Secrets

by Ken Altabef

  The old woman sniffed the air, and one eye squinted in recognition at the sound of Alaana’s voice in her head.

  “The people suffer for me, Alaana,” she said sadly. “One village was consumed because of me. Men, women and children. No more. I am old. I am willing to die.”

  “But I am not willing to lose you.” It was all she could say. She had no more energy to waste on conversation.

  Beluga Killer’s mouth fell open, releasing an overwhelming stench of rancid meat. The icy mouth loomed large, full to bursting with glistening teeth capable of shredding flesh to the bone. No one, thought Alaana, could willingly offer themselves up into that gaping maw.

  Higilak stepped forward. “My body is old, just skin and bones. And yet it will satisfy. Let him have his final snack, Alaana. Let him eat and be gone.”

  It was not her body Alaana was worried about at the moment. It was her soul, a soul she had come to love as adoptive grandmother, trusted advisor and friend. She would not see Higilak’s spirit ground forever in torment between the crushing jaws of that bear.

  She tore Old Manatook’s bear claw necklace from her neck. The thong snapped, the claws running loose. She let the spirit claws hang in the air, forming a circle about Higilak, the slender tips pointing outward. Alaana sent a fleeting prayer to the Great Bear Tornarssuk, in hopes he might be persuaded to lend power to the ring of protection. She felt nothing in response. Either the great bear was still too tired from his work in shifting the mountain, or simply refused to get involved.

  Beluga Killer’s ghost, seeing no real threat, lumbered forward.

  “Borghanu,” said Alaana. “Let this woman be. She was only a girl when she sliced you up, and you were already dead. She meant you no harm.”

  The bear, called by its birth name, hesitated for a moment. The ice shards grated against each other, crackling softly, a force of nature stilled by jagged uncertainty. But for a moment only. Then he came on again, fully intent on taking his prize.

  “Ursorsuuk!” shouted Alaana, repeating the name Balikqi had cited as Beluga Killer’s soul-name. The bear stopped cold. Its frozen eyes flashed, knowing a great weakness had been revealed, an avenue for harm had been opened into its soul.

  Now is the moment, thought Alaana. The spirit teeth shot out from the ring. As they sped toward their target Alaana could feel the presence of her old teacher, could sense the old man’s steady hand on her shoulder, the musty smell of him, a fading echo of his grunt of approval.

  “Manatook…?” said Higilak weakly.

  Beluga Killer erupted into a howl of rage and terror as the spirit teeth cut across the form it had created, shredding chunks of ice from its chest and neck. Biting deep, the barbs plunged into the ghost’s very soul. The bear’s cry was a wail of pain, but not of death.

  Alaana flinched, knowing it would not be enough. A bear merely wounded became twice as dangerous. The sound of her own heartbeat laboring in her ears, she braced for her end. Her inuseq might have flown away and saved herself, but she would not leave Higilak to face this monster alone.

  When death did not come, Alaana snapped back to attention. The monster had left them. Beluga Killer was gone.

  Higilak staggered forward, shivering with cold and fear. Alaana wished she could warm her, but she had nothing left.

  “Manatook?” she said again, asking after her husband’s spirit.

  The old woman had no answer, except for the voice of Alaana ringing in her ears. “Go to the Ring of Stones. It’s not too far. I’ll be there. Hurry.”

  Alaana’s spirit-woman reclothed itself in her skin. The sensation was that of melting, of liquid blubber poured into a mold, a surrender of spirit to the form of flesh. She had never felt so exhausted. For a moment she thought she didn’t have strength left to spark her body back to life.

  She thought of Ben.

  She imagined the smell of his hair, pressed close to her face. The sensation was impossibly fresh, as if it had just recently happened.

  She forced herself to take a deep breath. The air was intensely cold, searing her lungs awake. Alaana sputtered and coughed, groaning slightly.

  Her eyes popped open. Ben looked down at her. His lips were drawn tight, his brow creased with worry. His hair smelled wonderful.

  Alaana flushed with embarrassment that he should see her like this, so weak and helpless, strapped down like a baby in the amaut to keep from falling off the sled.

  “You shouldn’t have come here,” she fumed. “I told you to stay at the camp.”

  Ben smiled. “I think I liked you better when you were dead.”

  Alaana, still bound by the sealskin thongs, struggled to get an arm free. She half sat up but her arms were still too stiff and wooden to win loose.

  “Let me help,” Ben said. He pressed her back down and began to untie the straps in a fatherly fashion that only heightened Alaana’s chagrin.

  Dawn had already come. The brief summer night had dissolved into a terrific orange glow that cut across the horizon with such startling beauty it stole the breath from her lungs. Yipyip had not let her down. In the near distance stood the Ring of Stones, half buried in the salmon-tinted snow of the new day. Around the ancient landmark lay a stretch of open tundra in every direction. Alaana wanted to stash Ben away somewhere like a treasure in a cache but there was no place to hide here, only an empty plain and the Ring of Stones. No way to keep him out of sight.

  “Of all the senseless things for a man to do…” she grumbled.

  “You sound like such a crotchety old grandmother,” returned Ben. “Shaman or not, I can help.”

  “You want to help, help me to get up,” she grumbled, angry only at herself.

  Her arms felt tingly and numb, reminding her how close she had come to death itself. She felt like a helpless babe and appreciated Ben’s strength as he propped her up. There was no point in being angry. He had been very brave to come here, risking himself for her sake.

  As she stirred, Alaana saw the physical remnant of the bear claw necklace, still hanging about her neck, crumble away. Its spirit consumed in the battle, the okamak had become so much lifeless dust. Alaana dipped her head in a silent gesture of thanks to her friend and teacher, Old Manatook.

  “What is this place?” Ben asked.

  “The Old Place,” she answered. “The Ring of Stones. A place of power and legend. The souls of many Tunrit are buried here.”

  “Tunrit? Surely they weren’t real? I thought those were just stories for children.”

  “No. They were here. They ruled Nunatsiaq long before our people walked the snows.”

  Alaana was intimately familiar with the legends of the Tunrit, a race of ancient beings who preceded the arrival of humans in the northlands. They had tamed the land and made it habitable, favoring stone houses and gigantic hewn monuments. The Tunrit invented the bow and arrow and the leister, the stone weirs for fishing, and the cairns that lead the caribou to the special crossing places. When the time of mankind eventually dawned, the Tunrit greeted them with equanimity and legendary forbearance. They taught men the ways of the hunt and knowledge of the turgats and the other great spirits, enabling them to survive even as the Tunrit themselves gradually became extinct. Much was owed to them.

  Ben shook his head. “What can the Tunrit have to do with us? With Higilak?”

  “Higilak,” repeated Alaana distractedly. She turned to the north but there was no sign of the old woman against the unbroken plain of snow and ice. She wondered if she should take the sled and go after her but there was so little time. Worse yet, the snow had begun to take to the air. For now it wafted lazily about on a gentle whisper of wind, but there was a growing purpose to its movements and direction.

  “Something terrible is coming, isn’t it?” asked Ben.

  “Retribution.”

  “We have to do something. We have to stop it.”

  “Keep watch. Higilak will come from the north. It follows her. She’ll be tired and weak. Help her. Bring her wi
thin the circle.”

  “And if the monster should come first?”

  Alaana looked away. There was little help for any of them unless she had time to finish her work. “Then we’ll all die.”

  Ben tugged at her shoulder, turning her back around. His eyes bored uncomfortably into her own. If it was reassurance he was looking for, she was hard pressed to provide any. She wanted to throw herself into his arms, but there was no time for that. Not here, not now.

  “Are you afraid?” she asked.

  Ben set his lips into a defiant grin. His eyes were clear. “Does a man feel fear as he stands beside the shaman?”

  “I guess not,” said Alaana. She wished she could say the same for herself. The corrupted soul they were up against was unlike anything she had ever faced before, a monstrous and savage killer fueled by sixty years of hatred. She handed Ben the lead traces for the sled. “Hurry,” she said. “Higilak is out there alone. Find her. Bring her here.”

  CHAPTER 25

  THE RING OF STONES

  The Ring of Stones was incomplete. Most of the pillars still stood, huge gray boulders hewn by a race of primordial men who lived in forever darkness at the dawn of time. Wide capstones crossed the columns lengthwise at the four directional points of the circle. Alaana walked over to one of the stones which had toppled ages ago. She felt insignificant in its shadow, her footsteps small compared to the legendary strides of those who had built this place.

  “Shadowed ones, eternal ones, those who stand,” she intoned, “Always remembered, never forgotten…” She ran the palm of her hand along the pitted surface of the fallen stone. Great power had resided here once; she could still feel its echo, a distant hum through her fingertips.

  “In those dim dark days you stood straight and tall, touching the sky. Well you served those that we call the Tunrit. My heart breaks to see you brought low, ignored and in disrepair. I want to see you useful and strong in your power again.”

  Alaana felt the inua of the great stones begin to stir. There were twelve of them in all, spirits older than any she had ever encountered before and their slumber was a deep one. She felt as if she were in the presence of a dozen great grandfathers, wise beyond mortal ken and implacable as time itself. The gulf of the years was so vast she was drawn into its depths, and had to fight to keep her footing solidly in the present.

  She glimpsed the ring as it had stood in times of old when it was new.

  “I want to see you standing tall again as you were meant to stand. A perfect circle, all of a piece. I am but a wretched and useless little shaman who stands in awe of your great power. But I have need of you. Wake up. Wake up.”

  Foreboding purple clouds had snuck up on her, gathering in the sky above the ring of standing stones. A fierce wind blew down from the north.

  Alaana recalled her visit here with Old Manatook years ago. She remembered the names Old Manatook had used. “Aagdru, Yug, Yaavaad,” she intoned, “Hear my call. Yihood, awake dear brother. Oogdith, awaken to me.”

  There was the sound, incredibly loud, of the world flexing muscles it had long forgotten. A crackle of lightning raced across the sky.

  Suddenly the landscape erupted with a startling lurch. Great gouts of earth and cracked ice were hurled into the air.

  Slowly, ponderously, the two stones that lay askew rose up into their ancient places, bringing the fallen capstone along with them in their struggle to once again stand upright. The circle reformed. Alaana felt its great throbbing power restored. This was a place of mystery and of destiny, one she wished she could someday come to comprehend.

  “Welcome, Brother Stones,” said Alaana.

  Ben, standing beside her, let out a startled gasp. He stared at her with a completely awestruck expression. “How did you do that?”

  “I asked politely.”

  Ben had Higilak with him, supporting the old woman by an arm draped around her chest.

  Higilak was barely able to speak. Frost had gathered on her eyebrows, and her face was deathly pale. “It comes again, Alaana. As it must. Please leave me to it. I couldn’t stand to be the cause of your death. Not you.”

  “Maybe none of us have to die today.” She felt flush with a surge of renewed strength in the wake of her interaction with the stones. This was an important place. She had done well in restoring it.

  Higilak’s knees gave way and she stumbled. Alaana helped Ben ease her to the ground.

  The young shaman called her dogs to enter the circle. Makaartunghak curled his massive form around Higilak’s waist, covering half her body in his luxuriant fur. Then Yipyip added her spirit flame to warm them.

  “I can feel it,” Ben said. “Under my skin, tearing at me.”

  Alaana reached for him, but he shook her off, a faraway look on his face.

  “Feel what?” she asked.

  “The white bear. It’s almost here.”

  Alaana could not understand this. “You can see it?”

  “No,” he said, squirming as if he felt the flames of Beluga Killer’s fury licking at his skin. He looked desperately at Alaana. “What are you going to do?”

  “Get with the others,” she said, pushing him back toward Higilak and the dogs. She ran to the exact center of the ring and bent to sweep the slush from a circular keystone on the ground. It was a very old stone, gray and pitted. As she touched it Alaana felt its pulse, the swirl of cosmic energies trapped within now augmented by the rearrangement of the stones.

  She began a slow and steady pattern of breathing and a dull rhythmic chant. Again she recalled her previous visit to this place and the way Old Manatook had conjured a vision out of the past.

  The keystone had seen the eons pass; there were memories locked inside it which spanned the entire life of the arctic wastes. It would take a lifetime to digest all its memories and secrets. Alaana watched them stretch backward. Using the memories of the Grandfather Stone as her guide she felt the seasons drifting past in patterns of dark and light, the years peeling and falling away like finely boiled meat parting from the bone. Her spirit left her body again, traveling the pathways of time, back to the darkest age of the world. Into the dark time. Into the shadowy world of the spirits of the Tunrit.

  She found them there, in the long ago. Three of them, huddled around a fire, their backs to her. It was dark, as it was always dark where they lived, the flickering firelight a tiny beacon in a seemingly endless expanse of night. Their bulky outlines inspired a monumental sense of reverence in Alaana. She heard the cracking of bones and the ripping apart of flesh and sinew, the low murmur of voices. She smelled meat cooking, an unfamiliarly pungent type of game cleaved from the haunches of a beast long extinct.

  Their language was not a happy sound. Spoken in low tones, it was the sound of strife and struggle and survival under the harshest conditions imaginable.

  She stood in awe of them. They were so much more than men.

  But how to get them to help? She didn’t know their language.

  One of them turned his huge head. The Tunrit looked directly at Alaana for a moment then looked away. She thought it had seen her but must surely have thought her a worthless shadow, small and weak and insignificant.

  She didn’t know what to do. What care could they have for her? Filled with self-doubt and uncertainty, she felt the tug of the eons forcing her back to her own time, to Higilak and Ben and her dogs. She must not fail. But there seemed nothing to do except surrender to the pull and go back.

  As she emerged from the trance she noticed the sky had darkened considerably with the approaching storm. The northern lights crackled above, painting the clouds in eerie shades of pink and purple. Alaana strained to keep the path open, a rearrangement of time she could not hold for much longer.

  Yipyip barked a desperate note of warning. Recognizing her tone, Makaartunghak stood to attention. His tufted ears pointed forward as he jumped up from the old woman. His sharp gaze probed the terrain ahead, a snarl forming on his lips.

  “Get bac
k!” Alaana said, motioning the others to the rear of the circle. The bear’s ghost had entered the ring. It wore a semblance of flesh and blood, wreathed in dark black smoke. It had been damaged by Alaana’s previous attack. Rotting fur dropped in clumps from its chest, dripping black gore, the hair burned away where the spirit claws had struck. Beluga Killer’s face was a nightmare of slavering jaws, bared teeth and hateful, merciless eyes.

  As the bear came raging on, the spirits of three Tunrit warriors appeared at the central pedestal. Giant in stature, they each stood twice as tall as Alaana. Even dressed in bulky clothing, heavy bear skins and the hides of wooly animals long since gone from the earth, she could tell by their movements that their bodies were heavily muscled. Most impressive of all were the massive heads atop the shoulders, with jutting brows and ponderous jaws set with grim determination. Their appearance left no doubt they were superhuman primordial beings, such as had not been seen on this world for centuries.

  But no, there were more than three. There was one other, almost out of sight, hidden by the passage of the others. In their midst one moment, then off to the side, glimpsed, never clearly seen.

  The bear howled in senseless rage.

  Guided by instinct, Makaartunghak wanted to go at it. Even he, dull-witted to spiritual things, could sense the threatening presence of an instinctual enemy. Alaana tried to hold him back, but she wasn’t strong enough to restrain the big dog until Ben grabbed the harness as well.

  The three ghost warriors darted forward. There was no sign of the fourth, the shadowy figure that had appeared before, just out of sight.

  The three Tunrit fanned out, presenting a wide target for the oncoming bear. Even with their great size, Beluga Killer loomed tall above them. And yet they moved with supreme confidence. They began an attack in unison, with spear thrusts coordinated by training and practice. The bear knew no such strategy; it only came wildly at them, charging one and then the other with a quick swipe of a massive paw, trying to close with any one of the three. The Tunrit dodged the blows with a sure-footed sidestep and a stabbing parry of spear. Alaana was amazed at their speed. In this dance of brutal savagery against intelligence and skill, the ghosts of the Tunrit clearly had advantage. They evaded the bear’s attacks, acting in support of each other to delay and distract. Incredibly, they seemed to be enjoying the battle. Their laughter was an impressive sound, a deep rattle like two rocks grating upon one another.