Secrets

by Ken Altabef

  Alaana saw the value in her teacher’s words.

  “Remember,” added Old Manatook. “Always we cure a man’s soul, not his body. The physical form is only a coat, worn by the spirit, a vessel of skin and bone that has no life of its own. The spirit is everything.”

  Alaana sighed. The soft, half-melted snow of spring made travel by sled impossible, and they had been walking all day. Plodding along, plodding along. The cold had numbed her feet, but her thighs were on fire from the lengthy trail. Each new step brought an aching pain all the way from her hips to her knees. Now that night had finally come she’d assumed they would take shelter and some rest, but it seemed the old shaman had every intention of continuing onward.

  Old Manatook bent close to the trail.

  “Look here,” he said. “How to tell the way north when traveling the wastes at night? The Moon and stars are shrouded by clouds, there are no landmarks visible at the horizon.” He illustrated with a sweep of his arm. The barren ground to the north lay as a flat and unwelcoming plain of snow and crust. The familiar bergs that lined the shore, the gray mountains of the southern climes, all gone. It seemed as if the two lonely travelers were the only living things left on the face of the world.

  “Hmmf,” said the old shaman. “I know this land. Every mountain, every berg, even the gentle curve of the ice is a familiar sight. So many times I have chatted with its rivers and lakes, they are all friends to me. No place is strange to these old eyes. I can travel just as well in the dark months as in the light of day. But what about you?

  “The way is here,” he added, indicating a line of drifts on the bare ground before them. “This is called the sastrugi. During the night the wind always packs the snow in the same direction. Here.”

  He snatched Alaana’s hand by the wrist and pulled it to the ground. Alaana ran her fingers over the subtle line of ridges in the snow. “You can feel them,” continued Old Manatook, “even in total darkness, and never be lost. Since the wind runs always to the southwest, the sastrugi let us know the way. We travel away from them, to the north.”

  “Is it much farther?” asked Alaana. She thought she might not have the strength to stand back up.

  Alaana woke to the smell of breakfast — snow hare roasting on the spit. Dawn had just broken over the barren lands. The sun hung low in the sky, still not yet strong enough to reach more than halfway up the dome. It painted the horizon in red and yellow, streaks of brilliant color that spilled across the smooth wet ice of winter’s end. The jagged surfaces of towering bergs fractured the light and tossed it back in stunning shades of green and blue.

  Alaana drew Old Manatook’s attention to the marvelous sight. “Look.”

  The shaman glanced up but his eyes did not linger on the scene. “Yes, spring’s dawn, so I see.” He finished dismantling the tarp that had sheltered them for the night, then set off to scout the trail, saying, “Eat quickly.”

  The colors were so deep and vibrant that Alaana almost believed them to be a voice, a voice that spoke in gentle commanding tones. It used no language, yet she understood it. Each different hue was like a musical note, coming together into a tune that spoke her name, begging her to look and listen, to pause and contemplate. This was Nunatsiaq, the Beautiful Land. The gentle colors were soothing, the cooling breeze a friendly caress. You are mine, it said, and I am yours.

  The rabbit meat tasted pungent and satisfying. Even without herb or seasoning the old shaman was a good cook. Their relationship had changed so drastically over the past year. Alaana had always been a little afraid of the gruff shaman, but as they spent more time together she had come to rely on his wisdom and strength. The old man had saved her life several times over.

  During her initiation Old Manatook had given birth to Alaana, had forced the breath of life back into her lips as she lay dying, ushering her into a new world, the unseen world of the spirits. From that moment on Alaana had two fathers — Kigiuna, her stalwart and strong natural father, and Old Manatook as spiritual father. She loved them both.

  The old shaman was always so harsh and blunt, it was impossible for Alaana to tell how he felt about her. He seemed no less impatient and irritated than before, but she got the general impression a sort of warmth had developed.

  Old Manatook returned to the cooking fire a few moments later. Alaana had just finished the last of the rabbit.

  “Look,” said Old Manatook. The mist had risen, revealing a group of sharp pinnacles silhouetted against the fiery sky. “That’s where we are going. The Ring of Stones. The sastrugi have led us true. We are almost there.”

  Almost there, as far as Old Manatook was concerned, meant another day’s travel through the endless slush. By the time they arrived the sun had sunk so low on the horizon that the stars were already visible in the dusky gray bowl of sky.

  As they neared the ancient monument Alaana noticed conflicting lines of bear tracks cutting deep in the snow. She wondered why bears would wander here, so far from the open water of the sea.

  Any further speculation was cut short by her first sight of the Ring of Stones. The ice crystals that frosted the huge gray blocks shimmered like jewels in the fading sunlight. A chill ran down her spine.

  These towering monuments had been raised eons ago, almost before living memory. But the old stories remembered everything and the storytellers kept them alive.

  This was an old place, a Tunrit place. It was said the Tunrit rose from the mud of the earth after the Great Rift shattered the Beforetime, making an end to paradise. These first people were much stronger and wiser than the people of today, creatures of indomitable will who faced the challenge of a world in perpetual darkness. In those days there was not yet a sun in the sky.

  Not only could Alaana smell the Beforetime in this place she could actually taste it as well — on the tip of her tongue, an endless array of sensations each so new and unique that her head began to spin. In the Beforetime, everything had been possible. People lived in total freedom, changing shapes at will and creating anything their hearts desired from the formless stuff of imagination. But then came the Great Rift, and the formation of the world itself, and those who had once been all-powerful were reduced to walking the earth as the Tunrit.

  Alaana followed Old Manatook into the circle.

  “What was it for?”

  Old Manatook stepped into the center of the ring. “Long ago the Tunrit people used this to reckon the movement of the sky, they used it to divine the passage of time.” He spun around, squinting up at the sky. Alaana noticed circular holes had been bored through the lintel stones at irregular intervals to match the positions of the stars.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I told you, girl. Reckoning the movement of the sky.”

  The old shaman at last found the view he desired. He stood transfixed, studying the sky through the holes in the stones.

  “Not good enough,” grumbled Old Manatook. “The stars move so very slowly, don’t they?”

  Alaana honestly didn’t know.

  The old shaman sat cross-legged at the center of the ring. He gestured for Alaana to do the same. “Sit, and be quiet! Don’t ask any more questions. You’ll witness something human eyes haven’t seen for thousands of years.”

  “Aagdru, Yug, Yaavaad,” intoned Old Manatook. If these were words in the secret language, they were words Alaana had not yet been taught. There was something about the way the old shaman spoke them. Was he appealing to the great spirits of the stones and calling them by name?

  The spirit-vision came across her eyes, completely unbidden. Had Old Manatook invoked it for her or was it possible the trance state came spontaneously in this mystical place, falling upon the unsuspecting young shaman like a gauzy blanket thrown over her head?

  The towering stones stood bright against the purple backdrop of the spirit-vision. Even in its current state of disrepair — half of the crosspieces had fallen down and two of the thirteen standing stones had gone over as well — this place was
nothing short of glorious. The stones contained spirits both ancient and immensely wise, though currently all asleep. The structure rippled as if with lightning flashes, each one an echo of the Beforetime when everything had been made of light itself.

  “Yihood,” said Old Manatook. “Oogdith.” A shudder from one of the great stones.

  “Oogdith, my great friend,” continued Manatook, “Open these old eyes to what has come before. You know the work I must do, and time my enemy. Share with me the gift of your long memory. Take me back, I beg of you.”

  A tunnel opened with the sound of a tremendous whoosh of seawater. The spinning vortex rose out of the snowy ground, arching above their heads, churning snow and slush and bits of gray shale amid a wave of deep blue, mystical light. The noise increased to a thunderous roar and Alaana realized it was not the sound of water, but the voice of time itself.

  The tunnel swallowed them. Alaana had not even been aware that her spirit-woman had left her body until she found herself traveling along the deep blue tunnel. She and Old Manatook had been plucked like berries on the vine by an ancient and gentle hand. And yet she had the impression they weren’t moving. It seemed the tunnel itself moved past them, that time was flowing, shifting backward.

  The ancient monument still held its place all around them, but the light in the sky flashed with summer day and winter dark as each year passed. As the centuries flew by in an instant, Alaana felt dizzy and closed her eyes. When she opened them again she was almost relieved to find an unbroken darkness.

  The intoxicating smell of the Beforetime was overpowering. Alaana could see vague hairy shapes in the distance, huge beasts with long trunks and flaring tusks. The mamut shuffled in the dark, calling to each other by blasts of air through their long expressive trunks.

  A group of strange beings sat within the stone circle. Not ordinary men. These figures had rough, craggy profiles in the dim starlight. Their heads seemed almost too large for their bodies, with huge sloping foreheads and ponderous brows. They were swathed in bulky furs against what must have been intolerable cold, their clothing as thick with frost as the ground below. The Tunrit seemed so full of contradictions. Their hands large and powerful yet delicately dexterous. Their faces brutish yet amazingly expressive and thoughtful.

  Their bellies empty, the Tunrit began to sing. Their voices joined together in low forbidding tones to create a song of intense loss and sorrow. Their words were unintelligible to Alaana but the sadly resonant melody carried their lament deep into her heart, hitting her as solidly as a spear thrust.

  “There it is!” exclaimed Old Manatook. His spirit-shape, a blurry white figure which hunched beside Alaana on the altar stone, raised its hands to the sky. He made a triangle of the index fingers and thumbs. “Not yet,” he said, “but almost too late.” The spirit-shape lowered its arms, craned its long sloping neck toward the stars and clapped its hands together.

  The thunderclap echoed across the barren lands, rousing Alaana from her trance. She sucked in a draught of biting cold.

  Old Manatook still gazed at the sky. His face showed a deep worry.

  “Too little time,” he said again. It seemed he was always saying it.

  “Too little time for what?” asked Alaana.

  Old Manatook ignored the question. He inhaled sharply, taking in a deep breath of the frigid air. “I’ll be gone only a moment. Guard me in case of trouble.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Old Manatook had no intention of answering that question either but this, too, was nothing new. The old shaman was famous for his mysterious journeys, disappearing from the Anatatook settlement for long stretches of time, with no explanation at all. Even his wife Higilak had no idea where he traveled or what he did on those jaunts.

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Sit,” said Old Manatook. “Wait.”

  Old Manatook’s soul took flight, leaving his body sitting cross-legged on the altar stone.

  Alaana watched the blurred image of her teacher’s soul rise up into the air and shoot away. While all the other souls she had ever witnessed held a shape similar to their owner’s personal appearance, Old Manatook’s inuseq was incomprehensible to her. She was certain the old shaman was hiding something, some secret which he would not share with his anyone. Alaana strained to see its true shape in that moment, but as usual she couldn’t make it out.

  The old shaman’s body lay vacant. Hunched forward it seemed old and tired, very much unlike the vigorous and energetic shaman. The shoulders rocked slowly with shallow breathing. His face hung flaccid and deflated under the white beard. His skin looked odd, old and dead like a lifeless mask.

  A sharp crack of ice in the distance brought Alaana’s gaze up. As the sun neared the end of its trek along the horizon, the cooling plain of white had been visited by a fine mist. Alaana could almost believe it had been flung up by the simmering vortex that had carried them on their journey. She knew they hadn’t actually traveled back in time; the great stone had merely been sharing with them its memory of things long past. The Tunrit had not seen them; surely such stalwart warriors would have noticed intruders in their midst. And yet, her spirit had passed among the forebears, had seen them and heard their song.

  The ice spoke again. There was movement in the mist. Alaana strained to see a large shape not far in the distance, white on white. A bear was coming!

  The silhouette shifted slightly in the mist. The creature stood still, as if stalking prey. But there was no doubt about it. A white bear poised only thirty paces away. Alaana could even see the clouded breath spewing from its nostrils.

  Alaana sat breathless. The shamans traveled unarmed. Yet even if she had a spear or harpoon she wouldn’t have been able to fight a white bear by herself. She was no hunter. She had never even seen a white bear up close. The Anatatook didn’t hunt them; Old Manatook had forbidden it. Alaana supposed this had been because it was too dangerous.

  She heard Old Manatook’s voice inside her head, speaking the secret language of the shamans. “Dying? What do you mean he’s dying?” Alaana realized the words were not meant for her, that the old shaman was in conversation with someone else but had lost control and shouted.

  The white bear stepped lazily to the side. Its slender head remained pointed in Alaana’s direction, its ears high and alert.

  Alaana had been charged with protecting Old Manatook. Was this what the shaman had meant? What should she do?

  She might wake Old Manatook from his trance state. But what if she was wrong and bothered the shaman for no reason? The old man’s scathing wrath might be worse than a mauling from the bear. Was that really a bear over there, she asked herself? The mist seemed to have reclaimed the outline. Was it gone?

  Old Manatook returned to his body. He stood up, slapping the clinging snow from his trousers. He seemed even more upset than usual.

  “I saw a bear out there,” said Alaana.

  “Never mind.” Old Manatook sorted through the pack he had brought along on the journey, counting out strips of dried seal and fishmeat.

  “I heard something,” said Alaana. “I heard that someone was dying.”

  “Never mind, I said! Sun and Moon, girl!” He shook his head. “Go back to the camp. You know the way.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m going north.”

  “Can’t I come with you?”

  Old Manatook shook his head again, tossing the pack at Alaana. “And who will see to the Anatatook? Your place is with them. Always.”

  Alaana sighed. She couldn’t argue with that.

  “I may be gone for some time,” said Old Manatook.

  Again this was nothing new. It was useless to argue. The old man’s will was like stone.

  “See to the turgats,” said Old Manatook, meaning the great spirits that sent out the game animals to be taken for food. “The most important thing is the turgats. They must come to know you. Appeal to Tekkeitsertok within the next moon. If you catch him in a good mo
od, the caribou will be plenty. You’ll have to journey down into the sea at start of winter, pay homage to Sedna and arrange for the seal hunt.”

  “Winter?” asked Alaana, a little quaver of panic breaking her voice. Was Old Manatook expecting her to do this alone? “Won’t you return before winter?”

  “If I’m not back in time it falls to you to negotiate with them. Sedna lives in a big house at the bottom of the sea. During the summer all the mistakes people make, the taboos carelessly broken, these things settle in her bedroom like soot and grease. Any angatkok who wishes to please her must make apology. Clean out her house and comb the errors of men from her hair. If you don’t do it properly she’ll shut all the seal and walrus away in the water basin beneath her bed and our people will starve, maybe even die.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You can and you will!” Old Manatook spoke to her as a father rebuking a wayward child.

  “It’s a long way back,” said Alaana. She didn’t understand any of this.

  “I’ve shown you the way. Take note of the shape of the berg. From this angle it looks like a face, see it? Keep that face to your back until you see the fjord. The angatkok travels alone. You should get used to it.”

  Yes, thought Alaana, the shaman too often walks alone.

  She watched the old man stride away across the barren wastes, heading for parts unknown. She couldn’t know it at that moment, but it would be more than three years before she set eyes on Old Manatook again.

  CHAPTER 1

  DEATH IN THE NIGHT

  Three years later:

  It was silent as death, and at least as cold.

  Her breath clouding softly in the stillness of the polar night, Alaana scanned the shadows. Behind her the outlines of the snow houses and encampments of the Anatatook village were limned in the milky light from a crescent moon and a handful of mist-shrouded stars; ahead lay a vast plain of snow and ice stretching away to the tree line in the distance. There was no movement, only absolute stillness mated to absolute silence.