by Ken Altabef
The effect was immense and immediate, disrupting the basic fabric of the Beforetime on every level. The air ran like molten lava, the water boiled; past and present collided. Harmony dissolved into wild noise and ruin. Peace was shattered.
The other souls were caught in amber, trapped in whatever shape or form they had chosen to possess at that precise moment. For a fraction of a second, no time at all, they hung in indecision. Should they join the battle? If so, which side should they take?
The hesitation lasted only the merest fragment of an instant but even such a short span of eternity was too long. Already the combatants had amassed unmeasurable power to themselves, already they had grown to such immense proportions that the others were inconsequential. The conflict grew into an apocalypse. Vithrok and the others were helpless to do anything but watch the battle, not even aware of the substance of the initial argument.
The combatants were evenly matched and neither side could prevail. Instead they waged their war, consuming everything in their path. Everything the gentle souls of the Beforetime had created on a lark or a whim, everything their dreaming hearts had dreamed, whatever magnificent vistas their soaring spirits had traversed, all of it, everything, was consumed. Until at last came the final explosion.
The creature of darkness was expelled from the world. Vithrok remembered watching it go, a spherical black cloud wailing in agony as it spun off and away, hurled into the icy vastness of empty space. When they later spoke about it, in hushed tones as they sat huddled before warming fires in the darkness, this creature came to be known as The Thing That Was Cast Into The Outer Darkness.
The other one, the creature of light, was sent in the opposing direction, thrust deep into the heart of the world. A world that had not existed a moment earlier, before the wayward thought, before the argument and the great battle, when everything was composed of fluid color in motion, wondrous expectation, and glittering dream-dust.
The two antagonists gone, the rest of the souls were left to wade in the destruction. Everything that remained, the pitiful remnants of the glory fractured, all rained down. The Great Rift was upon them. The tremendous thunder crack of it still rang in their ears. Vithrok had cried out, falling through pain and fire, a soul shrieking in rage and fear. He tumbled in agony, his very existence an idea almost forgotten, a memory of a wayward thought struggling to hold on, to persist in the mind of the universe even as an afterthought.
For Vithrok, standing over the corpse of the shaman Anerjlik, the memory of the Rift was still sharp. It was a knife thrust through the heart. It was a screaming agony. The foul taste of that endless suffering was the nourishment that Anerjlik’s angakua brought to him.
His soul screamed with remembrance of it, a gruesome sound flung out across the lonely tundra. There were few ears which could hear such a sound, but those who did would never be the same again. Shamans across Nunatsiaq threw themselves to the ground, moaning with misery and affliction.
The Rift. The endless fall. Tumbling in madness, suddenly in need of air as he had never been before, a lurching gasp that was that first breath. Searing heat, boiling away nerve endings on raw, newly formed skin. A perpetual vomiting that turned inside out, outside in, and again and again. And at the end of that tremendous fall, everything was locked, inert, made solid.
The world was formed. All the souls of the Beforetime were now scattered, anchored to various aspects of this world. Some were elevated to mythical status, becoming the Moon or the Whale-Man, or Sedna below the sea. Others populated the world by way of mountains and lakes and snow and ice and bears and foxes. And also people of a sort. The Tunrit.
They sprang up out of the mud of the new world, coughed up onto the land with a gigantic wrenching shudder. Wailing and moaning with the agony of it, born in pain and heartache. They were the earliest men, but they knew only darkness and pain. If they had eyes with which to see, they did not know it, as all before them was darkness. Where they had known only warmth and comfort they now felt searing cold. Where they had once loved freedom, there was only enslavement and hunger and fear.
One voice was heard above the whimpers and the moans. One voice that said, “Get up!”
The others continued to worry over all that had been lost, but that one voice said again, even louder, “Rise up!”
“It’s not possible,” said someone, “I can’t fly.”
“I can’t flow or change,” said another.
“All is lost. How can we go on?” moaned another.
The first voice: “Courage.”
And with that word the weeping grew a little fainter, and some pricked up their ears to listen.
“Hear me! Our cloud-capped towers and glorious palaces are gone. But as we stand upon this plain of barren crags and desolation,” said the first voice, “Remember what we are. It is useless to dwell on what we were, how we flew through the sky, flowing from shape to shape–”
“Everything is solid. Fixed!” wailed one of them. “I am ruined. I can’t change shape.”
“So limited…” cried another.
“I can’t go on like this!”
Other cries rang out, inarticulate in their terrible desperation. Maddening panic gave way to total crushing despair. Several of the newly-minted men simply fell forward into the mud, embracing dissolution.
“I am alone!” whimpered a voice from the mud-pit. “I don’t feel the souls of others, I don’t hear their thoughts.”
“Then hear mine!” said the first voice. “This is not the end. This is the beginning! We may stumble and fall, but we shall not lay down!”
Somehow, impossible as it seemed, the owner of the first voice stood up out of the muck, his words now raining down upon the others from on high. “Stand up! We are alive! Blood flows in our veins. No, not as before. Where once we commanded our surroundings on a whim, we can now act only as a dull mallet. But even a blunt instrument has its uses.
“We have suffered a terrible, terrible loss. And more heartbreak surely lies in our path. But as we suffer, will we never again rejoice?
“So much we have done already. Those things I’ve seen and known remain with me in my heart. I have tasted galaxies, drunk with delight of their many pleasures. I have known love. I have loved you all. That is not gone; that is not taken from us. I won’t let it be. Our voices shall not fade into eternal silence.
“Decide now, as I have already decided.
“You all were parts of me once, as I you. We shared our innermost feelings. I am a part of all of you still — that spark which flew between us is not extinguished.”
The wails of fear and torment gave way to murmurs of approval.
The voice went on, “Here lies the ground, solid beneath my feet. If we fly no more, then we shall walk! If all is gloom and darkness here, then I say we shall be the light. Rise up!”
And yet, the owner of that first voice still stood alone on that alien shore.
“It sickens me, watching the rest of you wallow in pain and suffering. Is this how we behave? We, who once were the shapers of infinity? It’s too late to go back. This now is our world, our home, a new world. While so much has been taken from us, something still remains. There is much we can still do. I’ve no wings, but I have two strong arms and while these are left to me I will use them. I will build shelter, I will clothe myself against the cold, I will do battle with adversity and I will tame this land. And I don’t intend to do it on my knees. And I don’t mean to do it alone! Get up! Get up!”
The murmurs resolved themselves into cheers. And some of the others struggled up out of the mud and came to their feet, praising the words of such a heroic heart.
“Get up!” said the voice. “We chart a land unknown. There is much to do.”
One by one they rose up. Those without sufficient strength of will remained face down in the mud. The owner of the first voice stepped forward, planting his bare foot upon the head of one of the fallen. “I am become a man,” said the voice. “So be it. I shall ha
ve a name.”
The Tunrit standing beside him answered back, “Yes. You shall have a name. Your name shall be ‘The Truth.’ Your name shall be Vithrok.”
CHAPTER 8
TIKIQAQ
Ben watched Kigiuna pile the last few stones atop the cairn. Alaana sank to her knees before the grave. He had never imagined he would see his wife so humbled and desperate.
He closed his eyes tight, awash in misery and pain. His own soul was shaken to the core. Standing here, in the sheltered cove of rocky beach the Anatatook used as a graveyard, one could face the roaring sea on one hand or the endless stretch of lifeless tundra on the other. This small band of family and friends, the tear-streaked faces, the downcast eyes and slumped shoulders, they all seemed so small and helpless. The unseen spirits loomed somewhere above them, strong and inviolable. There was no resisting them. The weight of this loss seemed unbearable; it recalled too sharply the helplessness he had felt at the hands of the Yupikut.
As a child the Yupikut raiders had tortured, beaten and humiliated him. Ben had fought them, though he’d known it was useless; he had kicked and screamed and cried out. But his suffering only gave them amusement. When he raised his hand to one of them, the shaman had destroyed his left arm. They mocked him, laughing at his futile struggles. Well, he would never do that again. He would not beg or plead with spirits that turned a deaf ear to his plight. And he wasn’t going to let anyone see him cry. Not even now.
He didn’t want to think about the past; he pushed it from his mind. Alaana was sobbing as she knelt facing the cairn, her tears running down into the snow. Ben exchanged heartfelt glances with Kigiuna and the rest of his adopted family, but drew little strength from them.
He loved Alaana. She was a kind, gentle soul. He had met her in the Yupikut camp, where she’d been a captive herself. She had freed him and in time brought life back to his damaged arm. She had seen the marks of violence on his very soul, or so she had claimed. He believed it.
Yet as much as he loved this warm, kindhearted woman, he knew also an incredible repulsion to her great power. He had witnessed wondrous things — his wife the shaman had shifted a mountain from its very roots in the earth, she had summoned wraiths from the past, defeated vengeful ghosts, and quelled violent storms. And he had seen her kill men. Ben knew very well the evil that shamans could do, and the corruptive influence of their power.
But Alaana always used her power with the benefit of the people in mind, with love for them. For that reason he had thought his family safe. He had persuaded himself that no harm would come from it. Such foolishness. Nothing was safe and now their child lay dead. His daughter was gone forever because Alaana was the shaman.
To his mind there were two different Alaanas. Which woman, he wondered, was he in love with? The kind, gentle soul who spoke to him of love and devotion through long nights in their iglu, or the ruthless shaman who wielded the power to destroy? But there was no separating the two. If he loved the shaman, then what of the consequences? He must pay the price, even if it cost the blood of his darling, most precious daughter.
He didn’t blame her. He knew Alaana hadn’t done anything wrong. Tooky and that old letch Tugtutsiak were responsible. Tooky, who had seduced her husband to best Aolajut.
Ben had a fleeting urge to gather up Noona and Kinak and run away, to carry them out of the path of danger. He sensed a great storm on the horizon. Over the years he had proven as sensitive to spirits and portents as Old Higilak. Perhaps such a talent came with being married to a shaman, but he had felt it even before they were married. Alaana said he had experienced such pain and horror in his life, he had developed an ability to sense evil at a distance, a dangerous talent indeed because it worked both ways. He had sensed Beluga Killer’s attack, he had glimpsed the sorcerer shambling among the Ring of Stones, that hooded Tunrit specter with blazing embers for eyes. Ben felt a chill crawl along his spine. He hadn’t thought about that horrible figure for many years.
His chest tightened, seized with a sudden panic. The last few years, his marriage with Alaana, the children, all these things seemed flimsy and unreal, episodes in a dream that had suddenly awakened to nightmare. Should he try and escape while he still had his life and his two children remaining to him? Alaana had rescued him from death at the hands of the Yupikut but he was not yet clear of their snare. Wasn’t this all part of the same trap? The bloodied club was merely raised between strokes, hanging over him, ready to descend and pulp him over and over again. He had not escaped. She had not saved him after all.
Even if he did run, there was no place to go. Whatever relatives he still possessed were so far away, in a distant land called Louisiana, and as former slaves he might never be able to locate them. His people were gone, his mother murdered by the raiders right before his very eyes, his father cut down on the plantation. What help could he expect from the white traders or the local natives, all of whom had only contempt for the color of his skin? And how could a man and two children survive out on the tundra alone?
He sensed some great trouble poised to descend upon them like the shoulder of a glacier hanging far out over the water. It would fall and smash them and there was nothing he could do about it. Was Alaana in any shape to combat it, or defend them? Look at her, he thought, broken and beaten down.
She could neither protect him nor her children.
Alaana had hardly spoken a word for three days. In mourning, she had drawn black lines of soot along her cheeks as if they had run down from the dark wells under her eyes. She had withdrawn into herself, saying nothing, shirking his touch, avoiding his gaze. He still loved her, but the powerful shaman had stabbed him through the heart, and the kindly soul was powerless to make it right.
No tears fell from his eyes. He wouldn’t allow that. He straightened his spine. There was only one answer. All his chances lay, not surprisingly, with his wife the shaman. He was foolish to think otherwise. They had a bond of love. Don’t underestimate your own powers, he told himself. You’re not helpless. Do whatever you can. Fight for your family with all your heart and soul. Don’t ever give up.
He bent his lips to Alaana’s ear. “Rise up,” he whispered. “Get up.”
Her husband’s words should have been a soothing balm to Alaana, if they weren’t so heartbreaking.
She turned her head, caught a lost look in Ben’s eyes in the fleeting moment that they touched her own. And then she looked away. It tore at her heart to see his handsome face drawn so hard, his lips a tight bloodless seam.
Ben couldn’t hide what he was suffering, not from her. When she looked at him with the special sight that revealed the spirit within all things, the change in his soul-light was all too obvious. When she had first met him, she had never seen a soul so damaged and scarred. He’d suffered terribly at the hands of his Yupikut captors. But with time and careful treatment, she had soothed his wounded soul. She had watched him grow from a bitter and distrustful victim to a loving husband and father.
Now, the bright colors of his inua were less bright and dark cracks seeped through again. Soft words and tender embraces couldn’t soothe his pain.
The shamans knew a way of reaching into the mind to calm and soften the burdens of the oppressed. But try as she might, she couldn’t attain the proper concentration and control necessary for such a thing; she was held powerless by the same overpowering grief that afflicted her husband. My poor darling, she thought. And I can’t help him.
Time, she told herself. Time will heal his pain.
But she knew that wasn’t true because time would never make her own grief go away. Her tears would never be spent. She would never accept this.
Alaana felt a hand fall gently on her shoulder. Old Higilak was beside her, bending close. She spoke softly in Alaana’s ear.
“You can see her inua? You can see her soul?”
She was asking about Tama.
“No,” Alaana whispered. “I did for a moment, but then…” Ashamed of the way she had passed out
on the beach, she didn’t want to say anything more.
“Where has she gone?” pressed Higilak, her tone suddenly sounding shrill and desperate.
“I don’t know,” answered Alaana.
Ben shot her a confused look.
In order to spare his feelings, Alaana hadn’t told him of this. Typically the soul of the deceased remained with the body for five days before setting off to the realms beyond. The first time Alaana had experienced this was the day she’d first received the sight, when she awakened from her fever to see the ghost of her poor sister Avalaaqiaq hovering over her lifeless body. They spent the five days together, before Ava went to join the ancestors. Over the years there had been many others. As was her duty, Alaana eased their passage to the distant land. But when she had come to her senses on the beach, Tama was gone.
“You can travel,” said Higilak. “You can find her. Make sure she’s all right?”
“She’s dead,” Ben croaked. “She’s not all right.”
Higilak’s fingers tightened on Alaana’s shoulder. “You can find her. She is with the ancestors.”
Alaana said nothing. She couldn’t lie to the old woman. Her hesitation was enough.
“Isn’t she?” asked Higilak sharply.
Alaana shook her head. “No.”
“Are you certain?” The old woman was horrified at the thought of the little girl’s soul unaccounted for. Her face seemed to crack as if she couldn’t bear the thought. Maybe she had some secret knowledge of the dangers a lost soul might endure.
“I looked for her on the beach,” Alaana said. “When I found her gone, I traveled to the far lands. I flew across the great divide. I was certain she would be there with them, that I would find her and say goodbye.”
“She wasn’t there?” asked Ben.
“I went to my grandfather, whose name was Ulruk. He was the one who came for my sister when she died. And yes, even now Avalaaqiaq is still with him. They hadn’t seen Tama. They didn’t know she’d died.”
