The World Above the Sky (19 page)

“They'll be in no great hurry to see either of you,” Athol interjected. “Eugainia has tasted freedom and won't take well to prison, no matter how splendidly we restore it.”

“She needs time to heal and strengthen. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk won't abandon her.”

“What if there is a starving time?”

“Two may live easier than many. We'll have two less mouths to feed. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk knows the way of the starving time. He will provide.”

“And I'm to stand here and wait.”

“What would you have me do? They'll come back when they are ready. We will wait and we will see.”

Athol spread his beaver robe upon the ground. Henry did likewise. Keswalqw joined Athol. Henry and Keswalqw drank and smoked. They sat cross-legged, all three, united in comfort shared by those of a common age, possessing amongst them decades of accumulated wisdom, happy in each other's company, letting brandy and tobacco gently alter their senses, ease their apprehension, reshape their views of what would soon become their common world.

“Why did you let Antonio go, Keswalqw?” Henry asked. “Had he touched a hair on my children's head I would have cut his throat without a second thought.”

“And had his spirit wandering your village forever? We have our own Horned Serpent Persons, our own Jipijka'maqs. We don't need yours as well.”

Time dissolved as the sun moved west. Leagues down the bay
Reclamation
vanished where Turned Up Whale Belly Bay flowed into the southern reaches of the North Atlantic Sea.

• • •

Eugainia felt everything she knew, or thought she knew, fall away. In these wild days, lessons old as humankind and the earth upon which she trod were learned anew by the young Goddess. Perched on the crown of a high bald hill—the night cold, their robes warm, the stars a vivid, brittle blue—she knew she'd met her match in Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. She couldn't have been happier.

In the same way, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk felt reborn. He spoke the names of things—names he'd always known—as if for the first time. Great was her hunger to know his world: great his joy in revelation. Greater still was the joy he found in the flesh of the apple-breasted Goddess, her honey-coloured hair curling down to snowy hips.

Five moons had come and gone since they left Apekwit. Eugainia and Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk brought each other great comfort: they were no longer extraordinary or peculiar in their singularity. They'd travelled into the heart of the lands Henry's maps showed as uncharted, travelling the great river that emptied into the western shore of Turned Up Whale Belly Bay, skirting the foaming rapids at its mouth that flowed in opposite directions with every turn of the tide. Days and weeks and months slid past as the wide river narrowed. A day or two of travel. A week of hunting. Rest. Sleep. Love. Exploration for the sake of exploration itself. Repetitious tasks that would stupify their divine manifestations, feeding and sheltering their robust young bodies, travelling unsparing territory with only flesh and bone feet to transport them, their bodies' tiresome need to sleep, their rest often fraught with visions, some frightening, some beautiful, all intriguing, these became joyful acts of discovery. All this is deepest solitude. Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk purposefully avoided encounters with other Mi'kmaq clans and their Abenaki cousins. It was, as Keswalqw said, their time to be together and alone.

When in repose, or lulled by the rhythm of a long march, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and Eugainia slipped easily into silent communion. Images and unspoken lines of narrative flowed between them. Each showed the other realms mystic and divine through which they'd wandered separate and alone, free from their flesh, in God and Goddess form; realms ancient, realms vast and varied, realms forged in conflagration, realms born in agony and glory at the beginning and end and rebirth of time.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk rose to his feet, boneless as smoke. He stood behind Eugainia, his hand on her shoulder. She inclined toward it.

“Since we last saw Piktook, and Apekwit, the red island Cradled on the Waves where we became one,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk began, “Grandmother Moon has come and gone many times—”

“Let me see…the Blueberry Moon; the Blackberry Moon; the Deer Paws the Earth Moon; the Dry Grass Moon. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“And this is…?”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk slipped his chilled fingers below the neckline of her robe, where they absorbed the heat of her body, heat trapped in the long guard hairs and thick underfur of rabbit and wolverine.

“Tonight, in the presence of the Snow Moon, I'll show you the Six Worlds of Lnu'k, The People.”

Eugainia eased back against him. Her head lay soft on his belly.

“This,” he gestured, “is the Earth World. Below us, the World Below the Earth. Over our heads, the World Above the Earth, also called the Sky World. Above that—?”

“The World Above the Sky.”

“Yes.” He pointed down to the shore where blue white snow melted in the blue black breakers of the sea.

“There, beyond the water's edge, the World Below the Sea.” He filled his lungs with cold, dry air, held his breath a long moment. He exhaled lightly through pursed lips. His breath hung in a cloud of moon blue vapour.

“And everywhere,” he said to the lucent plume, hanging motionless in the tranquil night, “the Ghost World.”

He squatted, then knelt. He wrapped his arms around Eugainia from behind. She slipped his hands through the side-slits of her robe. She covered his hands with hers and laid them on the thin layer of fat which softened the hard layers of muscle on her warm belly.

“Everything in the Six Worlds is a Person, and Persons live forever,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk continued. “In the Earth World, the days of warmth and sunshine, the days and weeks and months, all these things which your people call time are Persons. The days of rest and plenty—what you call summer—these are Persons. As are the dark days of cold and hunger; winter is a Person. Rocks and stones are Persons. Plenty is a Person. Hunger is a Person. Life is a Person. And so is death.

Rocks and stones are the living bones of the Earth World. But beware. A rock may be a sleeping Person. Perhaps a wind Person grew tired, became a mountain to rest and to sleep. Perhaps a tired and hungry bear Person—a hungry angry bear Person—lay down, became a rock to rest and to sleep. Treat all rock and stone Persons with great respect The People tell us. One might awaken—might awaken and devour you if you disturb it, or act with disrespect.

Jipijka'maq, Horned Serpent Persons, tunnel through rock and stone in the World Below the Earth. Horned Serpent Persons have great Power. They carve great ruts in the earth. Sometimes they burst through into the Earth World. They leave mountains and valleys in their wake. Sometimes Jipijka'maq
is
a mountain,
becomes
a mountain when he's tired and needs to sleep; jagged plates of horn rise from his back, thrust out of the earth, rise into the Sky World and slice the clouds.

All is as one in the Six Worlds. A bird flies through the World Above the Earth, then plunges into the World Below the Sea where it swims like a fish. Seal Persons leave the sea and bear their young upon the ice or on the rock beside the shore.”

“In our Outer Hebrides, seals take the shape of a woman or a man. They live among us, sire and bear offspring. They're happy for a time, walking the Earth World with women and men. Soon the Sea World calls them home. They return to the sea. My mother was one of these for a time. Her name is Garathia.”

“Seal Persons follow our canoes, swim with us when we bathe in the ocean, come near us on the rocks and watch, their big eyes wet with longing.”

“Seals remember.”

“Yes.”

“We're lost seal children.”

“When we saw your people leaping off
Reclamation
, we said, ‘Ha! Seal persons on a spirit quest.' Then we smelled you. No, we thought. They're bear Persons in seal Person form. You were quite confusing.”

Eugainia relived her struggle back from death when air and sunlight flooded the stinking hold, the day
Reclamation
's hatch was flung open. She shuddered at the memory.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk buried his nose in her hair, inhaled deeply. “You smell just right now, beloved. E'eee!” he whispered softly. “This is the scent of my wife.”

“I know something of seals and their life in the World Below the Sea,” Eugainia said quietly, her head awash in curtains of fish, her heart full of Garathia. “Nothing was as I thought it would be.”

“Nothing is as it seems. Persons go on spirit quests to the World Below the Sea to dream and to imagine. The World Below the Sea holds all knowledge, remembers all things.”

“Persons witness miracles in the World Below the Sea.”

“And the greatest miracle of all?”

“The fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish.”

“We are in the Six Worlds and the Six Worlds are in us.”

“We are in our people and our people are in us.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk spread his arms wide, a newborn visitor raising his eyes from the well-known earth to the oft-seen sky as though for the first time. “Persons move swift as thought in the World Above the Earth. Thunder lives in enormous bird-shaped Persons. They beat their wings and crack the sky. Thunders rumble through the air and cause the earth to tremble.”

“Thunder Persons. Wind Persons. Enormous bird Persons. Their great wings flap and cause the winds to blow. Yes?”

“Yes. The wind is a Person. So is the cool place where the sun sets, and the warm place also where the sun rises. Where the birds go in winter, the place from which they return when winter days are done—all these are Persons.

“And the stars?”

“Stars are silent hunters who move through the Sky World day and night. Star Persons guide L'nuk, record our stories, remind us who we are. Great Power lives in the World Above the Sky. Grandfather Sun and Grandmother Moon, the ancestors of Lnu'k, The People, have the greatest Power. His heat feeds The People; her light makes us dream.”

“For this we thank them.”

“For this we give thanks. The last of the Six Worlds is the Ghost World. There live those who came and went before. A man or woman, boy or girl, a tree or an animal, any living thing—and in the Six Worlds all things live—may become a Ghost Person. But only once. Some, we say, some strong and brave Persons, some Persons with great Power have gone there—gone there in the living flesh, gone and returned from the Ghost World where they see the ones who've gone before.”

“The ones they love.”

Memories of loss and bereavement drew them close against the chill. Sorrow, a sudden halo of pale mist, circled the high hill.

“Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, I ask this question of all I meet. What do you say when you speak about love?”

“The Creator's greatest gift is love.”

“And what do you make of death?”

“There is no death in the Six Worlds. Not as you know it. We say life is death and death is life. And to live is to love. We say love unites life and death, as thunder unifies earth and sky. When it's silent, has thunder died? We say no. It merely rests in the ground and gathers strength. In this same way, we think love can't die. The People learn to love all creatures, all Persons in each of the Six Worlds.”

An odd shimmer pulled Eugainia's gaze to the shale at her feet. A line of pale light seemed, though still, to meander among the ragged stones. A seam of ice in rock, perhaps, reflecting the moon? Perhaps a length of leather thong, sheathed in frost? Or a white man's rope of hemp or jute sheathed in frost? No, not rope. Not here. None of the visitors had ventured this far, either from Piktook or Turned Up Whale Belly Bay. Some sort of lucent tube? She bent close. She passed her hand between the moon and the trail of light in the shale. The curious object disappeared. She removed her hand. The delicate coil glowed again.

Eugainia touched Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's sleeve, indicated the little mystery at her feet. He raised the shed skin of a small snake. It hung crisp and transparent in the pale light. “Ha! You can see....She became too big for her house. Slithered out her own mouth. A young snake, Tutji'j Jipijka'maq, racing toward adulthood lived here for a time. She sheds her skin with every turn of the moon until she becomes full-grown.”

Eugainia peered at the shed skin's spectral head, the grotesque mouth de-fanged, agape, its angry scowl a vacant threat backlit by the moon.

“How perfect!” she said, holding the snakeskin gingerly, its fragility essential to its beauty. The form of the eyes remained, the ghostly pupils raised, every counterfeit scale the full length of it in tact, its existence a memory clearly etched yet insubstantial as the light moon that defined it.

“She came to the top of this hill, in the last days of the Grandfather Sun's warmth, to renew herself. Crawled out her mouth then slithered down to a den in a small cave for the winter, knotted in a bundle of her kind, safe below the killing frost...”

“Silent in a dreamless sleep.”

“Silent, yes. But dreaming. Everything dreams in the Six Worlds. A Person of great Power, Tutji'j Jipijka'maq, this tiny Serpent Person. Size is no advantage in the Six Worlds. A beetle is a powerful Person. An ant is a powerful Person. All living Persons in the Six Worlds, including the earth and its bones of rock—water in all its forms, air restless or at rest, the heat and light of fire—all have Power; all have
Kji-kinap
.”

“Wandering the earth in our mortal frames we gather
Kji-kinap
and refresh ourselves,” Eugainia said. “Is this not so?”

“These are the words of The People. In the Six Worlds,
Kji-kinap
is the essence.
Kji-kinap
knows itself, thinks of itself and remembers.
Kji-kinap
, with its great strength, its force which can't be resisted, made or taken away, is everywhere.
Kji-kinap
comes and goes as it pleases. It is everywhere and forever. Everything we see and know, everything we do and feel; everything comes from
Kji-kinap
.
Kji-kinap
moves Persons.
Kji-kinap
moves through Persons.
Kji-kinap
changes Persons and gives them life.
Kji-kinap
knows the way of things.
Kji-kinap
is the way of things.
Kji-kinap
is a Person's fire and you, My Wife, by the light of Grandmother Moon, you do burn bright! Yet even the loveliest fur-clad Goddess is no higher or lower than the shed skin of the child of a snake. Both have Power. Woman or snake, so long as she receives
Kji-kinap
, and uses it wisely, each becomes a greater Person.”