The Chukchi Bible Read Free Page B

tried to calm herself: there was too little snow to worry about an avalanche, and a good deal of time yet before the first polar bears began to appear.
    Then Tintin heard a soft moan. She snapped to attention.
    Goigoi lay between two upended blocks of ice, seemingly fenced in. His face and body were covered in dense fur, his clothes were in tatters. He was barely recognizable.
    A man who has turned into a tery’ky cannot take his own life. The ancient legend tells us that tery’ky’s fate is to die at human hands.
    â€œGoigoi!” Tintin cried out. “I knew you’d come back to me, I knew you were alive!”

    Tintin found a cave to hide her husband, bidding him never to show himself around the village. She visited him in secret, bringing food.
    Goigoi could not bear to stay long within the cave. The stone walls pressed in on him and thoughts of the future drove him to seek freedom, his eyes searched for the beloved outlines of the surrounding mountains.
    At night, Goigoi would crawl out of the cave. From a hilltop he could sometimes make out the dancing lights from the fires lit at the entrances to the yarangas. And one evening he could bear it no longer; forgetting caution, he crept down the hill and to the edge of his own yaranga, its silhouette dark in the approaching night.
    Sensing his presence, the dogs erupted in hysterical howling. Mlemekym ran out of his yaranga, spear in hand.
    He saw someone running away, disappearing in the gloom. Perhaps they’d only imagined it, he and the dogs? But perhaps it really was a tery’ky, the changeling remains of the unfortunate Goigoi.
    Keu came up to Mlemekym.
    â€œI felt very uneasy. I thought I saw someone running off over the hills.”
    â€œNeither our father,” Mlemekym said, “nor any of our living ancestors ever claimed to have seen a tery’ky themselves. They only told stories about it. Can it be that it is our destiny to actually see one?”
    â€œAnd to kill him,” Keu said.
    â€œBut what if it’s Goigoi?”
    â€œGoigoi is no more . . . There is only a tery’ky now.”
    â€œSo what do we do?”
    â€œWe’ll ask the gods.”
    But the tery’ky Goigoi came to them of his own will. Close to dawn he
began to make his way down the hill, slowly descending toward the yarangas. Mlemekym tried to peer into the changeling’s face, but the low rising sun blinded him, while the tery’ky’s long shadow preceded what once had been Goigoi.
    Mlemekym returned to the yaranga and took up his bow and arrows. A similarly armed Keu emerged from his own yaranga.
    Slowly the brothers walked toward one another.
    Close enough to hear each other’s labored breathing, Mlemekym thought he heard something like words.
    It was Goigoi, now within shouting distance of his brothers, who walked forward to meet him with bows at the ready. He cried out to them to kill him quickly, not to make him suffer.
    â€œIt sounds like he’s talking,” Mlemekym exclaimed.
    â€œTery’ky don’t have the power of speech,” Keu answered him firmly.
    It was then that they all heard Tintin’s cry. Hair streaming, she raced past the brothers. Like the shadow of a windblown cloud she raced past the brothers, crying:
    â€œDon’t kill him! He is your brother! Don’t kill him!”
    Goigoi grabbed Tintin, tears in his eyes. For the last time he saw her, for the last time he looked on the world and the clouds, felt the cold wind; for the last time he saw his brothers, now taking aim at him.
    With a final effort, Goigoi shouldered Tintin aside and stepped toward his brothers. And in the very same moment he felt two arrows bite into his chest with a dull thud. There was no pain, just an astonishingly bright, clear light – and he floated on it, to the receding shouts of those around him.
    Tintin rushed toward him, but the snowflakes had already stopped melting on his open