Shadows

by Ken Altabef

  “I’ve known this man since we were children together,” said Alaana. She gazed deeply at Aquppak. Aquppak met her gaze. The beaten man’s soul-light blazed as forcefully as ever, in vibrant reds and orange. His spirit was a marvel to behold. He had overcome so much personal hardship to become hard, driven and indomitable. A great fire raged in his heart, a desire that could never be quenched — his ambition. Yes, there was arrogance and conceit, but Alaana also saw the young boy she had once known, still downtrodden and humiliated.

  Aquppak’s desire for power glowed as brightly and dazzlingly as the summer sky. It seemed to be as true a love as any.

  Alaana thought Aquppak’s soul was as beautiful and complex as any she had ever seen. He would have made a great leader for the people.

  “We’ve lost too much this year already,” said Alaana. “And now our headman, a good man, a great hunter, is lost to us.”

  “Kill him! Kill him.”

  “No,” said Alaana. “If I were to kill him, how will he ever redeem himself?”

  The men were impressed. It was expected that, given the seriousness of the offense, Alaana would take this opportunity to be rid of Aquppak forever. But to restrain herself when she had every right to kill her adversary was truly impressive. To allow Aquppak to walk free showed clearly that Alaana had no fear of him.

  “Let him go,” said Alaana. “Give him two dogs and a sled. And one more chance.”

  Aquppak glanced up at his wife Ivalu. She drew back, her arms around both of their young boys.

  “Find that weapon,” said Maguan. “So that we may bury it forever in the snow.”

  Alaana turned away. Her head was still swimming from the impact against the ground when Iggy had pulled her down. She looked absently about for her staff.

  “You’re hurt,” said Iggy. “You should take some rest.”

  “I need to talk to my husband,” she said.

  Alaana surveyed the camp. The sleds were already packed. The iglus emptied and half-collapsed, they had let the dogs in to eat whatever scraps they’d left behind. Some of the families had already set out for the shore, taking advantage of the last day, while there was still some light left to see them on their way. To begin such a trip after the long dark had already fallen would bring a bad omen to the band. And the Anatatook had already had their fill of bad luck. It was going to be a terrible, hard winter.

  “Ben?” she called out.

  He was gone.

  CHAPTER 47

  ONE LAST CHANCE

  Ben ran until the frigid air knifing in and out of his lungs forced him to stop.

  He took a rest just beyond the tall rocks on the far side of camp. To obscure the trail behind him he dragged a splintered shelf, broken from the ruined meat rack. His trail was subtle but still visible; his scheme would not fool an experienced eye for very long. He let the driftwood fall from numbed fingers, kicking snow over the discarded wood and tamping it down flat. He hadn’t taken the time to put on a second parka and the chill seeped all the way through to his bones. Winter had come to Nunatsiaq.

  His bruised cheek and nose had gone numb with cold, but the rest of his body was still sore from Aquppak’s attack, his neck and throat still on fire, his head spinning. Too much had happened all at once.

  He thought of Nuralak and Pibloq, both lying dead in the snow. The shadows had killed them, and been destroyed in the process. He tried not to feel guilty about it but conscience nagged at his soul. He hadn’t meant to cross them over, not intentionally. Hadn’t meant for anyone to die. But he had heard the men’s death screams as they cut through the frosty air, just as he had heard the screams of the dying shadows inside his head. It wasn’t his fault, he told himself. He couldn’t have known what was going to happen.

  Ben found a good spot among the jagged white rocks. It was not an easy thing to hide from the shaman. And he had little time before she would come looking. But time passed differently on the other side. It seeped and crawled, there in the shadows. He might be able to rescue Tama before Alaana realized where he had gone.

  What had really happened to Aquppak, she would ask? Why had he been traveling to the shadow world, and why had he kept it secret? She was going to ask those questions and more. She would find out what he’d been doing — about his other life, his other family, and he would have to take the consequences. He hoped she would understand — maybe when she held their little girl in her arms, their Little Mouthful, made real once again. If he crossed Tama’s shadow back to the physical world it would become real, flesh and blood, and with no living counterpart here to destroy it, Tama would live again.

  Alaana would know he hadn’t been cheating. Higilak had it all wrong. Accusing him. Warning him off, while the other Higilak drove him onward. She had it all wrong. It was all for Tama. It had always been about her. Nothing else.

  Ben settled into the rocks, deep down where he might not easily be found. He raised a scrap of walrus tarp over his head. The sun was already going down. Its fading light produced only a dusky shadow. What if there wasn’t enough sun left? Don’t think that, he scolded himself; there must be. If he missed this chance, his heart would break.

  Failing light. A pitiful shadow. It had to be now. He had to do it before Tama suffered winter in that horrible place. Before he had to face two and a half long moons of darkness and no Tama. Darkness and cold and nothing to do but sit in front of the lamp and know that his daughter was suffering. His heart would break.

  He closed his eyes, and stepped to the side.

  ***

  Ben awoke to total darkness. He felt the intense cold, the implacable hunger, the maddening itch of the lice. Each sensation slammed into him like a fist, one after another. Hunger, cold, itch. Despair. And yet the discomforts were as welcome as they were uncomfortable. He had made it. This one last time. He had made the journey. There was still a chance to save his daughter.

  He cast about frantically in the darkness. The shadow camp was gone. This darkness seemed even more intense, the seething blackness of shadow at the end of day, even deeper than before. And all was quiet. Where were the moans and laments of the people? This silence rang even worse in his ears. Terribly worse.

  The shadows had already broken camp; they were gone. And in this darkness on the cusp of night he could not possibly find them. Ben recalled the time he’d journeyed to this world during the night, when he’d found only an unbroken expanse of nothingness. He had floundered in shadow, a tiny lost fish amid an ocean of blackness. Only the Light-Bringer, an exotic god minding an empty shore, had saved him. Once again, he seemed the only hope.

  “Light-Bringer?” he called. “Please help me.”

  “I’m here,” said a voice.

  That voice. It didn’t belong to the Light-Bringer.

  It was Aquppak. Ben recoiled at the idea that Aquppak had found him. Here, he could call upon no aid from the other side. He would never be able to protect himself.

  A shadow rustled next to him, a hand’s breadth away. “They’ve already started for the bay,” Aquppak said. “I waited for you. I was hoping you would come.”

  “And why?” Ben asked, his voice still a painful rasp despite the fact that his real body had been left behind, abandoned in a rocky crevasse in Nunatsiaq. “What are you planning to do to me?”

  “Do to you?” The shadow seemed annoyed at the question.

  Ben realized this Aquppak didn’t know what had happened on the other side. This was not the same Aquppak who had just attacked him. The shadow Aquppak was gentle by nature. Noble. Self-sacrificing. But then again, Ben couldn’t be sure what this man might be capable of if driven to extremes, or in defense of his people. The real Aquppak had demonstrated self-sacrifice as well. And leadership. They were perhaps not so very different at all. With only a subtle turn, one could become the other.

  “You came back,” Aquppak pointed out. “You want something.”

  “You don’t know what happened on the other side?” Ben asked.


  “The other Aquppak? I still hear his heartbeat. That is all I know.”

  Ben took a deep breath and straightened up. He had to trust this man. He didn’t know if he could. “That’s all you need to know. I came here for my daughter.”

  In the far distance, as an echo from the other side, Ben heard Alaana calling out for him.

  “We should go,” Aquppak said.

  “We have to hurry,” Ben returned.

  “I have a sled and dogs. Follow me.” Aquppak took Ben by the arm to lead him through the dark. His shadow flesh felt like the gentle whisper of a dry mist, a sad reminder of the diminished capacity of those forced to live on this side of the curtain of light.

  The shadow sledge seemed doughy and insubstantial. Ben didn’t think it would hold his weight. Though his skin was charred black, he still had substance. He could not see the dogs; they were nothing more than seething black shapes at the head of the stanchion. But he could smell them and he could hear them, snarling with hunger and distemper. Aquppak commanded them to run.

  The blackness to either side of the sled remained unbroken. Ben couldn’t see anything; he couldn’t even tell if they were moving.

  “Damn it, how can we find them with no light?” he despaired.

  “I’ve walked these shadowed paths many years,” said Aquppak. “I can find them. I know where they rest the dogs. It’s not far. There’s no point in traveling all the way to the ocean today. By tomorrow everything will be gone.”

  Ben didn’t doubt his words. To him, it seemed as if everything was already gone.

  “We’re just slaves to the sunlit world,” continued Aquppak sadly. “Just shadows. We have nothing. We follow wherever you go.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said.

  “Wouldn’t you help us if you could?”

  “I would.”

  “Isn’t that why you came back? Really?”

  Ben wouldn’t answer. His memories of events from the other side were fading away. But he was certain of his mission here. He had come to save his daughter.

  “How much time is left?” he asked.

  “Enough.”

  “It’s the last day of the year. If the sun goes down before I get to her, I’m not leaving this place.”

  “You don’t want to stay here,” Aquppak warned. “Not through the winter.”

  “I don’t care! I won’t leave my daughter here to suffer.”

  “Then we had better catch them up quickly.”

  As they broke through the black mists, the sounds hit him first. The laments of the shadows, the endless dirge they forever sang, the hopeless, helpless moans of the damned. The noise had reached a fever pitch. Ben pressed his hands against his straining ears. He could hardly stand it.

  He passed through the crowd of Anatatook shadows as they milled about the cave entrance.

  They moaned, whimpered and whined, all pleading with him.

  “My daughter?” he said to Aquppak. “Where is she?”

  “Inside the cave.”

  Ben entered the cave. At least he thought it was a cave. Darkness not separate from darkness, cold upon cold. Nothing to see. The smoke walls were no blacker than the outside; the inky sky above might be a roof of stone, or it might not. But the steady stream of laments echoed weirdly here as they would bounce around the inside of a cave.

  A lot of people had gathered together. Ben could see none of them clearly.

  “Where is my daughter?” he shouted. “Where is Tamuanuaq?”

  “She’s here,” said Higilak.

  Ben felt relief at the familiar voice. “Where?”

  “You’ll see her soon,” said the old woman.

  “What do you mean soon? I want her now.”

  “First you have to help us.”

  “What’s going on?” said Ben. He turned toward Aquppak. The shadow shrank back slightly, his head tilted down and away.

  “What are you doing?” Ben asked. “Why are you keeping her from me?”

  “Night falls soon,” Aquppak said. “You have to open the way.” He raised his head and in a loud voice that all could hear, he said, “Let us all cross over!”

  The laments of the crowd transformed into a cautious cheer and Ben thought it might very well have been the first cheer ever raised in this dismal place. The sound was strangely heartbreaking.

  “Aquppak,” he said, “you don’t understand.”

  “I hear the heartbeat,” he said with surety. “It calls to me.”

  “We hear them!” shouted the crowd. “We hear the heartbeats on the other side!”

  Aquppak stretched a shadowed arm toward the far wall of the cave, which had begun to shimmer slightly.

  “Help us to step through,” he said. “Help us to be free!”

  “You’ll die!” Ben said. “The shadows can’t exist on the other side.”

  “Don’t lie to me,” said Aquppak. “You did it for Nuralak and Patloq. You can do it for all of us.”

  “Nuralak and Patloq are dead. I heard their screams.”

  This news shook the crowd. A chorus of suspicious murmurs extinguished the note of hope that had temporarily buoyed them.

  “Give me my daughter,” demanded Ben.

  “Open the gateway,” said Higilak. Still Ben could not find her in the dark.

  “No,” he said firmly. “I want Tama now!”

  “And why do you seek your daughter?” asked Higilak. “Your other children are here — don’t you care for them?”

  “Of course I do,” snapped Ben. “But they have to stay here. They’ll die on the other side.”

  “And the other?” said Higilak with a note of foul triumph in her voice. “You want to take her across!”

  “Yes, yes I do. It’s different with Tama. She can live on the other side. She’s not there. She’s dead.”

  “That’s absurd,” said Higilak. “If she had died over there, her shadow would not still be here.”

  “I don’t understand it,” breathed Ben. “But it’s true.”

  “You lie!” croaked Higilak.

  “Don’t stand against us,” said Aquppak. “Cross us over.”

  “I won’t!” insisted Ben. “All the Anatatook will be killed. And all the shadows.”

  Ben felt Aquppak reach out for him, a feather touch against his neck. He shook it off. It was only smoke.

  A few of the others struck out at him. He felt only a gush of air as their arms dissolved into puffs of smoke against his skin.

  “Let me go,” he cried. “Give her to me!”

  And then lightning struck. A flash of light so intense it made dark circles swim before Ben’s eyes. The rear of the cavern erupted in a tidal wave of bright amber light and in its center strode a man.

  He was a perfect man made entirely of light. His furs, the hairy skins of ancient beasts long since extinct, shimmered, each fiber glistening as he moved. Tall and broad at the shoulder he stepped forward from a sea of golden light. His oversized head bowed slightly as his eyes, shining silver, took in the scene before him.

  His face, both brutish and perfectly handsome at the same time, brightened. His lips parted in a half-smile, showing perfect teeth.

  His light had an odd effect on the shadows nearby. Instead of burning them away as Ben had been led to believe, the shower of light rendered them more substantial, giving them depth as well as color. The people gazed at each other in wonder. For the moment transformed, they seemed no longer shadows, but real men and women. Ben caught sight of Higilak at last, hugging herself and smiling at the great joy of her new condition. He didn’t see Tama.

  “He’s here!” Higilak shouted. “The Light-Bringer walks among us!”

  The shadows celebrated with shouts of wild abandon.

  “It’s a sign,” the old woman crooned. “He’s come at last to save us!”

  As the Tunrit’s soul lit up the rear of the cave, Ben noticed the ancient paintings on the walls. He recognized this place at last. It was the cave at Black Face.


  The shining beacon of a man spoke to them. “Yes, my children,” he said. “Deliverance is at hand. I brought you into this world and now I shall make you free.”

  The shadows erupted into a frenzy of happy cheers.

  The Light-Bringer stepped up to Ben. He smiled, looking down from his great height. “I have brought you this live-born man. He will set you free!”

  In the presence of the Tunrit’s great light a change came over Ben as well. His skin no longer appeared blackened and burned, but restored to its natural brown color. The people cheered again.

  “They want me to take them across,” he said.

  “Then do it,” said the Light-Bringer.

  “You must know what will happen?”

  “Why, they’ll live free, in the light. It’s what I’ve wanted for them all along.”

  “That’s not true,” said Ben.

  Something was not right here. If the Tunrit could make them real, why hadn’t he done so already?

  Ben regarded the faces of the people lit up with this new light. These were the Anatatook. His people, though torn and twisted. They had been hurting for so long, an eternity. They wanted freedom, release, to be saved from the long night.

  The Light-Bringer’s lip curved in disdain. He looked down on Ben as if he were a little lost pup. “Take your daughter. Take her across.”

  He gestured at Tama, who now stood in front of Higilak. Ben noticed the old woman’s withered hands holding his daughter back. But cast in the Light-Bringer’s golden glow Tama’s little shadow appeared human again. It was his daughter there, just out of reach, looking whole and healthy as if she had never died at all. Her playful little smile, the bright eyes, the shock of unruly hair. Ben’s heart leapt at the sight.

  “Take her,” said the Light-Bringer. “My gift to you. You have only to open the portal, and let the people flow forth. She will cross over with all the rest.”

  Ben was lost. Why was he saying these things? They couldn’t possibly be true. Unless he had got it wrong, unless he was confused and in the dark.