstag by heart. Lokeia had spent her life preparing for her ascension, and now it was all for nothing. She was finally strong enough to carry things that were heavier than herself, yet she could not carry her people; they would not let her.

She threw down the shovel, the blank face of a dead elder staring up at her. In that one face she saw the faces of her whole people, both living and spirits, who would all be lost to the void soon. In frustration she ripped the hind talisman from around her neck and hurled it against the ground. It struck a stone where it landed, and with a crack the body broke away from the head.

Lokeia felt a pang of guilt and went to retrieve the pieces. It was all she had left of her people. Perhaps she could find gluesap on this planet to repair it–

Her thoughts came up short as she stared down at the revealed interior of the talisman.
It wasn’t carved of wood after all, but antler. She could grind it into tyne, enough for hundreds of leaps!

“I can follow them!” she whispered to herself. “And then I will lead them.”

She warped again and again, following the trail of her people, a scent that she could now catch and track across solar systems. If she focused her eyes just right, she could even see a ghostly signature, like footprints left between the stars.

Her people had traveled many planets in just a few days. Was that possible? She had the fleeting thought that perhaps all along they had been crossing not just distance, but time. This many warps in the same week had never been done. But then, much had changed, and it was a dire season.

On each abandoned planet, Lokeia found more and more burial mounds. She wondered if her mother, her father, her sister were among the dead. They did not mark their graves, so there was no way of knowing. By the fourth planet, they had stopped burying the dead, but she did not find her kin there– only the blood of gutted hinds and their toothless fetuses, mingling with that of her peoples’ corpses, who in their fits had fallen against the sharp stones of an unforgiving planet.

On her fifth warp she found them. There was only a careless ring of stones for a firepit and a few pitched skenes. She walked through the camp, past bodies contorted by fit that couldn’t have been dead for more than a day. If she’d only warped a little sooner–

Her mother and father lay in the largest skene, side by side, their hands just touching. Her little sister was nowhere to be seen. Lokeia realized she must have died planets back.
Lokeia lay down between the bodies of her parents and waited to die too. 

“This one is alive!” a voice had woken her.

A pair of hands grasped her by the shoulders, and Lokeia’s eyes opened to an unfamiliar face above her.

“Oh, bless my earth!” said the one who held her. “She’s alive! She’s alive! Keep awake, friend, you’re warpsick.”

Another stranger entered under the flap of the skene. “They all show the signs, but we couldn’t find a ship,” he said. “They must have been abandoned. But the rest of the crew can’t be much better off. We’ll keep searching.”

“What happened?” the man holding Lokeia asked, “why did your ship make so many leaps? It’s suicide!”

The language the man spoke sounded strangely similar but was just out of her reach. As if he was pretending to speak her tongue but knew only the sound of it, not the sense. There were two words she did recognize. Warp. Friend.

“Friend?” she repeated uncertainly.

“Yes, friend, yes!” the man encouraged, smiling. To his companion, he said “I don’t think she speaks the standard. This may well be an uncontacted tribe.”

“Get her some gileal before she seizes like the rest of them,” said the other. “We’ll try and track down the rest of the crew.”

They took her back to their home planet. Qaesar.

They gave her everything she could possibly need. Food, shelter, a medicine that would prevent the falling fits, and a teacher who would help her learn the local language and the planet’s customs. Despite all this, she lay for weeks in bed, practically immobile. Three different doctors came to examine her, but they shook their heads, and gave no prescriptions.

“She has lost her people,” said the last doctor. “It may well be grief that holds her down.” And she was not entirely wrong.

It had taken great effort, when these strangers guided her onto their “ship” against her protestations, to pick up everything that had fallen with her people. She picked up their stories. She picked up the spirits of the scattered bodies one by one as she walked past them. And as the door to the ship began to close, she gathered all her strength– her arms were still so thin!– and she picked up the spirits of the ancestors too, where they lay abandoned beside her mother’s corpse. 

Now she feels the girth of the stag’s belly above her– it does not seem to mind. She feels its swell, and something else– a motion and thrum– something alive within. It has gotten even bigger since her visit yesterday. She imagines an entire herd quickening inside. Impossible, of course– warpstag is a hart, not a hind. And yet, Ak-teon bears forth a herd, as much a mother as Ar-temi birthing the first people.

“What are you carrying?” Lokeia asks, conscious of the thousands of spirits and stories weighing on her own body.

The stag kneels into the dust and cranes its massive neck toward her, once more offering the collar for inspection. She runs hands over it, feeling for a lock, and between the words “me” and “property” finds a simple latch. The people here see no point in securing what they view as belonging to everyone, the latch simply keeps the beast from freeing itself.
When she unlocks the collar, the green tracking light flares red. In response, a warning klaxon thunders round the zoo. The warpstag touches its chin to her forehead, its breath enveloping her in a cool cloud, the swirl of its beard tickling her cheeks.

The collar falls to the ground with a thud.
She reaches for her own neck.

The warpstag suddenly gathers its legs beneath it, muscles straining with potential energy. The air between its antlers shivers and unravels like cloth, revealing a galaxy. Distant moons and planets seem to hang from the tines like fruits waiting to be plucked.

Ar-temi Lokeia opens the pouch that hangs from her neck, full of tyne she ground the night before from what was left of the hind talisman.

Ak-teon leaps.
Ar-temi follows.