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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Unkoostika part II

All right, here's part II of Unkoostika. Sorry it took so long. If anyone reads this who's from Alaska, it'd be good to know if my description of a glacier fits reality. Hope y'all enjoy!

Unkoostika
Part II

“Your boy’s worthless.” Lin muttered as he polished his sword hilt.

Sitka’s father shifted on a log and puffed smoke from his pipe. He checked the uncle’s faces, and they watched him intently through smoke.

“Lin,” Sitka’s father said softly, “you said you were a samurai once, whatever that means, and we’ve respected you as one of us. You’ve carried the heaviest loads, taken the longest shifts as guard and always brought down the most prey.” Lin nodded and caressed his sword.

“You’re a part of this clan, and I apologize for what my son said.”

Lin spat and waved away wisps of smoke. “I don’t take offense from the mouth of a boy,” he lifted his chin, “and I’m angry for the family….your boy and mine are the only two in this clan. We can’t afford the older to be a fool. Kenai looks up to your boy; I get sick to my stomach thinking about the future.”

“Well said,” Knuckle muttered. The two other uncles nodded and inhaled.

Lin gazed at the dark sky, “Something must be done, Saami, before it’s too late. Either you deal with your boy, or we as a clan must.”

Saami stiffened and knocked the ash out of his pipe. “I’ll take care of my boy,” he stood, “and all of you remember that.” His eyes pierced everyone before he strode to Sitka’s tent.

Knuckle stifled a laugh, “He always looks like a bear when he’s walking,” he muttered to one of his brothers.

Lin rubbed his neck, and his features screwed up. “I’d say you’ve got another week before you need to shave,” Knuckle observed.

Lin glanced at him haughtily for a second, but he nodded. “I used to not let my beard grow so long….back when I had my own estate.”

Knuckle nodded, “You like hunting, don’t you? I swear I see you smiling after sneaking up on a caribou and, slice! one more carcass to carry home. Two, I mean.”

“I try to adjust.” Lin smiled a large row of white teeth.

“Sitka!” Saami roared within the boy’s tent and things crashed within. The men instinctively turned. The rampage continued for a whole ten seconds.

“Satisfied?” Knuckle mumbled, “He’ll never give you lip again.” He took a deep breath and blew so hard the ash flew out of his pipe.

Sitka’s father rushed over to the men, ignoring the women and girls who peeped out of their huts. “He’s gone!” he panted, “he’s run away….and your boy’s missing too.”

Lin paled and he stood shakily. He stared at the mountains, and especially at a jagged peak silhouetted against the moon. “They’ve gone after the caribou…” he mumbled, “with no one with them. They’ll try crossing the mountains….Let’s get after them!”

The men stormed out of camp after Saami explained what had happened to Grandfather. The old man’s eyes widened and he looked to the sky. “It’s a dark night,” he said, “beware of the Sly One. Those mountains are his hunting grounds.”




The moon casts light on many things, but there’re things it even wishes to remain concealed. A cave’s mouth was chiseled out of a cliff face overlooking a plain. The entrance towered hundreds of feet over a narrow pass. A cloaked figure hid in the cave shadows, and eagle eyes glowed as they followed two figures on the plain, coming closer.

The figure leapt from the cave. Its skeleton-like limbs flashed as his black cloak flapped in the wind. He bounced from one wall of the pass to another, till he found an outcropping. Nestling into the shadows, he clicked a talon on a stone, its keen edge catching the moonlight and holding it captive in a fluorescent glow.



Sitka’s legs wobbled beneath him. He rested on a boulder and glanced up the mountain slope. He’d crossed the tundra, but the mountain towered before him. It was the quickest way to the hunting grounds, but it cut up the mountain’s slope.

His clan never came this way to get to the hunting grounds, but every clan knew of the shortcut. The path cut between narrow cliffs for what felt like an eternity, and led across a glacier. From there he’d have to skirt the edge of a cliff as he descended onto the plain on the other side.

Sitka patted Wolf’s neck, and the dog yelped. The boy gasped and withdrew his hand. “It’s a little haunted, isn’t it?” he chuckled between quivering lips, “But it’s too late to turn back…father probably discovered we aren’t there anymore.” He gestured back to camp, and something caught his eye.

It was dark for summer, even for the early hours, but he thought he espied a figure coming closer. He groaned and slammed his spear butt in the ground.

“That pest!” he growled to Wolf, “Kenai’s following. He’s going to ruin everything!”
Sitka cuffed his hands and shouted over the plain, “Kenai! Go back! Go back! You’re not fooling anyone.”

The figure halted for a second, and then kept coming. Sitka charged up the mountain side, sliding occasionally on loose dirt. He grabbed small brush and leapt back to his feet. Wolf panted beside him, never passing when he fell and never falling behind.

Sitka slumped against the cliff’s cool wall as he reached the top and held his side. The sound of his breathing echoed down the narrow pass, and reverberated as he shouted. “Don’t follow me!” he gasped, “I’m not waiting for you.”

Rocks and boulders clattered and broke the deathly silence as the boy dashed forward. Wolf seized his pant leg and tugged him backwards.

“What’s wrong with you?” the boy panted, “don’t you know we’ve got to kill a caribou before father catches up?”

Wolf shook his head and pulled harder. Sitka wrenched his leg away, not carrying that the dog lost a tooth.

“Sitka?” Kenai’s voice reverberated from behind, “I’m scared! Let’s go home.”

“You go home!” Sitka trudged on, “I don’t want you here anyway.”

A gasp emanated somewhere far away, and Kenai’s gentle scream shattered the still night.
“Help!”

Wolf barked and growled, the hair rising along his spine. “Nice try,” Sitka laughed nervously, “I know that trick.”

No response. The dog whimpered and shifted on its paws.

“Kenai?”

“Sitka, come and help me!” someone called, “there’s a caribou. It’s attacking me! That’s why I screamed. It’s getting away!”

Sitka clutched his spear and darted back toward Kenai. Something heavy landed on his back and bore him to the ground. Sitka barely missed cutting himself on his spear.

“What’s wrong with you?” he screamed at Wolf, “the caribou’s getting away!”

Wolf seized the boy’s pant leg and charged down the pass, in the opposite direction of Kenai and the caribou. The lead dog retreated faster than Sitka had ever seen him pull a sled, and he was amazed at the strength in the animal’s thin legs.

“Go back! I said go back!”

Wolf ignored his master’s plea. The fur on his neck didn’t lower even as his paws stepped on the glacier. It was a barren place, covered in many places with small pebbles that had been heated by the sun and melted into the ice. The landscape rolled with hills and snow hadn’t relinquished its grip from this place. Jagged ice peaks rose to the left and gaping cracks dotted the landscape. Mountains towed on either side. Wolf ran across the slippery terrain like a seasoned expert.

Sitka lashed about on the ice, trying to get his spear into a throwing position. Wolf started panting between his clenched teeth and his pace slackened enough for Sitka to aim. The dog released the pant leg and collapsed with the spear between his ribs.

Sitka gasped; he hadn’t meant….

“Wolf!” he rubbed the animal’s ear frantically, “Get up! Are you alright?”

The sled dog’s head rolled over in a last effort, and his dying eyes gave such a mournful look that Sitka gasped. He caught the animal’s head as its strength ran out and its eyes closed to the harsh North.

“No.” Sitka rose to his feet, hypnotized by Wolf’s prone figure. His lip trembled and a single tear melted a tiny hole in the ice.

He tore his gaze away as the sound of clacking on stone came from the narrow pass. He glanced at his dog’s body one more time, stroked his head, and sprinted across the glacier. Occasionally he tripped and bruised himself on the ice.

Sweat dripped off the end of his nose, but he didn’t stop; what would Kenai say when he saw Wolf? It shouldn’t matter! But it did.

Towers of jagged ice loomed over Sitka, and he leaned over and gasped as he studied his situation. He’d run for nearly an hour, and almost crossed the great block of ice. This tower of ice separated him from the mountains on the other side. He craned his neck and stretched his arms; the peak loomed a hundred feet at least and the surface dripped with ice melting in the early sun.


Saami, his brothers, and Lin dashed up the narrow pass, stones clattering in their wake. The cliffs on either side felt small as the men panted and pushed harder and harder on the pursuit.

“This is your….fault!” Lin gasped as he pointed a finger at Sitka’s father, “If you’d kept a firmer grip on that boy….”

Sitka’s father stopped cold in the lead and spun around. His knuckles whitened on his spear and his chest heaved, “We’re after your boy too….Samurai.” he pronounced the title in a mocking tone, “Remember that!”

The clan’s leader turned his back on Lin and commenced the chase without waiting for a reply. The Samurai glared, but followed in the rear. Uncle Knuckle observed from the corner of his eye how Lin pounced from boulder to boulder with the ease of a cat. Perhaps more of a lion, he thought as he avoided Lin’s sharp glance, he looks ready to kill.

Sitka’s father and uncles pulled up short as Lin’s anguished scream filled the pass. “You’re going to give away where we are….” Knuckle’s voice trailed off in the harrowed silence.

The uncles passed a small alcove in the cliff face without noticing it, but not Lin. There was Kenai shoved in the alcove, and it smelled of blood. Lin seized the boy and the Samurai’s lip trembled as he studied his son. Kenai’s head slumped to one side as though it would never move again. His clothes were shredded, and blood formed small pools on the ground.

Saami and his brothers dropped spears from their unnerved hands or knelt with heads bowed. Lin’s hard face, the one that could watch unflinching as a cub was killed, slowly sunk. The lines always hidden under imperviousness came out at his dimples and stretched across his forehead. He clutched his boy, cradled his cut face in his hands.

Slowly, he lowered his son on a boulder and kissed his plump cheek despite the dirt. He staggered to his feet and gazed at the end of the pass with hollow eyes. His hands hung at his sides as though he didn’t know he had them. “He’s dead….he’s useless now….lets think about the living….he’s useless to me….”

Sitka’s father gently placed a hand on Lin’s shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Lin shook from head to foot. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he roared through trembling lips, “Of course I’m not alright! My son! He’s gone! gone! Gone! vanished! Deceased….”

He dropped to his knees at Kenai’s side, and bit the knuckles on his right hand as he gripped his son’s thin arm. That arm would never grow large enough to hunt for his wife and children.

The Samurai’s powerful shoulders quivered from gasps of sorrow. The uncles formed a circle and bowed their heads. “We’re sorry.” Knuckle patted the man’s shoulder, “He was…”

“He’s dead.” Lin didn’t raise his eyes, but his words were accompanied by the grinding teeth, “Saami,” he whispered so his voice wouldn’t crack, “your boy is still out there, with Unkoostika.”

Sitka’s father grimaced. He wanted to say something, but nothing came from his mouth. He stood in reverenced silence; Lin had never cried.

“Go away!” Lin roared as he pounded the rock and continued gazing at his boy, “Just go away all of you!”

The uncles backed away and picked up their spears. Saami picked his up last. He gazed at Lin’s broken figure a moment, and dashed down the pass with a bloodcurdling cry. “On the hunt!”

The brothers saw the end of the pass as Lin’s cry shrieked over their heads, “Gone! Dead!”



Sitka took a deep breath, stuck his spear butt down the back of his coat, grimaced from the chilled rod, and climbed the cliff of ice. He never looked down, and his breath melted holes in the ice when he rested his trembling limbs. The boy felt the higher he went the more he felt something would pull him off into space.

He rested his chin on some ice as he looked up; only ten more feet! Five more….two…he hoisted his body onto the cliff’s summit and gasped. A river coursed down the glacier in a deep crag, disappearing into dark blue under the ice’s surface. On the other side loomed the side of a mountain with trees and a path cutting upward.

His family always took a longer rout than this, but he guessed what was on the other side of that path; the hunting plains!

Grandfather once said there were streams and rivers beneath glaciers, and even caves. He’d told a story about a tribe that’d lived in a glacier, but Sitka hadn’t believed him.

Sitka clutched his knees to his chin and rocked back and forth. Maybe grandfather was wiser than he’d thought! No time to rest; his uncles had to know he’d run away. He took his spear from his coat and pushed himself up. Brushing the ice from the seat of his pants, he gazed over the glacier’s barren landscape.

Judging by the sun it had to be noon, but why was it moving so swiftly? It seemed eager to leave the world in darkness as it sped toward its resting place. Very strange for summer….

From nearly half a mile, he spotted Wolf’s figure against the blue ice, and he squinted. Was Kenai kneeling over the dog? Had he ever owned a black cloak? He could see the uncles emerge from the cliffs. They separated and combed a wide area of the glacier, spears at the ready. Shouts bounced off the cliff faces over the glacier and they charged….they must be furious with me.

Kenai leapt to his feet and appeared to listen to the approaching men, who were obscured by the rolls in the ice.

Sitka cuffed his hands and air chilled his throat as he yelled, “Turn back, Kenai!”

Kenai spun around and fixed Sitka with eyes hidden beneath a hood; did Kenai ever have a hump in his back? The figure’s white arm glowed in the sun, and a long finger, visibly long from a half mile, beckoned to the boy.

Sitka’s gaze riveted on the figure, and his tongue stuck in his mouth as an eagle’s cry shrieked over the barren ice. The cloaked figure sped forward like a wolf, leaping obstacles and not slipping once on the ice.

Sitka’s spear shook in his hands as he stepped back and he screamed as he slipped down the slope to the glacier’s river.

“No!” he screamed as he splashed into the water.

The river swept him away with the force of a great herd of reindeer, and he gasped in the cold. He braced his feet on the river’s bed, but to no avail. The river washed him down a crag before he could scream, and he vanished into the glacier’s dark recesses.

1 comments:

Jamin said...

Whew - Dad and the boys are right - goosebumps!