An hour later the lamps blazed in Kadlu’s house; snow-water was heating;
the pots were beginning to simmer, and the snow was dripping from the
roof, as Amoraq made ready a meal for all the village, and the boy-baby
in the hood chewed at a strip of rich nutty blubber, and the hunters
slowly and methodically filled themselves to the very brim with
seal-meat. Kotuko and the girl told their tale. The two dogs sat between
them, and whenever their names came in, they cocked an ear apiece and
looked most thoroughly ashamed of themselves. A dog who has once gone
mad and recovered, the Inuit say, is safe against all further attacks.
“So the tornaq did not forget us,” said Kotuko. “The storm blew, the ice
broke, and the seal swam in behind the fish that were frightened by the
storm. Now the new seal-holes are not two days distant. Let the good
hunters go to-morrow and bring back the seal I have speared--twenty-five
seal buried in the ice. When we have eaten those we will all follow the
seal on the floe.”
“What do YOU do?” said the sorcerer in the same sort of voice as he used
to Kadlu, richest of the Tununirmiut.
Kadlu looked at the girl from the North, and said quietly, “WE build a
house.” He pointed to the north-west side of Kadlu’s house, for that is
the side on which the married son or daughter always lives.
The girl turned her hands palm upward, with a little despairing shake
of her head. She was a foreigner, picked up starving, and could bring
nothing to the housekeeping.
Amoraq jumped from the bench where she sat, and began to sweep things
into the girl’s lap--stone lamps, iron skin-scrapers, tin kettles,
deer-skins embroidered with musk-ox teeth, and real canvas-needles such
as sailors use--the finest dowry that has ever been given on the far
edge of the Arctic Circle, and the girl from the North bowed her head
down to the very floor.
“Also these!” said Kotuko, laughing and signing to the dogs, who thrust
their cold muzzles into the girl’s face.
“Ah,” said the angekok, with an important cough, as though he had been
thinking it all over. “As soon as Kotuko left the village I went to the
Singing-House and sang magic. I sang all the long nights, and called
upon the Spirit of the Reindeer. MY singing made the gale blow that
broke the ice and drew the two dogs toward Kotuko when the ice would
have crushed his bones. MY song drew the seal in behind the broken ice.
My body lay still in the quaggi, but my spirit ran about on the ice, and
guided Kotuko and the dogs in all the things they did. I did it.”
Everybody was full and sleepy, so no one contradicted; and the angekok,
by virtue of his office, helped himself to yet another lump of boiled
meat, and lay down to sleep with the others in the warm, well-lighted,
oil-smelling home.
*****
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account