The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  The demon turned to Alaana, flushed and panting with her exertion, blood trickling from her mouth in a sharp line that ran down between her shaggy breasts.

  “That felt good!” she said, licking blood-stained lips. “But now you must go!”

  “My thoughts exactly,” said Nunavik.

  Alaana bowed her head. “My thanks Nirjkila.”

  “Never mind that. There’s no time. The drumbeats...”

  “I’ve tried the drum,” said Alaana. “I can’t reach it. It’s too far. Can you summon help from your husband?”

  The demon shook her head. “Qo’tirgin is out on the hunt somewhere running after caribou. It would take too long to find him. But there’s one way you can still escape.”

  “Then let’s be quick about it,” said Nunavik. “Show us the way.”

  Nirjkila cast a disgusted look at the walrus. “You don’t belong here, Alaana. You’re not dead. So there’s another path for you. The Dreamworld is connected to the other worlds at every point. Like the shadow realm, it lays not above nor below but alongside. If you fall asleep and travel to dream, you’ll be gone from here.”

  “Fall asleep?” said Alaana incredulously. “Just like that? With all this going on?”

  “It’s our only chance,” said Nunavik. “And, most importantly, it will work. You must not doubt.”

  “It will work,” said Nirjkila.

  “It will,” said Alaana. “I have no doubt.”

  “That’s my girl!” said Nunavik.

  Alaana indicated the tusk fragment she carried with her. “Get inside, Black Tusk. Ferry service leaving immediately.”

  Nunavik was happy to oblige.

  Alaana settled herself. Her heart was still pounding from the excitement of the battle. She closed her eyes on the room and its bloody walls with the tortured creatures still hanging in the foul webbing. She must relax. She must fall asleep. She tried to shut out the laments of souls in torment that rang out in the Underworld, tried to ignore the certain death that was probably only moments away, barreling down the tunnel in the form of some other hideous creature determined to devour their very souls, to rid herself of the specter of Vithrok, who had lured them down to their destruction.

  “I can’t do it,” she said to Nirjkila.

  Inside the amulet tusk, Alaana heard Nunavik groan in frustration.

  “It’s impossible,” Alaana said.

  “Not really,” said the demon bride. She smacked Alaana in the back of the head with a flat stone.

  White.

  A dizzy, lurching sensation.

  Cold.

  Alaana forced her eyes open. Everything was white.

  Snow.

  She was sliding down a hillside covered in soft, wet snow.

  She reached the bottom of the hill, a faceful of snow, still dazed.

  A strange night sky arched overhead. The familiar groupings of stars were no longer there. Instead, the Northern lights shone in the sky. Colorful ribbons of light ebbed and flowed in vivid purple, yellow, white and green. It seemed as if she were still under the sea, looking up through the surface of water at some awesome display on the other side.

  “Look out!”

  A high-pitched familiar voice. Mikisork.

  The young boy crashed into Alaana’s belly, but the impact didn’t hurt at all. The two went rolling in the snow.

  “Look out,” said Miki again, taking her hand and pulling her to her feet. “Iggy won’t be so gentle.”

  He led Alaana away from the bottom of the hill. His hand was warm. He didn’t let go. They often held hands as children. And they were children.

  Iggy came galumphing down the hillside kicking up a flurry of white powder on all sides, whooping with glee.

  “Show off,” said Aquppak. He was dressed in a ragged dogskin parka, which left him shaking with the chill. Alaana had forgotten how thin and half-starved Aquppak had looked as a child.

  I’m dreaming, she thought. I’m dreaming we’re all children again.

  This realization half ruined the spell. The four children were now walking suddenly through the Anatatook camp. They came upon Kigiuna, as Alaana remembered her father from her youth. Kigiuna in the prime of his years, strong and vital. Alaana thought her father would scold them for neglecting their chores but Kigiuna only smiled and said, “What are you waiting for? Run and play.”

  Alaana was delighted. She wanted nothing more. “Let’s get the sleds,” she suggested to the others. Turning, she ran directly into Higilak. Even thirty years ago Higilak had been an old woman with completely gray hair.

  “Not so fast,” she said.

  As Alaana watched, she saw Higilak age further still, her hair receding and becoming thin, her back bent. “You’ve got work to do,” the old woman said. “Shaman work.”

  Alaana wanted to point out that she was not the shaman and never had been, but the words wouldn’t come out. It wouldn’t be true. She took a step backward, disoriented again but now realizing she was fully an adult.

  “Nunavik?” she called. Her hand went to the amulet tusk in her pocket. “Sill with me?”

  “As ever,” came the walrus’ reply. He appeared beside her, restored now to all his golden glory.

  “All you have to do now is wake up, and you’ll be back in the karigi.”

  “Right,” said Alaana, but her attention was distracted by a group of children playing blanket toss beside the shaman’s tent. Tama was there giggling, and Miki’s daughter Talliituk. Old Higilak was right. These were the people she was charged with protecting. They were the reason she had become the shaman.

  Where the karigi was supposed to be, there stood no tent, only a sleeping platform alone in the snow.

  Her son lay on the bed, asleep. Next to him, gently caressing his forehead was the tupilaq.

  “Tikiqaq!” called Alaana. “So that’s where it is.”

  “Dawdling around,” commented Nunavik.

  “No,” said Alaana, “not dawdling at all.”

  She realized the tupilaq was helping her son. She had noticed the change in Kinak in recent days. His sleep was more peaceful now, his manner less distracted. Tiki was helping the boy, doing the things his mother could no longer do, or dared not.

  “Mother?”

  Alaana turned to face another vision of her son, this one standing tall. She had never seen Kinak so confident and sure.

  “Kinak?”

  “I’ve caught three snow hares,” said Kinak, hoisting the carcasses strung on a heavy thong. “I speared them at twenty paces.” Kinak laughed. “It was easy.”

  “A spear shot at twenty paces?” said Alaana. “That’s quite an eye.”

  “You should have seen it!”

  “I agree,” said Alaana happily. “I should’ve. We’ll have to go out together sometime soon.”

  “What nonsense is all this?” asked Nunavik.

  “This is part of Kinak’s dream,” whispered Alaana. “This is the man he’s dreaming himself to be.” It was not unusual in the world of dream for past and present, and even future, aspects of a person to stand side by side.

  Oblivious to this comment, Kinak laughed again.

  “Got to go, mother,” he said. “My wife is waiting.” He hefted his kills again. “She’ll be pleased.”

  “Wait!” said Alaana. She wanted to say more. She wanted to tell her son how proud of him she was, and how he was going to be a great hunter for the people. She wanted to say so much more but something caught her eye, a lurking figure at the far end of the camp, a tall hooded man with an oversized head.

  “It’s him!” she said to Nunavik. “No! He can’t be here.”

  She looked to her sleeping son again. The sorcerer came striding towards them. “He’ll destroy everything. He can’t be here. Not near my son.”

  “He’s followed us,” observed Nunavik, “not your son.”

  “Up!” shouted Alaana. “We go up.”

  The shaman took a deep breath. She had to lead Vithrok awa
y. Her spirit-woman shot up into the dream sky. Nunavik followed right after, a golden arrow aimed at the heavens.

  It was an exertion, making for the Upperworld so suddenly, but Alaana was full of desperate energy. “Is he following?”

  Not waiting for the walrus to answer, she glanced behind to see that the sorcerer, having sprouted a pair of large black wings, was indeed following them upward.

  “We have no weapons,” warned Nunavik.

  “Maybe we can lose him in the clouds.”

  Alaana began to feel dizzy. After all they’d been through on this soul flight from the bottom of the sea, to her upset at the cave of crystals, to the battles in the Underworld and the jaunt to the dreamlands, the exertion was beginning to take its toll. She pressed hard, struggling up toward the spiritual world of clouds and winds and breezes.

  “Halloo!” said a frothy cumulous cloud as it sauntered next to them.

  “Ah, visitors, visitors!” said its cheerful companion, a long white stream. “What dream wind blows them this way, I wonder?”

  “Look!” added the first, “It’s my good friend Nunavik. How goes it, Walrus On The Ice?”

  “Ah, fine, Ssussusuraq,” said the walrus. “No time to talk just now. Sorry.”

  The two travelers banked hard to the right.

  “Rude,” said the clouds.

  Alaana and Nunavik swirled among them, weaving a pattern they hoped might be difficult for Vithrok to follow. The clouds chatted and asked them questions as the shamans spun this way and that, ignoring their cheerful attempts at banter.

  Alaana risked a peek below. The sky beneath them was darkening considerably, the clouds scattered and in disarray, blowing fiercely in the sorcerer’s wake.

  “Still after us?” asked Nunavik.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, good,” said the walrus.

  “You know what to do.”

  Nunavik rolled his golden spirit-walrus to the side and disappeared into a bank of puffy white vapor.

  Alaana broke the surface of the cloud layer, ignoring grumbles and complaints from the fluffy denizens of the sky. Above the clouds, up where the bird spirits of the Upperworld roost in their ethereal aeries, she paused to watch Vithrok rising out of the mist on his great black wings. The sorcerer met the shaman’s gaze. The tanned hood had fallen back, and Vithrok wore now the handsome guise of the Light-Bringer with the sparkling silver eyes.

  This strange figure, blurred by the night mists, spoke: “Stop running, little shaman. You’ve nowhere left to go. Now I’ve caught you out, so weak and alone.”

  Alaana pressed for higher ground, but the sorcerer spoke the truth. She couldn’t continue like this for much longer. Maintaining the spirit-woman for so long was difficult under any circumstances, but after this long journey Alaana felt weighted down by exhaustion. Battered and bloodied, she could go no higher. Nor could she hope to fight the sorcerer like this. Luckily, she didn’t need to.

  Nunavik’s strident whistle call rang out through the air.

  Sparrow warriors, a vast number of them, swooped in from every direction. The wild flocks converged upon the sorcerer. Vithrok seemed startled and unsure what to do. He was the type of man, Alaana knew, who did not comfortably retreat. Though his attackers were small, they faced him in tremendous numbers.

  Vithrok waved his arms in big circular motions in an attempt to dispel the mass of birds and their mad, pecking beaks. Amidst all the confusion the sorcerer managed to maneuver away from the main mass of sparrows.

  At that moment the owls came soaring into view. Thousands of them, in military file, dressed up in war armor, came screeching out of the sky.

  Nunavik returned to Alaana’s side. “I brought everyone I could,” he said. “I hope it will be enough.”

  With a fierce shout, Vithrok’s spirit-man broke apart. He burst into a flock of black birds. Now the fight was truly joined. Owl to raven to sparrow, the aerial battle raged furiously across the azure skies of Upperworld. Alaana couldn’t keep track of the mass of birds, their frenzied flapping of wing, their various cries and screeches.

  “We’ve got him now!” shouted Nunavik.

  Indeed, caught between two aerial armies of hard-bitten warrior spirits, the sorcerer struggled to defend himself. Some of the ravens fell dead from the sky while others tried to regroup. Divided and embattled, it seemed possible that Vithrok might finally be defeated.

  “Something’s not right here,” said Alaana.

  The many ravens, under great pressure, joined together into one gigantic figure. The great bird shrieked, a high-pitched sound that startled even the owls.

  “Aacccckkk!” said Nunavik.

  Breaking free, the giant raven pressed upward.

  “He’s getting away,” said Nunavik. “He’s heading for the Celestial realm, toward the Moon. Quick! We should follow.”

  Alaana hesitated.

  “Let’s go,” said Nunavik. “He’s hurt, weakened. This may be our best chance.”

  Too weak to go on, Alaana said, “I can’t.”

  “Can’t!” repeated Nunavik. “That’s a word I taught you never to say.”

  Alaana felt dizzy. “I’m too tired. I can’t.”

  Nunavik squinted his black eyes at his friend. Perhaps, so lost in the moment, he hadn’t realized how badly hurt she was. Alaana’s skin was burned from the lumentin and she bled from a dozen other wounds as well. As her complexion had gone mostly pale, the crimson blood stood out in sharp relief.

  “It’s no chance at all,” said Alaana. “Don’t you see? This is not Vithrok. It’s Tulukkaruq. It’s Raven playing a trick on us.”

  “What?”

  “Those big black wings. Vithrok wouldn’t need wings to fly, just as we don’t. And when surprised, when pressed, he turned into a flock of ravens. Vithrok could have killed those sparrows easily, through sorcery. He would have done so without a moment’s thought. But that bird didn’t seem to want to hurt them. This is not Vithrok. It never was. It’s Raven, playing one of his tricks.”

  Nunavik shot a suspicious glance at the figure of the Raven as it retreated up toward the Moon. He thought he saw the turgat cast a glance back down at him. No, he thought, there was more to this than just a misplaced joke. He wanted to follow, but thought he had better help Alaana return to the karigi before she collapsed completely and plunged to her death.

  “Just another trick,” said Alaana bitterly. “Another trick.”

  CHAPTER 43

  FINISHED

  Alaana slept for nearly two days. When she woke, Tikiqaq fussed over her, spoon-feeding its master, rubbing salve into her many wounds, and telling her jokes and riddles to cheer her up. The burns on her legs where the lumentin had touched her crusted over, and even the place where one had bitten a piece out of Alaana’s arm began to heal, but the worst wounds were those made by the beaks of the doubt-bats. Several dozen such pinpricks covered her arms and neck, and they stayed red with blood and extremely painful. Tiki worried they would never go away.

  Alaana said very little. She slept most of the long day and kept chasing her little tupilaq away. She was tired of everyone propping her up. She wanted to be left alone with her husband. Of course in this regard, Nunavik did not comply. The walrus allowed his friend time enough to regain strength, but would not see her sit idle. Nunavik wouldn’t let Alaana sink from being disgruntled to giving up completely. For a shaman, that would mean a quick death. He demanded to engage her in conversation, and would not be pushed aside.

  “If that really was Raven--” said Nunavik.

  “It was,” said Alaana.

  “It seemed he was leading us to the Moon, there at the end. And I think there might be something up there that he wanted us to see.”

  “How can you know what he wants? Out of all the turgats, Raven is the most fickle. Even worse than the wind. He is too often cruel. You told me to stay far away from Tulukkaruq. Who knows what moves him to do anything? Most likely he was just tricking us.”
r />   “Maybe we should take flight again. Go up to the Moon and see for ourselves.”

  Alaana shook her head at the thought of another soul flight. “I have neither the strength for it, nor the stomach.”

  “Something there he wants us to see,” said Nunavik again. “It might be important.”

  Alaana was thoroughly disgusted. Of all the things that had recently happened she took the death of the ancient crystals hardest of all. They were great and wise spirits, spirits she had hoped to meet again and to come to know, now crushed to insensate powder. The last of the great crystals, the ruby gemstone, had been destroyed while still in her hand.

  “I don’t want to see anything,” she said.

  “No, really. I think we should look.”

  “Go wherever you want. I’m sick and I’m tired. I can’t go on. Too much has happened. It’s too big for us. Don’t you see that? We shouldn’t be chasing around after the turgats, or the sorcerer for that matter. Let the great spirits deal with him, if they want. I’m needed here, just to do what I can for my people. Sik-sik had the right idea.”

  “Sik-sik?” repeated Nunavik. “You’re taking lessons from a ground squirrel now?”

  “Why not?” said Alaana. “Maybe he knows better what to do than some mad, questing walrus. I’ll do what I can for the Anatatook — that’s my duty, not chasing around the seven worlds. No more. I have a family to care for, a people to try and protect. Go sailing up into the sky if that’s what you want. I’m finished.”

  When Alaana was strong enough to walk again, Ben sat with her outside their tent. Summer was fully upon them, with its long hectic days and short nights. He had no love for the summer, not since the shadows. The thought of two long months of daylight, with the tortured laments of the shadows ringing in his head without respite, was enough to drive him mad. He had suffered ten summers since his visit to the shadow world, each worse than the last. He didn’t think he could bear one more. Only in the winter, when it was dark and everyone else was miserable, did he find peace.

  They sat outside their tent, a full Moon high in the sky.