The Glaciermen #21: White (part 1)

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

Good Tuesday to you, Dear Reader,

As promised, the next segment. New things… new things in here, so let’s not waste any time and just jump in today.

Enjoy!

(Here’s the previous segment if you missed it, and the first chapter and index, if you’re new).

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White (part 1)

When the boy first emerged onto the surface of the glacier that morning, it had been amazing—the open space, the sun, and the sky. The sun was bright and warm on his face, but it was the sky that had captured him. It was a deep, rich blue, and he had forgotten just how big it was. He had spent the morning pressing on with eager footsteps toward the descending edge of the coastal mountain range.

But now, the wind battered against him, rushing past and taking his good spirits with it. The late afternoon sky above hid behind a thick layer of darkening gray clouds and falling snow. A gust of wind peppered the boy’s face with stinging, icy flakes. He blinked them away, then shrugged to adjust the harness over his shoulders. With mittened hands, he gripped the straps of the harness and continued his trek across the ice as the snowfall grew heavier. A sled dragged behind him, laden with the supplies he had been given for his task.

• • •

Aguta had spent every spare minute of the last two weeks preparing Lee for the Second Trial, and nearly an entire hour of that time trying to describe the animal Lee needed to hunt: an adult male bulltooth. When Lee finally realized what animal was being described, he had burst out excitedly with the only name he knew it by—walrus! But then he was confused. Walruses were friendly creatures, he thought, but Aguta made it very clear to him that this opinion was misinformed. The name was not unearned.

While it was true that the bulltooth was generally a peaceful, lumbering behemoth, it was incredibly dangerous when protecting itself. Despite its slow movement on land, it was surprisingly quick to strike with its massive tusks, and its thick leathery hide and inches of protective blubber made it nearly impossible to land a killing strike. Often enough to be remembered, boys who failed the trial were found dead with huge gashes from the tusks of the beasts. Even the mighty polar bear occasionally fell to their ivory defenses.

For the hunt, Lee had been given a spear that was as tall as him along with an arm-length blade. One side of the blade was sharpened to a razor edge, while the other was filled with jagged teeth—for sawing off the head of the bulltooth, when the time came. To his surprise, he had also been given clothing beyond just the waist coverings he had become accustomed to in the chasm: a sealskin parka, heavy pants, thick moccasins, and a pair of warm mittens. When he asked Aguta about it, his response had simply been, ‘You will need them.’ Lastly, he had been given enough food for the journey to the coastal inlet where the bulltooth came to rest from the sea—but not enough to get back. He was expected to eat what he killed.

All of this had been neatly stowed on his sled before departing from the chasm. Aguta was allowed to accompany him at first, but only long enough to show him the way to the surface. They walked together in silence for most of a day, winding through the dark ice tunnels with only the scrape of the sled and the flickering of a torch for company. They arrived at the opening of the tunnel onto the surface as the sun was dipping toward the horizon. Lee wanted to go on, but Aguta had shut him down firmly. The night was too dangerous, and he would continue the journey alone at first light. It would take at least a day, maybe two, to reach the coastal inlet and the bulltooths, and Lee would need the light to make good time.

They made camp just inside the tunnel entrance, a small opening hidden at the edge of a shallow crevasse. Lee had slept deeply, worn out from the long uphill trek through the passages to the surface. In the morning, Aguta helped Lee get ready, then spent a few minutes going over the most important points of Lee’s lessons for the hunt.

“Remember your breath,” Aguta had said at last, before sending Lee off. “Your warmth is alive within you, so long as you feed it with breath. You have special power in you, it is what drew me to you when you were in the killing pit, but you must give it respect. It will not come merely if you wish it. You must will it, and feed it with breath. The clothes you have been given should protect you well enough from the elements, but the ice is a wild companion, one which cannot be tamed, or trusted. Remember your breath.”

He had paused then for a long moment, staring off toward the rising sun peaking over the white horizon, then reached into a pouch in his belt to retrieve a wooden canister. 

“When I carried you from the pit, do you remember what I put in your lip?”

Lee had not forgotten, nodding his head. Aguta then removed the lid from the canister and showed it to Lee. Inside was a clear gel, glowing dimly blue.

“You already know what this is, I suspect,” Aguta had explained. “It is harvested from the mycelium you have been helping to cultivate with Lusa—that is what I gave to you then. It is part of why the tunlaq keep us, to farm it for them. This gel is a concentrated form of the active elements, and it has many special properties. The first among them is to mimic the natural ability you have to create warmth with your body. That is why the tunlaq apply it to their entire bodies, to keep them warm. It also creates light in the darkness, as you are well aware.

“While the substance stimulates the muscles for warmth, the rest of the body is empowered as well—becoming faster, stronger, and resistant to pain. And this is not all. The last effect is in one’s mind. It changes the perceptions, causing one to see things that are not there. Strange twisting patterns, colors that do not exist, secret meaning in the shapes of stones and ice. These patterns are represented in our scars. The effect lasts about an hour… in normal circumstances. The tunlaq believe this power is a gift of divine sight to commune with their gods, thus the name ‘god’s eye’.

“I give this to you now, but know that this power is no blessing. The gods of the tunlaq spawn from a dark evil, and they expect a price for their blessing. One may use the godseye once, perhaps even a few times, and maintain his control over himself. But after repeated use, like the tunlaq do, its begin to infect the mind. Strength becomes aggression. Insight becomes insanity. The thirst for this power begins to overshadow all other desires, and one seeks nothing else but to stay in the state the godseye provides. To achieve ‘Total Communion.’ Their shaman…”

Aguta had paused at that point. Then his face shifted, as if he were coming back from being lost in thought.

“Do not use this except to avoid certain death. You should not need it, but I give it to you anyway. You must survive this trial. Too much depends on it.”

Then Aguta had simply given Lee a pat on the shoulder and began walking back into the tunnel. Before disappearing in the gloom, he had turned and said one last thing.

“Oh, and do not have it with you when you return. The punishment if you were caught with it in the village would be death… I will await your return.”

And then he was gone.

Lee pondered the revelation for a time when he first shouldered the harness and began the journey across the ice, but the bright sun and open sky soon pulled him to happier thoughts and the adventure ahead. The good mood lasted until the afternoon, when the clouds began covering the sky, bringing with them the flurry that was now slowly transforming into a fully fledged blizzard.

Lee was not having a good time. He could barely make out the dark edges of the mountain peaks ahead of him through the snowfall. There was a small gap in the hood of the parka, and somehow each gust of wind managed to sneak a few ice flakes down his neck just far enough that he couldn’t scoop them out, forcing him to suffer cold dribbles down his chest when they melted.

The Second Trial… it’ll be fun! Lee thought sardonically. They could have given it a better name, at least. ‘The Trial of the Stupid Walking,’ or ‘The Trial of the Frozen Butt,’ or even ‘The Trial of the Dumb Heavy Sled.”

Nonetheless, he trudged on. Aguta had warned him that the worst thing to do in a blizzard was to stop moving without shelter, and he still had another hour or so before reaching the edge of the glacier, where the ice gave way to the coastal mountains, and where he could find somewhere out of the wind.

The sun was beginning to approach the horizon somewhere behind the thick clouds, and the light in the already overcast sky was beginning to fade. Lee walked mostly without thought, listening to the rhythmic crunching of his footsteps on the ice. He tried to keep his eyes locked on the mountains ahead of him, now barely visible silhouettes behind the falling snow, but the flurry kept sending new gusts of ice flakes into his eyes, so he ended up looking down at his feet much of the time.

Lee raised his face again to check his progress toward the mountains. They weren’t there. He squinted into the blowing snow, but all he could see was a wall of white. Then he turned all around. Nothing, just snow and the track left behind him by the sled.

Shit.

Lee turned back toward where the mountains had been and continued onward. The wind continued to whip, and the snow was falling so thickly that he could only make out a few steps ahead, but he kept going, putting his focus on his footfalls and trying to ignore the pit of fear growing in his stomach as the light continued to fade.

“Shit,” he said out loud this time.

On the ground in front of him, in the direction where the mountains should have been, two neat lines trailed across the snow with already filling in footprints between them. It was identical to the track behind him.

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And that’s it for now folks

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