By The Nanuak
Published: December 4, 2007
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The sunlight fell onto the frozen earth and the snow twinkled in a blanket of pearly stars. Birds sang in the icy thicket, the tracks in the ground were paved with frost. It was enchantingly beautiful on the autumn morning, especially with the leaves of every tree golden in the fall.
The clans called this time 'late fall', when autumn melted into winter: when the bear found herself a den, when the snow goose flew south, when the lemming ate all the nuts and berries he could find to keep himself healthy in the cold.
Everything from the sunrise to the last drop of dew on a blade of exposed grass was perfect, untouched.
Or was it?
Something about the day was evil - something small and insignificant, yet as noticable as blood on an ice bear's muzzle.
Every late fall day was cold - there was no doubt about that. Yet this particular morning was too cold, not just in the actual temperature, but in soul. The very breath of the air was poisoned.
A scent hung in the frost, rotten and decaying - a horrible scent that was impossible to ignore.
The smell of blood.
Rotten flesh.
Stretched out under a tall, snow strung spruce tree was the limp form of a fox, eyes shut, many large scratches down its once handsome fiery orange flank.
Killing a hunter was one thing.
Disrespecting a young vixen's body like this was another.
Something in the bushes stirred and as silently as a feather falling, a blurred shape flitted across the snow. Its faded outline was blurry - in fact it was almost impossible to see when it was running in the open.
Was it - no... It could not have been.
The shadow of a fox?

It was evening by the time the fox had been found by the Boar Clan. Two hunters had found her where she had been left - terrified of the unnatural chill they felt around the corpse, and the fact that the snow surrounding her had refused to melt.
They immediately told the mage, who had arrived at the leader's request to purify the area.
"Robbed of her pride," the mage said thoughtfully, sweeping over to the fox and laying a withered hand on the crimson fur, unafraid, ignoring the sharp intakes of breath from the two clan hunters that had followed her.
Surprisingly, the mage did not seem upset by the death of the hunter.
She just seemed thoughtful.
That was when the air turned fractionally colder.
From the depths of the bushes, a pair of blank, white eyes glittered maliciously, furious and burning with untamed sadness. The clan hunters noticed the abrupt change in temperature, cast the mage worried glances, and fled.
They were brave in the world of man, not the world of unnatural cold.
The mage had stopped still, her gaze directed at the shadowy undergrowth.
With the flick of a hazy tail, the thing had gone.

That night, no-one in the Boar Clan camp slept more than a wink. The terrible, heart-wrenching howls echoing from the forest were not only eerie, but full of sadness. These howls were undead.
The mage was nowhere to be seen; she was still seeing to the fox and her souls, struggling to get home.
Or so thought her clan.

The paintings carved into the cave wall glittered, freshly made, outlined in berry juice and fox blood.
A sleek vixen, travelling through the forest, taking back food to her thriving family in the den. A sinister figure was painted in black, shooting her down, and ripping her flank open for the hunter's power-rich blood...
The next picture showed the angry souls leaving her mortal form, torn with the sorrow...

The mage withdrew her bony finger from the wall as she traced the glistening lines that reflected their story.

Another tortured howl rang though the trees as the moon slipped out from her hiding place of the Far Mountains, surrounded by a halo of mist.
The white eyes in the shadows caught the light of the stars. The vixen walked out into the open. Her blurred features were full of immortal pain.
The snow had begun to fall again - flakes of it dancing and twirling into the ground.
The shadowy figure began to run, leaving the air as cold as ice, and the silence even more so.

The howling started again - torn apart with sadness; sadness that was carried through the air on a blanket of silver mist.