The Glaciermen #31: Answers

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

It’s Tuesday my dudes!

*Confused faces look back at me. I've done it again, messed up a cliche. ‘My dudes’ is the Wednesday thing—idiot! Gotta be quick. Say something clever so they forget how stupid I just was… tacos! Tuesday is the taco thing day…

It’s tacos, my Tuesday!

*Cringe, cringe everywhere. I run away from the crowd as jeers and peanuts start to fly. Time to hide away in my happy fantasy—a horror story about ice and death and ritual sacrifice… wait that’s neither happy nor a fantasy! I try to clamp down the stream of consciousness… the point? What was the point? Oh yeah, a fourth-wall-breaking-meta-first-person intro to my latest segment from The Glaciermen…

Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen and start reading…

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

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Recap: It is nine years later. Lee and Nantuk, now friends, hear a rumor of special hunt involving the tunlaq. Lee has not faced his past, and now it has caught up to him. Will Aguta have the answers he needs?

Answers

Aguta was furious, which meant he was silent, jaw muscles twitching, face an impassable mask of stone.

“Fool!” he said, finally. “You should have told me when this happened—we could have prepared to leave this vile ice, fled under the guise of a caribou hunt and stood a chance at least—but now that is impossible. The time of the next selection is upon us. Any such attempt would immediately be seen for what it is, and we would be hunted down like animals.”

“What selection?” Lee asked.

“Did you not comprehend the words of their shaman?” Aguta said, aghast, “You were selected then, but not yet of age. Now you are fully a man, and you will be taken to join the tunlaq on their next hunt. That means you must also join in their accursed rituals. Only a fool would allow himself anywhere near such corrupting evil.”

Lee was confused. “How do you know about the ritual?”

A look passed across Aguta’s face which surprised Lee. It was fear.

“Have you ever wondered why I am the only other outsider in the village?” Aguta said. “I can barely remember it, but my true parents followed the old ways, as it was before the white-skinned men came with their machines. They lived above, hunting and fishing for sustenance as their ancestors always had. But one night, the tunlaq came. It was a massacre. I was young, but still I tried to fight them. Instead of accepting my challenge, they laughed at me and threw me into the pit with the rest to freeze and die. But I survived, just as you did. The tunlaq were impressed at my abilities and initiated me. 

“When I came of age, I walked the same path you now traverse. I received the same offer you have been given—to join their hunt, and join it I did. I foolishly hoped that somehow this was not the case with you, ignoring what I knew could be true when you were called alone before the shaman. I should have acted sooner, made you tell me—but my hope became my undoing.”

Lee interrupted, “That’s good then. You can prepare me for what comes next.”

“No!” Aguta shouted, “You can not even imagine the darkness that lies ahead. What you saw at the blood ritual was only a foretaste of the depth of evil into which the tunlaq descend.”

Lee felt fear rising in himself now—Aguta’s normal confidence was giving way. It was unnerving to see uncertainty in the man Lee had looked to as an undying rock of stability.

“You mean it gets worse than the blood ritual, worse than the frozen mound of…” he could not finish the sentence.

“Yes,” Aguta said gravely. “I should have told you long ago, but I have withheld from you the full knowledge of the true ways of the tunlaq, and the full purpose of the Sikanuk, this tribe of slaves in the chasm. Most of those in the village, with perhaps a handful of exceptions, believe our people are enslaved merely for our labors—to cultivate and purify the godseye for the tunlaq so they are not burdened with such menial work. In their eyes, our life is peaceful enough. They try to ignore the tunlaq, keep them at a distance in their mind. Pretend that nothing is amiss, because the truth is too hard to bear.”

“I know it’s more than just work,” Lee said. “The shaman told me the Offering and the Trials are tests to find the strong, so they can be initiated into the tunlaq.”

“Yes,” Aguta said, “But the Trials are only a single part of the greater whole—to find the strong, the courageous, those who are resilient against the cold and can survive the ways of the ice. But the Offering is more sinister than you believe.”

“Worse than not returning some of the babies?” Lee asked.

Aguta ignored the question. “When infants are handed over, the strong are returned and the weak are culled—those with cleft lips, club feet, small ears, twisted hands, extra toes or fingers. Usually that is the end of it, but in some cases infants are returned supposedly healed—no cleft lip, a renewed limb—but also changed. Every so often, a young mother will insist that something is wrong, that more has changed than just a regenerated hand or knitted lip… that the child is not her own.

“In truth, these women are correct, but the older women of the tribe—especially those whose child was not returned and stew in jealousy—they do not allow the seed of doubt to grow, for though they may have suspected this truth once as well, it is too much to bear, so they choose to believe the lie and make sure none undermine its comforting falsehood, instead insisting that the tunlaq are grateful for our servitude and graciously grant healing as a gift.”

“But where do the other babies come from? Do the tunlaq have babies? Do they steal them from the surface?” Lee asked.

A dark look crossed Aguta’s face, then he said, “Did you ever see a woman among the tunlaq when you were in their presence.”

Lee shook his head.

“That is because there are no tunlaq women. They are a tribe of men only—women are too weak in their belief to be allowed among them as equals. As the shaman told you so long ago, the tunlaq are not born, but chosen, selected from the strongest and most fearsome of the Sikanuk.”

“Wait a minute,” Lee said, “If they take men from the Sikanuk, then how come I’ve never seen anyone leave the village and join them?”

“It is much like how we do not hunt caribou bucks during the season of the long sun, letting them live long enough to breed and produce sufficient offspring for the herd so we may hunt plentifully in the next year. Our tribe of Sikanuk is too few in this generation. Many were slain before my time when a strong leader tried to fight against the tunlaq, and those who survived were the cowardly who did not fight, the likes of which produced Sugu and Muktuk, dull of mind or black of heart.

“Taking any more men would leave so few behind that it would result in cousin-marriages, and the deformities of mind and body that follow. Such weakness could not be allowed to corrupt the bloodline which feeds into the tunlaq. So they paused their selection, allowing a period of quiet so that the tribe may grow in number, but it seems they have waited long enough.”

“But where do the babies come from?” Lee asked.

Aguta’s face flashed annoyance at the interruption, then he continued. “These hunts—like the one you will be called upon to join—they are not just for fresh victims for their blood rituals, but also to steal women from the surface, to secure new wombs to keep the bloodline from fouling.”

“But like you said,” Lee replied, “I never saw any women while I was among the tunlaq.”

“That is because they are discarded upon serving their purpose, killed and preserved in the ice like the rest to be harvested at some later time. It is from these women that the so-called ‘healed’ infants originate, who are then traded into the tribe to mix their bloodline with ours. It is a tunlaq trick to remove weakness from the tribe yet another way.”

Lee raised an eyebrow. “So the tunlaq steal pregnant women? That explains why they didn’t take anyone from the plane crash—no one was pregnant.”

“No, you fool! They did not use those women because their offspring would have been white-skinned. No Sikanuk mother could swallow the lie with it so blatantly in front of them.” 

“Then… where do—”

“Do I need to spell it out for you? Do you not understand how babies are formed? Do you not see why the shaman said that you were not yet of age for the hunt, that your seed was not yet ready?”

“Oh…” Lee said. He was quiet for several seconds as the meaning of Aguta’s words finally became clear in his mind. 

“I see,” he said gravely.

“Good. No more questions,” Aguta said. “If word has already spread, then we have little time. We must begin preparations immediately. You will not be able to escape this hunt, but you may yet avoid corrupting yourself with its evil—something from which there is no return.”

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And that’s it for now folks

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