The Shadow of Everything Existing

by Ken Altabef

  As it turned out, Kaokortok was as useless at swimming as everything else. He floundered this way and that, kicking with one foot and then the other.

  “Stop flailing around!” said Nunavik. It was bad enough having to ride along in the idiot shaman’s dirty pocket among old tobacco rinds, scraps of paper, and a petrified squirrel’s eye, but this was too much.

  “I’m no good at swimming,” said Kaokortok. “My spirit guide is the Great Vole. Remember?”

  “How could I forget? Just stop what you’re doing now. It’s no good. I’m a walrus and even I’m getting sea sick!”

  “I drowned. Remember? This whole affair is causing bad memories.”

  “I didn’t exactly force you to come along.”

  “I’m doing the best I can. There’s just so much water everywhere…”

  “It’s the sea.”

  “I know,” said Kaokortok helplessly. “It’s just a lot deeper than I imagned. A lot deeper.”

  “Okay, okay,” said Nunavik. “But there’s no need to swim. You’re a ghost now. You can’t drown. Again. Just imagine your feet are stones. Let them weigh you down, just sink straight down. It couldn’t be more simple.”

  It was indeed simple enough, at least for Kaokortok. Using Nunavik’s method he began to sink straight down. Nunavik cut a little hole in the pocket with the tip of his good tusk so that he could see what was going on.

  In the spiritual world of Nunatsiaq the shamans viewed their surroundings entirely by the lights of the souls they encountered. In the landfast world there was often not much to see. A stray wolf out on the tundra, a few wandering caribou, a ptarmigan in the sky. Some rocks, a lot of snow.

  But the spiritual plane beneath the waves was another thing entirely. There were soul lights everywhere, lighting their way in an incredible panorama of the sea. It was a dazzling display, full of color and wonder. Tuna glowed fiery red, cod a pale blue-white, eel and stingrays a dull orange. Thousands of smaller fish in yellow and blue, and surrounding it all the vast, luminous glow of the sea itself. With all the soul lights of the fish darting and weaving about them in chaotic motion, Kaokortok’s path took an even more erratic course. The Tungus shaman oohed and ahhed at each and every one.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.

  “Yes, they are beautiful,” agreed the walrus.

  “I’ve never gone this deep. Not even when I drowned. Arghh, don’t remind me! Ooh, look at that!”

  Kaokortok swerved to observe more closely a particularly huge jellyfish.

  “Don’t touch that!” warned Nunavik.

  “Is it made out of glass?”

  “No! It’s made out of poison. Sheer. Total. Poison. Look at those stingers.”

  Incredibly, the Tungus shaman still reached out for the thing.

  “I said don’t touch that!” bellowed Nunavik. “Its soul is every bit as dangerous as its body, you fool. How about you pay a little more attention to continuing our journey? Now we’ve got to move lateral.”

  “What? What?”

  “To the side. You’ve got to move to the side.”

  Kaokortok righted himself and took a few tentative steps along the rocky bottom. There was no practical place to step without jagged growths of coral.

  “You can’t walk on the surface,” said Nunavik, peering through his peep hole. “The bottom is too uneven, and you needn’t walk at all. Just stretch yourself out. Stretch yourself out lengthwise along the bottom and now your head is the weight — imagine a big block of stone. Of course that’s not much different than its normal state anyhow. Got it?”

  “I suppose…”

  “Your head is a block of stone and now you’re falling forward. Same thing as before really. No flapping the arms. Don’t move the legs. Falling forward. That’s all you need do.”

  Kaokortok could not do it very well. Falling forward was just a little bit too difficult of a concept for him to completely comprehend. So there were a couple of dizzying flips and somersaults and he resorted back to lurching to the side. Nunavik suffered along with it, urging him to turn one way or the other, occasionally peeking out of the pocket to take his bearings and issue more instructions.

  “I think that jellyfish is following us.”

  “Just leave it alone. Go faster if you can.”

  Kaokortok couldn’t go very fast, especially since he kept stopping every time he saw one or another interesting new thing. At one point he reached down, having spied what he thought was a big round opal on the sea floor. Before Nunavik could warn him, he reached for it only to discover it was the eye of a larger beast. An angry giant freed itself from the muck and mire of the bottom. It rose up above Kaokortok, a monstrous crab with eight snapping claws.

  Kaokortok let out an unintelligible squawk.

  “What have you done?” sniped Nunavik. “What have you done?”

  He fixed his eye to the peephole. He couldn’t see the entirety of the gigantic beast, but the claws were plain enough. “You idiot! That thing is the ghost of some ancient monster of the depths. It’ll kill us!”

  Several pairs of thorny claws came crashing at Kaokortok. The shaman stumbled backwards, flailing against the water. It was certain he could not evade those claws but, screaming and making such a ghastly noise, he frightened a school of spadefish. The fish began darting madly around, bumping into the gigantic jellyfish. The jellyfish’s tentacles lashed out in a frenzy. The spadefish also disturbed a barracuda nesting nearby. Between the ghost of the monster, the darting spadefish, the jellyfish and the monstrous barracuda, Kaokortok had created a scene of total mayhem.

  “I told you not to cause trouble. I didn’t want Sedna to find me. Idiot!”

  Lost in a panic, Kaokortok slipped clumsily on a slimy rock underfoot.

  “What are you slipping on?” barked Nunavik. “You’re a ghost.”

  The shaman’s stumble turned out to be a good thing, ducking him under the claws of the crab monster. He fell and rolled down the incline to safety out of the reach and attention of the others.

  “Don’t touch anything else. Sedna has some terrifying pets down here, I can tell you. Things you never want to see. Make that crab look like a minnow. Gobble you up in an instant.”

  Suitably chastised and frightened out of his wits, Kaokortok vowed to cause no more trouble. Nunavik directed him to the hidden grotto of the Whale-Man. The two bowhead whales at the entrance had no interest in letting Kaokortok anywhere near the place but Nunavik was well known to them, and finally the two were allowed to pass unmolested.

  The golden walrus descended gracefully into the cavern. Kaokortok followed after, flailing his arms and legs like a frog and pausing to stare goggle-eyed at all the colorful coral formations crusting the rock at every turn. Exotic fishes peeked nervously out, exchanged startled glances with the Tungus shaman, and retreated within. The floor of the cavern was littered with weird treasures, shipwrecked boats, and other shiny baubles. A great many bowheads and a few humpbacks milled slowly around the cavern. Other strange creatures populated the bottom as well, including oddly shaped crabs and wildly colored octopi.

  Nunavik was greeted by a beluga spirit so intensely luminous he shone like a beacon lighting up the entire cavern. His skin was perfectly white except for a delicate pattern of bright blue spots ranging along his brow, encircling his eyes and rounded forehead before making their way along his spine. His eyes were so round and deep and so much larger than those of others of his kind, they seemed bottomless wells of wisdom and kindness. He swam through the water with a commanding grace. “Nunavik!” he sang.

  The walrus dipped his head. “Buulabaq, my good friend.”

  The beluga shaman’s dome creased slightly. “Who’s this?” he asked, with a toss of his shoulder toward Kaokortok.

  “Oh, nobody important,” said Nunavik. They conversed, as did all shamans, using the secret language of the soul.

  “See here,” said Buulabaq, “you can’t just bring people down here
.”

  “Well I think it’s safe to say you’ll never see him again, and you’ll be glad for that.”

  Kaokortok might have taken offense at that remark, but he was too stupefied by the presence of Buulabaq. Though he was a shaman himself, and a proud representative of the voles, he had never seen anything quite as beautiful as the shimmering beluga. At that moment a two-headed walrus swam past on its way up to the surface for a few breaths.

  Kaokortok just stared at it.

  Nunavik turned toward him and said, “Go run and play. Go. Shoo!”

  Kaokortok, still awed into silence, drifted awkwardly down toward one of the sunken ships.

  Nunavik and Buulabaq swam toward the far end of the cavern.

  “How are the children?” asked Nunavik.

  “Much the same,” said Buulabaq.

  They reached a sheltered ledge of coral where rested three cocoons of green seaweed. They varied in size. The largest was equally as large as a bowhead, the second half that size, and the third about as long as the walrus himself. Inside the cocoons were the lakespawn, strange creatures that resembled whales, though they breathed water and each had twelve eyes and gelatinous orange skin. They were the children of a human woman and her husband, a lake spirit named Taamnapkunami. Alaana had discovered them on her first visit to the Lowerworld and promised to care for them after their mother died.

  Buulabaq nudged one of the cocoons with his glorious shining nose. “No change so far,” he said. “We know so little about them. What about their father? Have you spoken to him?”

  Nunavik snorted. “That lazy, good-for-nothing lake? He’s so old and sleepy he still brings food for them even though they’ve been gone two moons. He can’t keep his eyes open long enough to notice.”

  Buulabaq chuckled. “I haven’t any experience with lakes, but the sea is not so different. Maybe they’ll wake up soon. I’ve seen them stirring.”

  “Stirring?” asked Nunavik. “Stirring is good.” He’d had some experience with cocoons on his travels to the Upperworld, in dealings with the moth spirits and the butterflies.

  “The Whale-Man has a special interest in them,” said the beluga. “He can’t imagine what they might look like when they emerge.”

  “Well, just about anything will be an improvement,” said Nunavik. “I love them dearly, but they were never easy to look at.”

  Nunavik blinked his little black eyes, and dipped down toward the grotto floor. There among the debris, gold coins, and scattered gemstones he spotted a rounded bowl of golden bone.

  “Hey,” he said, “Is that my skull?”

  “Perhaps it is,” said Buulabaq.

  “I never thought I’d see that again.”

  “You want to take it with you?”

  “No. I’ve no use for it any longer. This is as good a place for it as any, I guess.”

  He glanced back at the cocoons, adding, “If anything happens to them, send word to me right away.”

  “You’ll be the first to know, well, right after I tell the Whale-Man.”

  “Since you mention Usinuagaaluk...” Nunavik glanced around as if hoping to see the Whale-Man there in the grotto, as if such a tremendous presence could possibly be hidden. “Can I speak to him?”

  “The sea is vast. The Great Whale is not here, and rarely will he speak to anyone he is not connected to in any case, especially one of Sedna’s creatures.”

  The rivalry between the Whale-Man and the Mistress of the Sea was known to most well-traveled shamans. “Well, I don’t exactly represent Sedna any longer,” said Nunavik. “In fact she’d probably kill me if she knew I was here.”

  “That might interest the Whale-Man,” admitted Buulabaq.

  “What I say will interest him. I have come to warn him.”

  “Warn him?” The beluga smiled and tilted his head. “Does a great spirit need a shaman to warn him? No offense, friend walrus, but you are nothing to him.”

  “Buulabaq, you are protected down here; you are apart. You don’t see what happens in the other spirit-worlds, but you’re just as much in danger as everyone else, even if you don’t know it. A sorcerer is murdering the turgats. The Moon has gone dark.”

  “The Moon is very far away,” said Buulabaq. “Not really our concern.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Nunavik. “It’s all our concern.”

  CHAPTER 12

  VITHROK ATTACKS

  Vithrok had come to hate his physical body. He much preferred to let his soul flow free among the spiritual worlds. How could anyone enjoy being constrained in a cage of rotting flesh?

  Vithrok had used a whirlwind to dig up his body, which had been buried by his fellow Tunrit ages ago, deep in the ever-frost. The implacable ice had preserved the body in a pristine state, but since he had retaken possession it had steadily deteriorated. Sunlight rotted the skin, turning it dark brown and black. The once-handsome face had been damaged in the battles he’d fought, leaving one cheek laid bare to the bone.

  The body was no longer alive. It housed his name-soul and was powered by his inua, or true spirit, but the breath of life was gone and could never be restored. It was a walking corpse, its every action fueled by his strength of will and sorcerous power. It was a tiresome drudgery, compelling wooden muscles to move, frozen joints to turn, ripping and tearing as they went. He took no joy in it. But sometimes, as today, there were tasks which required a mortal hand, or in this case a pair of mortal eyes. If Vithrok was to gaze into the Heart at the Ice Mountain, he must use flesh and blood eyes and not the spirit-vision of his soul.

  He made his way across the tundra, sitting astride the back of one of his great beasts. Another followed silently alongside. These monstrous creatures had been called maguruq by the Tunrit back in the dark times before the first dawn. Vithrok had unearthed the bones of these two when he had forced the weather spirit Narssuk to gouge up his own body from the permafrost. He had coaxed tiny remnants of their souls from the bones, reforming their meat and sinew in a likeness of their former shape. The bones had long been petrified in the deep blue ice and these souls, nearly turned to stone themselves, had little will of their own. They knew to snap and growl, and place one hoof in front of another. Vithrok directed their movements with his mind, as he directed the limbs of his own corpse.

  The beasts resembled giant, monstrous wolves with long snouts full of vicious teeth. A pair of tusks curled from their lower jaws to match the pair of sharp, short horns that crowned their brow. Each of them stood ten paces high, top-heavy with a massive humped back and shoulders, narrow waist and hips, and powerful hindlegs. Their hides were thick and scaly, frilled by patches of thorny, rotten fur. They moved with long, loping strides, the first maguruq to walk the earth in thousands of years. Vithrok himself had presided over their extinction in the dark times before he had brought the sun.

  The sorcerer turned his gaze skyward. During the previous night he had noted a curious thing. The stars had changed. The older stars which had shone in the sky since the earliest days, since the time of the Great Rift, still marked the constellations. But the newer ones, much closer and larger than the others, were gone.

  Let them come, he thought. Let them all come. He had not been able to conjure a way to bring the old shamans down from the sky, but his attack on the Moon seemed to have done the trick. He was glad of it. He wanted to add the angakua of the ancients to his supply of raw Beforetime, making more fuel for his fire. It would serve them right.

  The change in the sky had another significance as well. It had reverted back to the way it looked before the coming of men, appearing once again as it had in the very beginning of this desolate little world. Already he was turning time backward.

  The maguruq approached a twinned set of ice spires which formed a natural gateway to the Ice Mountain. The guardian bears had carved the massive spires with intricate and delicate patterns. These runes were meant to exclude malevolent spirits. No precautions had been taken against a Tunrit or his maguruq, both thou
ght long-extinct from the world. Atop one of the spires sat a coal-black raven, whose glistening eyes watched all that transpired below. Indeed it had been Tulukkaruq, the great raven spirit himself, who had informed Vithrok of the existence of this place.

  Two ferocious white bears emerged from behind the spires. Vithrok noted that the raven, who could see all from its aerial roost, had not bothered to warn him.

  The two polar bears, who served as sentries to the secret enclave of Ice Mountain, had never seen anything like him before. A man clothed in a sheath of metallic armor of pure Beforetime, standing tall upon the back of a towering maguruq. A fearsome sight to be sure, but the bears charged forward all the same.

  The sentries attacked the legs of the beast Vithrok rode, instinctually recognizing the slender ankles as their weakest point. The first bear slammed into a front leg with its full weight and momentum. The second wrapped its massive jaw around the other front leg. The maguruq let loose its distinctive howling cry and toppled forward.

  Vithrok sprang from the creature’s back. His mortal form could not fly; it was bound to the earth like all others. He had intended to leap in such a way that he would land, spear-first, directly atop the bear that had tripped up his mount, but the muscles of his body were sluggish and didn’t react precisely in time. He came to ground behind the bear.

  The first bear rooted over the body of the fallen maguruq, seeking a soft spot among its thorny hide, any weak place to make a kill. It delayed too long, as Vithrok directed the second maguruq to sweep in. The maguruq caught the polar bear with a forceful sweep of its horns. The bear was impaled for a moment then suddenly flung a hundred paces away. The bear made a heavy thump as it struck the ground at the end of its flight.

  Vithrok kept his eyes on the second bear. The beast had already pivoted and begun its charge. Vithrok noticed the blue marks on its face which identified it as one of the sacred bears of Tornarssuk. Growling ferociously, the bear came boldly onward. Vithrok had killed many a bear in his day, as well as much more fearsome beasts, hunting in the darkness as one of the Tunrit. He did not fear a charging bear, and was never intimidated. His favorite way to slay a bear was to drive the point of the spear up from under its neck, locking the jaw. It was so terribly enjoyable to watch the bear squirming and snarling helplessly at the end of the spear knowing it was to die.