But Sedna, who had learned all of her lessons the hard way since even before her father had betrayed her so long ago, had understood the danger the Tuunbaq posed to her even before she created it, so now she activated a secret weakness she had built into the Tuunbaq, chanting her own spiritworld irinaliutit incantations.
Instantly the Tuunbaq was banished to the surface of the Earth, never able to return to the spirit world nor to the deep bottom of the sea nor to hold pure spirit form in either place. Sedna was safe.
The Earth and all its denizens, on the other hand, were no longer safe.
Sedna had banished the Tuunbaq to the coldest, emptiest part of the crowded Earth — the perpetually frozen region near the north pole. She chose the far north rather than other distant, frozen areas because only the north, the center of the Earth to the many inuat gods, had shamans there with any history of dealing with angry evil spirits.
The Tuunbaq, deprived of its monstrous spirit form but still monstrous in essence, soon changed form — as all tupilek do — into the most terrible living thing it could find on Earth. It chose the shape and substance of the smartest, stealthiest, most deadly predator on Earth — the white northern bear — but was to the bear in size and cunning as a bear itself is to one of the dogs of the Real People. The Tuunbaq killed and ate the ferocious white bears — devouring their souls — as easily as the Real People hunted ptarmigan.
The more complicated the inua-soul of a living thing is, the more delicious it is to a soulpredator. The Tuunbaq soon learned that it enjoyed eating men more than eating nanuq, the bears, enjoyed eating man-souls more than it enjoyed eating walrus-souls, and enjoyed eating men more even than it enjoyed devouring the large, gentle, and intelligent inua-souls of the orca.
For generations, the Tuunbaq gorged itself on human beings. Large parts of the snowy north that once were thick with villages, areas of the sea that once saw fleets of kayaks, and sheltered places that had heard the laughter of thousands of the Real People were soon abandoned as human beings fled south.
But there was no fleeing the Tuunbaq. Sedna’s ultimate tupilek could outswim, outrun, outthink, outstalk, and outfight any human being alive. It commanded the ixitqusiqjuk bad spirits to move the glaciers farther south, making the glaciers themselves follow the human beings who’d fled into green lands so that the white-furred Tuunbaq would be comfortable and concealed in the cold as it continued to eat human souls.
Hundreds of hunters were sent out from the Real People villages to kill the thing, and none of the men returned alive. Sometimes the Tuunbaq would taunt the families of the dead hunters by returning parts of their bodies — sometimes leaving the heads and legs and arms and torsos of several hunters all mixed together so that the families could not even carry out the proper burial ceremonies.
Sedna’s monster soul-eater looked as if it might eat all the human-being souls on Earth.
But, as Sedna had hoped, the shamans of the hundreds of groups of the Real People huddled around the periphery of the cold north, sent verbal messages, then met in angakkuit shaman enclaves and talked, prayed to all their friendly spirits, conferred with their helping-spirits, and eventually came up with a plan to deal with the Tuunbaq.
They could not kill this God That Walked Like a Man — even Sila, the Spirit of the Air, and Sedna, the Spirit of the Sea, could not kill the talipek Tuunbaq.
But they could contain it. They could keep it from coming south and killing all of the human beings and all of the Real People.
The best of the best shamans — the angakkuit — chose the best men and women among them with shamanic abilities of clairvoyant thought-hearing and thought-sending, and they bred these best men with the best women the way the Real People today breed sledge dogs to create an even better, stronger, smarter generation.
They called these beyond-shamanic clairvoyant children the sixam ieua, or spirit-governors-of-the-sky, and sent them north with their families to stop the Tuunbaq from slaughtering the Real People.
These sixam ieua were able to communicate directly with the Tuunbaq — not through the language of the tuurngait helping-spirits as the mere shaman had attempted, but by directly touching the Tuunbaq’s mind and lifesoul.
The spirit-governors-of-the-sky learned to summon Tuunbaq with their throat singing. Devoting themselves to communicating with the Tuunbaq, they agreed to allow the jealous and monstrous creature to deprive them of their ability to speak to their fellow human beings. In exchange for the tupilek killing-creature no longer preying on human souls, the spirit-governors-of-the-sky promised the God Who Walks Like a Man that they — the human beings and Real People — would no longer make their dwelling places in its northernmost snowy domain. They promised the God Who Walks Like a Man that they would honour it by never fishing or hunting within its kingdom without the monster-creature’s permission.
They promised that all future generations would help feed the God Who Walks Like a Man’s voracious appetite, the sixam ieua and other Real People catching and bringing fish, walruses, seals, caribou, hares, whales, wolves, and even the Tuunbaq’s smaller cousins — the white bears — for it to feast on. They promised that no human being’s kayak or boat would trespass on the God Who Walks Like a Man’s seadomain unless it was to bring food or to sing the throat songs that soothed the beast or to pay homage to the killing-thing.
The sixam ieua knew through their forward-thoughts that when the Tuunbaq’s domain was finally invaded by the pale people — the kabloona — it would be the beginning of the End of Times. Poisoned by the kabloonas’ pale souls, the Tuunbaq would sicken and die. The Real People would forget their ways and their language. Their homes would be filled with drunkenness and despair. Men would forget their kindness and beat their wives. The inua of the children would become confused, and the Real People would lose their good dreams.
When the Tuunbaq dies because of the kabloona sickness, the spirit-governors-of-the-sky knew, its cold, white domain will begin to heat and melt and thaw. The white bears will have no ice for a home, so their cubs will die. The whales and walruses will have nowhere to feed. The birds will wheel in circles and cry to the Raven for help, their breeding grounds gone.
This is the future they saw.
The sixam ieua knew that as terrible as the Tuunbaq was, this future without it — and without their cold world — would be worse.
But in the times before this should come to pass, and because the young clairvoyant men and women who were the spirit-governors-of-the-sky spoke to the Tuunbaq as only Sedna and the other spirits could — never with voices but always directly, mind to mind — the still-living God Who Walks Like a Man listened to their propositions and their promises.
The Tuunbaq, who — like all the greater inuat spirits — loves to be pampered, agreed. He would eat their offerings rather than their souls.