Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 47 - Is There Anybody Out There?

He hurried her along, afraid that someone might see them. They had taken a cattle track that she was familiar with – it led up to the heights.

Every now and then he would nudge at her to indicate what direction she was to go in or to get her to move faster, but Tiili couldn’t stand him touching her. She would give a great start and try to shout for help again but to no avail. Tan-ghil got angry because she was so reluctant and sputtered long tirades of words she didn’t comprehend. But at one point she thought she heard him say, “I have planted ... now I’m going to reap ...”

It sounded unpleasant, she thought, even though the words didn’t really mean anything to her.

The tears streamed down her face. She was as frightened as anyone could be, and they were moving further and further away from any other people. If only they could meet someone here on the path! A hunter or someone herding their cattle.

But no, no one came.

Tiili grew tired because he was pushing her hard, but he didn’t seem to be getting tired at all. She stumbled along the steep path. My lovely tunic, she thought in despair. Mother sewed it from small pieces of leather; it took her a long time.

Her long, wide trousers, tight around the ankles, were badly torn by the juniper bushes.

What will Mother say? she thought, desperately holding back her tears.

Every time Tiili fell, Tan-ghil would grow impatient and hiss malicious words at her. She would quickly get back on her feet for she didn’t want that abominable creature close to her again.

Tiili didn’t consider the fact that he wasn’t carrying his jar with him, for she knew very little about that. Tan-ghil had already visited its future hiding place and explored the area. All that was left now were the last thirty days of the ritual.

He looked at his captive and smiled with great anticipation. Tiili noticed that smile.

“Mother! Targenor! Help me!”

In the twilight her evil captor came to a halt. By now she was so out of breath after the hard walk up there, and her throat was so sore from all the sobbing she had done, that she was wheezing.

Tiili lifted her tear-filled gaze and saw two almost identical mountaintops above her. They looked threatening, she thought, but it was no wonder in that particularly terrible situation. With darkness falling, the horrible creature behind her, the uncertainty, the fear ...

Targenor had always been there to protect her. But he knew nothing about this. Neither did her mother.

Her friends, the stars, lit up the sky. But on that evening they seemed dead and inaccessible, as though they had retreated in disgust and horror at her escort.

Tiili felt hopelessly alone and unprotected.

And frightened beyond all reason.

Tan-ghil gave a hoarse bird-like shriek directed at the ground before them. The mountain echoed back the scream.

Tiili shuddered and sobbed in the stillness that followed.

Then ...

Could she believe her eyes ...?

Out of the sloping ground emerged tall, dark men wearing monks’ habits. Beautiful creatures with furtive eyes. She almost lost consciousness from sheer shock. Only hazily did she register that Tan-ghil spoke to them in a guttural foreign language and that they gave him smirking smiles in response.

Then they began to approach her ...

The unfeigned desire in their eyes ... the jagged teeth that became visible as their smiles grew wider ...

She let out a trembling gasp. Was scared out of her wits.

But Tan-ghil stopped them. He held his hand up towards them, shouting in a shrill voice long, menacing diatribes of which she didn’t understand a word. But the message was clear. She was his sacrificial lamb, so hands off!

Tiili found both alternatives equally horrific.

What did he want with her? She couldn’t understand it. What had she ever done to him?

Mother! Targenor! Help me out of this! I’m begging you! Help me!

Tan-ghil had put the men in their place. They stood motionless as though he had tied them up with invisible chains.

Then he started chanting.

He was actually conjuring up something, but Tiili couldn’t tell the difference.

Out of nowhere new figures emerged. On a small prominence just below the two sheer mountain peaks sat three unpleasant-looking men with big, flat drums on their crossed legs.

How horrible they looked! They resembled caricatures of the oldest inhabitants of the Valley of the Ice People, the ones who had come with Tiili’s relatives from the country in the east, from Taran-gai. She knew that there had been shamans there, but that they were so awful to look at she would never have guessed.

Tiili was looking at Winter Sorrow, Kat and Kat-ghil. Tan-ghil’s own descendants. So it wasn’t so strange that they looked frightening.

The horrible little creature gave them a signal. Then he turned to Tiili with a satisfied and expectant look in his eyes.

Never had she seen anything as atrocious as that smile!

It became too much for her.

She let out a pitiful whimper, then spun around and tried to run away.

But Tan-ghil’s controlling magical powers were too strong. He stopped her with a movement of his hand, and then all she could see were his horrible eyes. She felt a great dizziness come over her as everything started to spin round and round and the only things she could see that weren’t moving at all were his yellow eyes.

When he saw that he had her in his power he turned back to the three shamans. At a given signal they started pounding on their drums, rhythmically and very heavily at first. So that the roaring sounds echoed against the mountain walls.

The group of men in monks’ habits stood quietly waiting.

Tan-ghil turned to Tiili again.

“Dance,” he said with his snake-like, slippery voice, hissing and drawling. “I know that woman has taught you the ancient dances of the tribe. So get started! Dance!”

“That woman?” He was referring to her beloved mother, Dida. She had wanted to preserve the old culture from the east, and since Tiili was so graceful and loved to dance, the lessons had just been for fun.

And Tan-ghil the Evil had been secretly observing them!

It hurt to think of it.

Tiili had no wish to obey that creep. But she no longer had a will of her own. Furthermore, the sounds of the drum were so magnetic that she couldn’t have resisted them even if she had wanted to. The rhythm had become more powerful and rapid and the shamans had also begun to sing. If you could call their monotonous, fluctuating chanting singing, that is.

“Dance!” Tan-ghil hissed.

Her feet moved of their own accord. As she fell into the rhythm of the music with the short, stomping steps she had learned she saw something else from the corner of her eye: all around the shamans, strange transparent creatures began to twist and slither in the air, creeping closer and closer to her only to draw back again.

Tiili knew nothing about Kat’s and Kat-ghil’s own spirits, which constantly followed them. She just grew scared but couldn’t do anything about it. She was caught in a hypnotic rhythm, moving in a trance with frightened eyes and tears streaming down her cheeks.

The drumming grew faster and faster. She heard excited moans from the beautiful, black-clad men; they could barely stand still. Had Tan-ghil’s willpower not held them back they would have hurled themselves upon her at that very moment, Tiili could sense that now. There was a horrible stench in that little glade, like the strong, oppressive stench of goats on heat, and from the look in Tan-ghil’s eyes it was clear that he too was affected by her. He was also breathing more heavily, she sensed.

She understood that it was the shamans’ song that was influencing everything that happened. Exactly what it contained she didn’t want to know but she sensed that it was what she had heard about as a child. About rituals from the old country in the east, about virgins sacrificed in the presence of the oldest members of the tribe – how their juices were rekindled at the sight of the virgin dancing the dance of death. And she cried from despair. But there was nothing she could do.