The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  “I looked down in surprise. What was this? I picked at the thing with the tip of my beak but I couldn’t pry it open. I heard sounds from within, little squeaks and squawks, muffled by the shell.

  “I leaned in close and spoke to the pearl. ‘Why don’t you come out?’ I whispered sweetly. ‘It must be so dark and confining in that shell. Don’t you know we have an entire world out here? You needn’t be afraid.’ I told them all this with a certain twinkle in my eye but they couldn’t see it from inside the shell. I spoke to them with kindness, telling them, ‘You have a friend in me, a protector and playmate. Come out and see.’ I coaxed them: ‘Won’t you come out and play with me?’

  “And when at last the halves parted I saw each pearl was full of tiny creatures, not yet fully formed. And so I played my first trick on them. I gave them only two legs to stand upon so that they must shuffle and lurch from place to place. Instead of wings to fly I gave them little sticks that bend and called them arms. Instead of a nice downy coat of feathers to keep them warm I let them run naked, bare skin against the cold. Oh what fun! And lastly I made them smart and cunning, gave them reason and intuition, for what fun is there in playing jokes on the stupid and outwitting the weak?

  “The men I released from one shell and the women, whom I made a little softer and rounder, from another. And then I let them roam. They were quick to fight and rut and, nearly helpless, they sought out food and shelter. But also they sang! What a surprise that was! Delightful, delightful. Yes, we’ve had all kinds of fun after that. I’ve never been bored since.”

  Having come to the end of his tale, the Raven cocked an eye at Vithrok. “And now you want me to destroy all of them? Just like that?”

  “Why not?” asked Vithrok. “Just think what a great joke it would be. The best of all.”

  Raven stretched his wings and lifted into the air currents. “Time to fly,” he said.

  Vithrok shouted after him. “What is your answer? Tell me now.”

  “My answer is perhaps, or maybe. Much depends on which way the wind blows.”

  “I make my own winds,” said Vithrok. “Join with me!”

  The Raven laughed.

  CHAPTER 19

  BEAR HUNT

  “These look fresh,” said Aquppak. He bent to examine the bear tracks, testing the firmness of the ridge of snow between the sole pad and toe depressions. “Only two days old. I knew we’d find something here.”

  “How big?” asked Niak.

  Aquppak looked down appraisingly, reminding himself the tracks of the brown bear were narrower than the white, and naturally deeper. “Full grown. Good enough.”

  A tremendous crack echoed down from one of the massive chunks of ice bordering the fjord as it settled in place. Aquppak glanced up and down the narrow pass. The spring thaw had resulted in a modest stream running down from the highlands. The escarpment of the fjord was slick with icy runoff. Hidden among the many crevices in the rock face were sizable caves, any one of them large enough to contain the lair of aklaq, the grizzly bear.

  The two men paced along the rock wall, sniffing carefully at each opening. Suddenly Aquppak nodded his head.

  “I knew we’d find something here,” he said again. “This is the best place I know to find a brown bear. I killed my first bear along this ridge, when I was nine.”

  Niak was surprised. “Nine?”

  “That’s right. Kanak was the greatest hunter of the Anatatook in those days. He felt sorry for me because my grandfather Putuguk was no good for the hunt. He was no good for anything.”

  That name was familiar to Niak; he had heard it torn from Aquppak’s lips as he lay deep in the delirium of strong drink. So Putuguk had been his grandfather.

  “Old fool!” said Aquppak. “Useless for the hunt. So I followed Kanak. He taught me how to track every animal. This time I am telling about, we were looking for fox along the edge of the berg and came upon a bloody parka in the snow, turned inside out like an old sock. The owner of the parka had been eaten by a bear, every last bit of him, except for his clothes.

  “Kanak wants to have that bear. He smells him. It’s nearby, he says. He’s glad he’s brought along his best bear spear. That spear was made of hardwood, two full paces long and tipped with a wide jade point. It was beautiful. He smiled at me, telling me he was going to get that bear, just wait and see.

  “So he slashed the traces and cut loose his dogs. They found that bear real quick, sleeping, its belly full from eating that man all up. Only one of the dogs was male, and the bear stood up to it, snapping its neck with one swipe. Then the bear came charging at Kanak and he thrust that spear at it with both hands. It turned sharply and blunted the stroke, breaking the spear in half. What happened next was even worse. The ice shelf cracked under the bear’s weight and Kanak sank through the snow. The bear was on top of him. Kanak screamed into the bear’s open mouth to startle it, and struck with his fist, but it was no good.

  “So what was I going to do? I couldn’t watch Kanak die. So I leapt at the bear.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Niak. He tried to imagine himself as a child, jumping on top of a full-grown grizzly bear. He wouldn’t have done it. He would’ve run back to the village seeking help that would inevitably arrive too late. Aquppak was a much different sort of a man than he. “Nine winters old. You must have thought you were going to die.”

  “No,” said Aquppak. “I didn’t think that at all. I thought that bear was going to die. The only thing I had was a sealskin thong, so I looped it around the bear’s neck. The aklaq tried to shake me off, but I was a skinny little boy then, just another little louse on its backside, and the more it thrashed the tighter I pulled the thong to keep on. Kanak struck at it from below, digging his knife between its ribs, but you can’t kill a bear that way. So I killed it. That was the only time I know a bear was killed by a cord around the neck.”

  Niak shook his head, letting out a dull whistle of air. He had never heard of such a thing.

  “That aklaq had good long fur,” added Aquppak. “And Kanak’s wife trimmed the tops of his boots with it. From that day he showed his good hunting skills on his legs, with proud new boots. I still had dogskin kamiks to wear. Well, that didn’t matter. Kanak always remembered what I did that day. He was the best hunter of the Anatatook. Until I came along.”

  “What happened to him?” asked Niak.

  “He was killed when I was sixteen, in a Yupikut raid.”

  “They kill a lot of people in Nunatsiaq.”

  “What do you know of them?” asked Aquppak.

  “They kill a lot of people.”

  “What about their headman?”

  “His name is Guolna. A bear hunter…”

  “They don’t respect anyone who doesn’t hunt bear.”

  “Yes, but the thing about Guolna — he comes from outside. He’s a Lapp. He knows about the white men’s ways, about money, and he spent time in one of their prisons.”

  “An outsider?” mused Aquppak. “How did he take over the Yupikut?”

  “He killed their headman, of course.”

  Aquppak squinted thoughtfully. “I don’t know anything about Laplanders. Are they strong?”

  He circled the cave entrance, looking down. He kicked at a small depression where the snow cover had melted a little. “Fresh dung,” he said. He knelt to inspect the spoor. “Roots and seeds, mostly. He hasn’t had meat in a while. That’s good. They get slow, if they haven’t had meat. We’ll find it inside the cave, I think.”

  “I’ll go back and get the dogs,” Niak said. They had tethered the team at the mouth of the fjord, so that they wouldn’t have to drag them across the water for nothing.

  “Don’t be foolish,” snapped Aquppak. “Those are good running dogs, all preened and pampered by the white men, but they aren’t bear dogs.”

  “Without the dogs?”

  “Sure. Besides they wouldn’t be any use at all inside the cave.”

  “You’re not going in there?” />
  “Of course I am. The best way is to get it from behind.”

  “Behind? In the cave?”

  Aquppak pushed Niak aside. He measured six paces from the entrance and planted his spear in the ground. He balanced the butt of the shaft so that it went not too deep, the copper tip standing up at the top.

  He made a small round impression in front of the cave entrance. “Lay the fish here, and stand ready,” he said. “And whatever you do, don’t use that rifle. The Yupikut don’t respect anyone who uses a gun to kill a bear. It has to be done by hand, no bullet holes on the pelt. We can’t walk into their camp empty handed. The skin of a brown bear newly killed by hand, that will speak for us. I’m going to kill it with this.”

  Aquppak pulled a blade from the inside of his ragged summer parka. He tested the blade. Its edge had been honed from an odd brown stone that glittered with shining flecks of gold.

  “Kanak gave this to me,” he explained, “for saving his life from an adder snake. This was one of his prized possessions.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Niak.

  “It’s cut from a piece of rock that fell from the sky,” said Aquppak. “It has sparkles in it.”

  “I see,” remarked Niak. “What do you think they are?”

  “I don’t know,” said Aquppak. “Lay the fish here.”

  Niak put the slabs of salmon in the depression Aquppak had made in front of the cave.

  The fish meat was old and particularly pungent. Aquppak crinkled his nose at the odor. “He’ll smell that.”

  “He’ll smell you first,” remarked Niak.

  Aquppak took up the bear spoor and mashed it between his hands, then smeared it on his forehead, neck and the front of his parka. “No he won’t.”

  Aquppak took a pair of deep breaths, looking back out across the frozen stream. He nodded and turned to Niak, smiling. “I feel good,” he said. “I feel good. Almost ready for the Yupikut.”

  He indicated for Niak to stand to the side, where he couldn’t be seen or smelled from the entrance. Niak did as he was told.

  Watching Aquppak enter the darkness of the bear cave, he felt uncertain of this whole endeavor. He held the rifle ready, wondering how big and hungry this bear might turn out to be, and how ferocious. A pristine bear skin was all well and good, but if that aklaq charged at him, he was going to fire. They could get a clean skin another day.

  One thing was for certain — Aquppak was living up to his reputation as impulsive and deadly, and surely the Yupikut would see that as well. Niak was counting on it.

  ***

  Aaacckkk! This is a fine fuddling I’ve got myself into, thought Nunavik. Trapped at the bottom of the sea. Helpless. How could such a thing happen?

  He knew damned well how it had happened, of course. But how could he have been so stupid? Taking the lakespawn into the ocean? Surely he knew better than that. But they had looked at him with those sad, imploring eyes — twelve eyes each, at that — and he just hadn’t figured all the consequences. I’m getting soft, he thought. Soft and slow-witted.

  It was lucky for him that he’d been able to retreat into his spirit-tusk. He’d never tried such a thing before, nor even considered that it might be possible. He had simply reacted to the threat of total destruction. Well, his reflexes were still sharp even if his common sense had turned to jelly. In his panic at seeing Sedna again, he had instinctually withdrawn his entire soul into the tusk of his spirit-form. A soul within a soul. He didn’t quite understand it himself. What did it matter? Hidden within the spirit-tusk his soul could not be seen by Sedna or any other spirit. That was good enough.

  The runes had been carved by a crazy, cross-eyed shaman named Kaokortok. A complete idiot, but now Nunavik owed the man his life once again.

  Years ago, the murder of Sedna’s only daughter by the men of Nunatsiaq had driven the sea witch into an unprecedented rage. The seas had boiled with her fury. Storms of salt water scoured the land, washing ice and silt and even entire human settlements into the ocean. Women and children alike, all dragged beneath the waves, never to return. Only their dying screams bubbled to the surface. And the men she wasn’t able to drown, she starved. For Sedna was responsible for apportioning the game animals — the seal and walrus — up to the surface to feed the men.

  And it was only a matter of time before the ruthless mistress of the sea turned her attention to Nunavik. After all, he had been the reason the turgat’s daughter had come up to the surface; he had piqued her curiosity, perhaps even her love. When Sedna found out about his involvement, as inevitably she must, her wrath would shred his very soul. As a walrus, Nunavik’s existence fell squarely under her purview, his soul was her plaything to do with as she liked, and judging by the look of the destruction wreaked upon the surface, he couldn’t even guess what terrible fate was reserved for him.

  And so Nunavik decided to make for the shoreline, thinking if he separated himself from the sea-born clutches of Sedna, her vengeance might not find him so quickly. It was a futile hope at best, for the great turgats can see the souls of their charges wherever they might go. He was doomed.

  That’s when he met Kaokortok, a broken-down Tungus shaman drifting helplessly on one of the ice floes. Hunting seal, alone, on an unsteady edge of the shore ice, a piece had broken away, carrying the hapless shaman out to sea. He had drifted for days and days, starving and alone. He had no hope of succor from his guardian spirit, who was the master of the voles, and had no power at all where water was concerned. When Nunavik first came upon the shaman he had his snow knife drawn, the blade held to his own throat. Kaokortok seemed to be in a state of self-debate, his shaky hand torn between two minds, threatening to end his miserable life right there and then, distraught beyond measure. Then he would reconsider and the knife would jerk away, back and forth it went in a sawing motion, poised at the flesh of his own throat.

  The shaman paused to lean over the edge, splashing salt water in his face. He grimaced in obvious discomfort as the brine stung his eyes, then picked up the knife, raising it again to his throat.

  The walrus broke the surface. “Don’t do that!” he called out.

  Of course Nunavik hadn’t actually said anything, but he knew by then that shamans understood the language of the soul. As Kaokortok peered at him over the rim of ice floe, one of his eyes bulged. Surely he thought he was looking at his long-lost supper. He didn’t respond, and Nunavik wasn’t sure this shaman was at all conversant in the secret language.

  Nunavik scooped up a few tomcod with the flat of his flipper, and tossed them up onto the ice floe. Slap, slap. Up they went.

  “What were you trying to do?” he asked. “Saw your own head off?”

  “No,” said Kaokortok defensively, using the secret language. He tried to straighten himself up, pulling his tattered parka tight, but the front panels, which he had torn apart in anguish, wouldn’t quite go back together. His hair a ratty nest, a mismatched pair of eyes, sunken cheeks, a long sloping nose. This was as wretched a creature as Nunavik had ever seen. “No, no,” he said. “I was merely trying to clean up a bit, that’s all.”

  With that he took several strokes of the blade against the stubble on his chin as if shaving, clumsily nicking himself in the process. He yelped in surprise, gazed sadly at the splash of blood on the blade and then sank down, weeping, onto the ice. “Oh, what’s the use? What’s the use? Go away, friend walrus. Just go away and let me die in peace.”

  Nunavik hauled his head and shoulders onto the floe. “Die? Why should you die here?”

  “I’ve been riding this floe for half a moon, and all that time, smaller and smaller it gets. I thank you for the fish, but, once I hit that water, it’s an icy death for me.” He looked embarrassed. “I can’t even swim. Not one little bit. So far out from shore, there’s no hope for me. And a shaman without hope is no shaman at all.”

  Nunavik began swishing his powerful tail in the water, pushing the floe slowly forward. “You won’t have to
swim at all,” he said. “This raft is only a few strokes from the shore.”

  Kaokortok looked all around, but didn’t see anything worthwhile. “You jest, friend walrus. You jest with me. Well why not? I don’t blame you. You think I’m a complete idiot, don’t you?”

  Nunavik thought it best not to answer.

  Kaokortok perked up, suddenly remembering his most bizarre claim to fame. “I have an eye that comes out! Want to see?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he pulled it out. No sooner out of the socket, the slippery orb made trouble and the shaman bobbled it in his fingers.

  “This isn’t my original eye,” he said. “This is a fish eye. I lost the first one somewhere. It’s almost as good, but it doesn’t ever blink, and it gets awfully dry.”

  He struggled with the eye, nearly dropping it overboard several times, then wrestled it back into its socket. He leaned over the side, splashed some salt water on the eye, then yelped when it stung.

  He groaned again, took a moment to wipe the tears from his one good eye, and looked around again. “I’ve got one eye for land, and one for the water, so if there were land anywhere near here, I would see it.”

  “Behind you,” said Nunavik.

  “What?” Kaokortok jumped up. In his excitement he pushed one foot through the floe, and an icy swell of water came bubbling up. “Ahh,” he wailed. “Too late. Too late, friend walrus. We’re going down!”

  The floe had already abutted the pack ice shelf of a sizable berg and stuck. Whooping with glee the Tungus shaman scooped up his tomcod and carried them onto land. “I’m saved!” he rejoiced. “I’m saved.”

  “That’s fine for you,” said Nunavik, pulling himself out of the water. He waddled onto the berg and flopped dejectedly across the ice, belly up. It occurred to him that the shaman might be considering him for a late supper in addition to the lunch he had already provided, but he didn’t care. He had never felt so sad and lonely. When Sedna had refused to send food to them, the people had grown desperate in their starvation and hunted whatever seal and walrus they could find to utter destruction. Nunavik had seen all his friends and family destroyed, killed and eaten, one by one, even though it was not their time. He felt alone, miserable and trapped.