by Ken Altabef
“Borghanu!” he exclaimed, using his son’s birth name. “No!”
“Don’t worry,” said Vithrok calmly. “You’ll take his place.”
The Tunrit’s eye, nestled deep beneath the prodigious brow, never left Baliqki. His oversized head tilted slightly, offering a thoughtful and confident lift of rotted eyebrows.
Balikqi, realizing some of the trouble he’d fallen into, cast a fleeting glance at the sky.
“Do you think I walk alone?” the bear said. “Tornarssuk, master of the bears, is always with me!”
“Too late,” Vithrok crowed. He held one crooked, charred hand in the air, palm downward. He swept it in a high arc that outlined the citadel’s dome.
Balikqi was assaulted by a thousand conflicting sensations at once — a jolt of emerald vomit, ruby claws rattling, onyx teeth flowing like water, an endless pool of blood screeching, screaming, squealing. A fiery explosion of butterflies in flight and in the spaces between swam clattering, clinking, clanging, tinkling fish. Polliwogs and tadpoles in indigo and violet. A midnight owl giggling with echoes upon echoes to make a symphony of sweet song. A coat of kittens glazed in azure and chromium tones. Smoke, tumor, bone, musk ox and mushroom, a dream of narwhals reciting exquisite poetry both hideous and foolish and bitter luminous.
The entire dome of the citadel was cloaked in a blanket of pure Beforetime. A white noise that shut out all else except for the mind-blowing realization that anything was possible. Anything. Everything. All at once.
“Too late,” said Vithrok again. “The Beforetime, in pieces I have collected from across Nunatsiaq.”
Balikqi reeled backward. He struggled to regain his wits amid a riot of sheer madness.
His connection to Tornarssuk, his guardian spirit, was broken. He glanced again at the dome of the citadel and its kaleidoscopic flashes of colorful light, he heard again the shriek and caw of every bird in unison, tasted raw meat and fresh blood and berries and smelled wildflowers in bloom and a hundred other scents for which he did not even have a name.
He must re-establish the connection. He reached out for the sky but drew his paw quickly away, burned by liquid quicksilver.
“No one can help you,” said Vithrok. “No one can know you are here, cut off from your guardian and your friends.” He gestured toward the coruscating dome. “No one can see through that.”
Balikqi shook his narrow head, his upper lip curled to bare yellowed fangs. Down on all fours, he circled slowly around.
“Then I shall fight as I am,” he roared. “With strong tooth and merciless claw. If that is all I have, so be it. It will be enough!”
The bear charged. He came straight at the Tunrit, a white juggernaut with deadly intent. He swung a massive paw for the sorcerer’s head.
Vithrok stepped aside to avoid Balikqi’s attack. As he dodged effortlessly around to the side he bashed the passing bear across the back of the neck, sending him crashing to the far wall of the citadel. As pure spirit, Balikqi didn’t feel the physical force of the blow, but the psychic energy behind it was enough to nearly knock him senseless.
The spirit-bear spun around and launched himself again at his foe. He snapped his tremendous jaw at the Tunrit but missed his mark. Vithrok had confidently anticipated the attack and slipped under it. He struck back with a spike of hot fire that passed through Balikqi’s chest. The pain was incredible, but the bear did not relent.
“Awarrrrrgh!” he roared.
Snarling with rage, he came at the sorcerer again, both paws slashing with a whirlwind of raking claws. He bounced back as if he had hit a solid wall. Knocked into the air, he remained there, fixed in place, his four legs splayed out in all directions. He could not move.
“You are mine now,” said Vithrok.
Balikqi strained at his invisible bonds. But it was no use.
“I want the spell, the web in the sky,” said Vithrok. “The lever with which you moved the mountain.”
“Never!” said Balikqi.
Vithrok shook his head in disgust. “Listen to me,” he said calmly. “You will. If I have to turn you inside out, you will.”
Balikqi closed his eyes. For the first time in a very long time, his great heart knew fear.
CHAPTER 45
HEART OF DARKNESS
In the shadow world, the creatures of night whisper a secret call. A final warning. The murmur, carried on a gentle breeze, is lost among the terrifying cacophony of background noises — the endless laments and ruminations of the shadows. The darkness is complete. The sky holds not even a glimpse of a star.
Ben shivered. He could never get used to it. The dark, the cold, the hunger. The only thing of value in this place were the valiant hearts of its long-suffering people.
His family sat outside their smoke iglu. Outside or inside, it didn’t seem to matter at all. With no lamp to burn, it was as desolate and gloomy inside the iglu as out upon the ocean’s frozen shore. What protection could those walls give, when they weren’t made of solid ice but thin rinds of black smoke? It was as cold as the icy heart of the storm.
He reached for the braid of Noona’s hair, but no sooner did he fold it upon itself, the strands began to drift apart. His own hand had a texture quite different from that of the other shadows. He appeared solid, not truly a shadow, covered by something that had once been living skin now shriveled and burned black.
“I’m hungry,” complained Tama.
“I know,” he replied. “My poor little lost shadow. There will be something to eat soon.” It was, as always, an unconvincing performance.
Ben took up the braiding again, looping the winnowy strands of smoke slowly over and over with a ridiculous determination.
Noona pulled away from her father, shaking her smoky hair loose, her fingers busily playing at the string dance. She was quite accomplished at the game. Ben wondered how she could work the smoky strings so well, but in her hands they hardly seemed insubstantial at all. The young girl gazed intently at the shape she’d just made. A weird light shimmered in her eyes. She can see, thought Ben. See what? The other side?
Ben found it hard to think clearly about the Anatatook of the real world, the physical world. The other side seemed so far away. Even now he heard echoes of their voices in the distance — talking, chatting, making ready for the trip to the bay. He heard Old Higilak telling a story to the children to pass the time. He realized he must soon go back. They must already be looking for him. The Anatatook would pass their winter at the ocean; but where, he wondered, where did these people go when the long dark night came over the world?
He heard a fragment of a sentence in Alaana’s voice. It sounded so strange. Here in the shadow world it was almost impossible to think about Alaana at all. She was dead and gone, a victim of the fever as a child. Old Higilak, in her faltering and uneven way, had told Ben the story.
He wrapped his arms around Tama in a heartfelt embrace. It was hard to hold the girl, her shoulders as insubstantial as mist, but the hug brought forth a good feeling just the same. Tama murmured contentedly. And Ben felt that this was right.
His wife sat down beside them. Marriage to Agruta still seemed awkward; for many years Ben had known her only as Itoriksak’s wife.
Agruta sighed, a sound of frustration, a clenched fist. So restless and moody, she would not stop fidgeting. Ben wished she could relax. He reached over and brushed a stray lock of hair from her face.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “You aren’t my Ben. Do you think I don’t know?”
Ben withdrew his hand. “I didn’t mean…”
“Didn’t mean what?”
Ben stared at the vague outlines of her face. Sometimes it was all too much. What did they want from him? “Your Ben,” he said, “What happened to him?”
“Taken away. I don’t know where. I don’t know who could have taken him. It happened during the night.”
“The night?” said Ben. He thought of the vast emptiness he had encountered during his visit to the shado
w world at night. He had found nothing and no one. Except the Light-Bringer.
“He can’t be dead because you are here,” she continued. “So I know he is being kept from me. Taken away, but I will find him.”
Noona sobbed. And Ben realized what she must have been doing. Looking for her real father with the string game.
“But there is a reason,” said Old Higilak. Ben had forgotten the old woman was with them. It was too dark to see, but her voice sounded close at hand. “A plan at work. Taken for a reason, that’s what I think, so that you might come among us, Ben. So that you might be here to save us.”
He didn’t like to think the shadow Ben was being held somewhere — a prisoner? — so that he might take his place.
“I can’t,” said Ben. “I can’t do anything. I just wanted to be with my daughter.”
“The girl is the link,” whispered Higilak. “That’s the way He wants it.”
“Who?” Ben asked. He didn’t like the sound of that. The Light-Bringer? Who else could she be talking about in such reverential tones?
“Here comes Aquppak,” she said. “Why don’t you ask him?”
In the physical world Alaana had refused a proposal from Aquppak in favor of Ben. She had found Aquppak too aggressive, too manipulative. When he tried to take her by force, she’d cut him with a blade. But the shadow Aquppak was not like that at all. This Aquppak was a noble figure among the shadows, a true leader of the people as he was meant to be.
There were no shamans here. No one to speak for these people or protect them. But Aquppak did his best; he promised them something better, never letting any of them give up hope.
Ben stood to meet him.
“These damn lice,” said Aquppak, raking smoky fingers through his hair, which was made of smoke, for lice which were made of shadow.
“They itch!” said Aquppak, “but you can’t pick them away.”
Ben had never heard him complain before.
“They itch and itch,” said Aquppak. “I don’t mind the hunger. I don’t mind the cold. I’ve become a friend to darkness. But that itch! Don’t you feel it?”
“The lice? Yes.”
“No. Not the lice,” said Aquppak sadly. “The yearning to be free.”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “I am free. We… we are free.” For a moment he wasn’t sure what he meant by that. It sounded like another person talking, someone who didn’t understand, someone who didn’t belong. Because in this place there was no freedom. No light, no warmth, food that didn’t satisfy, not even worth eating. The hunger. He felt that. Oh, yes he felt that. And that was what Aquppak was talking about. Emptiness and longing. “Yes,” he said, “I feel it too.”
“The other men wanted to kill you,” Aquppak said.
“What?”
“When you first came. The old woman spoke for you. She explained it to them. She told them.”
“They were confused,” explained Higilak. “They can see that you aren’t a shade, that you are a living man’s soul out of place here. That made them suspicious.”
“I don’t know what to say. I…”
“You don’t have to say anything,” offered Higilak.
“It made them suspicious,” continued Aquppak, “but to me it gave hope. And I told them, if a living soul could traverse the shadow world, isn’t it possible for a shadow to go the other way? For the shadows to travel to the real world and at last take our place in the light?”
Ben had not thought of that. He’d been so preoccupied with his lost daughter. He had not thought of that.
“Don’t you see?” said Aquppak. “You come from the other side. You can cross the shadows. You can get us across.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t even know what I’m doing, I just think of Tama and that’s how I cross.”
“It’s not a far journey,” said Aquppak.
“No, it’s not. It’s just around the corner.”
“I know,” said Aquppak. “When the night comes, when we suffer, I can hear his heartbeat. On the other side. I hear it.”
He turned to face Ben. There was a glint in his eye, the first sparkle Ben had seen since coming to this forsaken place.
“I hear it singing in the night,” Aquppak continued. “Thump thump, thump thump. It’s the heartbeat of the other one, the living one. It’s my heartbeat. Thump, thump. On the other side.”
He pressed his hand against his smoky shirt. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “There’s nothing here. But on the other side! I know, because I hear it. Every night. It speaks to me of food, of warmth, of love.”
Aquppak turned his gaze around the camp. There was nothing to see. “There can’t there be love here,” he said. “There can’t be joy. We are just shadows.”
“Is that what you want for your daughter?” asked Higilak.
“Of course not,” returned Ben. “I don’t want that for anyone.”
“We just want to walk in the real world,” continued Aquppak, and it was difficult not to feel his enthusiasm. He wasn’t lamenting the things they didn’t have, he was speaking with promise of that which they would soon obtain. “To feel the warmth of sunlight on skin, to enjoy the contentment of a full belly. To feel a lover’s embrace.”
“Is such a thing possible?” Ben wondered.
“Maybe,” said Aquppak. “Maybe not. But that heartbeat talks to me at night. It tells me so. Thump, thump it says to me, promising blood and life. Thump, thump. I’ll have freedom for my people or die trying.”
Again Ben was impressed by the strength of this shadow and the nobility of his dream. This Aquppak was so different from the real one. So much better. But weren’t they both real?
“We want to live in the light!” he said, raising a clenched fist. Not a gesture of frustration this time, but a symbol of hope and determination.
Ben felt overwhelmed. It couldn’t all be up to him. That wasn’t possible. “I’m not the one.”
Aquppak hung his head low, the stray locks of smoky hair blanketing his eyes. “My people grow desperate in the face of the approaching winter. The long night is coming. We must act soon.”
“And do what? I don’t understand.”
“There has to be a way.”
***
Ben woke with a start.
The sheet had been pulled away, the shadows suddenly gone.
He felt a moment of intense disorientation as he awakened to a different reality. Even the faltering light of dawn seemed too bright, the snow too white. It was too quiet, with only the noises of the sleds in the distance. He had wandered far from the camp. The day of the journey to the bay. The Anatatook all getting ready to go. He had made shadow under a tented scrap of skin, chancing one last visit to the shadow world to check on Tama before the band set out, to make sure the shadows would follow.
But in the shadow world he had lost track of his mission. He found it too difficult to keep the two sides in mind at once; this reality faded when he walked in shadow, just as the shadows were rapidly fading now.
Aquppak’s face loomed above him. Ben realized he had pulled the sheet away.
The headman sneered disapprovingly, his eyes glinting with suspicion. Again Ben felt a wave of disorientation. This Aquppak seemed completely different from the man with whom he had just been sharing the shadows. His face was still raw pink and puckered with frost scars. The top half of his left ear was gone, lost to exposure during the trek to Black Face. A lock of stringy hair fell carelessly over one eye.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Ben stumbled for a response. He’d worried that Alaana might catch him out, but not Aquppak. “Getting ready.”
He didn’t like the suspicious look in Aquppak’s eye as he peered under the skin. “What have you got there?”
“I don’t have anything,” he said, whipping the skin away. Beneath lay only shadow. “Just an old tent cover I found in the snow.”
“All the way out here, so far from the others
?”
Ben stood up. “I don’t have to answer your questions.”
“No. No, you don’t.” He smiled, and the handsome young man he had once been broke the surface of his ravaged face. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m just glad I found you. I have something for you.”
Ben found the headman’s conciliatory tone even less to his liking than the accusatory one. “I don’t want--”
Aquppak struck him full in the face. Ben’s head snapped back. One leg gave out and he stumbled onto one knee. He had fought Aquppak once before. With one useless arm, it had not been much of a contest. He had use of his left arm now, but it was still weak. He had no desire to fight.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“What I have to do. Don’t feel bad about it. You’re just in the way.”
Ben didn’t like the sound of that. He glanced back at the Anatatook camp in the distance. He had strayed too far from the others, seeking privacy under the skin. If he cried out, he wouldn’t be heard. And Aquppak would only laugh. No, not ever again. He might make a run for it, but Aquppak was very quick on his feet.
Ben swung with his good right arm. Aquppak dodged the blow, laughing. He spun around and before Ben had a chance to react he was hit in the face again. Blood trickled down over his lips. Aquppak kicked him in the stomach. He fell backward. Aquppak was on top of him, his knee planted firmly on Ben’s chest.
“Hsst! You’re weak.”
Before Ben could cry out, Aquppak grabbed him by the throat with both hands. Aquppak’s knee pressed against his chest with his full weight. His other knee pinned Ben’s good arm at the shoulder.
“Years ago, Alaana had a choice to make,” Aquppak said. “In those days I suffered sidelong glances from the hunters and talk from behind the hand. A young hunter who came from nothing, whose family had nothing, just a broken down old grandfather and a crazy sister.
“Well, they’re both gone. And so is the past. Gone. I rose up among the Anatatook men. Slowly they began to see. No one could bring the caribou down like me. No one had my eyes, my sure arm, my patience and skill. No one.