by Ken Altabef
“Look at me now. Headman of the Anatatook. Things have changed. If Alaana could have foreseen this moment, those years ago, I think she would have chosen differently. It’s not too late, you know. Not at all.”
Ben struggled under Aquppak’s weight, but couldn’t flip him aside. Aquppak knew how to pin someone helplessly to the ground. Ben couldn’t breathe. He threw himself side to side and bought himself a small gasp of air.
“And you?” Aquppak laughed but there was no joy in it. “She chose poorly,” he concluded, smiling at Ben as if they were the best of friends, two people sharing a secret between them. “After you’re gone, she’ll rethink that choice. Winter is coming. Another long night, and I want her to share it with me. When we make the trip to the bay, I want her to ride on my sled.”
Ben’s eyes bulged. What was this? Was he crazy? “She won’t,” he was able to hiss out, using the last of his air. “Never.”
Aquppak’s fingers closed hard, digging into Ben’s neck. “Maybe not at first. Maybe not today. But with you gone and buried in the snow, I think she’ll come around. I have plenty of room on my sled. Ivalu is mother to my two sons but she’ll be second; Alaana will be first wife. I’m the headman. I can support two wives just as easily as one. She’ll bring your children. Don’t worry, I’ll provide for them.”
Ben wriggled his good arm free. He wrenched one of Aquppak’s hands away.
Aquppak drove an elbow into Ben’s face, replaced his knee atop the arm, and resumed his stranglehold.
“Hurry up and die,” he said. “I’ve waited twelve years for Alaana to come around and change her mind, to see me as I really am. I’m tired of waiting.”
Ben struggled to shake off his grip, but it was impossible. He was weakening, blacking out. A crushing desperation took him back to the days of his captivity and torment at the hands of the Yupikut. He remembered the sickening wet thump as they beat him, their mocking laughter…
He didn’t want to die. Not like this.”
A floodgate opened, loosing a riptide of horrific memories. Things he hadn’t thought about in years. Things he had tried hard to forget. The helplessness — his hands bound, unable to move, unable to fight them off. The cruelty, the senseless beatings and humiliation. No, he would not endure that again. Not even for a moment, not even if it was his last moment.
Sparkling lights flashed before his eyes. Aquppak’s face, twisted with rage, faded into darkness. Ben felt a painful cramping in his bowels, his head pounding; he could no longer see. Still, he resisted. He would stop this. He was not helpless.
He felt his entire body go dark. Then light, then dark again.
Suddenly Aquppak’s hands let go. Aquppak screamed.
Ben scrabbled backward into the cold snow, gasping for breath as his vision slowly cleared.
He caught a glimpse of the second shadow as it boiled away from his skin. Aquppak, spun around in the snow, screaming, screaming. Swathes of inky blackness attached themselves to him. He thrashed this way and that, trying to shake off the roiling shadows. They clung to his face and hands, dissolving away his clothes with an acid touch, burning him. He kept screaming, spinning around unable to do anything about it, his shrieking mouth spewing a bloody froth. Whenever he shook off a tongue of black smoke, it swept right back again.
Ben realized the shadows were killing him, eating away at him with their darkness. His desperation had brought them across.
He heard Aquppak’s bones snapping beneath the skin.
Ben swallowed hard, his throat still on fire from Aquppak’s murderous grip.
“Stop!” he rasped. “Stop, you’re killing him!”
Though Aquppak more than deserved it, Ben couldn’t let this man die.
“Stop!” he said again. “Don’t kill him! It’s Aquppak. That’s Aquppak there. If you kill this man, your Aquppak will die on the other side!”
The shadows pulled back. Aquppak dropped to the tundra, limp as a rag doll.
Ben saw two distinct figures. One shadow glanced quickly at him. He recognized Nuralak, head of one of the hunter families. The other figure, a dark silhouette facing away, looked down at Aquppak where he lay writhing in agony on the ground.
Then suddenly, both shadows flitted away and were gone.
CHAPTER 46
INTO THE LIGHT
The shadow of Nuralak sped across the tundra, his mood expansive.
Free! He was truly free. On the other side.
He raised his head to greet the sun, letting the shadowy hood drop away from his face. He lifted his hands to it, hands which had become amazingly substantial. He clenched his fists and flexed his shoulders and chest, delighting in the feel of muscles he had never exercised before. He felt real. Hands outstretched to the sky, he let the sun see his face. He felt its radiant breath beating down on his cheeks, his brow, his eyes. It was warm. Warm.
There was light. And Nunatsiaq, he observed, was a beautiful land indeed. The snows, frozen hard with the approaching winter, glittered like gemstones in the sunlight. Even the rocky ledges, those dreary staples of the earth trod so carelessly underfoot, had fascinating textures. The sun shone brilliant red and orange on its bed of shockingly blue sky and white clouds. He stared up at them in amazement.
He drew in breath. The cool air graced his lungs with a variety of rich scents drifting over from the Anatatook settlement. Seal in the pot, burning moss, spiced stew. Glorious.
It was everything Aquppak had promised.
Nuralak chuckled with pure unbridled gaiety, moving faster and faster. Then he realized he was hurling forward, being pulled along, twisting, turning, drawn inexorably forward, out of control.
Alaana stacked the eagle feathers in a neat pile atop the oiled calfskin tarp. Such a waste. Most of her masks and drums had been destroyed by the massive storm. The Moon mask had cracked in two places. This mask of the Upperworld, which had once housed a noble and useful helper spirit, was a wrecked ruin of feathers and splintered wood. Maybe, she thought, Kigiuna might patch it back together again someday. For now, she carefully packed the smashed bits away.
“Angatkok! Angatkok!”
A pair of men came running toward her. They were kin of Nuralak.
“Come quickly!” one of the men urged. “Something terrible has happened to Nuralak.”
Alaana rose shakily to her feet. Leaning her weight upon a spear shaft, she followed after the men. The strength was returning to her limbs, but only slowly. In time, she thought, she would be well again, but that time would be long in coming.
Nuralak’s family stood huddled around their fallen patriarch.
“What happened?” Alaana asked.
“Something attacked him,” said Arouk, Nuralak’s eldest son. “Some kind of animal.”
“It was fast,” said another of the hunters. “And black. I think it was a giant bat.” He looked frantically around with an exaggerated whipcord motion of his head. “Where did it go?”
Alaana bent over the body. Nuralak lay motionless, his back slightly arched, his hands clawed in agony. One eye shut, one open, staring lifelessly up at the shaman. A dollop of bloody froth dripped from the corner of his gaping mouth.
Alaana put her hand on his chest. It was still.
“He’s dead,” she said.
“Do something!” said Arouk.
“Look in his left eye,” advised Quixaaragon as it materialized on Alaana’s left shoulder.
“I know what to do,” replied Alaana, using the secret language.
She pressed her thumb down on the man’s lower eyelid. Fixing her concentration, she gazed into the abyss of Nuralak’s iris.
“What do you see?” asked Quixaaragon.
“Nothing. His soul, his light is gone.” Where his light should have been there was only a smudge, like the sooty traces after a fire. Alaana had never seen anything like it.
She looked up, invoking the spirit-vision. The tundra colored itself purple. The souls of the people blazed with fire and light. Ala
ana looked for Nuralak’s ghost hovering near the body but there was nothing. Nothing. His soul was gone. Just like Tama. No, but this wasn’t the same thing that had happened to her daughter. Tama’s soul had remained with the body at first; Alaana had spoken to her.
Alaana turned back to the dead man’s family.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“I saw it all,” replied Irinniq, who was Nuralak’s wife. “My husband was packing up his sled, tying down the skins.” She gestured feebly to the sled. “Suddenly he cried out as if being strangled, his arms flew out and he fell straight down. His whole body trembled and shook, and foam came from his mouth like one of the dogs when it’s suffering the ague.” She pressed her lips against a sob. It was too hard for her to go on.
“Did you see any animal?”
“Something,” she said. “But it was no animal. It looked like a man. Dark. Fluttering and flapping like rags in the wind. It was fast. And then, nothing. Just my Nuralak, lying there.”
Alaana noticed a strange smell, like the residue left after a lightning strike.
“I smell it too,” said Quixaaragon.
Alaana closed the dead man’s eye.
“I’m sorry, Irinniq,” she said. “There is nothing I can do for him.” It was a painful admission for Alaana to make. But without some remnant of soul left in the body there was nothing for her to work with.
The wife nodded, sniffling, and went to sit down on the sled.
“That’s a mistake,” said Quixaaragon. “Old Manatook taught you better than that. When all else falls apart the shaman must be strong. You have to offer them hope, not admit defeat.”
“I can’t summon him from thin air!” Alaana said to Quixaaragon. “It’s just gone, and I haven’t the strength left to pretend.”
“What happens,” asked the helper spirit, “when water meets fire? What happens when light meets shadow?”
“Is that it?” she asked. “A shadow?” Alaana had seen intrusions from the shadow world before, but those had been only annoyances, little demons that managed to cross over and cause minor sickness. There had never been anything like this. Nuralak’s entire soul, immolated by shadow.
A crowd of people had gathered around them, people asking questions. Her father, Maguan, Iggy. Alaana had no answers for them. Quixaaragon snapped its beak angrily and disappeared from her shoulder. She was alone, weak and tired, and unable to help.
Another young hunter came running up to her. “Alaana, we need your help. It’s Patloq. He’s been struck down. He seems dead.”
“Just like Nuralak,” said Alaana. She knew there was nothing she could do, but agreed to take a look.
She stepped away, so shaky on her legs Iggy had to hold her up.
“I’m all right,” she told her friend. Gently she shook the big man’s hand off her arm. “It’s best if the shaman walks alone,” she said sadly. Quixaaragon was right. Keeping up appearances was all she could hope to do now.
As if all that wasn’t enough, another disturbance broke out. The crowd parted. Cries of “Aquppak” split the air.
The Anatatook headman approached, beaten and bloody, dragging one foot behind him. In one hand he carried the kabloona rifle, though its weight seemed too much for his arm. He dragged it along, carving a furrow in the snow.
“What happened to you?” someone asked.
“Alaana attacked me,” he said as if it were a simple fact. Aquppak spoke as loudly as he could, but his voice cracked midway through the sentence. “She tried to kill me.”
“That’s a lie!” objected Kigiuna. “I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t care what you believe,” returned Aquppak. “You’re nothing. We’ll ask Nuralak.”
“He’s dead,” Iggy pointed out. “And Patloq too.”
Aquppak stopped to peer at the figure on the ground. It seemed as if he hadn’t the strength to look down and walk forward at the same time. “Nuralak dead,” he mumbled in disbelief. And Patloq too. His two staunchest supporters among the hunter families. This could not be coincidence. “What about you, Arouk?” he asked. “You stand with me. Yes?”
Arouk had gone to comfort his mother. He waved the headman away without rising from the sled. “Leave us to our grief. We’ve no part in this.”
“You can’t stay out of it,” Aquppak said. “Don’t you see? She’s done this. Alaana! She killed them!” Aquppak stabbed a finger at Nuralak’s corpse. The crowd looked from Alaana to the headman in total confusion, not knowing what to believe.
“Go to the dogs with your lies!” shouted Kigiuna.
Aquppak gestured at Alaana with the tip of the rifle. “She’s done this to get rid of the… to get rid of me. She wants her brother to be headman. She knows we’ll stand against him. She tried to kill me. She sent monsters against me.”
“That’s a lie,” said Ben. His voice, still hoarse and raspy, cut through the crowd. The people stepped aside to let him enter the circle. A big ugly bruise had blossomed on his cheek where he’d been struck. One thing was for certain. Alaana had not caused that mark.
Ben stabbed a finger at Aquppak. “He attacked me, he tried to kill me.”
A tumultuous murmur rose up from the crowd. This was a serious accusation indeed. Violence of that sort could never be allowed among the people of Nunatsiaq, not even by the headman.
“You fought him?” asked Kigiuna. “You did all that to him?” It seemed impossible to believe that Ben could be responsible for Aquppak’s condition. Half his face was burned, his clothes shredded and the rest of him seemed barely held together.
“He attacked me,” Ben said with conviction. But seeing this would never be enough for them, he added, “There was something else, some dark things. It must have been Alaana. Protecting me.”
The crowd sighed. Now they understood. The shaman would certainly protect her husband, even at any distance.
Alaana, however, knew that he spoke a lie. She hadn’t done anything.
Aquppak screamed in frustration. The sigh of the crowd, the looks on their faces. It was too much for him. Maybe he could have gone on with his bluff, insisting that he was the innocent victim and Alaana the aggressor. But he saw that no one trusted him. Not against the word of the shaman, who did not ever lie.
With sentiment turned against him, Aquppak raised the rifle. Alaana, flanked by Iggy and her brother Maguan, stood ten paces away.
“I’ll kill her,” said Aquppak. He took another, dragging step. He held the gun with only one hand, the other bent awkwardly at his side, but he held the gun steady. Its muzzle pointed directly at Alaana. His eyes flitted in rapid motion, weighing the reactions of the men. “If any of you make a move against me, you’ll die first.”
“Put that away,” said Kigiuna.
“No,” said Aquppak. “It’s my word against hers, isn’t it? We’ll let the spirits decide. I’m just a man, just a hunter. And she is the shaman. Alaana has so many friends — the clouds in the sky, the snow, the pebbles on the beach, the wind, the air itself. All I have is this weapon, fashioned by the hand of man.”
He thumbed a latch on the rifle and it made a sharp click. Several of the men cried out, thinking he had already fired the gun.
Aquppak grinned. “So what do you say, Alaana? Can you stop this bullet?”
Alaana said nothing. She looked upon the face of her nemesis, wondering how she could have let this happen. They had been great friends once, before Ben came between them. Aquppak had even saved her life long ago, when she had fallen into a crevasse on Dog-Ear Ridge. Now she stood helpless, skewered on the point of his forsaken ambition.
“Well, come on then,” challenged Aquppak. “Call upon the spirits!”
“That weapon won’t get respect back for you,” Alaana said. “And you’ll lose everything.”
“Oh, that’s just what I’d expect someone to say,” Aquppak announced, some of his former bravado creeping back into his voice. “Someone weak and helpless.”
“Kill
ing me won’t change anything.”
Aquppak snickered. It seemed to him the shaman had just acknowledged that he’d already won. “We’ll just see if it doesn’t.”
Aquppak fired the gun.
In this, as in everything else, Aquppak did not ever miss. His aim was sure.
But Iggy, standing by Alaana’s side, had made his own decision. The Big Mountain moved fast. He pushed in front of Alaana, knocking her to the ground beneath him. Aquppak’s shot was fired, and Iggy cried out in pain.
Maguan threw his hunting knife. Maguan rarely missed either. The knife edge sank into Aquppak’s leading shoulder. The rifle, its charge already spent and smoking, fell into the snow.
The Anatatook surged forward, falling upon their headman with a vengeance.
Alaana hit the ground beneath Iggy, all the wind knocked out of her. She didn’t know what it felt like to be shot. She thought she might have been hit and killed. She saw a flash of stars, heard Iggy grunt. Then her friend rolled off her, blood streaming from his hip.
“Something went into me,” said Iggy.
“Where?”
Iggy looked down at the rip in his parka. “My hip. It doesn’t hurt too much. Just a mosquito sting.”
“Press your hand against it,” Alaana advised, “until the bleeding stops.”
She wanted to thank Iggy, but before she could say anything he squeezed her arm and said solemnly, “The shaman does not ever walk alone.”
“Kill him!” the crowd roared. “Kill him!”
Aquppak lay helpless on the ground. If he had been battered and beaten before, a few more blows added to his misery. He gazed up at the people surrounding him. The people whom he had led only moments before were now calling for his death. Alaana had spoken true. He had lost everything.
“Alaana should do it,” said someone. “She’s the one who’s been wronged.”
Alaana stood above the fallen headman. Aquppak wore a confused look on his face, still reeling from this new beating, unable to understand how things had gone so terribly wrong for him.