The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  But had the imposition of guilt been intentional on her part? Margaret understood his position completely. She had insisted that he go. King Edward had a keen appreciation for devoted men who took hardship and risk for the Crown. Such a man, taking it upon himself to suffer arctic winds for a year or two, bought himself much favor with the King and many rewards including a choice appointment anywhere in the realm. If he proved himself here, he would be set for life. That much Margaret understood perfectly, and even encouraged. For what woman doesn’t want her husband to become a grand success?

  Another pang. He had married her for status, but she did not know that. Or did she? Certainly she had allowed him no sign. She smiled wanly at him, gazed hopefully into his eyes, gave herself to him without reservation. He performed the role of doting husband as well as any headliner in a Royal Command Performance. Their marriage had seemed a natural step on a path that had led him from a filthy Lambeth slum to a redoubt in the military, a hard-won commission to the officer’s corps where he rose steadily in the ranks to First Lieutenant. It was a hard climb, but he pulled himself up hand over hand. Always certain, always sure because everything he wanted lay at the end of that rope — wealth and status and all the comforts upper-class British society could afford. And marriage to Margaret Appleby brought him several steps closer. Her uncle, the Earl of Saxonhurst, was flush with old money, title and lands and she, so fragile and reclusive, not so easy for the Earl to marry off. Gekko fit the bill perfectly.

  A secretive appointment to His Majesty’s Ministry of War and a full knighthood followed with clockwork precision. Gekko neared the top of his long climb. If he acquitted himself well on this last venture everything would be settled. He would have it all. Margaret was well-pleased. And she had insisted he accept the commission into the icy wastes in order to better his position with the Crown. She had insisted. But had she really wanted him to go?

  The letter continued:

  ‘Mr. Haversham has taken suddenly and seriously ill, possibly with the ague. He suffers terribly, with fever and violent tremors. The physician will make no promises as to a recovery. His poor dear wife has such a hard time of it with their three children and I am happy to assist in whatever small ways as ever I may. I do have to confess a slightly selfish motive because as you know I do so love the company of their little darlings William and Millicent. I look forward to the summer when I may see them frolic in the yard and dream up new fancies. Last year it was tadpoles and crocuses for William and garden pixies for his sister. I can only wonder what will take hold of their imaginations this season. I dearly hope their father’s illness will not end in disaster, such as would certainly overshadow their juvenile pleasures.

  ‘That is all I can write just now. Sending you my love, as always, until we see each other again.

  ‘Tender love,

  Signed, Margaret Appleby Gekko.’

  A pang for him there too. All this talk of children. They had no children and never would. Margaret had accepted those facts, so why did she play upon them in this letter? Or was she simply conveying her affection for Haversham’s brood, and no secret meaning intended? She was an intelligent woman, introspective and certainly clever in her way. It was this sharp intellect of the Lady Margaret which Gekko found quite charming and captivating if not endearing. The lady was often circumspect in her allusions.

  And what did she mean by that last bit about Haversham’s sudden illness? The man was a complete ass and always had been. Why devote half the letter to such morbid and irrelevant news? Surely their neighbor’s illness was off the point entirely. She refused to speak of her own health, but went on at length about Haversham’s fevers. Was there a message?

  A childless wife, waiting in a gabled house in Paddington Road. So small and delicate with blue eyes and a sad smile. He had been too long away.

  He raised the letter again, intent on divining some new conclusion, however abstruse, when the door to the inner sanctum flew open with a loud thump. Henry Jackson, the assistant manager at the post, came bursting into the room. He stepped briskly to the weapons locker and practically assaulted the lock with the key. He threw the door nearly off its hinges, revealing a small collection of rifles and pistols. His hands jerked with frantic motion as he ran them down along the stacked boxes of ammunition.

  “How are you with a pistol?” Jackson asked.

  “A fair shot at ten yards, deadly at six.”

  “Good. Good,” Jackson said, tossing Gekko a weatherbeaten Remington 0.44.

  Gekko automatically checked the firing mechanism on the pistol, finding it slightly rusted, a condition he would never have allowed in his own guns. “What’s happened?”

  Jackson offered an odd grimace, equal parts terror and good old British resignation. “The natives are getting restless.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “McPearson is dead. And the two officers from the Northwest Mounted. Both dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Murdered. Killed by a couple of crazy Eskimos. The same men, I am sure, that killed that fellow Kullabak.”

  Gekko hefted the weapon. “Well, they don’t kill an officer of the BEA Company and get away with it. How soon can we catch up with them? Are they holed up somewhere or on the move?”

  “We’re not going anywhere,” said Jackson.

  Gekko didn’t like the man’s look of abject helplessness. He helped himself to one of the rifles. “Well, I’m going after them.”

  “No, you’re not. I can’t spare you. Don’t you see? This place is a treasure trove to them. So many pots, pans, traps, tools piled to the rafters. Everything they could ever want all within easy reach. They were afraid of McPearson. Hell, he was pretty rough on them. Necessarily rough, of course. But if they know I’m here alone, they will come for me. Once they get their heads full of that home brew of theirs, once they get good and drunk. If they sense weakness here, they will come.”

  Jackson was utterly terrified. He continued, “If we put up a good show with the rifles they may settle down.” He said the words almost as if he didn’t believe them. “Otherwise we may have to kill a few.”

  He exchanged a troubled glance with Gekko. “I can count on you?”

  Gekko nodded gravely. He cocked the rifle. “I’m with you, old man. We’ll be alright.”

  “Good. Let’s push out whoever’s left in the sitting room and lock the place up tight.”

  CHAPTER 17

  AN ILL OMEN

  On the second day a high wind blew down from the north. The bite of the wind kept Alaana snuggled deep in her hood with a wrap of frozen sealskin tight around her face and neck. She could hardly see the trail with the ground blow swirling all around. Spiral plumes of snow ran before the raging wind, filling the air with flying powder. There was not much to see in any case, a bleak gray landscape devoid of even a horizon line. Tundra, sky, cloud — it was all the same.

  As they moved north the ground cover had changed from soft and patchy to hard snow, beaten flat by the wind. Now the dogs could really run. The powerful huskies took great satisfaction in ripping across the tundra, the guard hairs of their pelts thick with insulating snow, the warmth of pumping legs warding off the cold. No whip need sting their backsides. There was a rare joy in it for them and Alaana felt some of that joy reflected back onto her. These were simple animals and, like the ordinary people of her band, delighted in living their lives without giving thought constantly to ghosts, spirits and demons.

  Alaana closed her weary eyes and let Yipyip direct the team. The little dog knew the way to the Ice Mountain as well as her master. Spoiled old gal, she didn’t leave the sled nor put her nose to the ground to do this, she simply raised her muzzle from the stanchion from time to time, glanced left and right and then barked a command to the other dogs.

  After a long day they camped in the lee of a tall ridge the Anatatook called Blue Tailfin. The rock face was permanently coated by a thick sheen of ice which shone dull blue during
summer’s day and dark purple in the dim starlight of evening. Alaana tossed the dogs a well-deserved feast of minced walrus meat and then unpacked and assembled her tent. Set free from their lines, their bellies full, the dogs burrowed down into the snow.

  Alaana’s meal was tammoagac, a mixture of dried tomcod and caribou tallow. She ate sitting on a broad flat rock outside the tent while looking at the sky. It was a peaceful night, utterly quiet. A watchful half-moon glancing down, the sky slowly filled with fine pinpoints of light. Tikiqaq regarded the stars with hungry eyes and Alaana pointed out the constellations shining against the Outer Darkness. She had never found out what they actually were, though she had come to believe them to be the souls of ancestors looking down, perhaps those who had held the special light when they had walked the earth, the shamans. Now so far away. Of the six spiritual worlds, the celestial realm was all but unreachable. The only part of the celestial realm a shaman could visit was the Moon, that lone outpost closest the world below.

  Tiki asked question after question. How had Sivulliik, the little orphan boy, angered his grandfather? Why did Kingullik, the grandmother, chase them both across the sky? Alaana sat and told the legends of the constellations, old stories passed down from Old Higilak, until the cold began seep into her bones. She explained how the Aagjuuk, the Two Sunbeams, could be used to tell the season; how the appearance of Akkuttujuuk, the Two Apart, signaled the return of sunlight after winter.

  When asked how long the stars had lived up in the sky, she had no answer.

  “How long does a tupilaq live?” Tiki asked.

  “Usually only a short while. It’s life is temporary, meant to last only until its mission is fulfilled.”

  “I’ve never met any other tupilaqs.”

  “They are only a few,” said Alaana. Then she added, “And that’s a good thing.”

  “My mission was fulfilled,” it said. “Klah Kritlaq is dead.”

  “I gave you another mission. To protect Tooky and the children.”

  Tiki’s whiskers twitched. “Tooky is married many years now. Igguaniaq protects her. The children are grown. Will I go on, then? How long?”

  Alaana grinned. “There are always more children.”

  The cold didn’t bother the tupilaq, a creature that had already felt the icy embrace of death many moons before, and had a thick pelt of sealskin in any case. Alaana was only human and nearly frozen, but for a shaman out in the wild this was not a problem. She crossed her legs and assumed the position necessary for the tumo, the summoning of mystic heat. Out here in the quiet, empty night, maybe she could at last set her troubles aside and concentrate. With a series of slow, deep breaths she woke up a tiny fire within her chest and grew it to the size and shape of a little ball. The heat expanded along the lines of her blood flow, filling her body with a pleasant warmth.

  “Master!” squawked Tiki. This wild cry came not from the mouth of the seal carcass, but from the raven’s beak stuck in the middle of the tupilaq’s forehead. Its strange high-pitched alarm instantly roused Alaana from her stupor of warmth.

  One of the dogs howled. The rest of the team stood still, tensed and alert, the hair on their backs standing on edge.

  Alaana scanned the night. Moonlight on tundra revealed only an empty plain. She saw nothing. And yet Tikiqaq sat rigidly, staring into the distance. It pointed a clawed flipper north, screeching, “There! There!”

  Alaana took a deep breath and called forth the auspices of the spirit-vision, the shaman’s special sight. The dim, gray night unfolded, bursting into vibrant hues of purple and gold. The vast glow of the spirit of the snow lay across the land, overshadowed by the spirit of the Blue Tailfin, an old rock formation, now fast asleep. The souls of the dogs, nestled beneath their bank of snow, shone like amber lamplight within the iglus of a winter camp. Tiki had no soul of its own, but Alaana could see the faded castoffs from its various bits and parts and the amulets buried beneath its skin.

  Then across the plain, Alaana saw it at last. A stream of silver light coming down the pass, drifting slowly as water flows down from a mountain crag. A river of ghostly light.

  “They’re people,” said Tiki. “How many do you see?”

  Alaana counted heads bobbing as they marched. “Five or six hands.”

  “What should we do? Have they seen us? Will they hurt us?”

  The procession of silvery apparitions was heading straight for her little tent. Alaana glanced around the barren plain. Nowhere to go. No place to hide. Not enough time to drag the dogs out, hitch up the team and make off.

  “We’ll just have to wait.”

  Alaana recalled Old Manatook’s advice regarding ghosts. Such spirits were not necessarily malevolent, and in her life Alaana had encountered many. Most often they were lost souls seeking only respect or release. Still, to encounter so many at once was very strange. And ghosts usually stayed in one place.

  Alaana could make out thirty spectral figures, some plodding steadily along, some running, stumbling. She listened to the wails and moans of the suffering. So sharp, so new. These people were only recently killed. If roused to anger there would be no way to defend against such a mob. Caught out on the tundra, everyone, even the shaman, was left to the mercy of fate.

  As the ghosts bore down on them, Alaana drew supplies from her tent. She carefully set out all her food on the rock slab in front of her. Dried fish, strips of sweet tallow and whatever blubber she had left. She kicked out the tent poles and let the skins collapse, thinking the sight of her shelter might offend those who roamed the wastes with no hope of home, hearth or peace.

  The ghostly procession drew near. An entire village, walking slowly, their feet not quite touching the ground, their faces etched with pain and suffering. Their eyes gaped wide, perpetually witnessing some horror that had undone them; their anguished gaze roamed side to side as they, perhaps thinking themselves still alive, sought either aid or escape.

  For a moment Alaana thought they might pass by. But then the one in front, a tall man dressed in fine furs who stepped forward with a hint of his former confidence, locked eyes with Alaana. He led his people down the slope directly toward the shaman and the tupilaq. As the tortured band picked up speed they all began to speak at once, offering a hailstorm of terrified entreaties, helpless moans and wails of bone-deep misery. Thundering noisily down the pitch, such a stampede might easily destroy anything in its path.

  Reaching the feast upon the rock, the ghostly leader paused to speak to Alaana. The pale glow of the shimmering apparition, embossed by silver moonlight, detailed the lines of a once-proud face.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” he said. The motions of his lips, framed by a ragged beard, did not match his words. Though he spoke in an even tone, his mouth was forever screaming.

  “We are only passing through,” said Alaana. “We harm no one.”

  “Harm comes to those it will.” The man gestured limply at his anguished followers.

  An entire village, thought Alaana. Women and children alike. She could only wonder what misfortune had befallen them. It was not wise to ask such questions of the dead. If they wanted to tell you something like that, they would.

  “Share our meal,” offered Alaana with a sweep of her hand. “It’s not much, but we do have salted fishmeat and some blubber. Take some comfort here if you can.”

  The headman looked down at the food, but shook his head. “You are kind. But dead flesh can no longer fill our bellies, nor salted fish provide any comfort to us.”

  “I would honor you,” said Alaana. “If I knew what had happened to you, I would try to help. Maybe I could ease your passage to the distant lands.”

  At her offer of help, the crowd of ghosts kicked up their desperate wailing. Heads turned toward the shaman but there was little hope in their dead eyes.

  The headman stared distractedly at his belly. “I was cut in half,” he bemoaned. His hands went reflexively to his midsection, his face a mask of pain.

  Crossing s
ouls to the distant lands was the province of the snowy owl. Why hadn’t aided these souls already, Alaana wondered.

  “If I knew your names I might be able to help you,” she said.

  “Our names? What are our names? They have been stolen from us! Stolen by some monster from the flats, some evil come to devour us, eating everything.”

  “Tell me,” said Alaana, “what direction did it come from?”

  “I don’t know. He approached amid a swirl of snow. I couldn’t see.” That was all he would say. He glanced again at the food, but there was no hunger in his eyes, only endless suffering.

  The headman signaled to the line of shades; their wailing died down and they began to drift away again. Though it broke her heart, Alaana watched them go. Murdered children trailed behind their parents; their elders oblivious to them as they marched, their faces empty, their hearts torn from their chests.

  Alaana recognized a short man, who walked surrounded by the children, dressed in bird skins and a feathered parka.

  “I know you,” she said. “I know your name.”

  The man turned his vacant gaze toward Alaana, but didn’t recognize her.

  “You are Maatalliq, shaman of the Iakkut people.”

  A glimmer of recognition alit in the dwarf’s dead-brown eyes. He stared at Alaana as if still half asleep. “Is that you, Alaana?”

  “Yes, my friend. What could have happened? Did the snowy owl not come?”

  “Kiptaitchuq, the snowy owl, has gone missing from this land. She is swept away by the tide and gone.”

  “What tide is this?”

  Maatalliq, distracted, glanced around him. “My children…?”

  “Listen,” said Alaana. “I know your name. I know your deeds and your heart. I can send you on. I can release you to join the ancestors.”