The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  Alaana nodded. “Those herders visited with the Anatatook several sleeps ago. I suspected something was wrong,” she said, sniffing at the air in retrospect. “I should have searched their sleds more carefully. The demon may have been hiding among their bundled furs.”

  “Runs of smallpox have devastated the Siberian tribes,” whispered the doctor.

  “Many souls will cross into the distant land,” pronounced Alaana, even before Gekko provided translation.

  “Yes,” returned Harrington. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing for it but to sit and wait until the disease runs its course. I suggest you take all of her clothing, bedding and eating utensils and put them aside. Packs of ice or snow may help keep the fever down. You must isolate the ones who have been exposed, keeping contact to a bare minimum, starting with this family.”

  Alaana thought on this for a moment, her face maintaining its severe composure. “We’ll do these things if you believe it will help. For my part, I must find the ke’le responsible and deal with it. I already know where it is. I noticed a strange light in the Four Finger Hills a few days ago. I should have been more careful.”

  Alaana gazed upon the worried faces of Arnarkuak and his children, and a confident half-smile slowly replaced her expression of concern. “All will be well,” she said, nodding. “I will face that demon-spirit in the hills.”

  “Poppycock!” hissed Harrington.

  Gekko offered Alaana no translation of that one. Instead he applied a firm pressure to the doctor’s elbow, pulling him gently away.

  Alaana politely asked Arnarkuak to keep his family inside their tent until further notice, once again assuring him that the situation would soon be remedied.

  “Highly contagious,” whispered Harrington to Gekko as they departed the house. “I suggest we remove our camp to a safe distance as soon as possible.”

  By late afternoon Alaana had girded herself for the battle. Her ceremonial parka was strikingly white. It was made from albino caribou hide adorned down the front with two rows of amulets — caribou ears for luck and bear teeth for strength. A wide leather belt was cinched around her thin waist, dangling several tiny ornamental knives and a sheath for her ceremonial blade. In one hand she hefted a sturdy tukaq — a harpoon-headed spear inscribed with symbols representing the owl and the crow to aid it in flying true. In the other she held a small wooden hoop strung with cockleshell bells that would protect her by driving off the evil spirits.

  “Brother, do you see the demon’s lodge?” she asked. “Up there, just above the mist, where the gray rock abuts the flank of the mountain?”

  “I see nothing,” replied Maguan. “But I don’t possess the spirit-vision as you do. If you say it, it must be there.”

  “Of course it’s there,” remarked Alaana, clapping her brother loudly on the back, “I only wanted to know if you could see it.”

  She embraced her brother, who stood several inches taller, holding him tightly for a moment. Maguan planted a firm kiss on her forehead. “Oh, my little sister,” he said, “how far you’ve come from the thirteen-year-old girl who so reluctantly assumed the role of shaman those many years ago. Who is there among us, more brave than you? Not Old Nakarak, our greatest hunter; not Katmatsiaq, the bear-slayer.”

  Alaana flipped up the tassels fronting the headman’s sealskin tunic so that they gently pelted her brother’s face, and they both laughed.

  To her other side stood the shaman’s husband. Gekko found this man particularly interesting. A child of Louisiana slaves, Ben Thompson had somehow found his way to the arctic during the gold rush. He had peppered Gekko with questions about Europe and the Americas, although it was clear he knew little about life outside of the arctic. He had lived almost all of his life in the frozen wastes.

  Ben said nothing. The pair seemed to have little use for words. Not so different from any other long-married couple, Gekko supposed. Ben looked at his wife sadly, drinking in every detail as if this sight of her might be his last. She stared back, a hard look on her face. At last he nodded his head and said, “We’ll burn the lamps twice as brightly tonight, while we wait for your safe return.”

  That was all.

  Gekko observed the leave-taking as part of a small group of onlookers assembled in front of the karigi. The ceremonial center and sacred clubhouse served as a natural meeting place where people gathered to exchange news. This day the tone was both apprehensive and bleak as the people began to recognize the danger they now faced, and pondered the imminent fate of their shaman.

  An old tribal woman, her leathery face beaming with pride, took the Englishman gently by the hand. A web of deep creases at the corner of her eyes cut across the lines of her matrimonial tattoos, now faded to a whisper of things long ago. He knew her as Old Higilak, the eldest woman in the settlement. Gekko had spoken with her on several occasions, she being one of few who had the patience to speak slowly enough for his struggling Inupiat, and she had taken a liking to him.

  “Alaana goes to fight for us,” Higilak explained. Her deep rich tones were resonant with pride, and the lights dancing in her eyes transformed them into miraculous children’s playthings. “It shall be her final and greatest battle. This demon has come among us before. I remember. It was a full thirty winters ago, but I remember. Many of the Anatatook died then. There was such a horrible stench all about the camp. I remember the way their skins blistered and peeled as if burned by an invisible flame. Yes, I still remember. How could I ever forget the wails of the mothers who watched their children die? In the end it took the strength of three shamans to finally subdue the demon, and two of them perished in the attempt. Ah, but there were many shamans in those days. Now we have only Alaana…”

  “But it’s not a demon,” insisted Gekko. He tried to tell her that it was a germ, a microbe, but of course the Inuit tongue lacked a suitable term. The closest applicable word was tarraka which translated back into English as, of course, ‘demon’.

  Higilak grasped his predicament. “Call it what you will,” she said. Her eyes, misty with admiration, remained locked on the receding shaman. “Alaana, alone, can not stand against it. It shall kill her just the same. And then we shall all suffer. I only hope I’m not still left alive to bury the dead.”

  They watched the shaman trundle across the featureless stretch of tundra that led up to the hills until she disappeared into the thick afternoon mist.

  The old woman went on to relate some of the great exploits of Alaana — including how she had amputated her nephew’s foot several years ago and how the man had miraculously survived; although he had later drowned, it was not for want of a foot. Another time Alaana had fashioned an amulet out of a small stuffed ptarmigan that had banished the old woman’s headaches, causing the pains to simply fly away on the wings of the bird. Once in years past, she had defended the village against an attack of men who took the shape of wolves. Gekko, who had witnessed many weird and unusual things in his travels, listened to her stories with rapt attention.

  CHAPTER 2

  A STRONGER MEDICINE

  It was a long walk to the Four Finger Hills from the summer encampment, and by midway Alaana found herself winded and wishing she had brought along a sled and dogteam. She also wished she’d worn her watertight sealskin boots instead of the thin summer mukluks. The ice was jagged and rough from melting in daytime and re-freezing at night. As a result, the going was slow across the uneven tundra, but no matter. She was in no great hurry after all. The truth was that she believed, much as the villagers did, that this day would be her last and she wanted to make this final walk by herself, and she wanted to feel the earth beneath her feet. And feel it she did.

  An oppressive sense of dread hung over her like a funerary shroud. So many lives had been lost the last time this demon had stalked the Anatatook. Two village elders, Arquella and Qavaroak, two strong men in their prime, had quickly succumbed to the blistering fever. Her elder sister Avalaaqiaq had died along with them, her body covered with running s
ores. And countless others, marking a disaster of rare proportion. How many would perish this time, she wondered?

  Everyone was counting on her, but greatest of all in her thoughts were the children. Her son and daughter were both fully grown, but there were so many little ones in the village, their numbers swelling these past few years when food had been plentiful and the winters less harsh. It was her greatest joy to sit and watch the children frolicking in the summer thaw, carefree and innocent. The children were always the hardest hit. These hungry fever spirits had a special appetite for the youngest and weakest of the community. She must protect them.

  Alaana found the demon waiting for her at the base of the mountain.

  Wearing only a light amautik ornamented with crimson beads of a curious design, she stood hands on hips, patiently, waiting. She was an attractive woman with a narrow, delicate nose, thin lips and broad, flat cheeks. In sharp contrast to the tough, weather-beaten skin of the Anatatook her face was smooth and white, framed by a billowing mane of long, dark hair. Her eyes were a reddish brown and deep, filled with jaunty impertinence. She laughed, gesturing toward the loop of cockleshell bells Alaana was furiously jangling, the carefree laugh of a young girl at play.

  Alaana made her way slowly up the snow-crusted rocks that littered the base of the hill, leaning on her spear for balance until she gained the wide ledge where the demon stood. Behind the ke’le was a shabby summer yaranga, little more than a flimsy tent of animal skins strung across a driftwood frame.

  “Remove yourself from this land, our beautiful land,” Alaana growled.

  The demon turned her back, gesturing for Alaana to follow, and disappeared into the lodge. Alaana glanced warily about, but saw no other danger. Still gripping the war-spear, she went in. The inside of the tent almost unbearably hot, the air stale and heavy with moisture. The heat seemed far out of proportion to the single whale oil lamp burning within.

  She approached the demon until they stood only slightly apart, gazing eye to eye. The demon’s unthreatening appearance didn’t fool her one bit. She could sense a tremendous power hanging tensely in the air all about them, an overwhelming force which she would be foolish to oppose. To disguise the trembling of her hands, she rattled the cockleshells at the demon. “Be gone from this land, our land. Trouble us no longer.”

  The demon looked at Alaana as if she were a child. Chuckling softy, she slipped the beaded amautik from her shoulders, letting it fall in a pile onto the dirt at her feet. She stood before Alaana completely naked. The demon tossed her head backward, smiling through blood-red lips, and Alaana watched her long, wild hair tumble loosely about her pale, soft shoulders.

  The tent filled suddenly with the cloying scent of the red poppy. Alaana’s nostrils flared. For an instant there was the gleam of recognition in her eyes. If her spirit-vision spoke true, she had met this demon once before.

  Alaana had not chosen the path of the shaman. She had not been born into the role. Her link to the other world was forged late, at the age of eleven, by a less traditional design.

  She had not shown angakua — the rare quality of spirit that distinguishes a shaman from an ordinary tribesman — until a childhood fever had nearly killed her.

  As she lay in delirium, Alaana’s soul had been drawn up out of her shivering body and delivered into the arms of her spirit guardian. Floating high above the village, that great spirit revealed to her the world as it truly was. It became clear that all things were connected, like innumerable sparks of flame in a giant smoldering hearth. From the lowliest creature scrabbling in the snows to the loftiest falcon, even the great frosted mountain peaks and the giant floes of implacable ice, each and every stone and plant and drift possessed an individual and unique spirit, and she came to know them all. Her soul blew apart into countless fragments scattered on the wind, a process as indescribably terrifying as it was painful. By the time her inua returned to her body, she had touched the spirits in all things. From that point forward, she was a shaman.

  She had survived the fever that had taken so many, including her dear sister Avalaaqiaq. But before her guardian had claimed Alaana’s soul, thereby saving her, there had been another who would have laid waste to it. A shadowy figure lurking in the tent at night, thick with the cloying scent of the red poppy, the Red Ke’le had brought sickness to the Anatatook. Alaana remembered her, oh yes — as a child the demon had come to her in the form of a hag, a rotten old woman who aimed to suckle her at her vile breast. Now she came as a lover.

  “We’ve met before,” Alaana said.

  “Yes, I remember you,” the Red Ke’le returned. Her voice was like a hot knife. “It’s a long time since I’ve passed this way, but I remember.”

  “So do I,” Alaana growled. “You took my sister. And so many others. You’ve taken too much.”

  “But to you, I gave something. I opened your eyes to the world of the spirits.” The demon made a sweeping gesture with both arms, bringing them momentarily above her head. Alaana ignored the sensuous sway of her breasts. “Don’t deny it,” she said. “It’s true. Look at what you’ve become. So strong. So bold.”

  Alaana ran her fingers along the row of ornamental knives at her belt. “Sila gave those gifts to me, not you.”

  “You marched all the way up here to face me, yet you must know how this ends. I admire such courage, really, I do.” The demon chuckled softly again, a merciless sound. She glanced down at her naked body with a demure flicker of her eyelids. “I’m glad you came.”

  You won’t be, thought Alaana as she thrust her tukaq straight through the demon’s belly, just above her sex, aiming for the wombful of writhing young her spirit-vision had detected nesting within. She was no fool. Nor did she fail to notice that the corners of the tent were heaped with human corpses, their stench of decay now growing unbearable in the heat of the tent. The spear bit deep, but there was no reaction from the demon, and when Alaana looked down at the weapon in her hands she found there was nothing, just a few wisps of a vanishing mist.

  In their previous encounter she had let the demon go. The demon had once been Aneenaq, a young girl of Nunatsiaq. Starving out on the tundra Aneenaq’s mother had strangled her two sisters so that her son might survive. Aneenaq refused the thong about the neck, and was left to starve alone on the flats. The need for revenge corrupted her ghost, the unending hunger transformed her into a demon. She went about the villages, causing sickness and death, taking the Inuit young to her vile breast. In wanting to be a mother to them, she burned their lives away. Years ago, Alaana had convinced Aneenaq to forgive her grievances and travel to the distant lands, across the divide of life and death, to reconcile with her mother’s spirit. She had let the demon go, thinking she had reformed the angry, vengeful demon. This time she would not make the same mistake.

  She leapt at the ke’le with a desperate rage, drawing her whalebone knife. The knife was ceremonial but did have a keen edge, honed by thousands of strokes at the sharpening stone and with each stroke Alaana had offered up a prayer to ensure it would cut true when most needed. The demon took great pleasure in the futility of Alaana’s efforts, laughing gleefully at each thrust. Alaana went on as long as strength allowed, slashing at the soft flesh of the demon’s underbelly with a rare and unrestrained fury. But when she paused to look, expecting to see the demon’s innards spilling out in a steaming heap, she saw the monster was again unharmed, the pale skin unblemished.

  “Your silly weapons are useless against me. Don’t tire yourself out, angatkok,” Aneenaq laughed, running a hand along the slight bulge of her belly, “I have hungry mouths to feed.”

  Alaana let the knife fall from her hand in horror.

  I can not hurt her, she thought. There is nothing I can do. Absolutely nothing.

  “But why?” she asked. “What could have happened? You forgave your mother, you put away your horrible rage, your need for revenge.”

  “I did,” said Aneenaq. “I did what you suggested — I traveled to the land of t
he ancestors. I forgave my mother and my family. I embraced them. Your idea almost worked.”

  “What then?”

  “There were others there. In the land of the dead. All the children I had murdered. And they were not so forgiving.”

  “You don’t have to kill anyone else,” said Alaana. “You don’t have to hurt my people.”

  “Oh but I do,” laughed Aneenaq. She put her hand to her rounded belly. “I have children of my own now to feed. It’s as simple as that.”

  “No,” raged Alaana. “Not with my people. Not with my children.”

  “Come,” the demon purred. “I will kill you softly, and very, very slowly.” Laughing again, she took Alaana firmly by the wrist. The touch of her flesh was too warm, practically scalding, as she led Alaana to her foul bed of rotting skins. The filthy bedcloth was a discarded kayak cover of the type used to carry corpses to their stony graves. Alaana knew then that she must die. She saw a vision of her bones, bleached white, scattered on the wind.

  Laid down before the demon, Alaana was paralyzed with fear. She felt a sickening revulsion and a terrible sadness. She had failed. What horrible fate would await the Anatatook at the hands of this unrelenting witch? Her brother, her children, her friends. They would all die, trampled before Aneenaq, as Alaana floated above them, broken in pieces, a spinning skull helplessly grinning. She wondered if her soul would simply shrivel and be lost or face some more horrible fate.

  Yet, to her amazement, she did not wither and die. She did not weaken. And when the ke’le looked down at her, the demon was herself surprised at Alaana’s unharmed condition. Alaana saw a weakness on the demon’s features, a moment’s doubt.

  She can’t harm me, Alaana realized, suddenly elated. She can not harm me. And that is her weakness.

  Emboldened, Alaana found the strength to turn the demon over and force her face down into the rotten furs.

  “Not with my children.”