Shadows

by Ken Altabef

  “But I’m glad to see you here, young lady. It’s nice to pass a quiet night with someone new. I do get lonely sometimes. Of course the Chukchee send a man up once in a while. They’re good people. Very respectful. But you…” The Moon-Man turned his gaze full upon her. She was not afraid, for the great spirit had the character of a gentle old man, and eyes of blue like her father Kigiuna. “The other shamans shine with a light that reminds me of the Before, but you have something else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your light is not as theirs. It seems different. Older.”

  “Older than the Beforetime?” asked Alaana, incredulous.

  Annigan shook his great warty gourd of a head. “No, that’s silly talk isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know. Do you remember the Beforetime?”

  Annigan groaned slightly. “Now that’s a stretch. So many turns.” The Moon-Man put a huge, veined hand to his oversized head. “No, I can’t remember the Before, it’s all broken into pieces. I wasn’t quite the same then — parts of me were here and parts there. I only remember there was a battle, a Great Rift and then I hung here in the sky. All darkness. A dead rock in a dead sky.”

  Silence for a moment, as if the long eons were passing again before his eyes. “Then the sun came. It lights me up, you know, for my light is only a reflection of its own.”

  “There’s a story the old women tell,” said Alaana. “That the sun is your sister, and you chase her across the sky.”

  “No, that’s not true. The sun is a soulless monster. It came from somewhere else, on the other side of the sky. I never found out what it is. I don’t chase it. In truth I’m always running away from it as I believe it represents only one thing, and that one thing is death itself. As it is known for melting the snow, the snow probably has the same opinion.”

  “But the warmth is pleasant.”

  “Perhaps so,” allowed the Moon-Man.

  “And what of the tale of Alakrasina, the woman who married the Moon?”

  Annigan smiled distantly. “Yes, that was true.”

  “And your daughter?” asked Alaana. “I don’t mean to offend, but she’s the one I need to see.”

  CHAPTER 21

  MOONBEAM AND SHADOW

  Separated from Alaana, Tikiqaq could not fly. Having no soul of its own, just the remnants of former lives that clung to its respective parts, the tupilaq’s patchwork spirit could only crawl along the surface. And so it did. But it noticed the ground was different here, its pull less intense.

  And still it must kill Kritlaq.

  Tiki looked up. The dark sky held the blue world, and Kritlaq was there. The sky seemed darker than before, the stars cut in sharper relief, gloriously shining, the world a miracle floating in the sky. To the tupilaq’s new moonbeam sight, the entire ball looked like one great ocean clothed in loose ribbons of white like froth on the waves. It was, the tupilaq thought, stunningly beautiful. Tiki rose up on its hind flipper. The surface of this new world was so flat and strange, the horizon so close, the tupilaq felt as if it might fall off the edge at any moment.

  Tiki slapped its tail against the rugged ivory surface, and propelled itself into the air. Surprisingly, its hop carried it far above the ground where it hung for a moment, and then drifted slowly back down again. It tried again, putting more thrust beneath its spirit-body and rising higher. Soon it got the hang of it and was bouncing with great strides along the surface of the little ivory world. The experience went from disorienting to exhilarating. Up the tupilaq went, cresting in an almost weightless way, making a little half-spin at the peak and then drifting slowly back down again to land amid a puff of dust below. Tiki squealed with delight. This was the closest thing to flying that it could ever hope to know.

  For a moment, it forgot its purpose.

  Then it came crashing down, this time landing not among the lonely dunes but along the rim of one of the high craters. Dropping like a missile, it landed directly atop another creature. The other thing, a dazzlingly white soul-shape, cried out beneath the tupilaq. “Get off, you stupid oaf!”

  Tiki rolled to the side, sitting up to face its adversary. Kritlaq. Kritlaq.

  The other sat up and Tiki could see that it was not Kritlaq. It had the shape of a sinuous bird made of liquid white smoke. Its head, crowned with a ring of short, elegant horns, turned sharply toward the tupilaq. Its long, slender neck bent at a curious angle.

  Tiki hissed back at it. The tupilaq was not a creature that could move very quickly but it tensed itself to charge straight on.

  “You want to fight?” The ghostly creature poked a spindly claw at Tikiqaq. It clucked twice. “Fight me? You’re already dead, and I’m just a fragment of a dream. An important dream, but still.”

  Tiki, stunned, opened its raven’s beak, then snapped it shut.

  Quixaaragon flapped its leathern wings indignantly. “That’s better. Now let’s figure out what you are and what you think you’re doing here. Sometimes dead things are drawn to the Moon and the snowy owl collects them and takes them away, but I’ve never seen such a sorry sight. Just so you know, I’m not a snowy owl.”

  “Kritlaq. Kill!”

  “Let me see,” said Quixaaragon. It leaned its head forward and the delicate white beak snipped the spirits of the sinews holding the tupilaq together.

  “Your master will have to sew you up again when you return to the solid world,” Quixaaragon said blithely. “Oh, I see. Alaana’s made you. That’s a surprise. She didn’t seem the type for bloody revenge.”

  Quixaaragon rummaged through Tikiqaq’s chest with its beak, inspecting the various bits of souls still clinging to the mismatched bones and organs. “This is sloppy work. Let’s hope she does a better job of it the second time. You’re a mess.”

  Tiki allowed this rough handling without resistance. There was something about the attitude of the bird-like creature, composed as it was of vibrant white light, which offered reassurance as to its intentions.

  “Oh, there’s the problem,” said Quixaaragon, drawing back its head. “You’ve no heart. Or perhaps a heart that is something without a soul, that casts no shadow here in the spiritual world. I can see nearly everything from up here, but you,” it clucked, “you are a surprise. Alaana, my dear, whatever’s gotten into you?”

  “Kritlaq. Kill!”

  “Yes, yes. You want to kill Kritlaq. And yet you haven’t done so. And yet you are here, bopping around on the Moon, crashing into innocent people.” Quixaaragon gazed up at the world in the sky. Then it turned and added, “People who are busy doing serious work.”

  Quixaaragon flapped its leathern wings once for attention, then pointed a spindly claw at the world above. “Let’s have a look at Klah Kritlaq, shall we? You have a wonderful set of eyes. Use them.”

  A pair of moonbeams, long and slender, shot out from Tiki’s face.

  “Use them!” said Quixaaragon. Tiki lurched forward, setting its new eyes at the blue world in the sky.

  “The Tanaina camp is visible from here,” explained Quixaaragon. “Follow along, my friend.”

  “Kritlaq,” mumbled Tiki.

  “Yes, yes,” replied the other. “See, there he is.”

  At last Tiki beheld his enemy. Kritlaq was a tall man, at present rolling around on the beach with one of his children. The shaman was naked to the waist despite the cold, and as he laughed the long, sharp lines of his face softened considerably. His boy, who was six or seven winters old, was determined to get his hands on one of Kritlaq’s two strands of braided black hair, perhaps attracted to the colorful feathered tassels adorning the ends.

  “Kill!” said Tiki.

  “Kritlaq is not so easy to kill,” warned Quixaaragon. “He has a powerful name. He is a shaman, born from a long line of shamans.”

  Kritlaq could not hold his child still. He twitched endlessly, subject to a nervous tick that caused snake-like movements of his arms and neck. Cleverly, he wove these movements into the texture of the game, using them
to keep the tassels as moving targets.

  “But he is also a man,” said Quixaaragon. “Go ahead. Strike. From here you can kill him easily, yes?”

  Tikiqaq was momentarily distracted by the laughing of the boy. It loved children, and would never think to hurt one. And damned if Kritlaq didn’t seem to be moving his son in the path of attack. If he were not twitching this way and that, things would be much easier.

  Quixaaragon clucked for attention. “Like you, I have a violent purpose. I am a dream of death. But I don’t yet see the target. It’s there. I can feel it just the way you are drawn to yours. But my moment hasn’t yet come.”

  At last the shaman put the boy down. Klah Kritlaq paused, taking a moment to gaze up at the Moon.

  “You’ll never have a better chance,” said Quixaaragon. “What will you do?”

  Tiki looked away. Suddenly it had become hard to conceive of killing Kritlaq. The tupilaq remembered the admonitions of its creator, who had forbid it to think of killing at all. But without revenge Tikiqaq had no purpose. Except to protect Tooky, and that was too easy.

  The thought came to Tiki that perhaps protector was a much more noble role than assassin.

  Flying free, Alaana’s inuseq glided over the Moon’s luminous surface. From afar the random patterns of ridges and craters, the sheets of endless white, appeared not so different from the wintry landscapes of Nunatsiaq. Seen up close, the rock surfaces cut bizarre and jagged shapes, weird and unworldly as compared to the timeworn lines and smooth drifts of the arctic.

  Alaana didn’t have time to pause and admire the landscape. Having learned that Tama’s soul was not to be found here, she had little interest in the wonders of the Land of the Sky. She would conclude her business with Tatqeq as quickly as possible and return to the Anatatook. Tiki had wandered away, but this didn’t trouble Alaana. It was easier to journey without dragging the tupilaq along and she would find it later. After all, what trouble could it get into up here?

  Alaana made her way to the series of high craters Annigan had pointed out. She walked between tall spires of glistening white moonstuff extending from the surface like streaks of tallow melting into the night sky. She came to a particularly haughty tower, which looked as if just ready to release a big round drip skyward. The horizon lay outlined by a pearlescent haze of light boiling up from the surface itself.

  “Tatqeq!” she called. “Great spirit, please hear me.”

  Only the dead silence of the Moon answered and then, coming from somewhere between the peaks below, the far-off peals of a woman’s laughter. Echoes played with the coquettish laughter, making it difficult to pinpoint. It seemed to come from one location and then another and then several at once.

  She called again and laughter returned from somewhere off to her left. The sound shook the crumbling towers, sending a cascade of moondust down upon her like snow. Her spirit-woman was momentarily snowblind amid a luminous frothy cloud.

  The girlish laughter led her on a frustrating chase. She passed over curiously shaped landmarks coated with an odd sort of snow, not cold and soft, but made from flakes of ivory. Alaana scooped up a handful. Looking closely she noticed each flake was intricately carved, the handiwork of the Moon-Man on his lonely vigil in the Land of the Sky. On a previous visit Alaana had seen Annigan striking flakes of ivory from a segment of tusk and sending them drifting down to the world below as snow.

  Alaana sailed over bodies of water streaming down from the peaks, only to find the water was simply liquid moonbeams. She passed under a looming overhang and through a series of caves all made of luminous white.

  She stopped in an impressive cavern as large inside as the entire Anatatook camp. From a hole in the domed ceiling a brilliant waterfall of moonbeams came cascading down to splash into a pool of blue-white light. Clouds of moon vapor rose and swirled about the pool, and she knew at last she would find Tatqeq here.

  The laughter rang out again. At least, thought Alaana, the Moon-Man’s daughter was in a pleasant mood. Maybe she would help after all.

  “I am Alaana, shaman of the Anatatook,” she ventured, “come to ask your favor.”

  Parting the mist, Tatqeq emerged from the waterfall. She had taken the form of a young woman, clothed only in the clouded majesty of the mist, whose smooth alabaster skin shone with glittering moonlight. Her figure was proportioned differently than most of the Anatatook women, bulging in places that befitted a fertility goddess. And she was not shy about it.

  “How wonderful it is to have a visitor,” she said, “and such a fine young shaman at that.”

  She shook her head seductively, setting long white locks at play atop her delicately rounded shoulders. Wet with light, her hair shimmered and sparkled. Hers was a different kind of beauty, the ineffable grace of a goddess. Her face was as round as the Moon with plump and playful cheeks, a small dainty nose and pale, smiling lips.

  Alaana replied, “I haven’t come for myself…”

  Laughing, Tatqeq sent droplets of moonlight showering like water from her skin. She stepped close to Alaana. Reaching out a hand, she ran her slender finger along the line of Alaana’s shoulder, tracing the curve of her spirit-parka.

  “You’re a woman,” she laughed.

  “Well, of course,” Alaana said patiently. “But I am a shaman. I see to the needs of my people.”

  “I have needs too,” Tatqeq said in a lilting voice. “Come with me.”

  She took the point of Alaana’s elbow and drew her gently forward. Alaana had paid obeisance to many spirits in her time as shaman and wondered what type of demands were to be made of her on this occasion. Tatqeq drew her close, almost as if to snuggle. Alaana looked into her silvery eyes, each as round and bright as the Moon at its full, and felt an echo of the Maid’s intense loneliness.

  The Moon Maid turned, leading Alaana by the hand through the waterfall. Alaana went under, expecting to be drenched, but the moonbeams didn’t touch her. And yet, the touch of the Moon Maid’s hand felt real enough, spirit to spirit.

  Beyond the misty curtain lay Tatqeq’s bedchamber. Its warmth was striking, the air thick with the fragrant scent of white poppy blossoms.

  She released Alaana’s hand, leaving her standing before the bed. As she settled herself on her exotic pallet, the cloudstuff of her bedsheets rippled in gentle waves. They seemed to be made of mists and skies so soft, so enticing, all of creation lay nestled in their steamy folds. Tatqeq took up a pose among the soft cloud pillows that made Alaana’s heart quicken.

  “Now,” she said, “What is it you desire of me?” Her fingers idly followed the curve of her slightly rounded belly.

  “It’s not for me,” Alaana repeated. She didn’t approach any closer. “There’s a woman among my band. Her name is Kala. She’s married for thirteen winters and still without child.”

  Tatqeq leaned forward. “Her husband is special to you. I can see into your heart, Alaana. It is my way. You love him.”

  “I love him as I love each and every one of the Anatatook.”

  “Not quite,” she giggled. “Not entirely true. When you were children, you thought of him in a special way. You held his hand. Your hearts touched.”

  Alaana flushed with embarrassment. Though her spirit-form would show no sign of it, she realized her heart could claim no such privacy. The Moon Maid saw it all.

  “But then it all went wrong,” said Tatqeq sympathetically. “The river flowed, turning into avenues unexpected. You changed. You were called. He was frightened of you. And now he shares the bed of another.”

  “Yes.”

  Tatqeq made a sympathetic face. “As you still carry the love,” she observed, “you still bear the pain.”

  “It seems to me, great spirit, that you are overly concerned with affairs of the heart.”

  “What else matters?” she asked coyly. “This man spurned you, angatkok. And yet you’ve come to me on his behalf.”

  “For his wife to get a baby.”

  Tatqeq laughed. “Yes,
I understand.” Her eyes glittered like jewels in their ivory sockets. “Your desires and your reasons are all very clear to me. I know what you feel when you look upon Mikisork, but wait… He stands in the shadow of something so much greater. How did I not see it before? What an unusual man. So beautiful. Your husband?”

  “Ben Thompson.”

  The Moon Maid’s twinkling eyes gaped. “Your love for him is writ large across your soul. It’s so very beautiful.” She broke off the examination. “I’m grateful to you, angatkok, for the sight of it. I will grant your favor.”

  Raising her hands above her head she was suddenly clothed in a glittering silver gown. Her glorious white hair was drawn tightly back, in the manner of an old wife. “Have Kala sleep exposed to the Moon for the next three nights. On the third night dip a feather in oil and draw the figure of a baby on her belly. When she wakes up it shall be done.”

  Alaana sucked air. The transition back to the confines of the karigi was so sudden she had to force herself to take breath. She stood up, straightening stiff knees that had sat too long upon the mat. Night had given way to dawn. The sky, as seen through the tent flap, was already streaked with amber halfway up from the horizon. The full Moon still hung high in the sky, its bright glow fading with the dawn.

  It was cold in the tent and quiet. Tiki had left off beating the drum.

  Alaana found the tupilaq flat on its back with its laces cut open. She bent to repair it and noticed the glint as the dawn struck Tikiqaq’s heart of metal. This was the white man’s copper spear point which Maguan had found on the beach. Alaana had forgotten she’d placed it in the tupilaq’s chest. She reached for it, then drew her hand back.

  Maybe she should simply end the tupilaq’s existence. That might be considered a mercy, she thought. Now was the time, before the tupilaq woke.

  The creature’s eyes opened, glittering moonbeams. Tiki’s head tilted slightly to the side as it caught sight of Alaana with its new eyes.

  “And what happened to you?” asked Alaana.