by Ken Altabef
“You’re shivering, dear,” said Higilak. “Let’s get you back close to the fire.”
Ben nodded vacantly. He felt guilty, as if he’d just been caught out doing something he shouldn’t. Something disgraceful.
The old woman’s eyes missed nothing. “What were you doing here?”
Ben swallowed painfully. His mouth was dry. He didn’t have to answer the old woman’s questions.
“No, not here,” said Higilak. “You were somewhere else.”
Ben wasn’t sure what the old woman had just said. The voices calling him back to the other side were so loud now, so full of anguish and fear.
“You will answer me,” insisted the old woman. She pushed Ben away. Ben hadn’t yet completely stood up. He toppled back to the ground on lifeless legs.
“Or should I answer for you?” continued Higilak. “You were walking the shadowed pathways. And in your embrace you held another.”
Ben shook his head. It wasn’t like that at all. In the shadow lands he was married to Agruta, true, but the two of them simply went through the motions of marriage. There was no physical love between them, no contact at all, just like any other couple in that place. There was no love in the shadow lands, no desire. How could there be love in a place devoid of hope?
But there was family. In the shadow world Ben’s children, all three of them, belonged with him and Agruta. Having lost Alaana at an early age, the shadow world had healed like scarred flesh creeping over a deep wound. The shadows did not have Alaana the shaman to protect them. And no Alaana to rescue Ben. In the shadow world, however, he had managed an escape from the Yupikut camp on his own. He had wandered the shadows, starving and alone, until he came to the Anatatook camp. The shadows took him in, for they were all the same in their misery. The color of his skin didn’t matter, for the shadows had no color but shadow.
Agruta was a widow in the shadow world. Years ago Alaana had saved her brother’s life when he fell into the sea. But in the shadow world there was no Alaana to save him. Itoriksak died, leaving Agruta free to marry. Noona, Tama and Kinak belonged to Agruta and Ben in the shadows.
Did the children bring them joy? Ben thought not, since the children themselves were joyless. They didn’t play, they didn’t laugh. They were just shadow children. Now, returned to the cave in Black Face, Ben began to feel they didn’t belong to him at all. Noona was right. They belonged to a different Ben.
“They are yours,” insisted an indignant voice. It was the shadow Higilak, speaking from across the divide. “You belong with them!”
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Higilak. Ben peered at the old woman’s lined face, her skin stark white in the dim light of the caves. Higilak shook him by the shoulder. “Alaana, your wife, needs you.”
“Don’t listen to her,” said the shadow Higilak’s ghostly echo. “You belong with us. With Tama. And Agruta.”
Ben shook himself free of Higilak’s clutches. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to think.
“We all need you,” said Higilak. “The Anatatook are your people now and we are in trouble. We need your strength and your courage.”
“Tama needs me,” said Ben. “I’ve lost a child. You can’t know what that feels like.”
Higilak shook her head. “I’ve lost a husband, and I know what that feels like. I don’t want the same for you. Alaana lies wounded and close to death. You should be beside her.”
Ben shook his head. “She can’t do anything for Tama. Only I can!”
“Can do what?” asked Higilak. “I’m sorry to say, but your little girl lies dead in her grave back at the Tongue.”
“No, she’s not. She can’t be. She’s alive. I just have to find her.”
“That’s crazy talk.”
“It’s not crazy. You don’t know what it’s like. You live in the light. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“What what’s like?”
“To be without hope.”
“There’s always hope,” said Higilak and with such conviction in her voice, Ben almost believed it.
“For some,” Ben said, “but not for everyone.”
“Chasing shadows won’t help.”
“Enough.” Ben turned away.
“Alaana is hurt,” said Higilak. “She needs you.”
“Why don’t you leave me alone? Shouldn’t you be seeing to Massautsicq?”
“Massautsicq,” repeated Higilak. “For these many years Massautsicq has been known as ihumataaq, a wise man whose counsel was always fair and good. Now his voice is lost to us forever. There was nothing I could do about it. He’s dead.”
CHAPTER 36
NO FOOD, NO FUEL
Tikiqaq lurched into the cave. The little seal looked like a newborn pup, its black fur all white with frost. In its arms it held a few tiny sticks and a scoop of dried animal dung, enough fuel perhaps for a few moments only.
It approached the fire, frozen flippers shuffling stiffly. Roy Oakes screamed at the sight of it.
The children, peeking out from under the furs, laughed.
“They’re laughing,” muttered Oakes in wild disbelief. “They’re laughing.”
McPearson shoved some food at him. A small cut of frozen salmon topped with a little slice of caribou fat.
“That’s all?” asked Oakes weakly.
“Yes. That’s all,” said McPearson.
“I need more. I can’t stop shivering. I need more food.”
“That’s all,” repeated McPearson.
“This cave is a tomb,” Oakes said. His line of sight shot to the entrance. “I have to get out.”
“Buck up!” said McPearson. “You can’t go outside. You’d not last five minutes out there. It’s thirty below.”
Oakes decided to make the attempt anyway, but found his legs numb and useless. He tried pushing himself up with his arms but couldn’t manage it that way either. Bug-eyed and straining, he flailed violently, then flopped back to the ground. His face took on the flaccid look of a man who has accepted his imminent death. “A tomb,” he whispered.
At the far side of the cave an argument broke out.
“How long will it last?” asked Nuralak. The patriarch of his clan of hunters, he kept his voice strong and even-toned. The old man never showed signs of fear. “At this rate how long?”
Aquppak’s face was mostly hidden by strips of shaggy seal fur laid over the frost blisters. He was the only one familiar enough with the white men’s coal-oil to venture a guess. “Two days at most.”
“We have to burn less,” said Patloq. He was Nuralak’s brother-by-marriage. His small face and high, arched eyebrows lent him the look of a man perpetually surprised by the events around him. Still, he was a sure hand with the bow and generous with his tobacco when he had any. He glanced around the crowded cave. “Nothing else in here will burn.”
“We can break up the kabloona’s sled,” suggested Kigiuna. “It has wooden runners.”
All the men agreed on that, but still Patloq said, “We have to burn less.”
“It’s too cold like this as it is,” insisted Kigiuna. “We’ve lost too many already. Yesterday we had to put Massautsicq’s body out in the snow. And Alaana is not much better off. Any colder and she’ll die.”
“She’s the shaman. She will die, or she won‘t,” said Nuralak calmly. “What else can we do for her?”
“We can keep her warm,” said Kigiuna.
“That’s for her husband to do,” said Nuralak.
“And what about the food?” demanded Talliituk. The younger man fell far short of the ineffable composure of his elders. His voice was pitched with fear.
“Two days at most,” said Aquppak.
“Two days,” repeated Talliituk. He glanced at the dwindling pile of supplies.
Nuralak tented his hands before his face. “We must make the fuel last, wait for the storm to pass. It will pass.”
“Keep the fires going,” insisted Kigiuna, flushed with anger. “Give Alaana a
fair chance!”
Nuralak didn’t answer. His stony features, bisected by his long, thin fingers regarded Kigiuna with a hawk’s cool, predatory gaze.
“The shaman must heal herself,” said Patloq sadly.
“It’s not your daughter!” said Kigiuna. “Not your daughter lying there at point of death.”
“Be still!” hissed Nuralak. His hand went to the brace of a hunting knife he kept always at his waist.
“I won’t!” raged Kigiuna.
“This type of freak storm may lift at any time,” suggested Maguan, eager to change the subject.
“The food will run out first,” said Nuralak. “We can go without food but we can’t go without fuel. We have to slow down the fires. Burn less.” He measured the responses from the men. “Some may have to die,” he said in a low voice.
“We’ll all die,” said Talliituk frantically. “What if this storm lasts forever? Or two full moons, like the long night? Winter isn’t far away — if the sun goes down on this storm…”
“We’re all afraid, Talliituk but–” said Patloq.
“No,” said Maguan. “I’m not afraid.”
He raised his voice, and people stopped and turned to listen.
“I’m not afraid because Alaana is with us. She fights for us!”
A few of the men cast a quick glance at Alaana where she lay shivering on the floor with Ben bent over her. They didn’t seem particularly inspired by the sight.
“Do you think she has stopped fighting?” asked Maguan. “Do you think she abandons us, while there is still breath in her? Do you think she ever would? We’ve watched her face dangers that would have frozen the heart of any man here — even you, Nuralak. When terror walks among us, she asks nothing of us. Does she walk alone? Does she fight alone?”
Nobody said anything, so Maguan answered his own question. “I don’t think so. We are with her. Always. This is no different.” He sent a withering glance at Patloq. “No, I’m not cold. And I am not afraid.
“I am not afraid because Itoriksak stands with me, and Kigiuna stands with him. And standing beside my family is Anaktuvik and his clan, and beside them Tugtutsiak’s family, and beside them Patloq and his sons. And Patloq is married to Nuralak’s sister. And who could be afraid with Nuralak at his back?”
The corners of Nuralak’s mouth turned down. He nodded slightly.
“I’m not afraid,” continued Maguan, “because we are all together. We are, all of us, Anatatook. I am not cold because we, together, can never be cold.
“Talliituk, you talk of the winter. What do we do when the sun goes out of the sky in winter? We eat what we have. We try to get more. Do we lay down and die?”
Talliituk offered no answer except an embarrassed shuck of his head.
“Do we lay down and wait for the snow to cover us up? Or for meat and fish to rain down from the sky? What do you say, Talliituk? Do we lay down?”
“No,” said Talliituk firmly.
“You’re damned right we don’t!”
The men expressed their agreement in a resounding chorus.
“Well said!” Patloq clapped Maguan on the back.
“What should we do, Maguan?” asked someone.
“We will weather the storm. But more than that. We will fight it!”
The men cheered again.
“What do you advise about the white man’s oil?”
Maguan cast a guilty look at his father. Kigiuna returned a sad little smile, acknowledging his defeat. The spirit of the Anatatook was a raging river flow, as it was meant to be, and his concern for Alaana just one lone voice among them.
“We should do as Aquppak says,” suggested Maguan. “He leads us.”
Aquppak stepped forward, surprised at the way Maguan had ceded power back to him. He was clever, that one. The men shouldn’t be asking Maguan for a plan anyway. He was the leader, not Maguan. And yet Maguan had spoken well, bringing them all together, uniting them.
Aquppak lacked Maguan’s ability to inspire them; all of his plans called for dividing the ranks as a means to consolidate his own power. But Maguan was different. Now they were all listening, now they were all drawn together in a way he could never have done.
At times Aquppak still saw himself as the little boy, dressed in dogskin clothes, sent out in the mornings to beg food for his elderly grandfather. It didn’t matter he had worked hard, earned the respect of the hunters. It didn’t matter that he was now headman. His grip on that position was shaky, with Maguan and Talliituk snapping at his heels. It didn’t matter that he had married Ivalu and she had given him two strong sons. He would always feel like that beggarly boy until such time as he got what he really wanted.
“Nuralak is right,” said Aquppak. “Kigiuna is blinded by concern for his daughter. But we can’t all die, not even for the shaman, who has been little help to us this far. It’s time for us to take matters in our own strong hands.” He nodded, smiling, at Maguan. “We cut back the fires, we try to last a few more days.”
Nuralak and the hunter clans voiced their approval. Kigiuna and Talliituk exchanged a disappointed glance. Tugtutsiak’s son had developed a nervous tremor of his head, giving him the appearance that he was shivering, but only from the neck up. The prospect of the cold weighed heavily on him. “We can burn the sled runners,” he said weakly.
“There may be a better use for the kabloona’s sled than fuel for the fire,” added Aquppak. “I will take it out, hitch up whatever dogs we have left. The cache at the Forked River is not too far. If I take the sled and the dogs, I might be able to bring back enough food for a few more days.”
“It’s a good idea,” said Nuralak. “I wish I could go with you.”
Patloq shook his head. “Me too,” he said, “but I’m too old. In truth most of us could not hope to make such a trip.”
Maguan watched his father’s face as he came to the same conclusion. Kigiuna’s eyes took on a faraway look, as if he were gazing back through the years, searching for the young man he used to be, a man who would have offered himself up for such hazardous duty without a moment’s hesitation. Instead he balled his fists and stood quiet.
“I’ll go,” said Maguan.
“In this?” asked Talliituk, with a gesture toward the raging cave mouth. “It’s death out there.”
“Yes, in this,” confirmed Maguan.
“Good,” said Aquppak. He nodded his swaddled head. Between the rags only glimpses of cheeks blackened with frost scar and peeling skin were revealed. No one could see what sort of emotion his eyes held. “The cache at Forked River is well-stocked with meat. And plenty of whale blubber. That will burn long and brightly for us in this cave. We’ll leave right away.”
“You can’t go, Aquppak,” said Maguan. “Your face will fall off.”
Aquppak spread his palms and bowed his head. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Maguan, can’t go alone,” said Kigiuna.
Itoriksak made to take a step forward, but Kigiuna yanked him back before he could say anything. “Not both of my sons!” he hissed into Itoriksak’s ear. “I won’t have it!”
“I am with him,” said Talliituk. He looked around as if surprised at the sound of his own words. The looks of admiration from the other men bolstered him and he added, “I’ll go.”
“I couldn’t hope for better company,” agreed Maguan.
Maguan and Talliituk, thought Aquppak. Perfect.
“Higilak!” someone called out. “Higilak, let us have a story so that we shall not feel the cold.”
The old woman waved them off. She remained at Alaana’s side, whispering a tale of healing into her left ear.
“I have a story to pass the time,” announced Itoriksak. “I’ll tell. It’s a story about the way my sister Alaana, the shaman, saved my life by breaking my leg. Gather round. Come around, all you little ones. You haven’t heard this one before.”
CHAPTER 37
BROTHERS IN THE STORM
“Damn,” said Maguan. T
he traces had tangled yet again.
He hopped down from the sled. A myriad of tiny ice crystals were hurled into his face by the merciless wind. Finding their way under his hood, the hoarfrost stung his face. He wiped his cheeks as best he could. Despite thick mittens the pain in his fingers was nearly unbearable. The heel of his left hand had hardened, the first two fingers stiff as wood and exquisitely painful. Whenever he touched anything they burned. But the pain was a good sign. As long the cold still hurt, he wouldn’t lose his fingers.
Beneath a tarp on the sled Talliituk was taking some rest. Maguan stepped toward the tangle of bickering dogs. They were the best dogs that still remained, but they weren’t used to working together and recognized no leader. Starving and mired in the heavy drifted snow, they were quick to snap at each other. He knocked one huskie in the head and then another as he struggled to untangle their lines. His blows had little strength and the dogs hardly noticed.
Conditions for travel by sled were the worst Maguan had ever seen. A deep layer of snow usually facilitated travel in winter but only after it had been packed down hard by the wind. This stuff, continually whipped up by the fey gusts that blew from several directions at once, would not stay down.
Maguan sorted out the sealskin lines, working with half-numbed fingers. Sharp, rough ice had gathered on every edge of the tangled traces. It seemed he had performed this task a hundred times already. How long had it been? He had lost all concept of time. Only one thought weighed on his mind. Survival. Death was very close. It reveled in the chaos of the storm; cloaked in the cold, it rode the wind. It pulled at him. It pulled, it pulled. It nagged at him with a deceptively soothing voice urging him to lie down, to close his eyes, to sleep.
Death was all around him.
And he was so small, just one man alone in a swirling wilderness of white. But there was nothing else for it. Too many people were counting on him to bring back the food. His beautiful wife, his darling children. All the others. He would march on, forcing stiff, unyielding limbs to move, a frozen corpse driven by willpower alone if it came to it. He would never stop. No use in worrying. Just untangle the leads and start the dogs moving again.