The Eternal Maiden Part 8

The snow came, the storm spirits loosed the ice. I fell into an abyss . . . I lay asleep . . . for very long. It seemed like many moons. I could barely walk when I awoke. I had no food. I became very weak, but I uttered the _serrit_ (magic formula;), those words of the days when man's sap was stronger, and the good winds bore me hither."

A mystical silver light had risen over the horizon, and in the soft glimmer Annadoah saw that the face of Ootah was haggard and drawn. His voice was weak.

"The sun hath gone," murmured Ootah. "The long night comes. Ootah heard thy cry and has come to care for thee, Annadoah."

His voice was a caress. His face sank dangerously near the face of the girl. She panted into full consciousness and struggled to free herself. Ootah helped her to her feet.

"The winter comes . . . and famine," muttered Annadoah, hopelessly.

She pointed to the gaunt, hollow-eyed shadow, empurpled-robed, against the frozen cliffs. "My heart is cold--I am resigned to death."

"But I have come to give furs for thy couch," murmured Ootah, a beseeching look in his eyes. "Thou wilt need shelter--I shall build thee an igloo. Thou wilt need food--I shall share all that I have with thee and seek more. Thou wilt need oil for heat. I shall get this for thee."

Annadoah made a pa.s.sionate gesture. A curious perverse resentment for the youth's insistent devotion rose in her heart.

"Nay," she said, warding him away. "My shadow yearns only to the south . . . the far, far south."

"Thy soul yearns to the south--forsooth, will I all the more cherish thee. Thou art frail, and the teeth of _ookiah_ (winter) are sharp."

"The teeth of _ookiah_ are not so sharp as the teeth in my heart,"

sobbed Annadoah.

Ootah felt a great pity for her--a pity and tenderness greater than his jealousy.

"But I shall teach thee to forget, Annadoah."

"I cannot forget. Even as the ravens in their winter shelter dream of the summer sun, so my soul grows warm, in all my loneliness, in the memory of Olafaksoah."

Ootah groaned with an access of misery. Frenziedly he caught her hands and pressed them. Annadoah struggled. His words beat hotly in her ears:

"But I want thee. My blood burns at the thought of thee. It is against the custom of the tribe that thou shouldst be alone. Thou must take a husband."

"No--no," she shook her head.

"But some one must care for thee. I love thee. Thou wilt forget Olafaksoah. Thy hurt will heal."

Annadoah shook her head piteously.

"Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?" she asked, simply.

Ootah did not reply.

"He was strong," she murmured. "His hands bruised me. He was cruel.

He hurt me. Yet he gave my heart joy. My heart is dying--dying as the birds die. I feel the teeth of the wolves in my heart."

Ootah pointed to the women. The soft crooning of their voices reached him as they resumed the dismal dirge of their own woes.

"They hate thee," he said. He pointed to the constellation of the Great Bear which glittered faintly in the sky. "Yonder _qiligtussat_ (the barking dogs) would rend the gentle bear. Thou rememberest the old men's tale. A woman ran away from her family. She was false at heart. The good mother bear protected her and gave her food. But yearning for her husband, she returned and to gain his favor betrayed the hiding place of the mother-bear and her young. Then the husband drove out with sledges. His dogs attacked the bear. But they all became stars and went up into the sky. Even as the bear was good to the false woman so hast thou made clothing for those yonder, and now they would as the dogs rend thee. Thou needest a husband."

"They would be bitter to thee," she argued.

"Perchance, but I would protect thee. I love thee."

Annadoah shook her head. "The teeth of the wolves are in my heart,"

she said. "And I no longer care."

"Yonder _Nalagssartoq_ (he who waits and listens) bends to hear thy reply." Ootah pointed to Venus, the brightest of the stars--to the Eskimos an old man who waits by a blow-hole in the heavenly icefloes and listens for the breathing of seals. "Thou wilt come to Ootah, who loves thee? Answer, Annadoah! Ootah listens."

He soothed her little hands. A wondrous light burned in his eyes.

Every fibre of his being yearned for her. But Annadoah's hands were cold, her eyes were sullenly turned away. In her heart a vague fear of him, a resentment of his very love, stirred.

"My shadow yearns to the south," she repeated pathetically. "I shall wait. Perhaps he will come as he said when the spring hunting sings."

In her heart she feared that he would not.

Ootah in utter anguish dropped her hands. Annadoah sadly turned away.

Falling to his knees on the ice, he covered his face with his arms.

The sound of his heartbroken sobbing was drowned in the funereal chant of the women as, in a long procession, they pa.s.sed near him on their way to the sh.o.r.e.

When he raised his head, the rim of the moon, a great quarter-disc of silver, peeped above the horizon. A mystical melancholy light flooded the gloriously gleaming desolate white world. The ice floes glistened as with the dust of diamonds. The ice covered faces of the promontories glowed with the sheen of burnished metal. The clouds became tremulous ma.s.ses of argent phosph.o.r.escence. Far away the women's chants subsided. One by one they joined the men in their grotesque dances in the distant igloos. Ootah was left alone.

He gazed long upon the pearly lamp of heaven. The subtle sorrow of this world of magical moonlight filled his soul. Then the hopelessness and tragedy of all it symbolized were unfolded to him, and, extending his arms in a vague wild sympathy, in a vague wild despair, he moaned:

"Desolate and lonely moon! Oh, desolate and unhappy moon! . . .

Desolate and unhappy is the heart of Ootah!"

Far away, in her shelter, Annadoah heard the sobbing voice of Ootah.

And nearer, in an igloo where the men beat drums and danced, she heard the voice of Maisanguaq laughing evilly. Of late Maisanguaq had gibed her with her desertion; he was bitter toward her. But nothing mattered to Annadoah. She thought of the blond man in the south, and the pleading of Ootah. As she heard his weeping, she shook her head sadly.

She beat her breast and muttered over and over again:

"Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?"

V

"_What they heard was, to them all, the Voice of the Great Unknown, . . . He who made the world, created the Eternal Maiden Sukh-eh-nukh, and placed all the stars in the skies . . . Whose voice, far, far away, itself comes as the faintly remembered music of long bygone dreams preceding birth . . . And now, out of the blue-black sky, great globes of swimming liquid fire floated constantly, and dispersing into feathery flakes of opal light, melted softly . . ._"

Ootah began work on an igloo for Annadoah. None of the tribesmen had offered to do this for her, and, as only the men develop the architectural skill required to construct a snow shelter, Annadoah, until Ootah's return, was forced to continue to live in her seal-skin tent, where she suffered bitterly from the cold. His back aching, scarcely pausing to rest, Ootah constructed an icy dome of more than usual solidity. This completed, he went many miles, through the darkness, to the south, where, in the shelter of certain rocks, he knew there was much soft moss. Digging through the frozen blanket of ice he secured a quant.i.ty, and returning, made with it a soft bed for Annadoah over a tier of stones. This he covered in turn with the soft skin of caribou. Inside the immaculate house of snow he fas.h.i.+oned an interior tent of heavy skins to retain the heat of the oil lamps. Of his own supplies of blubber and walrus meat, which he had secretly buried early in the hunting season and which had thus escaped the rapacity of the white men, he gave more than half to Annadoah. He fixed her lamps with oil, and arranged them solicitously in positions where they would give most heat. He placed supplies in the house, and buried the rest outside so that Annadoah might readily reach them. Meanwhile Annadoah sat alone in her tent, her sad face buried in her hands, "her shadow yearning toward the south." Many of the tribe, emerging from their igloos, had paused to taunt Ootah at his labors.

"A-ha--a-ha!" they laughed. "Thinkest thou that Annadoah will let thee share her igloo when the snow closes in?" They laughed again. Ootah seriously shook his head.

"I would that Annadoah be protected from the storm," he said simply.

"A-ha--ha! No man buildeth a house wherein he may not have shelter; no man layeth a bed of soft moss whereon he doth not expect to lie. Idiot Ootah, as well mayest thou expect the willows to sprout in the long night--Annadoah thinketh naught of thee. Why seekest thou not a sensible maiden?"

"He hath given Annadoah half of his meat and fuel," the women murmured complainingly among themselves.

"He hath given her his skins; he hath thieved upon himself."