Strontium-90 (2 page)

Living Totem

Kulik lifted his face into the blizzard, rose from his shivering crouch and kept staggering. Icy particles beat at him. Snow crunched under his moccasins. His toes throbbed, but that was good because it meant they hadn’t frozen.

He pulled his fur cape tighter. Hoary frost coated his eyebrows and his lips were horribly chapped. He wore a cap made from a dire wolf’s head and fled across the
Ice.

A manito with an evil totem had arisen among the People. The manito had said they must return north to the bog lands. Kulik’s grandfather—the old manito—had only lain in his cairn a month. Kulik would have challenged the new manito, but nine days ago
, hunters with protective medicine bundles had tracked him as he’d wandered in the high forests for a sign. The hunters would have dragged him back to the new manito so he could slash Kulik’s stomach and read the People’s future in his intestines. It had taken all Kulik’s guile and accumulated spirit power to reach the Ice, the Great Ice that none dared cross, the Ice that blocked the People from the southern lands of plenty.

Kulik shivered. He heard the spirits in the wind. They were minions of the
Ice, the destroyer of life and the stealer of souls. The new manito had boasted of his strength, yet he lacked the courage to face the ancient enemy, to conquer it.

Kulik snarled. He was as lean as his dire wolf totem. The nine harrowing days—three of them trudging across the
Ice—had dangerously sapped his strength. His stomach knotted with hunger as he tottered through the winter horror-land.

Kulik stumbled then and fell hard onto his rawhide-wrapped hands. He panted with billowing white gusts of breath. Hail beat at his head. He squeezed his eyes closed and felt the icy particles in his lashes. Spirits howled, mocking him.

He frowned, moved his moccasin and moved the thing that had tripped him. With agonizing slowness, he shuffled around until his hands fumbled across…something.

His cold-fogged thoughts tried to understand. It was hard to see in the stormy gloom. Oh. It was an ancient pine branch about twice the length of an arrow. It was black, and it was the straightest wood he’d ever seen.

His eyes widened and his heart thudded. A double length arrow, a spirit arrow—Kulik wheezed pitifully. But a terrible gleam now shined in his clouded eyes.

He clutched the pine stick, jabbed one end against the ice. His aching muscles groaned with effort. His wheezing became horrible and then his chapped lips peeled back. It made cracks appear in his lips and sluggish, oozing blood froze in place. Kulik bared his teeth like a dire wolf until he swayed on his feet.

He was dizzy and his eyes shined crazily. He clutched the stick against his chest and staggered into the icy wind. His bloody lips writhed and he chanted his death song.

***

Kulik awoke in a strange valley of moss and humps of snow. He had no recollection of how he’d survived the blizzard. He unfolded from his crouch where he rested against a boulder, brushed off snow and discovered that he still clutched the pine stick.

He touched his nose and checked his toes. They were cold, but not frozen or black. Thirst racked him. So he ate fresh snow, let it melt in his mouth before he drank. The hunger in his shriveled belly—

He resolutely ignored it.

He had the makings of a name-arrow. The pine stick shivered with the power of his death song.

A crazed laugh bubbled out of him. He’d cheated the blizzard. Even more importantly, he’d defied the Ice and likely stolen some of its killing strength. Now, hovering between life and death, he must cunningly fashion the arrow and imbibe it with even more magic.

The rest of that day, Kulik chanted to the spirits of the
Ice. He played a dangerous game. It was close to mockery. His hunger, his fantastic survival through the storm and the fact that some mighty spirit had granted him the pine stick filled him with the temerity.

That night he slept like one dead. Upon waking, he wondered if that was a sign. His grandfather could have read it. Kulik knew he was not yet manito enough.

He sat up and his chest tightened. After his grandfather’s death, he had simply hoped to be a shaman. Now he aimed to become a manito, to replace the coward who led the People.

The valley had moss, patches of snow and twisted, dwarfish trees unlike any he’d seen. All around him towered baleful glaciers. The ice mountains howled their anger this morning like little gods, a cold thing that ought to have made him shiver. Instead, Kulik began to search. He found sparrow nests in the wind-twisted trees and eggs in the nests. He chanted to the sparrows, asked their permission and then ate the eggs and trapped several of the fluttering birds. The ease of it showed him the increase in his power.

Fortified by the food, slight as it was, he worked hard. With his stubby flint knife, he notched the end of the stick. He used sparrow feathers to fletch it because small sparrows dare to attack ravens many times their size in defense of their nests. In three carefully cut slivers, Kulik fixed tufts of dire wolf fur for cunning.

It might have surprised Kulik once, but not now, when he discovered perfect flint pieces. With a shaping stone and the upper beak of an eagle, he chipped and ground an arrowhead. The eagle totem would grant the arrow swiftness in flight. Tomorrow he would bind the flint to the arrow. Then he would paint a blood portrait on a boulder and perhaps let the arrowhead sip the blood so it would become greedy for more.

Kulik bowed his head in awe at what he did. This arrow might become as deadly as
Feast of a Mammoth
. He had once held the legendary arrow as it quivered with rage.

“It thirsts to kill,” his grandfather had told him, the arrow’s maker. “Now chant the song of safety, lest a death spirit strike you tonight in your sleep.”

Kulik shuffled deeper into the valley. Thoughts of food began to consume him. He had three regular arrows and his bow. He began to hunt for hares and rats, although the spirits yet shrieked across the icy mountains.

It dawned on Kulik later that this was a sacred valley. The constantly howling winds, the lack of rabbits or rats, the strangely twisted trees and the mossy humps and folds of land, a dreadful fear seeped into him. He shuffled over a rise of ground and came upon a terrifying print in the snow. He knelt and his heart began to flutter like one of the sparrows he’d caught earlier.

The footprint was like a man’s but twice as big. The endpoints on the toes could have been claw marks. Kulik knew the legends of the Lurii. Some told of Lurii hunting men.

As Kulik stared at the footprint, a shadow filled it. Openmouthed, Kulik raised his head. He felt numb and was unable to move or croak a sound.

The beast was huge, likely ten feet tall when it stood upright. Its furry head resembled a man’s in a vague way, although the head was as wide as Kulik’s chest. It had a flattish snout, with flaring, leathery nostrils. The ears were triangular like a sabertooth’s ears. The eyes were black and sunken under a bony brow ridge. As it opened its mouth, the beast revealed wolfish fangs.

“Who are you?” the beast asked, using the spirit tongue.

Kulik was too dazed to reply, too terrified to draw his knife.

The beast’s fur was sable, sleek and black. It had long arms, one of which rested on the ground, on its knuckles. It had comparatively short legs, and it hunched forward, as if it used its dangling arms to help it walk or run on all fours like an animal. The beast must weigh as much as five men.

Kulik groaned. Sweat trickled down his back.

The Lur cocked its awful head.

That’s when Kulik noted other things. The Lur wore a leather belt. From it dangled a rabbit-skin pouch. A big leather sack lay at the Lur’s feet. In its monstrous hand was a dreadful stone axe.

“Why are you here?” the Lur asked. “I thought men feared the
Ice.”

Kulik tried to gather his wits. Listening to the Lur speak was like having a cave bear grunt words or a dire wolf growl with meaning. The thing was so huge.

—The Lur spoke the spirit tongue.

Kulik drew a painful breath, and struggled to speak. Then he jeered himself. Was he a simple hunter to faint at great magic
? No. He’d trained his entire life to understand the spirit tongue, to know the meaning of visions and dreams.

“I…” Kulik closed his mouth, concentrated. “I seek powerful magic to fashion a name-arrow.”

The Lur sank onto its rump, almost seemed as if it collapsed to a seated position. The monstrous beast laid its axe on the ground as if it had become too heavy to hold. It stared at him with sickening intensity.

It dawned on Kulik that the Lur acted dazed.

Slowly, the Lur unhooked the rabbit-skin pouch, untied the sinews and poured tiny, painted bones onto the dirt.

“The bone runes spoke about you,” the Lur said. “They said I would find an ally here to join me in the
Great Ice.”

Kulik struggled to understand. It was almost too bizarre. The beast seemed to use the spirit tongue as ordinary language. That seemed profane, but maybe it was power unlike anything that even his grandfather had known.

Kulik asked, “The Ice?”

With its huge hand, the Lur gathered the rune bones
and dropped them reverently into the pouch.

Then the Lur exposed its hideous teeth in what might have been a grimace. “For ages, the
Great Ice has ruled. Before its coming, my race swarmed the mountains. We fought the giant beasts and others now long gone. Near here is an ancient place where my race made a stand against the Ice. Our last king gathered those mighty in spells and incantations. They unleashed lava, the spirits of steam and earthquakes against the advancing Ice. Mountains perished and the Ice retreated. It was a great victory, although the king died. They built his cairn there and left on his right arm the ancient charm of royalty.”

The Lur bowed its shaggy head and then looked up with anger.

“The Ice knew of his passing. It soon advanced and drove the Lurii south, ever south, scattering us. The Ice entombed his cairn. Then the Ice grinded over our victory steles and snapped the olden totem poles of legend and thereby shattered the link between my race and our mountains.

“I have searched for the cairn over a hundred moons. I have mastered forgotten spells and have unearthed these olden bones and learned to unravel their mysteries. I have journeyed far and pitted my strength against the
Ice and its cunning. I mean to find the cairn and gaze again upon our ancient king. But to win through, the bones said I need an ally, one I would find here in the Valley of Spirits.”

Kulik nodded.

The Lur cocked its head. “Yet you are smaller than a child and resemble the Skunk People, who are enemies of the Lurii.”

“The Skunk People?” Kulik asked.

“They live in caves and holes in the ground. Their shoulders are thick and they have squat necks and a bony ridge over their eyes. Likely you are weaker than a Skunk Man and fear great danger.”

“In great danger lies great magic,” Kulik said hoarsely.

The Lur laid its triangular ears flat against its head. “The Skunk People are clever, makers of traps and users of smooth words. I know little of men, other than that they breed like lemmings. How do I know you will not awake in the night and slink off with my axe or my bag of bones?”

Kulik could have asked how he knew the Lur wouldn’t slay him in his sleep, but the answer was obvious. The gigantic Lur could slay him any time it pleased.

Then Kulik had an idea, one that might magically strengthen his arrow enough to defeat the new manito.

“There is a rite among the People and among other nations of men,” Kulik said. “Two warriors of enemy tribes mingle their blood, call upon the Great Spirit to witness their oaths and thereby become blood brothers. It is a hideous crime for brothers to harm each other or steal their totems.”

“Tell me more,” the Lur said.

Kulik did.

Soon, the Lur raised its stone axe and cut its hand. Kulik cut his palm with his knife. They clasped hands—the Lur’s dwarfed Kulik’s cold fingers. They mingled blood and swore frightful oaths.

Before they left, Kulik knelt and pretended to retie his moccasins. In reality, he palmed his newly chipped arrowhead and dipped it in a drop of the Lur’s blood. Kulik chanted softly so the arrowhead would not simply lap the blood and grow greedy for more. He had sworn the oaths and dared not risk his soul. He let the arrowhead feed on the Lur’s strength and ferocity. He let the arrowhead grow strong with the power of a living totem.

***

Kulik regained his strength the next several days as the Lur continually startled him. It could hear a rat burrowing in the snow or sniff out a hare where it stood frozen. When the hare bounded out of the snow as they closed in, the Lur hurled a wooden dart before Kulik could draw his bowstring. The beast’s accuracy was uncanny.

In three days, they crossed the Ice four times, searching each valley for the last king’s cairn. Fortunately, each time they crossed the Ice the wind blew gently and the sun shined. The Lur slew a caribou in the last valley and they feasted that night before a roaring fire. Instead of twisted dwarf trees, pines grew here in abundance.