by Ken Altabef
“Take the mitt off,” McPearson whispered, “They don’t shake hands with the gloves on.”
Alaana took Oakes’ hand the Eskimo way, raising it in a gentle grip to eye level.
“Don’t squeeze,” McPearson suggested. “Just let go.”
“How are you?” asked Oakes heartily.
“She can’t understand,” said Aquppak.
“She’ll understand this,” said McPearson. He kicked a broad sealskin roll on the ground at his feet, letting it unfurl along the snow. He smiled broadly. “It’s good,” he said. “Take whatever you like.”
Spread on the mat were a generous helping of trade items, most notably a bush knife with a long, shiny blade that he had intended as a special gift for the headman and a new tea-kettle for his wife. There were also a few bags of fresh tobacco, a smaller pocketknife, several blends of tea, and a few scraps of calico. The shaman bent and began pawing tentatively through the items.
To Alaana, the white men seemed strange but in no way frightening. The large man with the full, reddish beard smiled exuberantly, showing brilliant white teeth. He had rounded, ruddy cheeks and an oddly bulbous nose. The man whose hand Alaana had taken had a smaller stature, a short black beard and strange circular devices strapped over his eyes. Most importantly, their souls appeared no different than those of any of the Anatatook. They were robust and hearty men and, for the moment, seemingly bore no malice.
She had seen white men before, but only at a distance. Tugtutsiak had always kept them away. And Old Manatook had said that nothing good could ever come of the kabloonas, though he had refrained from elaborating very much upon the subject. It hadn’t seemed important. The whites ranged far to the south, where the Anatatook didn’t usually go.
Alaana turned her attention to the goods they’d brought, opening up the sacks of tobacco and tea. She gazed deeply into the dried leaves, searching for signs of trouble among whatever bits of the plant souls that still remained. It was well known that evil spirits sometimes entered the camps, hidden among the things the kabloonas brought. She passed over the tea-pot and the knives which, being made of metal, had no souls at all.
“What is this?” she asked, indicating two large metal tins beside the men. Alaana imagined there must be something inside, but she couldn’t make out any seam. She began rocking one of the buckets from side to side. The man with the black beard interposed himself and opened the lid.
“Coal-oil,” the man said. Alaana didn’t understand his words.
Alaana dipped a finger into the thick black fluid. It had at one time been made of some type of plant, but the remnant of soul had faded almost to insubstantiality. No matter. It was harmless.
“They use it for fire,” explained Aquppak in the native tongue.
Alaana loosened the knots on one of two large sacks of white powder. She made to pour it out onto the snow but Aquppak waved her off.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“They make bread with it,” Aquppak said. “It’s for food.”
Alaana peered into the sack. She noted faded remnants of plant souls within the grain. But there was something else. There was a malicious spirit among the powder, trying to hide from her gaze.
“I see you,” she barked, “Come out!"
The little orange soul-flicker buried itself deeper in the bag. “This will make us sick,” Alaana said to Aquppak. She cast a stern glance at the two white men, but their puzzled expressions convinced her they knew nothing of this.
She saw no benefit to asking a second time. Instead she reached out, politely, to the wheat grain and the spirit that remained within it. “My brother,” she whispered in the secret language of the shamans, “Once you grew on some distant plain, drinking deep draughts of water and sunlight. Now you are only a shadow of what once you were, bound for the cooking pot. Perhaps it is best to fly free. Will you burn for me?”
The contents of the sack burst into flame. Alaana watched the little fever demon as it squirmed in the flames and disappeared.
The white men jumped back in alarm. Aquppak, annoyed, kicked snow onto the fire.
“That’s a neat trick,” said the man with the dark beard. “Somehow she must have ignited the coal oil on her finger.”
McPearson turned to Alaana. “Well now, madame, you’ve burned our biscuits,” he said, still smiling. The two kabloonas laughed and Aquppak joined in, not the least bit reluctantly. McPearson clapped his hands together. “No harm done. We still have the other bag, so there’ll be breakfast yet. If you’re willing?”
Again, Alaana didn’t understand the man’s words but the kabloona’s manner remained pleasant as he graciously untied the second sack and offered its contents for her inspection.
Finding nothing wrong with the flour, she nodded her head.
“Sit down, sit down,” encouraged McPearson. He had taken out a long calabash pipe and began stuffing it with tobacco from the pouch. “Try this. Good smoke.”
Alaana, still shaken by how easily a malicious spirit had slipped into the camp, did not sit down. It had been a petty little fever demon, it was true, but it might have played havoc with the dogs. Or the children. She watched McPearson draw a small twig from his pocket and strike it on the stone, producing a little flame with which to light his pipe. On the third strike the flame came out, but Alaana noticed he had not asked for its permission.
Saying nothing more, Alaana walked back to her own tent.
Ben couldn’t sleep.
Alaana lay beside him, snoring softly. He wrapped his arms around her, appreciating her warmth. But where her deep rhythmic breathing had often guided him off to sleep, tonight was different. Tonight the muffled sounds reminded him that she was just a woman, just a woman sleeping.
Of course, ever since she had rescued him from the Yupikut, that was all he had ever wanted her to be. He had never desired to marry a shaman and get involved with all their secrets and spirits. He didn’t see the spirits directly but sometimes felt their presence, a sense of danger surrounding him, the idea that some malevolent intelligence hovered close by. It was his wife’s duty to confront those monsters, and he wanted no part of it. He was repulsed by the idea of it. Sometimes he pretended that Alaana didn’t walk with one foot in the spirit world, that her soul didn’t fly free of her body on distant journeys, that she was simply a woman, holding her family close in her arms. Perhaps Alaana sensed his feelings in this, for she never spoke about her otherworldly duties. Or perhaps she was simply bound by the secretive nature of the shaman.
In any case, Alaana was a loving wife and a good mother to their children and that was all that mattered. Deep down she had a gentle soul, despite all the hard things she was made to do. She was everything he had ever desired, and he loved her completely.
But he had never wanted the shaman. And now he had gotten more than he ever bargained for. Because Alaana was the shaman, their precious daughter was dead. And her soul missing and in danger, and crying out for help. He could hardly stand it.
And worse yet, his wife the mighty shaman was unable to help. She had been broken; she was reduced, torn apart by tragedy and guilt. Asleep beside him, she was only a woman. And this was the one time he needed her to be more than simply mortal.
He felt helpless and in pain, a combination that recalled too many bad memories. Bound, beaten and abused. He had been held captive by Yupikut raiders for eight years. They had murdered his adopted father, Mr. Douglas, and they had used his mother for their pleasure and then killed her as well. He was kept as an errand boy, an unending source of amusement, a dog to be kicked and beaten often.
Helpless. If only he had the power to do something to help Tama, to undo what had been done, to save his little girl. And if she couldn’t be saved, at least to see her poor soul safely into the arms of her ancestors.
Kinak stirred in his sleep. Ben stroked his hair gently and wrapped him closer in his calveskin blanket. Beyond the boy’s shoulder he saw Noona, wide awake and staring back
at him. The sight of the child’s glittering eyes in the darkness was startling. Noona’s face appeared unnaturally pale. Her gaze seemed fiercely cold, and Ben found something accusatory in it.
“Don’t stare at me,” he said coldly. “Go to sleep.”
Noona hardly seemed to react to her father’s words, but turned dutifully away toward the tent flap.
Ben felt badly. He shouldn’t have snapped at his daughter like that, but it was all too much. Despair came crashing down on him. He felt like he was falling, tumbling down a deep dark abyss from which it would be impossible to rise again. He didn’t want to go down there. He had been there before, bound and beaten, in a world where nothing good could possibly exist, and Alaana had lifted him up. With gentle care and understanding, she had brought him back. He didn’t want to fall down again; he wanted to step sideways. He wanted to answer the call that came at odd moments from the land of shadow.
Ben listened, but he couldn’t hear that precious voice. He could hear nothing but the stray sounds of the Anatatook camp at night — a dog yapping, the sleepy voice of its master ordering it to silence.
“Tama,” he said softly, the name breaking on his lips.
He stepped sideways, into the world of the shadows.
Something had gone horribly wrong. He knew it instantly.
From his previous visit to the shadow world Ben already had a good idea of what to expect, and this was all wrong. There was an ocean of difference between shadow and emptiness.
There was nothing here. It was a void.
The woeful tapestry of sound that was ever-present in this place — lost souls bemoaning their sorrow, tortured cries in the dark, long, drawn-out screeches of inhuman suffering. All silent now, all gone.
Ben felt a surge of cold panic. He had made a terrible mistake, coming here at night. He needed to get away from this place, but he couldn’t move. There was no ground beneath his feet, nothing for his hands to hold. There was not even air to breathe. He wanted to cry out for help but there could be no sound without air to carry it.
He flailed around with nothing for his arms to hold, nothing to touch. He was falling, he was flying, he was standing still in the eye of a needle.
But there was light. He saw it now, a far-off glimmer in the distance, twinkling like a star. He must move toward it, but he had nothing to push against.
The dull glow loomed larger as he watched, its outline growing into that of a massive construct of black stone with the white light at its center. He felt a terrible sense of doom, but fought down the panic. Let it come, he thought. If there was even the slightest chance that such a thing would bring Tama to him, let it come.
The size of the tower was impossible to determine. It was an open-faced citadel with tall spires forming a pointed top and walls stretching to either side like huge wings. The light came from the center, illuminating the outline of a huge seat. Upon that seat sat a figure clad in white light.
The stranger gazed intently at him as the citadel approached, one hand stroking the hair on his chin. Ben knew him immediately for what he was — a Tunrit. He had heard their stories, the valiant primeval men, the first people to walk upon Nunatsiaq’s frozen lands. They were a heroic band, or so the legends told, men much greater than those of today. Stronger, braver, more clever — they tamed the lands in the earliest times, battling impossibly ferocious spirits and paving the way for those who came after. Of course he had never seen one before; they had all died off thousands of years ago.
And yet this was a Tunrit.
His most striking feature was the oversized head, which had a certain elongated shape that conveyed a sense of vast intelligence. His huge overhanging brow might have looked brutish but, coming as it did at the base of that enormous forehead, seemed somehow both handsome and noble. A wide, flat nose, a strong jaw line, a sensitive mouth with large teeth, perfectly straight and startlingly white. His eyes, which should have been left in the shadow of that prodigious brow, were like beacons of light. The pupils, Ben noticed with incredulity, were silver. They sparkled — the sight of them so incredibly startling he lost his breath for a moment when they first gazed at him.
“Are you the Light-Bringer?” he asked.
The Tunrit’s hand, huge but with fingers surprisingly nimble, drew away from his mouth. For a moment he stared at the fingers, flexing and relaxing them, then said, “I have been called that. Once, when I brought eyesight to the blind.”
His voice was deep and resonant, yet kind.
“I need your help,” Ben pleaded. The citadel had swept him up and he stood now at the foot of the high chair gazing up at the Light-Bringer. Whether the structure had finally come to rest or continued to drift among the emptiness, he couldn’t tell. What did it matter?
“My daughter — is she here?”
“She’s not here now. All are gone.”
“Gone? But where have they gone?”
“When the sun is down there are no shadows.” The silver eyes drifted away from him.
Ben stepped forward. “But what happens to them? Does she suffer?”
The Tunrit’s gaze found him again. He seemed the most handsome and perfect man Ben had ever seen. “They always suffer,” he said softly. “It’s their place in creation.”
“But that’s not fair! That’s not right.”
The Light-Bringer shrugged his massive shoulders. “If I could change it, I would.”
“But my daughter is here.”
“The shadow of your daughter is here.”
“Does that mean she’s still alive? They told me when someone’s soul crosses over to the distant lands their shadow fades away.”
“They told you true.”
“Then she must be still alive!”
The Light-Bringer’s huge brow creased and one glittering eye drew narrower than the other. He answered somewhat evasively, as if trying to spare Ben’s feelings. “Her shadow lives here. I have seen it. I have heard her laugh.”
The notion seemed odd to Ben because it didn’t seem the shadows laughed very often. But the thought of Tama’s wonderful laugh heartened him. If he could only hear that sound again. If only it were possible. And then he thought it must be possible. Looking upon this glorious figure out of time, anything might be possible. “I want to see her.”
“I have safeguarded her,” continued the Light-Bringer. “She is with Higilak and her family.”
“Higilak? Let me see her,” cried Ben.
“You will.”
CHAPTER 26
NARSSUK
Vithrok could not feel the cold. He could feel nothing.
He looked out across a vista of magnificent desolation, a land of frozen white, locked down beneath a monotonous expanse of snow and ice. Nothing moved. A fickle wind blew up from the south. If it carried a chill, he did not know it. Flakes of fresh-fallen snow thrashed about, dashed against his spirit-form and passed through, untouched, unnoticed.
Through the open vault of his citadel, the icy vastness of the night sky, the barren reaches of the Outer Darkness. Directly above, the Never Moves twinkled boldly. It was the same star he had studied all those thousands of years ago, hanging in the same place, distant and unknowable, yet reassuringly constant.
In a strange way he felt the star grounded him. When he lost track of time, when it ebbed and flowed, when it tugged at him, playing its malicious tricks, the Never Moves was ever there and he here, two counterweights on a long invisible line. When he felt as if his weary spirit might be pulled down into dissolution, the star was there. But it was not enough, that faithful anchor, so far away and unreachable. He was a ghost, a million years old. It was difficult to hold together. He could never relax. Not for an instant.
At these times he must shut out all else, close his eyes to the spirit-vision, and hold on. Not dead, he reminded himself, I’m not dead.
Such times recalled too much of his interminable imprisonment within the soulless stone. Ten thousand lifetimes within the dead stone. He
walked a precipice. He mustn’t fall. But there was nothing beneath his feet, nothing except a void extending so far below its floor could never be seen. And what should he find at the bottom should he fall, tumbling toward it for ages, spinning end over end over end, what should he find but the waiting heart of the soulless catchstone? Or perhaps the bottom marked the iris of Time’s implacable eye, bulging wide with laughter at another of its cruel jokes.
He must hold on. And if he waited long enough, the eye would blink.
He could not feel the cold, but he felt many other things. Anger and sadness at the loss of paradise. Determination, undaunted by failure. The sting of betrayal. Kidan’s great design still thrilled him — its weighty pillars, its seemingly impossible arches, the delicate intertwining of the spires. The citadel looked exactly the same as when Vithrok had last seen it, incomplete and unfinished. The capstones had never been placed; the roof and the impressive dome Kidan had conceived had never come to pass. The lost hope of a dead people.
Dead, but not...
Was time drifting backward? Was time drifting backward? He must hold on.
Walking these empty hallways again, the familiarity of the old place soothed him. The towering walls and broad rough-hewn corridors helped to ground his troubled spirit. He was proud of what the Tunrit had accomplished, of how they had found themselves in a situation of horrific adversity and how they had overcome. He was proud of all of them for that, even the miserable wretches who had betrayed him. If only he could see his friends once more. He would embrace them as long lost brothers. For whatever they had done to him, for whatever reason, he forgave them everything. It didn’t matter. Now the fires had cooled, they were all dust.
When he brought the sun into the sky they had hailed him as a great hero. These very corridors and halls had rung with cheers. Vithrok, who had been known as the Truth, was now the Light-Bringer. The people carried him on their shoulders, they sang his praises. He accepted the adulation quietly, for he did not deserve it. A heavy price had been paid, even if he was the only one who knew it. In forcing this great victory, he had broken his friend Tulunigraq. And that was a crushing guilt to bear.