Secrets

by Ken Altabef

  Aquppak nodded absently. “I’m waiting for the caribou,” he said. “Hunting is real work for men.” Again Putuguk noted an intended sleight on the part of his grandson. He was in a foul mood indeed.

  “You’ll get your chance soon,” Putuguk replied proudly. “And you’ll show the other men what you can do. You’re the best of them already.”

  “Yes,” said Aquppak softly. “When I see you sitting here, do you know what I think?”

  Putuguk sighed.

  “I think about how hungry I used to be,” continued Aquppak, “living off game from other men’s harpoons, parceled out as to a dog. I think about having to beg other people for scraps of skins for my clothes. I wonder if I’ll ever get out of that shadow. Too much charity make people into slaves, just as the whip makes the dogs whimper and beg.”

  “We all help each other,” said Putuguk. “No shame in that. The life is hard, the land unforgiving.”

  “No shame? Look at yourself, old man. Too old to hunt and lame in both arms.”

  Aquppak’s voice had carried across the snowy plain. Putuguk saw Higilak look up from her fish bellies then look away. Tiki hadn’t noticed, too intent on watching the children.

  “I used to hunt very well,” said Putuguk in a low tone.

  “And what would you do now to get a caribou? Spit stones at them? I would rather die than suffer such humiliation.”

  Ah so there it is, thought Putuguk. There it is.

  Aquppak was not finished. “There were times as a child when I had to run among the dogs after the hunters had put food out for them, and climb over the starving animals to get a few scraps of walrus meat. That was the biggest shame of all. Cuts on my hands from nipping teeth. Trading bites and scratches for a little something in my belly.”

  “And I love you for that, son.”

  “And the laughs that were made over me,” said Aquppak. “I traded those for a bit of my soul. That, I’ll never forget. Or forgive.”

  These words caused Putuguk indescribable pain. Aquppak was a good boy. He had lost much in the snowslide that had killed his parents, and then the sickness that had taken his grandmother from him. Putuguk had done his best for him, a boy who would never bow down to failure, who would let nothing stop him until he rose above his troubles, even if he was saddled with a lame old man for a father.

  “You’ve come up in the world,” Putuguk said. “You have plenty now. It’s time to forget.”

  “How can I forget? When you sit here watching with the rest of the women?”

  “You’ll see things differently when you’re older.”

  “No I won’t. I’m not like you. If I were you…”

  “Go ahead,” urged Putuguk. “Say it.”

  “If I were you I wouldn’t want to be a burden. If I were you I’d do something about it.”

  Aquppak stood up. Turning to walk away, he upset the little bowl of fish meat and stomped it into the snow.

  CHAPTER 18

  ERRANDS UNFINISHED

  Even though the summer nights had now grown so very short, Tiki often rose early.

  First light crept into Putuguk’s tent to find she had already been long awake, listening to the contented murmurs of the girls and thinking. She watched Aquppak rise at dawn and go out to prepare his gear for the day’s fishing. When he had gone, Tiki slid from her bed and dressed in the semi-darkness.

  She threaded her way across the sleepy summer camp, sheltered from the wind in the lee of a rocky outcropping that followed the stream. As she leaned against a convenient niche in the rock, she felt a cutting breeze, a cold slap from across the water. From this vantage point she could see the men going out to the river. She searched their line for the tallest and broadest among them. She was hoping to catch a glimpse of Iggy.

  Early morning was the best time, she thought. Leaving her daughters still asleep, one on either side of the old man — his toothless snoring lulling them in their dreams. Out here in the open she could be alone with her thoughts. She could be a young girl again, even a young girl in love. Again.

  Two young people from the southern camp, Qupagnuk and his wife Tunnillie had just arrived, coming around the basin in the night to join their father’s camp. It must have been a long journey pulling their sled in the dark, for Tiki could see how tired they both were. They had staked out a place beside Massautsicq’s enclosure. The pair worked in concert, unloading their possessions and setting up the interior of their home before they raised the skin walls. It was a clever if unselfconscious move, she thought, saving them the trouble of dragging each item inside one by one. Qupagnuk had already put up the driftwood table in the center of the room and the sleeping platform. Now the two of them demonstrated perfect teamwork putting everything in its proper place.

  They both knew exactly where each item went. Sometimes the man handed his wife a stray item — just holding it out at the proper moment without even looking, knowing she would take it on her way past and put it in its place. Their movements reminded Tiki of two people singing a song together. A song that promised great contentment, setting up their house so they could get snug inside and fall fast asleep. If anyone was to offer help they would only be getting in the way. The young couple needed no one else. They said nothing to each other, occasionally exchanging a laugh or a smile. At one point they cuddled for a moment without breaking stride as if it were a scheduled part of the routine.

  A low cough surprised her.

  “Oh, you startled me, angatkok,” she said, recognizing the lithe form of the shaman leaning against the rocks beside her.

  “I’m sorry,” replied Alaana.

  “I didn’t see you there.”

  Alaana chuckled. “I was watching the people start the day.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’m glad they came back.” Alaana nodded toward the young couple. “Massautsicq will be well pleased.”

  Tiki shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “I wonder what it would be like,” said Alaana, “being married.”

  “What? To have someone to hunt for you and bring you food. Someone to pick the lice off you in the dark, rubbing his cheek against your hair? Someone whose arms you could fall into at night, and know that you were safe and warm.” Tiki thought for a moment what else to say. “I wasn’t married very long, either time. But it’s good. It’s good having someone. You’ll find out, angatkok.”

  “Not me. Tiki I was talking about you.”

  Tiki pulled her eyes away. “I can never have another husband. Men don’t even look at me.”

  “That’s not true,” said Alaana. “Maybe it’s not my place to say this but there is one among us who longs to have you by his side.”

  Tiki’s heart sank. Was it impossible to keep secrets from the shaman? Did Alaana already know how she wanted to marry Iggy and be free of Aquppak? Was she being tested?

  “Everybody knows about the curse,” she said. “Any man I marry is going to die. Is that what you want for your friend?”

  “I want my friend to be happy. I want you to be happy.”

  “That can never happen,” she insisted, heartbreak straining her voice. It was all so hopeless. She didn’t want to talk about such terrible things. She turned to walk away.

  Alaana reached out, turning her head gently by the point of her chin. The shaman’s gaze was frightening in its intensity and Tiki knew she was looking deep, seeing things that she would have liked to remain hidden.

  “Don’t…”

  “I’ll tell you what I see,” Alaana offered.

  Tiki flinched under her probing stare but she did want to hear what the shaman had to say.

  Alaana’s eyes opened wide and Tikiquatta thought she saw a purplish haze flooding her pupils.

  “I see a beautiful soul, caged by doubt and fear. Like any flower waiting to bud, trapped under the crust of winter. When the sun melts the snow, the bud has to push itself up. It has only to reach for the light.”

  Tiki shook her head, but Alaana maintai
ned her grip.

  “I’ll tell you what I don’t see. I don’t see any curse.”

  “I’m sorry angatkok. I don’t know how this curse came upon me or why. Maybe it was something Putuguk did long ago. I don’t know. Maybe you should look in his eye.”

  “There is no curse in your father’s eye,” said Alaana, “and none in your own. Believe me.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “You mean well, I know. But… but…”

  Alaana released Tiki’s chin. Tiki pressed her palms to her eyes to stem the flow of tears. Too late.

  “There’s no hope,” she said. “I have something inside me. An emptiness. I can feel it. It’s hungry for companionship and love. But it’s a rotten thing, it’s too hungry. Anyone gets too close and it will devour him. It will eat him up.

  “You remember my first husband, Iksik. Killed — trampled in a rush of musk oxen. Oh, how he used to make me laugh. He would tell me…” She paused, wondering if she should continue. Well, it was all right, she thought, Alaana was the shaman and knew everyone’s secrets already. And, once having started, it was too difficult to stop. “He used to tell me stories. Little stories in the night. He would just make them up about this one or that one. Old Krittaq goes fishing and gets all wet falling into the river. The others have to pull her out with her sister’s big trout net, but it breaks for want of a good knot and she falls back in.” She giggled. “Or Kanak out hunting caribou and he falls in love with a brown-eyed doe, bringing her home as his third wife.”

  Alaana smiled.

  “Just silly things,” continued Tiki. “Oh, how I used to laugh with him.”

  Her heart felt lifted for a moment, remembering her first, dear Iksik. She would never forget his gentle touch.

  “Oh, how I loved Iksik. Trampled into the dust. I don’t know why that had to happen…”

  “Things happen,” said Alaana. “A foot slips…”

  “No,” said Tiki firmly. “Not like that. And the other, my poor Tutuiaq. Lost at sea, lost while out in his kayak.” She pursed her lips in a frown of disbelief. A tear came down each side, and then her eyes dried up. It was an old wound.

  “The sea’s dangers are well known, Tiki.”

  She snickered. “I’m sorry, angatkok. Tutuiaq did not die from some little bit of rough weather. He was such a strong man, so confidant and sure. He was the best kayaker. He used to take the waves under.”

  Alaana had seen him do this. Instead of allowing the force of the wave to break across his body Tutuiaq would take a deep breath and flip over, letting the wave flow over the upturned bottom of the boat. Timing it perfectly he would flip back upright — a little wet but none the worse for wear. Tutuiaq laughed at the type of wave that could snap a man’s spine if it caught him the wrong way.

  “He was such a fine boatman,” recalled Tiki. “In truth he preferred to hunt seal in heavy seas because he could get that much closer to his prey under cover of the waves. But it didn’t matter. Dashed upon the rocks and drowned. No one could believe it.”

  “It happens,” said Alaana.

  “Yes, it happens to less-skilled boatmen. Don’t you see? Chasing the last seal of spring, or the first musk ox of winter. On sea or land, light or dark, it was just the same. No man can hide from this curse. My brother — killed in a snowslide!”

  “And Putuguk is spared?” asked Alaana.

  “Spared? He watches his loved ones die. One by one. He can hardly walk, he can’t chew or eat…”

  “That’s just old age.”

  “There’s a curse,” insisted Tiki. “Everyone knows it.”

  Her eyes, though still wet, burned fiercely. Alaana noted the set of her jaw, the cords standing out in her neck, the unyielding stone of her entire face. Though she generally wore her long hair down to dissuade advances from men, she had this morning bundled it atop her head, perhaps to keep it from being tossed about by the river breeze. Under this hairtop she appeared matronly, as a woman long-married to sorrow.

  “If there was a curse on you, don’t you think I would know it?”

  “Of course,” she said, flinching back a little.

  “Then believe me when I tell you there is no curse.”

  Tiki made a little helpless grunt. “You are a great shaman for the people, Alaana. But some things you can’t see.”

  These words struck Alaana as a dagger through the heart. She was surprised. Tiki had always had a great deal of faith in her. But she was fixed in her idea. Her belief in the curse was even stronger than her faith in Alaana’s abilities. In such a case, nothing she could say or do was going to be able to change that.

  She would have to tell Iggy there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t talk Tiki out of it. She couldn’t change her mind. That was something only Iggy might do.

  Alaana struck flint against flat stone, but there was no spark.

  She sat on a braided mat of caribou hide, just out of sight of the summer camp. Woven into the fabric of the mat were a series of geometric shapes designed to represent the ever-changing form of Sila, the Walker In The Wind. In the distance she could hear people working near the stream, the women sewing dog packs and sealskin boots, the men sharpening their spears and fishing hooks.

  In order to draw fire from a stone, she reminded herself, one had only to release some of the life energy already present within the rock. If asked politely, the spirit within the rock would usually oblige. With this firmly in mind she struck the flint again. A waft of smoke curled up from the scraps of heather laid out on the rock, and Alaana gently fanned the nascent flame to life.

  “Thank you, Brother Stone.”

  From a small ceremonial pot she drew powdered black claw root and sprinkled it over the tiny fire. The scent had a sharply aromatic tang and helped clear her mind for the task at hand.

  The cloak of human skin lay draped over an upright spear haft braced in the slushy ground with stone wedges. At the top was Manatook’s face, hanging empty, the eyes dead in their sockets, the mouth gaping as if on the verge of some stern rebuke. Alaana gazed sadly at the distorted face of her friend and teacher. The memories she had recently experienced in wearing the skin had shed a new light on her relationship with the old shaman.

  She knew now how troubled Old Manatook had been at having two lives, each taking up his time while he was needed by the other. She felt the shaman’s frustration at having to train her when she seemed to be stubbornly wasting his time. Alaana felt ashamed. She saw herself as in the mirrored surface of a lake. She had been slow to learn and rebellious, questioning everything including the motives of her teacher. She felt even worse now, having tasted the depth of Old Manatook’s fatherly feelings for her directly from the skin.

  Also there was something having to do with Sila. A secret. Something Old Manatook had wanted to tell her but had never found the right time. This reminded her of Civiliaq, the ghost of another Anatatook shaman, who had hinted at something similar. His warning note still rang out in Alaana’s mind. Something false and deceptive about her connection to the Walker In The Wind. But what? And how could she ever find out?

  And Old Manatook had been deceptive as well. This mask of tanned skin did not hold his true face. He had been Aisaac. Alaana had seen the real face after his death, framed in pearlescent white fur, the huge and ferocious teeth, the gentle wisdom behind the eyes.

  This skin belonged to the real Manatook, a much more unpleasant fellow, and she had come today to release that tortured man’s soul. She regretted the delay in keeping that promise. She’d returned weak and weary from her trek to the north to find much neglected work. Two Anatatook men had suffered sprained ankles and one a broken leg from mishaps at the weir in the river. Also Alaana had to visit with Tekkeitsertok, guardian spirit of the caribou, to plead for the upcoming caribou hunt. She found herself slightly better received this time, as if the mighty spirit were an old friend who had appreciated the lethal joke she’d played on the Yupikut. The great turgat had promised nothing, but indication
s were good for a sizable caribou crossing at a certain place in the river in a few days’ time.

  Alaana inhaled the last aroma of the black claw root. Time to get to work. She found Old Manatook’s binding spell easier to crack than the one which had held the wolves. She had gained a measure of experience in the matter of spirit cages, and her familiarity with Old Manatook’s methods made the task that much easier. Layer by layer, she peeled away the soul binding.

  She began to hear the tortured cries of the man bound within the skin. “Let me out! Release me. Have mercy on my soul.”

  Manatook’s ghost didn’t deserve such torture. He had long paid for his crimes. Exiled from his own people because of a jealous murder, he had stumbled upon Higilak, alone and vulnerable in the white wastes, and taken her to wife. Alaana remembered the ghost’s woeful recounting of his murder at the merciless claws of Aisaac, and his subsequent imprisonment and humiliation. Yes, certainly Manatook had paid enough. Alaana wondered if Aisaac had been dispensing justice, or simply taking advantage of the man’s weakness for his own benefit? It was a difficult riddle and she felt it didn’t matter now anyway. The past was the past. Setting Manatook free was all she could do to make it right.

  With a satisfied sense of release, Alaana felt the last of the soul cage drop away. The spectral form of Manatook did not rise up before her as the wolf spirits had done. She felt a twinge of uncertainty. She wasn’t completely familiar with the ritual and worried that something untoward had happened to Manatook’s ghost.

  She wanted to look around for the ghost, but she couldn’t move her head. Something had gone dreadfully wrong. She couldn’t move at all.

  “So, you finally saw fit to release me, little devil,” she heard Manatook say. “You may expect me to thank you, but I don’t easily forget what you did to me. For sixty years I’ve suffered under this terrible curse, my skin worn like a coat by some stinking beast, my soul walking among the living but not really alive. For sixty years I’ve been bent to the will of another, a puppet of flesh, used by an animal to imitate a man. And all the while I could feel nothing.”