The wind that moved through the high pass carried the smell of wet stone and something else, older, like an animal that had never learned to fear fire. The herder named Batu had left the last yurt an hour before dusk because the strays had climbed higher than usual, and the snow line was already turning the grass black. He walked with the rifle slung low, the way his father had taught him, and he did not look at the ridges. Looking invited the thing that lived on them. He found the first sheep on its side between two rocks. The throat was open in a single clean cut that had not been made by teeth.
Blood had already frozen in a thin sheet across the wool. The eyes were still open. Batu crouched, touched the cut with two fingers, and felt the edges. They were straight. Something had used a tool, or something that behaved like a tool. He stood quickly and scanned the slope above him. The light was failing faster now. The trees higher up had begun to lose their outlines. A sound came from the dark between the trunks, low and wet, like a man trying to clear his throat after swallowing too much blood. Batu raised the rifle. The barrel trembled once, then steadied. He had heard that sound before, years ago, when his uncle returned from the northern valleys without his left hand, and without the ability to speak.
The uncle had written the name on a piece of birchbark with his remaining fingers, and then burned the bark. Almas. The word had been enough. Batu took three steps toward the trees. The snow under his boots made a sound like breaking glass. He stopped. The wet noise came again, closer this time, and with it the smell of unwashed hair and old meat. He saw the shape before he saw the details. It stood on the far side of a fallen pine, half-bent, shoulders wider than a man’s, arms hanging past the knees. Reddish-brown hair covered it from the crown to the ankles. The face, when it turned, was almost bare.
The brow ridge cast a deep shadow over small eyes. The nose was flat, the mouth was open, and a dark string of saliva hung from its lower lip and broke against the snow. It held something in both hands. At first Batu thought it was a branch. Then the light caught the pale curve of a sheep’s rib. The creature lifted the bone to its mouth and bit down. The sound was dry. It chewed slowly, watching him the entire time. Batu’s finger rested on the trigger. He did not fire. The creature’s eyes moved once, toward the rifle, then back to his face. It did not run. It simply continued to eat.
Batu lowered the barrel a fraction. The stories said they avoided people. The stories also said that when they did not avoid people, they took what they wanted and left the rest in pieces. He began to back away. The snow gave under his heel. He stumbled. The creature made the wet sound again, lower now, and took one step over the fallen tree. Its bare feet left prints that were almost human, except for the length of the toes and the way the big toe sat apart from the others. Blood from the rib ran down its wrist and into the hair on its forearm. Batu turned and ran. He did not look back until he reached the first flat stretch of trail.
When he did, the creature was still there, standing on the ridge where he had left it. The rib bone held loosely at its side. It watched him until the trees closed between them. Batu kept running. His lungs burned. The rifle banged against his hip. Somewhere behind him the wet sound rose once more, then fell, then stopped. He reached the yurt after full dark. His wife was already lighting the dung stove. She looked at his face and did not ask. She took the rifle from his hands, checked the chamber, and set it against the wall. Batu sat on the felt mat and did not remove his boots.
Outside, the wind moved across the roof and made the poles creak. He listened for the other sound and did not hear it. That was worse. In the morning he went back with two of the other herders. They found the second sheep higher on the slope, and the third beyond it. Both had been opened the same way. The cuts were clean. One of the men, older, touched the edge of a wound and said the name quietly, the way a person says a word they do not want to give power. They followed the tracks for half an hour. The prints led into a narrow gully where the snow had not yet filled the ground.
At the far end the tracks stopped. There was only a shallow depression in the rock, as if something large had sat there for a long time and then stood up. The rock was stained dark in places. When Batu touched one of the stains it was still damp, they did not go farther.
On the way down they passed the first sheep again. Something had returned to it during the night. The rib cage was empty. The spine had been pulled free and laid carefully beside the body, the vertebrae still connected by the remaining ligaments. One of the younger herders vomited into the snow, the older man said nothing. He simply turned the sheep so that its empty chest faced the sky and left it there. Batu stayed with the flock for three more days.
On the fourth morning he found a print outside the yurt, closer than any of the others. The toes were clear. There was a smear of dried blood on the felt near the door. His wife had not heard anything. The children had slept. Batu stood over the print until the sun was fully up. The edges began to soften. He did not tell the others. He cleaned the blood from the felt with snow and buried the stained snow under a rock.
That night he sat with the rifle across his knees and watched the door. The wind moved, the poles creaked. Once, very late. He thought he heard the wet sound again, far up the slope, but when he stepped outside the night was only wind, and the distant bleating of the sheep that were still alive. He did not see the creature again, the strays stopped climbing, the cuts on the remaining sheep healed or scarred.
In the spring the older herder moved his family to a lower valley and did not return. Batu stayed, he still walks the high pastures when the light is failing, and he still does not look at the ridges for long. Sometimes when the wind is right, he catches the smell of wet stone and something older underneath it, he keeps the rifle loaded, he does not fire unless he has to. Stories say that once you have been seen, the thing remembers the shape of your face. Batu believes the stories, he has learned to sleep with one eye open and even then the dark behind his lids is full of reddish brown hair and a mouth that does not know how to speak.
