Shadows

by Ken Altabef

  “Ulruk would’ve known,” whispered Higilak. “He was always sensitive, that one.”

  “That’s what he said,” replied Alaana. “But she wasn’t there, and when I learned that she was missing my connection to the spirit world… I couldn’t think straight. I fell away. I… I couldn’t fly.”

  Ben’s face grew hard.

  “I will look for her again,” assured Alaana, embarrassed by her own weakness. If she couldn’t concentrate, her soul couldn’t wander. “As soon as I’m able… I will look.”

  Higilak pursed her lips and closed her eyes. When she reopened them, they bore earnestly at Alaana. “Self-doubt, more than any other enemy, destroys a shaman. It is the worst thing.”

  “What would you have me do?” Alaana asked. “Forget my daughter lies buried beneath these stones?”

  Higilak took her hand. Her soft, loose skin, felt warm over Alaana’s own. “No. You must never forget that. I want you to be strong. For all of us. That is what’s needed.”

  “What’s this?” Ben scowled at her as if she had betrayed their daughter. “Our little mouthful…” he said. “I thought you were watching over her.”

  Alaana shook her head. “She’s gone. The great spirits take as they wish, they never give back. I don’t walk with them. I am in their shadow. I can bargain, I can beg. I can not oppose them. I can’t bring her back.”

  “Enough,” said Kigiuna. “There’s no use in going on about this. This is a trial for all of us, but especially for Alaana. We have all lost a piece of our heart, but Alaana has given a slice of her soul as well. Let her be.”

  Alaana recalled her sister Avalaaqiaq’s funeral, when Kigiuna had been cast in the role of bereaved father. She remembered the look on Kigiuna’s face when he buried his daughter, a look of desolation and acceptance. Her father had not been reduced to weeping like a baby. Alaana wiped her face, but couldn’t stop the hot tears from flowing down.

  Kigiuna said, “Walk with me.”

  Alaana glanced at the cairn, reluctant to leave. But there was no reason to stay. Her daughter’s body had been set in stones. Alaana could see the tiny cave opening where the ava lived, could see the little spirit’s misshapen head peering at them from the safety of the rocks at the edge of the little tidal pool. The ava will watch over her, thought Alaana, in case her spirit comes back to find the body. She won’t be alone.

  Leaving the others behind, she and her father walked slowly toward the camp.

  “I never wanted this,” said Kigiuna. “I never wanted you to be the shaman.”

  Alaana snickered. “It doesn’t matter what you want. It never did.”

  Kigiuna winced. “I tried to stop it.”

  “That was not possible. Sila spoke. From the moment he lifted me up from my sick bed and gave me the sight, there was no turning back. He told me I must restore the balance…”

  “What balance is there in this?” he spat, a flare of temper lighting up his cold blue eyes.

  She didn’t answer.

  He quickly recovered himself. “This is not your fault.”

  Alaana stopped walking. Her shoulders sagging, she turned to face her father. “But it is my fault,” she said. “It is my fault.”

  Kigiuna saw no point in arguing the matter. He was no authority where the spirits were concerned. When he had realized there was no way to oppose the calling, he had taken to Alaana’s side, done everything to protect her, to keep her safe. And that had never been easy. His understanding of the spirit world was naturally limited, based only on what tidbits Alaana had seen fit to reveal to him. Kigiuna walked a dangerous line. A normal man, blind to the ways of the spirits yet doing anything he could to protect the shaman. That was backwards. The shaman was supposed to protect the people. But fathers have a calling of their own, thought Kigiuna, where their children are concerned.

  Alaana had been only thirteen at the time. Old Manatook had taught her the Way but had been killed, leaving her education incomplete. Kigiuna had resented the old man’s attentions to Alaana, but had come to realize that Old Manatook had done more for his daughter than any natural father.

  Alaana did the best she could with what knowledge she’d been given. And her father helped her as much as he was able.

  And together they had prevailed. Times had been good. The coughing sickness came among them and Alaana sent it away again, with no deaths. In recent years there had been enough food, no vengeful ghosts, the demon fever of running sores had not returned. Alaana negotiated with the turgats, kept the taboos, saw to the people’s injuries. Kigiuna’s fear had relaxed. He had not reckoned on this. His granddaughter.

  “I didn’t want you to be the shaman,” he said again. “At first. But when I saw the change in you, I saw that you must answer the call. For your own life and for all the rest of us. No one else can do it.” He patted Alaana lovingly on the cheek, adding, “That has not changed.”

  Alaana didn’t answer.

  “We need you. The world is a dangerous place,” said Kigiuna. “The hunters must face down the threat of an angry bear or an enraged bull walrus. Our bellies empty and crying out for food, we sit on the ice and wait for the seal, though we freeze to death. Caught in a storm out on the trail, we dig our way out of the drifts. We dig! The world stabs at us, we stab back!”

  He mimicked a two-handed harpoon thrust meant for the throat of a charging polar bear. “You face dangers the rest of us can’t even imagine. But I think it must be the same. We don’t lay down in the freezing snow. We don’t let it take us away, even if it promise us a long, warm sleep. If someone stabs at you, you stab him back. Understand?”

  Three beats of the drum. That was all that remained. Three beats and she could send this thing against Klah Kritlaq.

  The tupilaq lay unmoving on the packed snow floor. The black seal carcass had begun to reek of corruption, but its smooth, loose skin glistened dully, lacking any mark of decay. The body bulged in places it shouldn’t, an ill-fitting sack stuffed with loose bones and amulets.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the ceremonial tent, Alaana balanced a large round drum between her knees. Etched into the surface of the calfskin drumhead was a representation of Erlaveersinioq the Disemboweler, the Skeleton Who Walks. She thought of her brother Itoriksak and the festering sore on his leg that had almost cost his life.

  Alaana beat the drum. The tupilaq did not stir. The chips of black stone in its eye sockets stared emptily at the roof of the tent.

  Alaana envisioned the tupilaq that had been sent against her, with its bulging eyes, a mind that knew only one thought and held only one purpose, to hate and to kill, and its mouth full of pointed teeth dripping poison. She beat the drum again.

  She thought of Klah Kritlaq, the rival shaman who had attacked her, who had sent that foul creature against her, who had sought to destroy her. She had never done any wrong to that man and yet he persisted in his attacks. He was determined to kill her and he wouldn’t stop until he was answered in kind.

  Alaana struck the third beat.

  The tupilaq stirred. Its rotten snout, which had been ripped apart by the dogs when it had formerly been merely a discarded sealskin, moved slowly in the air, questing a scent. The raven’s beak, stuck in the center of the forehead between the prickly eyebrows, gaped slowly open, then snapped shut.

  Alaana watched the awakening of its eyes as the little stones took on a subtle change of the light. As they began to gape and to glisten, Alaana felt bile rising in her mouth. She had never done this before and had no taste for it.

  When she saw the spark flare up within the tupilaq’s rotten breast, she felt a searing pain in her own, a ripping sensation that jagged from her neckline to her stomach. She retched, coughing up a clot of bile onto the floor of the karigi.

  She shook her head to clear away the dizzying sensation. The tupilaq, straining to sit up on its hind flippers, growled softly.

  “I want to know why,” she said.

  “You witless fool!” said t
he misshapen creature. The words were twisted and strained, as they came not from the seal’s mouth but from the raven’s beak. She recognized that voice. “You are weak and unworthy. You reap blessings you do not deserve. And yet your people bask in plenty while we starve!”

  “Killing me won’t feed your people, Kritlaq.”

  “You know nothing and less than nothing. I am better than you,” squealed the raven’s beak, “and yet the Tanaina struggle. Your women grow fat and your men happy. No more. I will have what I deserve.”

  “Enough!” Alaana said. “Speak with your own voice.” She reached around to the back of the tupilaq’s head and yanked the braid of Kritlaq’s hair she had attached there. The braid stung her palm like a handful of nettles.

  The creature flopped on its belly. Its head lolling from side to side, its eyes roving in their sockets as it struggled to take in the sights of the karigi for the first time. It backed away from the shaman. It padded toward the far end of the ceremonial tent where a stockpile of Alaana’s equipment was laid out. It turned around, to suddenly face the frightening Moon mask. The bone-white mask peered down at the tupilaq through one round eye and another that was crescent-shaped. Beneath the long nose gaped a wide mouth with wooden pegs for teeth.

  The little creature convulsed with fright and scurried along the far wall. It toppled another large mask, this one bearing the horrific visage of the Disemboweler. The mask crashed down behind the frantic tupilaq, causing it to leap in the air. It landed resoundingly amid a group of ceremonial drums. The crash and clatter were enormous.

  “Stop that,” said Alaana.

  The raven beak snaked its way out from among the drums, followed by the creature’s round, black head. Its eyes shone like still puddles of black water. Its eyes possessed no lids, but the tupilaq had a way of blinking with its entire face through a repetitive jerky motion of its head.

  “Come over here. Sit down!”

  The creature threw itself forward, tottered on its hind flippers again, then reached for her with sharp claws.

  Alaana swatted them away. “Sit down!”

  The tupilaq plopped down.

  “Tikiqaq,” said Alaana.

  The tupilaq blinked.

  “Tikiqaq. Say it!”

  It did.

  “That shall be your name.”

  “Name?” said the tupilaq. “Kill!”

  “No, you won’t kill,” commanded Alaana. Looking down at this pathetic creature, she realized her father was wrong. She no longer saw the value in striking back. Kill Klah Kritlaq and his people would suffer. Without their shaman to protect and provide for them they would all likely die. Alaana had had enough of death this day. “You’re not going to kill anyone or anything. Understand?”

  “Hok! Hok-hokk! No kill I?”

  “No.”

  The tupilaq burst into an excited fit of honking. “Hok-hok-hok! Hok-hokk! Kill Kritlaq!”

  “No!” said Alaana firmly.

  The fit of agitation passed. Tikiqaq’s eyes peered intently at its master’s face, its head tilting slightly as it tried to see beneath the mask.

  “It’s not a mask. This is my real face,” said Alaana. She slapped herself on the cheeks.

  The tupilaq mimicked the shaman’s action, slapping one black flipper against its own face. Alaana sighed.

  The tupilaq matched Alaana’s sigh, then said, “Father…?”

  “I’m not your father,” Alaana spat bitterly. She resented the implication that she was replacing her dear lost child with this monster. “For one thing, I’m a woman!”

  “You made me?” asked Tikiqaq.

  “I made a mistake,” replied Alaana.

  The tupilaq collapsed down onto the snow floor, burying its face beneath clawed front flippers. Its hind flipper knocked one of the drums from the pile. The drum bounced off the tupilaq’s little round head, beating a single forlorn note. Tikiqaq let out a tiny whimper.

  “I should die,” moaned the tupilaq.

  Alaana picked up the stray drum. “Death is not the answer. I’m not sure of anything else but I’m certain of that. You are alive. You should live.”

  Alaana didn’t know what the tupilaq might do next, but she knew what she didn’t want it to do. She regarded it with the spirit-vision, seeing all the diverse fragments of souls that she had brought together to animate the thing — a little remnant of the original seal still inhabiting the rotting skin, a whisper of the raven’s inua, the wolf bones and bear claws. She had knitted these disparate remnants together and convinced them to put forth a semblance of life. But the tupilaq did not have a soul of its own. Born anew, it lived for only one thing. Bloody vengeance.

  Alaana had given this creature life, now what to do with it?

  CHAPTER 9

  VENGEANCE

  For a short while Alaana lost herself in the exertion of chopping. The spring air felt damp and pleasant in her chest. She had stripped off her outer parka, wearing now only her calfskin shirt and light trousers. She swung the hand axe again and again, chopping and hauling up chunks of the frozen cache. Out of breath, she stepped up from the stone chamber to rest against one of its low rough-hewn walls.

  Alaana enjoyed doing physical work. This is what it felt like, she thought, to be one of the ordinary Anatatook women, doing normal work without a host of spirits and ghosts to contend with. One could easily forget one’s troubles for a time in the heft and swing of the axe, in the subtle smells of the spring air, and the welcome warmth of the mid-day sun.

  Men and women moved swiftly throughout the camp, hurrying to prepare for the trip overland. Children scurried between the few tents that had not yet been taken down, playing at hunters and prey, or sled master and dogs. Or even shaman.

  She ran her hand along the blade of the axe, asking the dormant spirit within the slate to reshape the edge to a finer point. She would make short work of the last pieces and then be on her way.

  Alaana lay the chopper atop the meat-box and lifted the piece she had just brought up, a sizable chunk of frozen seal and fish. It was cut perfectly to lay flat atop the previous slice, taking up the exact width of the sled. She stooped to inspect one of the runners, making sure it was still well-mudded and coated with ice.

  When she stood up, Ben was there.

  “Where are you going?” he asked cautiously.

  “A journey south.”

  “South?” he said. Typically she traveled to the north, spending time among the white bears at the Ice Mountain as her predecessor had often done. “Are you coming back?”

  “Of course I’m coming back. What did you think?”

  He didn’t answer. He stared at the great deal of food piled high on the sled.

  “I have unfinished business with Klah Kritlaq,” said Alaana in a low voice. She gave Ben a look he knew very well, a look that said she was the shaman and dangerous work was required of her.

  “Alone?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “The shaman often walks alone.”

  Ben snickered. “I suppose fighting back, I suppose killing Kritlaq will make you feel better.”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

  “Oh, then I suppose you’re going there to get yourself killed? Is that what you’re doing?”

  “No,” she said sharply. “Three sleeps. I’ll be back.”

  “And what about Tama?”

  Alaana’s throat tightened. She turned away, busying herself with adjusting the frozen slab she’d just added to the sled.

  Ben said, “There must be something you can do. If I had your abilities, I wouldn’t rest until I found her. I would do whatever I could, not suffer this injustice blindly.”

  Alaana turned back toward her husband. “There is no injustice. The Whale-Man took our daughter because he was angry with me. I can’t undo this. I can’t bring her back. There’s no point in seeking retribution, only acceptance. And you must do the same. While I’m away, spend time with Higilak. Talk with her–”

  “
She hasn’t lost a child,” said Ben bitterly. Higilak never had one, thought Alaana, except for those of us she has adopted. Though unrelated to them by blood, Higilak lived with Alaana and Ben as their grandmother.

  “How can you say that?” returned Alaana. “She’s lost a grandchild. She suffers with us. She is wise. Talk with her. You are a brave man, Ben — the strongest person I’ve ever known. But you can’t face everything on your own. Not this.”

  “Not like you,” he said. “Going off alone across the flats.”

  “Not alone,” she said, allowing a carefree twinkle in her eyes for just an instant. “You know Makaartunghak won’t let anything happen to me.”

  Ben smiled at mention of their loyal and enormous huskie. And with that smile Alaana felt that he would be made right in time, that life would go on for them, in some fashion, after all.

  “Makaartunghak’s getting old,” said Ben. “Be careful he doesn’t–” He stopped in mid-sentence and stepped back. The tupilaq had scuttled out from behind the sled.

  “What is that?” he exclaimed.

  “Misguided vengeance,” said Alaana softly.

  Tikiqaq rose up, balanced precariously on its tail flippers and lunged forward. Its beak made a low growling sound, “Hhhhh hhhh,” accompanied by a high-pitched whistling of air through the cracks in its ruined snout.

  “Keep it away!” He pinned it down with his foot by the loose fold of skin at the back, just above the flippers.

  “It’s not hurting anyone,” said Alaana firmly, as much to the tupilaq as for Ben.

  “Then what is it for?”

  Alaana fumbled for an answer, but couldn’t find any. A young woman’s scream rang out across the camp. A large group of people had formed near the meat rack and angry voices rose up. Alaana cursed herself for a fool. She should have foreseen this.

  Tooky’s eyes bulged with fear, but there was nothing left for her to do. No chance for escape. She was an outsider, sent here against her will. She had been happy to be the headman’s wife, but now, surrounded by angry faces, she had nowhere to turn. Talliituk cinched the bonds holding her hands behind her back and she cried out in pain. He spun the girl around to face him but her foot slipped in the wet snow and she fell backward.