Orluvoq by Benny Hinrichs

Author:Benny Hinrichs [Hinrichs, Benny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-06-21T22:00:00+00:00

The sun lounged on the horizon as they quit their windwalking a few hundred paces outside the village. No village she had ever seen aspired to distinguish itself much, to wax in both elegance and eminence until outsiders respected what a genteel people the denizens were. This cluster of igloos was no different in its functional design, yet Orluvoq couldn’t help but feel it exuded a peculiar impression.

Nalor turned to her, grin set wide. “Here we are. Home, sweet home.”

Her forehead frowned. “This is your home?”

“Don’t be absurd, they hate me. But these people—” he swung a hand toward the village, then dropped it. “Actually, they probably hate me too. Regardless, I suppose I could see how you wouldn’t be jumping and panting with recognition. After all, the last time you saw this location, you had turned the whole place into a lake.”

“Oh, spirits.”

“Yes, you did release some of those, if I recall.”

“Can we,” she said, stomach queasing, “take this somewhere else? Anywhere?”

His smile creased his face further. “Back to the prostitutes, then?”

“Nalor!”

“Are you really so worried about a little family reunion?”

“Family?” She jabbed an open hand past his jocose face and toward the igloos. “You think that Terianniaq is my family? I went to the end of the world and back for them, and they still rejected me. There is no one in this world further from family than them.”

“Well.” His mouth relaxed. “This sounds like just the place to be. Oh—” His eyes focused on an oddity off in the snow. “Is that…” He trotted over and Orluvoq trailed him.

The old angakkuq chortled aloud. “An unexpected boon!” Orluvoq expected him to jump in heel-clicking jubilation.

In the crust of the world lay the elephantine effigy of a man—or woman—carved out of the ice itself. It emanated spectacle in spite of its rough-hewn features, eyes shut, wrists crossed on the breastbone in a moment of eternal repose. Orluvoq could have laid down head-to-toe thrice and matched its length.

The snow above the head began folding in on itself, running to liquid and into the permafrost.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“We’re about to see just how deep our luck runs,” Nalor answered, concentrating on the concentrated thawing.

“Meaning?”

He didn’t oblige her an answer until he’d bored a hole deep enough to stand in and hopped down with a grunt. “Have you ever stumbled upon one of these before?”

“Uh…” She watched him prod the wall with a glove. “My stumbling usually isn’t so fancy.”

“Have you ever seen an inuksuk?” He seemed satisfied with his probings and began to work the candle again, the wall sloughing away.

“Yes. Pile of rocks made to look like a person. I have been north, you know.” Markers for travel, hunting, and the like.

“Well, this marvelous monument is similar, except it marks death.”

She scrunched her brow. “Mark death? The ice takes the body within half an hour.”

“Not,” he said as something dark poked out of the snow, “if you bury them in one of these.”

A head lolled out of the vanishing wall, its browned teeth clicking like mud-caked rocks.

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