by Ken Altabef
She feared losing him, his companionship, his warm embrace. This was all she’d ever wanted — a husband, a family, a normal life. Not to be the shaman. Not to have the weight of seven worlds on her shoulders. But she was stuck with those responsibilities, burdened by Sila with a task of which no one else was capable. She had suffered much on account of that gift. She had worked hard to earn Tugtutsiak’s respect. And now the headman was gone. The people looked upon her kindly but their gaze was tinged with fear. She didn’t want them to fear her; she didn’t want to stand apart. She wanted to be one among them like her brother Maguan, to laugh with them, and sing and dance without a heavy mask covering her face.
When Tama died, it was Ben that had saved Alaana. Ben hadn’t blamed her for the death. He blamed Tooky and then Tugtutsiak and finally the Whale-Man but he had been clear from the first it was not Alaana’s fault. If he had said otherwise or thought otherwise, she might have killed herself. Gone out into the snow and laid down. Let Nunatsiaq’s frigid embrace claim her body and the wild spirits tear apart her soul. Only her husband’s strong voice, holding her blameless, had held her back.
But now he had completely withdrawn. That reassuring voice was gone.
Usually Noona fussed and fidgeted as her hair was done, finding the new braids so stiff and uncomfortable. Ben would talk to her the entire time, speaking in a low voice that distracted and lulled her. Ben would tell her how cute and pretty she would look, and how Agruta and Pilarqaq would fawn over her in the morning. This morning Ben said nothing, knotting the strands in silence. And Noona, for her part, had not put up a fuss. She could sense Ben’s moods almost as well as Alaana.
Kinak asking again about his lost sister.
“She has gone far away,” Alaana told him. “Far beyond the high hills, where the birds live.”
“She isn’t coming back?”
“No,” Alaana told him.
Noona had taken it better — quieter, at least. She knew death already. Last summer one of her playmates, Ikeena’s third daughter, had drowned in the river. Noona had seen the lifeless body as the men pulled it out of the water and laid it down on the beach. For three nights she had fallen asleep in her father’s arms and he had dried her tears. After that, she understood death pretty well.
Ben tied off the last strand and said, in a completely uninspiring tone of voice, “There now. Don’t you look nice?”
Noona shrugged.
“Run and play with the others now,” Alaana told her. “Look after your little brother. I don’t want him playing by himself.”
When the children had gone out, Ben didn’t move from the platform’s edge. He remained silent for a long time, staring at the tent skins.
“You didn’t sleep well last night,” said Alaana.
“I had a dream of Tama,” he said softly.
“I dream of her every night.”
“She was lost and alone.” Ben’s words slashed into Alaana’s heart. She wanted to say Tama was not alone, but she didn’t know if that was true.
“I couldn’t see her clearly but I heard her voice. Her sweet voice.” Ben closed his eyes, tilting his head as if he were listening intently. “Is she there? In the dreamlands? Is she really there?”
“The dreamlands are real,” said Alaana, “but they exist alongside our reality. I think they are an echo of the Beforetime. In the dreamlands anything can happen, some of it is made to happen by our hearts, just like in the Beforetime when people could do anything. And other things happen by some design we can’t understand.”
“But is it real? When our souls wander there, can we meet another? Can I find her there?”
“The things we experience in the dreamlands are real, but their echo fades when we wake. The dream world is as fluid as the sea. Nothing that happens there remains. The experiences are sometimes remembered, but that’s all.”
“Not real,” he said.
“If you see her there, cherish the moment. But when you wake she will still be gone.”
“Gone,” he repeated, shaking his head. “Gone where?”
Again, she had no answer.
When he looked at her a terrible creeping horror came stealing through his eyes. Now it was finally coming out. Too long pent up, it came rushing forth. “I didn’t blame you when it happened.”
“I know.”
“But I do blame you now. For losing Tama’s soul, for not safeguarding our daughter’s passage. Her soul, just like all of the Anatatook, was in your keeping. Our little mouthful. Now she is lost, adrift among the spirits, unsafe. For this I can not forgive you. I just can’t help it.”
Alaana had no reasonable reply except, “I know.”
And Ben fell silent again.
With the drum-beater wedged between the claws of its left forepaw, Tikiqaq struck the drum.
The tupilaq had taken this chore to heart, its small black head bobbing, its whiskers flapping excitedly. For a moment it appeared to Alaana as a silly imitation of her father who displayed much the same eagerness to help and possessed a similar scrawny mustache.
“You’ve no sense of rhythm at all,” said Alaana. “Think of it this way. You’re swimming against the north current, right? It’s flap, flap, flap-flap. Understand?”
Tikiqaq nodded enthusiastically and set upon the drum again.
And the beat was wrong again. Alaana thought her father certainly would have done a better job with the drum, but Kigiuna had kayaks to mend and spearheads to sharpen.
To allow Kigiuna in the karigi while she met with Tekkeitsertok to decide the contest would be viewed with certain suspicion. Aquppak had already accused Alaana of willingness to give her brother Maguan unfair advantage. While the Anatatook believed in the honesty of their shaman, most would agree that Kigiuna would be tempted to reveal information that would aid his eldest son’s cause.
And so, Tikiqaq.
“Now you have it right,” said Alaana. “Swimming, swimming. Keep that beat, just so. Even after I’m gone. This is important — don’t stop until I return.”
The tupilaq said nothing, too intent on preventing a mistake, but Alaana knew its heart. It would do as it was asked.
“I’m depending on you.”
Alaana thought she saw an upward curl at the edges of the seal carcass’ ruined mouth.
The shaman began her chant. “Tekkeitsertok, spirit of the wild caribou, heed my call…” She struggled to clear her mind. Although it was a leap she had taken many times before, separating soul from body was no easy task. She was no longer sure she possessed the certainty of purpose and strength of will necessary.
“Tekkeitsertok, spirit of the wild caribou, heed my call…”
Alaana ground the words out between gritted teeth. She must relax, put away worldly thoughts, and let reality melt away.
She could forget Tugtutsiak’s death, the danger and disarray facing the Anatatook, and even Ben’s slow descent back into the maelstrom of dark thoughts and despair from which she had raised him years ago. But she couldn’t put away thoughts of Tama. That sorrow would always be with her, followed closely by its two companions, guilt and the keen-edged panic of self-doubt. The guilt was a writhing pain in her belly that never went away. When she put aside the other worldly distractions, the problem was only made worse — with all her other worries silenced, she could hear little else but the voice of her lost daughter.
Tikiqaq missed the rhythm, striking the wooden rim of the drum with a sharp clunking sound.
“That’s not right!” snapped Alaana. “It has to be right every time.”
Tikiqaq let out a startled squawk from the raven beak stuck in its forehead. “Tiktik not made for drums and music,” growled the seal’s mouth. “Me for blood and ripping and tearing things up. And bone crunching.” The tupilaq spoke with gathering confidence. “And biting poison,” it added, eyes lighting up. “And blood and ripping–”
“Tssst!” said Alaana. “The drumhead is the skull of your enemy. Strike it! And do it with
the proper rhythm.”
The poor creature bowed its head, having not the will to disobey its master. It took up the beat again.
The tupilaq was a poor excuse for a spirit helper, and ill-suited to guide and protect a shaman on her journey. Once again, Alaana walked alone. The helper spirits of her youth had all fled upon her initiation, worried away at the arrival of her patron spirit Sila, the Walker In The Wind. A fickle patron at that. Old Manatook had said that Alaana could do nothing without Sila’s help, but it seemed as if she had no help. Sila was perhaps too busy with the vast and important duties of being the wind to bother with such an insignificant little shaman, and left Alaana to fend for herself against her own inadequacy. Concentrate, she told herself in the voice of her old teacher Old Manatook. Concentrate.
“Tekkeitsertok,” she intoned, “Spirit of the wild caribou, heed my call.” She raised a smoldering braid of sweet prairie grass, an herb whose aromatic smoke was especially pleasing to the spirits of the wild. She waved it carefully, invoking patterns to the east, west, north and south, skyward and earthward.
“Heed my call.” Alaana felt ashamed at the note of desperation that had crept into her voice. She added a sprinkle of dried star anise to the burning embers within the soapstone vessel before her. As the pungent wisps spiraled upward, carrying her song to the supernatural realm, she lost herself in the twirling, twisting dance of the smoke. It had no cares as it went, drifting slowly, spiraling here, recoiling there, but always moving upward and away. Her awareness extended outward, flowing with the smoke as it rose toward the vent-hole.
And suddenly she was flying, lifted up in the blissfully wild embrace of Sila. The invisible hands of the wind spoke to her with the confidence of their touch. Sila could not heal Alaana’s broken heart, but he would bear her to the next realm. That he could do.
Alaana glimpsed the face of Sila in the ever-changing swirl. A pair of shining eyes that radiated kindness, a flowing white beard, a smile that creased the face in great ravines. A face that was all faces, including Old Manatook’s stern reproach when she strayed from her lessons, Tugtutsiak’s grim determination, Aquppak’s raw ambition, and her father’s wry smile.
So many things she wanted to say to Sila, so many questions she needed to ask. Alaana was concerned only with the most important. “Where is she?”
“Some place dark,” hissed the wind.
“Tell me. Tell me what I want to know.”
“You will find her.” The wind left her with a whispered assurance. “There will be answers someday.”
Alaana’s spirit-woman knelt upon the floor of brown needles and twigs that carpeted the Wild Wood. The arms of the trees bent overhead in a great arch that defined the wicker bower where Tekkeitsertok sat. Pale blossoms dotted the intertwined branches. Unlike the brilliant reds and blues Alaana had recently witnessed to the south, these flowers seemed pale and faded, their petals dropping silently down.
At rest on its birchwood throne, its head drooping with the weight of the huge racks of its antlers, the great turgat seemed to be sleeping. The long, sloping face of an ancient caribou teetered atop its graceful neck. A long white mane lent the spirit a venerable air. Surely the turgat was old beyond reckoning.
“Tekkeitsertok,” Alaana said again, “Spirit of the wild caribou, heed my call.”
Tekkeitsertok opened its huge liquid-brown eyes, tilting its head slightly. Then its chin slumped once again to its barrel chest.
“Here I stand, humble before you,” sang Alaana.
There was no response.
Alaana spoke up, invoking the terms of the Old Agreement. “With arms outstretched to your kindness and mercy. Hear me!”
Alaana felt her inuseq dissolving, felt herself begin to slip back into normal reality. Panic seized her heart. Not now, not like this! She couldn’t leave now. She needed an answer for the people.
Tekkeitsertok let out a sudden, booming snarl. It shifted in its seat, bending forward to glance down at the thing that had sunk its teeth into the fur of its hindleg. Tekkeitsertok lifted its other hoof as if to scrape the little beast from its shin.
Tikiqaq yelped softly and darted away. It shuffled backward among the pine needles strewn along the ground.
“What little thing is this?” mumbled the great turgat. “Curious little thing. A patchwork creature, bits of souls sewn together with blood and twine.”
“No kill me!” squealed Tikiqaq, still backpedaling toward where Alaana’s spirit-woman knelt before the throne.
Tekkeitsertok seemed to have grown amused, for it let out a thin rasp of a laugh. “I don’t know how you can be here,” it said. “But I’m willing to let you live, so long as you don’t bite me again.”
“I brought it here,” said Alaana. She stood up.
The gigantic caribou-spirit tilted its great head, noticing Alaana for the first time. It regarded the shaman through half-closed, sleepy eyes. “I don’t know you. Away!”
Tekkeitsertok flicked its tufted tail at her as if she were a pestering fly.
“You do know me,” insisted Alaana. “I am a shaman of the Anatatook people.”
One brow raised, a huge brown eye gaped slightly. “No, I don’t know you. And you don’t seem like much of a shaman to me.”
Alaana sighed in exasperation. Always it was the same. “Look closely. I have the light, and that is enough. There is a bargain to consider.”
The turgat nodded its great head slowly. Its long, slanted snout drew close, sniffing, then let out a blast of breath that reeked of moldy grasses.
Alaana stood firm, or at least as firmly as she was able with the cowering Tikiqaq tugging on the back of her legs. “My people are hungry. We need your help.”
“The Old Agreement,” said Tekkeitsertok, “grows old. I’m not sure why I ever agreed to such a thing in the first place. That was so long ago. Another time. Another people.”
“You swore to keep that bargain.”
Its huge, starry eyes flared. “So I did. And so I will.”
For a long moment Tekkeitsertok gazed pensively at the ground. Or perhaps it was falling asleep. Alaana panicked a little, not sure if she could rouse the great spirit again. She vowed she would try, even if it meant sinking her own teeth into the spirit’s tawny leg.
“The weather warms,” shouted Alaana. “The hawk chases the snow starling. The white owl hunts the lemming. Your charges come up from the south…”
Tekkeitsertok waved a foreleg impatiently. “It has been a long winter; I’ve not much to give.”
“We don’t need much. Just tell me: Where will they cross?”
“The tip of the silver tongue. Four days’ time. You won’t hurt the does?”
“Of course not,” said Alaana. “When have we ever?”
For a moment Tekkeitsertok seemed lost and confused. Its tremendous antlers swooped as the head described a slow arc that left its pointed chin nestled in the hollow of the barrel chest.
“We will keep the taboos,” said Alaana. She thought of the Whale-Man and almost choked on the words. “I will see to it.”
CHAPTER 16
A NEW HEADMAN
The salmon run had come and gone. The Anatatook had already begun packing up their camp. The heads of families met at the karigi to discuss the question of leadership with Alaana, while most everyone else made one final trip to the foothills to pick the last of the berries.
Ben would have liked to stay back at the camp but his family wouldn’t hear of it. They had devoted themselves to the impossible task of cheering him up, or at least walking beside him in his misery. Instinctively they kept him in the center of the pack as they foraged among the low bushes of the ravine, so that wherever he turned Itoriksak and Pilarqaq were quick to offer a reassuring half-smile or a nod of the head.
Soon the camp would move again, heading inland after the caribou. Leaving Tama behind, her little body crushed beneath the stones in a shallow grave at the tidal pool. The farther they traveled, the stronger th
e feelings of loss seemed to tug at Ben, drawing him back. Their tracks were swept away, eaten up by the melting snow, but as always sadness followed at their heels.
Ben paid no attention to the chattering of the others as he plodded along beside them. He was intent on listening for something else. For that whispered word he had heard in the dream, that forlorn call of a six-year-old voice. He didn’t feel the sun beaming down its rare warmth from the sky. He didn’t want to feel it. He was much more interested in searching the places where the sun did not reach, the dark places between the rocks, or the clefts in the trail. The shadows.
He snapped a plump salmonberry from its stem.
Plenty of chores to keep the hands busy, but the mind was free to roam. He thought of icy depths where the light never reached. He thought of the bottom of the sea. Could there be any deeper shadow than the bottom of the ocean? He imaged the cold water’s numbing embrace. As it leeched all feeling from his body, would it do the same to put his mind at peace? Would he find his daughter there? He thought not.
He squashed the berry between his fingers, letting the bright red juice run down.
And then there were his other children to consider. Noona and Kinak. He would never leave them.
“Oh, Look!” Kinak squealed with delight. “Isn’t he cute? Look how tiny he is. Even smaller than me.”
As the eight-year-old boy hopped around from foot to foot he frightened the object of his admiration, sending the tupilaq shuffling around behind Tooky.
“And he has such funny eyes!” added the boy. “Like little black stones.” He advanced on Tikiqaq again, chubby little index finger extended and no doubt meant for one of the eyes.
Ben gently pulled him back and away.
“Doesn’t it bother you, having that ugly thing follow you around?” he asked Tooky.
Tooky shook her head. “Better than having Aolajut’s claws in my back.”
“She wouldn’t!” said Pilarqaq.