The Shadow of Everything Existing

by Ken Altabef

  “Ben!” she repeated, but there was still no answer. She cautioned herself not to jump to conclusions. As a shadow, Ben might find himself completely helpless within the yellow blaze. She renewed her concentration, reaching out for any sign.

  She felt it. A desperation. Tama. Kinak. Noona.

  Ben was concerned for his children. Alaana felt it. She suffered the same concerns, after all.

  “You needn’t worry. The children are safe,” she said. She could sense no response from him, only his heartbreaking concern for the children.

  “I’ll find a way,” she said. “I’ll get you out.”

  She had no real idea how she might accomplish that feat. Ben’s shadow was so entirely absorbed by the yellow light it was impossible to draw him out of it. One thing was certain — she hadn’t come this far to walk away empty-handed.

  The source of the light was a strange panel in the floor. Alaana bent down and ran her spirit-hand across its clear, smooth surface. It was called glass, something Gekko had once described to her. The Europeans made it by melting sand into a lake of solid crystal. Alaana thought that if she could break the glass the light would be disrupted, but it was physical and she was not. She struck at the glass panel but her spirit-hand passed right through.

  She tried to reach out to the soul within the glass, hoping she might persuade it to shatter or at least momentarily disrupt the light, but found it empty. When the white men cooked the sand, changing it so fundamentally to this new form, the spirit was destroyed. The same thing happened when they made metal. The kabloonas were careless about spirits that way.

  There was nothing she could do.

  “I’ll be back.”

  She stepped out of the light.

  “What happened?” asked Aquppak.

  “He’s there, just as you said.”

  “The trap?”

  “It’s a machine. A machine made by the white men.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Aquppak, “How does Vithrok come to know the makings of the kabloonas?”

  Alaana shook her head. “You’ve got it backwards. Vithrok is a creature of the Beforetime, a time when everything was possible. We can’t imagine all the things they dreamed in those days. Vithrok may have invented glass on a whim ages ago, and it has taken this long for people to catch up. He knows so many things the shamans can’t possibly know. That’s what makes him so dangerous.”

  “I don’t care about any of that. We have to free Ben from the trap.”

  “I agree,” said Alaana, “but I can’t break it. I am spirit only.”

  “And I am only a shadow,” said Aquppak bitterly, “who dare not enter the cage.”

  “I don’t understand how the machine creates the light. There must be something more to it.”

  Aquppak’s eyes lit up, becoming a slightly lighter shade of shadow. “There’s something else. Haven’t you felt it?” He put his hand to the cave wall.

  Alaana did the same. Indeed there was something, a low-level vibration within the cave. The hum was like nothing she had ever heard before. “It sings a song with no tune, no meaning. It doesn’t belong.”

  “It’s part of the trap,” said Aquppak. “Follow!”

  The shadow moved off, feeling his way through the cavern in the darkness. Alaana felt the hum getting louder by increments. It was a trail.

  Aquppak moved swiftly despite the dark. Like his real-world counterpart he was an expert tracker, able to take direction from subtle changes in the intensity of the hum. Alaana followed behind, her spirit-light illuminating Aquppak’s wake.

  The trail led to another cell of the cavern. The shadows of several men toiled there. Moving in a circle, they each took turns striking the surface of a metal wheel. Their blows were practically useless, and it took several hits just to move the wheel a tiny fraction. The men kept at it, working tirelessly in a circle.

  Alaana recognized some of the men as shades of the Anatatook. Others, judging from their bear-skin attire, had been drawn from the ranks of the Yupikut raiders.

  Aquppak arrived first on the scene and showed no restraint, attacking the men in an attempt to disrupt their line. He shouted at them and shoved but the men didn’t respond to him at all. Their faces showed no emotion except an obsessive concentration on the task at hand. They were as those asleep, oblivious to the blows of Aquppak’s shadow. Shadow on shadow, his attempts to disrupt their progress produced no good result.

  “What can we do?” he asked.

  “They must have been at it all these years,” remarked Alaana. “Set to the task by the sorcerer and then forgotten.”

  Aquppak threw himself at the metal wheel, trying to halt its progress. The other men kept circling around in their slow, plodding circle. There was nothing Aquppak could do; he was one man opposing the work of a dozen.

  Alaana tried to communicate with the shadows in the secret language, but failed to rouse them. But as she drew near, her light had its usual effect on the shade of one of the Yupikut men. The shadow solidified into a semblance of real flesh and blood. The man paused, unused to these new sensations. He blinked his eyes as if awakening from a strange dream.

  “That’s it!” said Aquppak. Alaana went from man to man, her presence temporarily making them solid until each awoke from the trance. Their efforts at the wheel were abandoned as they looked at each other, trying to remember who they were and where they had come from. They had no desire to fight.

  Alaana and Aquppak hurried back to the original cave. The cylinder of light had disappeared, its glass base grown dark. And in its center stood the shadow of a man, dazed and confused.

  “Ben!” shouted Alaana. She rushed toward him.

  The man looked at her uncertainly. This Ben didn’t even know her. Alaana’s shadow had disappeared from this world at the age of twelve, when she had become the shaman. Ben had met and married Agruta. Alaana had nothing to do with it.

  Ben glanced at the figure of light. Having never seen a shaman before, he cringed, probably associating her with his tormentor Vithrok. The look on his face made Alaana turn away.

  Aquppak turned to his friend. “Thank you, Alaana.”

  “You needn’t thank me. I caused all this trouble in the first place.”

  “Not you,” said Aquppak. “It was the Light-Bringer, and I was as much fooled by him as anyone.”

  Alaana could have corrected Aquppak by mentioning that the sorcerer’s attack on the shadow world had all really been an attack against her, but she didn’t.

  “This trail has grown cold,” she said. “Vithrok hasn’t set foot in this place for many years. He used these men and simply forgot them. He doesn’t care about them. Maybe finding a trap would have been better.”

  “We’ll find him someday,” said Aquppak. “I won’t stop looking.”

  Alaana returned to her body to find Tiki curled in her lap. Old Manatook had already gone, presumably to see to his own errand, a visit with his spirit guardian Tornarssuk.

  Tiki’s soul-light, such as it was, still glowed faintly. The tupilaq was still alive, having escaped the shadow world just in time. Its body was broken, but it would mend. Alaana would see to that. She gently stroked the black seal’s face, gazing into its heart, a braid of hair that still bore a tiny fraction of a wise man’s soul.

  She had done well today. The shadows of Ben and Agruta were reunited once again. May they be happy, she thought. As they were meant to be.

  CHAPTER 6

  AQUPPAK

  Aquppak mustered his Yupikut raiders. He made them stand in a line at the front of the camp just behind the row of sleds they always kept ready for immediate launch. The women remained inside their tents as usual, tending their few children.

  All of his men, fifty or so in number, observed their headman with keen attention. They were a ragged bunch, dressed mostly in the furs of the brown bear they revered so much. The many brown bears Aquppak had killed in his lifetime had all been nothing more than stupid brutes, and most of t
he men arrayed before him fit that bill as well. The bears didn’t deserve the worship the raiders heaped upon them, but he didn’t waste his time contradicting them.

  To either side of Aquppak stood one of his lieutenants. First among them was Ginak. He was the tallest man in the camp and a Laplander just like the previous headman Guolna. He had much the same features: a long aquiline nose, straight sandy hair and cool blue eyes. Rumors said he was actually Guolna’s younger brother, a lineage Ginak neither admitted nor denied. No one among them knew for certain. Aquppak supposed Ginak enjoyed the presumed status the rumors gave him, though any brother of the murdered headman fell squarely within Aquppak’s crosshairs.

  Aquppak kept Ginak as first lieutenant despite the fact that he couldn’t trust him. Ginak knew all the ways of the Yupikut, all their contacts and travel routes, and every camp and secret cache hidden out along the tundra. Aquppak needed this man most of all. At least until he learned all there was to know.

  On the other side stood the second in charge. Ivaiarak was a huge man, tall and built like a musk ox. In this respect he resembled Aquppak’s old enemy Igguaniaq, called Big Mountain among the Anatatook, a loyal friend of Alaana. Ivaiarak had the same vacant unintelligent look, close-cropped black hair and beady eyes. This unfortunate resemblance, coupled with the general incompetence of the man, were reasons enough for him to be killed in Aquppak’s eyes but again circumstances intervened. Ivaiarak was related by blood to many strong men among the Yupikut and their support for him was well known. If he hadn’t been so stupid he might well have been headman himself just by virtue of these many relations. Aquppak could neither demote nor rid himself of Ivaiarak very easily. And he certainly could not trust him.

  In fact he could trust none of these men. He could hardly sleep on any given night, waiting for the knife thrust in the dark.

  “Tell me again,” Aquppak said to Ivaiarak.

  The big man flapped his fat, stupid lips, stammering around his answer. “The best approach is… is to the north. We can ride down from there… from the high ground. They’ll be weak.”

  “And how many armed men do the Tungus have?”

  “I saw some… very few. Three guns in all… and they have them all posted to the south. Very few armed men.”

  “They have no shaman?”

  “None,” reported Ivaiarak. “Plenty of women.” He smiled stupidly, leering at the other men.

  Women, thought Aquppak. That was the crux of the matter. The deaths of so many of the shamans had created easy pickings for the Yupikut all along the northlands. Without a shaman the other bands had little protection and no warning against the raiders’ stealthy and violent attacks. The other bands weren’t well versed in the use of guns or the tactics of fighting men. The Yupikut had accumulated food stores enough to last the winter in high style and winter was still several moons away. But women, as always, were in short supply. The Yupikut were hard on their women in general, and the prospects of a long dark winter without company did not sit well with the men. Aquppak must provide. This was perhaps the best measure and greatest responsibility of his leadership.

  “How is it, then,” asked Aquppak, “that my scout tells me otherwise?”

  At mention of the scout Ivaiarak’s blubbering intensified. “I don’t … I don’t… k-k-know…”

  “You don’t?”

  Aquppak took an intimidating step toward the big brute. The line of men watched in rapt attention. They hadn’t forgotten how Aquppak had beaten their previous headman, Guolna, in hand-to-hand combat right in front of them.

  Aquppak sneered at Ivaiarak and the big man stepped nervously back.

  “My scout says the Tungus have six guns and also that they are positioned mostly to the north.”

  More senseless blubbering from Ivaiarak, “I don’t… don’t know. I didn’t see…”

  The identity of Aquppak’s scout was not known. It was presumed that one of the men, his name kept strictly secret, came and went at the headman’s bidding. But some believed the scout was in reality a pseudonym for the shaman Khahoutek. In any case, the secret scout’s information was always correct.

  “According to my scout,” said Aquppak, “You are dead wrong.”

  Ivaiarak startled at the use of the word ‘dead.’ He began exchanging imploring glances with his kinsmen.

  “Now, I ask you,” said Aquppak, “are you merely incompetent, or are you setting a trap for us — for me?”

  “I wouldn’t… I... I wouldn’t…”

  Aquppak lashed out with his foot, knocking one of the big man’s legs out from under and he fell hard, collapsing backward, his other leg caught painfully under his great bulk. In an instant Aquppak leapt upon him, bracing one knee atop his heaving chest and laying the other across his neck, cutting off his wind. In his hand had appeared the meteor blade, the same blade he had used to gut their shaman.

  Ivaiarak struggled wildly for air. Desperation made him even stronger and he might have been able to throw Aquppak off, but the headman eased back on the windpipe. He let his lieutenant breathe, but kept the knife where Ivaiarak could easily see it. Now came the moment of truth.

  “So I want to know,” said Aquppak,“were you laying a trap for me?”

  Aquppak was completely disinterested in whatever the big man might have to slay. If Ivaiarak could manage to stutter out an answer it would be a lie in any case. Aquppak was more interested in the reactions of his relatives. To that end he swept his gaze across the crowd immediately upon asking the question. If the relatives were in on the trap, it was very bad news for Aquppak. He might have to get Ivaiarak out of the way immediately, kill him right then and there and take the consequences.

  But he could tell the others were innocent of any conspiracy. It had just been a case of incompetence on the part of Ivaiarak. So be it. He couldn’t kill Ivaiarak just now. An undeserved murder would stir the others up too much.

  Aquppak cut off Ivaiarak’s stammering protestations of innocence. “All right. I believe you. I believe you. But from now on we’ll keep your nose where I can see it.”

  To that end he sliced off the tip of Ivaiarak’s nose. Just a small slice that fell aside into the slush. Ivaiarak yelped in surprise. The pain was minor. The disfigurement unimportant. The Yupikut need not look handsome for their women.

  Aquppak kept his eyes on the other men as he rose up from Ivaiarak’s chest. He was careful not to turn his back on the big man either. He stepped to the side, keeping everyone in sight.

  “Now let’s plan our attack properly,” he said.

  Kritlaq woke up, naked, in his tent. One of the worst things about inhabiting a living body again was the need to sleep and the unwanted invasion of dreams. He spat a raven feather out of his mouth. He had been dreaming of Raven. He reached down and pulled out another one, stuck up the opposite end. Foul trickster.

  He didn’t need a reminder. He remembered what he was supposed to do. He had a message to deliver to Aquppak. The Yupikut were to attack the kabloonas at Old Bea.

  Kritlaq pulled on a ceremonial robe of quilted doeskin with brown bear fur along the collar and running down the front. He no longer wore the cumbersome wooden mask that had so long hidden the face of Khahoutek. The distinctive robe was enough to keep the men convinced that their old shaman still walked among them. As far as the Yupikut knew, their shaman had crossed over the great divide and returned. It was only natural he would be somewhat changed because of it. They had all seen his guts hanging out and some, the few who could stomach such things, had watched him place the row of leather stitches that now held his belly together again. It had been an impressive feat, so Kritlaq had thought not to waste it. Let them see. He doubted anyone would ever try to stab him again.

  Kritlaq exited the tent flap and strode purposefully across the summer slush. He had also abandoned Khahoutek’s ridiculous birdlike strutting manner and incoherent style of speech. But as one last concession to the previous shaman, he wore a mitten of grizzly fur on one
hand, studded with three long metal hooks made to look like bear claws.

  As he approached the men assembled in front of the sleds, he came upon Aquppak from behind. It was not possible to sneak up on the Yupikut headman. Aquppak seemed always aware of what lay behind him, by closely reading the expressions of the men facing him. He whirled around, his hand resting lightly on the grip of his meteor blade.

  “We need to talk,” said Kritlaq.

  “Go away. I’m busy, planning a raid against the Tungus.”

  “We aren’t going to raid the Tungus.”

  Aquppak laughed dryly. “We’re not? You hear that, men? Our shaman thinks you should sit lonely in your iglus this winter. He has no desire for the touch of a woman, and he wants all of you to be geldings too.”

  Kritlaq ignored their derisive laughter. “We go against the kabloonas,” he said. “It’s time.”

  Aquppak’s smile died on his face. “Come to my tent. Now!” he said, as if the whole thing had been his idea.

  He had to turn his back on the men to walk away. He didn’t look back to see if they were snickering at him, though he imagined they must be. Not now, he thought. He had no time for another confrontation, another fight. He’d have to deal with that later.

  His wife Inuiluq sat in front of their tent, sewing a new kayak-skin under the summer sun.

  “Go inside,” he said.

  Inuiluq, looking neither at her husband nor the shaman, struggled to gather up the bulky skins as quickly as possible. Not quickly enough. Fear made her clumsy. Aquppak kicked out with his foot, striking her sharply against the buttocks. She fairly threw the skin into the entrance flap and tumbled in after it.

  Aquppak spun against Kritlaq. “Don’t you dare interrupt me in front of the men again.”

  “Why?” asked Kritlaq. “Because you’re barely holding them together?”