by Ken Altabef
Alaana knelt before the pallet, humming the song of sleep to help soothe Tugtutsiak’s weary mind.
Summer had flown past and the freeze-up now come upon them. The return of night signaled time for the band to move. The last caribou had been brought low, the fatted herds already migrating toward warmer climes. The newly-formed shore ice offered renewed mobility and the men broke out their sleds, eager to travel the frozen waters off the shore.
As usual, Alaana’s attempts to communicate with Sedna, Mistress of the Sea, had borne little fruit, leaving her with no clear idea as to where along the vast shoreline the seal would be plentiful this winter. The entire settlement was to be moved and there were a choice of camping places for the winter. She had come to rely on Tugtutsiak’s instincts for direction in that matter, the most important decision of the year. But word had not come from the headman.
Tugtutsiak had been acting strangely for days. He was restless and un-communicative, eating little and sleeping not at all. An embarrassed Aolajut had tried to conceal the headman’s erratic behavior. At first she simply thought it was an effect of the season — the sleep patterns of the hunters often became disturbed at the end of summer. They saw the failing sunlight as a last opportunity to hunt and fish in hopes of setting aside stockpiles of food for the winter. They worked well past exhaustion and paid little attention to anything else. Tugtutsiak was as guilty of this as anyone. But this was not so simple. Tugtutsiak had become a walking nightmare, dazed and mumbling to himself, terrified at the slightest noise.
It wasn’t difficult for Alaana to find the cause of the problem. Someone had stolen the headman’s soul. Most likely this had happened during sleep. Dreams are adventures of the soul, and his spirit had become separated from his body and unable to return.
“How long has he been like this?” she asked Aolajut.
“It’s been two or three sleeps at least.”
The situation was treacherous. If his soul wasn’t returned soon, Tugtutsiak would die. Even worse, without his guidance the Anatatook might all starve for lack of seal.
Alaana asked Aolajut if Tugtutsiak had been worried or concerned about anything before he fell ill.
“He said something about the Moon,” she replied. “Talking in his sleep. He was concerned about the tides.”
“He is always concerned about the tides,” said Alaana. The sea was never far from Tugtutsiak’s heart. But this talk of the Moon might be significant…
And so, to the Moon.
Alaana sat her father at the head of the pallet, balancing the big Moon drum between his knees.
“You’ll keep the beat for me,” she said. She tapped out a sample pattern then placed the beater in her father’s hand.
Kigiuna took up the rhythm with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm.
“Slow it down, father,” Alaana gently corrected him. “That’s right. Keep the beat steady for as long as you can.”
Kigiuna nodded agreement, his concentration on the drum.
“It’ll be up to you to call me back,” she said. “Five measured beats. Just like this.” She slapped her hand firmly against his thigh five times. “You must call me back if I run into trouble.”
Kigiuna looked dubiously up from the drum. “How will I know?”
“You’ll know,” said Alaana, with a half-smile. She patted her father on the shoulder. “Let’s go. We have to set things right before it’s too late.”
Alaana donned a large round mask and sat cross-legged beside her father. This time she wore the huge Moon mask reversed, with the dark side out. In this way the crescent eye was to the left, the round one to the right.
She gave the women a mournful tune to hum, trusting it would keep Tugtutsiak sedate on the pallet.
Everything was ready. Alaana centered herself. She had no spirit helpers to guide her to the supernatural world or ward off evil creatures; she’d been without them ever since her initiation frightened them all away. This made traveling more difficult, but she had grown used to it. Nor did she appeal to Sila directly. She had an uneasy alliance with her spirit guide. Asking didn’t seem to matter; the tornaq would either help her or not. This relationship was in stark contrast to the few other shamans she had encountered. They all enjoyed a deep personal connection with their guardian spirits. Why did Sila remain so distant from her? It was maddening the things she didn’t understand. She trusted she would learn the truth behind these secrets eventually, but now was not the time.
With Kigiuna’s faithful drumming and the melancholy song of the women it was a simple thing to enter the trance state. Alaana let the feeling take her, lifting her inuseq from her body. She couldn’t see the Moon through the small circle of the vent hole but she knew it hung there, waiting for her even in daylight.
With a courageous leap, Alaana kicked out toward the farthest edge of the sky.
Weightless, she rose faster and faster, the fullness of the Moon drawing her upward in much the same way it pulled steadfast against the tides. The Anatatook settlement drifted away below and Alaana turned her gaze upward. According to the teachings of Old Manatook, she must now visualize the surface of the Moon as the ground, and believe herself to be falling toward it.
Sailing through the sky would have been much more enjoyable if the need had been less dire. Alaana was concerned only for Tugtutsiak and kept her mind’s eye open for any sign of the missing headman. For the empty space between the world and the Moon was not empty at all. It was filled with people’s cast-off memories, their discarded feelings and desires, with stray dreams and ambitions, joys and sorrows. It was like traveling through a vast soup, and Alaana sipped at the heady brew, searching as she went, looking for the trail of the one she sought.
She passed over the gigantic luminous iglu and the celestial guard dogs of the Moon-Man. She had no intention of disturbing that august personage again. She flew around to the opposite side, where there was no light at all. The Dark of the Moon — a place where the recently deceased might go, where confused souls and those who die cursed by evil charms congregate.
There was nothing much to see, only a barren plain of crumbling charcoal underfoot, a dark sky full of stars above.
She set down amid a mass of souls milling about in the darkness, but didn’t recognize any Anatatook people. These supplicants, dressed in rags and tatters, were only vague outlines of souls and glowed only dimly. They moved aimlessly, lost in woe and confusion, but Alaana noticed an area of greater activity not far up ahead. She made for it, her inua flying just above the surface of the ground.
The spirit-vision proved a hindrance here, making it almost impossible to see anything at all. The dry, rocky surface of the dark side was lifeless and still. Complete darkness covered the land and the spirit-lights of the people, so faded and dim, provided only pitiful hints at illumination. She could just make out a pinnacle of black rock forming a natural spire, so dark it could only be seen in the places where it blotted out the starry sky. The spike broadened at the base to form a high seat, and on this throne was a shadowy figure, composed of the same black crumbling moonstuff. Its body shape was clearly not human. The lumpy, irregular form seemed to ebb and flow as it shifted on the seat. The Dark had no soul, or at least none that Alaana could detect.
Slender black shapes, like slices of darkness, flitted around the spire and high seat, filling the air with the sad cries of lonely gulls. Their erratic flight kicked up small flakes of sooty stone which floated around, drifting weightless on the air, occasionally clacking together before they fell.
Alaana pushed her way through the milling crowd to approach the throne. The figure on the high seat addressed a withered soul that stood before it.
“Gjt. This is not your fault,” it said to the woman. Its voice was sonorous and distant, an echo of an echo. “Your child was born alive and well. She was taken by Children’s-Death. Gjt! A horrible thing, it is. Just a big hungry mouth, smeared all around with dried blood. That was the cause of it. Not you.”
>
As it leaned suddenly forward Alaana could see the inky outline of the Dark’s face. Beneath an incisive brow peered the cold gaze of eyes that held no light of their own but glittered with reflected starlight when they moved. “You don’t belong here. Go to the High Ridge Land. Your child waits for you there.”
One of the fluttering shadows, which also seemed to exist without souls, hovered close to the Dark, dropping a fragment of black rock into what passed for one of its hands. “Here, take this,” the Dark said, passing the chit to the woman. As it reached out, bits of its arm sloughed off in flakes of ash. The shadows snatched them up. “Take this with you. Get going.”
When it leaned back, it melted once again into the shadows of the high seat.
“Dear spirit,” said Alaana, “If I may speak...?”
Not paying her any attention at all, the Dark said, “Wait your turn, wait your turn. Many souls, always the same.”
It motioned to the next one to step up. “Hurry up. Quickly. Gjt. A lot of work to do. Always a lot of work.”
Another soul stepped from the shadows. Alaana looked upon the masses of broken-down shades, harrowed faces and crumbling bones swathed in rags, stumbling in the darkness. This was a sea of a different sort. She could spend the rest of her life here trying to help them, and make no difference at all.
“Gjt! That’s a black spot you have on you, isn’t it?” the Dark said to the lonely soul who stood for judgment, leaning forward to peer more closely at it.
“I didn’t do anything,” said the soul. Alaana couldn’t tell if it had been a man or a woman in life. Its face, a sagging mask of lifeless echoes, registered no expression.
“Didn’t you?” asked the Dark. “Someone put a heavy curse on your soul…”
“I…”
“You don’t remember?”
“I…”
“Lies!” The Dark signaled to the fluttering shadows to take the spirit away. They descended upon it in a black mass, lifting it into the dark sky.
“Dear Spirit,” said Alaana again, “If I may speak…?”
“I said wait — oh, what’s this here?” The eyes of the Dark flared as they fixed their mirrored gaze upon Alaana’s soul, noticing her for the first time. “You aren’t a creature of shadow and sorrow. You are a thing of light. You don’t belong here. Get away.”
The Dark squinted, turning half away as if it found the light most painful. It waved a crumbling, blackened stump at Alaana. “Go away, before you frighten them. They are bitter and fragile things. You don’t belong. I won’t have this intrusion, this disorder.”
“That’s funny,” Alaana said coyly. “You let my friend slip by, and he wasn’t dead either.”
The Dark leaned forward. Something about the tilt of its head was menacing. “No one slips by.”
“He is Anatatook. Well-built and strong. A bold spirit. He has only three fingers on his left hand.”
“Gjt! I have seen none such as that.”
“He might be confused. He might appear as something or someone else.”
The Dark stretched forward. With the sharp motion, a flurry of little bits sloughed off like flakes of ash. These caught in mid-air, trembled slightly and then took flight, becoming fluttering shadows. “I am not so easily fooled. Neither by him, nor one such as you.”
The Dark signaled to the sky and a blizzard of screeching, flapping shadows descended toward Alaana.
She stepped back. “I can see I was in error, dear spirit. If my friend had come here, you would surely have sent him away.”
“That’s right.” The shadows swooped at Alaana, tittering and pecking, then darting away. Unable to fend them off, she stumbled backward.
“Perhaps he is lost in the dream world,” rumbled the Dark.
“Perhaps,” said Alaana.
“What did he usually dream of?”
“Always the same,” returned Alaana. “Whales.”
“Ah,” said the Dark. “Then that is how it will be. Bother me no more. You don’t belong here. No one slips by.”
Alaana sensed a monstrous form behind her and whirled around to see.
CHAPTER 30
MISTRESS OF THE SEA
Dripping starlight like shiny water, the immense, ululating body of the Whale-Man breached the Moon’s horizon, filling half the sky with his slick, black form.
The great spirit turned to face Alaana, pointing his rostrum directly at her. His mouth, full of glittering baleen, was not turned down as typical of a bowhead whale, but upturned at the corners giving the appearance of a friendly smile. He was completely black, except for an irregular pattern of white skin splashed across the lower lip which gave the impression of a frosted beard suitable for such an eternal spirit. His eyes, tiny in the colossal form, were larger than the largest iglu Alaana had ever seen, and they were most definitely smiling.
The flapping shadows dove once more toward Alaana. She thought she heard what might have been the baleful laughter of the Dark, a sound as heartrendingly sad as any death cry she had ever heard. Alaana seized the moment. Launching her inuseq from the Moon’s crumbling surface, she landed flat atop the Whale-Man’s glistening backside.
Without a word the gigantic whale crested, tilted forward and plunged down. Alaana held tight to the warty surface to keep from being cast adrift into the night sky. Propelled by a gently thrashing tail, the giant whale began his descent toward the world below.
Splashing starshine as he went, the Whale-Man began to sing. He produced a series of melancholy notes that stretched and yawed, and rang with a desperate longing. Alaana imagined a lone bowhead out in the vast sea, calling out in search of its mate. But the Whale-Man, the guardian spirit of all the whales, was the only one of his kind. Perhaps in the Beforetime he had been something else, perhaps he had possessed friends and loved ones, for it seemed to Alaana that his song called out across the ages of time long past with a great sense of loss and loneliness.
The sound of churning water and crashing waves filled Alaana’s ears as they plunged into the water. Their descent was dizzying and swift. The souls of the various creatures of the ocean flashed by faster than Alaana could name them. The soul of the sea, so immense and powerful a spirit, could only vaguely be seen; benign and peaceful, it embraced her in a mild, soothing way.
At one point Alaana was almost picked from her perch by a pack of sea-lice as big as men. These ravenous bandits of the ocean were always eager to devour unsuspecting spirits whether they be traveling shamans or simply lost souls. Their attack was ineffective however, as they dared not trouble the powerful Whale-Man too much. Alaana worried for the soul of Tugtutsiak, who surely passed with no such protection.
They came upon an old couple living in a large air bubble carried along by a school of swimming carp. Alaana’s spirit leapt from the Whale-Man’s back and entered the bubble. The pair were seated on a bench made of colorful coral, the same material which comprised a small hut that stood further back in the otherwise empty bubble. The man and woman sat quietly on the bench, holding hands.
“A visitor?” said the man.
“Do you need help?” asked Alaana.
The old man smiled softly. “I have everything I need.” He turned to his wife, “And you?”
“Everything.”
“But you have nothing,” said Alaana. “A tiny little hut, all alone down here...”
The couple exchanged a warm glance. The woman said, “It seems to me, young woman, that you are the one that is alone and in need of help.”
Alaana shook her head. “But what are you doing here?”
“What does it matter?” said the woman.
“How long have you been down here?” asked Alaana.
“Does it matter?” the old man returned.
“I guess not,” concluded Alaana with a smile of her own. “Perhaps you’ve seen a friend of mine. He is Anatatook. A strong man, two fingers missing on his left hand. He has a deep laugh, like thunder rumbling across the sea.”
The couple assured her they had seen no one in a long while, which was all the same to them, and Alaana decided to move on. She dove down deep, heading for the ocean bottom. Her childhood friend Nunavik, the golden walrus, had described the technique to her once, saying, ‘Kick off as if from the middle of the sky and you will go straight to the bottom of the sea.’
It was easy enough to see the way; the water was alive with soul-lights. In the depths Alaana encountered such varied and wonderful souls as she had never imagined. Being only familiar with the fish in the river and lake, the exotic shapes and sizes astounded her. Some seemed stately and reserved, others curious and playful. She hurried onward, having no time to stop and know them or their wonderful world. Her inuseq did not need to breathe. Her physical body remained in the headman’s tent, sitting beside Kigiuna as he faithfully kept the beat.
Down at the bottom of the sea, so much closer to the center of the earth, Alaana felt stronger than ever. She could feel the power entering her spirit from somewhere below. It was as the dead shaman Civiliaq had once told her. And yet it was almost impossible to believe that the great wind spirit Sila could reside deep in the center of the earth. The origin of her power remained the greatest mystery of all. And how would she ever learn the answers she sought?
The Sea Mother’s house was a gleaming palace of brilliant coral. Alaana had never beheld such a gigantic structure. She was stunned by its immensity. Strange creatures circled the grounds. These guardians were ancients unlike any she had yet seen, gigantic eels crusted with barnacles. They had gaping mouths set in their armored heads, clacking jaws full of needle teeth. They cut the water with knife-like fins and goggled at her with cold, lifeless eyes. Alaana wondered what dangers might await beyond the swirling whirlpools that served as gates to Sedna’s abode.