clothes â a light kerkher of white fawn skin, trimmed with wolverine fur.
Silently they walked into the center of the icy circle. Mlakoran planted the spear deep into the ice and placed his daughterâs hand onto the spear shaft, so she could hold it at an angle.
All this happened in complete silence, in blinding sunlight.
Setting his daughter down and checking that the spear was firmly held upright, Mlakoran drew back a little and then threw himself onto the spear, hard enough to pierce both his white kukhlianka and his breast. Blood spurted down the spearâs shaft and Mlakoran toppled, taking the spear with him.
A childâs wail rang out amid the thick, tense silence, and then the howling cry of Mlakoranâs first wife as, loosened hair streaming, she came running toward the brightly bloodstained circle of ice.
They buried Mlakoran at the foot of the Hill of Heartsâ Peace.
That very evening Keleu went to see the rekken â but they had vanished. All that was left, if you looked carefully, were the barely visible, level tracks of their tiny sleds on the snow.
From that day on, there were no more deaths in Uelen and the sick began to get better.
Yet the death of Mlakoran did not mean the end of our line, whose thread continued in the deeds of Mlakoranâs eldest son, Tynemlen, named so because he had been born at the apex of dawn, almost at that very moment when the first ray of sunshine pours through to crown the far horizon with a smooth crimson stripe.
The Safekeeping of Names
The shaman Kalyach, wrapped in his ukkenchin , a cloak made of walrus intestines, made his way along the shore. He was heading for the Great Crag, which overhung the narrow shingled beach. Gigantic waves battered the shoreline, as if striving to capture the lonely wanderer, but only the flaccid, foamy tongues of the waves actually reached his high waterproof torbasses. Sometimes a clutch of seaweed, spat out onto the shore by the sea, twined itself around his feet; Kalyach would bend down, tear into the taut, slippery, wet loops, put some in his mouth and chew, squeezing the sour-sweet juice from the nutritious strands. Every now and then he came across little crabs, and the contents of their thin claws also went into the travelerâs belly. Starfish were similarly dispatched. Holding the prickly arms to his face, the shaman would slurp the liquid from their central hole and, flinging wide his arm, toss these gifts of the sea back into the waves.
Still, he was mindful of his main goal: he was searching for a good piece of sea-polished walrus tusk, blackened from its time in the water. It was precisely the item he needed in order to divine the name of a male infant newly born to the yaranga of Tynemlen, one of the descendants of the legendary Mlemekym.
Such was the old custom: after a certain number of generations, in order that the memory of the past did not dissipate in the mist of times long gone, a new arrival into this world was given an ancestral name, as though marking him out as a beacon link in the chain which future generations could use to peer back at the past.
A few more days and the winter ice, whose approach was already visible on the horizon, would draw close to shore and imprison the watery expanse, stilling the seaâs tempestuous disposition for a long stretch of winter. The short summer was over and dark times of trials, snowstorms, and piercing frost loomed ahead.
The sun had come up over the horizon, its light burrowing through the low clouds, but gloom still reigned underneath the overhang of the Great Crag. The wet shingle gave off a dim shine, and it was no easy task to find a piece of black walrus tusk among the stones. Kalyach had already made a few false starts, bending down only to toss away a glossy pebble, disappointed.
Ah, there it is â a shard of an old walrus tusk!
Kalyach carefully wiped the find with his sleeve, flicked his tongue against it to be sure it had
Silently they walked into the center of the icy circle. Mlakoran planted the spear deep into the ice and placed his daughterâs hand onto the spear shaft, so she could hold it at an angle.
All this happened in complete silence, in blinding sunlight.
Setting his daughter down and checking that the spear was firmly held upright, Mlakoran drew back a little and then threw himself onto the spear, hard enough to pierce both his white kukhlianka and his breast. Blood spurted down the spearâs shaft and Mlakoran toppled, taking the spear with him.
A childâs wail rang out amid the thick, tense silence, and then the howling cry of Mlakoranâs first wife as, loosened hair streaming, she came running toward the brightly bloodstained circle of ice.
They buried Mlakoran at the foot of the Hill of Heartsâ Peace.
That very evening Keleu went to see the rekken â but they had vanished. All that was left, if you looked carefully, were the barely visible, level tracks of their tiny sleds on the snow.
From that day on, there were no more deaths in Uelen and the sick began to get better.
Yet the death of Mlakoran did not mean the end of our line, whose thread continued in the deeds of Mlakoranâs eldest son, Tynemlen, named so because he had been born at the apex of dawn, almost at that very moment when the first ray of sunshine pours through to crown the far horizon with a smooth crimson stripe.
The Safekeeping of Names
The shaman Kalyach, wrapped in his ukkenchin , a cloak made of walrus intestines, made his way along the shore. He was heading for the Great Crag, which overhung the narrow shingled beach. Gigantic waves battered the shoreline, as if striving to capture the lonely wanderer, but only the flaccid, foamy tongues of the waves actually reached his high waterproof torbasses. Sometimes a clutch of seaweed, spat out onto the shore by the sea, twined itself around his feet; Kalyach would bend down, tear into the taut, slippery, wet loops, put some in his mouth and chew, squeezing the sour-sweet juice from the nutritious strands. Every now and then he came across little crabs, and the contents of their thin claws also went into the travelerâs belly. Starfish were similarly dispatched. Holding the prickly arms to his face, the shaman would slurp the liquid from their central hole and, flinging wide his arm, toss these gifts of the sea back into the waves.
Still, he was mindful of his main goal: he was searching for a good piece of sea-polished walrus tusk, blackened from its time in the water. It was precisely the item he needed in order to divine the name of a male infant newly born to the yaranga of Tynemlen, one of the descendants of the legendary Mlemekym.
Such was the old custom: after a certain number of generations, in order that the memory of the past did not dissipate in the mist of times long gone, a new arrival into this world was given an ancestral name, as though marking him out as a beacon link in the chain which future generations could use to peer back at the past.
A few more days and the winter ice, whose approach was already visible on the horizon, would draw close to shore and imprison the watery expanse, stilling the seaâs tempestuous disposition for a long stretch of winter. The short summer was over and dark times of trials, snowstorms, and piercing frost loomed ahead.
The sun had come up over the horizon, its light burrowing through the low clouds, but gloom still reigned underneath the overhang of the Great Crag. The wet shingle gave off a dim shine, and it was no easy task to find a piece of black walrus tusk among the stones. Kalyach had already made a few false starts, bending down only to toss away a glossy pebble, disappointed.
Ah, there it is â a shard of an old walrus tusk!
Kalyach carefully wiped the find with his sleeve, flicked his tongue against it to be sure it had
Similar Books
