The Tower: Part 5: Imbolc
Post #41: In which story builds connection (again) ...
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Morfran approached Sedna, who sat watching the activity around her with more interest than she’d yet shown. Clarissa liked to watch him move, with his odd blend of grace and awkwardness. He sat down, positioning himself slightly to the side so he could speak to her face-to-face without blocking her view of the camp.
“Where I come from, we use wolf skins. I’ve learned a bit about tanning their skins. May I take your skins and finish cleaning them? Pim said he would teach me how your people do it.”
Clarissa felt pleased to see Sedna actually make eye contact with Morfran for a few seconds before looking away. She nodded.
“Thank you,” said Morfran.
Marceau and Poseidon draped raw strips of meat and blubber over the whale’s bleached bones near the qulliq. Vasilisa looked after the qulliq, learning the knack of maintaining a steady smokeless flame. When the snow in the pot had melted, she called Pim and Morfran, who were carefully scraping the putrid skins with Pim’s knives.
As they gathered to eat, the short day waned. They sat around the qulliq, even this flicker of fire in the immense cold wastes as attractive as one of Baba Yaga’s bonfires. Pim positioned the qulliq close to Sedna. She demonstrated no desire to move, so the others formed a loose circle, including her, with the qulliq in the center.
Well accustomed to eating raw fish and meat, they chewed lustily on the strips of walrus and even more welcome blubber. Clarissa knew eating the fat was as important as the protein in the meat, as it provided both energy and warmth.
She noticed neither Pim nor Morfran ate at once. Pim produced a carved bone cup, filled it with melted snow water from the kettle, and held it to Sedna’s lips so she could drink. She drank cup after cup. The others shared a wooden cup, but Clarissa took only a mouthful, as did the others, before passing it on. They would clearly need to melt more snow. Clarissa wondered how long it had been since Sedna had the simple luxury of a drink of water. No wonder her lips cracked and her skin peeled.
When the pot was empty, Marceau took it and walked away into the dimming afternoon in search of ice or snow to refill it.
Morfran chose a strip of blubber and offered it to Sedna. Clarissa watched her eyes go from the fat to Morfran’s face, as though gauging the risk of accepting it. He held it patiently, a friendly smile with no hint of pity on his face, and when Sedna leaned forward and took a bite Clarissa felt like cheering. She turned her eyes away, took a grateful bite of her own portion of meat and entered into the casual conversation of the others.
Marceau returned, rehung the kettle over the qulliq, which Vasilisa continued tending as she ate, and they applied themselves to filling their bellies while Morfran murmured to Sedna and fed her strip after strip of blubber and meat.
By the time the second pot of snow had melted, Clarissa and most of the others were replete. Pim, who had apparently eaten his fill, once again held the cup for Sedna, but this time she drained only four cups before turning away. She accepted another strip of meat from Morfran and then one last strip of blubber.
Clarissa and the others drank their fill, and Marceau once again took the pot to refill it. Morfran sat beside Vasilisa and applied himself to his own meal while Sedna sat against her bony support, wrapped in a thick fur that hid her mutilated arms, her black hair a neat curtain around her.
When Marceau had returned and the pot once again held melting snow, Clarissa said to Pim, “Will you tell us a story?”
Pim turned to Morfran. “You are a selchie?”
“Yes,” he replied. My grandfather -- my other grandfather -- ” with a smile at Marceau, “was a selchie.”
“Do you know any of our stories?”
“Only my grandfather’s story”
“I will tell you a selchie story, then.”
“In a land where snow drifts like fallen stars and night sky ripples with color, there lived a young hunter called Tek. His skin boat was the lightest and strongest, his eye the keenest and his harpoon never missed. When his people needed food, Tek pulled his boat onto the sea ice with the other hunters, making camp where the dark water lapped against the ice, or where the seals made blow holes and came up to breathe.
Then he sat or knelt, motionless in his furs, for hours at a time. The people said he left his body, as the shamans did, and his spirit slid into the water, searching for an animal ready to give up its life. He swam among the whales in their season, among the seals and walrus, and darted among the silver fish, fat and heavy with rich flesh, until an animal offered itself freely and followed him back to where his body waited with the other hunters.
After a kill, Tek and his people lifted their faces to the sky, opened their arms and gave thanks to the animal for its life. Tek and his people honored every gift the animal gave: meat, fat, skin, blood and bones.
The young hunter was popular because of his skill, and many women wanted to share his igloo and qulliq, but he favored none of them.
The truth was he felt most comfortable in the world hidden beneath the sea ice, the cold, dim world of shining scale, sleek fur over a solid covering of fat, and the majestic blowing of the whales. The voices of the ice, groaning and creaking, followed him into his dreams. The sea beneath his skin boat held him and rocked him like a mother.
The animals came to recognize Tek’s spirit and welcomed the naked swimmer who visited them with his straight black hair and harpoon.
A group of selchie heard about Tek, and one day his spirit encountered this group. One among them, Selena, found Tek particularly fascinating. His skin was bare and smooth. Dark hair grew sparsely on his chin and upper lip and floated around his head as he swam. He had a layer of fat under his skin, as all healthy animals did.
Selena was young and vital, not yet ready to give up her life for the sake of others, but she noted Tek’s patience as he sought an animal who wanted to follow him into the world above, the world of humans and ice bears, birds and the life-giving air and sun.
He visited her people beneath. Why should she not visit his above?
The other selchie tried to dissuade her. They told her stories about humans who stole selchie skins, imprisoning them for years. They warned her of the anguish of leaving children in the world above to return home beneath, of being torn between one’s life and one’s loved ones.
‘Humans are not like us,’ they said. ‘Their love is selfish. What they call love is only possession.’
‘He is different,’ Selena protested. ‘I know he is different. He comes to our world beneath, and he is not selfish. He takes only those who offer themselves.’
‘If you follow him above as a seal, he and the other hunters will kill you for food.’
Selena began watching Tek and the other hunters from above the water. She avoided the blow holes the other seals used and concealed herself behind rocks or ridges and sea ice slabs. At night, the hunters disappeared into two round snow shelters, lit from within by a dim warm light. After a time, the light went out and remained so for several hours.
On a night of silver moon, Selena clambered out of the water onto the ice. Carefully, she anchored her skin with a stone so the wind could not steal it. She wriggled through an opening in one of the snow shelters on her hands and knees, crawling until the space opened. Three shapes lay under piled furs. The first man snored mightily, and he smelled of some kind of unfamiliar meat. The smell of it was strong in the shelter. The second man smelled of rancid fat and sweat. The third lay on his side, facing away from her. He smelled cleanly of the salt sea, and she knew this must be Tek.
Cautiously, she wormed her way under the furs, bending her knees and molding her body around his. The luscious fullness of her breasts and belly pressed against his hard back and she laid her round cheek against the blade of his shoulder, inhaling his body’s private scent. The mingling of warm breath in the frozen, dark shelter created an icy humidity that chilled every exposed inch of skin. She snuggled closely against the sleeping man, covering her face and ear with her black hair, tucking her shoulder down and pulling in her bottom.
Tek stirred and turned. Selena felt awareness wake in him. Warningly, she laid a finger on his lips, then replaced the finger with her mouth.
His breath, like hers, was scented with fish. His hand came up, rested briefly on her ribcage, and then moved in exploration over the landscape of her human form. It excited her and she stirred against him, torn between the necessity to stay under the furs and the desire to stretch and display herself for his touch.
As she returned his caresses, moving her hand over his muscled shoulders and chest, the slight indentation of his waist and the solid strength of his hip, his warm breath gusted against her cheek, her chin, and her lips, which he possessed again and again with gentle but increasing violence.
Her hand encountered soft, warm, rounded shapes with sparse hair at the core of him, and suddenly she found a hard rod, pulsing, velvet-sheathed, and he gasped when she wrapped her fingers around it.
Selena threw her right leg over him and knelt above him so they felt one another’s breath and her breasts made a cushion between them. She reached down and guided him into the wet divide between her legs, sinking slowly down until her full weight rested on him, though her elbows still supported her on either side of his shoulders.
He bucked under her, swelling and hardening, and she smiled against his lips, pushing into his mouth with her tongue. His hands came around her hips and he pulled her hard against him, thrusting deeply. She made a small sound of delight, and now felt his lips smile against hers. She lifted her hips slowly, feeling the delicious friction as he slid out of her, and then drove them down again with her soft weight.
Silently, they rocked together. Selena could see nothing but faint moonglow. Her senses were reduced entirely to her nipples, her mouth and face, and the place where their bodies joined.
His shuddering release fueled her own, and she writhed and jerked like a fish on a line while it swept through her. She slid off him in a rush of warm fluid and he put out his right arm and gathered her against him, stroking her hair, his breathing quieting. She laid her right hand on his chest and felt his heart’s strong beating.
She slept.
Hours later, when the short day dawned, Tek found one of his sleeping skins discarded near a large rock at the ice’s edge. He picked it up and the scent of their lovemaking came to his nostrils. He returned the skin to the igloo and spent the scant hours of daylight hunched over a blow hole in the ice, his body singing with remembered warmth and softness, his mouth tender with her scent and taste, his heart as loosened and melted as fat in a burning qulliq.
So the selchie Selena and the young hunter Tek became secret lovers. Above the ice, the long nights held them, wordless, naked and passionate. Beneath, Tek sought her out in spirit form, and they swam and played while the sea ice glowed and shimmered around them.
Selena was right. Tek never sought to steal her skin. She was free to come and go as she would. She, in her turn, did not compel him. When he and the hunters had food, they returned to their village; too far from the sea ice for her to visit at night. In this way, seasons passed during which they lived separate lives beneath and above for days or weeks at a time.
During a joyous reunion after some weeks apart, Selena told Tek she was pregnant with his child, and awe and joy filled him.
The other selchie watched Selena and her lover cautiously, accepting her right to do as she wished but fearing a painful and perhaps dangerous outcome.
Tek’s people had no inkling of his secret, but noted he was more remote than ever before, and less interested in the hopeful young women who tried to catch his attention. His prowess as a hunter increased with time; none other could compete with him. If Tek went to the sea ice, he always returned with food for the village.
Inevitably, the other hunters began to envy Tek’s success. That the young man should consistently bring home more meat than more experienced, older hunters and his own peers caused envy, and the other hunters muttered of uncanny powers assisting Tek. Their pride in his ability to send his spirit beneath the ice to hunt turned to distrust and fear. Perhaps he had struck a bargain with Sedna herself, they said, a bargain that might bring ruin and disaster to the people.
It's a strange thing, but people who need not work hard every day to survive soon fall into dissension and dissatisfaction. Tek’s village, with an abundant and ongoing supply of food, grew argumentative and restive. Fights and gossip escalated. Rumor spread. It was no longer necessary for the hunters to work together, and the pride of a shared kill diminished.
Camped on the edge of the sea ice, the other hunters began sabotaging Tek. They blunted his harpoon against a stone when he wasn’t looking. They interrupted his spirit trances by stumbling over him, bringing him back into his crouched body with an unpleasant jolt. They watched him jealously, their eyes unfriendly. Selena and Tek began to feel nervous and the tension in the rounded snow shelters disturbed their delight in their long nights together.
Selena’s time grew near. Seals must give birth on land, and Tek was determined to find a way to be with her and protect her and the child during the vulnerability of birth. As the birth approached, Tek took care to be less successful hunting; choosing smaller animals to assure he would need to return to the hunting grounds sooner. Once there, he would simply wait until the birth was safely over before accepting an animal that presented itself. The other hunters would follow his lead, he knew.
He did not know the hunters had seen him more than once with a certain seal, easily identifiable by a pattern of grey spots. Their vague suspicions and resentments flowered into certainty. The seal was a powerful spirit, perhaps an evil spirit giving Tek an unfair, uncanny advantage. Tek’s pride and arrogance must be smashed to teach him humility.
They decided to teach him a lesson.
The other hunters arranged among themselves that one of them always kept his eye on the young hunter. So it was, when he stole away from camp one day, saying he wished to crouch by a distant blowhole the seals used, they followed him, keeping well out of sight.
Tek helped Selena up through the blow hole and onto the ice. She lay, straining and heaving as she gave birth. The seal pup slid out in a gush of fluid tinged with blood. The little white creature flopped, bursting the amniotic sac, and as Selena turned awkwardly to sniff it, the thick ribbon-like cord attaching mother and child broke.
Tek, weeping and smiling, passed his hands over the pup while Selena nuzzled and spoke to it. Tek did not see the hunter with a raised club until the club crashed down onto Selena’s head.
Tek heard a sickening crunch, a sound that haunted him for the rest of his life. Two hunters restrained him while another took out his knife and skinned Selena deftly, removing the valuable blubber layer under the skin as well. The ice bloomed with Selena’s blood. The pup lay, defenseless and weak, as they butchered his mother, and Tek raged, beside himself with grief.
When it was over the hunters backed away with their bloody prizes. One held Tek’s harpoon and his knife. He fell on his knees beside Selena’s body, pouring out his grief. The hunters left him there, moving away with nervous looks over their shoulders in case the uncanny seal came suddenly back to life and pursued them.
As Tek wept, he heard an expelled breath and a seal poked its head up from a blow hole, nostrils closing and dilating. The seal gave a long, low cry and its lustrous dark eyes welled with tears. Tek rose like an old man and lifted the white pup in his arms. For a moment he held it closely while it squirmed and wiggled, and then he tipped it gently into the blow hole with the seal.
‘Take care of our son,’ he said, ‘please.’
Alone again with Selena’s body, he grieved for a long time. When the short arctic dusk fell, he wiped his face on his sleeve and made his way back to the igloos, leaving the pathetic skinned seal behind for whatever scavengers might come. It was the natural way of things, and Selena, he knew, wouldn’t mind.
The igloo he shared with two others remained empty, and he understood the other hunters meant to cast him out and had gathered together in the second igloo. He was glad. He neither ate nor lit his qulliq, but wrapped himself in his sleeping skins, wishing to never think, feel or remember again, and slept.”
Clarissa wept. In spite of the ending of the doomed love affair, something in her longed for the passion the lovers had shared. It was right, this power and delight in body and spirit. It was lovely, the selchie woman and the man in their snow shelter in the moon-washed arctic night.
“What happened to the child?” she asked Pim. “Did he become a selchie, too?”
“He did,” said Pim. The qulliq cast strange shadows on his face. Wind scoured the bare sea bed, and they hunched and huddled around the flickering light. “Another selchie with a new pup became his milk mother, and he grew up in the sea. When he became a young adult, the selchie told him about his origins, and he ventured onto the sea ice one day and discovered his human form.”
“It was you,” said Morfran. “It’s your story.”
Pim smiled. “Yes. Now I live mostly above, with my father’s people. I’ve told them I’m an orphan from another place. My father is dead now, but I’m a useful hunter and the village accepted me, though they sense I’m different.” He addressed Sedna’s slight, dark figure. “That’s why I’ve come to seek you, Ice Mother. We are your children, the creatures of above as well as the creatures below. Because of you, men possess food and light and life. Because of you, the sea is rich with salmon, seal, whale and walrus. Without you, we will die.”
Clarissa noticed Pim refrained from intimating Sedna needed help, as well. Perhaps she could survive on her own, even without hands, but she didn’t appear to be much interested in survival at this point.
Sedna neither stirred nor spoke in response. After Poseidon and Marceau lashed the skins they’d found in camp, still stinking, but considerably cleaner, to the whale bones to provide some shelter from the wind, they blew out the qulliq and lay down together to sleep in the empty place where land and water once mingled.