The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  “Tiki,” he said, “you shouldn’t have come here.”

  “I’ve come to help,” said the tupilaq.

  Kinak shook his head, pulling the furs up to his shoulders. It was dark in the tent and growing darker as a weird pall fell over the place.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” said Tiki. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you.” Tiki had known this boy for more than ten years, had played with him and protected him. Whereas the adults among the Anatatook held the tupilaq at a respectful distance, tolerating its frightful presence in deference to their shaman, its relationship with the children had always been good.

  “Tiki, get away!” said Kinak.

  He’s not afraid of me, thought the tupilaq, he’s afraid for me.

  The lines of the tent slowly crumbled away into flakes of darkness; Tiki heard the sound of ocean waters rushing, thick oily waters, poison. As frequently happened in dreams, the tent suddenly transformed into another place entirely. A horrific monster’s lair, a smoky cave full of oppressive gloom, the last place anyone would ever want to be, bones crunching underfoot, stale stink heavy in the air, rotting meat.

  Ominous shapes going past in the darkness, large and shaggy creatures grumbling, snorting.

  Those are the things he’s afraid of, thought Tiki. But it was so hard to see them clearly.

  Tiki stood up bravely amid the circle of ravening apparitions.

  “No!” said Kinak. “No! Go away. I don’t want them to get you.”

  What are they, wondered Tiki, to plague this boy? The creatures lumbered closer, barking ferociously and then shuffling back. Tiki scented their rancid breath, heard the gnashing of razor teeth and icy claws.

  Kinak, terrified, let out a long bawl of horror.

  “This is not your fault,” said Tiki. “These are the doubts and fears of your mother.”

  “My mother isn’t afraid of anything.”

  “Not for herself. But she fears for your safety. She fears you’ll get hurt or killed like your sister. Or tortured like your father. She believes they suffered because of her mistakes. She fears for you.”

  Now they were called out, the creatures became even more aggressive. Several huge hairy monsters surrounded the tupilaq, moving in for the kill. Little Tikiqaq stood firm.

  “But don’t worry,” it said. “I’m not afraid of those things.”

  Tiki raised its voice, baring the needle teeth that filled the seal’s mouth. “I don’t ever fear for your safety Kinak, because I know your mother won’t let anything happen to you. Your mother will protect you. Of that I am always certain. Whether the shaman realizes it herself or not, I have no doubt in her.”

  “Neither do I,” said Kinak.

  “Then this should be easy,” said Tiki.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I am going to kill them.”

  “But you don’t kill…”

  “I gave it up a long time ago,” said Tiki, “but killing is what I was made for. This I can do.”

  And this it did in spectacular style. From the raven’s beak came a blood-curdling squawk that froze the monsters in their tracks. Tikiqaq leapt forward, claws sizzling through the smoky air. It flung itself from one creature to the next, striking at their weaknesses. Their vulnerabilities were plentiful; the beasts were made entirely of weakness, for Tiki did not at all believe in their power. They were illusions of its master’s folly, insubstantial and harmless as smoke, because they were not true.

  The tupilaq was a whirlwind of claws and teeth, but its most effective weapon, its only true weapon, was its unshakable faith in its master.

  When it was done, Tiki awoke, still kneeling beside the sleeping pallet. Kinak sat up amid his sleeping fur. The young man looked gratefully at the tupilaq and smiled. There was no doubt. He had been released from the night terrors that had plagued him for so long. Alaana would be pleased.

  CHAPTER 36

  A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE MOON

  Annigan the Moon-Man awoke with a start. His first thought, which was always his first thought upon awakening, was ‘Is it time?’

  Is it time?

  He rose from his pillow of cloudstuff and forced sleepy eyes awake. Through a convenient peep-hole cut into the wall of his gigantic celestial iglu, he peered down at the sky below. Indeed, the fiery glow of sunset had already laid its first stripe across the Northlands.

  He jumped out of bed to crawl through the entrance tunnel. He had slept late. His Moon-dogs whined for their breakfast as he passed, but he paid them no heed. He strode across the frozen wastes of the Moon, admiring its supreme desolation, a cratered expanse of milky white crust and flaked ivory dust. He paused, regarding the blue-green orb below.

  Sunset, which was born of the passion of his ex-wife Alakrasina, was a spectacle he did not ever miss. Its fiery glow wrapped half the planet as she raged at her estranged husband in the sky. At him. Yes, Alakrasina had always been a very passionate woman.

  Annigan smiled.

  He remembered his young bride as she had first appeared on the Moon, her long raven hair, the high, proud cheekbones, her face partly hidden by half of the shaman’s Moon mask. At last a companion to walk the empty sands of the Moon. A soul-mate. He had never felt such excitement. He remembered their first embrace during the long, empty hours of the night, beneath the starry sky. She had looked back at him with a passion that matched his own.

  Yes, he remembered the intensity of her tender devotions as they had been lavished upon him, and the love she showered also upon their beautiful daughter Tatqeq. A loving bride, a beautiful family. Annigan had felt such exuberance in those times; he beamed down from the sky with a blaze of ethereal light, swollen with pride as he drove the tides to boisterous extremes.

  All gone now. Blown away, with the wind.

  He stood there for a long while after sunset, shining down at the world below, although admittedly his light was not as bright as before. His moonbeam eyes watched carefully, witnessing all that transpired among the softening crests of melting snow and the spinning jumble of icy floes. It was a very short night, so far into summer, and most of the people were asleep, exhausted from their many labors of the long day. Some few were still about, thankful for his full Moon glow above. One man glanced gratefully upward, lost out on the flats and trying to find his way home. And the beasts of the field were also thankful for his light as they walked the plains — wolves stalking their prey, ground squirrels and foxes in search of food, caribou picking for a late-night snack of moss or lichens, snow hares seeking mates.

  As he presided over the solitary creatures of the night-time world, the sleeping world, Annigan felt so very alone.

  The Moon recalled the dark times, that long stretch of unbroken night that followed the Great Rift. There was no sun in the sky, and no light for Annigan to reflect back onto the world. All was dark. He was dark, a dead rock circling the sky unseen. A time before the sun, a time before there was love. The Tunrit scrabbled for life down below, all but unknown to the blind, dark Moon. That had been a pitiful existence for him, a maddening epoch of captivity and isolation, a punishment undeserved. The taste of the Beforetime had still tingled on his tongue, a glory forsaken, a paradise lost. At last the Tunrit called Truth brought the sun, lending him light and purpose, and his life became a little less lonely. Lonely? In those days, days before Alakrasina, he hadn’t even known the meaning of the word.

  He recalled the fevered yearnings of Alakrasina as she called up to him from the world below. How she had loved him, gazing endlessly up at the sky, how she had adored him. He, who had privy to all the dreams of men drifting up from the night-time world, had never witnessed such a marvel. She was like a mirror. All his own hopes and desires were embodied in the soul of that one woman.

  No more. Betrayed. And gone.

  Sunset long over, she had retired to her sleep amid her gulls and sparrows in the dark night of the Upperworld.

  Annigan cast one long look out at the stars above, and tu
rned away. Time to feed the dogs. He plodded back to his gigantic iglu. His team of three waited there, milling excitedly around the kennel. He never bothered to tie them up. Where could they go? They were as trapped as their master.

  The gigantic huskies circled their master, tails wagging gaily, great gouts of Moon mist clouding their faces as they panted and yapped at him. Their shimmering fur, made of moonbeams and star dust, glowed silver-white. Annigan tossed tidbits of moonstuff to them and watched them eat. This celestial food satisfied dogs who were made, unknowingly, of moonbeams themselves. Did it satisfy him? How could it? What was there for him? These long years there had been only one thing, one woman — so long gone.

  The Moon-dogs were not strictly real. What companionship they could offer was merely a trick of his own light. But still he must keep them fed and fit. He lashed them to his sledge, which was made from the massive jawbone of a blue whale. He ran them around and around, taking the team through their paces, calling out the commands, which echoed back to him in the night.

  After a while he unhitched his team, tossed them some few more treats and walked on. The short night was already drawing to a close. Perhaps, thought the Moon-Man, he might yet have some company. Maybe a shaman would visit. He sat atop the glittering dome of his celestial iglu and waited. He waited and waited but no one came. It was a rare thing for a shaman to make a spirit flight so far, a difficult task for them to send their spirit all the way up to the Moon. It hardly ever happened any more.

  He stared absently again at the night-time world. All asleep now, deep in the night. Peaceful. Lonely.

  Oh, he thought suddenly, he had almost forgotten to raise the tide. He was getting so old and forgetful.

  Annigan climbed down from his high perch and walked to the edge of the Moon. He was late, but hoped nobody would notice. He gazed down on the vast blue ocean below, marshaling once again his great force of will. The beach must be scrubbed clean, the sea beds raised, the fish brought close to the fishermen’s nets along the shore. He took a deep breath, gathering strength from whatever deep reserve he had left, and pulled. He raised the vast bulk of the sea as if he were pulling a blanket across a swaddling baby, an awesome show of power which was not even hard work for him. But he was weary of doing it, deep down in his bones. Weary.

  As he tugged, he noticed a pale white beluga whale swimming toward the rising surface. As it breached, Annigan looked deep into the whale’s eye.

  Could the whale see him, he wondered. No, he was much too far away. But it could detect the moonbeams glittering on the sea-foam above.

  “I see you,” Annigan whispered.

  So then, alone, the Moon-Man composed a poem:

  “Beluga, beluga,

  Beneath the vast water’s sea,

  Look up, look up,

  Cast your floating shadow over me.”

  He imagined a storm at sea and added:

  “Through wind and through gale,

  Turn and spread your weathered eye,

  To my lonely roost here,

  At center of a cold, darkened sky.”

  He spent a long while debating whether he should replace ‘center of a darkened sky’ with ‘amid the darkened sky’ but decided at length to stick with his first inclination.

  Annigan smiled, thinking the rhyme not all that bad. He had written thousands of such poems during his lonely vigils in the night. No one would ever hear them. No man would ever sing them.

  He was growing tired and felt glad the night was nearly done.

  Having lost track of time, sunrise surprised him as it broke over the world below. The fiery ribbon rose across the horizon, painting the tundra red, setting the world aflame. Alakrasina.

  “She misses you,” said a warm, soft voice.

  “She regrets nothing,” he said.

  An alabaster hand pulled his shoulder gently backward and Annigan beheld the lovely face of his daughter Tatqeq, the Moon Maid. A young woman whose smooth, milky skin shone with his glittering moonlight. Her face was round and plump with playful cheeks, a small dainty nose and pale, smiling lips. Wet with light, her long white hair shimmered and sparkled.

  “She burns with shame,” she said. “Can’t you see that?”

  “No,” said Annigan.

  “Let me speak for my mother,” said Tatqeq.

  Why not, thought Annigan? His daughter was, after all, the living embodiment of the spirit of romance.

  Tatqeq held a sad, sincere look in her silver-gray eyes. “She made a mistake. Can’t you forgive her?”

  “She said this to you?”

  “Not in words, but I know her heart.”

  “I knew her heart once also. But it proved false.”

  “Can’t you forgive her?”

  “No,” he said. “I can not.”

  Tatqeq puffed out a frustrated sigh. Then she changed tack. “There’s something happening on the dark side.”

  “It’s daytime soon,” he said. “I’m tired. I would go to sleep.”

  “I felt something there,” she insisted. “A pull. A strange pull. It doesn’t belong.”

  “Let your brother handle it,” said Annigan. “I want to sleep.”

  “That thing is not my brother,” she said.

  Her brother Tingook, also called The Dark, reigned over the far side of the Moon, the side where the sun’s light never reached. Her father had created Tingook out of the black rock on the backside of the Moon after Alakrasina had gone away, as a sort of an experiment. Annigan believed he could create a son of his own, without need of a woman’s touch. It had not gone well. Tingook was a twisted spirit, loneliness incarnate, a relentlessly bitter soul, maddened, forever incomplete. He presided over the lost souls that were drawn to the Moon, deciding their fates in the afterlife, his judgment most often harsh and cruel.

  Her brother, an abomination who had no use for love or romance, hated her most of all. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said. “If anything is happening on the dark side it is the province of Tingook to deal with it and nothing to do with me.”

  Annigan leaned forward to kiss his daughter on the cheek.

  “Good night, my love,” he said.

  “Good night, Father.”

  The Moon-Man began his walk toward the iglu.

  CHAPTER 37

  LEFT FOR DEAD

  As he lay dying, Aquppak thought of his two sons, Manik and Choobuk, who still lived among the Anatatook. They would never find his body; they would never bury him, or know what had happened to him. Perhaps it was best that way. He had wanted to show them all the things he could do, the skills he had learned, to teach them and earn their respect. Now, broken and alone, as he gasped his last breaths in the slush, all he could teach them was how to come to a bad end. Had he missed Manik’s manhood ceremony yet? He couldn’t remember. It was better they didn’t know what had become to him.

  He drew breath with much difficulty now, as if he hadn’t even strength enough to work the bellows of his lungs. Each moment was a struggle, but there was no longer any pain. He could only see white and more white, and didn’t know whether he lay face up or face down. Too late. Too late to change any of it. No hope.

  “Rise up!” said a voice. Was it Putuguk? That old horror Putuguk?

  “Go away,” Aquppak rasped. “I’m done.”

  “You will hear me,” declared the stranger. It was a strong voice with a deep, resonant tone.

  Something rolled Aquppak over. He imagined a wet muzzle nudging his shoulder. Perhaps these were wolves, come to pick his bones clean. Talking wolves? What did it matter?

  “Go away, wolf.”

  Aquppak’s eyes opened.

  He saw a man’s face, a face unlike any he had ever seen before. For this man, it seemed, was composed of bright white light. Tall and broad at the shoulder, the man bent over him. He was clad in furs of bright light, tailored in a strange loose-fitting way. Most impressive of all was his oversized head with its wild crest of hair, massive overarching brow, and dee
p-set, glowering eyes.

  “I am Vithrok, known also as Light-Bringer, though some call me Death-Bringer.”

  “Then you’ve come just in time,” said Aquppak.

  The handsome face smirked. “And what if I said you need not die today?”

  “I’m tired. I want to sleep.”

  “Fool!” said Vithrok. “I tell you, you can walk again. I will heal your body. Make you new again.”

  Aquppak’s eyelids fluttered. “Raven? Is that you, trickster?”

  “Idiot! I’m offering you a choice. Live or die. Hurry up. Your light fades. Make your decision before it is too late.”

  “Go away.”

  Vithrok stared down at the dying man, half-buried in the snow. He didn’t think much of human beings in the first place, most certainly not this crawling little worm. How dare such a pathetic little creature refuse him? Enraged by this treatment, Vithrok held back a killing blow. The man was very close to death already. He peered closer. Yes, this man was Aquppak.

  Vithrok had been well acquainted with Aquppak’s counterpart among the shadows, a dauntless spirit, a man who would never give up, nor lay down to die. But hopelessness had eventually caught up to this version of the man. His soul flickered weakly, at the point of death. He had already given up. And yet Vithrok believed this was the man he needed. He desired an agent among the living, someone to do his work while his concentration was focused elsewhere. Once Vithrok began the great pull he didn’t want to be bothered with the affairs of human beings, or anything else.

  Vithrok reached out, sending tendrils of pure energy from his spirit-form. He sparked Aquppak’s soul gently, then went to work on his body. Slowly, Vithrok exercised his strength of will, forcing shattered bones to knit themselves back again. It was painstaking work. Vithrok ran his mind across the delicacies of the broken spine, the pulped legs and arm. The man’s spirit was weak, his body easy to command and manipulate. The bits and pieces formed an intricate puzzle, as Vithrok melted them within their pockets of flesh and bade them crystallize again.