by Ken Altabef
Alaana was beside herself but the old shaman comforted her, saying, “I trust he’ll be all right. Give him some time to straighten himself out.”
Old Manatook sniffed at her, scenting the Upperworld, a realm where Sila held great sway. There was no need to ask his student if she had encountered the great spirit there. If the girl had met her spirit guardian she would have returned exultant and full of energy, not half-dead and on the brink of collapse.
Alaana looked balefully up at her teacher. “I shouldn’t have gone traveling alone.”
Old Manatook nearly leapt at the chance to chastise the girl, but decided against it. Never mind, he told himself, she was called for a reason. And she had answered the call. “I’m glad you did,” he said, though somewhat reluctantly. “It’s good to see you acting on your own account at last, though I wish you’d promise not to do it again until I say you are ready. No more traveling alone! Or at all! You have to save your strength for the initiation.”
“I promise,” said Alaana, “But I did find the thing that was harming the Lowerworld, and I saved her. A little lost chick.”
“You’ll have to tell me all about it,” said Old Manatook softly. “After you’ve had some rest.”
Alaana glanced down at the tusk. “But the Walrus…”
“Give him time.”
CHAPTER 27
TRAPPED
Makaartunghak and Yipyip strained with anticipation at the harness of Old Manatook’s sled. Though it seemed ridiculous to think that the little black dog could possibly keep up with the magnificent huskie, Yipyip was already testing the traces. Old Manatook, sensing the dogs’ eagerness to set out across the fresh ice, cinched the lines tight.
“How long will you be away?” Alaana asked her teacher.
“At least a full turning of the Moon,” replied Old Manatook.
Alaana glanced up at the glowing crescent high in the black sky of mid-day. “Can’t I come with you?”
Old Manatook’s bushy white eyebrows twitched with surprise. He tried to conceal his smile by hoisting his bag of supplies atop the stanchion. “There are things I must do outside the Anatatook, pathways I must walk alone.”
Acting on impulse Alaana grabbed his hand, turning him toward her. “Why can’t you tell me?”
Old Manatook took a deep breath, running his fingertips along his curly white beard. “One day. For now you’ll do better to have some rest. Spend time with your father, your family.”
A few months ago Alaana would have been pleased by that idea, but she was different now. She had become much more interested in mastery of the Way. The world of the spirits, as dangerous and disturbing as it might be at times, seemed the only place she could truly belong. Her father and Maguan spent all their time out on the ice hunting seal in the dark with the other men. She felt so out of place in the winter camp. People looked at her strangely, her old friends didn’t want her, her own family didn’t know what to do with her.
“Look after Itoriksak,” said Old Manatook. “And visit with Higilak. She knows all the stories and legends in the world and will tell you which ones are true. I don’t like her to be all alone in winter when I’m gone.”
“Then why do you go? Where do you go? Alone in the dark?”
“I’m not alone,” said the shaman. He slapped Makaartunghak heartily on the back. “I will tell you everything one day. When you are ready to hear me.”
Alaana was tired of secrets, tired of cryptic answers and half-truths, of blurred soul shapes and mysterious errands. “But…”
“That’s enough,” said Old Manatook. “Stay away from trouble. Have some rest. You’re to face your initiation soon. There is much more for me to teach you before then, and we will have little time when I return.”
Then why was he going, she wondered. It seemed all too much at times. She watched Old Manatook pull away on his sled. The old shaman was correct on one point. Alaana was very, very tired.
In the full dark of winter, even Alaana had trouble seeing anything. The spirit-vision provided little help. With all the animals deep in their burrows there were so very few souls to light her way. The vast spirit of the snow was stretched thin over the land, providing only a dull purple haze. The rocks lay all asleep, the water locked down in icy slumber. She might not have been able to find Miki except that she already knew where his family kept their trap line.
In the deep winter cold that made every breath a chore she could not remain outside for very long, and neither could Miki. But this was her only chance to get him alone. With all the grown men busy at the blowholes, Miki must tend his father’s fox traps.
Miki’s soul-light burned brightly against the bleak tundra. Alaana jogged ahead to catch up to him. It was a complicated light, flickering orange and red and yellow like fire at its core, cool blue at the edges. Miki had so many varied passions and cares. His light was different than when Alaana had last spoken to him two moons ago. Miki was changing.
“Miki,” she said. “You shouldn’t be out here alone. It’s too cold.”
“My father’s too busy for the traps,” he answered. “And you know how my mother loves fox fur.”
He held up one of his catches, but Alaana couldn’t see it in the darkness. Its soul-light had already gone.
“I have to talk to you,” she said.
“I’ve a lot of work to do.” He reached down into the trap and reset the trip line. After he removed his hand, he balanced a flat stone at the top.
“A lot of work,” he said. “I don’t have time for play anymore.”
That’s just it, Alaana thought. No more time for play. She remembered early spring and her friends sliding down the ice. That was the last time for them, the last really good time. And, mourning the death of her sister, she had missed it.
“Do you have time to talk?” she asked. “Just for a moment?”
Miki kicked a little snow over the stone trap, burying it underground. He poked a hole in the snow so that the next fox might smell the bait.
“I was scared for you,” he said. “When your arm got stuck, the look of pain on your face, the way you screamed, I thought you were going to die.”
“That was a long time ago,” said Alaana. “You should forget about it. It was just a little stone spirit teaching me a lesson. Just a joke really. I made a mistake.”
“A shaman can’t make mistakes.”
Alaana was silent. He was right.
“Don’t you see?” Miki added. “You’re the last person I’d have chosen to be the shaman.”
“You didn’t choose,” said Alaana. “Sila did.”
“You’re too much like your father. You never do what you’re told, you’re always asking too many questions. Remember how red-faced Civiliaq used to get? When you tried to make him explain about the spirits?”
“I’m learning,” Alaana said. “And it’s not all bad, either. There’s a woman in the Lowerworld married to a lake and little men who turn into squirrels. There’s an entire world beneath our feet. And in the sky. I wish you could see.”
Miki shook his head, closing his eyes. “I don’t want to see.”
“Miki,” said Alaana, “I can fly!”
“Flying is dangerous,” he returned. “Especially when you don’t know what you’re doing. The baby murres fall, straight out of the nest. And a crow snaps them up.”
Miki bundled up the fox he’d caught and headed back toward the camp. Alaana watched him take a few steps then went after him.
“You don’t think I can do it,” she said. “You don’t think I’m strong enough.”
Miki said nothing. He looked away, and in the darkness Alaana could not see his face.
“I can do it,” she insisted. “I’ll show you. I’ll make it. Won’t you be surprised?”
“I hope you do,” said Miki. “I pray that you make it.”
“And then?” asked Alaana. “When it comes time to marry?”
“I’ll be with someone else,” he said flatly. “Don’t
you see? The shamans aren’t like the rest of us. Kuanak with his trembling hand and one half-dead eye, Civiliaq with his writhing snake tattoos, and that horrible Old Manatook. I can’t bear the thought of you like that, hard and ruined from dealing with the spirits. But it’s going to happen. Even lately, your sweet little smile is gone from your lips.
“The spirits are more frightening than anything. The wild wind, the fever demon, the great turgats — we can’t see them but they’re always up there, somewhere above us, and they don’t care what suffering and pain they cause. I don’t want to think about them. That’s the shaman’s duty. The shaman’s burden, not mine. And, like it or not, your husband must share that life. I want no part of it.”
She didn’t know what to say. She wanted children and skins to sew and fish to cook in the pot. And more children. And a husband. She wanted Miki. “I love you,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Alaana,” he said. “I can never be married to the shaman. I don’t want to watch my wife suffer and die. I couldn’t. If I have to watch you corrupted and destroyed, it has to be from a distance.”
Alaana watched him walk away.
CHAPTER 28
SPIRIT KAYAK
“Unseen forces are always at work.”
Alaana stared at the speaker’s back. He seemed but a tiny speck against a magnificent panorama — a vast expanse of white, untrodden snow blanketing the ice-bound waters. In the midst of winter’s long night, with the ice field lit by starlight alone, she could not make out its full extent. The horizon was a journey of at least six sleeps by even the fastest sled, ending in the shadowy blues at the feet of the ice mountains in the distance.
“What we call reality is not certain,” continued her teacher. “Nor is it solid. It is itself a shifting sea. Every state of being is a trance state, including the one that we consider to be ordinary reality. Did you know that?”
“You’re not Old Manatook,” said Alaana.
“No,” said Civiliaq as he turned around. “Far from it. But that does not make my lesson any less true.” He smiled his characteristic smile.
Alaana noticed the intricate designs that covered Civiliaq’s arms and bare chest were drawn backwards, as figures most often appeared in the dreamlands. The magnificent tattoos blazed as if with an inner fire, lending them a scarlet glow that stippled the edges of his bare skin.
“Oh,” said Alaana. “I’m dreaming.”
Civiliaq bowed at the waist. “Again, that is not a reason to dismiss the lesson.”
At that same instant, the scenery behind the dead shaman started to burn. The snow took on the color of sunset; the ice mountains caught fire, turning a blistering red. And a herd of huge beasts, which Alaana recognized as the long-dead mamut, could be seen crossing the horizon.
“Listen to me, little bird,” said Civiliaq. “There are things Old Manatook isn’t telling you. Remember what you saw at Uwelen? When he was revealed as a man with an empty face?”
“How could I forget?” said Alaana. When Old Manatook had dropped his guise of white bear he had, for a brief instant, worn a ghostly face. Alaana sensed the owner of that face to be a murderer, cast out from his band, who had beaten his wife almost to death, a terrible man who had been caught up for his sins and skinned alive.
Civiliaq tapped his black crow feather lightly against the side of his nose. “What if I said that is the true face of Old Manatook?”
“I wouldn’t believe you. He was testing me. That was just a disguise.”
“Was it? Testing you? I wonder why Old Manatook would have need of testing you. Is it because he is suspicious of you? Is it because he doesn’t trust you?”
Civiliaq moved his hand before his face. In their passing his fingers left the shaman wearing the guise of Old Manatook, caught in an expression Alaana knew painfully well. It was a look of disdain.
Civiliaq waved the face away. His own clean-shaven, sturdy features smiled dismissively. “Have you yet seen his true soul-shape? I doubt it.”
“It’s true, Manatook keeps many secrets,” said Alaana. “But he says he will tell me some day.” She paused for a moment, before adding, “And I believe him.”
“Ah, I see. He makes many promises. And in the meantime, he distrusts and misleads you.”
Civiliaq sat down on a bench of glittering crystal that suddenly formed beneath his buttocks. He motioned for Alaana to join him. “I don’t tell you this to make you feel badly, Alaana,” he said, “only to illustrate my point.”
Alaana didn’t sit. Although it was good to see Civiliaq again, she found she trusted him only as much as she had before, which was not all that much. When she was younger she had often marveled at his tricks and haughty good humor. The shaman made little pebbles dance on the beach, or whipped up a wind so that the whirling snow made it seem as if he had momentarily disappeared. All the children loved his stunts. But now, seen through the eyes of her new experiences, Alaana recognized these as petty tricks that any shaman could perform, and probably shouldn’t.
“You left me to die on Dog-Ear Ridge,” said Alaana.
“I tried to help,” insisted Civiliaq. “If you’d only done what I asked, but you didn’t. I could no longer hold that shape. It was all I could do to take the demons away with me in the end.”
Alaana sighed. She didn’t think there had ever been any demons that day at all. She didn’t know what to believe.
“Well, it appears you no longer trust me as well,” said Civiliaq. “And that is a pity, since I’ve always been a good friend to you.”
“You brought the fever demon among us in the first place,” said Alaana hesitantly. “The thing that killed Avalaaqiaq.”
Civiliaq scowled. “Not so. That was caused by Kuanak! Do you carry any grudge against him?”
Alaana shrugged.
“Listen to me,” said Civiliaq, kindly, “Speaking of your poor lost sister, have you ever wondered as to the reason why you survived when she did not?”
“Tell me!”
Civiliaq motioned for Alaana to calm down. “I don’t know all the answers, but I do know some things. It’s not enough simply to tell. Some things I must show you. Come with me to find the truth.”
Alaana balked. She knew where Civiliaq wanted to lead her, where the shaman must take her. Civiliaq’s soul had been bound to the Underworld ever since he died at the hands of the fever demon. And Alaana was not sure she trusted Civiliaq enough to brave that dreaded realm.
The Walrus On The Ice would know what to do. Alaana longed to ask Nunavik for his advice but the tunraq’s spirit was still incapacitated from their disastrous interaction with the bird-thing in the Lowerworld. My fault, thought Alaana. Again, my fault.
To Alaana’s surprise the vision of Civiliaq vanished, though his voice spoke across the spirit of the air, “To learn the secrets reserved for the dying and the dead, you must come to the Underworld. I am waiting there for you. Follow my instruction.”
The red light suffusing the dream tundra suddenly extinguished, leaving Alaana alone in the murky dark. At her feet, a long white snake was circling. Nunavik’s strict admonition against snakes and fanged creatures rang again in her ears. The snake sank downward through the snowy ground like a burning ember still circling and circling. Alaana peered into the tunnel left in its wake but all was darkness below. On second thought she was glad the belligerent walrus was not present to caution her against taking this chance. This was definitely not a good idea, but she was going to do it anyway. She must know the answers.
Alaana plunged into the tunnel. She was falling into death, and she found it surprisingly easy.
The route to the Underworld seemed composed entirely of pain. Invisible knives tore at her, shredding skin and stabbing at the joints of her arms and legs. She had to force herself to remember that she possessed neither skin nor body at the moment. This was, as far as she could tell, still a dream. How long would the pain last, she wondered desperately. How far is the journey to the Underworld? She had neve
r visited that frightful realm before.
She suddenly feared that the tunnel would deposit her in a lake of fire.
“Put that out of your mind, this instant!” demanded Civiliaq. As Alaana struggled to comply, she hit the ground. She felt so weak she could hardly think straight, let alone stand up. She had landed on a plain of black volcanic rock, charred and crumbling beneath the palms of her hands. But no fire. A shadow image of the fiery pit crossed her mind. Had she just narrowly averted destruction? Civiliaq’s warning had saved her life, she was certain of it.
Before her lay a bleak plain so totally unlike the world that she knew. The ground was sooty, without snow or ice, and there was no sky. It was completely disorienting, this plain of desolation which brought with it a heavy feeling of dread, of eternal hunger and woe. People milled about, or sat huddled up with their heads hanging down, their eyes and faces closed, looking weary and pathetic. Other unfortunates emerged from the dreary houses scattered around the plain. These dwellings were without windows or doors, and the souls of the dead simply passed through the walls. They were all slowly converging on Alaana.
“These are the noqumiut,” said Civiliaq’s disembodied voice, “the dead who abide here. They are the souls of lazy hunters, they know only perpetual hunger.”
“What do they want with me?”
“You look ill Alaana, so sickly and pale. They take you for one of them. Get up. Show them that you are still alive.”
“How can I? What must I do?”
Alaana forced herself to her feet. What could she do to prove she was alive? She began to sing the song Aolajut had offered to the first snipe of spring:
“First little bird of spring, we welcome you,
Pretty little bird of spring, bringing us the new year,
Blameless as the blue sky,
Good tidings you bring this year to us all.”
In the darkness and oppression of the Underworld it was difficult to sing such a merry tune. Alaana could go no farther, but it had been enough. The forlorn dead turned away, disappointed and horrified by the spirit-girl. They had no wish to be reminded of songs, and happy times, and all they had lost.