She worried away at the end of a strip of tuuaaq with her teeth, grinding a delicate patina of powder into her mouth. The dryness hit the back of her throat, making her gulp by reflex, and the dusty delight slid bellyward.
Half a minute later, rhapsody bubbled into her little frame. It was nothing like the full euphoric flood an entire bite offered, but her concerns seemed terribly unremarkable.
Enough sulking about, she quoted Mama, then dropped out of her berth. It was time for part two of the plan.
It took little time to gather her few possessions. She gave the dogs a brief goodbye, wishing she could take them all but knowing she could care for none, then scurried to the scullery. Between bulging candles and twigs of tuuaaq, she tried to fit as much meat and fat as she could. If only she were older, then she would have bigger pockets for more food.
“A late-night snack, is it?”
Orluvoq jumped at the voice and whipped about to see Kitornak. The sounds of the storm had masked her coming. “Angakkuit get hungry now and then,” said Orluvoq, “even us little ones. Why aren’t you in your trance?”
The older woman sighed. “Even in my waking dreams, I couldn’t help but think of you. I found no rest in the trance. I thought I might talk to you, and your empty cot told me that would be an option.”
“That’s very nice, but I can’t talk right now. Busy.”
“Busy? Dear, we live on a merchant ship in the middle of a storm-blown ice waste, and you’re an eight-year-old girl with no chores now that everyone’s asleep. I promise you’re not busy.”
“I won’t live here for long,” Orluvoq asserted, “and you can’t come with.” Hm. Why had she said that?
Kitornak’s eyebrows jumped to all kinds of heights. “And where might you be going, child?”
“To get a token.” She said it like the winds had been howling the same fact all night.
“A token… Orluvoq, I don’t think that clan Terianniaq will be very excited to see you again.” The maid planted her gloved hands on her hips.
“Not without a token they won’t.” The girl smiled.
“Which you don’t have.” The woman frowned.
“Right, but I will.”
Kitornak studied her the way a caribou might study a slippery patch of ice. “But where will you get a token of kinship if not from the clan itself?”
“Mama or Daddy, where else?” She shrugged, colored carefree by the tuuaaq.
The woman stared for a long time.
“Daddy said if you didn’t blink enough your eyes would freeze out of your head.”
Kitornak blinked. “You’re going to climb down the ice cliff at the end of the earth to find your dead parents?”
Orluvoq giggled. “Yep. And you can’t come.”
“Now listen here, you little—” She cut herself off. “You can’t leave. The ice will consume you and you’ll be at Nunapisu a lot quicker than you planned. Unless some demon gets you first. You know they say the north is demon country.”
The young angakkuq nodded. “Either I get the token and my clan takes me back, or I rejoin Mama and Daddy. In the end, I’ll be with my family.”
“I’ll be your—” Kitornak cut herself off again. “Look, I understand the desire to reunite with family, I really do.” Her eyes glistened in the nearly nonexistent light. “But eventually you realize they can’t always give you everything you need. Stay here. I’ll look after you.”
Somewhere to turn. Orluvoq burned to believe her, and the mental healing the tuuaaq provided almost allowed for it. But, like the captain said earlier, she was learning the only thing that never lied was the ice. Cruel though it may be, the world was crueler. “What about when Captain takes me to that one place, Atortittartut or whatever? Will you come with me and look after me there, wherever there is?”
Words scraped out Kitornak’s throat then died in her mouth.
The need for mothering clawed and yowled inside Orluvoq like two foxes fighting. She desperately wanted to break and shout, “Please, Kitornak, hold me close and let us start our own clan, just us two.” She sensed something genuine in this scullery maid, not like the other ship’s women who saw that she was cared for, but not that she was loved. The bereavement of her parents had scored a deep trench of love-longing across her heart.
But her mother, who had loved her more than she had loved anything, was torn from her. Love, it seemed, meant little when the world was crueler than the ice that covered it.
No, I can’t love her. That’s the way you get hurt. Love was just the precursor to helplessness and pain.
“If you were an angakkuq, I would bring you,” said the girl. “I would tell you to come run with me. We would find the token together.”
“I’ll—I’ll get skis.” The woman dropped to her knees, taking Orluvoq’s gloves in her own. “You can pull me along as you windwalk. I’ll see that you are sheltered and fed, that no one takes advantage of you.”
The young angakkuq leaned forward and kissed Kitornak on the cheek. “I love you.” Oh. I said it anyway. “Maybe we will see each other again someday.”
Kitornak pulled her in tight and wouldn’t let go for a long, long time. Orluvoq felt something break a little inside. She clearly hadn’t taken enough mental healing. The other woman’s sobs racked her. They might have even squeezed a tear or two out of her.
Finally, they pulled apart and Orluvoq pulled out a candle. Kitornak kissed her on the cheek, then stood. The young angakkuq rubbed some heatmoss together and lit the glim. Without another word, she stepped out into the storm and ran toward death.
Snow burned Orluvoq’s face. She jerked her head up and gasped for breath, wincing out a scream. Light came from a horizon, but she couldn’t guess whether it was morning or evening. A gentle breeze caressed the ice. Her hands were far too cold. Was that even cold she was feeling?
Wait, where are my gloves? Oh, tiaavuluk! Worry boiled inside. Five puffy lumps of rigid black sat instead of fingers on each hand, the darkness spilling over into her palms. If she could see them, she was sure her nose and ears wouldn’t look too different.
She fumbled for a candle and propped it between her legs. Like catching a pesky fly, she gripped heatmoss between the flats of her hands and rubbed until it ignited. It burned her hand, but the pain didn’t register.
Ah, can’t even think. Her whole body shook as she watched the flame flutter. It took another minute before she could extricate some tuuaaq from her pocket and get it crunching between her molars. When the mental healing finally came, she almost cried for joy. No bother from her hands or face anymore.
After half an hour of watching the glim flicker, Orluvoq remembered that her hands were frostbitten. Right. Should probably do something about that. In response to the musing, she laid on her side and closed her eyes.
Spirits only knew how long later, she woke to night. The tuuaaq’s mental healing still washed over her, though not as strong. Her frame shook with such violence she thought the sky was falling.
Finally, bringing her eyes down from the top of her head, she saw the candle, nearly a nub, still aflicker. I sh-sh-sh-should p-p-p-pro— She didn’t even finish the full thought, instead funneling her energy toward talking to the candle.
Warmth.
Ohh. Ohhh.
Tears dripped from her face as she finally stopped convulsing. How long had it been since she left the ship? Seven days? More? She had tried to die more than once, but it was too hard. Every time she woke up halfway to Nunapisu, she couldn’t resist healing herself.
Hands.
She drew from the candle and watched the blackness slowly retreat down her fingers. About the middle knuckle, the flame guttered to nothing. She pawed for another, then finished her banishment of the frostbite.
Her stomach foundered. She took another nibble of tuuaaq, knowing the meager bits of tusk couldn’t take the place of a strip of fat.
I need to find food, or else I’ll never find Mama and Daddy. She looked around while
waiting for the euphoria to hit. None of her attempts at vision had brought her parents’ spirits calling. Of course, there’s an easier way to find them.
Two spirits warred inside her, one dying to live and one dying to die. She found that she feared them in equal measures. If she lived, she would have to suffer life. If she died, she wouldn’t get to enjoy life. If she danced with one spirit beneath the aurora, she frolicked with its antithesis beneath the sun, ever teetering, never toppling.
But that only applied when she wasn’t elated by the tuuaaq. A wave of bliss swamped the young angakkuq. She found it much easier to not worry about living, dying, or anything in between by maintaining a constant state of mental healing.
The fresh surge of energy boosted Orluvoq to her feet and put her in motion across the ice. After following the light of Arsarneq for some time, her stomach complained enough to get her to ask the candle for directions to… somewhere. Food, shelter, no bears. She couldn’t remember quite how she worded it, but she was sure the tuuaaq would take care of it.
Brimming over with impatience and brio, she leapt into a windwalking jaunt. The ground flew by faster than a summer falcon overhead. She laughed at the tiny forms of narwhals swimming in the green light above. Before the sun made its appearance, she came over a rise and felt the navigating tug of the candle pull behind instead of in front. She ditched windwalking for mundane snow walking and turned around.
Following the tug of the tuuaaq, she saw… nothing. Just a hill of ice. She ambled around the rise in the tundra for a few minutes, but she found no food, unless snow could fill a belly.
Discouraged, she took another gnaw of tuuaaq and cut some ice to melt in her mouth. Querying the candle again, it pulled her in the exact spot she sat. Stupid spirits.
Wait, it’s not pulling here. It’s pulling down.
Re-encouraged, she clambered over the hill and down the other side. Sure enough, there gaped the maw of a cave not twice as high as her. The tuuaaq in her system took her into the cave at a nice stroll, no worries about whether hostile beasts might inhabit it.
Immediately, something pierced through her mental healing. Tinged it like a leaky chamber pot sitting in one corner for too long. Rustled it like a breath on the back of the neck when walking in the pitch of night. Stained it like finding blood in your bed and knowing it wasn’t yours. She damped her pace, now acutely aware of every scuff, puff, and drag her feet clanged out.
Around a bend, in the belly of the cave, flickered a light. A pale blue light. It glimmered with a cold colder than the darkest shadow in deepest winter. It wicked the heat from her small body, stealing the warmth she gleaned from the candle in hand. A faint, high-pitched wail stung her ears.
She gulped. What demon emitted frigid, blue light? Tariaksuq? Kigatilik? Ijiraq?
Perhaps if no tuuaaq flowed inside her, fear would have paralyzed her. Perhaps she would have had enough wits to windwalk in the opposite direction for as long as possible. Or perhaps the spirit that was dying to die would have taken her by the hand and led her gently into the light, as it now did.
With measured steps, she rounded the corner.
Five tuuaaq candles rested on five gray stones encrusted with thick gushes of tallow. The votive pillars burned bleak blue, and as they burned, they screamed. In the middle of the damnable display lay a man, his frost-coated lips babbling soundlessly.
Amid her shivering, Orluvoq shuddered.
The scene transfixed her for some indeterminate time. How could the candles take heat instead of give it off? Then again, how could they burn blue? Her own candle fluttered dangerously low. It was either time to get a new one or get out. Maybe both.
Maybe neither.
Many demons looked like humans, but she had never heard of one that could work blue candles. A sprig of hope twitched inside her. If she could take one of the azure flames, then the powerful demon magic might actually allow her to find her parents.
She strode forward. Heat, happiness, and coherent thought sucked from her as she approached the perverse flames. It was as if she had never eaten tuuaaq in her life.
I don’t want this. She whimpered. Her jaw ached from clenching.
But some vestigial force from her earlier decision to take a candle carried her on. The candle in her hand died. As she reached out to grab the candle on the small pedestal before her, she watched frostbite run black down her hand, then arm.
Bad, bad, bad.
Orluvoq’s senseless fingers touched the candle.
The demon’s eyes split open, a jet of blue light spurting out. His head whipped sideways, and his glowing blue eyes lanced her through with cold. He shot to his feet, bolted to each of the candles faster than her eyes could follow, then windwalked out of the cave.
Orluvoq fell to the floor, her shivering turning to quivering as the warmth returned.
What demon was that? And why am I still alive?
She relit her candle with a scrap of heatmoss and pushed the frostbite out of her arm, burning a precarious length of tuuaaq.
But… why would the candle tell me there was food here?
She decided to ask the candle. A stitch in her gut tugged her to a sack against the wall of the cave.
Ah.
She slumped down beside the small stock of meat and fat and stuffed herself with as much as her face would allow. Stomach on the mend, she stared at the stones in the weak light, wondering who had dug how deep to surface such marvels.
If she was running into demons, her travels must be actually getting somewhere. Then again, maybe not. The high north was a plane for demons. On unlucky days, so was the south.
Starting to run out of candles. And tuuaaq. I should probably get to Nunapisu before too long. No reason not to.
With that thought, she took a bite of tuuaaq, blew out the candle, and promptly passed out.
It took several more days to find the end of the earth, but not for lack of trying; it was just that far away. Twice she had diverted her route because of bad premonitions from the candle. That was as close as she came to another demonic encounter.
The most she had ever learned about the compass was that Arsarneq flowed from the north. How far east or west she might have been from Terianniaq, she couldn’t say, but she trusted in the track of cairns she had found. How someone had pulled so many stones from close to the ocean all the way out here befuddled her. They’d even taken the time to stack the rocks in humanoid postures, arms jutting out. Inuksuk, she thought they were called.
In the dying light, she noticed the most curious thing. An igloo sat almost right at the edge of the world. That could be none other than the infamous Watcher’s house—the man Mama thought was brave and Daddy thought was foolish. Nunapisu was endless, and yet she had managed to land smack dab on top of its only inhabitant. How was that for luck?
Beyond that lay the true spectacle: nothing. Absolute zero. Like the universe had yawned one day, then misplaced its mouth. As she came upon the end, she edged forward on her knees.
Now there was a drop.
It went down, down, down. Farther than stacking the aurora on itself a hundred times. Farther than if all the Nuktipik peoples ate a giant serving of tuuaaq and then crashed. To crash there had to be something to hit.
“Tell me.”
Orluvoq startled. Grateful she hadn’t been standing, she glanced up to see a stout man.
“When you look out into the darkness that has no end, what do you see? Beauty? Terror? Hope?”
She shook her head. “It’s not the darkness that I came for.”
A smile quirked onto the Watcher’s lips. “No? Of course not. One so precocious, hardy, and dedicated as you couldn’t possibly have come to feel the void’s embrace. Not at such a young age.”
She waited for him to continue or become impatient, but he simply watched the emptiness. “I’ve come for my parents,” she volunteered, wiping some snot off her face. She should probably find somewhere else to paint with mucus, but ever since losing h
er gloves, her sleeves had acquired many stripes.
“Indeed? An orphan, then? Or were you hopelessly thrust from each other, their final words an anguished, ‘Meet us at the end of the earth?’”.
“Nope, just an orphan.” She peered down the face of the cliff, trying to discern the identities of the few body-shaped blurs visible from this angle.
“Mm. I’ve been half an orphan most of my life. Can’t blame you for looking.”
She looked up at him. “Is that why you came here? Because your Mama or Daddy died?”
The Watcher paused. “That’s close enough to the truth that I think I can say yes.”
She nodded. “And did you ever find them?”
“Find my father?” He sighed. “I’ve only looked for him once. But no, I didn’t find him.” The man’s eyes drifted again to the void.
“Oh, sad.” She coughed. “I’m going to find my parents. Or at least one of them.” Or maybe fall off trying. No, she didn’t actually want to fall off. She either wanted to be with her clan or with her parents again. Falling off would be the end of her body, spirit, and name.
“Your ambitious quest across the ice and down the cliff to dangle above the void would be satisfied by finding just one parent?” The Watcher raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, I only need one token.”
“One… Oh, my dear, what is this business? You seek a token of kinship from your deceased parents? Your clan won’t accept you, I take it?”
Orluvoq nodded. “They know whose daughter I am, whose blood I have. Once I have a token, they have to accept me as part of them. I don’t even need them to love me. Just accept me.”
The Watcher was quiet.
“Watcher—”
“Please, my name is Paarsisoq.”
“Paarsisoq, will you help me find them?”
Orluvoq Page 5
