Free The Chukchi Bible by Yuri Rytkheu

human speech. They seemed to be calling or hailing someone, but their language was incomprehensible, utterly unlike that of any of the Chukchi’s neighboring tribes.
    Mekym was one of the last to leave Uelen. The men had grabbed their weapons as they left, their spears, their bows and quivers full of arrows. Some even managed to carry off their battle shields and walrus-hide armor.
Kalyanto, the young shaman, also seemed frightened and spoke in a quiet voice.
    From the top of Great Crag, the villagers watched the strange-looking humans scatter from the enormous black monsters like maggots from a cured chunk of walrus meat. Neither their looks nor their clothing brought to mind anything seen or heard of before. They had faces like animals, covered in bristles up to the eyes, and their speech too was more akin to wolfish growling, walrus snorting, or the cawing of crows. They spoke to one another so loudly that their voices muffled the sound of the incoming tide.
    â€œWe’ve never had anything like that in Uelen before,” Kalyanto said thoughtfully.
    â€œAnd what if they’ve come to live here forever?” asked Unu.
    â€œIf they don’t scram,” said Mekym, “we’ll have to kill them.”
    Kalyanto was uncertain. “But are they even mortal?”
    â€œWe’ll soon find out,” Mekym said with an air of mystery.
    The men of Uelen stayed atop Great Crag and kept watch over the abandoned settlement.
    As darkness fell, the strangers lit a chain of bonfires. In the flickering light, they dashed between yarangas, grabbing things, carrying them back to shore.
    And yet the night passed in relative calm, if you didn’t count the newcomers’ snoring – which was so loud and ringing that it caused Uelen’s anxious dogs to erupt in choruses of barks and howls.
    When dawn came, the newcomers followed the footsteps of those who had run to the opposite side of the lagoon. The watchers up on the Crag had already warned their tribesmen, and the men of Uelen met the foreigners as an armed column.
    Now Mekym could study the uninvited guests more closely. They really
did have a remarkable amount of facial hair, but it was the skylike blue color of their deep-set eyes that astonished. Dressed in ragged clothes, the foreigners were clearly trying to indicate their friendly intentions with gestures, proffering their wide and calloused empty hands to show that they did not bear weapons. Smiles glinted through their dense facial vegetation.
    A tall man with a leather thong that ran across his forehead and into his thick hair, threw something forward, as though spilling forth a handful of multihued droplets. The droplets were left to lie in the yellowed grass, and not a single one of Uelen’s warriors bent down for a closer look.
    The man with the leather thong ran his palms, wide as the shoulder blades of a whale, across his entire body.
    â€œHe wants to show he is peaceful,” Mekym realized. Lowering his spear, bow, and arrows onto the ground, he took a step toward the stranger.
    The other gave a wide grin, making a joyful noise, also stepped forward toward Mekym and then clasped him with a pair of strong arms. Mekym’s heart stilled in fright, his breath stuck in his throat.
    But the stranger quickly let him go, accompanying his movement with ringing laughter. The other strangers followed his example.
    â€œDrop your weapons!” Mekym told his tribesmen. “We’ll answer peace with peace.”
    Not without a certain trepidation, Mekym picked up a few of the multihued droplets and laid them out in his palm. They shimmered with rainbow colors, but felt cold, as though made from some kind of special, unmelting ice. Seeing this, the stranger with the leather thong extracted another handful from within the folds of his clothing and gingerly poured it into Mekym’s open palm. The he knocked his own chest and said:
    â€œSemyon!”

    He poked his finger in