The Calling
Page 29
But she must not forget the lake. She set off in the direction she thought she remembered traveling before, but none of these trees looked familiar. She kept trying to find that certain one, the giant she remembered as the great-grandfather of them all. In short order she had to admit to Nunavik she was completely lost.
“This does not surprise me,” said the Walrus.
“Do you know the way to the lake?”
Nunavik said, “I’m rather more interested in the way back to the karigi.”
Alaana let out an exasperated sigh. “You were right. You’re no help at all.”
Some small thing struck the back of Alaana’s head. When she turned around, another bounced off the front of her spirit-parka. She saw this one clearly. It was the top half of an acorn.
“Hmm-hum, play with us, spirit.”
Alaana turned round again to find a trio of the little men of the woods leaning casually against the base of a tree.
“Ho-hum. Run and follow,” said one as he dashed away behind the trunk. A moment later the smiling face of the ieufuluuraq peered expectantly around the opposite edge of the tree.
“Hum-hum. Play! Play!” said another. This one stood slightly taller than the rest, the top of his head on an even line with Alaana’s knee. His large eyes sparkled gleefully under thick auburn brows and the fine tuft of fur atop his head bore a distinctly reddish tint. His parka was the same reddish color, belted at the waist with a little piece of twine. He motioned with a stubby arm for Alaana to follow. His upper lip curled playfully. “Come, come.”
She stepped forward.
“No,” warned Nunavik . “You didn’t come down here to play about with the lowerfolk. Don’t dawdle. Twelve winters remember? What about the twelve winters?”
Alaana took another step forward but tripped over a loose root crossing her path. As she fell, the slender ivory tusk rolled from her hand onto the forest floor of cluttered leaves and branches.
The little man with the reddish fur snatched it up, giggling, and plunged through the underbrush. The creature was so short Alaana could only see the bushy tail pinned to the back of his jacket flapping upward as he went. She darted forward, just in time to see the tip of the tail as it vanished into a little hole in the ground.
“Nunavik! I can’t follow.”
“Of course you can,” said Nunavik, his voice trailing off as the little man carried him further away.
Of course, Alaana thought. She shrank her spirit-form to fit the bolt hole. With a rising panic she plunged into the darkness. A narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel forced her to scamper forward on hands and knees. There was no natural light but the purplish haze of the spirit-vision saw her through. The tunnel opened up into a sizeable warren. The walls of this oblong chamber were supported by crude wooden pilings that marked three possible exit tunnels.
“Nunavik!”
Alaana thought she heard the walrus’ distinctive “Ackk!” trailing back from the left-most opening.
Crawling awkwardly on hands and knees she was sure she’d never catch the nimble little creature she was after. Her nose passed close to the floor, littered with rodent pellets and half-gnawed bone fragments. The pungent odors of rank fur and raw earth filled the narrow tunnel.
The tunnel led to an underground dwelling. This area must have been directly below one of the trees as it had for its sturdy walls a pair of plunging tree roots. She found one of the ieufuluuraq women here cradling two of her furry young. The little mother was startled slightly at her sudden appearance, then waved cheerfully at her unexpected visitor. She wore a loose parka crudely trimmed with white fur at the belly and throat. She smiled, her face pleasantly round and feminine despite shaggy cheeks and pointed teeth.
Other children played at shields and spears using little branches taken from the wood. She called to them in a peculiar chattering language, interrupting their game. Alaana stumbled around them, crashing into a pile of empty nut-cases each large enough to use as a soup bowl. She crossed a hard-packed floor covered with small flat stones, and ran into the tunnel the mother had indicated.
Not far ahead she glimpsed the ieufuluuraq who had snatched Nunavik. The rascal seemed to be waiting at a crossroads but moved quickly when Alaana caught up. The tunnels were vast and confusing, winding their way back and around, twisting and turning and splitting frequently to rejoin the main network beneath the trees.
Alaana caught a flash of red fur as the little squirrel-man dashed up the hollow of a tree. She made quick pursuit, finding natural handholds along the rough surface of the bole. She climbed up the interior of the tree, sprouting long-fingered hands tipped with sharp claws to aid in the ascent.
She passed knot holes that offered breathtaking views of the forest from various heights. She wanted to stop and look but pushed on for fear of losing the red-furred little man who had taken Nunavik. Worse yet, she realized the beat from the karigi had lost its rhythm entirely. Weyahok had grown bored and begun tapping out a lazy, disorganized dance on the drumhead.
“Weyahok,” she called. “Weyahok! Stay to the beat. The heartbeat of the dreamer. If you don’t keep the way open for us, we won’t be able to get back!”
“I’m lonely,” said Weyahok. “Come and play.”
“Play later. Shaman work first,” said Alaana. “Shaman work.”
Reluctantly the little tunraq took up the proper measure again, and Alaana resumed her climb through the inside of the tree.
The pursuit led her out through an empty knothole and onto a thick, jutting branch. Alaana’s red-furred quarry turned and leered back at her. His face pulled into a blunt sort of a muzzle, now appearing much more squirrel than man. He scampered off the end of the branch and leapt across to a neighboring tree. Alaana followed, for it was only a short hop from branch to branch, a bushy tail having sprouted from her hindquarters for balance.
The branches were alive with playful parka-wearing squirrels. Darting along the thoroughfares crossing her path, they scurried up and down. Some swatted her with their soft, furry tails or gave her a playful poke in the belly as she went by.
Alaana kept her eye on the red squirrel as it leapt nimbly to a higher location. She climbed along the shaggy bark, digging into the soft wood with clawed hands and feet. Then she was flying along the branch with perfect balance, using the natural spring of the slender branchlets to bounce up and find a place on the next tier. She moved quickly, leaping from tree to tree, rolling along the springy foliage, falling backward and catching herself and then plunging onward, up and down and then back around. There was a sheer joy to racing and flying among the branches and she lost himself in the exhilarating feeling, Nunavik almost forgotten.
A bone-chilling shriek cut through the windless forest. Alaana nearly toppled from her high branch.
A sudden and total silence fell over the wood — no bird song, no scurrying of squirrels through the branches — as the entire world held its breath, waiting for some awful evil to pass.
The stillness lingered for only a moment. Then came another harsh, ugly screech. This sound, however, produced the opposite reaction than the stultifying effect of the first. It served as a call to action.
The squirrels moved with new purpose, coming at Alaana with violent malevolence. Two of the squirrels collided with her at the same instant, charging from different directions. They knocked her off the branch and sent her tumbling down through the leaves. She bounced off the branch below and, with a desperate grab, caught herself on another. Another inhuman shriek split the air and two squirrels crashed down onto the branch beside her. The branch snapped loudly, sending all three plummeting to the soft ground.
Alaana, momentarily stunned by the fall, opened her eyes to find a ring of the squirrel men surrounding her. She had not realized they possessed such sharp, slender teeth.
“Take her, Hmm-hum,” said one, his eyes wide, his voice hoarse.
“We’ll feed her to it, Har-umm.”
“Bite her, Hhhhhmm.”
“Weyahok! The five beats! Weyahok!” she said frantically, but the connection had been broken. There was no way back.
The little men shredded Alaana’s pants with their raking teeth, and bit into her legs. Using tatters of the spirit-trousers they bound her hand and foot. Alaana decided to enlarge her inuseq back to its original size in order to better fight them off. Too late. She abandoned the attempt when she felt the tightening bonds threaten to cut off her hands and legs.
The ieufuluuraq dragged her along the forest floor by her feet, leaving the back of her head to bump and thump against every tree root and jutting stone.
Up ahead the woods loomed twisted and dark. Alaana felt a deluge of doubt and fear as they plunged forward, as if she had passed through one realm of emotion and into another. Everything was different on the other side. The air hung thickly, smelling of burnt ochre. The soul-lights of the trees blurred and obscured as the spirit-vision became warped and unreliable. This was a bad place, a place of fear and madness. But where was she?
The concept of direction lost all meaning. Was she spinning around? Twisting, turning, even the ground underfoot had grown liquid and strange. There was no up or down.
Even as the surroundings changed, the denizens of the forest warped into bizarre shapes. Trees melded with rock, sheltering empty hollows that were themselves vast expanses. Alaana, breathless, was dragged deeper into confusion.
At the center of this chaotic realm sat a sort of throne. The branches of the trees merged and fused together to create a barbed and twisted arbor, sprouting weirdly-shaped leaves. The perverted carcasses of small forest animals were draped among the brambles, their exposed innards forming part of the thorny arch of the bizarre bower. Alaana noted with sickening horror that the animals were still breathing despite having been turned inside out.
She found herself in the presence of a strange creature. The sight of it sent Alaana’s senses reeling dizzily but she dared not look away. She could feel its will, nightmarish and undeniable, pulling her apart.
“Five beats,” she said desperately. “Five beats.” It was no use. If Weyahok could hear her at all, her words must sound like gibberish on the other side.
The ieufuluuraq with the reddish pelt lay squealing and shivering before the hideous creature enshrined in the throne’s madness. Nunavik’s tusk was there, dropped carelessly onto the shifting morass of the corrupted forest floor. When Alaana grabbed the talisman, she could hear the walrus’ distant screams. Alaana sobbed. It sounded as if her friend was being ripped apart.
A bird-headed and broad-winged demon prince shifted on the throne. Alaana sensed the power of this creature’s mad will. The glimmering bird eyes turned their cold, cruel gaze upon her. From its mouth came that same inhuman shriek of anguish that had so disturbed the ieufuluuraq.
Alaana screamed as her own spirit-form stretched and contorted, bones twisting and snapping, remolding themselves under the influence of the demon’s shifting madness.
“It doesn’t belong here,” said Alaana. Within this world of swirling insanity, only that one statement seemed to be still right and true. “It doesn’t belong.”
“Feathers and beaks,” said Nunavik weakly.
Alaana found momentary strength in the old walrus’ words. She was on the right track. The bird-thing did not belong. Trapped here, in an unfamiliar and skyless world, it had been twisted and driven insane. Lost and in pain, it had not the strength or knowledge to return.
Alaana struggled to her feet, Nunavik’s tusk clasped tightly in her fist. The solution was at hand. The answer, she thought, was so often the same. Take the monster’s pain away. There was only one way to go. They must simply travel up.
She realized what must have happened. Five of the seven spiritual worlds were aligned on a vertical axis. At the very bottom lay the festering Underworld, home to demons and evil spirits. The Lowerworld came next, sitting directly below the world that the Anatatook called home. The Upperworld hovered directly above, and crowning them all was the cosmic realm of the Moon and stars.
With five worlds existing on the same axis, occasionally a wayward soul fell from one spirit realm to the next.
Alaana called out to the demon prince. The cruel bird eyes cast their incisive gaze upon her, but saw no threat in her outstretched hand, no harm in her open soul. The head cocked slightly, then bowed slowly forward toward its feathered chest.
She took the bird-thing’s soul in her hand and, Nunavik in the other, readied herself to bring it home. She would save them both, if only she knew which direction was up. The thing’s madness still swirled around her, tearing up the emptied bower in a whirlwind of shattered branches and spiked leaves. Alaana felt so disoriented and sick, with everything spinning in several directions at once. There was no way to be sure. She must take her best guess, going on instinct alone.
With a burst of energy, she took flight. The distorted image of the forest shifted and ran like melting wax. Branches became firm once more; broken and splintered though they may be, they had been restored to peace. The squirrel men, released from the spell of madness, gathered around their fallen friends. Alaana looked away from the sight of the mutilated bodies. Nothing could be done for them.
Her spirit soared through the canopy of the Lowerworld and through the rock of the cave ceiling. She felt a great sense of relief at leaving the madness behind, like shedding an old, rotten skin. But her exaltation at flying free was dulled by the extreme exertion, and the nagging suspicion that this was likely the final time she might ever do it. There was so little of Sila’s fading gift still left to her.
Picking up speed, she sailed through layer after layer of bedrock and soil, through the ever-frost, and up into Nunatsiaq. She did not pause as, breaking the ground cover, her inuseq blasted through some poor soul sitting on a flat rock, sharpening a spearhead.
“Sorry, Iggy,” she whispered, having knocked a puzzled Iggianguaq onto his plump backside.
Alaana shot up into the sky. Her spirit flew past the peaks of the ice mountains and into the Upperworld, a world of blue skies and endless clouds. So wide open, so free.
The Upperworld was a strange land of air and clouds, which was no land at all. It was a place of winds foul and fair, all of which had voices and personalities of their own. She heard snippets of their conversation as the winds discussed the matters of the day. In the distance she saw the far pavilion of the Morning Dawn who resided in quiet contemplation among the Upper-people.
The bird-thing in her hand transformed as she rose higher and higher. The thorny head resolved into a round ball of downy feathers. The eyes, no longer menacing and wild, looked at her with surprise and gratitude. The little gull spirit cooed softly.
A flock of the Gull People materialized out of the misty skies all around Alaana. With a grateful sigh, she stopped rising. She had flown so much higher than ever before, and must soon go back down. But first she wanted to drink in this one, wondrous glance at the Upperworld and its strange denizens.
A pair of Gull People rapidly approached, soaring and gliding on the talkative winds. They had impressive wings, large and gray, stretching so far that the feathers at the tips blended into the very mist itself.
One lofty spirit presented herself to Alaana with a proud countenance that was distinctly female. The Gull’s elegantly feathered head offered a flash of yellow beak as she squawked tentatively at Alaana. Alaana released the chick.
The Gull said, “Tiffivilliq, my baby, we’ve found you at last.” She took the little spirit snugly under her vast wing. “How did you fall child? Didn’t we tell you to flap hard, flap hard? Oh, never mind — my poor baby chick, we were so worried.”
Her mate, a huge gull spirit with expansive bla
ck-tipped wings and a luxuriously fanned tail regarded Alaana with a wise and gentle gaze.
“Thank you, young traveler, for your help.”
Alaana wished she had time to answer, but already she began falling back down. The pull of Nunatsiaq was too strong to resist. A group of little sparrow spirits tried to help, flitting closely around, but they weren’t strong enough to prop her up. Alaana thought of the sparrow shaman that Nunavik had mentioned, but couldn’t recall her name. And then she found herself helplessly falling, with no chance to right herself.
“Weyahok!” she cried. “Now would be a good time for the five beats.”
The five beats on the drum, just barely heard as they drifted up through the spirit of the air, called her back to the karigi.
Alaana opened her eyes. She found herself face down on the prayer mat.
Her entire body ached. Rolling over, the first thing she saw were Old Manatook’s crusty old mukluks. The old shaman held the drum beater in his gnarly fist.
“Sun and Moon, girl,” he said sternly. “What trouble have you gotten yourself into?”
Weyahok peered out from behind the drum, looking as guilty and foolish as was possible for a featureless gray lump of soapstone.
Alaana didn’t care to answer. She was only concerned with the fate of her friend Nunavik.
The tusk fragment lay misshapen and dark in her hand. Alaana couldn’t discern the light of the ethereal walrus within. She feared Nunavik was very much the worse for wear. His voice could only barely be heard, making a strange high-pitched squealing sound, “Nnneeeeeeee.”
“Uncle Walrus,” she asked. “Are you all right?”
Old Manatook took the piece of tusk and peered at it. “Why is it you can not ever listen?” he said to Alaana.
“It’s all my fault,” she said uselessly. “He’s dying, isn’t he?”
Old Manatook cocked a bushy white eyebrow. “He’s had worse over the years.” He frowned, then added, “I think.”