Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic

by Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley

  Oh, we forgot to tell you: Shamans were also pretty clever when it came to the things that plants and other natural materials could do. Kannujaq, as it turned out, was right. The boy was an angakkuq—a shaman—and the lad had drugged him with the smoke from his fire. There’s no way to know exactly why he did such a thing. After all, we only know what Kannujaq was thinking, not the boy. But the young shaman probably wasn’t trying to be mean. If we had to guess, we’d say that he just sensed how freaked out Kannujaq was, and wanted to force a chat with him. Maybe it wasn’t the nicest thing to do, making Kannujaq breathe that smoke without telling him what it was. We don’t know what it was, either, and we’re telling this tale! Let’s just hope the boy knew what he was doing, because breathing the smoke from anything is never a great idea.

  5

  Under a Gentle Tide

  As it was, the winds rasped at the outside world, and the weeping of Tuniit gradually quieted down, and the hunter and the boy talked. For how long, Kannujaq was unsure—for it seemed that Siku had thrown something other than just heather onto the fire. And with every pinch of the dark, grey, crinkly stuff that burned, time washed away like sand under a gentle tide.

  Nevertheless, Kannujaq quickly learned that this was not the first time the giant-men had attacked. There had been rumours that every Tuniit camp, near and far, had been assaulted. It was said that they wiped out whole communities, or at least tried to, always attacking men and women first. For whatever reason, they left children alone. Some Tuniit escaped them by fleeing inland. More died under their colossal, whirling knives. Always, the invaders laughed, shouting as they slaughtered, as though they were crazy people who thought that murder was like picking berries. And their shouts sounded like:

  “Siaraili!”

  The war cry of the raiders had become the common name for them. And so it was that the giant-men were known to the Tuniit as Siaraili.

  There had been peace over this last winter, during which time no Tuniq had heard anything of the Siaraili. But just last month, the monsters had again appeared at the shore, savagely assaulting this camp.

  Ice is breaking up, Kannujaq thought, his mind clearing a bit as the stuff in the fire burned out. Their loon-wolf-boat couldn’t get here over wintertime.

  Kannujaq had heard that, unlike his own folk, the Tuniit rarely used boats. If that was true, it probably hadn’t occurred to them that the giant-men—Siaraili or whatever they were called—depended on their vessel. It meant that they lived somewhere else, somewhere divided from the mainland by sea, and not in some other camp along the same coast as the Tuniit.

  The shaman-boy had his own theories. Siku’s belief, as it turned out, was that the Siaraili had followed Angula, this camp’s current boss, to this part of the coast. And Siku claimed, with a scowl, that Angula was the cause of all this. Angula was a Tuniq who had brought himself into power, here, by lending tools to other camp people. Not just any tools. Special ones. Angula possessed a fabulous, secret hoard of “special” tools. And it was this collection, the boy claimed, that helped him buy his way into power everywhere he went.

  Doesn’t like Angula much, Kannujaq thought, watching the boy’s features twist as he spoke of the man.

  Kannujaq then learned why the boy had initially seemed so obsessed with his kannujaq necklace. According to Siku, every one of the special tools that Angula held so dear was made of the same stuff as Kannujaq’s necklace. It was Siku’s belief that Angula had somehow stolen these kannujaq things from the Glaring One himself. And now the giant-men, the Siaraili servants of the Glaring One, were searching for their master’s missing goods.

  With the difficulty in figuring out the boy’s weird Tuniq way of talking, this much of the little shaman’s account had taken some time to tell. The effects of the smoke had almost entirely passed, and Kannujaq’s thoughts were becoming more focused, sharp as an arrow point. It occurred to him, suddenly, that he might not be getting an accurate version of events, and he found himself wishing for some elders to consult with. That was not very likely to happen, though. Even the Tuniit who had not run from Kannujaq had at least refused to look him in the eye. The boy was the “friendliest” person here.

  Almost unconsciously, Kannujaq found his head turning in the direction of where he had left his dogs. The longer he stayed in this place, the more he felt trapped. Listening to the boy made him feel as though he were committing to something—and that, he could not do. It was becoming clear that, in the boy’s imaginative thinking, the loop of kannujaq material was a kind of sign from the unseen world that Kannujaq himself possessed a power that only the Glaring One and his giant-men had owned up until now.

  The idea was cute. Even tragic. Despite the lad’s special status, he still had the childish tendency to believe that events were connected. Kannujaq found himself wishing that he could state things plainly—tell Siku that things just happened. Not all things were signs. Not everything had meaning.

  Still, Kannujaq held his tongue. He understood that the boy was afraid. Desperate. The Siaraili were a horror beyond understanding. And Kannujaq’s arrival was sheer accident.

  How might two senseless things combine to make sense?

  Kannujaq could only put up with so much of Siku’s imagination. He was not about to stay.

  The boy still held a bit of the crinkly, mystery stuff in his hand—the gunk that he threw on the fire along with the heather to produce smoke—and he leaned over to toss more of it into the flames. Kannujaq, almost grabbing him by the wrist, prevented him from doing so.

  “No more smoke,” he told the lad. “Just tell me. Is this Angula person still the camp’s boss?”

  The boy used his face to indicate “yes,” raising eyebrows and widening his eyes. This startled Kannujaq: It was one of the facial expressions his own folk used to agree with something. Before Kannujaq could think about it further, though, Siku rushed into more complaints about Angula.

  It seemed that Angula, the Tuniq boss whom Siku portrayed as such a villain, had become mad with the idea of power. Increasingly, Angula had begun to claim that spirits were giving him his kannujaq tools. He had even begun to claim that his tools gave him, and those who followed him, special powers.

  Crazy, Kannujaq thought.

  It was Siku’s belief, apparently, that Angula wanted to think of himself as an angakkuq—a shaman. Maybe even something beyond a common shaman. These were strange times. With raids by the Siaraili, people were no longer sure what to believe. Some had given in to Angula’s ideas. Many Tuniit simply wanted to leave, even despite their intense love of their homes. But in his madness and power lust, Angula would not let anyone go.

  They love their homes? Kannujaq thought. He couldn’t help smiling at the weird notion. This at least answered a question that had been lurking in the back of Kannujaq’s mind: If the Tuniit were under attack from the sea, why did they not simply move away? To Kannujaq’s folk, home was a dog team, a temporary shelter, or wherever he could meet up with relatives for a while.

  Kannujaq kept listening, and Siku explained that Angula’s latest bit of madness had been to tell the Tuniit community that the Siaraili were under his direction. Their attacks, the crazy man claimed, were punishment for the camp folk disobeying his orders. According to Angula, the Siaraili attacks would stop as soon as people dropped any idea of leaving, and demonstrated complete submission to Angula’s will.

  Kannujaq fidgeted as he listened. He was uneasy with this story about Angula, and wondered whether the boy was exaggerating. Among Kannujaq’s people, it was a terrible thing to force one’s will on another. In truth, if there was anything that Kannujaq’s people could have called sacred, it might have been respect for the isuma— the personal feelings and thoughts of each individual.

  Kannujaq had descended into a spiral of his own dark thoughts, so he was startled when Siku suddenly tossed something. The object landed with a heavy “clunk” on one of the home’s flagstones. Kannujaq stared at it for a moment, amazed,
before picking it up.

  He immediately noted the weight of the object. It was obviously a kind of knife, but it was much heavier than it ought to have been. The knives that Kannujaq’s people used were small, typically made of ivory, bone, or antler, and they were feather-light in comparison to this one. He blinked, examining the blade, and a sudden realization almost made him forget to breathe.

  Tuniit, thought Kannujaq, could never have made this thing! Their craftsmanship was legendary for its poor quality. And, while Siku’s clothes seemed to have been tailored well enough, the rest of these camp folk were dressed in what—to Kannujaq’s family—might have been rags. The few tools Kannujaq had seen here were little better. No lamps. No dogsleds or the kit that went with them. No boats. Kannujaq wasn’t sure how the Tuniit managed to survive at all.

  But this knife was of excellent quality. And what most caught Kannujaq’s attention, what even frightened him a bit, was the colour: the dark red of a kannujaq blade. It was cold, like stone. Like the loop that hung from his own necklace. Yet this was no little scrap, the remainder of what had once been a grandmother’s needle. This blade was almost as long as Kannujaq’s forearm, having only a single, straight edge. The dull side was oddly curved, and along it ran mysterious etchings.

  Decoration?

  Kannujaq scratched at it with his fingernail. Rust, as could be found on some rocks, came away from the blade. Under the rust was a grey stuff, hard and cold. It was very much like kannujaq, but more dense. Stone could leave scratches on his own sample of kannujaq. But when he took the strange tool and scraped it along one of the floor’s flagstones, there was almost no scoring. Kannujaq clamped his teeth on the object, but he immediately sensed that it would shatter every tooth in his mouth before giving way.

  His heart began to race.

  6

  The Great Angula

  The boy had made a mistake. This knife was not made of kannujaq! The material was something like kannujaq, but far, far better. Kannujaq had assumed that, when Siku had spoken of “tools,” the boy had meant little things, like needles or hooks or bits for hand-rotated drills. But this …

  The hunter in Kannujaq began to think about what he could do with such material. He thought:

  And the boy says Angula owns a lot of this stuff?

  While Kannujaq turned the knife in wonder, already feeling a bit resentful that he had to give the tool back, Siku explained that it was one that Angula was lending him in return for various services. The hint of a mischievous smile, however, told Kannujaq that the boy had stolen it.

  Then Kannujaq sat up. He stared into the boy’s wide blue eyes. How could he begin to explain what danger the Tuniit were in? If the Glaring One was indeed angry at the loss of these objects, as Siku had claimed, and if the giant-men owned many more of these treasures …

  Kannujaq never got the chance to speak. A voice, deep, as though from a chest more bear than man, suddenly boomed from outside.

  “Why, I wonder?” the speaker bellowed. “Why does our baby shaman hide a dogsledder in our camp?”

  Siku went rigid, and the look of him told Kannujaq that the strange voice belonged to Angula.

  “I wonder,” bellowed Angula again, “what a dogsledder wants from we Tuniit!”

  Taking in a deep breath, then releasing it again as a sigh, Kannujaq stepped outside to face the voice’s owner. There, he saw before him the fattest imaginable Tuniq man, chest adorned with set over set of clumsily arranged bear-tooth amulets. Rather than dangle, they seemed to rest on his middle-aged paunch. As a Tuniq, he was already rather short and squat. The added weight simply enhanced the boulder-like appearance that all Tuniit men possessed.

  Here, Kannujaq thought, unimpressed, is the great Angula.

  Angula stood flanked by three younger men, who watched Kannujaq out of the corners of their eyes, as though hoping he might vanish like some trick of the Land. Kannujaq—whose skepticism toward Siku’s storytelling had waned on hearing, then seeing, Angula—suspected that the young men were Angula’s cronies. Their allegiance had been bought with Angula’s treasures. Fortunately, there were no weapons of any kind, much less those made of kannujaq, anywhere in sight. Kannujaq could see several other Tuniit men, women, and children, milling around behind Angula.

  Everywhere Kannujaq looked, there were nervous glances.

  Then, Kannujaq espied the first beautiful thing that he had seen since coming to the Tuniit camp.

  It was a woman: one with eyes like dark stones beneath sunlit water. But the lines of her face suggested that she did more frowning than smiling. Her hair was worn in normal braids, rather than in the crazy Tuniit way, and her clothes were of unusually high quality …

  Wait! thought Kannujaq. She’s no Tuniq!

  She looked like one of his own people!

  Though it took some effort, since she was lovely, Kannujaq forced his eyes from the woman. He greeted Angula perhaps a bit too late, for Angula ignored every sign of friendliness that Kannujaq tried to show, making only a bearlike chuffing noise in response. Again, Angula began to wonder—and loudly—why there was a “stranger hiding in his camp.” While he did so, Angula’s cronies snickered next to him. Their eyes, however, as with most of the Tuniit here, betrayed the fact that they were uncomfortable with Angula’s rude behaviour.

  Angula, it seemed, not only knew of Kannujaq’s “dogsledder” folk, but obviously had a problem with them. He spoke as a show of dominance, it seemed, for the sake of the onlookers, rather than directly addressing Kannujaq. He drove home his remarks by turning to look Kannujaq up and down, from moment to moment, wrinkling his face in disgust.

  “It is obvious,” Angula went on, “that this is why the Siaraili have attacked yet again! This is a camp full of disobedience. I have been defied once more, for now someone has tried to hide one of the foreign dogsledders among us.”

  Then the bully spotted the kannujaq knife, still held in Kannujaq’s hand.

  “What is this?” he exploded, going eye-to-eye with some of the folk. They seemed to shrink back from him, intimidated by his rage.

  “A dogsledder comes among us to steal!” he fumed. “It is bad enough that their dogsledding kind always soil our traditional lands! But now the trespassers steal from us!”

  Kannujaq noted that Angula was fond of that term: “dogsledder.” The bully used it a bit too much for Kannujaq’s liking. The word seemed to convey some particular, special brand of hatred that Angula bore toward Kannujaq’s folk; and something hot in Kannujaq’s insides began to curl and hiss. Rather than speak out of fury, saying something he might later regret, Kannujaq stood rigid, keeping his lips pressed together.

  Then Angula wheeled and pointed at Kannujaq, for the first time addressing him directly:

  “You are jealous! That’s why you have come to steal! You dogsledding foreigners always think you have better things than Tuniit! But now a Tuniq has better things than you. And you can’t live with it, can you?”

  Kannujaq remained shocked into silence throughout the tirade. But Angula’s shameful antics were not allowed to continue. A youthful voice suddenly barked from Kannujaq’s rear:

  “Angula!”

  Siku had emerged from his home. His blue eyes had paled further with rage, becoming like white sparks burning in Angula’s direction. While all the camp stood silent, the boy uncurled the fingers of one palm.

  Siku revealed his helper.

  Shamans could have many helpers. These could be the monstrous and unseen beings they had ritually bound under their willpower, or the willing souls of animals or ancestors. Everything under the Sky had the potential for life. And so a helper could be dog or a piece of seaweed; a giant or a bumblebee; one’s grandmother or a stone. Often, a helper was simply too bizarre for description. Helpers had only one thing in common: like the shaman, they were filled with the Strength of the Land. Helpers were not spiritual, in that they were neither worshipped nor held to be sacred. But their powers could be useful.

 
; Kannujaq got one brief glimpse at a tiny, skeletal figure in the boy’s palm—a carved figurine that symbolized the helper—before he turned his gaze away. Among Kannujaq’s folk, it could be unhealthy to stare too long at some-seen things from the world of shamans. Maybe it was the same with the Tuniit.

  Kannujaq heard gasps from the crowd all around him.

  Then the boy began to speak at Angula. His voice was spidery. High-pitched. Nothing like that of the lad who had just spent the last little while telling Kannujaq about Angula and the Siaraili raids.

  Kannujaq quickly realized that it was the helper, who announced itself as That One Bearing, speaking through the boy. No one would ever see That One Bearing (unless they were another helper or a shaman). But the boy could symbolize the helper through the figurine that he himself, or another shaman who had taught him, had carved. The figurine was just a representation, but for the moment, no less “real” than the helper itself. If necessary, Siku could also arm That One Bearing with invisible weapons, similar carvings of tiny knives or spears. Then he might send the helper to stab at somebody’s soul, making them sick.

  Kannujaq hoped, however, that Siku was not that kind of angakkuq.

  It seemed, for now, that the helper was here as no more than a messenger. Borrowing Siku’s voice to do its speaking, That One Bearing told Angula:

  “You are no longer boss of this camp. It is the dogsledder who must become the camp’s leader for a time. It is the kannujaq he wears about his neck, a thing the Siaraili also bear, that is a sign of this fact. It is up to the dogsledder to drive away the Siaraili.”

  Drive the Siaraili away? thought Kannujaq. No way! I don’t even want to be here!

  Then the helper addressed the other Tuniit, saying:

  “Angula’s sins have brought the Siaraili among you. You will all perish if you continue to have Angula as leader. This I know by Hidden knowledge. If you doubt me, simply look at the dogsledder’s necklace to see that his folk have power to match that of Siaraili.”