The Calling

by Ken Altabef

  Again, Old Manatook intoned the ritual words. This time he spoke for them all:

  “We stretch forth our hands,

  We put forward our feet,

  Guide us. Guide us!”

  Alaana sensed the rise and flow of energy within the tent, as a fish must feel the eddies and currents of a tidal pool. The tide swept forth from the people, raging toward the shaman who directed the flow into the heart of the stricken man. Old Manatook was the center. His back was turned to Alaana, a silver portal swirling all around him.

  Alaana’s ears were filled with a great rushing sound that drowned out the voices of the people. An entrance to the realm of the spirits gaped before her. The grotesque moaning and sighing of the long-dead called to her from across the divide. On the other side a frightening impression of the great spirit Tornarssuk loomed over them. A gigantic figure covered in matted white fur and bathed in starshine, seething with unbridled power and fury. Carrion-breath that stank of fresh kill. Enormous teeth and pointed black claws.

  She stared up at the immensity of the spirit. All the air left her lungs. Surely this was not something that the eyes of human beings were meant to look upon. Her heart pounding, she struggled for breath. The gigantic spirit-bear swung its huge black eyes down toward her, eyes that glittered with the light of stars.

  Old Manatook’s voice rang in Alaana’s head saying, “You should know this spirit. Trust me. Just take the step.” One step. But what frightening and unknowable things awaited her on the other side? It felt too much like falling from a great height into an unknown abyss of utter darkness. How could she trust Old Manatook would be there to catch her?

  Her head dizzying, Alaana swayed on the verge of passing out. It seemed too much like death. To proceed voluntarily toward death, to take that fateful step, was too difficult. And then it was too late. Old Manatook had found the solution already. The deed had been done.

  The cause of the trouble, having been extracted from Putuguk’s soul, lay writhing in Old Manatook’s outstretched hand. From the elbow upward, the shaman’s arm appeared blanketed with white fur, and clutched in the black claws of his fingertips was the agiuqtuq.

  The sight of it caused Alaana to retch in horror.

  “I see nothing,” whispered Kigiuna. He nudged his wife’s shoulder. “Do you see it?”

  “Of course not,” replied Amauraq curtly, irritated that he had interrupted her rapture. “Something like that, surely all eyes must be blind to it but the shaman’s.”

  Old Manatook held his trembling hand on high, clenched in a position resembling a claw. Though the fingers wrapped themselves around empty air, the old shaman stared intently at the hand as if it throttled some venomous catch.

  Alaana’s face had gone deathly pale. Kigiuna started to rise from the ground. If not for Amauraq’s restraining hand pressing hard on his shoulder he would have rushed to his daughter’s side. He shook off her grip, but the warning lingered. Not here, not now. He held himself in place.

  His little girl was wide-eyed with terror. But of what? There was nothing there! What did she see? What was happening to her? The chanting, the lifting of heads — those things seemed harmless enough — but he would not stand for Alaana being tortured with fear over things that most likely didn’t even exist.

  He stood up.

  Alaana gagged as the bitter taste of bile rose in her throat. Not more than an arm’s length away, the agiuqtuq was the most horrible thing she had ever seen. It writhed and twisted at the end of Old Manatook’s arm, threatening at any moment to break free of the shaman’s grip. A quivering shape composed entirely of blood, resembling nothing that had ever lived on this earth, it moved with the desperation of a mortally wounded animal, thrusting its crimson tentacles first one direction then another.

  Old Manatook tightened his grip on the corrupted name-soul. In his opposite hand he took up a gilded ceremonial arrow, pointed at both ends. He slammed the base of the arrow into the driftwood platform beside Putuguk’s head. Then, with a sharp, confident motion he impaled the agiuqtuq onto the upturned barb of the arrow. He stepped back, and Alaana could see his shoulders trembling slightly in the aftermath of the effort.

  Impaled on the stick, the name-soul no longer seemed quite so terrible. Drawn forth by Old Manatook’s hand, brought out into the world, exposed and alone, it shrieked and trembled. The agiuqtuq was afraid. In a horrifying way Alaana recognized the essence of Nalungiaq within the shifting mass of red jelly. Nalungiaq, who had always been good to her, offering a gift or a joke, and smiling down with kind, soulful eyes. Poor, dear, Nalungiaq.

  Old Manatook lost no time. He yanked the arrow from the wood, lifting the ceremonial bow, and notched the arrow.

  “This dart will speed Nalungiaq’s name on its way to the Moon,” he said, “where it shall reside until it sees that I have made amends for the improper treatment it has received from his family.”

  He shot the arrow up through the vent hole. Alaana noted the angle of flight carefully. The arrow had been aimed so that it would come down far from the camp, out of the way of the dogs and tents.

  A few of the men grunted encouragingly as the missile was released. All eyes went to Putuguk. Old Manatook, perhaps knowing the result already, gazed instead at the faces of the crowd as they flushed with relief and happiness.

  Putuguk sat up on the platform, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands, and a great cheer rose up within the karigi. The excitement nearly burst the tent skins.

  ***

  To Alaana’s delight a celebratory feast followed the spirit-calling. Unfortunately she couldn’t stop to participate. She had shaman work to do.

  Evening was drawing near, but it was still warm enough that hoods were thrown back to reveal smiling faces. Children ran back and forth outside the karigi. Women cut up arctic char fresh off the drying rack, passing out the morsels of red meat as fast as they were grabbed up.

  A satisfying feeling of harmony filled the camp. Laughter rang out and gossip was exchanged on light-hearted subjects that strictly avoided the sensitive disclosures of the spirit-calling. Several joyous singers competed for the attention of the crowd but, judging by the cheers of the men, Tugtutsiak’s deep, melancholic voice won the day.

  The air swarmed with clouds of summer mosquitoes. Alaana sidestepped Maguan and his friend Ipalook, who were doing an energetic dance that incorporated the swatting of the annoying pests as part of the routine.

  A group of women, a few of them heavily pregnant, tended a big pot of caribou ribs. They had a real fire going under the cooking pot, a rare sight, using dried willow shoots gathered the previous spring. The tantalizing smell of sizzling snow goose filled the air.

  Putuguk stood near the pot, talking with his daughter and Kigiuna.

  “How do you feel?” Kigiuna asked.

  Putuguk smiled with the few half-rotten teeth that remained to him. “Tired, old, barely able to walk.”

  “Good,” returned Kigiuna, smiling. “All is well again. We were worried.”

  Putuguk looked around at all the happy faces. “It’s good that people still care.”

  “Of course we do,” said Tikiquatta, “You should have seen them, Father. All in the karigi. All worried for you. And Old Manatook transformed himself into an enormous white bear, right there in front of all of us.”

  Kigiuna clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth, indicating that women should not intrude into men’s conversations. He snickered at Tikiquatta’s silly, wide-eyed expression. He thought Old Manatook’s impersonation of a bear hardly ranked as a transformation. “But what happened?” he asked of Putuguk. “What did it feel like?”

  “I didn’t feel anything. I was asleep.”

  “But you wouldn’t wake up…”

  Recognition creeped over the old man’s eyes. “I remember a bad dream. A bad taste in the mouth.”

  “What kind of bad taste?” asked Kigiuna.

  “I don’t know. It’s not important. I woke up
.”

  “And the dream?”

  Putuguk’s craggy face sagged under a dreadful far-away look. “A dark shape was over me, pressing me down. It was like thick black smoke, choking my air, and a huge hand with fingers as wide as tent poles, holding me still, wanting to crush the life out of me. It chills me to think on it too much. I don’t want to remember.”

  “Leave him be,” urged Tikiquatta. “He shouldn’t speak of it. Do you want him to fall ill all over again?”

  Kigiuna took offense at her tone but Putuguk said, “She’s right, she’s right. Just a bad dream in the night. All is well now.”

  Aquppak ran up to his grandfather. Having begged a choice rib from the stew pot he presented the steaming prize to Putuguk.

  Alaana headed away from the camp, passing close to the kennel. The dogs had all burrowed into the snow bank under the kennel posts to escape the raiding mosquitoes. They howled for their share of the food. Alaana chuckled, thinking she much preferred their noise to Tugtutsiak’s horrible singing.

  ***

  Sometime later, Kigiuna circled the outskirts of the camp. His daughter’s trail was not difficult to find. The soft, wet snow melted a little more each day, erasing most of what had gone before, but was still deep enough to set new tracks.

  He made his way down a slope toward a shallow valley to the west. He saw no one out on the plain. The onrush of dusk limited visibility, and there were too many hillocks and rocky escarpments between the camp and the distant cliffs, already in deep shadow, where sight of the girl could be lost.

  Kigiuna kept up a brisk pace. Usually a long walk across the barren, windswept tundra went a long way toward soothing the irritations of camp life, but even that small enjoyment was impossible for him now, so worried was he about Alaana’s disappearance.

  It didn’t surprise him that Putuguk could remember nothing, as if his ordeal had never happened. Maybe nothing had happened, just a bad dream in the night and a foul taste in the mouth. But what had caused that taste? Had Putuguk eaten tainted food? Or had something been put into the food to make him sick? It occurred to him that all of this could perhaps be Old Manatook’s doing. Poisoning Putuguk, and then creating the illusion of having cured him to make himself look important.

  It wouldn’t do to voice such suspicions in front of Putuguk or Tikiquatta, so Kigiuna had stilled his tongue, swallowing his own bad taste in the mouth. He was already disliked by some of the families. People had distrusted him ever since he was a child because of his blue eyes. Add to that a few lapses of temper in his younger days, certain rash actions and loud words which had earned a reputation he’d never been able to shake. It didn’t seem to matter how freely he laughed and joked with the other men or that he did more work than any of them. They still thought him hotheaded and as much as he fought to hide it, he knew his temper occasionally seeped through the cracks in his smile.

  For the same reason he dared not oppose Alaana’s training. Old Manatook’s influence was a force more powerful than the tides, and more dangerous. If one angered the shaman it was too easy to become outcast. And to be outcast was to starve. No man can hunt seal by himself, unless he knew precisely which air hole it would come up.

  And also there was that thing the old shaman had said, his warning that Alaana might die if she didn’t complete the training. Kigiuna was not certain enough of his skepticism to hold forth in the face of such a threat. How could he be certain in disbelief? There would always be the nagging doubt that he was missing something through some fault of his own, a lone skeptic left out of the mysteries the others could all comfortably share. What were the stars in the sky? Why did the sun hide itself for half the year? Some things were not meant for anyone to know. But of course that didn’t stop certain others from pretending they had all the answers.

  He came to a stream of run-off cutting across the valley. The water was ten paces wide and knee-deep. He had no desire to wade across but, stooping to examine the footprints carefully, he found Alaana had crossed here on her fool’s errand and not yet been back. He removed his kamiks and trousers and set forth across the icy stream.

  On the other side, he took advantage of a convenient rock to dry his legs. As he sat rubbing the cold away, he had a stray thought of his own father, who had perished in water during a whale hunt. Kigiuna had been only six winters when his father, Ulruk, had left for the hunt, cheerful and exuberant as ever, and had never returned. The sea had swallowed him whole.

  Kigiuna laced up his boots, jerking the thong tight. He felt a little bit like a seal in a stewpot. Tugtutsiak held too much influence over the Anatatook and enjoyed exerting his power, perhaps a bit too much. And the shamans were just as bad, slinging their omens and portents.

  The ice and snow, the sharp bite of the wind. A belligerent seal, a charging musk ox. These things were real. The hunt was tedious enough, the struggle for survival difficult enough without invisible spirits adding to men’s troubles. It seemed the shamans never really prevented anyone from getting sick, and by his count just as many died as got better. If a shaman could hunt and pull his own weight, as Kuanak had always done, then that was a man he could respect. Otherwise, Kigiuna believed the importance of shamans was overstated and often abused.

  The Anatatook’s former shaman, Civiliaq, had been the worst in that regard. It was widely held among the band that he could fly through the air. At every sighting of a strange light shooting across the night sky he later proclaimed it had been himself, soaring across the heavens. Kigiuna noticed he always took off and landed out of sight of ordinary people, usually from behind one of the tents.

  Civiliaq also claimed he had once fought off three Tsungus in an ambush by removing his right arm and using it as a weapon. No one had directly witnessed this marvel, but nearly everyone believed the story and several people claimed to have relatives among the Tsungus who would swear to having seen Civiliaq detaching his limb and putting it back on again. Ridiculous.

  And now Old Manatook was filling Alaana’s head full of this sort of nonsense. Kigiuna felt a renewed urgency to find his daughter immediately. He wished he had set out earlier — now he could see only a little way ahead in the dusk and would have to stoop and follow the trail closely, making for slow progress across the plain.

  He noticed a dark spot moving toward him in the gloom. He thought perhaps it was Alaana but dared not call out to her on fears that it might be a wandering bear. He stood still for a moment, but the figure was quickly approaching. Indeed it was Alaana.

  The girl approached her father.

  “Let me see,” Kigiuna said. Alaana produced the gilded arrow she had been hiding behind her back.

  “I would have thought this would be on the Moon by now,” said Kigiuna dryly.

  “The arrow is still here, but the spirit has flown on its way.” Alaana spoke the words hesitantly, in a slightly apologetic tone. But, Kigiuna realized, Alaana wasn’t reluctant to explain her own actions; she was sorry for her father’s disbelief.

  Without touching the thing, Kigiuna bent to sniff at the arrow. Then he took it, turning it over until satisfied it was just an arrow. He wanted to point this out to Alaana, but he knew what she’d say. He wanted to ask what Alaana had seen on the end of that stick, but was afraid of what he would hear, of the earnest look of devotion that would shine in his daughter’s eyes, that same rapture he’d seen in the karigi.

  Kigiuna threw the arrow down. The weighted point plunged into the snow, standing the arrow upright where Alaana could easily find it later. He pressed his daughter’s chilblained fingers in the warmth of his own hands for a silent moment. Then, with a commanding jerk of his head, he said, “It’s late. Come inside now.”

  CHAPTER 14

  SPIRIT OF THE STONE

  Alaana pumped her legs hard, putting on a burst of speed. She caught up to the ball, corrected her course and kicked it again.

  “Come on Iggy, you can make it,” she called over her shoulder.

  Iggy whooped in dis
may, the sound trailing along behind. He had no chance of winning, being so fat and slow, but as usual he plugged away with good humor. Foot races almost always belonged to Aquppak. But this time, Alaana thought she might have a fighting chance to win.

  Not even the freezing slush oozing down into her kamiks could dampen her spirits. It was good simply to be able to run free. The summer was the only time for it, with the snow only ankle-deep and soft as beaver pelt. She drew in deep gasps of the chill air. Old Manatook had gone off on some secretive journey, as he frequently did, offering no details about how long he’d be gone. For Alaana this was a welcome break from the endless recitations of lore, listening for messages carried on the spirit of the air and drumming, drumming, drumming, and none of it going well. She didn’t want to be out on some dreary plain with Old Manatook. She wanted to be right here, doing just this. Having fun with her friends.

  They were halfway across the course now and approaching the thin pole of driftwood that marked their goal. Alaana was leading Aquppak by a few paces. If only her ball would last out the race. Already the seams were splitting, with tufts of caribou hair spilling out. She tried kicking it a little more carefully, but a ridge in one of the drifts sent the ball bouncing off the wrong way. She darted after it.

  Her advantage this day was the fact that Arlu, one of Anaktuvik’s dogs, had attached himself to Aquppak. Arlu meant ‘Killer Whale’. The dog had earned the name because of the big black spots that adorned his white coat and because of his ferocious character. Several times already Arlu had gotten between Aquppak’s legs, threatening to bring him down.

  In an earlier time Anaktuvik’s dogs would have been chasing Alaana, but no longer. All the pack animals had acquired an aversion to her; they shied away when she came near, would not get into harness if she held the traces, and their dislike stopped just short of growling at her as if she were a stranger. Old Manatook had said, “It’s the taint of Sila. The dogs can smell it on you. Sila is not evil, but he is powerful and unpredictable. The Walker In The Wind is the spirit of chaos, of winds blowing both this way and that, of blizzards going forward and back and around again, of something over here briefly and then over there. He represents the fury of the unknown, but dogs are simple creatures. Such chaos their hearts can not abide.”