• 1.


    Once again we have heard of this “Pale Man” It seems that every time we end up in a new tribe, the tribesmen have heard of this mysterious wraith, they have told us of him as they know they should, our job is to deal with such things. They say that he comes to them while they sleep, with the night as his cover, he whispers promises of great fortune, great power. Some leave with him, hoping to become something more then they are meant to, some stay behind only to die days later of unexplainable accidents.

    Sky Heart is starting to become fearful of this mysterious man as well, he believes that this creature is something that escaped from the Other Place, something that must be dealt with. If Sky Heart is correct in his suspicions then the only way to send it back is through The use of Big Magic; this could cause harm to innocent people. Big Magic has a way of reaching out and touching people in the most unexpected ways, both good and sometimes terribly bad.

    Night is becoming our biggest enemy, my biggest fear. Would I be able to do anything if the Pale Man came to our tepee? He passes through Sky Hearts Barriers as if they were not there, that is the only way he could get to the people of the tribes we have visited, Sky Heart places a protective barrier around each tribe’s perimeter to ensure nothing can get to them, unnatural or otherwise. Somehow the Pale Man is still able to get to the people as they sleep, still able to lure the half awake men, women, and children to his colorless side.

    Even now as the sun sets I feel my heart begin to pound against my ribcage, the apprehension of what might happen scaring me more than anything else. Each night I find myself waking up multiple times at the slightest sound, the crack of a twig or the scuffle of a tribesmen’s feet as they make their way to the waste hole. It is making my days harder and harder to deal with, I see things out of the corner of my eye all the time, things that aren’t really there. As the days go by I feel like I’m loseing my mind, dreams are filled with horrible images of a man with a skeleton’s face, tall and thin. Evil.


    2.


    The Pale Man’s power has apparently grown in the weeks and months that have passed as we travel. Sky Heart and I found a burned out tribal ground; there was no one left, even the dogs that are known to wander around these small tribes are gone. At first we simply thought that we had come upon the remains of a raid, that is until we noticed the odd lack of tracks. There are always tracks where people have been for any amount of time. The fires still gave off a faint warmth as well, and the food stores were untouched. It must have been the Pale Man, that was the only valid explanation, but we had no proof. No way of being sure, that is until Sky Heart found the damning evidence we needed.

    We had been ready to leave the ruined grounds when Sky Heart’s foot crushed something just under the surface of the scorched soil. At first I thought that his foot had fallen into a rabbits hole or a snakes burrow, to tell the truth I was more worried about his ankle than what had caused his foot to fall into the newly formed hole, that is until I noticed the white fragments that fell to the ground as he pulled his foot free. My breath caught as my throat grew thick, tears starting to form in my eyes. Sky Heart looked first at me then at the ground, not knowing what had caused my reaction. When he had seen the skull his face registered no emotion, I think more for my benefit than anything else. He bent down and pulled the skull free of the brittle ground, shaking it gently to remove any excess dirt stuck to the small object. Without saying a word He deftly placed the broken skull into his traveling satchel and continued walking. I followed silently behind him, tears falling freely from my eyes. The skull had been that of a small child.

    Once we had gotten as far as we could for the night we made a small fire and sat eating stale bread and dried meat. When we had finished eating Sky Heart reached into his satchel and pulled free the damaged skull. He sat there in the light of the fire examining the skull for any signs of how it had gotten buried just under the surface of the ground, and possibly how long the child had been dead, what he found scared me more than any of the stories we had heard of this Pale Man, more than any of the evidence we had collected.

    Sky Heart motioned for me to get closer so that I could see the little skull more clearly. When he held it up to the light of the fire his calloused fingers traced the blood soaked lines engraved into the bone. Archaic symbols had been scraped into the skull with what appeared to be the tip of a very sharp knife, then what can be assumed to be the child’s blood was poured over it, giving the symbols energy to feed off of. We now knew how the Pale Man was able to breach the protective barriers that Sky Heart had been placing, Blood Magic.

    Blood spells predate most all other forms of magic in the world today, many generations ago the medicine people of the time realized that blood was a great source of power, it is after all the root of all life. They found that they were able to use the blood of animals to do some basic spell casting, mending bones and growing plants, simple things like that. As time passed however they began to realize that they could use human blood as well, this would yield powerful magic, the kind that could alter the weather or even bring the dead back to life. The Medicine people could only get the blood they needed by harming others, for many generation this was the only way that medicine people could alter the world around them. In order for the blood to be obtained however healthy people must be bled dry, for the last drop of blood is what hold all the power and feeds the rest of the stolen liquid.

    One bright day a great discovery was made, the Spirit could be used to bend reality, bring the recently dead back to the world of the living. In essence with the use of Spirit magic the medicine people could do all the things that blood magic could do and more, without hurting anyone. And so it passed that Blood magic was never to be used again. Sky Heart knows of the arts from his father, and he was warned from a young age that to use Blood magic is to cast aside everything taught to him, to throw out his heritage. This is exactly what Sky Heart told me that night by the fire, he also told me that it was our task to banish the Pale Man back to wherever he came from, only a being from the Other Place would be able to use Blood magic in today’s world.

    3.


    A few days later found Sky Heart and I at yet another tribe, this one untouched by the mysterious Pale Man. It was a welcome reprieve to find at least one place not filled with terror and woe. In this small out of the way tribe we found no traces of the hollow eyed fear we had grown accustomed to finding when we arrived to help in anyway we could. The People of the tribe were in the middle of a three day long celebration to honor the Great Spirit when we had arrived, they took us showing up when we did as a good sign and begged that we bless their people and their tribal grounds . We Relented after a small girl covered in ribbons and beads begged us to, “Please make their home betterer….” No one could refuse such a heartfelt plea from such an adorable child.

    After many hours casting the blessing spell Sky Heart and I finally were able to retire to our borrowed tepee. We were in good spirits that night, the horrors that we had been finding everywhere we went seemed to have left us at last. We had not forgotten about the Pale Man and what we had learned about him, but we figured that he would not dare strike when there were two very skilled and very powerful medicine people in the tribe. We reasoned that it he would most likely leave such a small tribe alone anyways, all his other victims had been much larger.

    I stayed up with Sky Heart late into the night, him telling me stories about his youth as he learned his craft from his father. I learned more about him that one night than I had in all the years I had been with Sky Heart, maybe he knew more about what was going to happen than he was telling me. Just as the sun started to climb its way into the still dark sky I managed to finally fall into a fitful and dreamless sleep. Sky Heart was still sitting up, staring off into space when I had fallen asleep. His eyes had looked almost hollow, the look of someone that knows fear, someone that knows death.

    I woke up at midday to the terrified screams of a tribeswoman, At first I had thought it was the tail end of some terrible dream, until my eyes opened and the screaming persisted. I was on my feet in an instant and out of the tepee moments later. My jet black hair wild from sleep, eyes those of a wild animal, I must have looked like a wild beast come to kill. I ran through the oddly vacant tribe searching for the source of the relentless screaming. The voice seemed to pierce my skull and bore into my brain, leaving me confused and disoriented. As my bare feet carried me closer and closer to the source of the sound I saw flashes of terrible things in my peripheral vision, things I figured to be more hallucinations.

    I Rounded the last tepee and skidded to a halt, tearing away the skin of my feet, I had found the woman. Her bare back was facing me, hiding the thing she was crying and screaming over. Slowly I moved closer, trying to see what she held cradled in her arms, fearing the worst. I called out to her softly, soothingly, wanting nothing more than to see what had caused her to scream the way she had, and still was. She seemed to not notice me as I slowly made my way around her naked body, what I saw will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

    Sitting in the woman’s bare lap was the limp form of a child, it’s skin the color of bone, I felt bile rise to the back of my throat. Her ribbon covered hair lay limp and dead, so unlike the night before. Her face was sunken in and hollow as if she had been sucked dry. I fell to my knees and tears formed in my eyes, the worst part of this macabre scene was the large hole in the pale chest, where the heart should be there was only an ragged hole, the ribs protruding out like some kind of nightmarish set of teeth.

    I sat there with tears streaming down my cheeks, sobbing for this child that had lost her life so long before she was meant too. As I looked on the woman, the dead child’s mother I assumed, got to her feet and slowly shuffled away. Her sorrowful screams my only companion in the now desolate tribe. My eyes widened in sudden shock, I had missed something important, something that would change the course of my life forever.

    Where was Sky Heart?