I had to walk.
But walk where?
Standing before the slain, I’d vowed to follow the strange giants and have my revenge. But the task now seemed impossible, the stuff of legend, not life. Far easier to simply wait for winter and then return home as I’d longed to do for so many moons. Once the wide strait froze again, nothing would stop me.
I looked north, to where my family waited. Soon their meat caches would be empty. Long ago, I’d promised to take care of them. But if I returned, I’d be a hunter who scared off the seals, an angakkuq who angered the spirits. All my life I’d had such pride in my skills—now I faced the truth of my own worthlessness.
With no dogs and no boat, I couldn’t even carry the maktak to my family. They didn’t need me. They needed Kiasik.
How he’d strut to hear me say that, I thought, laughing hoarsely through my tears. We had always saved each other, he’d said. I wanted him to be right. I just didn’t see how.
I had two options. Walk home to starve beside my kin. Walk south to certain death chasing the giants who had captured my milk-brother.
I looked out once more over the water. There was a third option. I could do as Ipaq had done—take myself onto the ice to die. With no babies born to my camp, my soul wouldn’t return to this world for a long time. Yet I didn’t mind the prospect of leaving this life for a while.
I was very tired.
I sat on the ice and closed my eyes. I didn’t try to summon the spirits; I knew they wouldn’t listen. Instead I offered myself to Sila the Air. It would do with me as It wished.
As You raised Malina and Taqqiq into the sky to become Sun and Moon, I prayed, so too might You guide my path.
When I heard a wolf howl, I felt my own spirit crack open in lamentation. Stripped of my magic, I couldn’t understand the wolf’s words, but I knew it sang of my loss: Never again would I see Ataata’s face or little Nua’s. Never would I fly like the raven or run like the wolf. And now I’d lost Kiasik as well.
I opened my eyes. Far across the open lead, a wolf ran toward me, a distant blur of white fur on white ice. It came from the ocean, a place no wolf should be.
The wolf galloped straight toward the water’s edge, never slowing. It leapt—so high and long I thought it might never come down. But the crack in the ice gaped wider than any wolf could ever jump, even a wolf such as this.
The wolf didn’t fall into the water—it merged with it. One moment the animal hung in midair; the next an ocean swell covered it completely. I got to my feet, squinting to see if the wolf might survive and swim to shore.
A burst of wet air shot from the sea, the setting Sun painting rainbows in the droplets. A whale’s breath.
I could just make out the top of its glossy dark head. A moment later, a tall fin, as sharp and black as a raven’s wing, pierced the water. An aarluk. A whale with teeth like a wolf’s.
The aarluk surfaced to suck another slow, wet breath. For just a moment, I could see its eye, small and dark beneath a bright oval of white skin. Then it slid beneath the water, first its head, then its tall, sharp fin. I watched until the fin appeared one more time far down the lead, waving slowly in the distance. Beckoning me south.
There is a very old story, rarely told, of a wolf that runs into the ocean and becomes a whale. It is said that the two animals share a spirit.
I’d been sent a vision, though I didn’t know by whom. Sila, perhaps. Or Singarti. Maybe even Ataata. I couldn’t speak to them, couldn’t summon them—but I could watch. I could listen. And I thought I understood their message.
The wolf is not bound to its shape. It can change form at will, transforming to a whale when it must swim in the sea.
Seeing the whale, no one would ever suspect it had once been a wolf.
Asking its pardon, I undressed Onerk’s corpse. Flouting the agliruti, I dressed myself in the dead man’s clothes. I’d killed him. Now he would be my rebirth.
Garbed once more as a man, I entered the blood-soaked iglu. I sawed at my hair so it brushed the tops of my ears as a man’s should. I filled a pack with sleeping furs, a tent, a few tools and weapons, the smallest stone lamp and pot, and as much maktak as I could carry. I lashed the pack between Issuk’s bow and a harpoon shaft and slung the frame onto my back. A carrying strap braced the weight against my forehead.
I wore a man’s knife in a sheath looped across my chest. I carried a woman’s ulu in my pack.
The wolf in the whale had gone south, following Kiasik. Following the yellow-haired murderer with his bloodstained hands. Following the flame-haired giant with his gentle touch and wicked blade.
The wolf in the whale had gone south. And so did I.
BOOK THREE
WOLVES
The old Inuk stands vigil on his qarmaq roof, awaiting the heralding stars and the rebirth of his son.
The Moon looks down from above. The Sea Mother looks up from below.
At the other end of the world, a great one-eyed god with a long gray beard sits on a high silver throne. With a raven perched on each shoulder, he looks westward across the wide ocean toward the land of ice, where the Frost Giants, his eternal enemies, live amid the black mountains and the frozen sea. But he does not see the child born amid its mother’s cries and a wolf’s hot breath. He sees only his own fear.
Long ago, he slew the greatest of the Frost Giants. He made the earth from the Giant’s eyebrows, the rivers from his blood, and the sky from his skull. To the small, dark folk who live in homes of snow, the Frost Giants are gods still—gods of moon and sky and sea. And one day, those Giants will return to take their revenge on the one-eyed god and his kin.
He has spent an age readying for the prophesied battle. At his command, the gods have forged weapons of iron and gold, clothed themselves in armor, and gathered armies both human and divine—all in preparation for the Ragnarok, the Fate of the Gods. Even the one-eyed god cannot tell who will be the victor.
Thus, since the time before time, he has stood vigil, his one eye sharp, watching the West for the Frost Giants’ approach. Until now.
The god turns away from the Giants’ icy realm and toward the searing heat carried by a strange new wind. A desert wind that saps the strength from his limbs, the keenness from his mind. A wind that carries word of a new god upon the land, a god without spear or hammer, without wife or child, a god more powerful in death than in life.
A new enemy threatens his rule. One he did not prophesy. One he cannot defeat with arms or armor or armies.
The one-eyed god summons his divine family, who call him Odin, All-Father. They stand tall and stately, with hair in streaming braids of yellow and orange and brown, their gowns of silver cloth and armor of beaten gold so bright no mortal can live in their presence.
The All-Father’s mightiest son comes forth, red bearded and broad shouldered, his hammer—so heavy no other god can lift it—held loosely in one armored hand. “Father,” Thor begins, his voice rumbling like the thunder he wields, “the new god walks among his followers, barefoot and radiant, with blood coursing from his hands. Always north and west, spreading like a pestilence. He saps the strength and courage of our people. No longer do they dream of joining us in Valhalla, where the walls echo with the clash of glorious battle.”
The old All-Father nods weakly. He rubs at the socket where his eye once lay. A shiver runs through the others as they watch Odin diminish. His wife, Frigg, shudders with grief, and the mothers on earth tremble in turn. Tyr, one-handed god of war, strikes his fist against his thigh—far below, warriors strike their swords upon their shields in unconscious imitation of their lord. Freya, beautiful goddess of love, hides her face behind her golden hair—the flowers wilt as mortal maidens sing songs of death.
The Thunder God raises his hammer, and lightning sparks from his fiery beard. “Let us march to the East and kill the desert god! Let us banish him as we banished Loki!”
“Patience, Thor,” Freya’s brother, Frey, urges. Barley sheaves bind the brow
of the god of growing things, and his eyes are mild.
Red-bearded Thor strikes his hammer against the walls of the golden palace. Lightning flashes. Storm clouds roll. “You are a coward, Frey—you who gave away your sword an age ago! What know you of battle?”
Frey merely nods. “True, I am no warrior. I give men food, not rage. I do not wield a hammer, like you, or a sword, like Tyr, or a spear, like the All-Father.” He raises his empty hands, and a soft yellow light fills his palms. “I bring sunlight, not war. I seek fertile land, not the plains of battle.”
Beautiful Freya steps between her brother and Thor. Flowers bob in her hair, but her voice is fierce. “Listen to Frey. Peace is what we need now. Force of arms will accomplish nothing against this new god. He is dead already, and yet lives on.”
“So what would you have us do?” demands Thor.
“Where our people go,” she answers, “where their skalds tell our tales and their warriors sing our songs, so, too, do we. Perhaps we can live on… after a fashion.”
“You are saying we stop fighting?” Thor roars the words, his voice shaking the hall. The others shout and gasp—to a god of the Norse, there is nothing worse than surrender. A slim goddess, handmaiden to Freya, nearly faints in shock. One-armed Tyr helps her to a nearby bench.
Tall Frigg, Odin’s wife, silences the assembled gods with a single raised finger. “Why are you shocked? You know our immortality has always been a fragile thing.” Deep shadows circle her eyes. She has already mourned the death of her youngest son, lost to foul trickery and murder despite all her efforts to keep him safe. This new threat is just one more grief to bear. “We chained Loki for his crimes”—she touches the heavy keys that dangle from the brooch on her breast, the ones that keep her son’s murderer imprisoned—“but we are the ones who are trapped. Bound in place beneath a serpent’s fangs as its venom trickles on our heads without cease. Drop by slow, poisonous drop, until we are eaten away to nothing.”
No one speaks. No one breathes.
The All-Father finally rises from his throne, leaning on his spear. The gods wait, sure their wise king will know how to defeat this new enemy as he has defeated all the others. But when he speaks, his shoulders hunch. Odin has already surrendered. “Soon there will be no place for us here. Freya and Frigg are right. The bleeding Christ will conquer our lands without striking a single blow. He will chase us away just as he chased Athena from Athens and Jupiter from Rome. Now those gods wander homeless, forgotten, all their powers lost. The same fate awaits us. The Ragnarok I envisioned will never come to pass. No final glorious war with the Frost Giants. No battle to end all battles.”
He gives his arm to his grieving wife, and they walk slowly from the chamber. One by one, the other gods depart.
Odin’s high silver throne sits empty.
Only one goddess remains: the fainting handmaiden, still propped upon her bench. Her eyes flutter open, spinning with rainbows. Then, suddenly, she is not a she at all.
The others name him Trickster, Shapeshifter. Loki, the god of mischief. Born a Frost Giant, but so cunning that he convinced the gods to let him live among them. Until he murdered Frigg’s favorite son, of course. They think he suffers his punishment even still, but he long ago escaped his bindings and wiped the serpent’s venom from his skull. Now he takes his seat upon the throne so that he, too, might see across the vast distances of space and time.
He looks across the ocean to his birthplace, far to the West. Wise Odin thinks he sees the future. But the earth is round, and so is time. Loki gazes over the horizon. He sees what farseeing Odin did not.
Between the ice-girdled mountains and the frozen sea, a newborn child is warmed by a wolf’s warm tongue. She is small and still and covered in blood. Yet within her tiny breast lies the power to end the world.
“She is like me. She contains multitudes,” he murmurs. “I am man and woman, giant and god. So Omat, too, will live between worlds, speaking to men and gods alike, containing two souls.” A single tear forms in the corner of his rainbow eye. “Like me, she will be torn between the people she was born into and those she will grow to love.”
The Trickster wipes away the tear before it can fall. “Odin thinks the final battle will never arrive,” he whispers to the empty hall. “But the Ragnarok is already in motion.”
He raises one arm and points toward the child in her cradle of snow, a smile dawning across his face. “There. There it begins.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I hated Issuk. But I missed his hunting.
Taqqiq the Moon Man grew weaker as summer approached, often disappearing from the sky for days at a time. Yet I still felt the weight of his curse upon me.
This was a barren land indeed—no seals basked along the floe edge. No caribou trotted across the tundra. The few animals I saw vanished before I could even ready my spear—as if fleeing from Taqqiq’s shouted commands.
Once I finished the maktak, I contented myself with setting snares. Sometimes I caught a lemming. Sometimes other small, unfamiliar animals. At one creek I managed to spear a fish. But for the most part, I went hungry.
The straps of my pack cut into my ribs and forehead. Without meat to sustain me or dogs to help carry my load, my limbs grew tired quickly, and my back bent over the hollow curve of my stomach. Soon I walked with the faltering step of the very old. I discarded Uimaitok’s heavy stone pot first. There wasn’t meat or blood enough for a proper soup anyway. The lamp next. I had no seal fat to feed its flame.
I kept my weapons. And the ulu.
My boots wore out, my weight thinning the sealskin until the stark white imprint of my foot appeared on the dark sole. A wise hunter always carries an extra pair of soles, but in my haste to begin my journey, I’d left all the spares behind. I couldn’t afford to destroy my few sleeping furs to make new ones, and lemming skin would tear too easily, so I cut the hem from my sealskin tent instead. As I walked, I chewed the stiff hide until it was soft enough to work, the taste of flesh—no matter how dry—taunting my tongue and wringing my stomach. I stretched the lemming hides, too, unwilling to let any furs go to waste. I never stayed in one place long enough to dry them properly, but I built a small driftwood frame to carry on my back so they might stretch as I traveled. Though the women’s work made a mockery of my reclaimed manhood, I sent thanks to the spirits of Uimaitok and Kidla for teaching me to prepare hides. I would use what skills I had, no matter if they were men’s or women’s. Above all else, an Inuk survives.
When I finally had enough softened sealskin to repair my boots, I made clumsy work of it. Without new caribou sinew for sewing, I had to rip out a seam from my tent. I softened the old sinew as best I could, but it still snapped far too often. I tied the shreds together; the thick knots tore holes in the boots faster than I could sew them closed again.
The farther south I went, the less snow squeaked beneath my ill-shod feet—too little for a proper iglu despite the frigid weather. My ever-smaller summer tent sheltered me from the wind, but not the cold. The lemming hides became misshapen socks and mitten liners. Better than nothing, but not nearly as warm as caribou or wolf fur. I was, in short, miserable. Worst of all, I was completely alone for the first time in my life.
The Sun barely set at night, but the length of the days only made them lonelier. I didn’t even know what moon it was. Could it be the Moon When Rivers Flow if they’d never frozen completely in the first place? Could it be the Moon When Animals Give Birth if there were no caribou calves? I knew only that many days had passed, and still I saw no sign of the strangers’ boat.
I walked along the snowy shore with only the driftwood to keep me company. At home I’d learned to save every precious log that washed ashore for kayak frames or harpoon shafts. But here, trees lay piled upon the beach like tide-tossed seaweed.
I’d never seen a plant taller than my knees—these massive driftwood trunks soared over my head. They lay in great tangled nests, their roots pointing skyward, each limb a withe
red arm crooked toward me, each sea-polished trunk as smooth as skin. I considered making a kayak frame from the wood, though I didn’t have the proper hides to cover it. Then I thought of Sanna—I wouldn’t be safe upon the sea. Better to stay on land, out of her grasp. So instead, I did the unthinkable: I burned the logs.
One night I made my camp in the lee of a massive tree, sheltering from the ocean-borne wind. I paced the shore, seeking the needle-point breathing holes of clams, then digging through the icy sand to rip them from their slumber. Without a pot to boil them in, I shoved them into the fire, then plucked the hot shells free the moment they popped open.
I fell asleep glad to have found a meal, however small. But it would take more than clams to sate the hunger that never stopped gnawing at the flesh between my hipbones.
I awoke the next morning to a faint whining. I fitted a spearhead into the foreshaft of my harpoon, hoping for more food, and followed the sound to a dark crevice in the driftwood log. Cautiously I bent to peer inside.
Two very small yellow eyes flashed back.
A wolf pup. I might no longer speak its language, but I knew its gaze.
I backed away, wary of a wolf parent ready to defend its young. But Singarti’s face flashed through my mind. Wolves were the only family I had left. Even just a glimpse of one might relieve some of my aching loneliness. So I waited.
Before long, a tiny black nose appeared, followed by two paws, one gray and one white. Then, amid much clambering and whining, a whole pup tumbled from the tree. She sat on her haunches and stared at me.
A moon old. Perhaps a little more. Young to have eyes already so yellow. Not yet big enough to wander from the den on her own.
“I’m going to eat you, you know,” I warned her.
She padded over to me and began gnawing contentedly on my bootlace, as if enjoying the best meal she’d had in days.
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