Donât fail. And as bear and hunter ran, winter deepened around them. Wolves howled after starving deer. Birds froze in the trees. Wind shrieked across the ice, filling the air with a thousand anguished voices, the voices of ghosts and weirds rising with Sedna from her kingdom beneath the waves.
One day, to his surprise, the hunter stumbled upon his bear already dead, stretched next to a grave mound on a lonely beach. On top of the grave stood the statue of a woman dressed in strange clothes and the skull of a seal. As the hunter approached, the bear suddenly seemed to give birth. Out of its belly slid a naked woman, slick with blood, speckled with bird down, a walking skeleton. Beneath the blood, her skin was bone white, like the men who sailed from across the sea, like the ghosts who rose from the depths with Sedna.
The hunter remembered how the wizard had told him he was to seek his vision on some isolated shore, beside a grave. The Great Spirit Tongársoak himself would approach the aspirant in the form of a white bear who would kill and eat him,transforming him into a skeleton. Three days later he would regain his flesh, awaken, and his clothes would come flying back to him. Everything turned out as the wizard had foretold, except that the hunter found a white woman in his place. The bear had eaten her, and the power belonged to her. He would never be able to save his people. The bear had led him all that way to witness and to understand.
Itslk seems relieved when the story is done, as if it were a burden he could finally put down, or as if in telling the story he has worked out some knotty problem of logic. He confesses that he believes this sequence of events, his recent past â the coming of the white men, the bear, the grave, me â is a nightmare. In the morning he will awake next his wife on that far shore beside the infinite sea, walk outside and kill two seals who will be waiting for him beside an air hole. The seals will greet him in their normal seal voices. They will say, Come, Itslk, slay us and eat. And be careful not to damage our bones, but send them whole back to Sedna that she might continue to feed you and your family.
Colony of Dreams
Next morning Léon wakes me with his joyous barking. I am aroused (nothing unusual), half-dreaming of a bear lover, or a man in a bear suit, or perhaps it is something else entirely â a priest or a dolphin. My hand is tucked between my legs. But Léonâs eager yips drag me abruptly from this access of sensualitybeneath my bearskin coverlet. The interruption feels like a punishment. It reminds me of my uncle, the General, with his vexed moustaches and wounded fingers. I think, this is the difference between men and women: My uncle has conquered Canada by brandishing a sword over the bodies of his companions; I have conquered Canada on my back. In either case, the long term effect on the inhabitants is the same.
I think of Sednaâs maimed hands and her perpetual malevolence. One story tells of an enterprising angakok who swims to her underwater realm and earns her gratitude by combing the lice out of her hair, a homely task she can no longer perform for herself.
I think, oddly enough, of Guillemette Jansart and her evil consort. Perhaps he isnât evil, only misguided, the product of a difficult childhood; perhaps she sees correctly into his heart. Though what good does it do her? He is not guided by his heart.
These are waking thoughts, not to be trusted.
There are two dead seals, fat as pigs and still warm, lying on the bloody snow in front of the hut. They seem asleep but for the tears the harpoon made in their flesh and the blood. Where did they come from? I shade my eyes and peer at the surrounding ice. Nothing. Perhaps I have not yet learned to read the country aright. Or perhaps they are dream seals. Léon nuzzles them, then prances away, trying to get them to play. He looks suddenly bear-like.
Itslk, as I expected, is
One day, to his surprise, the hunter stumbled upon his bear already dead, stretched next to a grave mound on a lonely beach. On top of the grave stood the statue of a woman dressed in strange clothes and the skull of a seal. As the hunter approached, the bear suddenly seemed to give birth. Out of its belly slid a naked woman, slick with blood, speckled with bird down, a walking skeleton. Beneath the blood, her skin was bone white, like the men who sailed from across the sea, like the ghosts who rose from the depths with Sedna.
The hunter remembered how the wizard had told him he was to seek his vision on some isolated shore, beside a grave. The Great Spirit Tongársoak himself would approach the aspirant in the form of a white bear who would kill and eat him,transforming him into a skeleton. Three days later he would regain his flesh, awaken, and his clothes would come flying back to him. Everything turned out as the wizard had foretold, except that the hunter found a white woman in his place. The bear had eaten her, and the power belonged to her. He would never be able to save his people. The bear had led him all that way to witness and to understand.
Itslk seems relieved when the story is done, as if it were a burden he could finally put down, or as if in telling the story he has worked out some knotty problem of logic. He confesses that he believes this sequence of events, his recent past â the coming of the white men, the bear, the grave, me â is a nightmare. In the morning he will awake next his wife on that far shore beside the infinite sea, walk outside and kill two seals who will be waiting for him beside an air hole. The seals will greet him in their normal seal voices. They will say, Come, Itslk, slay us and eat. And be careful not to damage our bones, but send them whole back to Sedna that she might continue to feed you and your family.
Colony of Dreams
Next morning Léon wakes me with his joyous barking. I am aroused (nothing unusual), half-dreaming of a bear lover, or a man in a bear suit, or perhaps it is something else entirely â a priest or a dolphin. My hand is tucked between my legs. But Léonâs eager yips drag me abruptly from this access of sensualitybeneath my bearskin coverlet. The interruption feels like a punishment. It reminds me of my uncle, the General, with his vexed moustaches and wounded fingers. I think, this is the difference between men and women: My uncle has conquered Canada by brandishing a sword over the bodies of his companions; I have conquered Canada on my back. In either case, the long term effect on the inhabitants is the same.
I think of Sednaâs maimed hands and her perpetual malevolence. One story tells of an enterprising angakok who swims to her underwater realm and earns her gratitude by combing the lice out of her hair, a homely task she can no longer perform for herself.
I think, oddly enough, of Guillemette Jansart and her evil consort. Perhaps he isnât evil, only misguided, the product of a difficult childhood; perhaps she sees correctly into his heart. Though what good does it do her? He is not guided by his heart.
These are waking thoughts, not to be trusted.
There are two dead seals, fat as pigs and still warm, lying on the bloody snow in front of the hut. They seem asleep but for the tears the harpoon made in their flesh and the blood. Where did they come from? I shade my eyes and peer at the surrounding ice. Nothing. Perhaps I have not yet learned to read the country aright. Or perhaps they are dream seals. Léon nuzzles them, then prances away, trying to get them to play. He looks suddenly bear-like.
Itslk, as I expected, is
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