She grimaced. “She’s been hurt really bad, but not in the way you can touch.”
Qummukarpoq walked around her. “There is that which can be saved once broken, and that which can only be saved before it breaks. Hearts, it seems to me, know nothing of restoration, only scarring. Your mother’s heart could have been saved before it was broken, but now it will scar and hurt till she herself is laid upon the ice.”
“That’s terrible!” Qaffa’s heart panged for her mother. “Can I… can you help her? You’re the best angakkuq ever.”
The king transfixed the void with his gaze. “No, Qaffanngilaq. This is not the type of thing that can be saved once broken.”
Her words melted like flakes to flame. Nothing to be done. Her mother would roll in torment until her days fell dark forever. The thought pressed. Qaffa crouched down and hugged her knees. “Then why didn’t you save her before she broke?”
The silence that came after somehow both stretched and bent back on itself. Finally, the king spoke. “Your grandmother was old for one of the Nuktipik. Sixty-three. But with the proper application of candles, she could have easily had twenty more years. Could have seen you return to the ice a full-grown woman resplendent in power. But to do so would have taken more than the pale yellow of blandly burning tuuaaq. Only the skills of a tirigusuusik could have preserved her, and your mother so loves to pretend to limit her use of the blue flame.”
“So… Mama could have saved her? But she didn’t, and now she’s sad?” That didn’t sound fully right, but her father wouldn’t lie to her. Or, more appropriately, he didn’t need to.
“She could have done many things, including save her mother. However, she only did one. It is the domain of curious children to speculate on what could be, and the domain of piteous elders to speculate on what could have been. Do not follow the folly of the old who never gathered wisdom. Think instead on how you can affect that which is to come.”
Something seemed a tilt off, nevertheless the words puckered on her heart like some far-flung betrayal. Her mother could have saved her own mother, but she chose death. Life on the ice was bitter and fierce, Qaffa knew that exceedingly well after spending so much time in the easy sun. It was all the more necessary to stick together and help where possible. Not leave your own mother to wither body from spirit. She hadn’t truly embraced the blue flame in the two years since Qummukarpoq had first instructed her on it. But if it was the only way…
“What should I do?” she asked her father.
He turned to her. “You must touch the things to be avoided. You must become tirigusuusik.”
Memories of the king burning with a tainted dark while profane blue sleeted through her spirit. Half-hearted struggles with the tuuaaq herself. Shame of concealing her dabbling from her mother. It all creaked in her mind like a single tree tipping in a windless cavern. She bent her head and shrank her voice to the size of a snowflake.
“I will.”
22
Orluvoq
She dreamt of ice. Why would she dream of aught else? That same primordial ice she had first beheld twenty years ago when Nalor had guided her spirit here to the Warren of Immortality. That same scent of dead ages feather-thin in her nostrils. The shut-in sense of stolid stretches of ice heaped above her head. The quibbling cloud of spirits hemming her every side.
It almost felt like home.
Orluvoq knelt with one hand in her lap and one on the clear, green stone, thumb running across a line of runes. Kitornak, she said within herself. Unlike her first visit, she could read every name inscribed in the catacomb. Sometimes she did just that, but none weighted her breath as heavily as her mother’s. It seemed like Kitornak had been the only woman she had never taken anything from. No, Kitornak had given freely.
A surge of introspection washed through Orluvoq. Here she knelt in her pitiable sanctuary of folded dreams, biding her time until reality summoned her back to ravage anew. Though she didn't look a day over a sultry twenty, her spirit ached with the weariness of having lived a hundred lives. Perhaps in order to take from someone's body, you had to sacrifice a portion of your spirit. Maybe that was why tirigusuusit tried to live forever. When they died, there wouldn't be any spirit left. Just a beautiful body and a name to curse.
Perhaps that was why she liked coming here. It reassured her that some modicum of spirit resided still within her.
She stroked her mother’s name again. “I’m sorry. I should never have left you.” Lured into darkness by the faintest of lights.
And now, in spite of her best efforts, Qaffa was being pulled adrift by the same cold light. Why had they even sent her to another land twelve years ago? A pure start. A clean snow. That’s what Orluvoq had wished for her.
But the tusk reached farther than her imagination. Merchants hauled their goods whithersoever clients called from, and more than meager portions of narwhal tusk made their way to Ariki Haka’atu’s domain. Apparently, a daughter of the ice couldn’t resist the song of her mothers’ sky thrumming in her blood, so the blue flame made a stage of her daughter’s hand.
She had disdained the first reports two years ago, feared the reports of yesteryear, and grieved every report she heard today. Qaffa had found the path—or had it found her? Did the hardest path reach for the strongest people? Or was it merely the lot of the weak to stumble onto the roughest way? Not that it mattered when it befell one you loved. Both resulted in equal pain.
The queen’s attempts to reach Qaffa through the dream yielded no success to speak of. Some way, somehow, she would pluck her daughter from this path of descent. If she had to travel up topside herself, or bring Qaffa under her watch down here, or—
No. Best not to follow that thought any further. The two resolutions she'd named each came with attending complications, though, and most of those revolved around the king. Could she find any way around that bulwark?
The press of spirits shifted and Orluvoq looked behind her. In the shadowed corridor stood a man possessed of no outward menace. But Orluvoq knew better.
Nalor stepped forward with a twinkle in his eye. “Fancy bumping into you in a venue like this. You just stopping by to gather some interior design ideas? Finally got fed up with the ‘castle austere’ aesthetic?”
A part of her pained at seeing the man who had led her path into the azure depths. She smiled. At least he was a reprieve from her usual life. “And why would an old scab like you show up to somewhere this holy?”
“A scab? That’s when your body works to stop itself from bleeding out. I’m not nearly so useful.” He walked toward her on soundless feet. “And you are beautiful as ever. I’ll have to get your skin care routine sometime. Pit sweat and blubber, was it?”
She rolled her eyes over a genuine smile. “Yes, I stole it from you.”
He laughed, sounds of his amusement pinging round the cavern. “Do you sharpen your wit on your husband, or have you gained humor all on your own? Imagine how grand our romp twenty years ago would have been had both of us been funny.”
Her smile faded to a wan strain. “The situation was funny enough for me. A, what, five-hundred-year-old man sending a girl of eighteen on a quest of rapine and horror, all because he was too ugly to get what he wanted? I’ve laughed about it for years.”
“Five hundred? Such a tawdry sum. I wasn’t even ninety.”
That caught her interest. Twenty years of efforts to discover her husband’s age had all fizzled, but she had worked out that he was no more than two decades Nalor’s senior. That slotted Qummukarpoq somewhere in his hundred twenties. Old codger.
Orluvoq shuddered. He would have been over a hundred when Qaffanngilaq was conceived. She shuddered once more for propriety’s sake, even if his body hadn’t looked much past forty then.
“Anyway,” Nalor continued, “I had rather hoped you’d be here. It’s been, what, three, four years since our last talk? How are you holding up?”
She was almost touched that he asked. “I destroy girls for gain. M
y husband will brook nothing else. I have nerve pain down my left backside that won’t be healed by candle. And my only daughter is tainting herself with the path of tirigusuusit.”
“But you do live in a castle,” said Nalor thoughtfully.
“You’ve been angakkuq for too long. You’ve kept yourself warm with the candle so many years, you’ve forgotten how humble people live.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She placed her mother’s stone down and stood. “In a normal igloo, you heat the air with body and breath. The ice of the walls keeps the warmth of people in and the chill of winter out. You think we have enough people here to heat a castle? And don’t even get me started on all these windows. Whoever built this oversized igloo deserves a dunk in the sea.”
“You might be onto something there. Should I start doing fasts from the flame to remind me of common concerns?” He chuckled to himself. “Maybe you just need to take a little time and dream of somewhere warmer.”
“You know what you’ve never told me?” Her hands found her hips. “How did you know what would be past Qilaknakka? You talked about warmth and all the ice being gone before Sulluliaq was ever opened.”
“Oh,” he flapped a hand, “just a dream I had.”
The evasiveness pulled a sigh from her. “And what have you been doing up there since? No Rapai’ians ever make mention of you.”
“Not every island is Rapai’i.” He leaned into an eyebrow. “Speaking of our island friends, I am ever so curious to know, how comes your husband’s moai?”
“Are you asking about its current state, or the method they’ll use to ship it here?”
“Let’s go with the current state of the moai.”
Orluvoq put some of her distaste into a shrug. “One month is what they say. However, there might be… complications.”
“Fright of frights. Complications hauling a several ton rock through the ocean? Impossible.”
“Even more impossible when Sulluliaq crashes in on itself and becomes just a memory in the face of Qilaknakka.”
He raised an eyebrow with unusual interest. “Oh? Is this your plan for getting back at your husband for forcing you to seize beauty?”
Orluvoq’s cheeks warmed. Even if she’d entertained the idea in the past, her spirit was far too deviant to stop taking now. And Qummukarpoq’s wishes were far better followed than dismissed. “Nothing so brash. And I don’t seize beauty. Not since your introduction to the practice, at least. I take what is given. But what is given is given less and less these days, and my body leaks beauty quicker than it ever has. If no one comes to Qilaknakka within two weeks, I fear Sulluliaq will close.”
It felt good to breathe the words into open air, even if it was to just one person beside her husband. It wasn’t the sort of thing a queen voiced to her servants, nor was a queen’s failing beauty the sort of thing servants voiced.
“I assume the king knows?”
“Oh, yes. He won’t let up about it. He wants me to skywalk to the north, enter a village, and demand a royal offering.” Qummukarpoq’s wishes may be better followed, but there might still be a chance she could shift the object of that wish.
“And shall you?” Something dark glinted in Nalor’s eyes.
“I… will do what’s best for the people.”
He studied her awhile before speaking. “You rose from orphan to powerful angakkuq queen, yet you are bitter over your station.”
“Bitter over being forced to do what I hate for twenty years? I must be the pinnacle of unreasonable.”
“You’ve never enjoyed any benefits?”
She rubbed her tongue against the ridges of her hard palate. “The king commands, so I must obey.”
“It is Qummukarpoq’s fault, then? Your bitterness?”
“Nalor. I want to be strong. I want to do right. Maybe once he gets his stone, I’ll have the opportunity.”
Nothing left to crawl for, yet his hand kept her prone. All the strength she had gathered along the way amounted to nothing beneath that hand. One month more and she could wriggle out from under; finally take up the search for a better path. Maybe even stop taking beauty.
“Orluvoq. Let me tell you something that, ironically, took me years to learn. You can’t awaken someone who is feigning sleep.”
“Exactly! He knows what is right, but he has decided that his will is straighter than what is right.” That stultifying phrase described Qummukarpoq with compelling accuracy. In his overassurances, he dragged her down with him.
Nalor tapped a finger against his chin. “Are you patient enough to hear a story from me?”
“I believe I have time.”
“Most excellent.” He cleared his throat, no more than an affectation in the dream. “In a certain clan there were two women who had babies only days apart. The clan knew it couldn’t provide for any more mouths at the time, so when the first bore her child, they asked her to surrender it to the ice. She, having great love but being pragmatic and devoted to her clan, assented and laid the babe to sleep in Nunapisu’s cradle. Sadness gripped her, but such is the way of things.
“When the second bore her child, the clan asked her the same, as she knew they would. Unlike the first, her emotions overpowered her devotion to the clan, and she pleaded until she prevailed upon them to let her keep the babe, with the agreement that she would always be last to receive food.
“Watching the other woman’s child live, the first woman mourned her decision for the rest of her days. Years passed, and the child grew into a mighty hunter that single handedly saved the clan from certain starvation one winter. The second woman rejoiced in her decision for all her days. For the actions of the two women, where did the responsibility lie?”
“The responsibility lies with the entire clan,” Orluvoq said on instinct. “Even a child knows that.”
“Then why was the first woman sad?”
“No one in a clan rejoices that they have to lay a babe on the ice. But she wasn’t only part of the clan, but the child’s mother beside.”
“You describe the typical depression that hits such a surrendering mother; the weight of yielding to the clan. You fail to mention that when she laid her babe on the ice, she had no choice. So she said. And when she had no freedom, she had no responsibility. But her clan sister soon proved that sometimes a mother’s word holds more sway than a clan’s. Her guilt was writ clear as blood in snow, and her remorse stretched to Nunapisu’s pit. Contrary to what she’d always known, it had now frozen sharp into her spirit that the weight of yielding surpassed the weight of defiance.”
Orluvoq held a frown that had been forming. What was Nalor trying to say here?
“But that’s not the only interesting question to come from the story. The second woman took responsibility from the clan—or perhaps exercised the responsibility she’d always had—and twisted herself, her child, and even her clan into great risk. When even a child knows to follow the clan’s decision in leaving behind those that can’t be cared for, why would this mother choose something so reckless?”
“Selfishness.” Orluvoq gave the answer any Nuktipik person would, but her heart didn’t fully feel it.
“Or was it love for her child and hope for all his possibilities?” Nalor reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. “Remember these two things. You can’t scrape away responsibility without scouring away choice. You can’t melt risk without evaporating possibility.”
As queen, Orluvoq had grown accustomed to withholding a response when it suited her. But now response was withheld from her. She had no choice but to not respond, yet still felt responsible for being responseless. He had always been adept at that. Finally, words came to her, even if they erred on the side of graceless.
“And what of all your wrongs?”
He frowned and drew back. “Cast your gaze back one hundred years, name an action of mine, and I will claim it. Show me the bite, and I’ll show you the teeth.”
She returned the frown. “Claiming you
r wrongs does not make them rights.”
“Neither does avowing they belong to someone else.”
Orluvoq studied the wall. Meeting his eyes could wait for another time. Frail of her to do so when she had held face with so many merchants and dignitaries. But where they saw only the dour witch queen, he saw past to the medley of fragments that made up her spirit. The chaos that still awaited a master puzzler. The weight she still hadn’t found the strength to lift.
Nalor drew in the breath that preludes farewells. “Nevertheless. Your father misses you terribly. A visit wouldn’t be amiss. I hope we meet again soon. Perhaps at the end of the earth, even. Until then.”
She winced at the reminder of the pain she’d given her father in exchange for his love. As Nalor disappeared, the cavern air swirling in his subtraction, that statement of his tossed around Orluvoq’s head. You can't awaken someone who is feigning sleep.
He had been speaking about her husband.
Right?
23
Qaffanngilaq
6 Years Before
Qaffa screamed and harrowed up black soil with her fingers. Her hands itched to fly to her leg and force the bone back together, but the current pain sickened her enough as it was.
“Qaffa!” Ka’emu shouted and slid down the tree adjacent to the one that Qaffa had occupied until a few seconds before. She thudded into the dirt, pushed aside a branch of orange and purple flowers, and looked down at the damage. “Oh! Ah—Qaffa! Oh no! Your leg!”
“Ka’emu.” Qaffa gritted her teeth and spoke between sobs. “Calm down. Help me.”
“Okay. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. What do I do?” Ka’emu’s tears flowed as though she were the injured one.
Qaffa pillaged her brain for any hints from her tutors on what to do for a broken leg. The answer usually amounted to: find someone with a big moai as fast as you can. “Go get some of the matatoa who didn’t go on the war raid with the king. They can help fix it.”
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