The Eternal Maiden Part 14

Ootah saw Koolotah turn and look inquiringly upward. The next moment, driven downward by the wind, a ma.s.s of clouds, glittering with bleached moonfire, rolled over the slopes and hid Koolotah. Ootah only heard his voice.

Then the glacial mountainside to which he clung trembled. A terrific crash, like that of cannon, followed. The very mountain seemed to shake. For a brief awful spell everything was still--then, with an appalling thunder, the ice split and began to move. The moon reappeared and Ootah--in a tense moment--saw chasms widening about him on the glistening slope. He heard the deafening echoing explosions of splitting ice in the distance . . . With fierce ferocity he instinctively fastened one bleeding hand to an icy projection above him, with the other he held with grimly desperate determination to the sled . . . In the next dizzy instant he felt the icy floor beneath him lurch itself forward and downward . . . before his very eyes he saw Koolotah and his team--not twenty feet below--wiped from existence by the descending glacier to which he clung and in the hollow crevice of which he found security . . . In a second's s.p.a.ce he caught a clear vision of tremendous ma.s.ses of green and purple glaciers being ground to fine powder in their swift descent on all sides of him, . . . he saw the feathery ice fragments catch fire in the moonlight, . . . he heard the elemental roar and grinding crash of ice mountains sundering in a t.i.tanic convulsion . . . then he lost hearing . . . In that same sick bewildering moment of preternatural consciousness he thought wildly of Annadoah . . . he saw her appealing wan face amid the blur of white moonlight . . . he knew she needed food . . . and he felt an ache at his heart . . . he called upon the spirits of his ancestors. Then the silvery swimming world of white dust-driven fire became suddenly black--and the earth seemed removed from under him.

In the village the natives were awakened from their lethargic sleep by the far-away crash of the avalanche. Their faces blanched as they thought of the hunters. "The hill spirits have smitten! _Ioh_!

_Ioh_!" they moaned. In her igloo Annadoah, who had waited with sleepless anxiety, wept alone. Of all in the village only the heart of one, Maisanguaq, was glad.

VII

"_The utter tragedy of her devotion to the man who had deserted her, and the utter hopelessness of his own deep pa.s.sion, blightingly, horribly forced itself upon him . . . Ootah asked himself all the questions men ask in such a crisis . . . and he demanded with wild weeping their answer from the dead rejoicing in the auroral Valhalla.

But there was no answer--as perhaps there may be no answer; or, if there is, that G.o.d fearing lest, in attaining the Great Desire, men should cease to endeavor; to serve and to labor has kept it locked where He and the dead live beyond the skies._"

The moon dipped behind the horizon. For five sleeps naught had been heard from Ootah and his companion. Inetlia, the sister of Koolotah, followed in turn by some of the other women, visited the igloo of Annadoah. Upon her couch of moss Annadoah lay, and over her a cover given by Ootah and lined with the feathers of birds.

"'Twas thou who sent Ootah to the mountains," one complained. "May the ravens peck thine eyes!" cried another. Annadoah shook her head sadly and wept.

"'Twas thou who chose Olafaksoah, the robber from the south, that thou mightest be his wife; and 'twas thou, his wife, who beguiled the men and robbed thy tribe. Did we not give away our skins, and didst thou not make garments for Olafaksoah? And do we not now shudder from the cold? 'Twas thou who put the madness into the head of Ootah, the strongest of the tribe. Many are the maidens who are husbandless and yet Ootah pined for thee. Why didst thou not choose Ootah? Then he would have remained and prevented the thievery of the strangers, we should not have been robbed, and he would not have had to go far unto the mountains, where the spirits have struck him in their wrath? Nay, nay, thou didst make the men of our tribe sick with thoughts of thee.

They have quarrelled among themselves. And before the white men came, did they not reproach us, their wives and their betrothed, with thy name and the vaunted skill of thee? Thou art as the woman with an iron tail, she who killed men when they came to her, their skins flushed with love. Thou destroyest men! Thou didst send Ootah and Koolotah to the mountains! And they have perished! _Ioh-h_! _Ioh-h_!"

Entering her igloo two or three at a time they reproachfully recited in chiding chants to Annadoah the story of her life; how her worthy mother and august grand-parents had died, hoping she would choose a husband from the hunters, and how she had refused all who sought her; they told, with reiterant detail, how she had caused quarrels among the men, and sent many of the warriors in their compet.i.tive hunts to death; and how, finally, when Ootah, the bravest of the hunters, wanted to wed her, she had chosen a foreign man, who deserted her and left her a burden on the tribe. Sometimes they shook her roughly.

To the native women the brutality and virility of the men from the south exert a potent appeal; and the fact that Olafaksoah had chosen Annadoah many moons since still made their mouth taste bitter. This jealousy rankling within them, they now with angry exultation took occasion to mock and abuse her. The girl lay still and did not reply.

Her heart indeed seemed like a bird lying dead in wintertime.

Then one of three women who stood by Annadoah's couch leaned forward and whispered a terrible thing. The others looked at the girl and fear, mingled with hatred, shone in their eyes.

"Thou sayest this thing," said one, "how dost thou know?"

And the other, pointing accusingly to the girl who lay before them, her face hidden in her arms, replied:

"The night my baby died . . . I heard her voice."

They stood in silence, rigid, implacable, bitter.

During the latter dark days a terrible calamity had made itself felt among the tribe. This was the death of many of the newly born.

Outside the igloos during the past months, as the babies had come, the number of tiny mounds had increased, and when the aurora flooded the skies heart-broken mothers could be seen weeping over these graves of snow. It is not uncommon in this land for babies to die at birth or come prematurely; but the number of recent deaths and tragic accidents to expectant mothers was unprecedented. This was undoubtedly due to the depleted vitality of the starving mothers--but to the natives there was some other, some unaccountable, some sinister, cause. In their hearts they experienced, each time a new mound rose white in the moonlight, that tremulous terror of a people who instinctively fear extinction. The grief of a mother was for a personal loss; to the tribe each death meant an even greater, more significant loss, a thing of more than personal consequence.

And when, out of the dim regions of her brain, one of the women now conjured the terrible thing which she whispered concerning Annadoah, it was little wonder the other two regarded the girl as a thing hateful and accursed.

"_She stealeth souls!_"

Nothing more frightful could have been said.

"Yea, the night my baby died I heard her voice," repeated Inetlia angrily.

And the other, among the superst.i.tious voices in her memory, found it not difficult to recall a similar thing:

"Methinks I heard her sing the night my own little one came--too soon."

And the third whispered:

"She is as the hungry hill spirit who feasts upon the entrails of the dead. Yea, she carrieth off the souls of the children. _Ioh_!

_Iooh_!"

Their voices rose in a maniacal cry of terror and denunciation.

Annadoah rose. Clasping her hands, she demanded piteously:

"Why . . . sayest ye this of me?"

And they shrieked:

"Thou stealest souls! By the _angakoq_ shalt thou be accursed!"

"No, no! No, no!" the girl pleaded, falling on her knees and weeping.

Although they suddenly ceased their reviling, hearing outside the barking of dogs, the women thereafter in secret often a.s.sembled together; there were ominous whisperings; and each time a child died visits were paid to the _angakoq_, and the unseen powers were invoked to bring misfortune to Annadoah.

Outside the silenced women detected the barking of dogs approaching the village from the distance. They heard the excited calls of tribesmen and the chatter of other women. One by one they crept from the igloo.

A strange light in her eyes, Annadoah followed.

Over the mountains to the north a soft and wondrous light began to palpitate tremulously . . . While the men of the tribe rushed to meet the oncoming team of dogs in the distance, the women stood and gazed with awe upon the increasing wonder in the skies . . . The northern lights, seen nowhere else so splendidly in all the world, had begun the weaving of their glorious and eerie imagery. A nebulous film of silvery light wavered with incredible swiftness over the heavens . . .

The snow-blanketed land took instantaneous fire in the sudden flares . . . In the torridly tropic heaven of the virtuous dead an Unknown G.o.d, so the tribes believe, makes fire--just as in the nether regions beneath the earth the Great Evil, who has revealed himself with a more terrible reality than the Great Benign, creates cold and forges ice. In that land of the happy dead, disclosed in the aurora, there is never any night, nor is it ever cold. So the souls there are always happy. Sometimes in their revels they troop earthward to cheer the mortals who suffer from _Perdlugssuaq's_ frigid breath as it comes during winter from h.e.l.l . . . The women looked at one another. The augury was good.

"The spirits of the dead," one whispered, "are happy . . . They are playing ball."

Into their midst, surrounded by the glad cheering men of the tribe, Ootah staggered. His face was cut and covered with black clotted blood. His legs dragged with utter exhaustion. His features were gaunt and marked by lines of frightful suffering. His eyes were bright with the light of fever. When he saw Annadoah a faint but very glad smile pa.s.sed over his countenance; he made an effort to forget the anguished throes of pain in his limbs and the intermittent shudderings of cold and flushes of intense fever. He tried to speak, but then shook his head sadly. Instead, he pointed to the dilapidated sledge.

Three of his dogs had perished--five had been saved. The sled had been battered, but was lashed together. Upon it, however, the precious load of meat was intact. The subtle aroma of it sent a wave of gladness through the crowd. They danced about Ootah, asking questions. Ootah staggered backward and sank helpless against the sledge. After a while he found voice.

"I am very weak," he managed to say.

Several of the women disappeared and soon returned with a bit of walrus blubber. This, having undergone a process of fermentation in the earth, possessed the intoxicating qualities of alcohol. It is used by the natives for purposes of stimulation in such cases and in their celebrations. Ootah with difficulty ate this.

He felt stronger, and rose.

"Thou art ill," said Annadoah, approaching him, and gently touching his wounded face. "Enter, Annadoah will care for thee."

Her face was perilously near him; it was very wan and beautiful in the auroral light--Ootah felt his heart beat wildly. But it was pity, not love, that shone softly from Annadoah's eyes.

"Thy igloo is cold, thy lamp unlighted," Annadoah insisted. "Come!

The others will prepare thy couch and light thy lamps. Until then my bed is thine. It is warm within."

With difficulty Ootah bent low and followed Annadoah through the underground entrance of her igloo. His dogs, which the men had unhitched, and as many as could enter the small enclosure, followed.

The stench of the oil lamp at first almost suffocated him. He sank to Annadoah's couch from sheer weakness, and his dogs, licking his face and hands, crept about him.