The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  The Moon mask, with its large oval face smiling with a mouth full of wooden peg teeth, had originally belonged to Old Manatook. As it had been properly passed down to Alaana, its spirit now served her just as well. Another task beckoned — now that springtime’s dawn had finally arrived she must use this mask to beg the Moon-Maid to grant pregnancies to some of the Anatatook women.

  The mask of the Upperworld, embellished with white and silver feathers to represent a row of clouds and sea birds in flight, had belonged to Klah Kritlaq, a very unpopular, some would say monstrous, shaman from years ago. Alaana probably should have destroyed this mask, for it was still tainted with a bit of the evil man’s soul, but she had no good replacement. For this reason she was loathe to journey to the Upperworld, leaving its spiritual welfare in the charge of Nunavik.

  Tikiqaq hummed a tune as it worked, rubbing oil into the flat wooden mask of the Lowerworld. This mask was an ancient relic, a conduit to a realm of trees, mischievous squirrel-men, and wizened crystals. The maker of this mask was long gone and only the faintest trace of his soul remained within its wooden frame, a reminder that Alaana was part of a tradition stretching back as far as anyone could remember, to times that existed only in stories told among flickering seal-oil lamps for generation after generation.

  The tupilaq was the dead carcass of a black seal. Years ago, Alaana had animated the corpse in a fit of rage, stuffing its insides with amulets and fetishes to hold the spell, in an attempt to retaliate against an attacking shaman. Tiki, like all tupilaqs, had been charged with one mission only — bloody revenge. But after a change of heart Alaana decided to handle the situation in a more peaceable way, ordering Tiki to abandon its mission to kill. She should probably have ended its existence right then, but Alaana thought instead to keep the tupilaq at her side, feeding it on kindness rather than hatred. A gift of the Moon-Man had replaced its eyes with brilliant moonbeams, and Alaana had given it a heart made from a lock of a wise man’s hair. Now that it had left its overriding desire to kill behind, it had developed into a good and loyal assistant.

  The tupilaq’s appreciation of music was a fairly recent development, and Alaana enjoyed listening to the old songs as interpreted by its unusual talents. Tiki had the benefit of two mouths — the natural mouth of the dead seal with its pointed teeth, and a raven’s beak implanted in the center of its forehead. When it sang, the seal’s mouth played the lower range while the beak supplied a clacking percussion.

  Alaana straightened the Wind mask in its place along the wall of the tent. The long, baleful face on this mask was constructed of hollow tubes of gray driftwood from top to bottom which allowed winter and summer winds to blow through and call to its master, the great wind spirit Sila.

  “I don’t know why I keep this one,” she said to the tupilaq. “Do you know this spirit has never once come when I’ve called?”

  “The wind is not your patron,” said Tiki with a shrug.

  “True,” said Alaana. Since her true guardian had seen fit to impersonate Sila at her initiation, Alaana had for many years believed that Sila, the Walker In The Wind, was her guardian spirit. When she had finally encountered the real Sila she’d been surprised to find he did not know her at all. “Still, you’d think it might answer me, as any other shaman, once in a while.”

  Tikiqaq shrugged its humped shoulders. “The spirits do not answer to the shamans,” it said through the raven’s beak. “I believe it’s the other way around.”

  Alaana groaned. Now the tupilaq was instructing her. “Sometimes it seems I’ve no patron at all.”

  Tiki regarded her with its brilliant moonbeam eyes. “It’s difficult for you,” it said. “I have it much easier. My creator stands before me. She tells me what to do, and I do it.”

  Alaana often thought the tupilaq — a reanimated corpse living an entirely soulless existence — was better off than its shaman. Its moonbeam eyes had a good appreciation for beauty. It reveled in simple pleasures, its lopsided smile a reminder to Alaana of the many good things in life. The rolling hills of the tundra under a blanket of fresh snow, the luminous Moon watching over the nighttime sky, golden sunlight glinting off the great silver bergs in the bay. The unbridled, simple joy of the children, the bravery of the hunters, the dedication of the Anatatook mothers. The tupilaq prized all of the Anatatook, for it loved them all. In this way it was the same as its master. The Anatatook were Alaana’s people, brave and strong and when they needed her, she would always be there for them, even at cost of her life.

  “Is that better for you or worse, I wonder?” asked Alaana. “Your creator stands before you, and yet you can see she knows very little herself, and stumbles blindly along through the world of the spirits.”

  “She serves her people as best she can. The results are not so very important. I look upon her face, and I know she is right and good.”

  The tupilaq’s blind faith cheered her, especially since its simplistic mind seemed to have an unerring appreciation for the blunt truth. “Well, I wish I could look upon Tsungi’s face, just once and know the same,” said Alaana.

  “Did anyone ever tell you the life of a shaman was easy?” said a familiar voice. Alaana felt a fuzzy sensation ripple along the air in the tent and looked up to see the spirit-form of Nunavik, the golden walrus, slowly materializing in front of the row of masks. The walrus looked weary, his tusks low to the ground, his eyes half closed.

  “Ughh,” groaned Alaana. “I just knew you were going to say that.”

  “Did I?” asked the walrus. “Did I ever say it would be easy?”

  “Did I ever want this life?” returned Alaana. “It was thrust upon me.”

  “Aaackk!” remarked the walrus wearily. “Not that again. You never asked for this, you never wanted it. We know, we know. I’ve warned you time and again about the dangers of self-doubt, and yet still you grumble and grumble...”

  Alaana smarted, as if the walrus had smacked her in the face. For Alaana, childhood had ended the day she’d been called upon to become shaman, crushed under the boot-heel of the spirits. Her childhood friends had turned away and even the adults began to treat her with fear and suspicion. And as time wore on more sacrifices — Old Manatook killed by werewolves, Alaana’s ear chopped off by Yupikut raiders after they kidnapped her to act as their shaman, the death of her daughter Tamuanuaq to satisfy the vengeful whims of the Whale-Man, and the torture of her husband Ben at the hands of the sorcerer Vithrok. She had never wanted any of this — masks and drums, ghosts and demons poisoning her soul. She resented it. She had wanted a normal life, to be only a common seamstress, wife and mother. To walk with the others, not stand apart.

  “How can I not have doubts?” she asked. “My initiation was based upon a lie. Sila didn’t call me; it was another spirit posing as Sila. What good could come of a lie?”

  “Your guardian said you would restore the balance,” the tupilaq reminded her. “He promised you would do great things.”

  “And in the ten years since his true name has been revealed to me, I have received no help from him at all. Rather than a powerful shaman, harnessing the awesome might of her guardian spirit, I am little more than a woman alone, facing all the dangers of the spirit world with my bare hands.”

  “The people of this world,” said Nunavik, “even the shamans, are merely toys in the grand design of the great spirits, lofty figures who stride so far above. Men are generally beneath their notice. And yet, to survive, you must persevere.”

  “You’ve kept your friends and family alive,” said Tiki. “You’ve kept them safe.”

  Nunavik barked his agreement. “We all stumble blindly along, Alaana. Take it from someone who has travelled far and lived long. I’ve been everywhere and seen everything. I know nothing. That’s just the way it is. Answers are not for us.”

  “That’s not good enough,” said Alaana. “I accept there are mysteries we won’t ever understand — the sun in the sky, the stars. But I only want the answers to a few simple que
stions. Why have I been chosen? What am I meant to do? There is something I am meant to do, something I’ve been called for. But no one has bothered to let me know about it. I’ve seen the face of my sponsor in disguise only, clothed in the assumed form of Sila. I want to see Tsungi’s real face. To know what my life is all about. Is that too much to ask? Too much to hope?”

  “You’ll see that face some day,” said Tiki. “I am sure of it.”

  The tupilaq, a creature of destruction, gazed adoringly at her with its luminous, moonbeam eyes. Its blind faith warmed her soul.

  “We’ll see,” said Alaana flatly. She turned toward the walrus. “But I want to hear what you’ve accomplished on your journey, Nunavik, now that you’ve returned. Hopefully it will be more interesting than listening to you berate me over the same flaws in my character again and again. So?”

  “So? Sew buttons,” snapped the Walrus. “That’s what you say to me? After I spend two moons scouring the Upperworld for you? That’s not so easy for a walrus you know. There’s no water up there at all. It’s all clouds and air and everything wafting to and fro. But what do you care? I had quite a time of it, I can tell you.”

  “Any sign of him?” asked Alaana impatiently.

  “No.”

  “Then maybe you missed something.”

  The golden walrus reared up on his hind flippers. “Acckkk! What’s gotten into you?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Alaana. “I’m sure you did your best.”

  “My best,” said Nunavik, “is considerable, let me tell you. He’s not there.”

  “What did the owls say?”

  “They’ve seen nothing, and Strixulula the owl-king has the keenest eyes in all the spirit world. The sparrows have seen nothing; I went from cloud to cloud asking. The winds blew me this way, they tossed me that way. They’ve no respect for an old walrus, that’s for sure! The winds told me many fanciful and useless things, but no news of Vithrok. No one sees him.”

  “Ten winters,” said Alaana, “and no sign.”

  “Maybe he’s dead,” suggested the tupilaq. “Maybe you did kill him.”

  “He’s not dead,” said Alaana.

  “Well, it seems to me as if he is just gone,” said Nunavik. “Maybe he simply went away.”

  Alaana shook her head. “I can’t take that chance.”

  “Vithrok is a very old spirit,” said Nunavik. “He may sleep for ages. He may not come again in your lifetime…”

  “He’s not sleeping.”

  “Well,” said Nunavik wearily, “I don’t know why you ask, when you already seem to know everything yourself. I don’t know what he might be doing, and I’ve no place else to look. Twelve hundred years and I’m getting tired…”

  “Are you really twelve hundred years old?” asked Alaana. “I thought that was just something you say when you want me to pay attention.”

  Nunavik grunted softly. “It’s true.”

  “Then why haven’t you gone up in the sky with the other dead shamans?” asked Tiki.

  “Because I’m not dead,” snapped Nunavik, “as if I have to answer insolent questions from you, a silly little thing, brought to life on a whim. A seal no less, and a dead one at that!”

  Tikiqaq, properly rebuked, let out a little whimper.

  Nunavik grunted again. “I placed my soul into the tusk talisman while I was still alive. I’m not dead. And neither are you, Alaana. You have a life to live. A good life. You’ve children, a family, a people. The Anatatook are doing well. If you seek a purpose in life you have only to look to them. You needn’t worry so much. If Vithrok ever returns--”

  “I can’t do that,” said Alaana. “I can’t take that chance. I have nothing so long as he is out there. I have only a gnawing suspicion, day and night. A feeling that something is very wrong, even if no one else knows it.”

  Nunavik bowed his golden head. “Such feelings are very important,” he said, “and not to be ignored.”

  “I just want to find him, to find out what he’s up to and stop him. I made a terrible mistake, letting that sorcerer escape the Ring of Stones.”

  Nunavik did not disagree.

  “Something terrible is happening out there, or going to happen. I don’t know what, but all of it can be laid at my feet. My mistake! And Vithrok is behind it. Hiding, biding his time. He’s out there. Whatever my doubts,” said Alaana, casting a baleful look at Nunavik, “of that I am certain. But where is he? I can’t hope to stop him unless I can find him first.”

  “We will find him,” said Tiki.

  Alaana sighed, wishing she possessed half as much optimism as her tupilaq.

  “That’s right,” said Nunavik. “We will find him. We must not doubt.”

  Alaana nodded. “And the sooner the better. That way we can plan and be ready. And if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll settle that creature for what he did to Ben.”

  “Right,” said Nunavik. “Now what to do, what to do?”

  “You need to take a little rest, my dear Uncle Walrus,” suggested Alaana. “Tiki and I will go visit the Heart and try again. If anyone can find the sorcerer, it will be the bears of the Ice Mountain.”

  “And I will stop off at the Lowerworld,” suggested Nunavik. “A little rest sounds like a good idea, and perhaps a dip in the pool. And then I’ll start looking again. I promise.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “YOU BELIEVE?”

  Sir Walter Gekko doled out a handful of fish-ends to the team of huskies in harness. The dogs greedily gobbled up the bits.

  “You shouldn’t feed them so much,” said Old Higilak.

  “Oh?”

  “Not at the start of the trip. They run poorly with a full belly. And in the warmer weather they really don’t need to eat so much.”

  Gekko snickered softly. Warmer weather? Even in spring the temperature was well below freezing most of the time. He would never get used to it.

  “You know a lot about sled dogs.”

  A playful light kindled in the old woman’s eyes. “I wouldn’t let the men hear me say this, but I could run a sled team with the best of them.”

  Gekko laughed. “I’ll bet you could. I could use you on the trip back to Old Bea. Sure you won’t come along?” He indicated Doctor Harrington and the other Englishmen. “Half of these men don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.”

  “And who will teach the children? Most of their mothers don’t know their hindquarters from a tea kettle.”

  Gekko laughed. She really was a delightful old woman. “You know a lot about the shaman, don’t you?”

  “Alaana? She’s lived in my tent for a good many winters.”

  “She calls you Old Mother. Are you her grandmother?” he asked, hoping his Inupiat translation held water.

  “My husband Manatook was Alaana’s father in the teachings of the Way.”

  “I suppose that makes you her spiritual mother then, not grandmother. She’s the most powerful woman in the village, isn’t she?”

  Old Higilak shrugged. “She protects us. That is all. She wants nothing more.”

  Gekko nodded. “And her daughter?”

  “A lovely girl.” The old woman, half bent over with age, stooped even lower, her gaze fixated on the poor state of Gekko’s boots.

  “Oh yes. Quite. She’s not married…”

  The old woman smiled distractedly. “Let me see that boot,” she said, pointing. “Put it up here.” She indicated the stanchion at the front of the sled.

  Gekko put his foot up.

  His old leathers had seen a lot of mileage. She fussed over the seams at the front. “You need new boots. Men have died out on the tundra from just a little cold water seeping into their toes. If you had a good wife, she’d know this.”

  “Right. Thank you, Old Mother,” he said with a sly smile, knowing he had just counted himself her grandson. “I’ll see to it at the trading post, I assure you.

  She slapped his foot, and Gekko realized how deftly she’d avoided his questionin
g. He tried again. “The shaman’s daughter?”

  “The shaman’s daughter,” she said, indicating the young woman’s imminent approach. Higilak stepped away. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”

  “Ah, Noona,” he said, straightening the front of his greatcoat. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

  “I wanted to see you before you go.” She spoke in her native tongue. Though Noona knew many English words, she was not yet fully conversant in the language.

  “I’m glad,” he said. “Ah, well, not glad I’m leaving. Just glad to see you again.”

  And that was true. Gekko’s eyes drank in the sight of this young beauty of the north. She was soft-spoken and mild-mannered, or at least presented herself that way, but there was no denying the strength in her spine, the confident way she carried her shoulders, the cool intelligence with which she looked out at the world from her silver-gray eyes. Such oddly captivating eyes. He had never seen anything like them.

  “Will you come back soon?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he assured her. “I’ve just got to deliver the doctor and the rest of these men to Old Bea. At the post I can telegraph a report to my employers. If they don’t send me immediately out on assignment again, I can return right away.”

  He caught the perplexed look in her eyes. “I guess that didn’t come out right,” he said. Idiot, he scolded himself. How could she know about wireless telegraphs and assignments from the Crown? “Did you understand what I said?”

  She shrugged. Her people did that often. It could mean a lot of things.

  “I will be back,” he said definitively. “As soon as I can.”

  She smiled.

  “Good, and well done,” he said. “It’s all settled. Oh, I almost forgot. I have something for you. A present.” He fished in his pockets, bare fingers already grown half numb from exposure but that was the usual state of affairs in this place. He brought out the gift. It was a small charm made of silver and tin beaten into the shape of a larkspur in flight. He had attached a pin to the reverse so she could wear it on her clothes. “It’s nothing really. Just a trinket. But I thought you may like to have this.”