The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  “My blood, it was truly glorious! A gigantic cathedral of light amidst a sea of hope and joy, all set in shimmering crystal. I could have spent an eternity there on its rocky shore, just looking at the place. But I had a job to do. I had not forgotten my young friend, the newest shaman of the Anatatook people. And I would not forget.

  “So we crept closer and closer. And as we narrowed the distance a strange feeling took hold of me, so out of place in those happy surroundings. A sense of turmoil, of great oppression and torment. I wanted to peek inside the window but I couldn’t do it. For I knew what I would find, and could not bear it. The palace is but a hopeful façade, and within its heart is a chamber where your guardian labors and struggles. He suffers. I might have looked after all, but he detected our presence there and — whoosh! — he sent us away, back up and away. And now we come to it. The big secret.”

  The Walrus paused for dramatic effect, but Alaana refused to let it irritate her. Her mind was racing with these new revelations, and she already had a good guess as to what Nunavik would say next.

  “It has to do with the Beforetime,” said Nunavik, “when everything was spirit and bliss, and nothing had solid form. It was all magic and light — you know the story — until one of the spirits rose up, the one which we now call The Thing That Was Cast Into The Outer Darkness, and caused some great trouble. Another came up to battle it, and that one we call the Long-ago Shaman. The first shaman.” Nunavik tilted his golden head teasingly toward Alaana.

  Alaana felt her skin tingle. “You mean?”

  “The battle was fought,” Nunavik went on, “but the great spirits were equally matched. There could be no winner. The Thing was cast out, a ball of shadow, hurled into the sky, and the Long-ago was thrust the opposite way, deep into the earth. As paradise shattered and this world created, all the spirits took solid forms, becoming as we see them now, except for those few who remain as guardian spirits above all the others. But the Long-ago is trapped down below, and his true name, if he can be said to have any name at all, is Tsungi.”

  For Alaana this was a momentous revelation indeed. The name! The true name of her guardian. She had spent so long adrift without knowing.

  “That explains so much,” said Alaana. “Our relationship is not as close as it should be. He aids me only when I’m on the point of death, and leaves me like this.” She ran a hand along the severed stump of her right ear and the line of her scarred cheek, burned while calling forth the future’s fire to quell the ice demons.

  “Did I ever say the life of a shaman was easy?” asked Nunavik. “Your guardian suffers in some kind of labor or torment. He can only reach out with great effort. But you are bound to him with a tether of light. I can almost see it, now I know how to look. And he feeds strength to you.”

  “Tsungi,” said Alaana. The name tasted well on her tongue.

  “Better you don’t say the name out loud,” warned Nunavik. “Keep it close, and safe.”

  “You’re right. But what does all this mean? What kind of shaman am I, then?”

  “One with a very powerful guardian,” said Nunavik. “The most powerful.”

  “Diminished and trapped,” said Alaana. “An inconstant aid.”

  “Quixaaragon was a part of him,” said Nunavik, referring to Old Manatook’s familiar, a small white dragon that had been passed down to Alaana.

  “I know,” said Alaana. “He helped me defeat the sorcerer.”

  “Sorcerer?”

  Alaana took a deep breath. “I may have made a few mistakes of my own while you were gone,” she said. “Despite your wonderful teaching.”

  “It was bound to happen…”

  “Old Higilak is like a grandmother to me. When she was young her father slew a bear in the worst possible way, showing disrespect for its spirit. When the ghost of that beast came for her, Manatook trapped it beneath the ice, preventing its rightful vengeance.”

  “Old fool,” snickered Nunavik.

  “Old fool he, and a young fool me,” said Alaana. “When the bear’s ghost came for Higilak a second time, I called upon other ghosts to defeat it. Tunrit warriors from the distant past. I released an ancient Tunrit sorcerer from a soul cage deep beneath the Ring of Stones. He attacked me, using shadows to try and kill all of the Anatatook.”

  Nunavik’s beady little eyes bulged. “A Tunrit! A sorcerer! Not someone I’d care to meet in the dead of winter.”

  “At last I stabbed him with the dagger that Quixaaragon had become, wounding him and driving him away.”

  “Quixaaragon, a weapon?” mused Nunavik. “I knew there was something more to that little dragon, but all Old Manatook could think to do with it was carry it around on his shoulder like some kind of a pet. That creature had its origins in Tsungi, as I’ve said. So you see, your guardian provided for you when you most needed him.”

  “Provided for me, or used me?” returned Alaana.

  “It was you who released the sorcerer, not your patron.”

  “He’s not dead,” said Alaana. “The sorcerer is out there still. We have to find him.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” said the Walrus. “Let’s start looking.”

  CHAPTER 1

  THE DEMON RETURNS

  Amid a small group of onlookers gathered at the edge of the settlement, Gekko watched the shaman march away from the camp. Alaana trudged with a measured pace through the hardening slush of late afternoon, a steady and familiar struggle against the soft drifts beneath her mukluks.

  “It waits for her there,” said Higilak, the old Inuit woman who stood beside Gekko. She stabbed a spindly index finger at the base of the mountain, now shrouded from view by seething billows of gathering mist.

  “One thing is certain,” she added stoically. “Alaana can not possibly win. She is going to die this day, and still it will not be enough. After she is gone, the people will follow.”

  She brought her hands to her face, fingers knitted together in front of her mouth.

  “If the demon takes me,” she added, “I don’t care. At least I won’t see the bodies of any more children set in stones. My heart couldn’t stand it. No more.”

  Gekko offered no reply. From their nest of intricate wrinkles the old woman’s eyes looked earnestly back at him, alive with silent frustration.

  “Her brother is the headman,” she continued, “but he is powerless to prevent any of it.”

  Just a few hours earlier, Alaana had sat in front of the karigi entertaining Harrington and Gekko, a pair of visitors from a far land. The Anatatook villagers hurried about the bustling camp, each preoccupied by their urgent tasks of the season.

  “This is the most hostile environment imaginable,” declared Doctor Harrington. “I am continually astounded at the way these people have been able to cope. Please ask her to what do they attribute their survival?”

  To the best of his ability, in his faltering Inupiat, Gekko relayed the question.

  “We survive only by the good grace of the spirits,” replied Alaana, speaking her native tongue with slow, even tones in the way she had learned to accommodate Gekko.

  “Ah, yes the spirits,” mused Gekko. This was, of course, the village shaman they were conversing with after all. Alaana was a plain-faced woman whom Gekko assumed to be in her early forties, an estimate which allowed for the fact that appearances could be deceiving. These Siberian natives lived hard, and the elements proved especially unkind to the exposed skin of face and hands.

  Sitting quite at ease on an empty packing crate that proudly bore the logo of the British East Asia Company, Alaana casually fingered the bowl of a long briarwood meerschaum the Englishmen had gifted to her earlier that day. Her hair was black and straight, rather coarse, and drawn back by a narrow leather thong. Her right ear was completely missing. With the harsh glare of the Arctic summer throwing a scintillating halo behind her, she seemed every bit the ethereal medicine woman she was purported to be.

  Doctor Harrington beamed with delight when inf
ormed of the shaman’s answer. Alaana and her people, squatting before their ashen hearths, swathed in animal furs and tribal ornaments, posed an interesting study of the primitive mindset for the English doctor. Gekko knew better. Where Doctor Harrington saw savages, Gekko saw a cultured people, technologically inferior to be sure, but hardy survivalists well-versed in the ways of the wild.

  “It’s simply a question of viewpoint,” stated Doctor Harrington enthusiastically. “We Europeans have risen above the forces of nature. If not conquered them, we can fairly assert that we have tamed them. We make our own environment, so to speak, embellished with as many comforts as we desire.”

  Alaana begged to disagree. Her people lived in harmony with the tundra and bore it no grudge. In her view, nothing could be accomplished without both the consent and cooperation of the elements.

  “Man is not the master here,” she continued. “He doesn’t possess the strength of the white bear, the fortitude of the caribou, nor the great bulk of the beluga. He cannot stand alone against the wind, the snow, or the storm. The spirits protect and guide us. It can’t be any other way.”

  The doctor shook his head, smiling. “Ahh, but you should see London, my friend.”

  Sir Walter Gekko was an investigative officer of the British East Asia Company, currently tasked with analyzing trade possibilities in the polar region. On that front he had much to report. The natives were adept survivors, whose entire existence and lifestyle depended on the hunting of animals and the use of their products. In a burgeoning fur trade he thought they could serve King Edward well. With modern armaments, there would be seemingly no limit to what they could bring in. But there was the dilemma — the Crown most definitely did not want them armed.

  Unbeknownst to his trading partners, Sir Gekko also reported to His Majesty’s Ministry of War. The tail end of the Nineteenth Century had brought significant political unrest to Northeast Asia and it was feared Nicholas II was considering arming and training the Siberian Inuit as a rugged military force. The two governments were no longer talking. Any worthwhile assessment of the situation required boots on the ground — trusted men such as Gekko willing to traverse hundreds of miles of harsh terrain to observe the situation for themselves.

  After several such visits here, Gekko had determined that subversion of these tribes would be all but impossible. The Anatatook formed a closed society, completely uninterested in Western ways, and viewed the outside world with a distant and cautious eye. Only a handful of travelers passed through these barren wastes, primarily missionaries and traders, and he’d had to work hard to learn their language and gain their trust. After three years he was finally no longer regarded as a kabloona inugluk, or strange white man, but as a trusted friend. Yet still the shaman kept him at arm’s length.

  The shaman’s daughter, a young woman named Noona, delivered a platter of steamed fish. The Siberians might just as well eat it raw and frozen, Gekko knew, but they made certain allowances for their guests. The young woman laid the platter down and smiled at her mother, not acknowledging Gekko in any way until she had retreated a fair distance away and cast a furtive glance backward. With her round face, glossy black hair and slender figure, Gekko thought Noona very beautiful indeed.

  Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a small boy, perhaps eight or nine years old, who came running breathlessly across the camp.

  “Angatkok! Angatkok, please help.”

  “What is it, Aaliaq?” asked Alaana.

  “My mother is sick. My mother is very sick! Father doesn’t know what to do,” reported the boy, repeatedly bowing his head in deference to the shaman.

  Without further comment, Alaana drew herself up and walked off at a brisk pace, the boy at her side. Gekko and Harrington followed along as they proceeded through the settlement, cutting a straight path among the Inuit as they struggled to prepare for the salmon run.

  It was the summer thaw; occasional patches of brown earth were visible where the stubborn crust of ice had peeled away. Women sat outside their tents mending baleen nets and weaving fishing mats of caribou skin. Closer to the water, teams of men worked at erecting barriers in the tributary to trap the fish, while a few others sat atop the upright umiaks which served as lookout posts, eyes fixed for telltale ripples in the water that would mark the struggling ascent of the salmon.

  The many tents and sodhouses of the summer settlement were laid out in single file along a thin line set back a few paces from the stream. It might have taken twenty minutes to walk the entire length of the camp end to end, but at their hurried pace it seemed they arrived in an instant.

  The house of Arnarkuak and Tunnillie was a large and fairly permanent one, constructed of upright posts of driftwood and whalebone, caked with dried mud. The roof was sealskin with a characteristic Inuit skylight, a transparent pane of walrus intestine stretched over an arching frame of twigs. Alaana brushed aside the deerskin curtain at the doorway and followed the boy inside. A tunnel of about six feet in length lay just inside the entrance, set low to the ground to keep out the icy Arctic wind. The two Englishmen trailed along on hands and knees down the gentle slope that led to the semi-subterranean main level.

  The interior of the house was floor to ceiling with caribou skins and beaver pelts, dusky with clinging traces of smoke and ash, and thick with the odors of half-dried fish, seal meat and stale whale oil. Although it was a sunny day, only a hesitant amber glow penetrated the skylight. Tunnillie lay on the sleeping platform, unclothed but swaddled in bulky sleeping furs. Arnarkuak hovered in close attendance, two of their small children huddled behind him.

  Alaana bent to the woman’s side, gently calling her name. Tunnillie gazed at her with barely a flicker of recognition alight in her eyes, shaking her head slowly from side to side as if to cast off an obscuring veil of confusion. She could say nothing.

  “She is a good woman,” said Arnarkuak. “She has done nothing wrong.”

  “I know,” replied the shaman. She gently touched Tunnillie’s forehead, slick with sweat, and bent to press her lips against the woman’s cheek where they lingered for a moment. Her expression was naturally grave, but now the worry lines seemed etched even more deeply. She lifted Tunnillie’s head with the palm of her hand behind the neck, testing its weight, and then set it back down.

  “I’ll need some things from my tent,” she told them and went out.

  No longer able to restrain himself, Harrington stepped up to the platform. Gekko explained that his friend was himself a medical man who might be able to provide some aid to the stricken woman. Arnarkuak nodded and took a step back, his expression cautious but nonetheless grateful for any help the doctor might be able to provide.

  “Obviously quite febrile,” said Harrington. “And apparently delirious as well. Ask the husband if she had complained of any discomfort or pain in the joints.”

  Gekko did his best with the translation, and Arnarkuak confirmed the doctor’s assumption. Harrington motioned to Arnarkuak and with a bit of illustrative gesturing requested to see inside the patient’s mouth.

  The Inuit man willingly obliged, holding his wife’s jaws open. The doctor peered in, all the while complaining about the insufficient light.

  “Apthous ulcers,” he stated, stepping away. “As I surmised, Walter, this is an early case of smallpox. By tomorrow she’ll begin to show the rash.”

  The shaman reentered the tent, a thin apron of sealskin tinted with red ochre draped across her torso. Without a word she resumed her ministrations, smoothing the wet hair away from the patient’s face with both hands and tucking the ponytails carefully behind the head. Gekko observed her manner, noting the brisk yet gentle movements, and thought them no different in character from those of any Western physician.

  “I wouldn’t get that close…” warned Harrington in a whisper, but Gekko waved him to silence. It would be extremely unwise to interfere with the shaman at her work.

  Alaana arranged sprigs of some dark green herb around t
he woman’s neck. She spent quite a few minutes on this procedure and seemed particularly concerned with achieving the proper pattern. When finally satisfied, she spat into the palms of her hands and wiped them on the woman’s cheeks, evoking a snort of surprised disgust from Harrington. Alaana then began puffing and blowing on the area with deep concentration. Harrington was positively aghast until Gekko explained, in a whisper close to his ear, the Inuit belief that the shaman’s saliva contained some part of her inuseq, or vital essence, which would aid the stricken woman in battling the disease.

  “Preposterous!” whispered the English doctor. “Absolute nonsense!”

  Again, Alaana spent some time carefully straightening the herbal necklace before looking up.

  “We are visited by a powerful demon-spirit,” she announced. “One who seeks to destroy the village. Such things have happened before. Many years ago.”

  “We call this disease smallpox,” offered Harrington.

  “You can see it?” asked Alaana.

  “Oh, no. It is quite invisible.”

  “Ah, inua,” exclaimed Alaana.

  “No, no it’s not a spirit,” explained Gekko, “It’s an actual thing. A physical thing. A germ.”

  Alaana’s downturned lips and creased brow belied a strenuous search for understanding. Finding none, a wave of her hand and a shake of her head indicated her frustration.

  “There was an outbreak reported at the West Koryak Trading Post not two weeks ago,” urged Harrington, “originating from contact with infectious reindeer herders.”

  Gekko offered his translation, asking if such a caravan had recently passed through the area.