I soared up to where a dragon's spine like a dark corpus callosum cleaves a whispy ceiling of white clouds. Hell's roof is heaven's floor, as death initiates tent rings, meat caches, kayak stand, graves and semi-subterranean winter houses. From time to time we are joined by a friendly sik-sik and birds, who watch our progress as we walk through the site. I am aware, as they may be, that their ancestors probably watched mine in the same manner and in this same place hundreds of years ago. Here, at this site, nothing has changed through time. I—Illuitok—and the land and the animals are all still here. This is my past, and this has become a special place. Even though I am young, I too am the soul's double flight. Thus, "she placed the beak of a falcon on her deceased husband's mouth, to give his soul the bird’s power to fly at will to the hills and to the lowlands."   The environment of the Nenets of northern Russia is permeated by a hierarchy of spirits, the paramount among them Num, a celestial deity. The mediator between the ordinary world and the upper– and underworlds of the spirits is the tádyebya, a Nenets shaman. Tádyebyas are ranked according to spiritual attainment, function in society, and practical experience. Songs basically fall into two categories: Magic songs, accompanied by a witch drum, and narrative songs. Like the Nenets, Inuit shamans sing of journeys they've made to where the helping spirits reside, or to the Land of the Dead; while narratives carry myths and folktales into quamat, igluit, and qaggiit, now timbered homes in towns.