The World Above the Sky (21 page)

“From now on, Kulu,” Mooinskw, her great paws on Kulu's slender shoulders, says, “You are a bear person. The cruel man is wrong. I see into your heart. Strong and brave is your totem.” Kulu runs off into the forest, chatting and laughing with the other animals, for he is a magic boy now and knows their tongues. Kulu will grow into a great shaman, a good man, and heal The People of many ills.

The she-bear turns to Sir Athol. She places her great paws lightly on the big man's broad shoulders. “I am Mooinskw, your totem animal and your mother while on earth. From now on, white-as-a-ghost-person from across the great sea,” she says, “your totem gives strength and courage, to you and to those you love who love you. Go. Walk among The People. Gather
Kji-kinap
for the great task that awaits you.” Mooinskw ambles into the cave, takes her place among the Seven Sleepers. Soon her gentle, rumbling snores are indistinguishable from the others.

It isn't the snores of the bears that cause the rock walls to vibrate, then rattle. What evil force disturbs the World Below the Earth? Rock splinters fly past the dreamers and the dreamed. The cave wall splits open with the sound of seven thunders. Great and terrible is the bone-plated head of Jipijka'maq, Horned Serpent Person. His eyes are like Cannibal Ghost Person's—flaming pinwheels spurting blood. His pupils are black rectangles, his forked tongue flicks sparks and ropes of flame lick his hard-as-bone serpent lips. Jipijka'maq opens his gigantic mouth. Eugainia cries out in anger and in fear. Caught between the serpent's terrible teeth is Prince Henry Sinclair, Earl of the Orkney Isles, Liegeman to the King of Norway, Baron of Rosslyn, Protector of Scotland, Protector of the Holy Grail. His right side is pierced by a fang, below the lowest rib. Arched unnaturally backward, in terrible agony, repelled at the stench of Jipijka'maq's awful breath, the air he gasps to breathe, Henry calls to Eugainia. “Eugainia. Come back to us. We need you!” His face fixed in horror, his chest heaving, Henry Sinclair's last breath is about to be wrung from him. Eugainia steps forward. She raises her arms. Light streams from the tips of Eugainia's fingers.

Jipijka'maq squints in the blinding light. He drops Henry. He shakes his great head, scales rattling. Jipijka'maq hisses radiant, flesh-melting fire. The fiery gust breaks and flows around Eugainia. She wavers. She weakens.

“Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk,” she calls out in distress. “Help me.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk brandishes Tooth of Wolverine. “No,” he bellows, “you shall not have her.”

Gentle as a lynx retrieving her wayward kitten, Jipijka'maq bends, plucks Henry from the floor of the cave. Jipijka'maq's stone-plated scales, each the size of a swordsman's shield, rattle to life. Horned Serpent Person speeds away down the cave, its prize, Prince Henry Sinclair, limp as a rag doll, dangling from its jaws. Above the rattle and clamour, Henry's cries for help trail to nothing as the monster's endless length speeds past them, down into the depths of the cave. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, swift as lightning, secures his grip on the spear shaft. He plants Tooth of Wolverine deep into Jipijka'maq's lashing tail. Eugainia grabs Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's extended arm. With her free hand, she takes a firm hold of Sir Athol Gunn's tunic. All three, twisting like kites in a Thunder-bird wind, disappear down the tunnel.

Keswalqw stands before the she-bear. She raises her arms, throws back her head.

“
Akaia-aia-ah
,” she chants. “
Akaia-ia
!”

The dream time ends.

In Keswalqw's lodge, the thin breath of sleeping people, living people, not spirit bears, hung in a perceptible layer, frozen mist in the burning cold. The starving time was upon them. Sir Athol, not awake, not asleep, his skin wet with perspiration despite the bitter cold, gasped. He cast his sleeping robe aside. He sat, naked, confounded, with no idea who or where he is. He came fully awake when Jipijka'maq rose from two glowing embers in the wigwam's central firepit. Sir Athol lashed out at the hunger-induced vision. “Henry!” he cried.

No answer came from the dark. Henry's sleeping robe was turned back. His fir-bough bed vacated.

Athol woke Keswalqw. “Keswalqw. Henry is gone. Come.”

“No. Would you have three die seeking one? Henry will find his way.”

“We can't leave him wandering the woods in this cold.”

“Nor can we find him in the dark. Henry will find his way. If he's not back by dawn, we will seek him.”

The hunger song of a pack of wolves echoed in the night.

“Dawn may be too late.”

“It might. It might not. There's nothing to do but wait.” Keswalqw urged Athol back beneath the sleeping robes. “I heard you speak in your sleep. What were you dreaming?”

“I thought I was a boy. The Son of The People. A cruel stepfather. Me the son. Then the dream was not about me. It was about Henry. It seemed so real...”

Keswalqw offered what spare comfort she could. “Your hunger has found a voice and now it's speaking.”

“But the bear. She was for me. She loved me. She became my mother.”

“Your totem. Your bear-clan totem.”

“Yes. Then this monstrous snake. Now Henry's gone. It's as though the dream became real, but only when I woke.”

“Shh, my love. Rest. The morning soon will come. In the light of Grandfather Sun, we'll see what we must do.”

The scent arising from warm fir boughs calmed him. Sir Athol folded himself back into Keswalqw's embrace. He set his lips to her breast. He held the nipple lightly, not exerting the slightest pressure, not daring, in a starving time, to suck, lest there be blood. For a time, Keswalqw and Sir Athol lay awake in each other's arms. When they slept, briefly, feverishly, they dreamed of flesh and blood.

In the little moosehide wigwam on a far-distant hill, the little moosehide wigwam warmed by stones heated to perfection before they climbed the hill to speak to the moon, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Eugainia, tired from their journey through Sir Athol's bear-man dream, prepared to sleep.

In this place untouched by the starving time, three weeks' travel from the winter camp of The People, their life was full and rich. They knew The People suffered. They also knew they could not interfere. It was the way of The People to endure the starving time, to let nature take its course. They knew what was expected of them. It was their time to be together, to gather the strength to fight the great battle they knew would come, a battle greater than that being waged against cold and hunger. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Eugainia would lead a fight for the very survival of The People. They could not go home to The People until their spirit journey was complete. Victory would demand all the Power they could gather from their walk through the Six Worlds.

Eugainia settled beneath the weight and warmth of the furs. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk opened the smoke flap at the apex of wigwam, not to release smoke, for they had no need of fire, but to open the night to the moon and stars. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk shed his garments, raised his arms to the revolving night. Eugainia marvelled at the moon-washed beauty of her young Man/God, starlight shooting through his moon black hair. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, despite the bite of the cold, paused, gazed down at the Woman/Goddess he loved. He knew what awaited...his skin quivered, yes, in response to the cold, but also in mounting desire. Eugainia threw back the robes.

“Hurry, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. We'll freeze!”

Still he lingered. The long line of her waist, the tight plane of her stomach, her breasts, at once generous and discrete, the strong and supple legs, the honey-coloured patch tightly curled, the warmth of her gaze, the cold of the night, the love in his heart, the tender joy he knew lay before him...

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk was seized by an unreasonable fear that it was all an illusion forged by the moon. He scrambled beneath the robe, pressed his naked body to her's. Real enough. Almost more than even a strong young Man/God could bear.

“You are beautiful, Eugainia. Beautiful in the cold fire of Grandmother Moon. I give myself, my
Kji-kinap
, to you.”

“The night we loved on Apekwit,” Eugainia responded after a moment's thought, “I became Lnu'k, a Person, one of The People. Since then, I have walked with you and gathered Power. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. Tonight...here on this far distant hill...tonight I give myself, my
Kji-kinap
, to you.”

His hand drifted over ribs which, when he first knew her, were covered with a thin layer of soft yielding fat. Now her torso was laced tight with muscle and sinew. Her flesh was hard and warm, polished marble, not weak, pampered flesh.

His fingers trailed the natural curve of her waist, rose with the rise of her hip, descended to the gates of the Cauldron of the Five Trees. He furled and unfurled her tight, honey-coloured curls. He traced the swollen curves of her outer lips, his pause a question, asking permission to enter.

“Yes, beloved. Enter, and be welcome.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk watched Eugainia's eyes close then open softly. Her lips parted. The sweet breath of her sigh washed his brow and temple. He hovered above her. “You are Eugainia, White Goddess from across the Sea no more,” he whispered. “You are Eugainia—Woman Who Fell in Love with the Moon.”

“And you, my God on earth, formed of sand and stone, air and water, fire and ice,” she said as she rose to meet and enfold him. “You are my Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. Thank you for showing me the Six Worlds of The People. ”

“It was my great pleasure.”

“From this night forward, beloved,” she said as her hips rose to meet his gentle downward pressure, “we weep and grieve alone no more.”

• • •

Henry woke with a start to the howl of a wolf. This was no dream wolf. A feverish rose and purple radiance thinned the indigo night. He'd slept standing. How long, he didn't know. He raised an arm, a ghost of a thing against the wisp of a crescent moon. A thin layer of ice, a second skin, caught and held the slow, uncertain dawn. The matted guard hairs of his beaver robe and ragged chain mail glistened.

I'm clothed, he marvelled, in a sheath of light.

Beneath the begrimed robe, Henry's flesh quivered. He remembered stumbling through these young maples in the last light of a baffling day. The bitter cold had lifted briefly as the sun set. The wind lost its equilibrium. Pelting rain angled off the horizontal when the wind dropped and fell straight down. The temperature plummeted in the upper atmosphere then swept down from the World Above the Earth. Rain, cold beyond freezing, yet liquid while in motion, became ice on contact. After the rain, more bitter cold. Dry air was a sabre lacerating his nostrils. Water pooling at the corners of his eyes froze.

The once-patrician brow protruded, an apocalyptic ridge of bone. Tendons and ligaments lay stark on desiccated muscle. His malnourished, parchment yellow skin was cold as marble. Blood vessels roped up his torso in high relief. Blood pulsed erratic at his throat before disappearing below his jaw on its ascent to further chill his brain. Nostril blood, blackened by the cold, caked his frosted moustache. His blue eyes were ringed, dark with privation and despair.

In a lifetime as a leader of men, Henry had lured more than one dying mind back from paradise. Could he do the same for himself? He'd seen cold men die in deliriums of heat, pulling frozen clothes from convulsed bodies, mistaking death's intimacy for the warmth of a loved one's touch. He'd heard their bright rambles, these doomed men, their flashes of counterfeit logic stirring the deaths of a congealing mind.

Henry forced his mind to this: in the darkest hour of a snowless night in the coldest days of the starving time, he was lost and alone in a grove of young maples, their trunks frozen stone. How he'd come there, he could not imagine. He released his grip on the trunk to which he'd clung the long night through, grim with instinctual purpose. He forced one foot forward. Then the other. What seemed progress to Henry would rouse the deepest sympathy of an observer: two months shy of forty years of age, his was the slow, ponderous gate of an enfeebled old man.

What better place to relieve The People of the burden of his care, he'd reasoned as he rose from his sleeping robes and wandered out into the night. How better to atone for his great failure? Where better to offer his soul to God?

The dying night gave no answer. Nor was there solace in the growing dawn.

How have I come to this frigid, savage place? The stars. Yes. I followed the stars westward. Across the great northern sea. In the great dome of heaven, the ancient gods are near. God guides me. No. God did guide me. No more. God brought me here, then deserted me. Can it be? All these years of struggle? I lived to die alone. A wasted life? No. The ancients tell that every age proclaims its God. God's emissaries, patterned there in the stars. Human longing written in the heavens. Horus, Krishna, Vishnu, Muhammad—Peace be upon him. Peace be upon me. Aye. God obliged me to usher out this bloodied, plague-ridden arc of the wheel. To usher in the new. Our Lord the Christ appeared at the sign of the fish. His time has all but passed. In my soul Aquaria, Eugainia, the true Madonna sings the sweeter song. At last, the Goddess star is once again risen. All fear shall dwindle. Cruelty diffuse. Anger born of ignorance shall be overwhelmed by patience and love. Or so I thought. 'Til some cruel viper laid her egg in me. Was it yesterday? Last week? An ancient man of Keswalqw's clan told his sons and daughters his time to die had come. Great peace descends upon the dying grieved by loving kin, I think. Anguish chills the failing hearts of those who journey alone. The old warrior had seen one hundred and forty winters. The starving family struggled to rise from their torpor. They wept through the night, grieved together with their father, grandfather, father-in-law. Great uncle to Keswalqw. Newfound kin-friend to Athol Gunn and to me. The old man's breath was shallow but regular. His heart beats irregular but strong. He said, I know from the sound of your voices and in my own heart that I need suffer the burden of being L'nuk no more. Though I breathe and my blood still flows, I am dead now. Please, take me out so that I might end my walk upon the earth in open air. Let the snow-coloured Person from the place of ice and frost lead my willing spirit to the Ghost World. He slipped into the quiet sleep of the winter dead. His sons carried his frozen body back inside the communal hut. Wrapped in his finest robes, they lay him far from the heat of the fire, secure against decay and predation. They say when the starving time ends, the old man will be raised to the upper branches of a funeral tree. After two summers the bundle of bones, all that will remain—the flesh withered away by wind and sun—will be taken to the burial mound and interred with his hunting kit and spirit gifts. He will be mourned with proper feasting. I wish I could be there to honour him. Who will honour me?

Three big-eyed children, all skin and bones, were taken next. The death of the old man unsettled Henry: the death of the children cracked his gallant heart. He confronted Keswalqw:

“Surely something could have been done to save them. Two dogs remain uneaten. Why were the children not fed?”

“The bitch is fat with pups,” Keswalqw replied. “We do not eat the future. ”

Henry was not satisfied. “Then leave the bitch and kill the dog.”

“Destroy half of the last mated pair?” Keswalqw's patience thinned. “No. We need both to run the deer.”

“There are no deer.”

“There will be deer.”

Henry said no more.

“Our stores are empty, Henry. The ground is bare. There is no snow. The earth is hard as your iron axes. The water like a stone. Moose and deer hear every snapping twig, the crush of each dry leaf. Even if we could get near enough to plant a spear, none in our feebleness, not us, not the dogs, could chase a wounded animal down. Don't be downhearted, Henry. Or waste your strength on anger. You say you wish to know our ways, that you can better respect them. Hear this: it's time for the creatures of stream, sky and forest to multiply, our time to decrease. This is the way of the starving time.”

“A sad, miserable waste.”

“It may not be your way. It's how it must be for The People.”

“We spend much time at home laying up stores against these starving times—”

“And how much blood to defend your cache against your friends and neighbours, not to mention your enemies? And how much blood is shed to gather in food that is not yours? You see? I listen to your tales too.”

“I never doubted for a second that I had less than your full attention.”

“No. I don't suppose you did.” Keswalqw's smile was little more than a tug at the corners of once-f, now ruined lips. “Nor is there need for sorrow. Those unable to live, the old and tired among us, the child born weak or unfinished, the man killed in battle, the women dead in childbirth...all go to prepare a place for us who stay to walk the Earth World without them for a time. Those who wish walk to the Ghost World, to which we all one day must travel...let them go. Give thanks they show the way and make the Ghost World pleasant for us.”

“I watched the children die and felt such anger.”

“Spirit children have a task. They leave the Ghost World in time of need and lead the animals to us. Simple and sweet are their childish natures; trusting and generous the creatures who follow them. Put your anger aside. A starving time is not a time of waste. A shift in balance, for certain. A change of spirit, yes. A time of pain and sorrow yes. But not waste.”

Henry held his silence. Keswalqw caught and held Henry's ambivalent eye.

“You have no wish to follow the old man to the Ghost World, do you?”

“No.”

“Good. Then stay. Take heart, Henry. The snows will come. The cold will end. The sun will warm our bones. Our cheeks will be round with fat once again. Men and women will join together when their bellies are full. The children will come back, my friend. They always do. We will survive. We always do.”

Henry walked along a frozen stream in the early days of the starving time. He happened upon a young woman in the forest at the edge of its stone-hard waters. Her head was cloaked. Her face in silhouette. He was about to call her by name. Eugainia! No. A young woman of The People. She had not seen sixteen summers. Her newborn child, still wet from her mother's womb, cord bitten and knotted, steam rising from its infant body, lay naked on an untanned hide nearby. No matter the time of year of its birth, an infant born to The People must be cleansed quickly by complete submersion in moving water lest evil spirits catch its scent and stalk it. Beside its mother at the edge of the frozen stream the baby's miniature arms and legs pumped the frigid air with infant fury. The mother raised a rock the size of her child and brought it down with all her force on the glassy surface of the stream. One blow fractured the thick ice. Clear water flowed swiftly. She watched, momentarily mesmerized, as fragments of ice swirled, caught the jagged edges of the hole. The rock slipped from her grasp, fell from view below the surface. She raised her naked child to the Creator, asked a blessing and then plunged the infant through shards of ice into frigid water. She held the child below the surface for what seemed an eternity to Henry but was, in fact, only ten short beats of his racing heart. He was on the verge of interfering when Keswalqw stepped from shadowed spruce and grasped his arm.

“You have no place here, Henry Orkney. This is woman's business. Go back to the men. Watch and wait with them.”

“But the child...” he protested.

“Cold is not our enemy. We walk with the cold and we gather Power. Cold walks with us and it gathers Power from L'nuk. In this way winter and The People become a single Person. The child will decide to live and walk the Earth World with us or, before three nights have passed, will travel to the Ghost World. Either way, The People become stronger. Only the strongest survive the winter cleansing. Only those who wish to walk with the cold will survive the cold. You see how we embrace it, teach our bodies to live with it, to use what the Great Spirit provides. ‘Walk quickly in the frost and snow,' He tells us. ‘Walk slowly in the heat of summer. Walk with joy amid the bounty I provide, with your head raised up when your belly is full. Walk softly, with patience and humility when provisions fail until I restore the balance.'”

If he could cross the short distance to the next set of trees, Henry reasoned, those beyond the perimeter of the woods where the rising sun would warm him, he'd survive. To his fevered mind, light, no matter how faint or febrile meant heat. He attempted another step, his breathing rapid and shallow. He fell to his knees. He stared, unable at first to make sense of the glistening surface. Ice. Frozen water. A pool. In width the height of the fallen man, in depth no more than the length of his arm, wrist to elbow. The frozen pond mirrored the fading stars. He strained to lift his head. His chin broke contact with his chest, where it had found brief relief. He forced his eyes to the horizon. His clouded mind rose from his body. His heart stopped beating.

No…not now. Too soon. I've yet to make my peace with God.

An involuntary gasp from lungs near collapse, then a sharp inhalation, reunited Henry's body and soul. He forced his gaze up to the zenith still dark above the fringed horizon. His chin fell back to his chest. He addressed the image of the helmeted, thin-faced man reflected in the ice below. The Great Architect, with square and compass, sets our destiny. Among the stars, God writes it. All sacred texts lay open on our Templar pulpits. Bible. Qur'an. Talmud. In each the same great mystery is laid bare. But now the Temple's razed. All books but one are burned. Temple Knights, in their ones and their thousands, hanged by the neck until near death. Cut down...death's blessings unreasonably withheld. Their private agony becomes the rabble's ecstasy. Strapped down naked, angled upright to the mob's best advantage, private pain made spectacle. My Brother's shame repellent and instructive washes the leering mob, evoking not their pity but their lust. A poor soul's eyes held open, forced to watch his living bowels drawn and draped about him. His privy parts held high for all to see, dripping blood. His mutilated corpse hacked in quarters, or pulled apart by horses. The Temple Knight's final resting place a shameful lime-slaked grave.

The struggle to raise his head from the sickening images alive in the ice mirror below forced tears to Henry's lashes, their fanned shafts already flared thick with shards of ice. On ape-knuckle hands—his wrist rigid with cold, his knees insensible—he straightened his elbows, raised his torso, but only slightly. The stars in the ice snapped into focus. Were they on the ice? In it? No. The stars swam in the air between his chilled pupils and the surface of the ice itself.

Look how the stars speed across the surface of the ice. The entire history of the heavens and our place below...displayed for my benefit. Praise be to God! God wills it. As one star sets westward, another is born, low in the east. Morning star. Guiding light. Goddess star. Our own eternal Venus. You led the sun through Cancer in the days of the stone-circle queens and kings. You led the sun to Aries the Ram heralding the Shepherd dynasties of the Hittites...then Horus, and Ramses, King of all Egyptian kings. In his turn, Christ followed you through Pisces. Now, morning star, in the flood of this frozen dawn light the path for My Lady. Aquaria. Bearer of the sacred water. Chalice divine. Eugainia. The Living Holy Grail.