The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  ALAANA’S WAY

  BOOK FOUR:

  THE TUNDRA SHALL BURN!

  ALSO BY KEN ALTABEF:

  ALAANA’S WAY

  Book One: The Calling

  Book Two: Secrets

  Book Three: Shadows

  Book Four: The Tundra Shall Burn!

  Book Five: The Shadow of Everything Existing

  FORTUNE’S FANTASY: 13 excursions into the unknown

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Ken Altabef is a medical doctor who lives on Long Island. As a SFWA member, his stories frequently appear in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and have been published in Interzone, BuzzyMag, Abyss & Apex, Daily Science Fiction and others. His first short story collection “Fortune’s Fantasy” is also published by Cat’s Cradle press.

  Please visit the author’s website

  www.KenAltabef.com

  THE TUNDRA SHALL BURN!

  Ken Altabef

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Ken Altabef

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  ISBN: 1502962551

  ISBN-13: 978-1502962553

  CHARACTER LIST:

  Author’s note: One of the things readers comment about most regarding this series are the character names. Some readers appreciate that they are (mostly) authentic Inuit names. Other readers lament they have a hard time keeping track of the characters. In hopes of making it a bit easier, I’ve added this list.

  Author’s other helpful note: There is a glossary of Inuit terms at the end of the book.

  THE FAMILY:

  Kigiuna………..Alaana’s father

  Amauraq……..Alaana’s mother

  Maguan……….Alaana’s eldest brother,

  now headman of the Anatatook

  Pilarqaq……….Maguan’s bride

  Itoriksak……….Alaana’s second brother

  Agruta………….Itoriksak’s wife

  Avalaaqiaq……Alaana’s sister, deceased

  Ben Thompson……Alaana’s husband

  Noona………………..Alaana’s daughter

  Kinak………………….Alaana’s son

  Yipyip…………………Alaana’s little dog

  FRIENDS:

  Mikisork………Alaana’s friend, also called Miki

  Iggianguaq…..Alaana’s friend, also called Iggy,

  also called Big Mountain

  Tookymingia….Iggy’s wife, also called Tooky

  Tamuanuaq…..Tooky’s daughter,

  also called Tama

  Aquppak………..Alaana’s childhood friend

  Ivalu……………...Aquppak’s wife

  Manik……………Aquppak’s son

  Choobuk…………..Aquppak’s son

  Sir Walter Gekko…..British spy

  Qo’tirgin………….shaman of the M’gipsu

  THE ANATATOOK:

  Old Manatook… shaman with polar bear

  guardian, deceased

  Old Higilak ………Old Manatook’s wife, also

  the storyteller

  Civiliaq…shaman with raven guardian, deceased

  Kuanak….shaman with wolf guardian, deceased

  also called Wolf Head

  Kaokortok…goofy Anatatook shaman, deceased

  NOT FRIENDS

  Klah Kritlaq……a rival shaman, deceased

  Klah Kritlaq….old Anatatook sorcerer, deceased

  Niak……………..Aquppak’s friend

  Guolna………...headman of the Yupikut

  Khahoutek……shaman of the Yupikut

  THE TUNRIT:

  Vithrok…..…the leader, turned sorcerer

  Tugto………shaman with mammoth guardian

  Oogloon……..shaman with snow sight

  Tulunigraq….birdlike shaman

  SPIRITUAL CHARACTERS:

  Tikiqaq………..Alaana’s tupilaq

  Nunavik……….the golden walrus

  Weyahok……..little soapstone spirit

  Balikqi…………polar bear shaman, deceased

  Orfik…………..young polar bear shaman

  Oktolik……….young polar bear shaman

  Uuna………….one of the lake children

  Siqi…………….one of the lake children

  Ikik……………..large lake child

  Sila……………..great wind spirit

  Tatqeq………..the Moon Maid

  Tingook…………..the Dark side of the Moon

  Tekkeitsertok….guardian spirit of caribou

  Tornarsssuk……guardian spirit of polar bears

  Tulukkugraq……great raven spirit

  Sedna……………..the Sea Mother

  Kktakaluk……….Sedna’s mate, a sea scorpion

  Usinuagaaluk……...the Whale-Man

  Qityabnaqtuq………the golden starfish

  Strixulula……………the owl-king

  PROLOGUE:

  NUNAVIK'S TALE

  Ten winters ago:

  “Tell me!”

  “Don’t worry, ungarpalik,” said Nunavik, using Alaana’s childhood nickname. His spirit-form, a large golden walrus, had appeared before her only moments ago. “I will tell you everything. But first we need a cup of warm tea.”

  “You don’t drink tea,” she said.

  Nunavik, whose name meant ‘Walrus On The Ice’, had been Alaana’s childhood friend and one-time spirit-guide. As a disembodied soul, he didn’t drink anything at all.

  “Of course not,” replied the Walrus, “But a story such as this needs to be told properly. I was thinking of the comfort of my audience. You’ll freeze to death if we stay out much longer.”

  Nunavik was right. Even bundled up in two heavy winter parkas the few moments of exposure to the bitter cold had left Alaana shivering. In the midst of winter, she had been visiting the burial cairns of the Anatatook. The stones glittered with a fine sheen of ice. Frozen completely solid, the graves were almost indistinguishable from the white, crusted ground in the same way the series of low mounds that represented the iglus of the Anatatook winter camp were barely distinguishable from the barren tundra. The polar wastes of Nunatsiaq had taken the dead into its frozen embrace.

  “And you don't look very well, yourself,” added the Walrus.

  “I know,” said Alaana. The past few moons had nearly killed her — a battle with ice demons had left her weak and at the brink of death, and then she’d rushed to the shadow world to face the Tunrit sorcerer Vithrok. “You've come just in time. I need you more than ever.”

  “Well of course,” said Nunavik. “What did you expect? A soul doesn’t live twelve hundred winters and not learn how to make an entrance. Now let’s get you safe inside the karigi.”

  Alaana nodded agreement, but couldn’t go inside without a final glance at the frozen graves.

  Nunavik’s whiskers drooped. His barrel chest deflated visibly. He too, knew the loss of someone he had once loved, a profound event that had changed the course of the mighty river that was his life. “I suppose you have a few stories to tell,” he said sadly. “As do I. Come, let’s go inside.”

  Alaana crawled through the low entrance tunnel to the karigi, a large iglu which served as the shaman’s ceremonial house. Nunavik, who existed as spirit only, entered in no such undignified manner — he merely passed through the icy walls to appear inside the iglu. With a few brisk strokes of a snow-beater Alaana knocked the white crust from the front of her outer pa
rka and hung the garment on a peg to dry. A vast array of her masks and drums and other spiritual weapons were neatly arranged along the snow-block walls. She placed a bit of dried moss in the center of a whale-oil platter.

  The shaman’s eyes were able to see the spirits within all things, and Alaana clearly made out the tiny green soul-light of the moss. “Dear spirit,” she said politely in the secret language of the shamans, “I have need of your warmth and your light. I promise you, if you burn for me you will enjoy being smoke much more than being dried moss. You will be able to fly.” She tapped the green flake and the little spirit, trusting in her advice, sparked bravely to flame. The wick burned, and the whale-oil began to simmer. The shaman shook off her chill, appreciating the warmth as the burning oil shed an amber glow along the glistening ice walls of the karigi. Alaana set a pot of tea to boiling.

  “Let’s do this right,” she said. She dug out a small pouch containing a stash of sugar which the white traders had left and sprinkled a pinch of the stuff into the pot. Her mouth watered in anticipation of the sweet, warm brew. “Now tell me what you know. Did you discover the source of my powers or didn’t you?”

  The walrus pulled his tusks back, which was as much as a walrus was able to smile, and blinked his small black eyes. “Yes, of course. That’s where we’ve been all this time.”

  “We?”

  From one of his voluminous folds of golden blubber Nunavik produced a small lump of soapstone. The gray rock promptly opened its eyes and sprouted tiny arms and legs. “Heya. Heya!” it said.

  “Weyahok!” exclaimed Alaana. She took the stone into the palm of her hand, delighted to see the little tunraq once again. The two friends of her childhood had returned to her. Now, at twenty-nine winters, she felt like a girl again if just for a little while.

  “Speak Walrus!” she said, through a broad, happy smile. “What have you learned? Who is it? Tell me!”

  Nunavik shook his broad, flat head, puffing his golden cheeks indignantly, “Look at the way she talks to me,” he said, addressing his sarcasm to one or another of the ceremonial masks. “I taught this girl how to mindspeak. I taught her how to walk between the worlds, you know.”

  Alaana groaned softly.

  Nunavik turned his attention away from the Moon-mask. “Get hold of yourself, ungarpaluk. I said I would tell you everything.”

  “Well, go ahead then.”

  “As I’ve said before, a tale such as this needs to be told properly. Let’s see. We have the whale oil burning, the tea with sugar…”

  “I had forgotten what a complete fuss-pot you were,” said Alaana. She realized there was no use pushing Nunavik, who returned the comment with a wounded tilt of his head and a wink of one beady little eye.

  “Stubborn old–”

  “Uncle–” said Nunavik

  “Walrus!” they both said together.

  Alaana laughed. It really was great to see him again. “Are you going to tell me?”

  “It all started with your initiation,” said Nunavik. “How many turnings of the sky since then?”

  “Three hands.”

  Nunavik grunted his surprise. “Fifteen winters! That long? Well, yes. Your initiation. Let’s see. As I recall I had finally gotten through to you as that old fool Manatook never did. I suppose he takes full credit for it?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh. Well, it was bound to happen. I was always surprised he lived to such a ripe, and stinky, old age. He never listened to my advice.”

  “He died protecting us, defending the Anatatook.”

  “Oh,” Nunavik said sadly. “I’d like to hear that story...”

  “First, the initiation?”

  “Right, right. You called to Sila in the proper way at last. That is to say, you finally begged him for help. And something answered.”

  “Something came,” said Alaana, “but it wasn’t Sila.” All during her training at the hands of Old Manatook she had been led to believe that her guardian spirit, the most important spirit to any shaman and the source from whence all her strength and spiritual gifts came, had been the wind-spirit named Sila.

  “No, it certainly was not Sila,” said Nunavik. “Sila, I’ve known. He blows out on the wastes of the tundra and he blows above the sea. I’ve encountered The Walker In The Wind more than a few times in my twelve hundred years, you know. And the thing that came was not Sila. That was clear to me at once. But it was a spirit of great power just the same. And ancient. For that spirit I had no name. And that gave me pause.”

  Nunavik struck a thoughtful pose, and what may have perhaps been a tiny walrus smile creased the edges of his long white tusks. “So ever the dutiful friend and Uncle, I decided to follow him. You were spinning up above the ground in a great funnel of air, as I recall.”

  “Yes, he made me a shaman. He forged a link, a connection I can still feel. Without his strength I would’ve been dead already many times over. But lately I feel his power only faintly, and it seems to come from so very far away, as if traveling a long, long wire. But at the other end of that tether, who is it? I have to know.”

  Nunavik cocked his head indignantly. “My blood! I’m coming to it, girl. Have you no patience at all? So little regard for all the suffering Uncle Walrus had to endure to obtain this information for you? You can’t even be bothered to hear about it?”

  Alaana sighed.

  “Now then,” said the Walrus. “I felt the power of that great spirit — so pure and strong like nothing I’ve ever known, and I’ve known quite a lot. And when it turned to go, the flow of energy in its wake was tremendous. I saw my chance. I didn’t want to leave you, but that crusty old shaman Manatook was there to care for you, and I knew how important this would be. If a shaman does not know the true source of his power, how can he be a shaman at all?”

  “Not a very good one,” said Alaana.

  “I’m sure,” returned Nunavik. “Listen. The great spirit went straight down. And let me tell you, diving down into the earth is much more difficult than going under the sea. I had never tried that before. But I was legendary for diving deep. That’s how I got into so much trouble in the first place, you remember. But under the ground the pressure was incredible, the weight of all the earth full upon me, closing in, I almost couldn’t bear it.”

  “Weyahok!” said the little stone.

  “Yes, yes, Weyahok was carried down with me, although being made of stone he wasn’t discomforted in the least. And I drew a little bit of strength from our silly little friend. Just a little, as the pressure closed in. I am a walrus! I’m not meant for that. But it was important to you, Alaana, so I bore up under it. I felt my eyes pushed into their sockets, I felt my spine begin to crack...”

  “You’re a ghost. You don’t have a spine.”

  “Felt like it, I can tell you! It hurt. It hurt a lot, but we clung to your guardian spirit’s gigantic parka like fleas, like a pair of lice on the loose strands of his coat, Weyahok screaming with fright as we went lower and lower. Riding down deep, we would not give up, through rock and fire and pain until at last we were shaken off. Hah! Like fleas.

  “Adrift alone. The great spirit continued to descend. Now we would have to find him again, and with me out of my element, to say the least.”

  “What’s it like at the center of the world?”

  “Aaaackk!” grunted the Walrus. “Why do you interrupt to ask that which I am bound to tell you next in any case? The center of the world? I wish I could describe it. There is no light. Of course I have the spirit-vision as you do, but nothing much to see down there. Except in the bubble! Yes there’s a bubble down there right at the center of it. Your great spirit resides there, amid wonders beyond imagining. I suppose he can create anything he wants.”

  “Then why is he hiding there?”.

  Nunavik’s beady eyes narrowed. “Have I finished answering your previous question? About the center of the earth? No, I have not.”

  “Bubble!” said Weyahok excitedly. “Bubble
!”

  “The bubble does, in fact, hold so many wonders I couldn’t possibly describe them all,” said Nunavik, resuming his own steady pace. “Wonders of light, and taste and smell. A sky of many colors, mountains of glistening bone, lakes of gold, and trees. Such trees! There is forest and sea and tundra all jumbled together, shifting and changing at his whim.” Nunavik’s eyes lit up with a sudden realization. “It was the Beforetime, like a sphere of pure Beforetime thrust down into the center of the world! And I think I know how it came to be there.”

  Alaana refrained from interrupting again, taking a sip of warm tea. She nodded thoughtfully and rubbed warmth into her hands in front of the simmering basin.

  “He has made people there,” said Nunavik, “but they aren’t like men or quite like any other animal anyone has ever seen. They captured us right away, very suspicious types. Their purpose, I learned, is to protect the bubble. But they weren’t ungracious either. They took us in, treated us well. Our host was Arnayak, a good-natured fellow. He was mostly a big white bear, though he possessed a gigantic pair of luxuriously feathered wings just like the snowy owl. I used to watch him fly — what a sight! His wife was a woman with the graceful features of a caribou princess and the downy fur of a white hare, exquisitely beautiful. I had another friend there who was both a whale and a walrus. I could go on…”

  “Weyahok!” said Weyahok, which happened to be both his name and the word for ‘stone’.

  “Yes there were people made of stone also, and water and fire!”

  “What do they all do down there?” asked Alaana.

  “The same as we do. Eat, sleep, make love. It’s a peaceful place. They really didn’t know what to do with us. Don’t get many visitors I suppose. But their charge is to protect him. They wanted to be certain about us.”

  “Did you get to see him?”

  “No,” said Nunavik, “but after a while their tongues loosened a bit. They can’t help talking about him, they love him so. They told me of his glorious palace at the center of the bubble where the stones are made of light and the air is sweet ambrosia. Weyahok and I, never losing sight of our goal amid all these marvels, waited for our chance. Curiosity — that’s always been my downfall. Every time. At last we snuck away and undertook a journey to the palace.