Orluvoq

by Benny Hinrichs

  Qaffa’s mind mainly registered incredulity. Just moments ago, she’d been raging against the eidolon of her mother. Now here she was, on the side of a volcano, about to get choked to inexistence by a reluctant, sluggard murderer.

  Hands closed on her throat and husky fingers closed off her air and circulation.

  “Excuse me.”

  The pressure relented. It took Qaffa a moment to realize why the voice had been so out of place. It wasn’t that it was coming from a fourth person, nor that that fourth party had somehow found them leagues from humanity under dense overgrowth.

  The voice had spoken in Nuktipik.

  She craned her neck to see a man in a reindeer hide parka, standing in the forest as if he had stumbled upon them during his afternoon stroll. Other than his dress and skin, one thing was off. Beneath a full-sun sky, he held a burning candle.

  “What did you say, tuaku burner?” shouted Kinoki.

  “I, of course, can’t understand you,” answered the Nuktipik. “But I suggest you let her go.”

  Kinoki drew breath to yell at him again, then turned to Qaffa. “What’s that tuaku burner saying?”

  “He wants you to let me go,” Qaffa croaked in Rapai’ian.

  “Well tell him we ain’t letting go of anything.” Kinoki clutched the stolen tuuaaq to her chest.

  Qaffa looked at the newcomer and spoke in Nuktipik. “They’re killing me for tusk. Help?”

  A smile widened his cheeks. “Gladly.”

  She hadn’t noticed him take any tuuaaq, but a chill thrilled through her as his flame flipped from orange to blue. The addicts raised their arms and crouched in defensive stances.

  “I don’t like this, Kinoki,” said Amomo.

  “Shut up! Knock that candle away and you can snap him in half.”

  “But he—”

  “Shut up! Do it!”

  Amomo took one step toward the tirigusuusik man before a tundral breeze swept past Qaffa and the addicts slumped to the ground, spitting up gurgling sounds. The Nuktipik man floated forward, toes skimming the undergrowth. Qaffa finally succeeded in sitting up, and she scooted away from the proceedings.

  “What shall it be?” mused the tirigusuusik, hovering above the pair. “Sucking your lives clean out of you is the most obvious, but almost too obvious. Voices? No, that leaves you a little too free. Ah, I’ve got it.”

  The addicts’ spines arched rigid while their hands quaked. Sliver upon sliver, their eyeballs bulged like a hen adding to its brood. Then one by one they popped out, tethered to their brains by gory cords. Qaffa scooted even farther away, sickened by the vivisection but more shocked that the tirigusuusik could leech from two people at once. Almost she begged him to spare Amomo, but the words never made it to her tongue.

  The two layabouts twitched like half-mashed beetles while ethereal ribbons of blue issued from their vacated sockets. The wispy blue stopped, and the Nuktipik man released his hold. Four plops brought their eyeballs back into their heads. Blinded. Amomo moaned. Kinoki screamed.

  The tirigusuusik reached down and grabbed Qaffa’s candles from where they’d fallen, then floated over to her and offered a hand. “Hello, Qaffanngilaq. I’m Nalor.”

  She stared at it. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  “My story is of little consequence, save for the fact that I am what you are not.”

  “Ugly?”

  He grinned. “Powerful.”

  Qaffa considered the two addicts still wallowing in the dirt. She took the hand. “So, you’re here to teach me? Did my father send you?”

  “No, he didn’t. But I have met both him and your mother. Time is too short for me to get into any practicals today. Would you be interested in a story?” He set his feet on the ground and began to walk away.

  Qaffa paused, looking back at her blinded attackers, listening to Kinoki curse everyone in the vicinity.

  Nalor turned back and followed her hesitation. “What do these two mean to you?”

  “The man,” she said. “He can be better. He deserves better.”

  “If you say so.” Nalor gestured with his head. “Talk with me, I won’t be terribly long, then windwalk back to your home and get some matatoa to come with you to get your ‘friend’.”

  Qaffa gave one last look, then reasoned that even if Amomo had been bashful about it, he did try to kill her. He could suffer for a while.

  “So, what story do you have?” she asked after explaining what sort of flower she’d been hunting.

  “Have you ever heard ‘The Warrior Children’?”

  “It’s a Nuktipik tale?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then no. The Rapai’ians have something close to that though.”

  “Maybe someday I’ll get to hear that one from you.” He breathed in the forest’s earthy odor. “In a time more than ten generations distant, there were two clans.”

  “Only two?”

  “Don’t get smart on me, girl. I have halitosis and I know how to use it.”

  Qaffa’s Nuktipik upbringing had, sadly, left a gap where there ought to be a definition for halitosis.

  “As I was saying, two clans. I’ll call them Hare and Bear, for their names have been lost.”

  He paused and Qaffa knew that lost names should feel weightier, but she didn’t reverence names the same as her parents.

  “Both lived along the ocean shore and fished the waters and hunted the snow fields. When the sun drooped low and daubed igloos gold, their old men sat along the strand chewing the gristle and speaking of ancient heroes. When winter devoured all, their old women huddled together and worked their crooked fingers, spinning narwhal guts into nets.

  “Two hours’ sailing to the south of either of them rested an island girt in green sea and robed in iridescence. Feathered in trees and dappled with lakelets. Once a summer and once a winter, each clan was allowed a day’s hunt to snare the moon fox. A sprightly beast whose coat shimmered gold and echoed silver, then shimmered silver and echoed gold. A nobler garland could not be found among the Hare nor among the Bear.

  “For years they practiced their ways, so conjoined yet always separate. But there came an ill-omened winter where one among the Bear, a certain Valappaa, waxed disdainful of their customs. Five summers and six winters he had failed to fetch himself a moon fox sash. While winter smothered silently, he conceived a second raid.

  “Six nights he hunted on the island with two fellow Bears as coterie. When they returned home with their kills and braggart’s grins, the people of Bear denounced their sin. However, they made no demands save that Valappaa and his hunters could not wear their prizes around the Hare clan.

  “But Valappaa was a man of no small pride. He would not set aside his new ornament and wore it across his puffed-up chest before their sister clan. The Hare, well galled, demanded that Valappaa and his friends cast their moon fox furs into the sea and never hunt on the haven isle again. The Bear did not take well to this. You can bring every accusation against your own blood, but as soon as an outsider does the same, they have brought an accusation against you.

  “For the first time in their long friendship, war broke loose.

  “After the first bloody battle where more than a dozen died on each side, the Hare held council. They needed to ascend to warriorship before the Bear, else the Hare would become rare. After long talks that amounted to little more than puffing mist, Noqarti, the clan angakkuq, stepped forward.

  “‘I have a way we could become warriors and never lose another life to the Bear.’

  “‘What is it?’ they demanded.

  “‘Have you ever heard of tupilaq?’ he asked.

  “And so, he told them of an ancient practice among angakkuit, long since forbidden, wherein the candle worker could reanimate a corpse and bend it to his will.

  “‘Have we not heard of this?’ they said. ‘Is this not the bluebodies of which you have spoken in the past?’

  “‘Not so, my brothers,’ he said. ‘Though both
must need the flame of blue, an angakkuq has full control over a bluebody, but he can only puppet one at a time. An angakkuq has only basic control over a tupilaq, but he can make as many of them as he has candles. After I wake the body, I put a candle in the chest, and it will fight for us until the flame is gone.’

  “With greedy smiles and a meal of caribou heart, they made the pact to do all in their power to help Noqarti, their angakkuq, to field them an army of tupilait. Narwhal after narwhal they felled from the sky, collecting tusks. Every battle-slain man corpse they kept from being claimed by Nunapisu. A constant perimeter of guards they established.

  “When the preparations had been made, Noqarti sent the first of the tupilait lurching for the Bear. No one liked their tendon-tense movements, but a handful of observers trailed behind to behold victory. The living Hares came back cackling with two fresh bodies in tow.

  “‘They died like sick fish,’ said one who had been there. ‘Seven or eight of them in one go. They hacked down the tupilait eventually, but that just means we didn’t have a single loss. We were able to grab two of theirs to make new tupilait with.’

  “The Hare celebrated their great victory with an all-night repast and dance, dancing until they began collapsing where they stood. They only left one guard out at a time, for the Bear had been subdued for a good while. Or so they thought.

  “In the wee hours before Arsarneq had withdrawn from the sky, three angry Bears hitched dogs to sled and stole across the snow fields. They stormed the halls of the Hare igloo and brought slaughter in their visitation. The fest-worn Hares roused a sluggish defense and ended their attackers, though not before eight Hares lay slain.

  “The next night Noqarti sent the bodies over in tupilaq vengeance, but the Hare were in for a nasty surprise. The Bear sent tupilait of their own.

  “The battle raged for well over a month, until the sun poked its nose above the horizon and began its banishment of winter. Each clan suffered losses more grievous than any they’d thought they could bear. They’d fortified their igloos and thrown up battlements of ice thicker than a man is tall. But what they’d done best was die.

  “Down from a hundred twenty each to no more than thirty per clan, food had become scarce. Not that the fish in the sea, the caribou in the field, nor the narwhal in the sky had dwindled in number. All the best hunters had been turned to tupilait. The Hare clan gathered in council once more to uncover how they could end it all before their extinction.

  “‘I have one suggestion we have not tried,’ said the angakkuq Noqarti.

  “‘Tell us, tell us,’ they demanded.

  “‘When I make a tupilaq, I must place the candle in its chest, as you have seen. It then follows a simple instruction until the candle burns to naught.’

  “The clansfolk nodded along. This was why they had made the longest candles possible.

  “‘Any candle would last twice or more as long if we were to make a child tupilaq.’

  “They all sat in glum silence at his revelation. More than half their number were children. It made sense that at some point the young must start contributing to the clan’s survival. But wipe out children down to the last and the clan had no survival. In the end, the clan decided to try it with the sickest child, one who wouldn’t last more than a week. It was no different than giving a babe to the ice for the good of the clan.

  “So, they sent a dead child to terrorize a wounded people. Small in stature, poor in spirit, not a frolick left in its bones. In its chest, a candle burning. In its hands, two seal bone knives. Round its neck, a moon fox sash. Over the bulwark, into the igloos. Through the halls and into rooms, shuffling, swinging, and impaling. Breaking seagrass left for drying. Slicing gutstrings stretched for sewing. Finding hearts in covered chests.

  “Before they stopped it, six had died. Six the Bear could not afford to lose. No one had expected death to wear a child’s form, so no one had countered it until far too late. They mourned their dead, then sent them forth as tupilait, including two slain children.

  “For two more weeks their battles raged in tuuaaq-fueled tableaus of carnage. Raid after raid with tupilaq after tupilaq until the Bear clan angakkuq was slain. That left four survivors of the Bear clan, all children, and four of the Hare clan, one of them a child. Heavy was the price of three moon fox skins.

  “They say the only thing worse than winning a battle is losing one. Perhaps even worse than losing is when there is no victor.

  “Of the four surviving Hares, the two old women griped betwixt themselves, saying how it had all been Noqarti’s, the angakkuq’s, fault. Deciding they’d rather perish than have their survival abetted by the angakkuq butcher of the Hare, they crept to his room one night and opened his throat. The last blood of the war had finally been shed.

  “The Hare, having spent their future on clash and fray, took in the children of the Bear. Yet how could they call themselves either Hare or Bear? Both clans had achieved decimation. Neither remnant would survive without the other. They cast aside the ancient names and chose anew, one to forget the days of blood and death. The two women and their flock of four children petitioned another clan for aid, and somehow, they weathered the next winter. To this day, their descendants can be found on the ice by the sea.”

  Qaffa spent a few moments sorting her spirit out in the unsettling denouement. The stories of the ice. They were nothing like island tales. “They live on to this day? What is their clan name?”

  Nalor waved a hand. “It is neither Hare nor Bear.”

  She frowned. It felt as though if she missed something apparent to those more conversant in Nuktipik. “Is there a grander reason you chose this story? Or do you tell it to every girl you meet?”

  He stopped walking and looked her in the face. “It is a warning. Your mother wishes for you to never touch the blue flame again. I cannot bring myself to give the same counsel. However, I can say this. Know what you hold. Know where you stand.”

  She nodded slow as a setting sun. “I think I understand.”

  “To Noqarti, every problem required a tirigusuusik solution. He forgot there is more to life than flames of blue.” Nalor pushed back a giant leaf and Qaffa gave a squeal of surprise.

  She rushed forward and plucked the tuapi flower by the stem, careful to not let its nectar reservoir drip loose. She drained some into her mouth and let her eyes roll back at the gush of sweetness.

  “You should visit your grandfather soon.”

  “What?” Qaffa’s eyes snapped back forward. “You know everyone in my family?”

  “I knew Paarsisoq before your mother did. He would appreciate a visit from his only granddaughter.”

  She looked at him for the first time in earnest and realized his age defied discernment. “Who are you?”

  He smiled. “I’m just Nalor. But I’ve got places to be, and so do you. I believe you’ll find someone waiting for you back at the palace. Perchance we’ll speak again, Qaffanngilaq.”

  In a blur, he windwalked between a stand of trees and out of her life. He hadn’t even tried the tuapi.

  Qaffa dropped out of her windwalk and took the remaining paces up to the palace at a dawdle, basking in the burned hues of the falling sun.

  “Qaffa,” said Tikai, a matatoa doorguard. He said it like all Rapai’ians, never starting the word far enough back in his throat. “An important messenger came for you while you were away. You’ll find her just inside.”

  Qaffa nodded her thanks and passed into the feast hall. In spite of Nalor’s hint, she couldn’t suppress the mild surprise at seeing her second Nuktipik person for the day. The woman noticed her enter, then pressed herself up from the mat where she sat eating cold ti root. Beside her sat the Rapai’ian prince, Mahiahia. Qaffa’s counterpart who had lived with her parents as she had with his.

  She blinked surprise. “Mahiahia, what are you doing here?”

  “Princess,” the Nuktipik woman said, preempting the prince. Qaffa had seen her in the ice castle before but couldn’t
dredge up a name. “I’m glad they found you. The guards sent someone looking hours ago.”

  “My hunt finished. I came back on my own. What is your message?”

  “Your father requests your presence at Qilaknakka, and he no longer requires Mahiahia’s presence.”

  Qaffa’s heart clenched faster. She hadn’t received a summons in years, yet this one sounded uncomfortably final. “And when shall I meet my father?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.” They usually gave her a week’s notice. “What occasion can I expect to be attending?”

  “King Qummukarpoq did not say. Apologies.”

  Bile nattered in her stomach. The queen would call her back on such vanishing notice to attempt further dissuasion from the blue flame. A king-sent summons for an occasionless occasion? She’d rather face another set of addicts.

  “I will do as my father commands,” she said, hoping she remembered the correct form for ‘command’.

  “Then, if it pleases you,” the messenger reached down to retrieve her parka from the mat, “let’s go.”

  “Tonight?” Visions of Amomo stumbling around the forest bumped through Qaffa’s mind. “That would be most inconvenient.”

  “I can’t force you to come tonight,” said the messenger. “But if you’re not there when the king expects you to be, he very well may come collect you himself.”

  Qaffa spun through the possibilities. By far the least frightening was comporting herself according to her father’s demands. Sending a few matatoa out after Amomo wouldn’t be so bad. He had tried to kill her, after all.

  “Let me gather some things from my room, then I’ll leave with you.”

  28

  Orluvoq

  Orluvoq, queen at the start of the world, wore white on the day she was to obey the king. Not that her wardrobe contained much else of late. Some king long since committed to Nunapisu had fancied white vestments, and no king since then, seemingly, had the authority to supersede that preference.

  Her feet and hands would know no rest. Qummukarpoq had brought his willing sacrifice to the castle the night before. Orluvoq’s impulses drove her to avoid the girl’s face through the long hours. Almost she had taken a blindfold to her eyes from the offering’s arrival until the siphoning’s end mere minutes from now. Evils unseen were evils unreal, yes?