by Ken Altabef
“Hurry,” said Avilik as he drew aside the entrance flap to his tent. “Go in.”
Alaana hesitated. The smell of blood was strong. She didn’t know anything about childbirth, except that men weren’t allowed to be near a woman in labor. In the three moons since her initiation, Old Manatook had taught her nothing of such things. But there was no one else.
A terrified groan came from inside. Avilik’s face sagged gravely. Maguan ventured a smile at Alaana and nodded his head encouragingly. “Go ahead, sister.”
Alaana stepped in.
Tahkeena crouched in the center of the tent, squatting above a hole cut into the bare ground. Suuyuk, the midwife, stood behind Tahkeena, helping to press the baby out. As not even the midwife was allowed to touch a woman in labor, Suuyuk applied her leverage through a sling of skins wound around Tahkeena’s waist just above the mound of her belly.
“It doesn’t come out,” said Suuyuk.
“Well, I…” mumbled Alaana.
“Come on,” said Suuyuk. Alaana stepped closer.
Tahkeena glanced at her hopefully. Her brow was plastered with sweat, her hair was in wild disarray, her face blotched with tears. Her cheeks were flushed from the strain, and Alaana saw red flecks in the white of her eyes.
“I…” said Alaana.
Tahkeena screamed. But what began as a sound of pain stretched into a deep groan of intense effort. Suuyuk tugged on the seal thong, but gained no obvious benefit.
Alaana swallowed hard. She couldn’t let them see her hesitation. “I’ll do what I can,” she said.
“You can help?” panted Tahkeena, her eyes half-closed with exhaustion.
“I can help.”
But what to do? She knew nothing of this. She was perilously in need of help herself. Help. That was it.
“Sila,” said Alaana.
Suuyuk shot her a wary glance. Alaana lapsed into the secret language of the shamans, saying, “Beneath the blue sky, beneath the white cloud; Keeper of the echo in the high mountains, keeper of the winds across the wide sea…”
Tahkeena was heartened by this approach. Her groans took on a new determination, but Alaana felt no better. No connection was established, no response returned. She wasn’t surprised. In the three moons since her initiation, she had seen nothing of Sila again.
“Be strong,” she said to Tahkeena, catching her eye.
She reached into her pocket, circling her hand around the walrus tusk amulet. She was certain Nunavik would know what to do. Surely the Walrus On The Ice had seen birth and death more times than anyone could count. Alaana called out to the tunraq, using again the secret language. Again there was no answer and again this was no surprise. Her helper spirits were gone.
But she still needed help. Tahkeena groaned once more. She was becoming weak and exhausted. The hole in the floor was filling up with water and blood.
If only Old Manatook were here.
“Manatook? If you can hear me, father—” She stopped abruptly. She realized she’d been using common language. Suuyuk peered warily at her from behind the enormous pregnant belly. The old woman smirked and glanced at Alaana with ire in her one good eye, her suspicions confirmed. She saw Alaana for what she truly was — an inexperienced and useless child who had no place in the birthing tent.
The midwife clucked her disappointment, then reached down and placed her hand between Tahkeena’s legs. “Still it does not come,” she said. “It’s stuck. I fear for the baby.”
“Mind your tongue, Suuyuk,” said Alaana. “The baby will be fine. I am certain of it.”
Tahkeena’s groans became louder and more frantic. Reassuring words were not enough. If only Alaana could find a more direct way to help.
“Manatook,” she hissed again, this time in anger. Why must he spend so much time away?
Suddenly Alaana had a new idea, and she thought it was a good one.
“Kuanak!” she called out. No use.
The labor pains worsened. Suuyuk wiped the sweat from Tahkeena’s brow with a bloody hand, leaving a streak of red across her forehead.
“Nalungiaq?” said Alaana. She watched the expectant mother closely, but again each pain seemed worse than the last.
“Kukkook?” She struggled to recall the name of anyone else who had died recently. There was something Old Manatook had told her. If an unused name-soul was attracted to the baby, it might ease the passage.
Tahkeena screamed even louder than before. A gush of fresh blood plopped down between her legs.
“Avalaaqiaq,” said Alaana.
A change came over Tahkeena almost immediately. She gasped as if the baby had somehow shifted inside her. She groaned again but this time the sound had a much lower register, evoking a sense of renewed determination.
“Avalaaqiaq!” said Alaana. “Yes, Avalaaqiaq!”
Suuyuk probed the space between the legs again and came away with a reassuring nod. Tahkeena pushed a few more times and the baby came down into the recess in the ground, the afterbirth following immediately. Suuyuk snatched up a soft piece of bird-skin and wiped the newborn clean. “It’s a girl, a beautiful girl.”
The baby was put directly into the amaut, the big pouch on the back of her mother’s coat.
“Naaklingnaqtuq,” the new mother said, declaring that the baby was lovable. “My husband will be very happy. He wanted a girl. Our little Avalaaqiaq.”
Alaana took a deep breath. Nearly a year had passed since the death of her sister. Her name-soul must have been waiting all that time, following the Anatatook from place to place. Alaana had acted just in time. If not reassigned within a year, her sister’s name might have turned into an agiuqtuq, a revengeful spirit causing sickness and death. She had done well today.
Alaana ventured a little closer for a peek at the baby’s face. Avalaaqiaq, she thought, welcome. She wondered if the baby, like her dear sister, would have the marvelous laugh and the crooked smile.
Suuyuk cut the square flap of hide beneath the afterbirth and bundled it up so that it might be properly buried.
“Thank you, angatkok,” she said.
EPILOGUE
Alaana walked alone, the Anatatook winter camp at her back. It had been three sleeps since Old Manatook had gone off to the north on the latest of his mysterious errands. She had no idea how long the shaman would be away, nor the purpose for his journey.
But she had her own errand to perform, and for this she had waited until her teacher was far away. She wished she didn’t have to risk going to the Underworld alone, but it wouldn’t do to bring Old Manatook. Not this time. As she had feared, Nunavik and her other helper spirits had indeed disappeared. Had Sila chased them away? Alaana might have believed such a thing of Weyahok and Itiqtuq, but not Nunavik. Much more likely the walrus had gone looking for something, and Alaana believed that one day he would return.
And so, she was alone.
When she reached the face of the ice cliff, far from even the best-sighted among the Anatatook men, she took off her parka and trousers. She lay the garments atop the crust of snow. Spring had come once again and the sun rode halfway up the blue sky, offering its mysterious light and warmth.
Naked, she drew a long, deep breath of the frosty air. She took it all in — the sunlight bursting across the tundra, the big blue sky, the chill that stung at her bare skin, the frigid air in her lungs. She was ready for anything.
This journey, she had determined, must be undertaken with neither weapons nor spiritual garb. No protective amulets, no ceremonial blade. She kept only the talisman of Sila, a solitary eagle feather linked to an owl feather, strung about her neck. And in her hand the black raven feather which had once belonged to Civiliaq. His terrible fate still bothered her. She had once admired Civiliaq, before desperation had corrupted his soul. Civiliaq had done his best to save Avalaaqiaq, even at the cost of his own life. True, his arrogant feud with Kuanak had caused the fever demon to come among the Anatatook in the first place, but he had journeyed below with the other
s to make things right.
Alaana had listened to Old Manatook tell the story, especially the part where Civiliaq had confronted the demon by himself only to be undone by his own doubts. Although he had subsequently tried to manipulate Alaana and damn her to a fate even more terrible than his own, Alaana could only sympathize with the desperate actions of a tortured man. She had witnessed firsthand the disgraced shaman’s horrific torment in the Underworld. And when he had asked his brother Kuanak for a second chance, Wolf Head had turned away. But now, Alaana realized, she and Civiliaq were also brother and sister.
Old Manatook had condemned him to his prison by not killing the fever demon in the first place. Alaana had decided that another encounter with the demon was a risky measure, but well worth the danger. She would not leave her brother to suffer.
Alaana sat cross-legged on her folded parka. Even with the warming sunlight, it was cold. And the gnawing fear, welling up from inside, sharpened the chill. There was nothing she feared more than that horrible hag. It had preyed on her when she was sick and helpless. And it had killed her sister. It was time for a reckoning.
Old Manatook had avoided teaching Alaana how to journey to the Underworld, but she had already received that lesson courtesy of Civiliaq. Such a journey did not require drum or song. She slowed her breathing; she set her heart to the dreamer’s beat. She cleared her mind. The only thing she required was the serpent. She visualized the snake, the white snake spinning around in the snow, creating the vortex. Slow the breathing, slow the heartbeat. Put aside the fear.
She was alone, but she believed she could do this. She must.
The snake spun round and round. Alaana watched it form a circle about the size of a cooking pot. She saw the snow fall away into the void as it bore through ice and dirt and down into the ever-frost below. The roaring tunnel beckoned; she had only to fall into it.
Alaana leapt. The plunge was drastic and breathtaking. She anticipated the searing pain as before, the sensation of a gullet lined with knives cutting away at her soul. But that didn’t happen this time. And she realized the cuts she had suffered before were caused by doubts. She had no doubts about this. She had a clear goal and a pure motive.
Her inuseq landed with a thump on the floor of a wide, dark cave. The impact was softened by a bed of tiny crystals in blue and green. Alaana sat up. Naked, alone, with no protection against the many dangers she must face. Only one solitary black raven feather which, in this reality, manifested as a slender spike of obsidian.
The spirit-vision showed the cave in deep purple tones. The room was filled floor to ceiling with intricate webs and tendrils, each as sharp as a carefully honed blade. As Alaana brushed past them the webs chimed notes of guilt and shame, speaking with the baleful voice of missed opportunities. Alaana passed through the poisonous strands as if they were smoke. They could not affect someone who harbored no bitterness, no regrets. None at all.
The weaver of the web crouched on its haunches in the corner, filling the cave with the hissing sounds of its heavy breathing. Its many rheumy eyes swiveled in her direction. A score of shaggy limbs tensed as it lifted its trembling bulk from the floor.
Alaana had never seen anything as sad or pathetic. Its anguished thoughts, which radiated from the creature in a bilious cloud, were too much to bear. Alaana wished she could soothe its suffering but there was nothing she could do. But just as she could not heal such a pitiful creature, it could not do any harm to her. It slunk back toward the corner.
The next chamber held a pack of snarling itgitlit. The misshapen dogs advanced toward her, their human hands slapping the floor of the cavern with an odd sound as they ran. Beneath their furry hoods and peaked ears their faces looked at her with sadness and confusion.
Alaana wondered whether the itgitlit had originally been dogs or men, and how they could have been brought so low. But even in the Underworld dogs had an aversion to her and the pack halted their charge. Heads hanging low, they drew back and moved silently out of her way. A few showed their teeth and snarled impotently but instead of tearing her to pieces, they parted to let her pass.
The next cave was the one where the battle had taken place. Below this floor of ice, the fever demon had been imprisoned by Old Manatook’s thundering blows. She kneeled before the patch of rough ice.
Thoughts of the demon made her heart skip a beat. Its leering smile, that hideous mouth whose dry, cracked lips gave way to a gullet of raw flesh and writhing maggots. The sickening ichor that it had force-fed her as mother’s milk. Alaana gagged, remembering its sour, corrupted taste.
She was breathing heavily, her heart beating too fast. She was afraid.
The contours of the cave shifted and changed. A black, oily mass gathered in the shadows. The roiling, bubbling monster slithered toward her.
All was lost.
The black cloud surged forward, seething malevolence. Alaana had no place to turn.
Suddenly a snarling, snapping whirlwind cut through the murk, slashing and hacking, throwing globs of the oily spume in every direction. A creature of demonic fury burst through. It was Yipyip.
The soul of the little coal-black dog appeared no larger in the Underworld than in the physical world but its might in spirit was undeniable. It attacked the oily froth with an intense ferocity, nipping at it from every direction until the monster turned away from its intended target. Yipyip pressed her attack further still, driving the creature from the cavern. Alaana gasped with relief. She silently thanked the little dog for chasing away her own dark thoughts and fear, the greatest monsters of all.
Now is the time, thought Alaana. The last chance. There must be no hesitation.
She held the slender spar of obsidian over the cavern floor and drove it down. In this reality the raven feather was not quite the savage dagger that Civiliaq had once wielded. It was a thin, frail spike almost crumbling in her grip. But in Alaana’s hands she knew it would be enough. She stabbed the slender dagger into the ground at precisely the spot where Manatook had bested the fever demon. The point of the dagger created only the tiniest pinhole in the surface of the ice.
A great tearing sound shook the cavern. The ground ripped asunder, and a gout of noxious black smoke came bubbling up from the chasm. Alaana did not shrink back from it.
The smoke thickened and coalesced into a vague, towering form. The mass of smoldering vapor had no face or distinguishing features, but it let out a sound much like a gratified sigh.
“You should not have come here,” the demon said. “You should not have released me. You will die for that mistake, little shaman.”
Alaana stood to face it. “No mistake.”
“You’ll say otherwise after I’ve crunched your eyeballs and licked the marrow from your bones.”
“Perhaps,” said Alaana modestly. She, like her father Old Manatook, was willing to sacrifice herself to save another. There was great power in that strategy, Alaana thought. The gesture, if genuine, could be completely disarming to an opponent possessing even the slightest whisper of conscience. She was counting on it.
“I’m not afraid of you, Mother,” she said.
“Mother?”
In the blink of an eye the cloud of black smoke transformed into a giant woman. More than twice as tall as Alaana, she stood naked except for plumes of thick gray smoke which seethed from her charred and blackened skin. Her hairless head tilted down toward Alaana, the eyes as hot as open flame. She ran heavy, steaming hands across an exaggerated bosom and down curvaceous hips. “Why did you call me that? Why did you set me free?”
“Why do you think?”
The demon’s surprised look was replaced by an expression of twisted glee. Blackened lips curled upwards at the ends, peeling back from a row of wickedly pointed teeth.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Such a pretty girl. Let me wrap my arms around you. In my burning embrace you will come to love me. I will make you love me if I have to cut you to ribbons to do it.” She spread her arms wide, dri
pping with melted fat and strings of gristle.
Alaana smiled. As foul as she was, a living nightmare, she was beautiful too. She was vengeance personified. She was pure retribution.
“But I do love you already,” Alaana said.
Startled again, the demon halted her advance. She reduced in size and shape to that of an ordinary young woman. She wore fine black hair, carefully drawn back from the oval of her face with a slender strap of sinew. Her nose was slightly too large and round to be considered beautiful, her lips full and pleasant. Her eyes were small and held a willful radiance and a subtle vulnerability.
“Are you sincere?”
“You see that I am,” she said, “Aneenaq.”
The woman made a startled sob.
“Yes, I know you,” Alaana said. “I know how you’ve been wronged. I understand.”
“No you don’t. You can’t.”
“Yes, I do. The stones out on the tundra have long memories, and they speak to me. They bore witness to your suffering, abandoned by your own mother so that your brother might live. The cliffs near Dog-Ear Ridge remember you. You went there often as a young girl to gather fresh eggs and listen to the song of the murres at roost. I know your pain, Aneenaq, and I love you even if no one else does.”
The woman let out a soft moaning sound.
“How I suffered,” she said. “Left to starve in the cold. My own mother…”
“There’s more to it than that. The land takes but it also gives. Your sacrifice was not for nothing. Your brother survived.”
Aneenaq’s brow wrinkled. In all the years of rage and suffering she had never looked at it that way.
“I bring news of the murres,” said Alaana. “It’s springtime once again.”
“Springtime?”
“They roost again on the cliffs by the sea, singing their song.”
Aneenaq, a little girl of nine or ten winters, looked up at Alaana with tearful eyes. Alaana thought her beautiful, though she was still black around the mouth from the starvation. “Oh, how I want to hear it.”