by Yuri Rytkheu
Keu often visited the yaranga of Mlakoran’s abandoned wife, to listen to her wails and sigh with sympathy, hinting by degrees at the magic that had obviously been wrought upon her poor husband. “We’d managed to live without deer, didn’t we?” the shaman thought. “What use are these antlered beasts if you have to travel and travel just to get to them? Try finding a tiny camp in a snowy fastness.” He felt his hatred for Mlakoran growing, pressing on his heart and making it hard for him to breathe.
Keu had a son, to whom he’d passed his skill as a shaman. From his father the young man learned how to ease the suffering of the sick, how to heal dogs, drive away curses, perform the rites of the departing dead.
Keleu, a youth of amazing strength – with large, perceptive eyes unusual for a Luoravetlan – did not shave the crown of his head, but let his hair grow free. His long, sparse beard fluttered as he strode – Keleu always walked quickly. The young shaman possessed a resonant, melodious voice and had no equal when it came to composing new songs and to dancing. He was the first of the Luoravetlan to incorporate singing techniques of the neighboring Aivanalin, and their use of the big, sonorous yarar. This large tambourine was made of a specially tanned walrus stomach stretched over a whalebone frame. The sound of a yarar could carry a great distance, and could even be heard from the far side of Uelen’s lagoon. Keleu liked to make little figurines from walrus tusk and carved ornamentation even onto plain bone buttons. He was the first to depict the creation of the Earth, Sky, and Man on the surface of a polished walrus tusk.
Besides all this, Keleu was a lucky hunter, could chase tirelessly after a white bear, and always took the prow position of the harpoon-wielder when the skin boats went to hunt whale.
Keleu was known for his affability, and his tribesmen never saw him cross and frowning. You could wake him in the middle of the night, and he would always go to the aid of someone who was ill.
Mlakoran tried to make an ally of him, showing him many signs of respect, but Keleu continued to behave the same way with everyone, including the chieftain of the Uelen Luoravetlan.
Now the old shaman’s clan was becoming more and more prominent and influential in Uelen. The last word in disputes belonged to Keu, and since Mlakoran was usually away, the ascendant family of Keu tended to deal with community matters.
Why do the rekken – the tiny people who, lore has it, deliver illness – most often come just at the break of winter, when the sun starts to peek over the horizon? It was just in those quiet sunny spells that Uelen was struck by a plague. People burned up within days from incredible fever and ceaseless coughing. The living barely managed to bury all the dead.
Even Keu himself fell ill.
Keleu went to the outskirts of the settlement, where the rekken rested underneath the shadow of a tall snowdrift. Their leader informed Keleu that their little dogs must be fed, else it would take them months to make the journey from the first to the last of the yarangas strung out along the shore.
Keleu dragged over the last of the kopal’khen, stores that had been put aside for the spring sacrifices, and begged, pleaded with the little people to hurry.
“That does not depend on us,” said the leader of the rekken. “You should talk to the Outer Forces.”
Keleu put on his father’s garment, a long, loose shirt of napped wild deer hide, trimmed with wolverine fur and decorated with free-swinging bits of colored stone. He used a strip of white nerpa skin embroidered with holy ornaments to tie back his hair. Tambourine in hand, Keleu dove into the darkness of the fur-lined polog, its stone lamps extinguished. His father was breathing heavily in one corner of the dwelling, his breath struggling to flow, as though against barriers of stone.
Slowly, Keleu was elevating himself to the highest degree of divine inspiration. When he thought he could feel himself beginning to levitate off the floor and touch the fur-lined polog ceiling, he dampened his ardor slightly. What he needed was to hear. To hear the mysterious voices that prophesied in human language from an equally mysterious source. Keleu slowed his ragged breath and was all attention. At first what he heard seemed like nothing but a random jumble of words, devoid of meaning:
From the vastness of the tundra came the wind
Brought the scent of deer droppings
Flattened it over snow, smeared it over sled tracks
The narrow-eyed glance pierces deeply
And the deer-riders call down death . . .
Followed by this, very clearly and beyond mere suggestion:To preserve life and save the people
Mlakoran must fall
By the hand of Koranau his daughter . . .
Keleu pitched forward with shock and horror; he felt the coolness of the walrus-skin floor covering on his face. He could not believe what he had heard, not at first. This was impossible! In ancient times it had so happened that human sacrifice was required. But Keleu could not think of such a thing in living memory.
His father stirred in the corner of the yaranga and asked:
“Let me have some water.”
Keleu called out for the women and told them to give his father water.
The terrible words he’d heard during the ritual would not leave the young shaman. He tried to forget them, tried to think of other things, to keep himself busy, going off to the ice floes to hunt polar bear for days at a stretch. But no sooner did he stand still than a voice descended directly from the skies and filled all the visible space: “Mlakoran must fall by his daughter’s hand!”
A few days passed before Keleu revealed this to his father. Keu listened to his son in silence and said:
“This portends grave misfortunes for us. We cannot disobey the Voice from Above, but Mlakoran will not be easy to convince either.”
“So what do we do?”
Keu did not answer right away. Many times in his life he’d had to make difficult decisions, but nothing like this had ever happened before.
“We’ll ask the Outer Forces again,” he said.
Keu’s yaranga seemed on the verge of collapsing as it shook with the force of the beating tambourine, over the heads of father and son, both dripping with sweat, hoarse from chanting, exhausted by their movements inside the close, fur-lined polog.
But no sooner did they fall silent and quiet the ringing tambourine than the Voices from Above would repeat the Sacred Order. Mlakoran must die by his own daughter’s hand.
“But how,” wondered Keleu, “could a small weak child kill a strong grown man?”
He had addressed the puzzling question to his father, but the latter’s reply was curt: “The Higher Powers know . . .”
Meanwhile, the people of Uelen continued to die, and the rekken had barely made it halfway through the village. Soon a third of the people had gone to the place of eternal sleep, the Funerary Hill also known as the Hill of Hearts’ Peace.
Keleu rounded up and harnessed the dogs – gone half wild and starving, they now fed on human remains – and set off for the Kaaramkyn camp. Were it not for the grave mission destined for the young shaman, the sled ride, in such clear weather and with the sun already noticeably warming, would have been a real pleasure. But Keleu was shadowed by his grim thoughts and paid no notice to the beauty of the distant blue mountains, nor to the partridges bursting into flight, nor to the lovely color of the spring sky. What words could he find to tell Mlakoran about the Sacred Order, about the strange and unusual human sacrifice required?
If Mlakoran did not believe him, he would have the right to test the shaman. In the past, this had sometimes meant inhuman torture . . . If the shaman managed to withstand it, the Sacred Order must be satisfied.
Spotting the first nutlike little clumps of deer droppings, Keleu deduced that the herders’ camp must be nearby.
Mlakoran greeted Keleu warily, asking him for news from Uelen. When he heard about the continuing deaths, his face darkened.
“We haven’t any old people anymore,” Keleu told him dourly.
“How is Keu’s health?”
asked Mlakoran.
“He’s recovering,” answered Keleu.
He didn’t know quite how to come to the main point, to tell Mlakoran about the terrible Order from Above.
“We’ll load your sled with deer meat,” Mlakoran promised him. “You will bring back as much meat as you can carry.”
Mlakoran’s little girl was playing with walrus tusks on the fur-lined polog’s floor, raising a smiling face toward the visitor from time to time. Keleu looked at her, and with a growing horror wondered how it would be possible for her to kill her father, still such a strong man. Tul’ma served the food and did not intrude on the men’s conversation, despite having become proficient in Luoravetlan speech by now.
“There is a bad piece of news,” Keleu finally managed to get out. He fell silent for a moment, marshaling his strength. “There is an Order from Above, to save the people of Uelen. It pertains to you.”
“I’m ready to do my all to help the people,” was Mlakoran’s answer. “If you need me to, I’ll drive the deer closer to the village, to the edge of the lagoon, so people can take meat.”
“My father and I divined for a long time, asking the Gods. But they were immovable, and I can still hear their voices, even here in the tundra.”
“We are prepared to make any sacrifice to save the people,” Mlakoran repeated.
“They want a human sacrifice,” Keleu said quietly.
Mlakoran had thought that this custom was a thing of the long ago, never to return. Nowadays, a living creature was still killed to placate the spirits – a dog, a deer . . . But a human sacrifice?
“They take human sacrifices from us every day as it is,” Mlakoran grumbled. “You said yourself that the Hill of Hearts’ Peace is already crowded with dead.”
“But the Higher Powers are demanding a special sacrifice,” Keleu said with difficulty. “They want a specific person.”
“Well, then, who is it?” Mlakoran asked impatiently.
“You!” Keleu blurted out, and cringed, expecting a blow.
But there was none.
When he raised his head, Mlakoran was not there.
He was standing outside the yaranga and looking at the distant mountains, radiant with the glow of spring. His face was a mask of deepest sorrow.
An Order from Above was never rescinded. Neither Keu nor Keleu could turn their back on one. Mlakoran heard the young shaman’s footsteps and asked, without turning:
“Did you ask many times?”
“Yes. We chanted and danced, asking and asking, for many days. It took all our strength, but the order was always the same – you must fall by your young daughter’s hand.”
“But she’s still a small, weak child . . .”
“They,” Keleu flicked his eyes upward, “insist on exactly that.”
“You know that I can put you and your father to the test?”
“We are ready,” answered Keleu.
If both of the shamans were prepared to be tested, the matter was serious indeed. On the other hand, Mlakoran knew that the two of them, Inspired from Above though they were, did not approve of his behavior, especially his kinship with the Kaaramkyn and the fact that he had become a deer person.
Yet the thing Mlakoran was being asked to do was too heavy a price. If indeed this originated within the shamans’ heads, it was inconceivable treachery. So then, he would have to test them . . .
Mlakoran went to Uelen, taking his daughter and a small herd of deer to feed the ill and the dying. Keleu rode ahead on his own sled.
Never in Mlakoran’s life had he loved the spring so much! Clear skies, a sparkling sun that lent its brilliance to the slightly melting snow. A comb of blue mountains on the horizon, air as soft as melted snow, the kind you could breathe in with mouth wide open, without fear of freezing the tops of your lungs. And the anticipation of warmth spilled all around, nature’s turn toward the season when life bursts forth. Then, even the does are heavy with young, carrying future deer inside them; even the tundra mice leave their warrens and beat trails over the softening snow. The sun is high in the sky, signaling to all that lives: hurry and live, be quick to enjoy life and the contemplation of nature returning to life, go on and delight in everything that lives, together with your friends and your dear ones! Forget quarrels, remember instead kind words and melodious songs!
But that is all for those who remain alive, those whose living eyes are to see the new fawns, the tundra in bloom, the first of the walrus herds, and the sea free of winter ice!
If the Order from Above were to be fulfilled, he, Mlakoran, would see none of these things. He would be resting within the symbolic ring of stones, naked, surrounded by his private possessions – his harpoon, his light sled, the wooden ladle from which he had drunk broth and water.
From a hilltop Uelen appeared in the distance, across a lagoon encased in ice and shimmering snow. The yarangas were strung along the shingled beach like a chain, from the foot of the mountain over Irvytgyr7 to the ice-locked bay between the lagoon and the open sea. There was no sign of smoke over any of the dwellings, no sound of dogs barking, nor of human voices. An ominous, glittering silence filled with blinding sunlight enveloped the scene that was so dear to him, and his heart contracted in anticipation of grief. A thought fluttered in Mlakoran’s mind, exacerbating his suffering: perhaps he was seeing all this for the last time . . . Another’s eyes will gladden to the sight of the rows of yarangas appearing along the shingled beach; another’s heart will feel the mounting joy of nearing the warm hearths of his birthplace. Mlakoran felt his heart emptying, its hot blood replaced by a deadly frost.
Mlakoran walked up to his yaranga and entered the chottagin, the cold outer part of the yaranga. While his eyes adapted to the gloom after the blinding brightness outside, all he could hear were muffled moans from behind the fur curtain. Raising the polog he saw his older children and first wife lying beneath some deerskins. It had been a long time since a grease lamp burned here and the dwelling’s inner walls were limned in hoarfrost.
“Save us!” his wife moaned from beneath the fur blankets. “You’re our only hope!”
“But did you hear what the shaman demands in exchange for saving the people of Uelen?” Mlakoran asked her.
“It’s not the shaman’s demand, it’s an Order from Above,” answered his wife.
The testing of the shamans began that very night in their own yaranga. Everyone had left the dwelling, save Keu and Keleu. Mlakoran entered the close polog and saw the two shamans – father and son – naked from the waist up, in the dim light.
“Take it all off!” Mlakoran shouted.
Both shamans began to unlace the plaited deer tendons that held up their fur-lined trousers, obeying the order. Keu was a pitiful sight – a skeleton of sharply jotting bones, tautly covered by dry, dark brown skin. But it was he who was the main source of danger. There was no question in Mlakoran’s mind that Keu had been the one to introduce the idea of the cruel Order from Above to his son.
For a start, laying Keu on his back, Mlakoran pressed his thumbs forcefully into the man’s eye sockets. The old shaman did not make a sound. Mlakoran could tell that any moment the eyes would burst under his fingers. Easing the pressure, Mlakoran turned the old man over and began to twist his arm behind his back. Keu was silent. It was obvious that the old sick man no longer even felt pain to the same degree as a healthy person.
Letting go of the father, Mlakoran set to work on the son.
Again he began with pressing his thumbs into the other man’s eyes, but Keleu only groaned and ground his teeth. For a moment Mlakoran thought that the young shaman was ready to ask for mercy, and letting up a little, asked loudly:
“Do you still insist that you had an Order from Above?”
“Yes,” Keleu breathed out with a moan.
Mlakoran kneaded and crumpled the younger man, bent his spine and throttled him, cutting off his air supply, but each time Keleu answered that the Order from Above was genuine and not the pro
duct of the shamans’ imagination.
Then Mlakoran came to the worst of it. He clenched the young shaman’s genitals in his own strong fist and began to tighten his grip, slowly, pausing from time to time to give Keleu a chance to catch his breath and speak. The young man’s balls were slippery, as though trying to escape, but Mlakoran’s sturdy fingers brooked no such thing. Keleu was screaming, his face ran with a mixture of salty sweat, tears, and snot; rivulets of blood from his bitten lips coursed from the edges of his mouth, but the answer remained always the same: the Order had come from Above.
An ordinary person could not have withstood the tortures that Mlakoran practiced on the young shaman.
And at some point Mlakoran realized that Keleu would lose his gentials, die of agony, before he admitted that there had been no Order, and that the wishes of the gods were invented by himself and his father.
Sticky with sweat, he let go of Keleu. The young shaman reeked of shit and urine; the terrible pain had caused an involuntary voiding of bladder and bowels.
Barely able to control his revulsion and nausea, Mlakoran walked out of the shamans’ yaranga and into the fresh air. The bright sunlight was blinding.
Slowly, pausing often, he ascended the Crag that hung over the eastern part of Uelen and looked back.
This was his favorite spot from which to gaze on his birthplace, the chain of yarangas stretching along the long shingled beach. In that world where the souls of dead heroes and those who gave their lives for their tribesmen went, the world near the North Star, there was no room for little Uelen.