Eviane watched as the Raven swept the magical children into his claws and swooped up, up until the entire globe of the earth was a hazy white arc beneath her, and her heart was in her throat. Then the Great Bird swooped down, and left pairs of children around the rim of the Arctic Circle. She saw them swiftly gather together the tribes of the People, and teach them to make fire with the fire drill, to skin and tan, to build houses of wood and stone and ice. The old ways. Sedna showed in double exposure: her hair was coming clean. Her head lifted, she sighed, she waved a languid stub-fingered hand that streamed flocks of seals…
Gone.
Eviane blinked her eyes, rousing slowly from the spell. The pictures were gone, and Martin the Arctic Fox was speaking again.
“The Great Raven made the new men to teach the old knowledge to our people, to give us back the spirit world we had lost. He dispersed us around the great circle of ice. I came here, to this land you call Alaska. My son is called Ahk-lut, and together we were powerful guardians of the Old Ways. For half a century we used the power to help my people. Then Sedna became sick again, and Ahk-lut formed other plans, other ideas.
“Through dreams, through chanting, he reached our children, the children of the children of the Raven. Gathering them from tribes scattered around the ice, around the world, he formed the Cabal. The Cabal seduced more than half of our children. They kept their secrets from their parents, and together they worked their magic.”
An ocean of mist boiled away, and when it cleared Eviane was in a sweat lodge much like Martin’s qasgiq, but larger, darker. Eight young men formed a circle around a smoky fire. They were naked but for leather pouches slung on thongs around their necks. Their skins were burnt dark red by the heat. Perspiration drooled down their faces and slicked their bodies.
An alien, evil sound coursed through the air, one she finally recognized as a chorus of low mutterings, malignant human voices joined in dark harmony.
One stood. His face was very like Martin’s, leaner than a normal Eskimo face, with indented cheekbones and sunken eyes, as if he had not only Martin’s genes but the old shaman’s suggestion of deep sickness. He was shaven-headed. The dark eyes squinted in old hatred; the corneas looked milky. He reached into the pouch that hung from his neck, fumbling, and for a moment Eviane saw a tiny, withered pair of human legs in the pouch, and the rounded suggestion of a head. Then it vanished again, and Ahk-lut (who else could it be?) drew out a bar of chewing tobacco.
With dark, stained teeth Ahk-lut tore an enormous plug from the bar, masticated it, then spat a long, brownish stream into the fire. The flames leapt, and the smoke became a pillar of fetid dark green, masking and noxious.
“The young ones. Our children,” Martin said. “They were trying to heal a great wrong, but they were impatient. They wanted it quick and easy. They’ve done a dreadful thing…”
The Cabal passed the tobacco from hand to hand. One at a time every man in the lodge spat tobacco juice into the fire, until at last the smoke within the lodge was so deep that she could barely see faces at all.
Ahk-lut turned, picked up a robe, and swept it aside. The lump beneath glowed faintly blue. Ahk-lut picked it up-it was heavy-swung himself around, and set it in the center of the fire. Sparks sprayed outward.
Firelight masked the blue glow, but set the irregular mass gleaming. It was polished metal, with shattered edges like curved daggers, and thick tubing twisted and torn.
Above the fire, a huge face looked briefly through the smoke. It was part bird, part man: enough of man to show its astonishment.
Each man reached into the pouch hung around his neck, and from it drew a handful of powders and bone fragments.
With each handful there was a brief flash of a shape that roiled within the smoke and then vanished again, like a walrus rolling at the water’s surface before disappearing back into the depths. Here was a monstrous caterpillar, a writhing, multiarmed abomination. Smoke churned and became a killer whale with stubby human arms. It changed again, into the malformed corpse of a fetus pushing its flattened head against its amniotic membrane. A dead man clothed against bitter cold, face hooded, clothing and torso ripped open and empty. There were other, darker, bloodier images.
Higher within the pillar of smoke, the bird-face showed again. Its beak opened wide; it screamed silently, and faded, and then the shrill cry of a bird burst through the illusory smokehouse. The Cabal bellowed in triumph.
… When had they become nine?
Ahk-lut stepped into the circle, set his hands on a man’s shoulders, and pulled him to his feet. Eviane saw that the man’s arms and ankles were bound. He screamed like a bird. She saw, now, the suggestion of a beak in his pointed face.
Quite suddenly, the fire was out. An angular metal shape gleamed harsh blue within it. Shapes moved in the dark. A shadow occluded the glow, and fell into it-man-shaped, a bound man, writhing-and he was gone, and the blue glow was gone, and the firelight was the light of Martin’s qasgiq.
Chapter Eight
The fire was down to coals, and the smoke was thinning. Some of the refugees began to remember their half-naked state but there were larger matters to consider.
Martin said, “We believe that the Raven’s children’s children tricked their grandfather. They piqued his curiosity until he assumed human form to spy upon them. They cast their spells upon him, then upon the sun. The sun’s death spells the end of your world, and the beginning of theirs.”
“Martin.” Within the smoky dark, who spoke? “What was the metal object that glowed blue?”
“That? A powerful talisman I traced when I was young. The Cabal has stolen it. It was a fragment of a thing that fell from the sky, in Canada.”
“That was no meteor.” Now Eviane recognized the voice of Orson Sands.
“No, it was a machine from Russia that fell before I was born. Talismans gain power from the distance they have traveled. I learned that this object had gone round and round the world until whatever held it up stopped working. So I sought it out. Now the Cabal is using it to throttle the sun.”
Eviane heard herself saying, “They’ll make the whole world into an Eskimo world.” She wondered how she knew. “Cold. No crops, only the animals. We’d have to learn…” Her prescient vision ran far ahead of her tongue.
Martin said, “Yes, you would have to learn. Ahk-lut would teach the white and black and yellow men our ways. Those who will not learn would starve. We have guessed that much. We can even guess why they have barred us from tending Sedna-”
“Sedna,” Orson Sands broke in. “Shouldn’t we know more about Sedna?”
“Ah, I forget. All who live at the rim of the world know Sedna, or Nuliajuk, or the Food Dish. Sedna has the care of the sea life that keeps us alive, fish and seals and plants and the very core of our lifestyle. She is the conscience of all mankind. When the sins of men and women take refuge in her hair, then Sedna becomes sick. If the sea dies, the land dies, and all men starve. Your people are starving now, and will continue to starve until Ahk-lut believes you are few enough.”
“What about this Torngarsoak?” Kevin asked. “He’s her boyfriend? Why doesn’t he help?”
“He is a hunter, and roams the land,” Martin said. “Hunters are often gone for months at a time. He may not know her plight.”
“Okay, sins. It’s a missionary word.” Hippogryph spoke sharply, as if he were questioning a prisoner. “What do you mean by sins?”
Martin’s lips moved, tasting his choice of words. “Abortion is a sin.”
“Were the Eskimos practicing abortion?”