The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  Her eyes lit up with a stunning silver sparkle and Gekko fell heart-first into those delightful, shimmering orbs. She was so beautiful smiling like that; he desperately wanted to kiss her.

  She said she loved the broach, and he enjoyed the warmth of her hands as she took it from his frigid palm. Her touch lingered only slightly. Dare he assume some special meaning in that? He meant to show her how to work the pin but she had already figured it out. Suddenly he wondered what significance the gift might have for her. In some cultures such a thing might mean they were engaged or some similar, but these natives had such strange ways about them. Their courting rituals were entirely unknown to him, and not the sort of thing a gentleman could discreetly inquire about.

  Among these natives, he’d heard, a couple simply announced that they were married by mutual consent and that was that. Men often bragged about taking the women by force, but Gekko had the impression that was mostly for show, with arrangements often made in advance. He tried to imagine one of the young men bartering with the grim-faced shaman for Noona’s hand.

  And that was a point of confusion for him as well. Noona was twenty years old and should have been married already, especially given the dearth of available women among the band. He assumed the men must be put off by her intimidating mother or perhaps the strange color of her eyes. He remembered hearing a rumor to that effect, but didn’t know if it was true.

  “I want to tell you something,” she said. “I think you will believe. Sometimes…”

  She faltered, either suddenly embarrassed or having trouble finding the words even in her native tongue. Gekko thought he saw a subtle flush color her cheeks, making her even more desirable.

  “Go on.”

  “I can see certain things. Sometimes.” She paused again, putting her index fingers to her eyes and making a soft sound. “I see things that have not happened yet but these things will happen. Oh, why do I tell you that? You’ll think I am a crazy woman.”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “You believe?”

  Gekko nodded. “Yes.” What else could he say?

  “There is danger for you. Great danger! On the boat!”

  “Oh, well, you needn’t worry. I’m not planning a sea voyage any time soon. Just taking the sled over to the post and, hopefully, back again. No boat.”

  She was relieved. She really did care for him. “Good. Good.”

  Again, he wanted desperately to kiss her.

  “Noona, how come you aren’t married?” he asked, immediately regretting it. Oh god, Gekko, he scolded himself, how obvious can you be?

  “I told you,” she said. “I see things. There is no man here for me.” She jerked her head in the direction back toward the camp. “I know.”

  He took a step closer and almost, very nearly almost, worked up the nerve to kiss the girl. It was too complicated. There was a deep divide of culture, and he tottered on the brink. Here the earth was believed to be flat and it was flat. No use trying to tell them otherwise, or suffer strange looks and whispered talk behind the back of the hand. Simple amorous advances didn’t mean the same thing in these trackless wastes, as on the streets of London or Paris. These people had long been wary of Europeans. Gekko had worked damn hard to gain their trust. Out here in the wilderness none of his wealth or influential continental associations mattered; the shaman and headman were the power. A tryst with the shaman’s daughter could be devastating to his work here, or even deadly.

  “I’ll be back soon,” was all he could say.

  Noona moved a little closer, her warm breath clouding so near, so very near his own. She smiled again, and chuckled nervously. Then she leaned closer until her cheek touched his ever so slightly. The skin on her cheek was soft and warm. She smelled of raw fish and lamp oil and a host of other noxious odors, the perfume of the north. He looked deeply into her gray eyes for a moment and then they flitted away.

  He so much wanted to kiss this girl. And then he realized, in the ways of these people, they already had.

  CHAPTER 6

  A SECRET CACHE

  For Aquppak it was no difficult thing to find the Anatatook camp, even though the entire village packed up and moved every half moon, leaving little trace along the trackless wastes and ice-bound inlets. It was no difficult thing for a man who knew their movements and haunts as well as he knew the back of his hand. Their usual path this time of year, an irregular circle driven by the changing seasons, led directly across the valley known as Big Basin and toward the open bay.

  The short spring day was quickly done, but no matter. His hands might shake, but his eyes were sharp as ever and half-moonlight was all they needed to see clearly. He plodded along in silence, the only sound the slap of his broad-padded boots against the slush. A sled and a team would have been useless on the soft trail even if he had still possessed one. He took frequent sips from a flask of home brew, a bitter grog the Inuit at the trading post fermented from the white man’s yeast cakes. Aquppak had filched this bottle from the house of Angkivik, a large unhappy man with frost scars running across both cheeks. Angkivik’s brew was twice as potent as any kabloona’s rye or whiskey and would warm his belly throughout the night.

  This year, it seemed, the Anatatook traveled more to the south than previously, circling far below the rim of Big Basin. They weren’t camped along either of the first two game trails he’d passed, even though he had seen ample signs of migrating caribou coming up from their winter grounds. Alaana must be having trouble locating the herds again. Spirits or no, she was damn near useless and her brother almost as bad when it came to setting up a hunt. When Aquppak had been headman he’d known which way the herds passed every time. He could read their spoor better than anyone among the Anatatook. He didn’t need some shaman to make predictions. He traveled fast and light, just as he was doing right now. Using only natural eyes, his nose, and his hunter’s instinct he always found them.

  He spotted the cut end of a young-walrus thong strewn in the snow. Its scent spoke to his nose of Old Higilak’s rubbing oils. Aquppak chuckled. It must have come from the pack sled of the shaman herself. Not far now. The camp was most likely in the lee of the big rock that overhung the river the Anatatook called Silver Tongue.

  A familiar stretch of land, distinguished by a peculiar spiral curve of the gentle slope down to the river basin. The big rock was a distinctive skull-shaped mound of limestone, also called Black Ox Ridge because the twin points at its mount resembled the horns of a musk ox. He was very close.

  A small cairn of freshly laid stones marked the western face. Whoever had built this new cairn must have come very close to blundering upon one of Aquppak’s secret caches. He had buried a large store of equipment — a small sled and harness, his harpoons and other weapons including his best kakivok, the three-pronged leister used for fishing. They still lay there, he was sure, locked deep in the ice, waiting patiently for the day he would claim them again. He flashed upon a vision of himself dead and gone, perhaps slain by that wretched Kullabak back at the trading post, his precious items left waiting in the cold and dark, never to be dug up or used again.

  He stopped at the creek to lap up some of the icy water. The cache nagged at him. When he had planted those items, he had been the headman. Now he was that boy again, that miserable beggar-boy, a wandering loner dressed in rags scrounged from a dust-bin. And he vowed for the hundredth time that he would claim that leister again, and stabbing it into the icy water at Silver Tongue River, draw forth a salmon trout, fresh and wriggling. He would.

  Aquppak reached the Anatatook camp a short while before sunrise. He paused for a few moments to study the outlines of the tents; from their distinctive silhouettes in the moonlight he identified the one belonging to his family.

  He took another sip of home brew and felt it burn a track down his throat. He was tired and his head swam, such a long time since he’d eaten he didn’t even know. Hadn’t brought any food. Maybe filch something from the Anatatook stores for the trip b
ack. Easy enough. The camp was all asleep. Aquppak took the last fiery sip of brew, belched and buried the bottle in the snow. A few of the men were already awake, readying their kayaks and hunting equipment. Easy enough to avoid them.

  He swept aside the stone holding down the flap of the tent and peered inside. The seal-oil lamp, left unattended too long, was burning low, sputtering in need of more blubber. By its dim amber glow he made out three bodies on the sleeping platform.

  “Heya! Choobuk!” he called out, keeping his voice to a whisper.

  His son didn’t stir. Aquppak stepped inside, gave the sleeping form a shove. “Choobuk! It’s your father.”

  The boy came instantly awake. He snapped the sleeping cover down, his other hand clenching a hunting knife. He stared wide-eyed into the gloom. “Who? What?”

  “Your father,” said Aquppak angrily. He watched recognition creep across the young man’s features, but noticed that he still held the knife above the furs. At fourteen winters, Choobuk was two years older than his brother Manik.

  “Wake up Manik,” instructed the father. He trusted Choobuk would know enough not to disturb his mother’s sleep. He glanced at the woman he had married but never cared much about, his eyesight adjusting to the lamp’s dim glow. A good cook and adequate seamstress, a reluctant lover. Even relaxed in sleep she looked old and worn out, almost a hag.

  The two boys sat up. “What do you want?” asked Choobuk, a bitter twist evident in his tone and a sneer, if Aquppak saw correctly in the gloom, on his lips.

  “I don’t want anything.”

  Silence followed for a long beat. Was there nothing else to say?

  “I wanted to see your faces,” said Aquppak.

  The answering silence remained unbroken.

  Manik started to speak but his brother quickly silenced him. “You don’t look well,” said Choobuk. “You stink of strong drink. Why do you come here? What do you want?”

  “I wanted to see my sons. I just wanted — you’re almost a man…”

  “I am a man!” hissed Choobuk. “I caught my first seal two winters ago. At the ceremony, my grandfather released the seal bladders for me. I have no father.”

  Aquppak snorted angrily, his hands balled into fists. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “I have no father,” repeated Choobuk.

  “I’ll get my first seal this winter,” said Manik at last, his eyes bright in the faltering light. “I’ll be a man.”

  “I will be there,” said Aquppak. He pointed a finger at his youngest son. “I will be there.” Manik smiled a little.

  “You won’t,” sneered Choobuk. “I will release the bladders for him. I will.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “You shouldn’t come here. It upsets Mother. You’re not welcome here.”

  “Whatever they tell you — it’s lies. Do they tell you of the season I brought down so many bucks twenty hands could not count them? Or the winter I lead the band to Black Face through a demon storm?”

  Choobuk snickered.

  “These things are true!” insisted Aquppak, too loudly. Ivalu stirred beside her children. “I was the best of them! I was the headman!”

  “For half a season,” added Choobuk, “So I’ve heard. Until you disgraced yourself over another man’s wife! Do you deny it?”

  Aquppak said nothing.

  “Do you?” pressed Choobuk.

  “She should have been mine.”

  “Go away!” said Choobuk.

  Aquppak lunged for him, wary of the knife. But Ivalu, now fully awake, threw herself between them. “Aiyah! You!” she shouted. “Get out! Or I’ll have half the Anatatook men raining down arrows upon your sorry head.”

  “I don’t care,” said Aquppak. “Yell all you want! I’ll kill them all!” This talk was done. He couldn’t stand her burning gaze, her hatred and resentment cutting sharper than any knife. He turned away, stumbled and almost went through the skin wall of the tent before he realized to pull it aside.

  Kigiuna and Maguan watched the lone figure run away from the camp.

  “We should go after,” advised Kigiuna. “He’s still dangerous.”

  Maguan shook his head, watching Aquppak run. “That’s not what Alaana would have us do.”

  “Who runs this camp? You or Alaana?”

  Maguan smiled broadly. “We both do,” he said, “with sage advice from our father.” He clapped Kigiuna on the shoulder.

  “Advice readily ignored,” said the elder.

  “What did he want here? Some food from our stores? A visit with his family? Let him have it. You used to give him food I remember, the little beggar boy in the first light of morning. This is not so different.”

  CHAPTER 7

  BITTER FRUITS

  Vithrok catches the taste of wild strawberries on his tongue. Strawberries! It has been centuries since he’d last experienced that taste, he thinks, an eternity. He remembers all the tangy, mouth-watering fruits he and the others had created in the Beforetime, when everything was possible. And cinnamon. Tugto had created cinnamon, he remembers. What a delight. Or had that been Sedna? Sedna had been the best with spices. What did it matter? In the Beforetime they had all been interchangeable, swapping parts of their souls as easily as men now passed around a slice of blubber or a cup of water. When they made love, knowing each other so completely as to meld in consciousness and spirit entire, fragments often shedded and intermixed in the moment, in the supreme ecstasy of total communion.

  Now he is alone.

  He tumbles forward, spinning round and round in the liquid miasma. Warmth, warmth, warmth. His spin takes him through all the colors of the rainbow, and with each hue comes a different flash of music, an intriguing smell, a poignant new emotion. He experiences red for what seems an eon, remembering that there were an almost limitless variety of reds, a million subtle tints and textures, the blood of the Beforetime. And then blue, the blue of topaz and sapphire, of water and ice, of sky and purple orchid blooms, and on and on and on. Everything was possible and just within reach, and time enough to enjoy it all. Paradise.

  The Beforetime. An expanse of pure joy unbroken by day or night, by seasons or years, unmarked by time. Any moment could stretch as long or pass as quickly as desired. Pleasures without end, lost to context, everlasting dalliances, eternities. An instant of romantic ecstasy in union with another soul that seemed to last forever. An ocean of cozy rapture, warm and deep beyond imagining, its pleasures perpetually changing flavor as it roiled in ceaseless motion. A crystal citadel with towering spires of glittering ice, and the ice itself was sentient and alive, the house an extension of his being so that anyone stepping within his house ventured inside his mind itself. All gone.

  Gone! The loss was too painful to think about, a lesson hard learned by the Tunrit as they shivered in the darkness during the long night when despair had threatened to extinguish them all. Better to think about his resolve, his plan. In time, he would set everything right again.

  Time.

  Time to wake up. Time to move. To plan, to work. He must.

  Emerging from the pool, his strength restored, droplets of the Beforetime drip from Vithrok’s withered skin like sparkles of starshine.

  He was still drunk with it, his head still buzzing with endless possibility, sweet strawberries and a staccato waltz. He glanced down at the cistern full of liquid Beforetime, bubbling and simmering, oily colors flowing, calling him back.

  He stepped away, his body an insignificant frame of frozen flesh ripped from the heart of paradise. It was like being born again, like taking solid form for the first time, like dying. It was almost too painful to remember, that moment just after the Great Rift when the world had first formed and the Tunrit rose from the mud. They had been gods once, then born into this ball of mud as Tunrit, the first men, vomited onto a world of perpetual darkness, cold and hunger. Thrust from the grasp of the eternal and the immense to the pathetic limitations of physical form. A world of black and white and shades of gr
ay. Each time he withdrew from the pool of Beforetime he felt the same crushing wave of bitterness and despair. He, along with everything else, had become so diminished. Dead, but not dead.

  The cistern bubbled its liquid quicksilver. The Beforetime, all the bits and pieces that he had salvaged and collected, ripped from the souls of shamans out on the tundra and from the turgats themselves. He had amassed a great deal of it. Many had fallen before him already — Tifimaqpak, the guardian spirit of the eagle; Ukpiq, the guardian of the owl; also the guardians of the lemming, the hare, the snow starling and the wolverine. Their angakua, the spirit light that had lent them power, all added to the pool. And all of that just a mere fraction of what had been in the Before. Just a little more and he would have enough to serve as spark, a spark to set the tundra aflame.

  The pool ran deep below his Tunrit citadel, a palace built of ebony rock at the very top of the world. Carved in the ancient style of the first men, awash in runic symbols and delicate filigree, spiral towers and intricate archways and vast rib-walled rooms, all empty. And reaching high above, he had erected a glittering dome of this most wondrous and precious stuff, pure Beforetime, to shroud his Tunrit palace in secrecy. The dome rippled with grandeur and unlimited possibility, always in flux, flowing between elements and ideas without number. A dome of white noise that kept him secret from prying eyes and mystical probes. The shamans could not find him, nor the turgats either. Even the eyes of the Moon-Man who saw practically everything from his perch on high, could not unmask what lay below the blanking dome of chaos.

  He was safe here. Shielded, he could plan and he could work.