It was a lost valley on a lonely mountain at the very ends of the earth. The deep, long gash had been carved from the flank of a barren mountain that stood in a place where the Arctic weather patterns met. The air from the frozen north and that from the interior landmass collided on the desolate range that had birthed the peak. The violent atmospheric currents formed a thick shroud of mist and cloud. This wet whiteness had blanketed the head of the valley since the fires of creation had dulled and chilled into icy rock.

In the pale misty light, minute particles of ice caught the weak sunlight that vainly attempted to penetrate the brooding layers of cloud clinging to the peaks above. The dancing ice particles were the product of the spray from the stream that tumbled down the floor of the valley, linking the hanging snow fields with the distant sea, through hundreds of miles of river and lake. The only trees on the entire upper third of the mountain grew here. They fringed the sheer walls of the valley and broke the length of its steeply sloping floor into a dozen meadows of coarse grasses and jumbled rock.

A sliver of pale sunlight caught the shadow standing where the tall trees crowded down to the stream. The shadow had no right to exist in this feeble light, but it did, standing as a motionless slab of non-color above the wild stream that was the life of the valley. The stream didn't have a name in a living tongue because no human came to this place but by accident or folly. None had ever stayed and lived and few lived to leave. Centuries before this moment in time, the Indians had made their legends to keep their people away. The white man who came to this land ignored the native superstitions. Gold prospectors, explorers, fur trappers, and hunters had all been lost here; their demise or assumed demise attributed to avalanche or bears or simple misadventure. In the days gone by, this place had been too far from anywhere for rescue or the recovery of bodies. Even given the white man's ignorance of the natural order of the wild, the high valley on the lonely mountain had eventually been declared a bad place. Now no one ever came here.

It was the time of the salmon. The fish were returning to their home waters to spawn and die. They fought their way into this high place, driven on by their instinct to breed. The broken, tumbling water flashed silver and red as the fish humped their backs out of the relentless current in their upstream fight.

The young grizzly male was into his fifth year. He was big, full of the power and arrogance of youth. His appetite was that of any young animal, but it was exaggerated by the need to store fat for the coming winter. The boar had already devoured a dozen fish this day. He would eat a dozen more before he padded away to find a place to doze. When he awoke he would empty his bowels and return to feed. He would do this again and again for as long as the salmon ran, providing him with the rich protein and oils to sustain him through the long months of hibernation ahead. When the salmon stopped coming, the snows would follow and then it would be time to sleep.

The bear rested on his rump at the edge of the water and devoured yet another fish. He held the ten pound salmon between his front paws and he ate it as a child would an ice cream cone. The fish was gone in a matter of moments. The bear licked his muzzle before rocking forward onto all fours and padded to the stream to stand, chest touching the water, big head poised - waiting.

Driven from a neighboring valley by the bigger, older animal that was its father, the youngster had come to this place. Here, with no other resident bear, it would be master. But, deep in the young bear's inherited memory there was an imprinted warning about this place--a warning from its ancestors. It was a warning the youngster ignored, as was the way of the young. For now, he concentrated on gorging himself, the pulsing alarm deep in his brain going unheeded.

Another fish was caught as the bear plunged his snout into the water, gaping jaws locking. The salmon threshed helplessly as the grizzly backed up and clumsily thudded down into a sitting position. The animal dropped the fish and pinned it to the ground with one heavy paw and raised his big head. Alert! Something was wrong. This time it wasn't the warning signal nagging away deep in his brain. This was a fresh impulse, one that came to him through his super-sensitive nose. The bear's snout twitched as its delicate sensors detected an alien odor carried on the chilled wind. The grizzly turned his head into the breeze sniffing, blinking with shortsighted eyes, as it tried to identify the cause of this unfamiliar scent.

Realization came slowly, but when it arrived, the grizzly reacted in an instant. The young bear reared onto his hind legs and turned to meet the threat. Standing over nine feet tall he was an imposing sight. In this place, the young bear was king. He was more than match for anything, other than a hunter with a potent rifle. But this was no man scent in his nostrils, and this was no man creature in front of him.

It had come from the trees. The sound of its movements lost in the noise of the stream. Now it was standing unmoving twenty feet upwind of the bear. The young animal began to snarl a warning at the intruder but the sound died in his throat. The dark figure towered above him. It was a solid shadow with red fire for eyes. In the brain of the young bear this was the specter of death. Its death!

With a squeal of terror the bear bolted like a cub chased by a grown adult. Head down it ran into the stream and battered its way across the current in a half dozen bounds, scattering the forgotten fish as it went. On the far bank the youngster didn't stop until he reached the trees. Here he turned and looked back. The bear's eyesight was poor at this distance, but it could just make out the shape standing motionless where it had been before. The young animal couldn't identify this creature but his instincts, highly developed over only five short seasons of life were enough. He knew that to return to this high place would be to die.

The grizzly wasn't consciously aware of it, but this experience was now deeply imprinted in his brain, a warning to his own offspring if he survived to breed. Some of his descendants would of course in their turn ignore the warning as he had. Some perhaps would join the bones of hundreds of their kind that littered the valley floor.

The grizzly turned and with a noise that was almost a whimper of something approaching relief, he loped into the forest edge and started down the valley to the safer waters below. The salmon left behind on the stony ground beside the stream gave a slap of its tail that propelled it several feet towards the motionless figure that towered over it. The shadow didn't move. It didn't acknowledge the dying fish in any way. The fish was nothing. The creature ignored it as it had done the young bear; its senses were tuned to something far beyond this place.

In the valley, the aura created by its presence was a tangible thing, a nerve-stretching tenseness that rode the cold damp air like a vibrating harp-string. This was a silent, invisible energy that formed a blanket of throbbing rawness that covered every surface and touched every living thing in this place.

With his keen senses, the young bear had registered this, but had shrugged it away in his gluttony and arrogance. Other creatures however paid greater heed to the warnings of their senses. Those that shared this place stayed because this was their world, their universe. They knew no other, and while they lived in fear, in the midst of that fear they were safe, providing they avoided its territory. Because, there was a place in this valley that every resident creature capable of thought or instinct avoided. They understood the concept of territory and because of that, the predators that came to hunt here became the hunted. The invaders over the countless generations, whether two or four-legged, furred, feathered or clothed, would stumble onto the killing ground and die--while their weaker and more helpless potential prey lived on under the protection of the shadow being.

It continued to stand, as if waiting for something.

Apart from the red glow high on its body where the eyes would have been on a humanoid creature, there was no indication it was even alive. The forgotten salmon lay on the bank of the stream its gills working frantically, tail slapping the stones more and more feebly. Eventually it ceased to struggle and died--becoming as motionless as the other.

It had no need of food. No need to interrupt the continuous parade of fish as they fought their way to their breeding pools. Perhaps it was watching them, perhaps not. Day became night, but to it they were the same. As it stood, the only movement was the red pulsing light high on its body. The light showed in five narrow slits, flaring and dying to a rhythm that was as measured as that of a metronome. The only sound in the valley was the relentless hiss and chuckle of the unnamed stream.

The silent watcher had witnessed the stream's very birth an eternity ago. It had existed in this place far longer than the time of man, waiting across ages beyond comprehension. Time for it had no meaning, a millisecond or neverness, they were equal. It waited through the violent upheavals that formed the continental landmasses of this youngest of planets. It waited through the fire and lava and ash of a thousand volcanoes, and through the time of the great ice. It survived all, because there was nothing that could harm it, nothing in nature's grand armory, including the giant, clumsy and sometimes ferocious creatures of the Earth's pre-history. It did kill, but not to protect itself, it had no need in its invincibility. It only killed those that ventured too close to what it protected.

And so it had stood like a gray monolith and watched as life clawed its way from the swamp, propelled by a raw instinct. It saw the first tiny sparks of intelligence ignited in the lumbering hulks a million years before the distant glow of man's fire touched the night. It watched man struggle to his feet and tame his fire. It listened as the feeble creatures discovered the power of speech and war. It waited on through the ages of famine and pestilence and senseless slaughter, waiting for the time when its purpose would be realized and its silent eternity ended.

The waiting was almost over. Now it would succeed in its task, or, it would wait again, with its infinite, boundless patience. It was dawn when it moved again, away from the stream and back into the trees and that which it protected.

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