Beyond the Sea of Ice

by neetha Napew

  “Navahk will make the magic to make us strong upon the hunt,” said Supnah to Torka as they strode out together.

  “Our numbers and the many fine spears that Supnah’s men carry will make us strong,” replied Torka. He could not have said why he wanted no part of Navahk’s magic.

  At the edges of the encampment of women, Karana looked up at Navahk and experienced the old, instinctive fear and distrust of the man and his ever-present, insidious smile. If Navahk saw the boy, he gave no sign of it. He did not move. He kept on staring. He kept on smiling. The wind was hard out of the east now, cold and acrid with the smell of ice, of rotting stone, and of distant groves of spruce. Navahk did not flinch as it blew against him. It whipped the long, white fringe of his sleeves. It lifted the single winter-white flight feather of an Arctic owl that he always wore braided into the forelock of his waist-length black hair.

  It rippled in the thick, silken white caribou skins of his leggins

  Karana shivered against the deep, threatening ugliness that he had always sensed lurking beneath the exterior beauty of the magic man. “Navahk .. . why do you smile?” he pressed, half-afraid to speak the question, yet knowing that he must.

  Navahk’s smile deepened as he looked down at Karana. “Why does Karana think that I smile?”

  Karana’s eyes were caught in those of the magic man. In deep, black, bottomless sinks, Karana’s mind waded as though through pitch. He sank, choking, fighting for breath as, suddenly, within the strangling darkness, light exploded. Vision swam, like sunlight reflecting off huge, towering walls of ice. It was a miles-high world of ice, and in that world, a sound reverberated, such as the boy had never heard: a screaming, a roaring, a trumpeting. And suddenly the ice was falling, breaking apart as the vision itself shattered. “Karana knows. Karana sees. The son of my brother’s woman, of the woman who would have been mine had I been headman .. . knows that he is of my flesh ... he sees the world through my eyes .. . and what he sees betrays the truth of his birth to all but Supnah, who is a fool who sees nothing!”

  Karana stared, still trapped in Navahk’s eyes. In his father’s eyes. He felt sick, confused, betrayed. “You left me to walk the wind!”

  “Thereby breaking my brother’s spirit! I command the band through his mouth. Only for your sake has Supnah ever been strong enough to stand against my will—your sake and your mother’s. It was good that she died! It will be good when your spirit joins hers. I have seen your death, Karana. That is why I smile.”

  The boy stepped back, aghast, unable to speak.

  The smile was back upon Navahk’s face. His eyes strayed once more to the eastern ranges. “The canyons entered by the hunters will lead them to the Corridor of Storms. It is a place of death from which no man has ever returned. Supnah and his hunters will turn back, but Torka will die. I have heard his death in the roar of the thunder.” Turning, Navahk reached out to close his fingers upon Karana’s shoulder, the fingers curling inward, deliberately rousing pain as his eyes focused upon the boy with purely raptorial intent. “You will die with him—you who should never have been born. Navahk will share his magic with no one!”

  Karana wrenched himself free. The magic man reached out to grab him again, but Aar’s warning growl stayed his hand.

  “I have seen your death, Navahk continued. “And Torka’s. In the face of the rising sun .. . beyond an endless corridor of ice and storm, you will all die.”

  Karana was suddenly angry. “We will all die. Someday. But not today if this boy can help it!” He wheeled then and tried not to think of Navahk’s smile as he raced eastward across the tundra with Aar at his side and Sister Dog loping close behind.

  Distance was deceptive upon the tundra, but the carelessly laid trail of the Ghost Men was not. It led them into the neck of the canyon, deep into a cold, wind-scoured cleft of land between two southeasterly aligned mountain ranges. Through groves of spruce and alder, they moved in silence, as far ahead the distressed cries of mammoths called them on.

  It was a dark, high-walled territory—intimidating to men born and bred on the open tundra. Above the bare, black bones of the mountain, massive glacial lobes extended downward from the heights. Torka cringed, recalling the terrifying collapse of the glacier that had capped the Mountain of Power, but he could hear the voices of the Ghost Men now, as well as the cries of mammoths. He went on. For Umak, for Manaak—for all of those who had died at the end of the Ghost Men’s spears and for all of those who had been degraded by them—he would not allow himself to be afraid.

  The canyon widened ahead, then forked suddenly in several directions. They took the most promising one, advancing more quickly now as they were drawn forward by the catcalls and hoots of the Ghost Men. They were very near. The adult mammoth screamed, and the sound echoed in and out of the intricate convolutions of the canyon. They took a few more steps, then stopped dead, knowing that they had taken the wrong turn. The mammoth’s cries were behind them now. Nevertheless, they did not move. They were too stunned by what lay ahead.

  The world spread wide before them. Never in their lives could they have imagined the staggering dimensions of the landscape that lay ahead. Below them, the mountains fell away to merge with a wide swath of undulating tundra plain, It ran eastward into infinity, between the leading edges of two glacial masses that appalled their senses—two continent spanning ice sheets. The majority of the moisture of all the seas, rivers, and oceans on earth lay frozen two miles thick within their monstrous vastness.

  “The Mountains That Walk ...” whispered Supnah in awe.

  His men murmured softly, reverently. The wind blew toward them out of the east, across distances too huge for men to conjure; but somehow Torka conjured them as his eyes roamed out over that miles-wide ribbon of tundra) plain that cut due east between the ice sheets. Thick with the first new grass of spring, it rippled in the wind like the fur of a green animal, and upon its skin other animals were grazing. Distance made it impossible for him to identify their species, but clearly that broad, glacier-walled avenue of tundra was rich with game.

  Supnah followed Torka’s gaze and shook his head with warning. “The Corridor of Storms is a bad place. No man may- hunt there.”

  “Not even Torka! panted a breathless Parana. Torka was startled to see him, and annoyed. He admonished him for following when he had been told to stay behind. The boy gulped an apology, then blurted, “This boy had to warn you! Navahk has said that bad things will happen if Torka follows the mammoths into the Corridor of Storms.”

  Kuranas words shadowed even- man within the hunting party. They eyed him and the dogs dubiously, until they were distracted by the renewed cries of the mammoths and the taunting of the Ghost Men.

  “Navahk has not seen with a clear eye,” Torka said. “The mammoths call us away from the Corridor of Storms, not into it.”

  Supnah’s men were glad to turn back to their purpose. Karana was told to stay close as they reentered the canyon and followed the x-oices of the Ghost Men into the correct fork. It led them to a small valley ringed by sharply defined cliffs. A tiny spruce-lined lake lax- at the base of these encircling walls, and in the lake, a spear-riddled mammoth calf lay dead, mired up to its shoulders in the icy sludge of the treacherous, flax-like loam that layered the lake bottom. The Ghost Men stood arrayed along one of the ridges that partially jutted into the lake. They were just out of reach of the exhausted mammoth cow that raged at them as she smashed her body against the rock in a hopeless effort to get at them. They mimicked and mocked her and hacked at her mutilated trunk with daggers as she tried to sweep them off the ridge. Several spears protruded from her bloodied flanks. Nearby, at the opposite side of the lake, a frightened adolescent mammoth swayed and cried pathetically from a grove of spruce trees while its mother continued her attempt to drive off the men who had killed her baby.

  There was something indescribably touching about this besieged little family of mammoths. The cow and adolescent could easily have escaped their torm
entors, but the cow refused to abandon her calf even though it lay dead; and the adolescent cried and called with fright as though it were a human child. Mother!.” Come away! Before it is too late!

  The exhausted cow cried back in a vain attempt at consolation, then called as though petitioning for help from others of her own kind who might be within hearing distance. Stumbling, she nearly fell into the lake herself as she sobbed and gasped in impotent fury, ignoring her own wounds as she continued her attempts to drive the calf killers from the ledge.

  Then, suddenly, as Aar growled and Sister Dog whimpered, the cow stopped and turned. The world shook. Thunder rent the sky. But it was not thunder. It was a great and terrible roaring as, from yet another branch of the canyon, a bull mammoth pounded into the valley.

  Its shoulders touched the sky, and the top of its head was in the clouds as it stopped, observing the scene that met its small, red eyes. It was breathing hard. How far it had come, how long it had run, no man could have said, for, as was the way of its kind and gender, it had been ranging alone since it had last cast its shadow upon the lives of men.

  It was the Destroyer. It was Thunder Speaker. It was World Shaker. It was the beast of Torka’s nightmares. In disbelief, the Ghost Men stared as Death charged them full speed. The cow had been unable to reach them, but as they scrambled for their lives, the giant bull plucked them off the ridge and hurled them high against the cliffs. They broke, screaming and spurting blood from ears, mouths, and noses as they crashed to the ground. Some were dead when they landed. Others lay stunned or screaming as Death ground them into the earth, screaming back at them in a trumpeting rage that obliterated the panicked cries of Supnah and his men as they raced for safety through an offshoot canyon too narrow to allow the great bull to follow.

  Only Torka stood immobile, transfixed, watching as the Destroyer comforted the cow. Its mate? Yes. Torka was certain of it. After the killing was done, the bull huffed softly, consoling, caressing, snapping off the offending spears with its great trunk; then it soothed the wounds, scooping clay from the lake and packing the wounds with its long snout until the blood ceased to flow. Together, with infinite tenderness and soft buffings of affection the pair touched the adolescent and drew it from its hiding place within the spruce grove. They went to the lake, then stood swaying as they called to the lifeless calf. With its vast tusks extended, the bull reached out and beneath the limp, bloodied infant, levered up, lifted it from the muck, and laid it upon the embankment.

  “Torka!” A terrified and almost infinitely brave Karana had come back into the little valley. He tugged hard at Torka’s sleeve as he rasped an imploring whisper. “What is the matter with you? Come! Supnah and his hunters have taken the high ground all along the canyon wall to the west. If the beast tries to follow, it will lodge itself in the narrows. Before it can back out, we can kill it! Its meat will last us forever!”

  Torka’s hands were closed tightly around the hafts of his spear and bludgeon. He tested their weight against the merit of the boy’s words. Karana was right. It could be done. Yet now, as at last the moment arrived when he knew that he could avenge himself upon the Destroyer, he wanted no part of its death. The giant mammoth was not a mindless marauder but a creature capable of the same deep emotions as he. Indeed, the beast was no more of a beast than Torka-and less so than Galeena or any of the Ghost Band.

  But it was too late for reflection upon the virtues of the great mammoth. It had picked up his scent and those of the boy and the dog who had followed. The Destroyer’s head went up. Its ears oared forward.

  “Run!” Torka commanded Karana.

  Together, with Aar beside them, they fled, racing for survival, knowing that if they could reach the narrow canyon where Supnah and the others waited on the heights, they would be safe.

  Halfway there, Karana’s weak leg gave out. He fell, stunned, his mind filled with Navahk’s smiling visions of death until Torka wheeled back, scooped him up, and ran on. The moment of compassion had cost him. The mammoth was nearly on them. In desperation, he made for the nearest rock face and lifted Karana high.

  “Climb, Little Hunter! Climb for your life!”

  He turned, knowing that he was all that stood between Karana and death. The light that burns behind a man’s eyes when death is near was white hot behind his own. There was a strange thrumming within his ears. Beyond it, he heard Aar’s savage barking as the dog ran circles around the mammoth, attempting to distract it as he ran between its limbs, leaping up and snarling. The mammoth demonstrated an amazing grace as it flicked the dog away with a backward movement of its enormous foot. The dog cried out and fell in a heap.

  “Brother Dog, we will run together upon the wind,” called Torka, knowing that in the next moment he would follow the valiant dog into the world of spirits. Truly they would be brothers forever.

  He stood his ground and hefted his weapons. He called back over his shoulder for Karana to climb. Climb! One bludgeon and one spear were all that stood between him and the realm that Torka and Aar would soon walk together.

  “Come!” he called to the mammoth. “Thunder Speaker! World Shaker! He Who Parts the Clouds and destroys the lives of men, Torka is not afraid to die!”

  What happened next seemed to occur within a dream, within a heartbeat. And yet the telling of it would last for generations. The man held his weapons steady, staring into the eyes of the beast. The mammoth paused. Perhaps in that moment the Destroyer remembered the bold hunter whom it had once left to die in the snow. Perhaps it scented no stench of the Ghost Men who had slain its calf. Or perhaps in the great and legendary wisdom of its species, the mammoth saw in the man one who shared its own great heart, one who would risk himself to save the life of even the smallest member of his own kind.

  Whatever the great beast saw, whatever it sensed, it stood for a long time before, at last, it turned away. Something walked within the ebbing night. Something huge. Something silent. Something no longer terrible. It moved within a shadowed valley, and while the people of Supnah’s band rejoiced that the Ghost Band was no more, Torka climbed to the heights of the canyon and looked down, sharing the grief of the great mammoth as it mourned its dead calf.

  He stayed in that place until the day was done and another day was being born. Karana joined him, with Lonit, to bring him the good news that Aar had not left the world of the living to become a spirit.

  “Hrmmph! Brother Dog is too smart to be killed by a mammoth! He was bruised and his pride was hurt, but while we were hunting the Ghost Men, Sister Dog was having a litter of pups. Aar has his own band now! And Karana has many dog brothers and sisters. It is a good thing! Umak would be glad!”

  Torka nodded. Yes. The old man would be glad .. . especially to see how the boy was emulating him. Not only in gestures and patterns of speech but in subtler, deeper ways. Navahk also saw it—there was a power within the child. He would be a spirit master someday, and a greater magic man than Navahk could ever hope to be. Navahk .. . Torka did not like the man ... or trust him. He had empty eyes, as though his spirit had already flown from them to walk upon the wind.

  Lonit cuddled close to her man. She held their tiny daughter to her breast, suckling her within the garments of fur that Supnah’s women had shared with her. She pointed off, down into the valley where, with heartbreaking tenderness, the mammoths were laying spruce boughs across the body of the dead calf. “It is as though they were people,” she whispered sadly.

  Torka nodded. She was right. The mammoths were like people. Better than most people he had ever known.

  The dawn was clear and cold. Supnah was approaching them. “Come,” he beckoned. “The band readies to move on. We will hunt bison to the west.”

  The words washed through Torka’s mind as he rose. The mammoths were leaving the little valley. Slowly they walked into the light of the rising sun, heading eastward out of the can von and into the Corridor of Storms. Torka could see it clearly from the heights. The sun shed its light straight down th
e tundral avenue. He could see game grazing in the distance. Overhead, wheeling above the glacial vastnesses, flocks of wild fowl were flying toward the sun.

  He was suddenly trembling. “There is a new world out there, in the face of the rising sun. We will follow the game there, to the east. We will not go back.”

  Supnah looked as though Torka had struck him. “But no man has ever dared venture into the Corridor of Storms! Death awaits those who journey into the unknown.”

  A sweet sense of calm filled Torka, as though an old friend had suddenly returned from the spirit world to stand beside him and speak through his mouth. “Umak says that a hunter must face into the light. Only by facing death may his spirit overcome it.

  The baby made soft sounds of contentment as it drew life from Lonit’s breast. She stood close to her man and looked back, westward to a world that had brought only darkness to her spirit and then forward, into the dawn, into a new world that was filled with light. “This woman is not afraid,” she said boldly.

  “Nor is this boy,” vowed Karana as he smiled, suddenly understanding the vision that he had shared with Navahk. It had not been a vision of death. It had been a promise of rebirth, a vision of a new life in a new land ... in the face of the rising sun .. . beyond the Corridor of Storms.

  Far below them, the great mammoth led his family onto the greening tundra that lay between the glaciers. It seemed to Torka that, for the moment, the largest of the threesome lifted and moved its trunk as though beckoning the man to follow. Torka raised his arm. The mammoth trumpeted. It was a sound that shook the world. Torka smiled, saluting the great beast who had allowed him his life and defined his future.

  “This man will go forward into the dawn, he said to Supnah, knowing at last that his dreams had been more than dreams. Behind him, to the west, the world was a hostile, hungry place, with half the year in light and half the year in darkness. But ahead, to the east, the sun was rising over herds of game and greening tundra. He would lead his people there, into the dawn, following not the Destroyer but Life Giver, into that warm, bright hunting ground out of which the sun was born.