by Ken Altabef
With her confidence restored, she felt the power of Tsungi racing through her veins once more. It was as Old Manatook had taught her all along. Fear and doubt were the ultimate poison for a shaman. She would have no more of them. She was whole again.
“It was the Raven,” Alaana told Tiki. “Why would the Raven want to help me?”
“Because you are right. That’s why.”
“He helped me once before. He tried to, at least. He led me on a chase to the Moon. Nunavik was certain there was something up there that Raven wanted me to see. I should have listened, but I didn’t get a chance to go.”
Alaana glanced up at the sky. The Moon was still up there, now just a dead rock in the sky.
“No, that’s not true,” she said. “I had the chance, but I was too beaten down to make use of it. That won’t happen again. Now I know what I have to do.”
“Go to the Moon?” asked Tiki. It turned its half-rotten snout to the sky.
“Too late,” said Alaana. “No chance of traveling there now. The spirit of the Moon is dead and gone, and without Annigan, none may visit the Moon ever again.”
“Was Raven really trying to help? Or merely playing a trick?”
“That’s the question. With Raven, that’s always the question.”
The Anatatook camp was relatively quiet, most of the men out on the hunt, most of the women in a sewing circle near the river. Kigiuna was sitting out front of his tent. Even in full daylight he had fallen asleep, a carving knife still in his hand. Alaana picked up the piece of ivory her father had been working. The carving was only half done, but she could tell it was meant to represent Noona’s face. Kigiuna had such a hard time carving these days, his fingers and knuckles were swollen painfully with age. He had lived a very good life, Alaana thought, and had several more good years left to him. He was well-fed and content.
Alaana whispered to the tiny bit of the spirit of the walrus that still lingered in the ivory, convincing it to change shape as a favor to her father. Alaana held the fist-sized sculpture up to the light. It was now a perfect likeness of her daughter Noona. She placed the completed sculpture in her father’s hand.
After walking halfway back to her tent, Alaana turned and retraced her steps. She took the sculpture from her father’s lap. She asked the spirit of the ivory to return to its previous shape, just the way her father had left it. Then she placed it back on the ground.
Her father was only a normal man, Alaana thought. And normal people do things for themselves. Kigiuna wouldn’t want it any other way.
CHAPTER 19
PARADISE
One step after another after another. The endless plodding had set Vithrok into a sort of a trance. His body cold as ice, he could feel nothing. Meat and joints stiffened to the breaking point. He drove the body forward as a puppeteer animates a caricature of a man, made of dead wood and threadbare skins. Driving forward through a vast and monotonous field of white, he slowly made his way back to the citadel of black volcanic rock at the pole. One plodding step after another.
Time shifted and blurred until it lost all meaning. His battle with the Heart had strained him to the limit. His eyes turned inward. He didn’t even notice the lone raven, a little black bird skipping merrily along the snow behind him. He could only think of one thing. When he returned to his citadel he would immerse himself in the great pool of Beforetime. Its vast energies would replenish his strength and fire his soul. Then all would be well again.
He almost didn’t realize he had reached the gates of his fortress. The pair of maguruq which had formerly guarded the entrance were now gone, left behind as petrified bones on the doorstep of the Ice Mountain. The gates had been left wide open, an invitation to intruders.
Vithrok forced his legs to mount the stone stairs that led to the circular chamber at the top. Above, he could see the coruscating dome of Beforetime that served as a shield for his citadel. In the center of the dome a small opening revealed the North Star, the Never-Moves directly overhead. The larger stars that represented the shamans of Nunatsiaq were all gone, leaving only their very distant cousins, the stars that had existed from the beginning, whose origins nobody could know. Only three newer stars still remained in the sky. These represented the old Tunrit shamans, his brothers from the dawn of time. He could see Tugto and Oogloon and just barely make out Tulunigraq, whose spirit he had broken, shining very faintly next to the other two. So much time had passed. These three were too old and too weak to make the return trip to earth with the other shamans.
Occasionally their ghosts spoke to him over the distance. Perhaps tonight his melancholy reflections sparked them once again.
“You failed…” said the ancient voice of Tugto.
“Leave me alone,” said Vithrok. He wanted only the bath, the sizzling embrace of Beforetime. A circular opening in the center of the stone floor allowed access to the vast pool of liquid Beforetime. It was mesmerizing to look at, shimmering like quicksilver, the colors dancing along the surface, shifting and changing with infinite possibilities.
“Tsungi eludes you… still…”
Vithrok dismissed the voice, saying, “He hides. That is all.”
“You’ll never … find him… until it’s too late.”
“Have you nothing to do but nag and natter at me like impotent old men? Such you were when you died, and so you remain.”
“Perhaps… the same can be said… of you?”
“You don’t have the power to defeat Tsungi,” said another voice. “We were there. We remember.” It was Oogloon. His voice was very faint, choked by time to a bare whisper. “I remember Tsungi’s rage shaking the heavens, the Beforetime shattering like a piece of tinted glass…”
“I remember,” said Vithrok. His naked spirit stepped out of the Tunrit body, leaving it to collapse in a heap on the floor like a discarded parka. His soul hovered at the cistern’s edge, poised at the lip of the pool.
“And even now…” said Tugto.
“Leave me be!” said Vithrok. “Just voices. Dead men, long gone. You’re nothing. You’re nothing to me anymore.”
“And even now… You can’t find him… and you don’t have the power… to defeat him.”
Vithrok remembered the way Tsungi had struck at him years ago, using Alaana and her little dragon Quixaaragon as weapons. Alaana had thrown open his soul and the dragon had stabbed at him. That blow had hurt, surely, but it hadn’t killed him. “I don’t fear Tsungi,” he said. “Time has dulled his claws. He hides because he is weak.”
“You may find out otherwise,” whispered Oogloon.
“You’re going to …have to face him…”
“Then I will face him. Without doubt or fear. And I will win!”
“You’re not strong enough,” said Oogloon.
“I will be.”
Vithrok tumbled into the life-giving waters of the cistern.
Vithrok swirled amid ecstasy piled upon ecstasy. Bodiless within the liquid pool of Beforetime, he was a being of pure, raging spirit. Swimming, floating, drifting among waves of infinite possibilities that offered unlimited pleasures. The silvery fluid caressed his very soul, showering him in turns with warmth and excitement, intrigue and unlimited power, and above all else pure joy. One moment he was soaring through the sky on feathered wings, in another he was a song of heady music, building toward a crescendo, a perfect wave crashing upon a gilded shore. He had a full belly, a respite from struggle, a moment of perfect understanding, an orgasm that stretched for eternity.
And he thought for a moment, that he could well be satisfied with this. Inside his pool of collected Beforetime he felt a total and perfect bliss. It was foolishness for anyone to want anything more. Why do anything more? He could just keep things this way and ignore all the rest. Here at the top of the world he was safe, with no risk of detection, in a place no man could reach without suffering the bone-biting cold of the pole. He could laze here indefinitely and be happy beyond measure. Why am I doing all of this, he asked hi
mself. Plotting and planning, risking everything? Why should I struggle?
But it was not enough for him to be happy in himself while the great spirits grew old and faded away. He wanted to set things right; he wanted this same bliss for everyone. Everyone. That was the way it had been Before, a whole world of spirits, sharing in the ecstasy of the universe and each other. He wanted it for them too, even the fools who resisted his efforts, like Tornarssuk and the Whale-Man. Yes even those. He wanted paradise for everyone and forever.
And that, he thought, was worth fighting for.
He took an intoxicating breath of pure, untarnished truth. He could see everything clearly. His plan to bring heaven back for everyone would work, though it involved great risk. To achieve paradise one must first destroy it. After the Thing had killed the sun and stopped time, he would set the Beforetime aflame. That type of fire would spread to an unstoppable conflagration. And he would be at the heart of that fire just as he was at the heart of joy right at this moment, and then everything would depend on the Raven. If the Raven un-named all that he had once named, the energies released would restore the Beforetime to its former pristine state. If Raven refused to help, Vithrok would be left there to burn in a moment without time, a moment that would last forever.
Everything depended, in the end, on Raven. If only Vithrok could be certain of his help. Of course, when asked, the Raven preferred to prick at Vithrok’s skin rather than answer directly.
So be it, thought Vithrok. He had gambled many times with the fate of his people and with his own life and he had won every time. Raven was not so far gone he would refuse paradise. The plan must succeed.
He reached out his mind, calling across space and time to the name-soul of Klah Kritlaq where it resided among the Yupikut in its masquerade as their shaman Khahoutek.
“Kritlaq,” he called. “Answer me.”
Kritlaq could not refuse. “I live to serve,” he answered.
Vithrok, swimming in his pool, was not fooled. He knew Kritlaq’s ambitions, as well as his own desires. The name-soul was a haughty one; it didn’t appreciate servitude. But Kritlaq was not such a fool as to risk paradise either. He would serve.
“I want to hear,” said Vithrok, “that the trading post has been destroyed.”
“Razed to the ground and burned,” replied Kritlaq. “The Yupikut have taken her supplies and killed every man there.”
“Excellent. The ship lies at the bottom of the sea?”
Vithrok sensed the name-soul’s hesitation. “Tell me, fool!”
“The ship has sailed.”
“What? Why has it not been brought down?”
“It’s not such an easy thing…”
“Idiot! You were there. Why didn’t you command its wooden beams to part?”
“The ship is made of metal,” said Kritlaq. “It has three hulls to hold against the pressure of the ice. It can’t be commanded to sink. The white man’s metal has no soul with which to barter or control. They cook it away with very hot flames. Sorcery has no power over it.”
“Then drive it to ground on a foul breeze.”
“I can’t. The ship is driven by fire, not wind.”
Fire, thought Vithrok. An invention of the Raven. That was something no mind could control. “Tell me where it is,” he said. “I’ll go and settle it myself. This ship is crewed by men. I’ll go and burn them down.”
“You must be careful. They have weapons, blasting caps and gunpowder and other explosives. I saw them use such things in a mine once. They blew through solid rock as if it were nothing at all, and when it was done I looked again for the soul within the stone, but it was gone. Destroyed. The ship has weapons that could topple your citadel in an instant, disrupt your web, and kill you.”
Vithrok thought for a moment. “It’s just a ship,” he said. “They are just weapons. I have weapons of my own, far greater than anything that ship could possess. Nothing will stand in my way.”
“Of course,” said Kritlaq.
“I will call for you again later,” said Vithrok. “Be ready.”
“In the meantime, shall I send my Yupikut against the Anatatook? Why not let me remove an obstacle for you, that little shaman Alaana lives among them.”
“I will send you, Kritlaq, against the Anatatook when the time is right. Don’t worry. You will have your petty revenge against them after all. When I say, not before.”
“But Alaana is connected to Tsungi—”
“Yes, she is,” said Vithrok, “and so she is worth something to me left alive. Do you think I fear her?”
“Of course not.”
“And yet, as you say she is connected to Tsungi. Cut the float away, and you might lose the whale.”
Vithrok referred to the standard method of whale hunting. Each harpoon is fitted with a float, an inflated seal bladder, strung on a long line. When the harpoon enters the whale, the float is left bobbing atop the water, telling the whalers where the beast moves under surface.
“Alaana, the unwitting fool, may well lead me to her master.”
CHAPTER 20
SEDNA
Seized by a deeper melancholy than she had ever known before, Sedna stared up at the surface of the water. She lay on a crusted shelf of the escarpment just below the water line at Great Basin bay.
Sedna remained calm, letting the surface of the water settle to a smooth sheet. On the other side she could just barely make out the blue sky. On the other side she could hear children frolicking on the beach. They would not dare venture into the icy waters. She did not dare cross the barrier either, for bereft of the embrace of the sea, she would surely die.
She remembered her own childhood, when she had played in the frosty air, beneath a warming sun. She had been a young girl, no different than those Anatatook children playing above, running along the beach, laughing with her friends. She remembered her father’s face, his fat cheeks, his curly gray beard. These memories came hard for her, dredged up from cloudy waters which had run dry so very long ago.
She glanced down at her fingerless hands. The littlest digits had become the seals, the larger knuckles the walrus, her fingernails had become the sharks. She remembered that day, the most horrible day of her life. She had been the most famous beauty in the village. All of the other girls were jealous; she had such fine lustrous hair in those days. But because she had refused to marry, and would accept none of the men her father had chosen for her, her parents abandoned her, refusing to support her any longer. If she had taken a husband things would have been different. Her parents loaded their belongings into a kayak and went away in search of better fortunes.
Sedna continued to live among her band, a pathetic orphan, begging favors and food. The other children were cruel. They had all been very jealous. They forced Sedna to cut her hair. Hunting was so poor that many people began to leave. There were no caribou to hunt, and no seal or walrus. One day the last of the families took to the sea in their large whaling boat. When she realized she had been left behind Sedna swam out after the boat. She grabbed the sides of the boat but couldn’t pull herself in. The other girls used their ulu knives, chopping off her fingers to prevent her climbing on board. They were still very jealous. The fingers fell away into the water to become the animals of the sea. And Sedna drowned below the waves. She remembered the water filling her lungs and stealing her life away. She remembered sinking helplessly to the bottom, as if dragged by the ankles, sinking and sinking.
Sedna, sitting below the waves and listening to the children sing, remembered what it was like to cry. Her hair itched terribly. For some reason she had never been able to understand, the sins of men accumulated in her hair. Every broken taboo, every malicious thought, these tangled her lustrous green locks, knotting them together in painful twists. Without fingers, she couldn’t undo them. Every so often the soul of some shaman or other would visit her under the water and offer to comb her hair in exchange for a bounty of food in the form of walrus or seal. But lately there were so few
shamans about. The world was changing. The changes followed a straight line and she did not like where that line was leading. The itch was maddening.
The sea grew rough, waves stabbing at the shore. The Anatatook girls stopped singing and left the beach. Perhaps someone had taken note of Sedna’s distress because a luminous shape took form before her eyes. She recognized right away that a shaman had come to help her.
“Who’s that there?” she asked. “And where is your comb? How can you tend my hair without a comb?”
“It’s here,” said the shaman. He held up a carved flat of ivory. Saying nothing else he went behind Sedna, tilting her head ungracefully to the side and laid the comb on.
Sedna was insulted. Why did this shaman not say the words, why did he not humble himself before her? She was almost tempted to bring her wrath down upon him, but her hair was so badly in need of tending, she held back. This shaman was different than the others. He was much taller and his head seemed too large for his body.
“A Tunrit shaman,” she said at last. “It’s a long time since I’ve had a visit from one of your kind.”
“Don’t you recognize who I am?” he said.
“Why should I care? So long as you work my hair?”
“I was called the Light-Bringer, because I brought sunlight to this world.”
Sedna snickered. “The sun doesn’t cast any light on me, nor does it bring any warmth to the bottom of the sea. In my house it is still as cold and dark as ever.”
Vithrok hadn’t realized that. “Well it’s not my fault you wound up at the bottom of the sea.”
“Not your fault? Whatever do you mean?”
“You don’t remember? The way it was Before?”
Sedna shook her head defiantly, knocking the comb away. “Is this the best shaman they could send me? You speak in riddles, and not with the proper respect.”