Blood on the Snow

Lungs already raw, lips already blue, I ran through the snow on that moonless December night. Nothing moved in the dark forest, no sound broke the stillness but the constant ring-ting-tingling of the bells. But they alone were enough to drive a man mad.

How long had he ridden this wild hunt? How foolish was I to think I could beat him at the cruel game he had devised?

*

Misha was dying.

He had been sick since the leaves turned and had taken a turn for the worse with the first snow. I had watched his mother weaken and die the same way and I was desperate for any chance not to watch my son suffer the same fate.

He had been born as strong as his namesake, the bear. There is only so much of the heavy work on a farm that a little boy can help with, but that little bit he had been eager to do. Helping his parents had been his passion. His heart was even bigger than that of a bear. When his mother died last spring, he had only been eight. If I couldn’t save him now, the grief-filled summer that followed her loss would be his last.

When I was a child, we had thrilled as Piyotr rocked back and forth on the creaky porch of the store, puffing on a horn pipe and wheezing out through his white beard dark stories about Old Niklaus, the hunter of men. Slaughter a pig at midnight in December in the deep woods and he would come. The bargain was so simple that it didn’t need words. If you could make your way home without him catching you, Old Niklaus would grant your fondest wish and he always kept his part of the deal. But if he caught you, he would kill and eat you.

No one believed the old man’s stories, of course. I had always wondered who could be so foolish to risk a deal with such a devil, since Piyotr claimed that no one who had bargained with Niklaus had survived to tell the tale.

Yes, we all said that we didn’t believe the stories. But still, some dark December nights, desperate men would disappear into the forest never to be heard from again.

So too did I find myself, a desperate man, in the forest so late that even the mice had ceased to stir, a sow’s life staining the white snow red when I heard the sound, colder than the night, of those bells in the distance. I didn’t waste a moment on disbelief. I just ran.

The hunt was on.

*

The cold air burned like fire in my throat now. The fur boots I wore could have been made of lead. I had hoped to do better, to be stronger, but I was reaching the end of my endurance. Worse, I could hear the beating of hooves closing in now.

But I was almost home! In a few moments, I was sure that I would be able to see the glow of my hearth! My weariness and pain were nothing if the stories were true and I could save Misha tonight! With Old Niklaus hotly pursuing me through the night, the stories must be true!

With a renewed jangle of bells, my world exploded in snow-white pain and I fell headlong into the deep snow.

Only seconds could have passed, but when I opened my eyes to see the head of a great boar-hunting spear embedded in my shoulder, my hopes bled into the white snow like the blood of that sacrificial swine.

With a terrible clatter, he was before me.

The silver bells that had followed me through the night lined an ebon sleigh drawn by eight black goats, frothing at the mouth. From the sleigh stepped an enormous figure, perhaps eight feet tall, which seemed to darken the already black night.

Burdened by the spear, I struggled to my knees, my best attempt at meeting my hunter. He roughly ripped the weapon from my shoulder and let me tumble back onto my face with a terrible cry.

The pain was bad enough, but what drew the cry from my lips was the glimpse I had caught of the terrible phantom before me.

In a broad face chapped and reddened by unknown eons of driving through cold nights sat two ice-blue eyes that had nothing human in them. This creature knew nothing of pity or hope, only wildness and death. A matted white beard flowed from the great head and tangled, snowy white curls flowed behind. His immense shoulders were wrapped in a cloak made of nameless fur, still white around the edges but all over stained red with numberless bloody sacrifices. His huge, distended belly was covered by an oiled butcher’s smock and a great sack lumpy with ominous shapes and wet, dark stains was slung over his back.

When he saw the fear written on my face, he laughed loudly and his gelatinous girth shook disturbingly with each “Ho Ho Ho!”

Setting down his gruesome burden, he lifted me off the ground with one hand and drew back the great spear with the other.

Before he could deliver the final blow I began to laugh madly in spite of myself. Lifted up, I could recognize that I had reached the edge of my land! I had made it home, and even though he had caught me and my life was forfeit, my wish might be granted.

Old Niklaus narrowed his eyes as though discerning my thoughts before looking at the surrounding forest questioningly. Then, with a frightful wink, he too began to laugh that terrible, shaking laugh, as though he understood. I couldn’t know for certain that this being would follow the letter of our unspoken agreement, but I couldn’t stop laughing with a feeling of hope that he could never feel despite his primal power.

Together we laughed, hunter and prey for a few moments until we both stopped sharply, as though commanded to silence. Then, with a terrible smile he hefted the boar spear in his other hand and said in a voice hollow with uncounted years, “To all a good night...”