BOOK 4
VILJA
I
PANIGPAK said it was necessary to wail until snow had fallen and igloos could be built. That time soon came. For three days and the three nights in which they were but a glimmer, the angakok fasted. Thereafter he went alone into the mountains while men made a house of a size that would hold everybody. They lined it with tent hides, but over a ledge opposite the doorway they laid a bearskin.
hen folk were gathered there after dark, Panigpak’s name was called thrice before he entered. “Why are you here?” he said. “This person cannot help you. I am only an old fool and liar. Well, if you will have it so, I will try to bamboozle you with my silly little tricks.”
He went to the ledge and stripped himself naked. The others already were unclad to the waist, or altogether, for the heat in the igloo was stifling. Lamps made sweat sheen, eyes glisten; the sound of breath was like surf. He sat down, and a man called Ulugatok bound his arms and legs with thongs that cut into the flesh. Panigpak gasped for pain but otherwise uttered naught.
The helper laid a drum and a dried sealskin nearby, before he joined the crowdedness on the floor. “Put out the lamps,” he said. “Stay where you are, whatever happens. To go to him now is dpath.”
Blackness rolled in, save for one tiny flame which did not make the angakok visible.. He began to sing, a high-pitched rhythmic chant, louder and louder. The drum beat, the dry skin rattled, sounds which came from elsewhere in the murk, some-times here, sometimes there, sometimes overhead, sometimes below ground. Slowly the people started singing with him. It came to possess them, they lost themselves in it, swayed back and forth, writhed across each other, spoke in tongues, howled and screamed. The madness gripped Tauno and Eyjan as well, until even with Faerie sight they did not know when or how Panigpak departed.
He was gone. The song quavered onward, endless as winter night. The Inuit were beside themselves, out of themselves.
Now, said their belief, the angakok swam downward through the rock to the underworld, and out below the waters. He passed the country of the dead; he passed an abyss where whirled eternally a disc of ice and boiled a cauldron full of seals; he got by a guardian dog, greater than a bear, which bayed and snapped at him; he crossed a bottomless chasm on a bridge that was a knife blade; and thus at last he came before huge, one-eyed, hostile Sedna, whom some call the Mother of the Sea.
It was as if time had gone on to Doomsday F.ve when finally Ulugatok called, “Quiet! Quiet! The shadow ripens.” He dared not give aught its true name here-a man must be a shadow, his approach must be its ripening-lest the spirits hear and strike. He quenched the single flame, for it would kill Panigpak did anyone see the angakok before he had put his skin back on, that he left behind when he went below.
Utter lightlessness brought a sense of spinning, falling, rushing helpless on a stormwind whose noise echoed off unseen heaven. Then the drum began anew, and the crackling sealskin. Ulugatok droned forth a long magical chant in words that nobody else knew. Perhaps its chief purpose was to bring calm. He did not stop until the only sound was the crying of frightened children.
Panigpak’s voice came weary: “Two of us must die this winter. But we will find abundance of meat, the fish will swarm, spring and summer will be mild, the Neighbors will go away. I have also word for our guests, but must speak to them later, alone. It is done.”
A man groped through the dark, sought a nearby hut for fire, returned and kindled the lamps. Panigpak sat on the ledge, bound by the thongs. Ulugatok went to release him. He fell back and lay swooned for a while. When he opened his eyes, he saw Tauno and Eyjan among those beside him. He tried feebly to smile. “It was nothing,” he muttered. “Just lies and tomfoolery. I am an old swindler, and no wisdom is in me.”