The Barsoom Project

The seas swelled, and suddenly Eviane was in the prow of a small, shallow boat, skimming across the waves behind a flashing seal. The seal was speared, pulled aboard. The hunters rattled quick memorized words, and for a moment Eviane was back underwater, and the woman with the stubby fingers cocked her head to hear the voices.

Eviane was on the ice, belly flat against the floe, as a walrus rose through a hole to take a precious mouthful of air. A spear flashed past her viewpoint She ran with her companions beside a river, stretching their nets. Nets heavy with salmon were pulled to land. Voices were raised in happy song She was surrounded by dancing children in the midst of a communal hall, a qasgiq. Naked bodies bent and twisted to the rhythms of a hundred unfamiliar percussion instruments She stood on the shore, and watched a strange and alien vessel approach across the water. It was large, larger than a whale, large enough to hold whales. Gigantic white billowing wings caught the wind and breathed the thing in toward the land. Men sprang out, hairy men with pale skin.

As she watched, with impossible, magical speed, they began to build. Suddenly houses of wood-more wood than her people had ever seen-began to sprout in tight clusters. The new men killed whales and seals until their corpses littered the beach like poisoned ants.

And when there were no more whales and seals, they dug the hills, pulling out the yellow metal.

And when that slackened, they drilled into the ground, and pumped out thick black fluid.

The quickly shifting views of white intruders spilling across the land were becoming blurred. Behind them Eviane could see the woman beneath the water, the Eskimo woman with mutilated hands. Sedna was sick. A pale mass with white, veinlike threads, a fungus or parasite, was spreading through her hair, across her cheeks and neck, down her shoulders. She hunched her shoulders and hid her face in misery.

“The people of the Raven watched the destruction of their land.” She heard Martin’s voice dimly in her mind. “The people learned the ways of the intruders and forgot their own. Sedna was ill with their sins. And the Raven circling overhead, watching his people seduced from the way of their ancestors, was not happy.”

The Raven was a monstrous black shape, diving like a hawk. The earth’s surface tore like paper. The Raven ripped his way deep into the world’s heart. He emerged with claws filled with sticky orange-glowing magma. From that he made new shapes: children, boys and girls who glowed with force, whose faces were filled with wisdom and knowledge. They-uh-huh! — they had no navels.

Eviane watched as the Raven swept the magical children into his claws and swooped up, up until the entire globe of the earth was a hazy white arc beneath her, and her heart was in her throat. Then the Great Bird swooped down, and left pairs of children around the rim of the Arctic Circle. She saw them swiftly gather together the tribes of the People, and teach them to make fire with the fire drill, to skin and tan, to build houses of wood and stone and ice. The old ways. Sedna showed in double exposure: her hair was coming clean. Her head lifted, she sighed, she waved a languid stub-fingered hand that streamed flocks of seals…

Gone.

Eviane blinked her eyes, rousing slowly from the spell. The pictures were gone, and Martin the Arctic Fox was speaking again.

“The Great Raven made the new men to teach the old knowledge to our people, to give us back the spirit world we had lost. He dispersed us around the great circle of ice. I came here, to this land you call Alaska. My son is called Ahk-lut, and together we were powerful guardians of the Old Ways. For half a century we used the power to help my people. Then Sedna became sick again, and Ahk-lut formed other plans, other ideas.

“Through dreams, through chanting, he reached our children, the children of the children of the Raven. Gathering them from tribes scattered around the ice, around the world, he formed the Cabal. The Cabal seduced more than half of our children. They kept their secrets from their parents, and together they worked their magic.”

An ocean of mist boiled away, and when it cleared Eviane was in a sweat lodge much like Martin’s qasgiq, but larger, darker. Eight young men formed a circle around a smoky fire. They were naked but for leather pouches slung on thongs around their necks. Their skins were burnt dark red by the heat. Perspiration drooled down their faces and slicked their bodies.

An alien, evil sound coursed through the air, one she finally recognized as a chorus of low mutterings, malignant human voices joined in dark harmony.