The story she told

Beginnings

 “Welcome to the darkness”, Qila says to Nivi and the little girl opens her eyes wide and earnest in response; although she’s a bit scared too.  Her grandmother has brought them both close to the stove in her small, cluttered room.  The stove’s metal is creaking in the heat and in its window, she can see flames cavorting like little, red demons.

Nivi snuggles in to Qila and pulls the blanket higher up their laps. Winter has wrapped round the Greenlandic house, bringing its long nights and deep snow.  Summer seems such a long way away that it’s hard to believe it will ever come back.

“Tell me again about your sisters and brother. Tell me all there is to know”, says Nivi and Qila clears her throat.  Nivi has heard all she’s about to tell her before, but she’s seemingly never tired of the stories.

“Well, there’s Minik.  You met her when she visited, but you might not remember as you were a very little girl then.  She’s a year older than me and she’s the kindest person you’re ever likely to meet - ”

“ - Was she very fat?” interrupts Nivi and Qila admonishes her.  “Not as a child, although her name means blubber.  She’s just got big bones, like a whale’s – and besides, don’t be rude.”

Nivi frowns.  “Who next, who next?”

“My sister, Ugalick, six years older than me.  Shrewd and quick as an artic hare.  You’ve never met her as she lives on the other side of the world, but I hope one day you will.”

“And your brother?  Tell me about him.”

“You know this already, Nivi, but my brother was Saamik.  He was ten years older than me and he could do magic.  He was a shaman, my brother Saamik.”

Nivi scratches her nose, sneezes and grins all at the same time.  At this moment, her sister, Iseq, walks through the room, but she ignores Nivi and her grandmother in preference for the phone she’s carrying with its pounding music and horror film screams drowning out the stove’s spit and splutter.

Once Iseq’s left, Qila continues.  “When we were children, it always seemed to be summer, although I realise that can’t have been true.  The valleys round our hut were green and the waters were ice fresh with melt-water.  In Greenland, even in midsummer, huge lumps of ice spread through the sea’s silver. We had nothing on our minds – none of us children - but play, mischief and the fish we would eat in the evening for tea.

Occasionally, people would leave the area and sometimes new people would arrive.  The waters would bring something to the shore or take something precious away with them.  But this was flotsam and jetsam that we accepted was simply the way of life, and we were happy.”

Next to her grandmother, Nivi yawns and the winter wind’s cadence sounds like it’s joining in with Qila’s story.

*

The story she told

Saamik’s magic helped everyone.  He used it with caution, for the benefit of those that needed it. He was kind and wise, and even though he was a grown man all the time I can recall him, he had the beauty of a young boy.  He could hunt and fish and he made the cold and darkness seem trivial to the rest of us.

When Saamik was with you, there was life in the very air.  He brought summer.  Cotton grass and arctic poppies.  Crowberries, black lichen.  The wolf and the reindeer would appear through the birch trees and grey leaved willow.  In the dreamy blue of the sky, kittiwakes, puffins and eiders flew above his head.

*

Underneath the ice

What Qila did not tell Nivi was about the siku - the ice - that ran through Saamik.   Underneath the moulded rock, the perfection of his exterior, was a glacier.

He carried the burden of melancholy and relished the short days of winter.  When the mood took him, everything he touched rotted and perished.  He was haunted by the ajumaq, with its three fingers on each hand and its three toes on each foot.  Rarely leaving Saamik’s side, not walking but gliding.

*

The story she told

Saamik was a skilled hunter.  Both through the long days when the sky was endless and through the short days when the sun shone brief and jewel-like.  He loved the chase and the glory of catching the prey.

But what Saamik loved more was the seals sitting on the edge of the water, sad-eyed and trusting.  Waiting for him.  Accepting of their death.

He respected what he killed, as was the custom of his ancestors.  With the other hunters, he ate a part of each animal.  And with sorrow and honour, he consumed its soul.

*

Underneath the ice

What Qila did not tell Nivi was about the peevish argument with another hunter – with Aput, whose name means snow.

Aput saw Saamik eating the meat of a seal he had just killed and then he saw him wrinkle his nose and spit the meat on to the ground. He shamed the animal. Its body, its soul.

The snow in Aput recognised the ice in Saamik, and Saamik saw that he had noticed it.  The two men locked eyes in the blue white glare.  In the sheer black of the ice.

*

The story she told

Saamik was not afraid of anything.  His magic was protection against the small death of illness and against the largesse of death.  His magic was one of influence and amulets.  Of bone and teeth.  Of carved wooden figures, stones and bird wings.

Saamik saw the soul in everything and death was transformation only.

*

Underneath the ice

What Qila did not tell Nivi was about the secret night when she caught Saamik making a tupilak, a puppet of revenge.  A thing made of animal bone, skin, hair and sinew.  He added too the small bones of his niece, his sister Ugalick’s child.  Left in a beaded box in their family’s house for remembrance and taken by him to make his tupilak to use against the hunter, Aput.

Qila and her sister Minik peering into Saamik’s room and seeing him with his hood over his face, singing and chanting, crafting the tupilak. They moved away when they saw the lewdness of his movement as he thrust his groin into the bones. Sex magic. The magic of concealment.

*

The story she told

When Saamik disappeared, it was assumed he had fallen in the water, or into a hole in the ice.  It wasn’t uncommon.  It was simply one of those things that happened, like the ebb and flow of the waters.

The transformation of death was on him, but Qila knew that this transformation was not instant.  It would take more than a year for his soul to crawl to a new world, under the huge skin carpet that weighed him down and pressed out the juices of his body.  But finally, Saamik would reach the new world under the water and earth, a world rich with seal meat and sweet berries.

*

Underneath the ice

What Qila did not tell Nivi was about the danger of making a tupilak, particularly in an ice world, where reflections were plentiful.  Where the magic of revenge could be directed back on the revenger in the honest clarity of a sheet of ice, bright in the sun.

Saamik knew instantly what had happened.  He felt the tupilak’s magic, burning cold in the secrecy of his chest.  He knew too that the only way to combat it was public confession of what he had done.

But people do not always want honesty and after his confession, they sent him away.  Far from anyone else, into the wild white of un-trodden snow.

Over time, Saamik transformed.  In his shame and desperation, he became a Qivitoq, a shape shifter.  He moved through the shape of an artic hare and was a stampeding reindeer for a while.  But then the rage and cold inside him gave him a form he understood.  Drinking from a pool of melt-water one summer morning, he caught sight of his reflection and saw he had become a wolf.

*

Endings

Nivi yawns again and Qila sees it’s far past her bedtime.

“So in the end, Saamik is happy?” asks Nivi, and Qila nods in reply.  She’s not sure this is the truth of the matter, but what else can she say?

She wishes she could have forgiven Samick as Minick had, or had not known what he’d really done, like Ugalick; but neither of these things is true.

What Qila is left with is protection of his memory - and stories.  Ice has its own music, its beautiful resonance.  Its cut and its crack.  But unlike ice, stories don’t sheer.  Stories stay solid.

In the distance, a wolf is howling.

*