Orluvoq Read online

  Orluvoq

  Benny Hinrichs

  Copyright © 2021 by Benny Hinrichs

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Edited by Austin Gragg (@austingragg)

  Cover art by Abel Klaer (@superstarfighter)

  Released 22 June 2021

  https://www.bennyhinrichs.com

  Contents

  Part I

  Nunapisu

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Interlude

  Part II

  Qilaknakka

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Interlude

  Part III

  Sulluliaq

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Image Gallery

  Don’t look if you 100% want to avoid spoilers

  Asanninnermut kusanartumut akigisaq tassaavoq anniarneq kusanartoq.

  The price we pay for beautiful love is beautiful pain.

  Part I

  Nunapisu

  8 YEARS OLD

  1

  Paarsisoq

  The Watcher sat at the end of the earth; he sat at the start of the sky. Today he watched errant flakes of snow drift over the edge in apathetic gusts of suicide. It was one of the few dances his eyes would never tire of, their ambling drift shimmering before a backdrop of inexhaustible darkness. If his luck held, that would be all he watched today.

  As idly as the snow fell, he pondered over what happened to the spirits of those forsaken flakes. Did they, through some mystic means, return to earth, or were they consumed entirely by the void? A younger Watcher—and indeed not yet then a Watcher—would have contested against the cruelty of the nihility at the end of the earth. But such were the customs of naivety.

  Today’s Watcher knew frailty. He knew nullity. He knew reality. The knowledge lodged in his skin much as humans lodged in the earth’s hide. The snowflakes were gone.

  Gone…

  The thought guttered out as the candle beside him tugged at his innards. He gathered up the glim in his gloved hand and focused on the swaying flame, the other dance his eyes never tired of. The distinctive odor of burning alicorn wafted into his nostrils and his eyes slid shut. An indistinct gravity flittered behind his spirit. He damped his breathing and released himself from the world.

  The gravity consolidated. There she was, a mile east, the thrum of her quavering within him like the lowing of calving glaciers. He tracked the pull of her paltry procession toward Nunapisu, the end of the earth. Today he would watch more than snowflakes.

  The Watcher’s eyes cracked open and he groaned to his feet, stretching his back once he arrived. He took a brace of exploratory steps to check that his snowshoes needed no adjusting, then embarked.

  Twenty minutes later, and silent as a dead fox, he trailed mere paces behind on her approach to the edge. Her feet carried her to the brink then scuffled to a halt. They always stopped at the edge.

  He slid in beside her and resumed his observation of the dying snow. “What do you see?”

  She sucked in an acute breath, jumped back, and turned to appraise the newcomer. A portion of her hackles settled as she decided who he must be. “I don’t need your words, Watcher.”

  He stared into the neverending, arms crossed over his chest. Few may want my words, sister, but all need them. “What do you see?” he repeated, nodding to the dark.

  A frozen moment passed before she shook her head. “Nothing. I see nothing.”

  Nothing. That was true enough. But two decades had taught the Watcher that much could be wrung from the inky abyss. “Nothing? If that’s so, then I don’t think this is the place for you.” He pushed some of the warmth from his candle onto her.

  Her breath flickered in preparation for weeping. “Everything, Watcher. I see everything.” A gulp. “I see everything behind me and realize that everything is nothing now. I see nothing before me and realize that nothing is everything now. I am nothing. And so, nothing must become my everything.”

  He waited, turning over half a dozen replies in his mind. “Who do you run from?”

  “Who do I… It’s not that simple. I…” She sniffled. “My mother has disowned me.” A sob tremored her body.

  The Watcher turned to behold her for the first time. Matted hair clung haphazard about her face. Dull eyes weary of being squeezed for tears regarded him. She was somewhere around his age, mid-forties and holding, and from the state of things, it appeared the age of her spirit might be near his as well.

  “Loss is not friends with ease, I know,” he said. “Even more so when the one you’re deprived of chose to become lost.” He let the words hang in the air, then continued when she made no reply. “And what of your husband? Your children? Do none of them claim you any longer?”

  She wiped at the fresh tears on her contorted face. “My husband is a quiet man who fears talking against anyone. He would never dream of confronting Mother. My children are… Well, Inneq has always hated me. He was glad for the change. And Silaanoq—she’s too young to sway things either way, but she’s always been more like her father. It wouldn’t matter if she were older.”

  He nodded at the revelation. Some took longer than others, but all wanted to spill their story at least once more. “And so, everything has become nothing, and nothing has become everything.” Both of their eyes were drawn to the glinting flame in his hand as silence set in. After a minute, he broke the quiet. “Here you’ve come, unable to resist the draw of Nunapisu. That queer hope offered by this gulf of eternal nothing. You resisted many miles of hungry ice for the chance to cast yourself beneath the sky.”

  Her gloved hand pawed at more tears. “What does it matter to you? You don’t know me. What if I deserved to be forsaken?”

  “There is always somebody who cares about you. Today that person is me.” He lessened the amount of heat he was drawing from the candle so he could funnel more to her.

  She scowled at his pronouncement and took a step to peer over the edge. A shiver gripped her body, and the Watcher discerned other telltales of a fever.

  “Infinity gets smaller with each moment that you stare at it,” he said.

  “What does that mean?” she eventually replied.

  His gaze disappeared into the expanse. “When you look into the stars and imagine how far away it all is, it makes you feel a tiny piece in the midst of greatness. Not so for the void. The longer you stare, the more you realize that there’s nothing. You could fall for a thousand years and never see a difference. And when all is the same, it doesn’t matter how much there is. It begins to shrink around you until you’re pressing your arms and legs against it, and then the nothing swallows you.”

  The woman picked at a fraying seam in her caribou coat. “Then I must jump.”

  His candle burned lower than he would
have liked. He thought about scaling back the heat he was channeling, but her preservation was worth more than some narwhal tallow and horn. “When I came, I thought the same. I reasoned I was bred from oblivion’s stock and was through with my sojourn in existence. Time is the only thing that can heal these wounds.”

  “No. This wound will fester with time. Better to cut it off and save myself the pain.” She shuffled closer to the edge.

  “I’m not here to tell you what to do with your life; it’s in your hands.” He underscored his statement by grabbing her hand. Sometimes, they hadn’t known the touch of another in so long, mere contact could pry them from the edge. It had kept him back often enough. “I’m here to beg you to give your body to the ice. Let it be preserved forever instead of disappearing, and your spirit along with it. Give me your name, and I will remember it. Give your spirit a chance. You may be filled with sorrow now, but you’ll have all eternity to find joy.”

  “Which is the same as saying that I’ll have all eternity to be miserable.” Her fevered face reflected her belief in the words.

  “Unbound by present cares, you will find misery tiring.” He pontificated from his own musings and the words of elders from his youth.

  Her breathing increased to an angry rate as she snatched her hands from him. “Do you know what I see? I see a fool at the end of the earth who doesn’t understand why people come here.”

  Her words spoken in a tangle of emotion twanged hollowly against his heart. “You’re right, of course. A score of years on this lurch sweep has shown me nothing.”

  The woman’s face distorted with grief again. “How could someone I love so much cast me aside so easily?” An unintelligible moan racked her body. “Where did I love you wrong, Mama?”

  His heart quickened at her sudden change in humor. “It’s not always—”

  A rustle of movement and a wail of despair cut him off.

  The Watcher stood at the end of the earth; he stood at the start of the sky. Today he watched an anguished woman throw herself over the edge in an irrevocable thrust of suicide. It was one of the few dances his eyes would never watch while dry, her miniscule form sprawled before a backdrop of inexhaustible darkness.

  His luck hadn’t held. She was gone.

  Gone.

  Gone…

  Gone.

  2

  Orluvoq

  Orluvoq loved when the ship stopped and she could get off and play on the ice. Though the boat was vast and full of crannies for stashing herself away in, the ice was endless and full of life.

  But not today. Today Orluvoq watched the men lower her mother’s corpse to the ice. She shook from the cold and the hideous ache in her gut.

  It’s not fair. She can’t be gone. A fresh gout of tears froze as the wind shouldered by. One of the ship’s women, Kitornak, laid a hand on Orluvoq’s shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry. No one so young should have to experience this sorrow.”

  The words stopped dead in her skin. Why did what “should” happen matter when it had nothing to do with what did happen?

  The rest of the crew fanned around the funeral proceedings like a sail cupping wind, all mindful that it could be any of them atop their grave. Ribs of ice trickled up from the tundra and slowly cocooned the body.

  Captain Naalagaa pulled his hood from his head, turning to the grieving girl. “Your mother was a good, hardworking woman. Your parents were a valuable contribution to this vessel, and we’re all sad to see them go. But soon they’ll be reunited at the end of the earth.” He examined the fur on his glove. “You’ll have berth with us until we can take you back to your clan. Sorry to both you and your parents, but we just can’t care for you.”

  “I’ll care for her,” Kitornak interjected, hand returning to Orluvoq’s shoulder. Orluvoq wondered up at the woman maybe fifteen years her mother’s senior.

  Naalagaa frowned. “It’s not just supervision I’m talking about, Kitornak. There’s also the matter of supplies. The girl will grow, and where will her clothes come from? Also, this ship doesn’t have enough candles for two angakkuit, as we’ve seen over the past years. Ikingut has been hard-pressed to earn his keep.”

  The word still had a strange ring in her ears: angakkuq—worker of candles. Angakkuit were supposed to be strange old people reserved to themselves, but she had first worked the tuuaaq candles two years ago when she was just six. She still hadn’t quite acclimatized to hardened adults asking her to heal their cough or try to receive a vision for them. It sometimes embarrassed her they didn’t go to Ikingut instead, but she secretly knew her angakkuq abilities surpassed his.

  The woman vouching for her didn’t reply to the captain. The matter was done. It wasn’t right to eject a faithful crewmember just because something newer and better came along. Instead, she turned again to the exequies. “And look, your mother is gone to Nunapisu now.”

  It wasn’t a revelation, merely a comment to fill the heavy air. Orluvoq had watched the ice consume her dearly departed inch by gelid inch, just as it had her father five months prior. If she ever wanted to see either of her parents again, she would have to travel north, past demons, to the end of the earth. Then came the climb spirits knew how far down the frozen cliff—the cliff which had no bottom, only depths. The cliff which held all the dead to ever die. Some devotees made the pilgrimage, but none returned with tale of success.

  With the funeral finished, the crew re-embarked and set about preparing the ship for travel. Luckily, it seemed there was enough wind that they wouldn’t have to hitch the dogs. Well, maybe it wasn’t lucky. It was a predicament she had heard the captain gripe about multiple times. When the dogs pulled the ship, it went too slow. When the dogs were onboard, they were too much of an obstruction. Orluvoq always preferred onboard doggies, except for the time Ikik had peed on her.

  “What was your clan again?” Captain Naalagaa asked as they ascended the ladder.

  “Terianniaq.” Orluvoq pulled herself over the gunwale and dogs bombarded her.

  “Ah, that’s right. Haven’t been there in a spell.” Naalagaa mounted the railing. “Let me see, we should be over that general direction in, say, a week. Week and a half at most. You’ll be home with your people before you know it.” He turned his attention to the crew, commands barking from his throat.

  After the hounds had settled, Orluvoq hung over the side of the ship while the unfurled sails gathered in wind. Her body slid back as the boat kicked to life, sliding along the ice. When she bored of tracking aberrations in the landscape over and over, she headed toward her bunk.

  Dead. First Daddy, now Mama. She collapsed on the poorly furnished floor she had called a bed for the last three years and wept. Above her rocked the hammock that her parents had shared. More tears came as she stroked it, remembering the times she had tickled Mama and Daddy through the thin bed.

  How am I supposed to live? Where would her food come from? She didn’t even know how to take care of her hair, much less herself. Orluvoq got up and crawled into the hammock, images of her parents playing in her mind. Mama’s just in the scullery. She’ll be back in a couple hours. Daddy’s just on deck, playing dice with Inuunu and Kakajik. He’ll come and pick me up when he’s done.

  The images faded into visions of her parents sinking into the ice. The cursed ice. Visions of them nuzzling heads as they floated, frozen in the cliff at the end of the world.

  All they have to look at anymore is the forever blackness. They can’t even turn to see each other.

  Orluvoq curled like a rabbit in its hole at the first light of sun, not wanting yet to rise.

  Helpless. The mechanism of memory could eke out no other time where she had truly been helpless. There had always been somewhere to turn. Not now. Toothless beneath the bite. Legless beneath the trample. It felt like she’d been rendered into an unquenchable candle and set ablaze, fated for eternal burning without even a hill to scream on. Helpless did not feel good.

  Their spirits live on somewhere else.
Maybe I can talk to them. Excitement tingled through her, a reprieve from the sobs. I need to burn a tuuaaq candle and try to talk with them. Or maybe see if I can get a dream or vision.

  Remembrance doused her enthusiasm. The captain himself had said it earlier. Tuuaaq was no common object to be collected from the ice. Hunting narwhals inside the great green aurora in the sky to obtain their unearthly tusks was a difficult pursuit that yielded a limited amount of tuuaaq.

  Her parents had let her stay up to watch a hunt two years ago as she began her angakkuq training. They figured she should know where the candles she’d be using came from. Watching the hunters fly into Arsarneq, the great aurora, with their kites surpassed anything she had ever done with the tuuaaq. She’d watch them every night if she could.

  After a few hours, she wondered if she should eat. Thinking about food set her stomach swirling. No, no food. Maybe if she went long enough without eating the crew would have to lay her on the ice, too.

  At least then she wouldn’t be a burden. She could join her parents at the end of the earth.

  An unexpected nudge rocked her cot. She looked up to see a pocked face and an uncomfortable smile. Ikingut, the ship’s other candle worker.

  “Heya, Orluvoq. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about your parents. I know how you feel.”