Under the Ice

Fate was with him as the ivory spear point firmly embedded itself in the pack ice. With his heart beating madly away in his chest, Ootah exhaled a long sigh of relief. Only then did he identify the black force that had almost sent him plunging to his watery grave, and was most likely keeping the seals away as well. There was no doubt in his mind that Tornarsuk, the great devil who travels on the wind, had paid him a visit. Ever thankful that he had survived this confrontation, Ootah once again raised his voice in prayer. Yet this time his petitions were directed solely toward the spirits of his deceased ancestors, who had intervened on his behalf in this most eternal of earthly struggles.

With the life-force flowing full in his veins, Ootah scanned the Arctic heavens, his prayers of thanks barely audible in the still-gusting wind. A sun that had not set for over six moon cycles now lay low in the gray sky, its light muted and diffused. All too soon it would be dropping beneath the horizon altogether, as the winter arrived in a shroud of perpetual darkness.

The new season signaled a time of change. The cold would intensify, and as the ice pack further solidified, new hunting grounds would form in the waters to the north. Hopefully they would be more prolific than the ones he presently stalked. Otherwise, he would have no choice but to return his family to the white man’s city from which they had originally ventured nine months ago.

Merely considering such an alternative sickened Ootah. His brief time spent in the white man’s world was far from pleasant. It all began a year ago, when the scarlet-coated policeman arrived from the south and ordered Ootah to convey his family to the city of Arctic Bay on Baffin Island’s northern tip. He did so without question and was somewhat shocked when the Canadian officials there informed him that his son would be taken from them and forced to attend a state-run school. He reluctantly complied with the law, and took up residence in the settlement to be as near to the boy as possible.

For the first few months the time passed quickly.

The house that was provided for them was filled with many amazing devices, and Ootah and his wife Akatingwah found themselves with a whole new world to learn of and marvel at. Yet the surrounding land was almost barren of game, and Ootah was forced to take government handouts in order for his family to survive.

They were not the only Inuit to be called to the city, and Ootah watched how the white man’s culture changed his brothers. Also driven to accepting government welfare, they seemed to readily abandon their ancestral ways to become as much like the whites as possible. Dressed in bluejeans and sweatshirts, the Inuit gave up their dog teams for snowmobiles and pickup trucks. Canned food replaced fresh, red meat, and the men learned to ease their anxieties by consuming vast amounts of alcohol.

Ootah had fallen into this dangerous trap himself, and was well on his way to completely losing his identity when the hand of fate intervened to save him.

It had all come to pass nine months ago, when he received word that his mother was on her death bed.

Borrowing a neighbor’s snowmobile, he dressed himself in a nylon ski outfit, that he had purchased on credit from the Hudson’s Bay Company, and took off across the frozen Admiralty Inlet for the Brodeur Peninsula, where his father had set up his spring camp.

As it turned out, he arrived just in time to view his mother breathe her last breath. Though she had been unconscious throughout most of her brief illness, she awoke from her coma just as Ootah came storming through the door of their ramshackle snow cabin. He would take to his own grave the moment when her pained glance locked onto his face and figure. For instead of acknowledging his presence, she greeted him with the cool indifference of a complete stranger.

Ootah couldn’t help but be puzzled. Had her illness distorted her mind so that she couldn’t even recognize her only son, or had she indeed not recognized him because of his alien garb? He would never learn the answer to this question, for less than five minutes later she left this earth for all time, to join her ancestors.

Ootah’s father had been perched in the cabin’s shadows, and as his mate of fifty years passed into the land beyond, he vented his sorrow with a gut-wrenching wail. In all his life, Ootah had never seen Nakusiak lose control like this. Yet his cries of grief were short-lived; all too soon he regained his composure and somberly initiated the burial procedures.

Hardly a word was spoken between them as they wrapped the still-warm corpse in a shroud of sealskin.