What did Nalor do back on the cliff? I think he tapped into its mind and then tore its head off with his mind. He also had a blue candle. Nonetheless, allowing for her to have one of those wouldn’t give her enough time to reverse engineer Nalor’s methods.
Could I burn it with a burst like I did back at Terianniaq? That was probably her best option. If it failed, then she would go quickly, though likely not painlessly. Then she could stop worrying about all the cruelty and hardness of life.
All out of naked tuuaaq, Orluvoq took a candle out of her pocket and bit off the wick at the top. She checked over her shoulder—still safe—then felt for the light inside her. She watched it bloom and prepared to funnel it to her flame.
She swiveled around and drove all the light inside to the candle. The blast of heat once again swept her by and ripped the bluebody from the ground, tossing it like a snowball in a storm. This time she knew she’d glimpsed a flash of blue before shutting her eyes. Where had she gotten this candle?
She slid to a standstill and watched the desiccated form. Watched it right itself and retake the pursuit. Her heart slid to a standstill. The man’s clothes fell off as he charged her, his entire frontside charred to an unrecognizable black and red—all except the eyes, which oozed a lustrous blue.
No. How is he not dead yet? The obvious answer was that he was dead. Orluvoq had killed him. Nalor’s voice came to her, “You would find them a bit… different than you remember them. Much less enjoyable company.”
Exhausted by overdoses of adrenaline and tuuaaq and an underdose of sleep, she spun about and pitched back into windwalking. I need to keep doing that until its eyes stop glowing, or until there’s not enough of it left to chase me. She denuded the tuuaaq in her left hand of its wax and took another bite. Timing everything so the bluebody’s distance and her channeling of inner light lined up, she swiveled and let off another burst of superheated air.
The scorched cadaver flew backward, crashing across the ice. Orluvoq stopped and waited, breaths coming almost as quickly as her heartbeat. The twiggy black body struggled to its feet, hobbled out a few steps, then collapsed. Cautiously, she approached, slipping in another bite of tuuaaq.
The thing still vaguely resembled a human. No one could have convinced her to try healing it had they brought it to her. It reached up to her with its devastated arms, eyeballess eyes still seeping out the lambent blue.
She sat down a small way off from the laboring remains. Alright, I need to finish it. I have to make the lights go out of the eyes. But as much as she told herself that, she couldn’t. In the heat of the moment, she did what she did, but sitting here in the relative calm she couldn’t help but think of it as a person.
Stupid. You already killed him. You need to show him the proper respect by ending this connection so he can be taken by to Nunapisu. Why was it so much more different—
The corpse heaved up from the ground and threw itself on the girl. She screamed and tapped into the tuuaaq light filling her body, venting another discharge of heat. The bluebody flew into the air and crunched back down. A look at the eyes told her that, finally, it was just a body.
She slumped back and let sleep take her.
Echoes bounced around as though in a giant ice cave as the ground rocked. The echoes got louder until Orluvoq opened her eyes.
“Hey.”
Her vision came into focus and the voice found an identity. Nalor.
“Can I just say that I’m a huge fan?” He chipped off a laugh. “I mean, I thought you were going to die. Thought to myself, what is she going to do, just run until she runs out of candles? ‘To burn this candle to its end is to burn this candle to no end,’ and all that. And then you flip around and land a solid, concussive heat blast. Amazing!”
Orluvoq scowled at the man silhouetted against the night sky above. “You were there? Why didn’t you help me? I was about to get eaten by a bluebody.”
“Ah, yes, I can see why you would be confused.” He pulled her to a sitting position and gave her some fat to eat. “I used a tirigusuusik trick to cast my spirit out of my body and find you. Like a more powerful angakkuq vision. I was belatedly worried that you walking into the den of whatever evil tirigusuusik had already tried to kill you might not be the best of ideas. At any rate, by the time I found you, the bluebody was upon you. No amount of skywalking, even through Arsarneq, would have gotten me there. So, I resigned to watching. And how fantastic you were! A girl of—how old are you?”
Orluvoq finished the fat, then accepted a drink from him. She finished her quaff with a smack of the lips. “Eight.”
“An untrained girl of eight, single handedly taking down a bluebody in the Nuktipik wastes. That’s a spectacle that has a hard time finding its equal.” He shook his head, smiling to himself.
“Did you, um, see Terianniaq?” She drew shapes in the snow, not meeting his eyes.
He tutted. “Did I see Terianniaq, indeed. You’ve made a hot mess of your old stomping grounds. How does that make you feel?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Bad, I guess. It felt good at the time. They ruined my life forever, so I ruined theirs for a while.”
“A while?” Nalor quirked an eyebrow and flitted his eyes to the ghastly remains. “Death certainly does last a while, you cheeky supreme. But better them than you, in my opinion. I believe someone in your old clan had something of a feud going with your parents.”
She chewed on his words, particularly the part about death lasting a while. She would have preferred chewing tuuaaq. “What happens now? Do I die?”
The question plucked a deep laugh from Nalor. “If that’s your wish, you’ll get the dish. But after seeing all the trouble you went to to not be killed by a bluebody, I suspect that’s not what you truly desire. What do you think?”
She grumbled something indistinct, unsure how to correlate her thoughts, feelings, and actions.
“That bad, huh? Well, just to tame any errant thoughts you may entertain: you can’t come with me. As fantastic and talented as you may be, I can’t care for a child.”
“For someone who can’t care for a child, you sure have gone far out of your way to care for a child,” Orluvoq shot back.
“Ha, right you are.” He poked her collarbone. “But I’m not looking for anything permanent right now. Think of it more as… securing my investments.”
“Okay.” Whatever that meant.
“So. You don’t have a clan to go to. You can’t come with me. How’d you like to return to your old ship?”
“Not a whole lot.”
“Not a whole lot, she says.” He gave a close-lipped smile. “And I assume child prostitution is off the board? Right. I think that leaves the only option as becoming Watcher Junior.”
She groaned. “But I don’t want to stare into the darkness for the rest of my life. And Paarsisoq doesn’t let me eat tuuaaq.”
“Well, you’ve convinced me. I’m leaving you here.” He stood and lit his blue candle.
“Wait, no.” Orluvoq grabbed the hem of his coat despite the drenching cold. “Please, take me to Nunapisu. I’ll stay there for a while, then figure out something else to do.”
Nalor grinned. “As you wish.” He threw her on his back and skywalked northward.
Orluvoq stared into the black expanse. The end of the world. Nunapisu. The place where the aurora and narwhals and tuuaaq came from. The place where she could go eternally with one big step. Her parents had died. Her clan had rejected her twice. She had killed people. And she couldn’t even go a whole day without eating at least some tuuaaq.
Every day she better understood why Paarsisoq was so against it. It wasn’t as fun as it used to be. She used to eat it because it took her to a new plane of existence. Now she ate it because life without it was a torturous slog. She ate it because she had to remain on that new plane of existence. False strength. It locked her into helplessness rather than liberated.
The last couple weeks at the end of the world had bored her terri
bly. Paarsisoq made her use the candles and tuuaaq sparingly, as they were never sure when they would be able to get more from travelers. But at the very least, she had concluded that she wanted to live.
Of course, the next day she had decided that death was the finer option. A few hours after that, life took the lead. The life-and-death struggle had continued ever since.
The subdued crunch of snow told her that Paarsisoq approached the cliff. She didn’t particularly want to talk to him, but there wasn’t much else to do.
“What do you see?” he asked.
“The darkness that has no end. It’s like staring at a representation of my life.” She flicked her thumbnail off the tuuaaq in her pocket.
“You know, it’s kind of silly. I once loved a woman who lost a daughter about your age. When you came to Nunapisu, a clanless orphan, it reminded me of our love and I fancied I might raise you in memory of her. It would be a broken version of the broken family I never had.”
“What happened? Between you and the woman?” Orluvoq broke off a crumb of tuuaaq in her pocket and discreetly slipped it into her mouth.
“You know, I’ve helped lots of people in my days, but she’s the person that’s helped me the most. She was only in my life for a short time, then she had to leave. I haven’t seen her since, and I often wonder if she ever found happiness.”
Something twitched in Orluvoq’s heart. I’m not the only person with problems. What sorts of problems has Paarsisoq had? And how many people has he helped? That woman was only with him for a couple days, but she helped him more than anyone. Maybe, just maybe, I could try to help him. Try to be like her.
“Where will you go now, Orluvoq? You are a nearly peerless angakkuq, especially for your age. You could go anywhere, except for Terianniaq, I suppose.”
She noticed that included the option of jumping into the abyss. “I—could I stay here?”
He turned to face her. “You want to stay with me? An old man who’s spent most of his life away from people? A middling angakkuq? Someone with many acquaintances, but few friends?”
She nodded. “Because you accept me. A broken family is better than no family.”
Paarsisoq’s careworn face cracked into a smile. “Shall we make our own clan? Call it the Watchers?”
Orluvoq giggled. “Yes, please.”
He snatched her from the ground and spun her around. “Well then, my daughter, how about clan Watcher has its first official meal together?” She agreed, and they entered the igloo. She spent the rest of the day fighting the urge to eat tuuaaq and only failed one little time.
Evening came early. Winter was yawning and soon it would swallow them whole. Before the sun had completely bled out of the sky, clan Watcher heard the approach of footsteps crunching over the ice. As proper Watchers, they hastened out to greet the traveler.
Paarsisoq exited first and Orluvoq watched him stop dead in his tracks, jaw slack. She hurried out behind him to discover who or what could be so enchanting. Her face broke into a smile and she ran forward. “Kitornak!”
The scullery maid from the ship laughed as the little girl jumped into her arms. “Oh, my dear Orluvoq, I’ve been worried to, well, to Nunapisu about you. I’m so happy to find you alive and well.” She put the girl down and turned to the Watcher.
“Kitornak,” he whispered. Orluvoq saw a tear track down his face.
“Paarsisoq,” she whispered back.
They rushed forward and encircled one another in an airtight hug.
“You came back,” he said.
“I told you I would. I told you.” She sniffed. “And I meant it.”
Wait, Kitornak is the woman Paarsisoq was talking about?
“I waited. Sixteen years. What finally made you come back?”
“Orluvoq started it. We lived on the same ship, then she ran off to here. It wouldn’t work out of my consciousness, letting a little girl roam the ice alone, so I finally left the ship to see if I could find her and… and maybe be a mother to her.”
The pair pulled apart. “Well, you’ve come at just the right time. Orluvoq and I have decided to start our own clan. Clan Watcher. Would you like to join us?”
A smile as wide as the cliff they stood on spread across Kitornak’s face. “I would want nothing more.”
Orluvoq pulled her hand out of the pocket where she had been toying with some tuuaaq and grabbed Kitornak’s hand instead. The urge to take a bite of the tusk prickled inside like mad, but she pushed it back down this time. Real strength?
She turned and watched the crystal dance of flakes glitter orange before the darkness of infinity. In the midst of the tractless expanse, a spine of green and purple lanced forth. Stars winked awake. Her other hand reached up and found Paarsisoq’s. They stood like that a long while, watching Arsarneq crawl through the heavens.
Most of her wanted to be happy, but a darkened nook of her murmured cold imprecations against getting comfortable. After all, love was the precursor to pain. She decided to ignore her darkened nooks, at least for tonight.
When a yawn took over Orluvoq an hour later, Kitornak suggested they retire for the night. Two parents tucked her in. Two parents kissed her cheeks. Two parents snuffed the candles and sang softly of times before and times beyond.
Finally, she was home.
Interlude
13 Years Old
The spire of tuuaaq leered at Orluvoq beneath the midnight sun. As heaven’s fiery ball sipped the horizon, amber dribbled out across the world and splashed against the white tusk. She twirled it slowly in her new mitts, sized for thirteen-year-old hands.
Skimming for moss. That’s what she’d told her parents she was off to do. Not standing on the deck of one of the abandoned ship carcasses a league from home. She needed the two elder Watchers untouched by worry. The best remedy for staving off worry was cluelessness.
For years Orluvoq had followed Paarsisoq and Kitornak’s admonition against partaking of the crooked horn. Holding the itch in denial. Tonight, she would answer a question that had been strafing her all the while. How could she be strong if she only hid from challenge?
The tusk mythologized strength. It filled her breast with an empire of hero-strummed notes, and so wreathed in the echoes of valor, she fancied that the song had been hers. And as it curried her with its sleight, it twined its fetters about her in climbing, cloven knots which she had no prayer of loosing. While she wandered a vagabond in the tusk’s mythology of strength, it purpled her face with its grip.
Helpless. Whenever she locked horns with the tusk, she proffered open invitation to helplessness. Or, she had nearly five years ago. Tonight, she commenced on the path of the conqueror. Before the nights grew dark, she would be able to devour her oldest antagonist without it devouring her. The days of hiding from challenge were over.
She raised the stick of tuuaaq to her lips and snapped off a chip. Boils of nervousness, tumid from years of anticipation, burst in her gut like coughing stars. In seconds, the old effervescence would shatter through her veins in liquid maelstroms. It wouldn’t break her. She would command. It wouldn’t—
It clapped her like the cupped hand of a lightning storm to the ear, and she stumbled from the abandoned ship deck. She fell to the heights of Nunapisu and back. The midnight sun rolled, circling her head like a halo. Snow pillows burst into glamor after golden glamor of speck and sparkle. She led the birds in a choir of laughter.
The euphoria put her memories to shame.
Underlying the entire unearthly moment was the song. That immortal after-hum of gallantry unrivaled. In her head. In her head. It rang of power in her head. It must have come from her. She was the hero the notes proclaimed. Slayer of demons. Savior of peoples. She was Orluvoq, and she could do all.
No. It’s not. It’s not. She managed to inject a thought of her own. It’s the tuuaaq. It’s fake. It’s all fake. I can do this. I will do this.
So, she struggled. Euphoria embrittled her mental grip each time she built it up. Hours r
olled on. The sun peeled away from the far horizon and climbed.
She practiced talking. “Hello Mom and Dad. It’s just me, your daughter, out late or early or, you know, just sort of out and doing stuff, not really important, but fun. Definitely fun. Way fun. Do you guys do fun? It’s night but the sun is up, and that’s fun, but not fun because no aurora and no narwhals, and what if we run out of tuuaaq? Not fun. But still fun. Ha-ha! That’s good. We’re good. I’m just great. Been out late, maybe early. Been fun.”
Right. That wouldn’t make them suspicious. She tried again, pacing round and round, until she could almost say just one sentence at a time. Until almost her thoughts were hers. Until, capillary by capillary, she almost reclaimed her brain. Beneath the ecstasy, she exulted in the victory, incomplete as it was.
Strength. Real strength.
Not helpless.
She fell to the snow, laughing through the morning frost. Not helpless! She could be stronger than the tusk. No more stumbling across the tundra, letting her hands freeze black. No more fighting the itch. No more hiding.
Her laughter rattled on far longer than someone not on the sweet tooth would have shaken for.
The spire of tuuaaq stared at Orluvoq beneath the midnight sun. Should she have been trying it again so soon? After the first success, how could she not?
The bite nipped her tongue with its bitter, chalky pulp, but to her it diffused sweetness through her throat. After the initial explosion of sensation, she set about her exercises of normalcy once more. Walking, talking, sewing, eating, drinking, packing snowballs, rolling down hills, chasing foxes, scaling the abandoned ship masts. She mostly motored through, only going too fast on—well, on all of it. But that was fine. She floated on the cloud of tuuaaq-supplied giddiness all the while.
Orluvoq Page 10
