In the deep twilight
when snow covered shrubs look like ghosts, and wandering deer look like
monsters, beyond the cities and the farmlands, the farthest regions of
Minnesota forests, and to the Canadian Arctic, nothing seems to appear in its
right perspective; everything is too large, too tall, too wild, too ugly, too
far, too near, too fierce, thus one never sleeps at ease in the wild of winter
nights in the land of gray strangeness, in the land of the forbidding.
When
the northern lights appear, never are they the same, they, like the cold forest
wavers and shimmers like the crossbones on a black flagged ship at sea. The Inuits know the land and its old legends.
Its ghosts, death, for death is common in this place, should you make the
wrong, move, turn, step, choice, you must live with its results.
With a
bottle of whisky, which is common in these out of the way places, and an odd
warmth comes to the blood and unknowingly you slip away, the spirit leaves its
long dwelling and is no longer cold or hungry, but you are dead all the
same.
This
strange land that points to the North Pole, wicked demigods battle for who will
take the form of the bear, the wolf, who will enter them to possess their
spirits, after twilight. With them they bring sickness, death to the living.
The spirit demigods are concealed in wedges, have good knowledge of the area.
They sit on rocks and wait. Foolish they may be, but there they wait, chewing
on seal skins, as they choose to pass the time.
The
wolves know more than any book will ever tell of the wild. To the wolf,
darkness or light of day, one and all are the same. They howl through the
valleys and the polar bear, thank God he can swim, avoid the packs of wolves.
The caribou, astray, are a quick mark for a pack of hungry wolves.
. . .
At such a twilight a
thing accrued, a great wolf fell into a pit, one an Inuit dug, covered with
twigs and moss, he had several stakes embedded into the bottom soil, however, somehow the wolf landed twisted all
around the stakes, unhurt on the floor of the pit, but escape was
impossible.
As I
implied, death is common and the news of this wolf defeating death became a big
news for the little Inuit fragment of a tribe of fifteen inhabitant, without
showing its astonishment or giving comment to the beast, they freed him, they
might have known some evil could befall them, but it didn’t occur to Kayak (who was named for
his love for the water).
What creature survives without the demon in
him? Did not God send him to Kayak’s pit
for its execution? So a wise man from a nearby village had said to his pupils.
It was
the evening of the second day of the wolf’s freedom that one of the fifteen
inhabitants of Kayak’s tribe had died, left were the marks of fangs coming from
a stray wolf. Then the following day, another youth died, wife of one of the
inhabitants of Kayak’s tribe, her body lay lucid and ripped apart as she lay on
a pile of skins she evidently had been working with; her throat ripped to its
windpipe.
On the
third day, a new born was fond with its limbs chewed to its bones, and left for
dead, thus, the tribe was now twelve.
The
wolf-devil, was a virile active creature, huge in size. Never did such a beast
have such sturdy legs, and strong spine, “He will die in day,” said Kayak to
his tribesmen, “I will slay him with my spear!”
And
alone in the wilderness, that very night, he sensed the dark eyes of the wolf
fall upon his back, and in a moments thrust, he was chewing through kayak’s
elbow, disconnecting the upper and lower parts, and accordingly he dropped to
the ground, prayed to his guardian spirit, that his little son would survive.
The
beast bent down lower as if to listen to his last words, his eyes appeared very
wide to Kayak, and the wolf, with a human voice laughed. This fact no longer
surprised Kayak, then suddenly, lightening hit the wolf, and its pelt was burnt
to a rough brittle, and the animal sniffed his own hide, and died alongside of
the Inuit. But before either one’s last breath, Kayak heard the beast say, —as
Kayak bent his ear close to the mouth of the wolf, and through the lips of the
beast the demon whispered: “The bear is on its way.”
It was said a bear killed every member of kayak’s
tribe but one, whom this story comes from, it was Kayak’s son, and the old man
of the nearby village, told his pupils: “The devil and the wolf have grown up
together they both like blood. Let them die together as they are playmates, do
not disturb nature’s plan!”
#5069/ 2-13-2016
Copyright © by Dennis L. Siluk 2-2016
