by Ken Altabef
“If only we could consult Tugtutsiak,” said Nuralak. “But his soul is at the bottom of the sea, in a place where even our shaman dare not go for fear of the Whale-Man. Tugtutsiak was special among us. He was a whaler, but a fine hunter too. He knew every landmark of this land, every crack and cranny. He knew the animals as if they were his brothers, their wants, their movements, their moods. His was a gift of intuition, one we may never see again.”
“He taught me,” said Talliituk.
Although Kigiuna thought this a lie he returned, “No one’s doubting your abilities.”
Aquppak interrupted. “I am! We’re not here to give suck to Tugtutsiak’s puppy. Everyone knows he’s like a blind bull walrus stumbling along the game trail.”
“Aquppak knows the herds best.” This came from Nuralak. Kigiuna wondered why the influential patriarch showed no inclination to seek the position himself. Maybe the older men didn’t want the job, he thought, having seen Tugtutsiak so recently cut in half. “He scouts often; he knows the traders.”
“And he falls under outside influence,” noted Kigiuna, speaking as if talking to no one in particular, his eyes looking up toward the roof flap.
“No one influences me!” roared Aquppak.
“And certainly that is the problem,” said Talliituk. This quip did score some points with the men. Again the tent seemed on the verge of shaking apart with noise, but at least this time they were laughing.
Aquppak said nothing else. He carved up a trout with great deliberation, popping one of its eyes into his mouth. “It should be a hunter,” he said when the others had quieted down.
“Tracking the herd is the immediate problem,” said Massautsiaq, the oldest man among them. His ancient face was framed by a fur collar made of three different colors of caribou hide. Everyone respected his opinion for he had seen so much and remembered everything. He kept the count of the winters, naming each one in turn. A quiet dignity enveloped him, having faced death so many times and survived longer than anyone else. He knew just where to step on the ice, and a man like that was worth following.
“The caribou hunt is the most important thing,” he added. “You young people don’t remember the winter of empty bellies, or the winter of the coughing sickness. You don’t remember the hunger times when we had no food at all, and your mothers and fathers dare not name their newborn children in case they couldn’t keep them. How many little ones were lost to us? No one knows. I had not the heart to keep the count.” The old man’s eyes closed briefly, then opened again. His wizened head sank back into its nest of fur.
“We might have a whale next year perhaps or not at all,” said Nuralak with an air of authority. “The caribou hunt comes first and for that Aquppak is the best choice.”
Many thought this was true, and said so.
Massautsiaq held up a hand. “Good judgment is also needed,” he said, a statement which seemed to be an indirect volley at Aquppak. Everyone knew the young hunter was subject to fits of temper. Some had seen it firsthand. Not long ago Aquppak had been nearly exiled for threatening to kill his wife’s father.
“Then what of Maguan?” said Iggy. “Everyone likes him and knows his good character. He’s not the foremost among the hunters but he’s a balanced man. Surely he would lead us well.”
“This sounds like foolishness to me,” said Nuralak. “We can’t fill our bellies with well-wishes and smiles.”
“What does Maguan know of the movements of the herd except what his sister may tell him?” argued Aquppak. “And what does Talliituk know of anything?”
Talliituk had reached his limit. He was not a hot-head like Aquppak, but could bear these insults no longer. The two men faced each other, sure to come to blows.
“The most important thing is the food,” said Massautsiaq — the voice of wisdom and age. “We’ve lost a good man and a powerful leader, but the Anatatook people are not lost. Look how many fine choices we have.” He indicated the three men with a sweep of his arm. “We have a feast of choices. Certainly any one of them could lead us. If one is better than the others we will soon know of it. Therefore I suggest a practical test. Let the three of them think on it and each suggest a crossing place where we can make the hunt. Alaana will commune with the great turgats. If we ever needed their help and guidance, now is the time. They will not fail us. Alaana will press them as to the location of the herd. When she has the answer, we will know who is best to lead us, be it Aquppak or Maguan or Talliituk.”
The men responded with clear approval of this plan and Aquppak smiled broadly, seeing this as victory. He said nothing more, giving Nuralak a nod, went immediately out of the tent. Kigiuna did not doubt that while the others slept, Aquppak would be preparing for a scouting foray into the wilds. He might even depart camp during the night, setting out alone into the cold and dark, and that spoke something for him.
Maguan breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced appraisingly about, glad that his tent had not seen a fight to the death between Talliituk and Aquppak. “If you’ve finished littering my house with fish bones,” he suggested, “you might all go home and sleep.”
CHAPTER 12
A FOUL WIND
Vithrok exhaled.
Without form or body, he did not move the air but crept along it, extending his consciousness to greater and greater lengths.
His spirit flowed like water along the land, taking in every nook and cranny, every rocky outcropping and fold of snow. Here, within his little sphere of influence there was no life, no spring hare skittering among the stones, no ptarmigan on the wing, no fox or lemming to startle and scamper away. He had drunk them all dry. He was alone. It was early evening, the sun having finally withdrawn its roiling accusation from the sky, and he was free to roam.
He pulled himself back in, contracting, retracing his steps. It was a nauseating feeling, as if time was reeling backward. He became momentarily disoriented by the thought that if time went backward he would wind up bound inside the catchstone prison again, and trapped, and helpless, and all alone, and unable to escape. The idea was an icy skewer through the heart, freezing him in place.
All was still. Time, his implacable enemy, had stopped. There was no movement, no fire, no energy. Snowflakes paused on the air in mid-flight, amid silence unbroken. Vithrok hung in place, drawn in upon himself. In absolute stillness the world seemed a better place, the snow a sparkling afterthought rather than an eternal burden, the bergs hanging in expectant anticipation, at any moment to come crashing down, perhaps bursting into flame or shooting up into the air, or taking on any new shape that he might desire. Beneath its coat of monotonous white everything lay ready, just under the surface, awaiting his command to burst forth into ribald color certain to stimulate the mind and send the spirit soaring, a riot of incredible patterns and hues only faintly remembered, all lurking just beneath the skin of snow.
Hold it, he thought. Hold. He strained with the effort, but the pull of time was too strong. He was as a man under water, holding on from moment to moment, lungs aching, thoughts becoming hazy and indistinct, and bound eventually to take the next breath. He could hold on no longer.
Vithrok exhaled himself again.
He was moving again and time was flowing. Again. Flowing forward, but was that any better than flowing back? This new existence seemed only a slight improvement over his previous captivity. He had been released into the world, but what was this world if not another type of prison?
It was excrement. It was formless snow and ice and heavy stone, and all of it taken together was not more than the merest fragment of what had been before. Before. In the Beforetime.
To his horror, the Beforetime had become almost impossible to remember. He could recall it only in snippets, in flashes of ecstasy that danced across his mind like fickle thrusts of wild flame. Within the confines of this reality there was no way to grasp what had gone before. Just glimpses of paradise. The concepts did not fit, the ideas no longer applied. The fabric of the world had changed
so drastically — the cloth could not be cut to shape again.
The world was solid; they were all solid. In this new nightmare, time oozed forward in a slow, painful crawl. In those early days just after the Great Rift, the memory of the Beforetime had been clear, paradise the norm and this new reality the aberration, the nightmare. But now the reverse had become true — this dull new reality was accepted as normal, and the Beforetime the treasured memory of a dream.
Now, his spirit crawling forward across the tundra like some kind of lowly vermin, his path crossed the Ring of Stones. He carefully avoided the center of the circle where the soulless catchstone lay buried, the chamber that had imprisoned his spirit down through the ages.
This place held many memories for him. Stranded in this dismal reality, the Tunrit had struggled to understand their limited circumstances. They had hewn these slender stones from a mountain of granite that stood in the distance and shaped them and built this structure. They dragged the stones here because it was the ideal place to measure the turning of the sky and to learn. The Ring had been the realization of one of Kidan’s ideas. Kidan excelled at that kind of thing; he had such a clever mind for designs, the actions of parts, and the forces that moved objects. The movements of the stars were the key, he said. There was no light in those times, the time before the sun, and in all the darkness there were only the stars to guide them, those few tiny pinpoints of light.
In that time, the earliest times of this world, the stars were fewer in number. This bothered Vithrok, for now they seemed much larger, bloated like gigantic lice clinging to the night sky, gorged on its blood. He felt an innate repulsion to them, and a curiosity. But they kept their secrets so far away and he was powerless to investigate further. They simply hung there in the sky, bearing silent witness to his struggle. They watched and waited while he scrabbled along on the ground and it almost seemed as if they mocked him. Or lay poised waiting to attack. Were they enemies?
He exhaled again, stretching his spirit farther still. He came upon the encampments of the Nunatsiaq people. These pathetic creatures recalled to him the little shaman who had released him from the catchstone. Vithrok passed through them, brushing their souls with a feather touch, leaving them with a startled shiver. He observed the way they lived off the crust of the land, using that which the Tunrit had left behind. Their minds were small, almost devoid of imagination; their souls were small. These people lived in a world so much tamer than before, and yet they barely survived. They seemed so degraded, so reduced. Was this all that was left? Had the Tunrit sacrificed themselves for this?
A few among them were shamans, possessed of the inner light, those small fragments of the Beforetime which Vithrok longed to take back to himself. He marked their positions in his mind. He would reclaim what they had stolen.
They made easy prey. All but the one who had released him from the catchstone. That little shaman had been one of these people, but different. Her soul-light burned so much brighter than theirs, it seemed out of place among these wretched creatures. Vithrok thought there was something familiar about that soul-light, something he should have recognized. But he couldn’t remember. He knew instinctively that he must be careful of that one. The little shaman was a thorn among the grasses — no, much more, she was a poisonous scorpion. He must deal with that one very carefully; he must destroy her.
But not directly. No, not directly. Not that way.
The little shaman was not among the people camped in the shadow of the mountain, nor was she among those spread out along the shore digging in the muddy bank for something to eat.
A sudden realization struck Vithrok. All his Tunrit were dead. The irony was tremendous. He, who had been imprisoned for the sin that had destroyed them, was now the only one left. He walked alone. The thought was almost more than he could bear.
Vithrok inhaled again.
He pulled back, recoiling within himself. Reality crumbled, falling down, collapsing on him in an instant.
Was he still locked away in the dark prison, his eyes closed, imagining all this from the depths of a tortured mind? No. No, that could not be possible. He was out. He was free. Remember that. Freedom was one thing he loved above all else. The one thing that had been stripped away. The freedom to create, to change, to truly live.
Not dead, he told himself. Hold on. All that had been lost shall be reclaimed.
He flung himself outward again, straining even farther than before, and the land flew beneath his raging spirit. He passed camp after camp. Without a body to anchor his soul, this game grew increasingly dangerous. If he went too far, dissolution beckoned. If he let himself go and spread his soul too thin there would be no coming back.
He flew outward, scouring the desolate wastes and the camps. Little more than animals, a group of people were gathered at the fishing weir. Vithrok remembered building this place. One of Kidan’s ideas again. Even blind in the darkness, Kidan had envisioned this excellent food trap and directed the others in carving it from the stone. None of these human creatures was Kidan’s equal, and yet they used what the Tunrit had left them.
The little shaman was here. Here. Her soul-light unmistakable even within the confines of her tent. It was pure Beforetime. Time. Time. That was the greatest enemy.
The little shaman was too dangerous, even asleep. Vithrok passed into the fabric of her tent, but would go no farther. He seethed and boiled, looking down upon the shaman and her family. Her children slept beside her. These little ones were born helpless, carried on their mother’s backs. This too was weakness, unlike the Tunrit who had risen from the mud, born as fully-formed fighting men.
The shaman slept peacefully. Vithrok noted the sway of her breasts, the curve of her body. The gentle lines of her face. She was different in ways he could not fully understand.
Again he was appalled at the weaknesses of these little people, this new way, two halves being separate, dependent upon each other. The little shaman had the great light, the scorching flame. Her husband was a different matter. He had nothing, the other half. He was her weakness. This was where he must strike.
Vithrok inhaled again, slowly drawing himself back and away. These creatures were beasts just like the rest. The animals all had male and female. They rutted and reproduced. But not the real people. Not the Tunrit.
Born from the mud after the Great Rift, the Tunrit had all been male.
CHAPTER 13
VITHROK REMEMBERS
Vithrok remembers.
In the chaotic dance of the fire he saw hope. Flickering in unexpected shapes and bursts of color, it blazed with wild possibility. In flame he found the only thing on this frozen, rocky world that was not stagnant. Here there was color. Here there was warmth. And life.
The Tunrit huddled gratefully around the sputtering hearth. A thin wisp of gray smoke trailed up toward the ceiling of the cave where they had carved a ventilation hole through the unyielding rock.
Tugto and the others, having returned from their long hunting foray, had brought back a few sticks of wood. While the band made full use of the light and warmth, Vithrok could not draw his eyes from the fire. Such a rare thing. There was so little that could produce flame in this frigid wasteland, unlike the time before when anything, even water itself could be made to burn.
Vithrok stared at the flames, looking for a message within its chaotic depths. Makite impaled a snow hare on a spit and dangled it over the fire. Uivvaq had decided to take advantage of the rare light to make one of his paintings on the cave wall.
Vithrok leaned over the fire, soaking up its precious gift of heat. Rubbing with both hands, he woke up the skin of his cheeks. It was impossible to get used to the intense cold of this world, the cold that gnawed at them, nipped at their faces and hands, blackening cheeks and noses and stole their fingers and toes. The cold forced them to huddle close, dressed in the stinking skins and hair of wild beasts, making them into mockeries of animals when before they could have transformed themselves at a moment’s whi
m into anything at all. And the skins brought the lice, with their incessant maddening itch.
Makite turned his catch on the spit and the smell of snow hare roasting over the fire filled the cave.
“I only caught two,” said Makite. “It’s not much.”
“Divided among the lot of us,” said Tugto wearily, “it’s almost nothing. We’ll have to go out again before we sleep.”
Vithrok grunted his agreement, breaking off a slender leg joint and biting into the juicy meal. The meat tasted rich and succulent but would not long assuage the empty feeling that nestled ever in their bellies. That was another thing that could never be gotten used to. Hunger.
“We would have had more,” said Makite, “Much more.” Dark, sharp eyes glittered beneath his overhanging brow.
“If not for Tekkeitsertok,” added Tugto. “It spoiled the hunt for us. Again.”
“Tell me,” said Vithrok. “Tell me everything that happened.”
Makite shook his huge head, rattling a collection of small animal bones braided into his beard. “It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. There were ten bucks and twice as many does. We tracked that herd through the dark for two sleeps, Tugto sniffing out their trail like an animal. We didn’t stop to eat or sleep until we caught them. This was on the ridge above where the Silver Tongue flows down from the high rocks. The perfect place for an ambush.”
“And then,” said Tugto, “Tekkeitsertok was there.” He spoke the words as if they were a dreadful capstone to the story and no more need be said. Tugto slumped his head into his massive shoulders. He was a large man among giants, dressed from head to foot in the long hairy coat of the mamut. His own hair and beard, hanging in long tawny strands of brown, matched the color of his dress exactly. He was a gigantic shaggy form in the dim firelight, dour in expression and quiet by nature.
