going north.
It disappeared once again among the mountainous waves and never reappeared.
Wet and exhausted they stumbled back to the cave, barely visible now through the driving snow as the storm struck again with redoubled fury.
The next day they ate the last of their food. Kerrick was licking the crumbled bits of sour meat from his fingers when he looked up and caught Ortnar’s eye. He wanted to speak but could not. What could he say?
Ortnar pulled the furs about him and turned away.
Outside the storm winds blew, screaming along the cliffs. The ground beneath them trembled as the high waves thundered down onto the beach.
Darkness came and with it a great and all-possessing despair.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Outside the paukarut the blizzard blew with unceasing fury, the wind hurling the snow before it across the arctic ice. Nothing could live before its blast, nothing moved in this totally barren landscape — other than the attacking blizzard. It heaped high around the snow-banked paukaruts until each had a downwind drift like a white beard. In the frozen desert of endless night there was only darkness and certain death.
Inside the paukarut the yellow light of the oil lamp shone on the black ularuaq skin, the white-arched ribs that supported it, the furs and skins and laughing faces of the Paramutan as they dipped bits of rotten meat into the open skin of blubber, fed mouthfuls to the children, roared with laughter when they rubbed it into their faces instead.
Armun enjoyed their presence and was not too disturbed at Kalaleq’s constant attentions, his hands always reaching out to touch her when she came close. They were different, that was all. They even shared their women and no one seemed to mind. Laughed about that too. Her temperament was not theirs so she could not join in the wild laughter.
But she smiled at their antics and was not bothered when Harl joined in with the others. They moved aside to make room for him — some reaching out to touch his light hair. They never tired of the novelty of this and always talked of the Tanu as Erqigdlit, meaning fantasy-people in their own language, for they were Angurpiaq, real people as they called themselves. Armun could understand their talk, this was the second winter that they had spent in the paukaruts on the ice, and that was long enough. When they had first arrived among the Paramutan she had been grateful just to be alive. She had been weak, had lost weight, was worried about Arnwheet in this strange place. It was so different in every way — the food, the language, the way they lived. Time passed very quickly while she was finding out how to adjust to this new life, so that the second winter was upon them even before she realized it.
There would be no third one for her here — she was steadfast in her conviction about that. In the spring she would make them understand that it was time for her to leave. She had her strength back: she and the two boys were well fed. An even more important reason to leave was the disturbing knowledge that by this time Kerrick would have discovered that they had left the sammads; he would be sure that they were dead. The smile slipped from her face at the darkness of this thought. Kerrick! She must go to him, go south to that strange murgu place that they had burnt, go wherever he was…
“Alutoragdlaq, alutoragdlaqoq!” Arnwheet said, shaking her by the knee. A strong little boy who had already seen his third summer, talking excitedly through his uneven new teeth. She smiled again as she wiped some of the grease from his face.
“What is it you want?” she asked, speaking Marbak. She could understand him well enough, but did not want him to only talk in Paramutan. If the two boys were left alone, he and Harl only spoke to one another in what had now become their daily manner of communication.
“I want my deer! My deer!” He beat on her knee with hard little fists, laughing. Armun dug into the jumbled furs until she found the toy. She had made it from a strip of deerskin, adding bits of carved bones for antlers. He seized it to him and tumbled away, laughing.
“You should eat more,” Angajorqaq said, sitting down at her side and holding out a handful of the white blubber. She had thrown most of her skin clothes aside in the heat of the paukarut and her fur-covered breasts swung free when she extended her arm. Armun dipped out a small bit of the greasy substance and licked at it. Angajorqaq made unhappy clicking noises with her tongue.
“There was a woman once who did not eat the fish when it was caught.” She had a story about everything, saw hidden meanings in any event no matter how commonplace. “It was a silver fish and very big and fat and it looked at her and did not understand. Tell me, the fish said, why you do not eat me? Deep in the ocean I heard the right spells that the fisherman said, saw the hook with the bright bait. I ate it as I should and now I am here and you do not eat me. Why?
“When the woman heard this she was very angry and told the fish it was only a fish and she could eat him or not, whichever pleased her. But of course when the fish-spirit heard this he was even angrier and swam up from the dark bottom of the sea where he lives, swam faster and faster until he hit the ice and broke up through that and opened his mouth and ate the paukarut and all the furs and the baby and the oil lamp and then ate the woman too. So you see what happens when you do not eat. Eat!”
Armun licked some more of the fat from her finger. “When the storm stops and the sun comes back and it is warm — then I am leaving with the boys…”
Angajorqaq screeched aloud and dropped the blubber, grasped her ears and rocked from side to side. Kalaleq looked up when he heard this, eyes wide with astonishment, then climbed to his feet and walked over to see what had caused the commotion. In the warmth of the paukarut he had thrown all of his clothing aside: his smooth brown fur shone in the lamplight. Even after all this time Armun found it hard to realize that all the Paramutan were like this, covered with fur from head to foot. Kalaleq’s tail came forward decently up between his legs, the furry end spread out to cover his maleness.
“Angajorqaq made a sound of great unhappiness,” he said, then held out the bone he was carving to distract her. “This will be a whistle, and see — there will be a ularuaq on it and the whistle will come from its mouth when it is blown.”
She pushed his hand aside, was not going to be deprived of her misery this easily.
“It is winter and dark — but the hair of the Erqigdlit is like the sun inside the paukarut and we laugh and eat and are warm. But now…” she wailed again, still rocking from side to side… “now Armun will go and the light of the boys will go and all will be black.”
Kalaleq gaped at this outburst. “But they cannot go,” he said. “When the blizzard blows, death sits outside the paukarut with open mouth. When you walk from the paukarut you walk into his teeth. So they cannot go and you do not have to cry out.”
“In the spring,” Armun said. “We must go then.”
“See,” Kalaleq said, stroking Angajorqaq’s fur to quiet her. “See, they are not going. Eat something. They stay.”
The Paramutan lived one day at a time and each new day came as a wonderful surprise. Armun was silent now, but her mind was still made up. They were going to leave as soon as the weather was warm enough to travel. She licked the rest of the blubber from her finger. They would eat well now so they would be strong. And go south as soon as they were able.
The storm blew itself out during the night and when Kalaleq loosened the laces on the smokehole in the morning a tiny shaft of sunlight lanced in. Everyone shouted with excitement at that and searched among the tumbled furs for their discarded clothing, shrieking with laughter when they found someone else’s skins. They had been trapped by the storm for days without number and the children screamed with eagerness. Armun held tight to the wriggling Arnwheet with one hand while she pulled on the soft undergarments that had the fur facing inward for greater warmth. Over them went the thicker outer furs, with the hood, then boots, gloves, everything that made existence possible in the polar north.
Kalaleq was lying stretched out flat, grunting with exertion as he pushed aside the snow that was blocking the end of the entrance tunnel. Light filtered in, then darkened as he wriggled into the opening. They blinked in the
