The Calling

by Ken Altabef

  He took up the drumbeat once again. “Relax and let your mind drift. I’ll show you the way. Success in journeying depends on a state of mind exactly between exerting one’s self too much and not trying hard enough.”

  “I will beat the drum throughout your journey,” said Nunavik, “keeping the way open for your return. When I make a string of five sharp raps, that is the signal for you to know the journey is concluded. You will then return.”

  “Deep breaths,” reminded Old Manatook as he took up the rhythm once again. Alaana was tired and hungry, having fasted for an entire day in preparation for this exercise, and soon felt her head sway with dizziness. She let the voice of the drum take hold of her, its invitation so deep it rattled her body, numbing her consciousness, blotting out everything except the hoary voice of the old shaman.

  “Visualize the tree stump. Do you remember? That trip we took to go and look, the place where I coaxed the soapstone pot from the cliff face?”

  “Yes,” said Alaana. Her own voice sounded far away. “I remember.”

  “The hollow tree stump we found. You thought it strange, one solitary stump out there all alone, as wide around as a man is tall. Remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “That memory shall be our portal. Visualize the stump. It shall be our entrance to the Lowerworld. We need not travel to the stump; its spirit can be brought here.”

  His words were soothing, soporific.

  “Here it is before us.”

  And there it was. In the center of the karigi the gigantic stump had appeared. Alaana could feel its presence, so old and revered, rimmed by flaking, ancient bark. Now hollow and dark, but not empty. Never empty.

  Still kneeling on the ground, Alaana peered down into its black depths. What mysterious recess lay there untended and undiscovered? She smelled rich dark soil, whose depths sheltered unimaginable creatures of myth and fable.

  “The stump’s roots go deep,” said the old shaman, “See them slither and stretch like serpents, tunneling under the snow and ice, beneath the wall of everfrost where men can never go. We may wander there, not in body but in mind, yes, that is the way. Just like the roots, we go delving into lands of forests and rivers and lakes unknown, of strange creatures and peoples that dwell in another place, in another way.”

  The stump transformed into a gaping tunnel, a whirlpool of churning snow and earth being sucked down and away.

  Alaana didn’t need to be told what to do next. Her spirit, which had already drifted apart from her body, surged forward. The way opened before her, and she stepped into it.

  Her inuseq, her spirit-form, fell down a long tube. Concentric rings of light and dark flashed by, their pulsations in time to Old Manatook’s quickening drum beat. Alaana was uncertain whether she moved along the tunnel or if the body of the earth was flowing past her in the opposite direction.

  The tunnel melted away, fading into a gray and dimly lit landscape. She caught a glimpse of a vast sea, with two rivers leading away in opposite directions. And then she was in the water, afloat in an ineffable sense of joy, an awe of the mysterious and fascinating world that lay opened before her, full of impenetrable secrets and profound truths.

  Bliss! Her spirit, having left the body behind, roamed free. Anything was possible.

  The sea was composed not of water but tiny crystals of all tints and hues — emerald and pale blue, tan and brown and radiant white — as if pure light had been captured in each grain. The crystals, smoothed by eons of ebb and flow, bathing her in truth and wonder. All her questions could at last be answered, all her troubles washed away by the endless scouring of the crystals. She was almost lost forever, but for the echo of Nunavik’s warning. One must be able to resist this enchantment. Alaana wasn’t sure she could turn her back on this, that she didn’t have the strength in her to do so, but the deed was already done. The thought alone had been enough.

  Another vortex opened beneath her, a slender whirlpool that took her down and down, spinning her inuseq in a dizzying spiral.

  Her spirit-form took on a sudden weight and, with a grand thump, Alaana landed solidly in the Lowerworld.

  CHAPTER 16

  A VISIT TO LOWERWORLD

  In the absence of any natural light, normal sight was impossible. But even plunged into a realm of total blindness Alaana had the power to lighten the dark, to see what others could not perceive. The spirit-vision rendered everything in shades of gray and purple which she found oddly disorienting. No sky hung above, just a ceiling of rock that marked the roof of a cavern. She could still hear the beating of the drum in the distance, echoing softly as it came down the tunnel. She felt lightheaded and uncertain.

  “Manatook?”

  “I’m here, Alaana, though you may not look upon me directly. I am merely a guide on this, your first journey.” The old man’s voice sounded strange, having taken on a peculiar muffled quality that echoed within the cavern. Alaana couldn’t see her teacher. There was only a shape of blurred white hovering near her, wavering and indistinct as if someone were flapping a sheet in front of it.

  “How much time do I have?” she asked.

  “Hmmff. Time. You will have exactly as much, and not a moment more. Begin.”

  The cavern had a floor of dark gray stone strewn with tiny crystals, little bits of shell and bone, nut-cases and twigs. Alaana picked up a particularly fine, blood red crystal. It was roughly the size of her thumbnail. She slipped it into the front pocket of her parka.

  Deep cracks lined the cave floor. Alaana felt one of her kamiks yanked from her foot. The laces had all been neatly cut. A thin black hand was struggling to draw the boot down into the crack, but the kamik was too wide for the slender opening and bounced away. Alaana lurched after it, but before she could grab it another slender arm shot up out of another crack, again in pursuit of the kamik. It groped blindly, knocking the boot further away.

  “Heya!” she yelled.

  The boot continued to move as more spindly, bone-like appendages emerged from the cracks and tried to force it down into the floor. Alaana dived after it again and again. In the end she almost reached it, but her desperate grab missed its mark and the boot was dragged under and gone.

  She went down on her belly and peered into the impenetrable dark of the crack. After a moment she realized she was looking directly into a set of beady little eyes. The creature in the chasm twitched and its outline suddenly became clear. It looked like a hideously emaciated caribou, all ribcage and spindly legs ending not in hooves but thin-fingered hands. It looked as if it had been charred in a fire, the fur crumbling away like charcoal. On a slender neck sat an ungainly head crowned by a pair of stunted, thorny antlers. The nose twitched fitfully, the nostrils flaring above a slit mouth whose frown told of unspeakable sadness. But the eyes that stared back at her were not the large glassy orbs of an animal; the eyes were distinctly human.

  “Manatook?”

  “These are the lumentin. The souls of hunters who have taken caribou out of turn, without the permission of the turgats. Here their souls are merged with that of their prey in a perpetual torment. Mindless things, or so they seem. Leave them be. At the moment they appear content with only your boot.”

  “But if I’ve lost my kamik in this world, what will happen to my real boot?” asked Alaana.

  “Thunder and lightning, child, they are both real! You have carried the spirit that resides within your boot to this place. If it does not return with you, you will find your physical boot much the worse for wear. With its spirit gone, the sealskin will be dried and shriveled away. You must heed this lesson well. If your inuseq were to be trapped in any of the other worlds you travel, your physical body would suffer much the same.”

  Alaana shivered, recalling what had happened to Kuanak. She looked into the rift again but the lumentin had retreated into the shadowy depths. She reached for the opening.

  “Don’t!” said Old Manatook. “Leave the lumentin alone. Give no more thought to them. They are mo
re mischievous than dangerous, at least on this side. But these cracks extend to the Underworld on the other side, and they have a much different existence in that world. If you meet them in the land of the dead — beware their dark power.”

  “But isn’t this the Underworld?”

  “Certainly not. Would I be so foolish as to bring a novice to the Underworld on her first spirit journey? This is the Lowerworld.”

  Alaana glanced around the cave. Of the seven worlds to which a shaman’s spirit might travel, five were aligned vertically. Both the Lowerworld and the Underworld, home of dread spirits and demons, lay below the physical realm of Nunatsiaq. The Upperworld and the Celestial realm of the Moon and stars hung above. The other two worlds, the dreamlands and the shadow-world, were more intimately connected. She had only Manatook’s descriptions of the Underworld to go by but if there was some distinction between that dreaded realm and this place, she couldn’t find it.

  “Ah, I see the cause of your confusion,” said Old Manatook. “Perhaps it would be better if you went outside of the cave.”

  “Outside?”

  The fluttering wraith with the old shaman’s voice drifted toward an opening in the cavern wall some fifty paces away. Without his guidance Alaana might never have spotted it. It was just as dark outside.

  As she passed through the arch of stone that described the opening, she merely passed from one cave to another. She entered a vast world-cavern. The sky was again made of gray stone, but that roof could hardly be seen at all because of the trees. There were trees everywhere. Trees!

  Alaana had seen very few trees in her lifetime, excepting a lonely conifer or a dwarf pine or two, standing near the tree line at the far reach of the tundra. And even those, stunted by wind and snow blast, grew barely to the height of a child. But here, there were trees! An impossible number of trees, outlined in the pale moonlight of the spirit-vision. Etched by stark contrasts of purple light and deep shadows, Alaana could almost believe them carved into the rock of the cavern itself. That notion was quickly dispelled by the rustling of leaves as a squirrel leapt among the high branches. Joining overhead, branches and leaves intertwined like hands clasping, to form an arched canopy. Alaana was disappointed there seemed to be no such thing as scent in this place. She could only imagine the richness of fragrance she might smell among that varied and wondrous foliage.

  She passed among the trees, noting the individual character of each. Here was one whose trunk was three trunks woven together like snakes, caught frozen in a race to the top of the cavern. Another forked into two competing stalks like rival brothers whose leaves, waxy and polished, gleamed silver in the twilight. And here was another from whose mighty trunk wild branches flared at odd angles like flame. Here was one with purple leaves whose trunk was five trunks, a loving family whose boles spread up into the cavern far above.

  An incredibly broad tree blocked her way. Its bark, thick and hoary, sculpted by time into an abundance of rough knots, shone silver in the pale dream-light. Standing beneath this giant, with its massive arms spread above, great and wide, until they flayed out like a tremendous fountain, Alaana was struck by the sense of a venerable patriarch, old beyond guessing, who had stood with grim forbearance as the paltry lifetimes of men flew by, generation after generation. Alaana thought she glimpsed a pair of wizened eyes peering at her from a deep cleft at the base of the trunk, but when she moved closer they were gone.

  Something stung her bare ankle, as if she’d been stabbed with a pin where her foot went without a boot. She saw a rustle among the clutter of twigs and leaves that littered the rocky ground. A small figure darted through the underbrush to take shelter behind the mighty oak. It moved with a strange, waddling gait. She remembered the admonition against snakes, but she didn’t think it was a snake.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Oh, just some foolish little creature looking for attention,” replied Old Manatook.

  “That’s some rotten way of showing it,” said Alaana. She pulled a thin needle of bone from the heel of her foot.

  “Hmm-hum,” said a little voice, “Play with us?”

  Alaana circled slowly around the tree but the creature matched her progress, keeping the trunk between them.

  High up on the massive trunk, a tree squirrel groused loudly down at her. It was dressed in a miniature parka. Having ridiculed her thoroughly, it fled back up among the boughs.

  The creature that had been playing hide-and-seek with her peeked around the side of the tree. The strange little man stood only about as high as her kneecap. He had large friendly eyes beneath bushy brows, a nose so small as to be insignificant, and sharply peaked ears set quite near the top of his head. A tuft of gray fur ran in a strip along the top, to match the patches of scruffy growth on his cheeks. He was dressed in a gray parka made from some short-haired animal, belted at the waist, with a tail like a squirrel tacked to the rear.

  “Hum-hum, visit with us,” said another little voice. Alaana spun around to find another of these creatures standing just behind her. Before she could start toward it, the little man dove backward and disappeared into a hole in the ground. Alaana brushed away the twigs and dead leaves. It looked like a small squirrel hole going down between a gap in the rock. She paused with her hand poised above the burrow.

  “Do squirrels have fangs?” she asked. “Didn’t you say something about fangs?”

  “You’ve nothing much to fear from those ieufuluuraq,” said Old Manatook. “But there might just as easily be a snake down in that pit, you know.”

  She withdrew her hand. When she turned around there were four ieufuluuraq behind her. They all jumped back half a step. They stood frozen in wary poses, tiny noses twitching, watching for her next move. Laid out just in front of them was her lost kamik.

  “Mmm-hum. Come. Come.”

  Alaana found the little men charming enough but Old Manatook had said that every journey between the worlds had a distinct purpose, whether it be apparent or not, and that it was up to the shaman to find out what it was. She doubted she’d been brought here to frolic with these little things, as much as she might’ve enjoyed it.

  A long wailing cry rang out across the cavern, so twisted with anguish it seemed entirely out of place, though Alaana felt hard pressed to imagine any world where such a tortured sound might belong. The four very little men scampered quickly away. With a flash of bushy tails they were gone. The terrible screech has left a near-total silence. The only sound was that of the distant drum beat as Nunavik held fast to his duty, keeping the tunnel open.

  “What was that?” asked Alaana.

  “I don’t know,” returned Manatook. “From top to bottom, from the Outer Darkness to the smoldering center of the earth, I’ve never heard anything like that.”

  “What should I do?”

  “You might start by putting on your boot.”

  Alaana slipped on her boot but couldn’t fasten it. The laces were scorched where the claw of the lumentin had cut them.

  She wandered for a time among the great trees, marveling at their size and complexity and the way they grew directly out of the bare rock.

  The ground curved lower, running from a mild decline to a steep slope. The trees thinned as she reached the shore of an underground lake. Alaana was impressed by the enormity of the cavern that housed the Lowerworld. She wondered what other marvels lay in wait for her in this world devoid of light yet full of trees, where the sky might be more solid than the ground, where squirrels dressed as men, and men might be squirrels.

  The lake lay quiet and serene, its waters untroubled by wind or wave, nor current feeding in or flowing out. There was no sound at all, excepting, over there, in the distance a quiet splash. A sploosh. Yet another splash. Alaana saw a figure in the lake, wholly unaware that it had been seen, frolicking in and under the water.

  “Manatook?” she whispered, but the shaman seemed to have left her.

  She made her way to the shore, surprised at how the ro
cky ground simply ended where the lake began, without any beach. She got the impression that the lake didn’t belong, that it had perhaps been transported to the spot from somewhere else. From this closer perspective Alaana saw that the figure in the lake was in fact a young woman. From her lips came youthful giggles and mumbles of pleasure as she enjoyed the caress of the waters. Although she was a little embarrassed at watching unannounced, Alaana didn’t turn away. Somehow this chance encounter felt right.

  “Heya!” she called out.

  The figure dipped under the water. Alaana, who hoped she hadn’t startled the other girl into drowning, kept watching for her to come back up. She resurfaced right near the edge of the pool only an arm’s length away. She was young and perfectly formed.

  As the water dripped away from the girl’s body, Alaana beheld the wrinkled flesh of an old woman, at least as ancient as Higilak the storyteller. The woman, walking with a pronounced stoop, went directly past, saying nothing. She bent and took an old skin from its place among the rocks and draped it over her bony shoulders. She deftly manipulated the skin, folding it over this way and that until she was completely clothed.

  “Why don’t you come inside and share a cup of tea?” she said, still facing away from Alaana.

  “Do you mean me?” asked Alaana.

  The woman turned. “Of course, you,” she said kindly. “Who else but you? Dear child. You should call me Weeana, though it’s a long time since I’ve heard that name spoken aloud. I’m not sure I should like to hear it again.” She seemed momentarily confused, and remained staring at Alaana.

  “Perhaps that was a mistake,” she finally said. She gave Alaana an intense look, as if trying to see beneath the surface and determine her true nature. Alaana felt uncomfortable beneath her probing stare.

  A wave splashed up from the side of the lake, breaking the old woman’s reverie. “What would you call me, child?” she asked.

  “Weeana.”