Shadows

by Ken Altabef

  Vithrok gained advantage when he rammed his thick skull against Tulunigraq’s more delicate forehead, temporarily stunning him. He slammed an elbow into the beak-like nose, knocking Tulunigraq to the ground. The other was unusually slow to recover, and Vithrok thought the fight to be over.

  Tulunigraq’s eyes gaped wide, fixed on some point above Vithrok’s shoulder. Seeing his expression of horror, Vithrok spun around to face the gigantic figure looming above them.

  Tekkeitsertok had arrived. It appeared as a living mountain of tawny fur. Its barrel chest was topped by a huge head whose elegant horned racks spread like the branches of an enormous tree. The turgat stood on two legs like a man, clacking its forelegs in the air with an ear-rending clatter that drove most of the Tunrit to their knees.

  “Kneel down!” shouted Tulunigraq. “Maybe it’s not too late!”

  “Never,” said Vithrok. He shook a bloody fist up at the guardian spirit and saw Tekkeitsertok’s nostrils flare at the bitter scent of fawn’s blood. The great spirit swept its head lower, bringing its crown of antlers down at Vithrok. Vithrok did not flinch from death as the barbed antlers swooped toward him. He noticed a triangular white patch above Tekkeitsertok’s brow, having the shape of a flame.

  As the fire enveloped him Vithrok did not scream, though it felt as if his flesh was being boiled away. No, not his flesh. His soul. Ripped from his body by force, Vithrok felt his entire being melt into liquid fire. The pain was exquisite.

  As his lifeless body dropped to the ground, he heard the other Tunrit gasp in horror.

  Vithrok howled.

  His mind swam in a white-hot abyss. The pain of his soul being torn from his body threatened his very sanity. His thoughts, stretched and pulled in opposing directions, seemed both sharpened and dulled at the same time. What was pain, he thought, but a sensation perceived by the mind as uncomfortable? And what was pleasure, if not something similar? Agony was also ecstasy. Freed from the constraints of the body, no real difference existed. It was just a matter of interpretation.

  He found himself deposited in a bizarre forested plane known as the Wild Wood, the spiritual realm where Tekkeitsertok made his home. Vithrok didn’t know if he was dead. It didn’t matter. He stood determined to surrender his life if necessary.

  The Wild Wood was a vast, sprawling forest of exotic trees whose branches strained skyward, with leaves like pointed daggers and delicately filigreed leaflets in infinite design. Having lived so long among a dull white waste, Vithrok enjoyed a moment of nostalgia. Here was variety, an abundance of seed and flower, bursting with possibility and life. As a disembodied spirit he could not smell the lush bounty of scents such a place must have to offer, but memory supplied enough. He gaped at his beautiful new surroundings, lost in a moment of dream-like wonderment. But the moment passed.

  Before him, Tekkeitsertok sat on an enormous throne of weaved birchwood.

  “Your home is impressive,” Vithrok said, “but as I remember it, my forests were better. I had…” he fluttered spiritual fingers in the air, “butterflies.”

  “You go too far,” Tekkeitsertok said. Its voice carried an odd and heavy timbre, as issued from the mouth of an enormous caribou-head.

  “You have no idea how far I am willing to go,” shot back Vithrok. “You will not turn me from it.”

  “The caribou belong to me!” growled Tekkeitsertok. “They are mild and unselfish souls. They want nothing except to graze where they may, to enjoy what simple life they have been given. I warn you for the last time. Leave them alone.”

  Vithrok stood firm. “They will all die. Your threats will not dissuade me, nor change my purpose.”

  Tekkeitsertok snorted, its great head shaking with rage, the antlers slicing through the air. “Then you will die for what you have wrought!” it raged. “I will crush your bones beneath my stamping hoof!”

  The great turgat stood up from its throne of massive trunks and boughs, scattering the wood to the sides as the branches cracked and splintered apart. It towered over Vithrok, one gigantic foot raised above him, ready to stomp.

  Vithrok stared defiantly up at the underside of the cloven hoof. He could not back down now. The fate of all the Tunrit rested on his shoulders. “Do it!”

  The vast forest rustled, branches clacking together, stray leaves circling on a maddened breeze.

  The cloven hoof hesitated. Was it possible the guardian of such timid, sad-eyed beasts did not really possess the killing instinct it wished to portray?

  “Vithrok,” the turgat said, “things are not as they once were. You are only a man now. I can crush you to dust.”

  “Do it! I will be crushed but never humbled. I am but one of many. The Tunrit all stand behind me. We work together, as you’ve seen. If I am killed, it won’t matter. Makite will take my place, and after him it will be Tugto. And another, and another. We will continue to attack your caribou until they are all destroyed. The Tunrit are many, but we live and die as one. In the past, we were your friends. Are you prepared to kill us all?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Even if there is a simpler way to stop us?”

  The hoof eased away. “How?”

  “With a promise,” said Vithrok. “With a promise.”

  He stepped forward, reaching up to pluck a fruit from a nearby tree. “Middle ground,” he said thoughtfully, turning the peach over in his hand. “A simple bargain, nothing more.”

  Tekkeitsertok took a step back. The birchwood bower creaked noisily as it sat.

  “From time to time,” explained Vithrok, “we may ask you to provide for us. To allow us some meat without interference, so that we too may survive. If you supply game for us in some small quantity, we will take no more than is necessary. The fawns and does will not be harmed.”

  Tekkeitsertok’s head bowed thoughtfully, its long chin coming to rest upon its barrel chest. Its large brown eyes betrayed little emotion, but Vithrok imagined he caught a glimmer of relief amid the liquid pools.

  “Promise to help us when we are in need,” said Vithrok. “That’s all I ask.”

  “As it happens the tukturjuit, my gentle caribou, have generous souls,” replied Tekkeitsertok. “This they can be convinced to accept. But your part of the bargain will have to be kept as well. I ask respect for the dead, for those who make this sacrifice. Take no more than is offered. It will be enough. You may have their skins and their flesh, but not their souls. You must honor them. There will be no scraping of skins while a hunt is on, and no boasting of your kills.”

  “These things we will do,” said Vithrok. He eyed the peach thoughtfully.

  “One more thing,” said Tekkeitsertok. Anger flashed in its huge brown eyes. “Why did you single out the caribou when there are so many other creatures?”

  Vithrok thrust his wide chin forward.

  “You are not the only one,” he explained. “But the first of many. Tell the lord of the musk oxen that his turn comes next. Perhaps we can come to a similar agreement before the Tunrit people begin to wipe out his charges. And tell Sedna, mistress of the seals, and Tornarssuk and the Whale-Man and all the others. It shall be no different with them.”

  Vithrok took a bite of the peach but, being spirit only, it had no flavor.

  “You see?” shouted Tulunigraq, “You see?”

  And of course, except for Oogloon and Tugto, none could see. The flashes of lightning had abated.

  “Vithrok is struck down,” explained Tulunigraq. “This is what comes of angering the great spirits. At least now he can’t lead us all to destruction.”

  “Is he dead?” asked Makite.

  Tulunigraq bent to Vithrok’s body and turned it over. “He’s dead. And gone. His soul-light has fled from his body, leaving nothing but an empty shell.”

  Tulunigraq stood. Tekkeitsertok’s wrath seemed to have been sated. The ground had stopped shaking at least. “Take what meat we can carry and let’s leave this place.”

  Makite bent to take one final look. He was s
orry it had come to this. This was a tremendous loss to the Tunrit, making the road before them ever more difficult. He swept the hair from his friend’s forehead.

  Vithrok’s eyes flew open.

  Tulunigraq let out a startled yelp.

  The first gasp of frigid air stung Vithrok’s lungs. With great effort he forced himself to draw another breath; he commanded the blood to again flow in his veins.

  “He lives!” shouted Tulunigraq, with genuine relief.

  Vithrok was shaky on his feet, as if unused to carrying the weight of his body. Just moments before he had existed in spirit only. His soul had separated from his body. It had traveled a pathway apart from the flesh, among a world of spirits. He wondered if he could do that trick again. He thought he could. A useful lesson, courtesy of Tekkeitsertok.

  Amid the field of lifeless caribou, the Tunrit gathered around their fallen hero. As Vithrok witnessed the concerned faces of his crew, huddling close in an effort to see him in the darkness, he smiled.

  “Pack up the meat and let’s go,” he said, “We need not go hungry anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Tulunigraq.

  Vithrok cocked his head and grinned. “We have come to an agreement.”

  CHAPTER 14

  A WALK WITH SHADOWS

  Ben woke with a start. A chilling rush of fear had suddenly come upon him in his sleep. With only a tiny movement of his head, he searched the room. He found the tent empty and dark. His wife was not beside him. His children were gone. He was alone.

  He sat up on the platform, naked, reeling from the shock. Everything had been taken from him — not just his darling daughter but everything. His heart seemed to have stopped; it now lay dead in his chest.

  An odd sense of acceptance followed, a realization that it was natural he should be alone, that this was the way he had been certain to end up, that love and family were nothing but a dream from which he had been bound to awake. Hadn’t he known that all along?

  The tent flaps whistled in the wind, the poles shook. This flimsy enclosure offered no shelter, no safety. Nowhere was safe. Whatever was waiting for him, reaching its clawed hands to claim him, would not be kept away by caribou hides and driftwood poles. If there was someone or something outside, he would go to meet it. He had no hope left, only a morbid sort of curiosity.

  He cast aside the sleeping furs. Naked and shivering, he stepped over to the tent entrance. It was only right to feel cold. Empty, dead and cold. His heart had been ripped out with the death of his daughter. He could feel nothing but cold and sorrow, and cold was the more preferable of the two.

  He stepped into the night. The Moon shone weakly, sleepy and half-hearted, surrounded by black driving clouds. It painted the scene in two contrasting shades, silver and black, a severity of light and shadow in which he saw the Anatatook camp transformed.

  The skins of the tents were rotten and full of holes. The meat racks and kennels wrecked and abandoned. The dogs gone. The entire settlement empty, empty and dead.

  Looking down he saw his true self revealed. He wore dark and rancid hides, worn thin with neglect. His skin was burned and peeling with char as if he had spent a long time in the fire. He was twisted and broken, an oppressive weight bearing down on him, pressing against him from all sides. It held him immobile, breathless, constrained. Why had they done this to him?

  A fleeting memory of his childhood in Louisiana visited him in the form of his father’s treasured smile, glimpsed through sleep-lidded eyes. But the memory burned away to ash. He strained to bring it back but, reduced to black smoke, it drifted out of reach. His father had been murdered in a revolt against sadistic men. It was not enough for them to lay his back open with the whip, they had string him up from the same tree Ben had happily climbed as a child just days before. There was no happiness. Not anymore.

  A lowering cloud passed over the Moon, cutting off the light. Darkness fell on the scene like a thick, all-encompassing bedsheet. All was blackness now, as it was meant to be. All was shadow. Ben moved forward, stepping silently through the murky dark.

  He could see very little. Everything had been rendered black, but there are shades of black, aren’t there? Degrees of darkness. Black on black.

  He sees figures moving in the gloom. He can catch only hints and suggestions of what they are, these living shadows. Hungry eyes stretch forth, then recede back into the lightless pools of their skulls. Are they beautiful to him? Yes. Yes, they are. Or are they horrible? Trapped in this realm of cold and perpetual darkness. Yes, they are that too.

  He hears their voices, away in the far distance. He hears them wail and moan.

  The shadows of everything existing.

  And yet there is more. A presence above it all. Calling to this burned-out man who has lost everything, even false memories, calling him home.

  He begins to recognize faces in the shadows, some of those among the Yupikut who had tormented and abused him and escaped the shaman’s justice. And is that Aquppak, deep in the shadows, glowering at him? They are so difficult to see as they meld into the darkness. He feels drawn to them, for surely these are his people welcoming him home. He surrenders to the urge to move forward, to blend in with the lot of them. But something holds him back. The presence. The one who stands above them all, the only one who could light his way in this hidden world. Ben feels him, there in the shadows, immensely powerful. But he is not threatening. He is the light, the truth.

  “Father?”

  Ben’s heart, awakened by pain once again, lurches within his chest. Such a thing can’t be possible. All else fades to obscurity as he listens for that desperate sound again. He can see nothing.

  “Father! Father!” So lost and alone. Tamuanuaq.

  “Tama?” Ben searches about, frantic for any sign that might lead him into the arms of his lost treasure.

  “Tama!” he screams. But it is useless. The echoes of his past life are fading fast. The obscuring cloud drifts away and the Moon comes out again, throwing its silver light across the slumbering Anatatook camp, chasing away the darkness. Again, the empty tents, the deserted camp.

  Everything looks wrong. A profound realization comes crashing down on him, the idea that the light is not real, never real, that only the shadows are real.

  He begs the cloud to sail across again, to once more bring the shadows and reclaim the truth. He needs to go back.

  Ben trembles as the bold voice of the truth spoke at last, saying only, “In time.”

  “Mommyyyy…” whined Kinak, still half asleep.

  “Sssh,” said Alaana. “Sleep now.”

  It was always difficult for the children, she thought, to sleep during the long daylight of summer. Light forced its way through the ceiling flap, and through the seams in the walls and through the skins themselves coloring the interior of the tent with a constant amber glow. She remembered how the sunlight had called out to her as a child, telling her that sleep was not needed, that all the world was alive and ready for play and adventure, simply awaiting her attention.

  Ben’s restless nightmare had disturbed the children. Alaana saw Noona sitting up in bed. The young girl said nothing. A quiet and introspective child, she knew better than to complain about such things.

  Now lying still once again, Ben’s lips gently parted, his breath coming in long heavy gasps like a drowning man unable to catch his breath. Asleep, but not in the dreamlands.

  Of the seven worlds she traveled, Alaana had the ability to see directly into only two of them — the world that the Anatatook called reality, and the dream world. She had explored the worlds above — the lofty Upperworld with its clouds and chatty gull-people, and the Celestial realm of Moon and stars. She had also visited the worlds below — the Lowerworld with its vast forests and caverns, and the Underworld, the home of demons and foul spirits. These spiritual realms were only accessible to those who possessed the special light of the shaman.

  But to the common people the dreamland was a frequent destination
. It overlapped the ordinary world at every point. Anyone might travel there, shaman or not, when their sleeping souls took flight in dreams. The seventh world, the shadow world, was also intimately connected to reality, accessible whenever the sun shined above, casting its shadows. But the human soul did not often travel to the shadow world, if ever at all. Alaana herself had never ventured there.

  The tension in Ben’s brow relaxed as he reached nightmare’s end. But he was not dreaming. Alaana would have been able to see his soul if it walked the pathways of dream. She might even be able to see what he was dreaming about. But she couldn’t see his soul-light at all, as if it had gone far away.

  She wanted to nudge him awake but to rouse someone whose soul had left their body was too dangerous.

  Alaana stroked her husband’s cheek. She nuzzled her nose against the nape of his neck, but he didn’t even know her touch. She was helpless to do anything more.

  She felt practically useless these days. All of her shamanic abilities depended on concentration, on attaining the proper state of mind. And since the death of Tama she’d been completely unable to focus. She had been helpless to save Tama, unable to locate her missing soul, and now powerless in regards to Ben. Without the help of their shaman, the people faced all the dangers of the north, a land of deadly weather and unforgiving spirits. Without her to defend them, the Anatatook might fall.

  Amid these discouraging thoughts, Alaana caught a whiff of a bitter smell that came from another place, another time. Something very, very old and dangerous. She sat up and flung her mind outward, but it was gone before she could identify the source. It was gone.

  CHAPTER 15

  TEKKEITSERTOK

  As Alaana watched her husband silently braiding Noona’s hair, it became clear that he had lost faith in her. Ben was not one to talk much about his feelings. He left so many things unspoken; it was his way. By the time discontent showed on his face the situation was always very dire.