The Calling

by Ken Altabef

  She smiled broadly, showing a tiny row of teeth, all worn down from a lifetime of chewing the skins. With a deep breath she made sure all eyes were still fixed on her, then began.

  “In the time before time, all was beauty and light. In the Beforetime, no one knew cold or hunger or darkness. People and animals both lived on the world, but there was no difference between them. They were free and interchangeable. A person could become an animal, and an animal could become a human being. Wolf, fox, owl, bear — it did not matter. They were all the same. They may have had different habits, but all spoke the same tongue, lived in the same kind of house, and lived and hunted in the same way.

  “Life here on earth in the very earliest times, the Beforetime, was such that no one can understand it now. That was the time when magic words were made. A word spoken by chance would suddenly become powerful, and what people wanted to happen could happen, and nobody could explain how it was. They could travel effortlessly in the sky, taking whatever form they wished. Anyone could wander between the worlds. For in those days heaven, earth and the underworld formed a whole. Death was unknown; people lived in freedom from sickness and suffering.”

  Higilak glanced at Alaana, no doubt thinking of her sister’s plight. She looked at a few of the other children whose family members had also fallen prey to the same sickness. In the past few days the fever had so spread among the Anatatook that there was not a family among them who did not see some person suffer.

  “Today the unity is broken. All things live separate from each other, their bonds severed, the connections shattered. Now we have spirits and men, animals and human beings. And such is the world that must be bargained with, by the few among us who can still walk between the worlds. The shamans.”

  “But how did it happen?” asked Aquppak. “What caused the Great Scattering in the first place?”

  “Ah, well, no one really knows,” said Higilak. “It was during the Beforetime that one of the spirits rose up, the one which we now call The Thing That Was Cast Into The Outer Darkness, and caused some great trouble. Another came up to battle it, and that one we call the Long-ago Shaman. The battle was long and furious, surely one to rock the heavens themselves, and the end of it saw the Great Rift, the scattering, the Aviktuqaluk.”

  One of the babes in her lap took to squealing. When Higilak bent to soothe the child Alaana found the opportunity she’d been waiting for. She grabbed Mikisork’s hand and pulled him toward the back flap of the tent.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Going to the karigi.”

  “Alaana, we shouldn’t!”

  “Don’t you want to know what they’re doing in there? I do.”

  “I’m not going,” he said.

  “We’re almost old enough,” Alaana returned, “Besides, they’ll never even notice us.” She let go his hand and ran for the karigi. “Stay if you want. I don’t need your help anyway.”

  “My help?” he asked, but she was already too far ahead. “Wait for me,” Miki hissed, running to keep up.

  They approached the karigi, a gigantic tent in the center of camp which the shamans used for ceremonial purposes and community meetings. Alaana shifted one of the round stones weighing down the bottom of the tent and stuck her head under the joint. It was intensely warm inside with all the people packed closely together, and almost everyone was stripped bare to the waist. Many of the women were crying, taking turns telling of their misfortunes. Every family had someone who had fallen ill to the fever and the blisters on the face. It looked as if her own mother might have just finished speaking, for she was weeping the loudest and a few of the others had stopped to offer her comfort.

  Sitting before the people were the three shamans of the Anatatook. Bare-chested Civiliaq sat tapping softly at a round flat-headed drum. Next to him kneeled Old Manatook with his curly white beard, as grim and intense as ever. Then came Kuanak — sour-faced, dour, with a thin mustache and beard and one droopy eye looking sideways out of his creased face. The hood of his parka sported bristly frills of gray wolf hair, and for this reason he was often called Wolf Head. He clapped a small red rattle against the armored chest plate he wore to protect against the bad spirits. His other arm, held raised to the heavens, shook with a palsy he had acquired during some previous encounter with a revengeful ghost.

  Old Manatook and Kuanak began a soothing chant meant to quiet the sobbing women and the moaning men. Civiliaq rattled a withered old sealskin in front of the people in order to blow away their troubles. The rotten old leather made a peculiar crackling sound as he waved it around.

  Alaana felt awfully warm with her head tucked into the sweltering karigi, but didn’t dare pull away. She had to see what would happen next.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” whispered Mikisork. “What if we anger the spirits?”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “Then maybe you should listen to your mother more often. It’s dangerous to spy on the shamans.”

  “You’re probably right,” she admitted, but what she’d seen at Ava’s bedside still troubled her. “But I don’t care. I have to find out what they’re planning to do about Ava.”

  Civiliaq stood up and the three angatkuit broke off their chant.

  “This trouble came here,” Civiliaq said solemnly. “Someone has brought this trouble here.”

  The people said nothing. They looked warily about, exchanging suspicious glances.

  “We must find the cause,” said Civiliaq. He held a solitary black feather which he twirled three times in a tiny circle. He pointed the feather at Kanak, one of the most successful hunters among the Anatatook.

  “Is it you, Kanak?” Civiliaq asked.

  Kanak, looking both surprised and offended, shook his head. “It’s not me.”

  The accusatory raven feather did not waver. “Did you do something?”

  Kanak’s eyes roved around the room although his head remained absolutely still. “Nothing.”

  “You did do something. You did something and we will have it out!” insisted Civiliaq. “Did you look at your brother’s wife?”

  Kanak’s eyes sought out the ventilation hole at the top of the karigi. His head moved from one side to the other as he made up his mind what to do. “Yes,” he said unconvincingly. “Yes, I did look at my brother’s wife.”

  The black raven feather tapped Kanak atop his head. “It is only a small offense,” Civiliaq said. “A minor trespass, and now that it is come out, it is meaningless.” His feather jutted out towards Kanak’s brother, whose name was Mequsaq. “Is it not meaningless, Mequsaq?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the brother.

  “That’s good. And now we move on.” Civiliaq sent the point of the black feather questing out around the great expanse of the tent, carefully examining the faces of the people who sat all in a tangled mass on the floor. “The spirits are angry and this sickness is their sign. What about you, Amauraq? What did you do?”

  Alaana gasped. Civiliaq had indicated her mother. Her face flushed; suddenly it felt difficult to breathe. It was so hot in the tent, especially with the rest of her body still outside in the evening cool.

  Amauraq put her hand to her face, covering her eyes. “I may have scraped some skins while the caribou hunt was on.”

  “I thought as much,” said Civiliaq. “It’s no wonder these troubles have come.” He addressed this comment to the roof of the karigi, and perhaps to the spirits beyond. “When we have so many among us who are careless and stupid.”

  “Enough,” cried Wolf Head. “The spirits are angry, but we must give them what they need. And what they need is the truth.”

  Civiliaq turned to face him.

  “You know as well as I what caused this,” said Kuanak. There was no mistaking his angry tone. He stood up. “What brought the evil here? Somebody did something. We shamans did it. A lapse of friendship, a rivalry, a jealousy. Civiliaq and I distrusted each other.”

  All fell silent in the w
ake of Kuanak’s confession, but Alaana had begun to hear a buzzing in her ears which blurred the shaman’s words. Her head felt like it had somehow blown up to twice its normal size. She reached for Mikisork’s hand where their bodies lay still outside the tent.

  He pulled away. “Alaana,” he whispered. “Your hand feels hot.”

  “Distrust between shamans is an ugly thing, and certain to anger the spirits,” said Wolf Head. “Civiliaq considered himself a superior shaman to me. He challenged me. Foolishly we took our quarrel onto the spiritual plane to test our prowess. In one such contest, he blew himself up to the size of a mountain ridge and dared me to push him aside if I were strong enough. Of course the real mountain became offended.”

  Wolf Head’s typically grave countenance was particularly evident as he detailed these disgraceful breaches. His thorny eyebrows drooped further still; the corners of his mouth down-turned into a grimace of guilt. “Another time we burrowed under the glacier to see who could get the farthest through, but the glacier took offense and tried to swallow us up. We argued, and I left him there to die.”

  “But I forced my way out anyway,” Civiliaq was quick to point out.

  “Indeed,” Wolf Head barked at him. “We were distracted from our duties, we should have been protecting the people, not bickering over who was perceived to be the greater. The fault is our own.”

  The villagers erupted into a wild clamor. The noise filled Alaana’s ears with a roar that set her head to pounding. That was the last thing she heard before the entire scene faded to white.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE THREE SHAMANS

  The familiar contours of her father’s face loomed over her, mist-shrouded and uncertain. Alaana couldn’t hear anything but a wild rushing in her ears as if she was under water. But water would feel blessedly cool and she was intolerably hot. So weak and tired she could hardly move, she was lost, swimming in a doughy heat that smelled like the slop they used to feed the dogs.

  She tried to call out to Kigiuna but her tongue stuck in her mouth. She wanted to say she was sorry for all the wrong she had done. She had questioned the shaman. She had embarrassed her father. She had violated the karigi. She’d been so worried about her sister’s life, she had ruined everything.

  With eyelids half crusted shut, she could not raise her hand to clear them. Alaana tried to make out the expression on her father’s face, but it wasn’t her father’s face anymore. The features had dissolved away into the stern expression, the bristly beard and eyebrows, the long sloping nose of Old Manatook.

  Would the old shaman be willing to help? Could he help? The shaman hadn’t done much good for her poor sister, but that had been Civiliaq. Old Manatook had always seemed bigger and stronger than his brash younger counterpart. Still, Alaana didn’t want to see Old Manatook’s pale face looking disdainfully down at her. She pleaded with the swirling mists to bring her father back, smiling and happy.

  The mist surged forward, blending with Old Manatook’s white hair and beard. A pair of savage eyes appeared dead center as the mist resolved itself into the wickedly leering face of a pale old woman. If eyes could be said to speak, these uttered one word with deadly force. Hunger.

  The hag reached a withered claw toward her face. Alaana wriggled away. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs but only a small cry emerged from her throat.

  The horrible old woman smiled, showing rotten pegs in blackened gums. Alaana had never seen anything so loathsome as the inside of her mouth, which was alive with a mass of writhing worms embedded in rotting flesh.

  Panic seized Alaana. She was alone. Where were the shamans? Where was her father? Most of all she wanted her father.

  As the demon leaned down, the tip of a slimy gray tongue emerged from dry, cracked lips. Its touch was like fire, burning a track along Alaana’s cheek and jaw. The wicked old hag laughed again, bringing a withered breast toward Alaana’s face. It pushed the greasy flesh at her as if to suckle her at the vile teat. Alaana turned her head away in desperate revulsion. The demon shoved the nipple at her mouth, smothering her, but she refused it. Undaunted, it gave the breast a squeeze, releasing a spurt of putrid black slime which splashed thickly against her face. Alaana choked and gagged as that rotten mother’s milk dribbled into her mouth. Her heart raced at the horror of it, but she was helpless to do anything to stop it.

  Looking down at Alaana, Old Manatook saw the demon leering over her shoulder. Alaana tossed fitfully in sleep, her short black hair plastered across her damp forehead. She was a slightly odd-looking girl with a quirky fullness to her lips and a squat, round button-nose, but to the old shaman all children were equally beautiful.

  The cloying scent of red poppy stung his nostrils. He recognized that smell. This particular fever demon was old and virulent, having burned long and consumed many. This disease, sometimes called the Red Ke’le, had recently raged in the south, where the fever and the blisters had wiped out several bands completely. It traveled hidden among the white traders the Anatatook so fervently avoided, passed along freely with their tobacco and sugar. If allowed to run unchecked it would devastate the entire settlement.

  The withered old hag didn’t return his gaze, reserving its attentions solely for the girl asleep on the platform. The depraved ministrations it was heaping upon the child kindled a furious anger in Manatook. Although tempted to recklessly engage the demon, wisdom and experience held him back.

  Kigiuna perceived none of this. He saw only his youngest daughter in grave danger, burning with the fever. Pushing a sweat-soaked clump of black hair from Alaana’s forehead, his fingers gently skimmed the tiny blisters that had begun to form across her brow. It pained him to witness his daughter’s formerly carefree, gap-toothed smile transformed into a grimace of fear and suffering. He gazed contemptuously at the old shaman. “Can’t you help?” he demanded.

  “Not directly,” said Old Manatook. “This fever demon is a strong one. It has killed many in the southlands.”

  “There must be something…”

  “We are all of a piece here. This family, your brother’s family, all the others. What happens to one happens to us all.”

  Anger blazed from Kigiuna’s cold blue eyes. He grabbed the front of the shaman’s parka. “Listen to me. I’ve lost one child already. I won’t lose another!”

  Old Manatook brought his gaze slowly down to the hand gripping the front of his parka. “This does not help,” he said in a surprisingly even tone.

  Kigiuna released his hold and turned away.

  Old Manatook glanced over at where Avalaaqiaq lay bundled up at the far corner of the tent. Amauraq knelt weeping beside her daughter’s lifeless body.

  “We shamans shall make things right,” he said. “Trust in us.”

  The three shamans, dressed in blood red parkas, sat in front of the karigi. A protective circle had been set up to safeguard the spectators, an invisible net in which the demon would become hopelessly entangled should it try to escape the conflict. The circle was represented in this reality by a thin line of black soot poured out along the snow. Kuanak’s idea, Old Manatook considered the gesture a useless waste of time. As revealed by his spirit-vision, the fever demon already had its hooks and tendrils into at least half the people gathered around them. If the angatkuit should fail this day, the entire village would be consumed before winter’s night once again darkened the arctic wastes.

  Most of the able-bodied Anatatook men and women had come to the karigi, forming a rough semicircle of nearly fifty adults and their children. Old Manatook reached his consciousness out to them, drinking in their feelings of good will and support. Their confidence was still not as high as he would have liked. Fear and desperation posed major distractions. Another day of chanting and drumming might bring them better into line, but the need was pressing and time was short. Too many had already fallen ill. The situation was spinning out of control and, as the shaman well knew, loss of control presaged the end of all things.

  As he met t
heir eyes Old Manatook felt their strength flow into him — the devotion of the hunters, the courage of the mothers, the innocent faith of the young. These sentiments lent a welcome boost to his own weary soul. He smiled confidently back at them, showing big white teeth. The task ahead was a daunting one, the enemy formidable. And yet there was no place for doubt. He must believe in their ultimate success.

  He did believe it. Despite the foolish rivalry that had developed between the other two, and he would have much to say on that matter after this ordeal was done, the three shamans each possessed unique talents and abilities which complemented each other. Working together they would meet this challenge.

  Old Manatook continued to bind Kuanak, wrapping his torso in tight coils of harpoon line. Kuanak wore his hair drawn up into a knot and his sleeves rolled back. He preferred to be bound in order to attain the proper trance state. Old Manatook yanked the sealskin cord tight as it wound around again. The pain would help Kuanak focus on his journey to the Underworld.

  “It was our transgression,” whispered Kuanak. “This is our responsibility. You don’t need to go with us.”

  Old Manatook answered, “If we three don’t destroy it, we will all die.” He motioned with his chin toward the assembled Anatatook so that his meaning would be clear. “All of us.”

  Seeing that his knots were good, Old Manatook took a square of walrus leather and placed it into Kuanak’s mouth. The surly shaman bit down on the scrap, cutting off the conversation in favor of ritual words mumbled under his breath.

  Since Kuanak’s arms were tied tightly behind his back, Old Manatook laid Wolf Head’s weapon across his knees. This was a long staff fashioned from a single narwhal horn, ornately carved with the signs and sigils of Kuanak’s spirit guardian Quammaixiqsuq, the master of lightning.

  Old Manatook took his place between the other two, kneeling on a prayer mat woven from long strands of dark musk ox mane.