The World Above the Sky (20 page)

“Keswalqw has great
Kji-kinap
.”

“She does. Hers is the
Kji-kinap
that opens a channel between the Earth and Sky Worlds. Your friend Athol Gunn has great
Kji-kinap
, though he doesn't know it yet.”

“So does poor Lord Henry, though his Power is blocked. My mother the Selkie Garathia has great Power. In the way Keswalqw brings the Earth World up to heaven, and heaven down to the earth, Garathia brings the waters up to heaven, and the heavens down to the sea.” Eugainia lay her hand on Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's chest. “Does it frighten you?”

“What?”

“This mortal body.”

“No.”

“It frightens me. When I see the flesh of other creatures wither and rot.”

“This is the way of things. The moon Person wanes. The star Person falls from the World Above the Sky in a burst of fire. Even the stone Person is worn away. The river Person rises to the sun, its bed dry and empty for a time. The air becomes wind, the wind a shadow. The shadow becomes a cloud. The cloud becomes rain. The rain falls and the river runs again.
Kji-kinap
accumulates and is spent, accumulates again so long as Persons move through and live in the Six Worlds. There is nothing to fear where all is one.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk moved a little distance away. He felt Eugainia's presence behind him. When he turned, he saw the full moon in her eyes, as on the night they gave their mortal bodies to each other on Apekwit. “We walk the Six Worlds together,” he said. “We gather
Kji-kinap
. When we're strong enough, a child with great Power, great
Kji-kinap
, will walk among The People and your people.”

“Just so. A child will be born, will grow wise in the ways of The People and my people and guide them while we rest.”

They stood in silence, the bright stars pulsing, the moon white on the snow. The Sky World washed the Earth World clean.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk spoke quietly. “Before you came, before I remembered who I was, I said: I'll gather Power and go to the Ghost World. I'll visit Muini'skw my wife, my beloved wife, my human soul, my Muini'skw who went too soon to the Ghost World and left me here to grieve and weep alone.”

“How did she die?”

“She followed our child. My great love and Keswalqw's tree-Person potions were no match for the pull of the Ghost World.”

“We'll go there, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. We'll go to the Ghost World. Together. When you see Muini'skw, your beloved wife and your little child, your heart will heal and water will no longer flow from your eyes.”

“Or your eyes,” he said, unashamed that she should see his mortal's tears. “When you see Morgase, your kin-friend healed and laughing, your spirit will mend and time will have no meaning.”

“When I watch Morgase, healed and laughing, tend my broken baby boy.”

“Who himself will be healed. If we go we may not come back, such is the beauty and Power of the Ghost World.”

“We'll gather strength. Wrap our grief in Power. A man or woman who has seen the Ghost World and returns brings great strength, becomes beloved of The People—a clan mother, a shaman or a chief.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk began their descent of the hill. Eugainia followed. She realized the young God had a scent about him, at once familiar and obscure. She relived the day she lost Lord Ard's misshapen child, in the Meadow of the Singing Stone, across Spirit Bird Bay from Pictook's Smoking Mountain. It seemed centuries ago. Yet only eight moons past, Keswalqw's child-birthing medicine, made from the bark of seven trees, hurled Eugainia into a swirl of celestial fire, raised her higher into realms exquisite and more familiar than her epiphanous journeys had ever done. Instead of snapping back to reality, as she normally did when the golden cord that bound her soul and body was stretched beyond its limit, she wafted back to earth on a beguiling scent she could not identify.

In her cream white wigwam, Keswalqw had assembled a group of children, boys and girls below the age of six. When asked why this white-as-a-ghost-person woman appeared on the great wooden whale with its wind-catching blanket, Keswalqw answered: “She came to us to learn and teach and be our friend.” Satisfied, the children sat quietly in a circle around the sleeping Eugainia, awaiting her return from her spirit quest. When Eugainia woke, the image of her twisted child flickered once and then vanished. The children rustled like poplar leaves. She turned from one sweet face to the other, her heart awash in their open smiles, their black-haired, tan-skinned, brown-eyed beauty. Joy filled her heart. She inhaled, deep as at the first breath, as though fresh from the womb herself. She thought at first the scent her lungs devoured rose from her fir-bough bed. Her second breath revealed the truth: the children of The People smelled of smoke and fire, of woodland scents and pure ocean air. They smelled of earth and wind and moss and meadow. They smelled of light and joy. They were life, and the breath of life. They were heaven and they were the earth. Like blades of grass in the meadow, they were not born into the world but from it. They were made of stars and stardust. And light from the Great Spirit's eye.

On this night, descending this hillside path in the cold light of the moon, Eugainia noticed that the same scent, the earth and sky scent of The People's children, rose from Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk and trailed him as he walked.

Eugainia, nibbled pink these last five moons, addled and elevated by love, realized until Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk she lived but was only half alive. He taught her to follow the ways of the animal Powers. She was no longer the pampered Lady of the Grail. Eugainia the huntress learned the habits of the creatures that sustained her. She learned their speech. She came to know their thoughts and feelings. She felt the outrage of their mortal flesh. She shared their fear when she killed.

“Our brother and sister animals,” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk mused as they walked, “speak with tongues, yes, but also with the very flesh of their bodies. The joy you feel? Their great hunger? Their fear of injury? Their fear of death....This is animal knowledge common to all. We were born, as were you, they say. So that you may live, they say, we must die. The People say it is the meat speaking.”

“The
meat
speaking?” Eugainia recoiled at the brutal phrase. Yet she knew exactly what he meant. Once she heard the flesh of a moose speak its outrage when she plunged Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's spear, Tooth of Wolverine, into its exhausted heart. Resigned to its fate, she heard the moose meat say, “Honour the bones of my body, and the skin of my unborn calf, and I will come and feed and clothe you again.”

Unborn calf? Eugainia felt herself crack open, like an egg.

She heard the meat speak caution as she sliced through the wall of the uterus, extracted and butchered the calf, whose heart still beat, whose hide she stretched on a frame of ash, soaked in saltwater and stretched again, then tanned with the brains and liver of a seabird—the tender hide she wore beneath her winter robe, soft on her breasts, kind to her nipples, soft as the finest silken camisole. She felt the meat speak when she reclined after eating, sated and drowsy. At her sexual awakening, and subsequently—hers was the flesh of a starved animal, a creature willing to sacrifice itself completely, to devour and be devoured—the meat of her body and the marrow of her bones sang love. “
Akaia-aia-ah
,” her flesh and bones had whispered. “
Akaia-ia
!”

In the still of the night, as they moved down the path under crackling stars, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk's mind was clear and sharp—a gift of the night, he mused, a gift from the light of the moon on the snow, from the rounded mounds bending the branches of black spruce.
Kji-kinap
grows quickly through L'nuk, he thought, when the blood is roused on a cold night's march. A man thinks that he might walk, but walks that he might think. Ha!

Eugainia was surprised when they continued down past the small moosehide wigwam they'd built that afternoon, where heated rocks and rolled beaver robes waited their return. She was tired. Her body, poor weary donkey, needed rest.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk turned and smiled. “We've borne The People's yearning long enough. It's time to ride their spirits for a while.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Tonight we enter the Cave of the Seven Seekers.”

“What? The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus? Have we come so far?”

“No, no, dear one. The Cave of the Seven Seekers of The People. Tonight we become bears and serpents.”

• • •

A cleft in the rock face the height of the man and as wide as his shoulders offered Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk entrance to the World Below the Earth. He stepped inside without considering Eugainia. There was no need. Though still some distance behind, when he entered the darkened cave he knew he'd find her waiting.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk passed his hand over the tip of Tooth of Wolverine. Warm light filled the cavern. It cast no shadow. Eugainia eyes adjusted quickly. Lying in their great bulk before her, seven sleeping bears, arranged heads inward in a well-spaced circle, snored gently.

“Who are they?”

“In the time of my grandmother's mother, seven of The People went on a spirit quest, seeking to know why so many of the first white-as-ghost-persons—the ones who came many years before you and Henry—died such swift and painful deaths.”

“The poor beleaguered Templars on their first flight to the New World. The beginning of their time of plague and woe.”

“Keswalqw tells they dug the great well by the sea.”

“They came to hide the Holy Grail.”

“Then built the Stone House of Death where my grandfather's father found Tooth of Wolverine. The white-as-a-ghost-persons' skin erupted in black sores. Those few People who came to know them—slept in their scratchy beds, wore their stiff clothes—became ill and died with them. The People left their camps and started over, far away. But still the questions lingered. Why had these kind and good red-cross men come among them? Surely not to suffer such terrible deaths. A council was called. It was decided to send two clan mothers and five brave young warriors on a spirit quest to find the answers. They set out. After a time, lost and starving, the seven seekers found this cave and fell asleep.”

“They've been asleep for a hundred years, these gigantic bear Persons?”

“Two lifetime winters. The seven seekers woke as Spirit bears. They had no need of water. No need of meat or nuts, honey, grass or berry. Of
tagawan
, the young salmon when it first returns from the sea. They lay here, not awake or sleeping. Somewhere in-between. Dreaming dreams of strength and courage. Bear dreams.”

“They all dream the same dreams?”

“In their sleep, bear totem People travel great distances to the bears. All seek the answer he or she requires.”

“The bears dream for them.”

“Yes. For all the bear totem People. Medicine dreams. Answer their questions. Where to hunt. Where to fish. How to deal with cranky wives or husbands. Willful children. Envious neighbours. All things of life.” He propped Tooth of Wolverine against the cave wall. “In this same way, dolphins dream medicine dreams for dolphin totem People. Trees dream for tree totem People. As moose and trees dream together for moose/wood Persons like me, Persons with blended totems.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk stood before a brown mass of rumbling fur. A grunt preceded a throaty rumble. “This great she-bear calls me,” he said.

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk wavered, turned from mist to vapour. Eugainia clapped her hands with delight when the she-bear inhaled. Feet first, he disappeared up the great bear's nostrils. Eugainia chose another, a great rumbling male. Her feet, then legs and torso became insubstantial. She found herself inside the snoring bear, standing face to face with Sir Athol Gunn who stood wide-eyed, fast asleep, paralyzed with fear. She placed her hand on his shoulder. Instantly, she was swept up into the churning sea of Sir Athol's dream:

A dying man, bloodied by battle, reaches toward a boy. The boy is Athol. Six or seven years old. The man near death is Athol's father, still caged in his bloodied armour, his torso bruised, his organs ruptured. He clasps Athol's hand. The light fades from the battered man's eyes. Young Athol lowers his dead father's visor.

In dream time, Athol leaps to a place unknown to him. Eugainia follows. Athol is a boy watching another boy. This boy is Kulu, not yet six, a tender boy, still full of magic, a handsome son of The People.

Eugainia hears Athol say, “No. I'm too young...”

A young woman, one of The People, Kulu's mother, says, “No. He's still too young to hunt.”

In separate wisps of colour that twine like smoke into one, Eugainia and Sir Athol rise from the fur of the he-bear and float near the zenith of the cave. Keswalqw and Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk emerge from the nearby she-bear's nostrils. They ascend to the ceiling and hover near Eugainia and Sir Athol.

From deep in the earth, a tremor.

Sir Athol's shade wavers. Eugainia's shadow trembles. Keswalqw's dream shape whispers...“Jipijka'maq!”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk doubles his size, puffs up, like a cobra. He hisses. The tremor subsides. “Still distant,” Athol hears Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk murmur as he resumes his familiar shape. “But coming this way.” Sir Athol dreams the childhood dream of the boy again. He sees a face, painted ochre, a wide, black, eye-width stripe drawn from forehead to chin. Eagle and raven feathers radiate through three hundred and sixty degrees, fixed at the back of the dreadful head in a knot of greased-back, blue black hair.

The warrior/hunter towers above the little boy Kulu. “Why do you stare without mercy, Father?” Athol asks him. Keswalqw's voice calms him, “This man is not your father, Athol.” She extends her hand. “The boy is not you but like you.” Athol, reassured, holds it tightly. “This is Kulu's stepfather. He has no fondness for the boy.” Keswalqw leads Athol, a boy himself now, deeper into the cave. “He is a jealous man,” the mothering Keswalqw says. “A spiteful man and he dislikes you because he fears I care more for you than him.”

“Wife,” says the feathered menace, “it is time the boy learned something of the forest. I'll take him with me today. I'll take him hunting.”

“No!” Eugainia re-enters the dream, clasping Sir Athol the man's arm tightly, holding him back. “Kulu is far too young!”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk touches Eugainia's arm. “Let him go where he must.”

Kulu, the son of The People, or is it Athol the boy of the Highlands, follows the befeathered Stepfather, meek as a lamb. The mother weeps, for she is powerless before Kulu's cruel stepfather and knows his jealous heart.

The Stepfather knows of a cave deep in the forest, on the side of a rock-strewn hill, a cave that leads to the depths of the earth. It is this cave, this bear cave. The Cave of the Seven Seekers before the time of the bears. The Jealous Stepfather leads his stepson to its open mouth. “Go inside,” he tells the boy, “and hunt for rabbit tracks.”

Kulu hangs back. “It's dark in there. I'm afraid.”

“It's dark and he's afraid,” Sir Athol, the grown man dreaming, tells Keswalqw.

“Afraid!” scoffs the man. “A fine hunter you'll make.” He pushes the dream boy Kulu into the cave. “Stay in there until I tell you to come out.” He thrusts a pole under a huge boulder. It tumbles, covers the mouth of the cave.

Athol assaults the boulder. “Kulu will soon die of starvation,” he cries. Even Athol the great hairy bear of a man is too small to move it. Even in a spirit quest. Even in a dream.

“I'll not return home at once,” the cruel Stepfather says as Athol and Keswalqw watch powerless from a distance. “I'll go to the beach and collect a bag of Kluscap's purple stones to take to her as a peace offering. I'll make her think I was looking for the boy. I'll let time pass, time enough for Kulu to starve and die. She'll be angry. She'll be sad. She'll blame me. But only for a while. I'll win her back. She'll have my child and forget her snivelling boy. No one will ever know what had happened.”

“No one?” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk appears before Sir Athol. “There is one who knows already. I am Kluscap the Great Chief. I am Kluscap taller than the tallest pine tree. I am Kluscap whose arms encircle the world....I am Kluscap. I know. Come, Sir Athol.” Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk touches Athol's arm and takes him on a journey. “Look. I, the Mighty Kluscap, appear from behind his cliff called Blom-i'-don. I am well aware of what the wicked Stepfather has done and I am angry.”

The Mighty Kluscap, Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk in his Kluscap form, watches as the cruel Stepfather picks the finest purple stones from the beach. He cracks them open with his stone axe, for they are hollow as goose eggs after Clever Fox—who once learned to puncture them and suck them dry—has finished feasting. Inside the egg-rock, purple crystals glint in the sun.

“In time she will love me as she loved the boy,” the cruel Stepfather, a weak and selfish man, says. “The child we will have, my child, will be a real child. My boy-child. Strong like his father, not the weakling boy who hates to hunt, tells tales and sings the woman songs.”

Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, in the guise of the mighty Kluscap, grown taller than the tallest mountain, strikes the red stone cliff of Blom-i'-don with Tooth of Wolverine, his mighty spear. Athol watches in dream-awe. The great cape splits. Earth and stones tumble down, down, down to the beach, burying the wicked Stepfather, killing him instantly.

Led by Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, who is once again himself, not Kluscap, Sir Athol flies back to the cave from their journey to Blom-i'don. In the darkness, Kulu sits and weeps out his loneliness and fear. Keswalqw walks from shadow, takes Sir Athol by the hand. “He has only seen six summers, after all, and wants his mother.”

Suddenly, an almighty voice!

“Kulu!” almighty Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk calls to the boy. “Come this way.”

In his dream, Athol sees two eyes glowing in the depths of the cave. He is afraid for the boy. He is afraid for himself.

“Come, Kulu,” the Great Chief Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk, calls. “You have nothing to fear.”

Athol watches Kulu walk toward the glowing eyes. Kulu trembles. Great burly Sir Athol, man of war and destiny, trembles, his fear no less than the boy's, be they both awake or dreaming. Flat as a leaf, Keswalqw appears on the wall of the cave. As though drawn in ash and ochre, outlined in black, her body red, rendered in two dimensions, she ripples over the rough surface. She speaks: “Look. My dear Athol,” she reassures, “Kulu is afraid no longer.”

The glowing eyes in the dark of the cave grow bigger and brighter. At last Sir Athol sees they belong to an old porcupine.

“Don't cry anymore, my son,” says Porcupine. “I'm here to help.”

The leafy Keswalqw slips from the wall. She stands fully formed at Athol's side, his sword-arm side. Joy spreads across his ruddy face. “I'm no longer afraid,” Athol tells Eugainia, who has come to stand behind them. “I have this woman, Keswalqw, a woman of The People who walks beside me now.” They watch Porcupine waddle from the darkness to the crack of light at the cave entrance. Porcupine tries to push away the stone, but the stone is too heavy. Porcupine puts his lips to the crack of light and shouts to the forest outside, “Friends of Kluscap! Sons and daughters of Great Chief Mimk
ɨ
tawo'qu'sk. Come around, all of you!” Woodland animal and bird Persons hear him and come—Wolf, Raccoon, Caribou, Turtle, Opossum, Rabbit, and Squirrel, and birds of all kinds from the Great Chuckling Turkey to the little Hummingdird. “A child has been left here to die,” calls old Porcupine from inside the cave. “I am old, and not strong enough to move the rock. Help me or he is lost.”

The animals call back. “We will try.” Bold Raccoon, who is known to act before he thinks, marches up and tries to wrap his arms around the stone, but they are much too short. “If only I had arms like Brother Bear, I would lift and hurl this rock past Grandfather Sun,” Raccoon laments. “Come, Fox. You are swift and clever. You'll find a way to move the rock.” Fox, who is known by times to think too much, bites and scratches at the boulder, but this only makes his paws and lips bleed. “Blood. Bright red fox blood. Too precious to leave on a rock that will not move,” he complains. “Call Caribou.” Caribou, vain and fleet, steps up and thrusts her long antlers into the crack, tries to pry loose the stone. Her antler breaks. She stamps in rage. “Who will mate with a one-antlered caribou? They'll think the Creator gives a warning. No calves that jump, and butt and suck for me. I'll have to wait until next spring, until my antler grows back, before I am beautiful again,” she moans as she walks away, shaking her lopsided head.

In the end, all give up. It's no use. They can't move the stone.

“
Kwah-ee
,” a new voice speaks.

“Who comes?” they ask.

They turn and see she-bear Mooinskw. Who is more steadfast and dependable than she? Mooinskw comes quietly out of the woods. The small animals hide. Fox tells Mooinskw what has happened: a child has been imprisoned by a selfish man, left to stave and die. Mooinskw's great bear heart is moved to pity. She wraps her strong arms around the boulder and heaves with all her great strength. With a rumble and a crash, the stone rolls over, tumbling end for end down the steep slope of the hill, cutting a path through the forest. “Sorry trees,” Mooinskw says as the trees crack and splinter and call out in their pain. Mooinskw turns back to the mouth of the cave. Out come Kulu and Porcupine, followed by Sir Athol and Keswalqw, their faces radiant with joy.