Skraelings: Clashes in the Old Arctic

by Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley

  There was no alternate plan.

  11

  Eyes of the Glaring One

  The days were long now, so it was late evening when the Glaring One returned in creeping dusk.

  One by one, the great boat’s torches sprang to life as it reached the shore, to the roars of:

  “Skraeling!”

  “Skraeling!”

  “Skraeling!”

  The Tuniit camp, and especially Kannujaq himself, had already spent hours in nervous anticipation. All eyes were on the sea. Everything was set, and cries of alarm spread faster than flame in heather among the Tuniit, who were soon running inland with all the fleetness their stocky bodies could muster. Kannujaq ran alongside of them, desperate and hoping that the Tuniit would be able to summon their courage when the time came.

  Kannujaq’s great worry was that the raiders would not behave as expected. Siku and Siaq had prepared a kind of rancid-smelling tea out of their dried shaman stuff. Each had assured Kannujaq that the soup would be undetectable on meat that had soaked in it. They were wrong. Kannujaq himself had sampled the tiniest bit of the food. It had no peculiar scent, but its flavour was off. Bitter. Even from the nibble he had tried, his stomach had begun to lurch soon after swallowing. He had puked it all up before learning what else it had in store for him.

  Maybe, he hoped, the raiders will arrive hungry. Either that, or they’re just stupid.

  The Tuniit reached the hills and many sheltering boulders, keeping low. Kannujaq could already spot commotion down by the beach. This turned out to be raiders kicking in the short walls and ripping the tops off of Tuniit homes. Stamping their way through cooking fires. Kannujaq gave them time, letting the rosy light of evening approach. After the amount of time it might have taken for someone to boil up soup, he began to creep back down, doing his best stalk, hoping that his now sooty clothes would help him blend in with the landscape.

  It was like torture, creeping down to the beach, wondering with every beat of his heart if raider eyes were already tracking him. At last, he arrived at the edge of the community. Fortunately, there were many large rocks about the place—enough, at least, for him to move from cover to cover.

  The Glaring One was easy to spot. There was that owl-like mask, once again gleaming by torchlight. The Siaraili leader never seemed to stray far from his boat. As before, he was arguing with one of his own people. He seemed frustrated by something. At last, as Kannujaq watched, the leader tore off the kannujaq shell over his head—it seemed to be one piece with the mask—and he cast it on the stones of the beach. The Glaring One, as it turned out, was ruddy skinned for one of the Siaraili. But, other than a short, dark beard, Kannujaq could see little of his features.

  The Glaring One’s hulking servant, the one he had argued with, watched his leader climb back into the boat, searching about until he picked up something near its stern. Then the Glaring One stretched himself out, drinking from what looked like a kind of skin container. If so, the container was much like the sort Kannujaq’s own folk might use. Given what Siaq had told him of the Siaraili drinking habits, however, Kannujaq doubted that it held water.

  The servant shook his head and left his leader there, joining the other raiders at a fire they had constructed. For fuel, they were burning the precious few driftwood tools the Tuniit had made over generations.

  But at least they’re eating, Kannujaq noted. The raiders had found the meat, but the poison would take some time to work. Kannujaq needed patience. The kind of patience he required while hunting. Compared with waiting for a seal to surface, however, this wait was easy.

  But at least seal hunting was sane. Kannujaq could still not believe that he was doing this. If the poison failed, or if the giant-men spotted him …

  For now, it seemed that the Glaring One’s men were cocky, overconfident, too used to their raids going smoothly. They had not even bothered to post a lookout. Kannujaq sighed to himself, pleased with such luck. If an alarm went up, the entire plan would dissolve like fat in fire. So far, he had not spotted anyone hefting bows and arrows. That, too, was a piece of luck. He doubted that any archery contest between himself and the Siaraili would go as well as his encounter with Angula.

  It was a sudden thing when it happened. Kannujaq’s breath hissed between his teeth.

  The Siaraili were still laughing, but Kannujaq could see that their movements had become funny. Loose. Disjointed. After a few more minutes, whenever one of the raiders arose from sitting, he teetered dangerously, almost staggering into the fire pit.

  One of them suddenly vomited. The others laughed at this, crazily, before they did the same. The mad pitch of their laughter increased, until they fell. First, they were on their knees. Then, they started to fall on their sides. Most began gesturing. Calling out at empty air.

  In time, all eight of the raiders were down. Some were shaking violently, like a sleeper having nightmares. One lay still. Others were laughing or weeping uncontrollably.

  Jerky from his own nerves, Kannujaq unravelled a bull-roarer that he carried in hand. The object was a small bone that could be found inside a caribou’s hoof. When attached to a cord about arm’s length, it could be whirled round and round. The resultant noise was a low-pitched buzz, useful for sending a signal.

  Feeling that, even now, it was a bit of a risk to abandon his crouch, Kannujaq paused for a long moment, watching his fingers tremble. Then he cursed himself as a coward, forced his legs and back straight. He whirled the bull-roarer with all his strength. The caribou bone hummed, singing on the air.

  He was calling the Tuniit.

  Now! Now! Kannujaq thought, almost panicking when none of the Tuniit appeared. I can’t do this alone!

  But how could he expect the Tuniit to be any less terrified than himself?

  At last, Tuniit men appeared next to him, long bear-spears in hand. They stood stunned by what they saw of the fallen raiders. Kannujaq roared at them to get moving.

  He did not watch as they stabbed the giant-men.

  Kannujaq’s objective was the boat. Hissing aloud like some mad angakkuq, he ordered several Tuniit men to join him and do as he did.

  Kannujaq flew down toward the water, almost leaping, almost stumbling, head forward, when his legs seemed incapable of running fast enough. At the water’s edge, he threw himself against the bow of the boat. The Tuniit men did likewise. Together, they began to shove the great loon-wolf-thing backward, until even the waterproof stitches of Kannujaq’s boots were useless, as the seawater’s biting cold surrounded his legs. Still, Kannujaq and the Tuniit heaved, and the huge boat did move.

  Kannujaq’s one great worry was the Glaring One himself. He had hoped that the man would join his fellows in feasting. He’d been wrong. Instead, the Glaring One seemed to have gone to sleep in the stern. Siaq and Siku had both insisted that the weird fluid the giant-men liked to drink made them sluggish, but still violent. Could they get the boat away from the beach before the Glaring One woke up?

  Keep on sleeping, Kannujaq thought toward the Glaring One as he heaved. Just sleep …

  But there was a sudden, dry, rasping sound—that of a weapon being drawn—and the Glaring One appeared with a bellow. Kannujaq barely fell away from the boat as a great blade bit into the wood near his face.

  The Tuniit, however, at last found their courage. No longer fleeing like frightened caribou, they came together as a team, and put their powerful shoulders into one last heave. By the time they managed to push the loon-wolf-boat away from the beach, all stood up to their thighs in the frigid water, Kannujaq included. They splashed and waded back up onto the beach, shivering from a combination of cold and nervous tension. Kannujaq was the first to turn, to look back and see if the Glaring One dared to climb out of his boat.

  He did not.

  Kannujaq and the Tuniit watched from the shore, panting, shivering. Other Tuniit, with reddened spears in hand, came to stand with them. Kannujaq assumed that they had finished off the Glaring One’s servants. Now,
there remained only the leader himself, unmasked, staring at them all as his boat drifted further out into the water. Kannujaq opened his mouth to tell the Tuniit to fetch bows, but one glance told him that they were already sickened by the violence they had committed. He disliked the fact that he, himself, was still ready to kill; and he realized that the desire was born only out of his terror. His fatigue. His fear that a threat still remained.

  The Tuniit were right. He heard the rattle of spears from men dropping their weapons, as though they had become poisonous to touch, on the stones of the beach.

  Kannujaq stared at the Glaring One, now no longer needing to flinch or hide before the other’s gaze. They had killed him, anyway. In a sense. There was no way that a single man could handle such a large boat.

  The Glaring One returned Kannujaq’s stare, his face calm, as though he understood his fate and the fact that there was no longer any need to rage. Currents were already tugging at the boat, turning and drawing it away from the coast. There stood the Glaring One, no longer glaring, but only watching Kannujaq with a hint of sadness. It was a strange thing that there was no hatred in those ice-blue eyes. Only despair and acceptance.

  Suddenly, Kannujaq recognized the colour of those eyes. He had seen that kind of ice-blue before.

  Then Kannujaq understood.

  The Glaring One had never come here for his kannujaq weapons and tools. He was seeking a different kind of treasure. Siaq, the mother of Siku, had kept a secret from them all.

  In a heartbeat, it all made sense to Kannujaq: The Glaring One was a wealthy man. He and his servants had always owned enough weapons and tools. The objects that Angula had stolen meant nothing to them. As with Kannujaq’s own folk, what mattered most to the Glaring One was family. Kin. Kannujaq realized, in that moment, that he was looking at a fellow stranger in these lands. A newcomer. One who has known the dread, but also the delight, of the unknown Land. For the first time, Kannujaq found himself wondering what the Glaring One’s people were like. Really like. Maybe they had more in common with Kannujaq’s folk than he had wanted to admit. Maybe they had just arrived in this area, or nearby. Maybe they had not done as well, in surviving the Land, as Kannujaq’s people.

  The Glaring One, Kannujaq realized, was a man whose sole treasure had become family. Perhaps his greatest fear was that he and his kind would die alone, without generations to succeed them, on the uncaring Land. After all, everyone wanted to matter. To count. To place some mark on the world that said, “Remember me. I was here.” Even if it were only in the memories of children and grandchildren. Kannujaq knew, now, that the leader of the raiders had not come all this way, time and again, just to harass the poor Tuniit. That had been the men—frustrated and angry at being ordered to a place where they did not want to go. To search for a child who was not their own.

  The Glaring One’s child.

  The son he had had with Siaq.

  Siku.

  12

  The Inuit

  You’ve already heard of how Kannujaq and the Tuniit were sick of violence. Imagine how we felt, having to describe it! There were no police in Kannujaq’s time and place. No real laws. So, in order for folks to avoid violence toward each other, they often had to learn why violence is not a good thing. They had to understand it for themselves, so that when those who had learned the lesson became Elders, they could pass it down to future generations. The Land has a great deal of wisdom to give us, but it’s never free.

  So, if you see what we mean, you’ll find it understandable that there was no real celebration over the defeat of the raiders. The Tuniit simply wanted to put it all behind them. They wanted to return, as soon as possible, to their shy, boring, Tuniit ways.

  After all that had happened, Kannujaq did not blame them one bit.

  As for Kannujaq’s knowledge of Siku, Siaq, the Glaring One, and how all three were related, he didn’t bother to speak of it. Why run around, exciting things further by talking about Siaq’s husband from beyond the sea? Better to let the Tuniit continue thinking that Siku’s blue eyes were supernatural—the mark of an angakkuq, rather than simply the eyes of his father.

  In time, Kannujaq offered to bring Siaq and Siku away with him, so that the woman might again know the company of her “dogsledder” folk, and the boy might learn of his ancestors. Half of them, at least.

  Siaq just smiled and refused the offer. She was now a Tuniq, she explained. She wanted simple peace. Forgetfulness. And so she would stay.

  Yet Siku, in his odd way, went into a three-day seclusion to consider Kannujaq’s offer. And it was just as Kannujaq had come to believe that the boy was uninterested that the young shaman suddenly approached Kannujaq, talking as though going with Kannujaq were the most natural thing in the world. Unlike his mother, it seemed that Siku had never felt comfortable among the Tuniit. And he loved the idea of sledding. Just as long as Kannujaq promised that the dogs would not try to eat him.

  So, in the early evening, when the little remaining snow was cooling, Kannujaq and Siku got ready to depart. And as Siku watched Kannujaq tighten the lashings on his sled, the boy grew more and more quiet. Almost sullen. As though he were thinking very hard about some disturbing fact.

  “Qanuippit? Anything wrong?” Kannujaq asked him, finishing a knot.

  Siku did not answer for a long moment. Then he sighed, saying,

  “I know I’m not a Tuniq. Neither is my mother. We’re like you, the dogsledding ones. But what do you call yourselves? What do I call myself, now?”

  Kannujaq stood straight, thinking for a moment, trying not to feel anger toward Siku’s mother, who had hurt so many by keeping so much. For the hundredth time, Kannujaq thought:

  He’s been cheated by his mother. What’s a parent for, if not to teach?

  It was not Kannujaq’s place to speak of Siku’s father, but he could at least tell him,

  “I’ve heard my family say that we’re just The Living Ones Who Are Here. In the way of our people’s talk, they say Inuit.”

  The word was strange to the shaman boy, and Kannujaq smiled as he repeated it over and over again.

  But Kannujaq’s smile faded when he thought of Siku’s father. The Glaring One’s folk.

  For the first time, Kannujaq began to worry for the fate of his own people. In his mind, he could not keep himself from comparing them to those he had just fought against. Were his family and all their relations destined to struggle as hard as the Glaring One and his folk? Was it the destiny of new people, in this odd part of the Land, to fade and die? Maybe these ideas were all in Kannujaq’s dark imagination. But maybe, in some future time, Kannujaq’s folk would exist only in the stories of Tuniit.

  Kannujaq was wrong, of course. Oh, his guess about the Glaring One’s people was right—the colony from which the so-called giants had come did not end up doing well at all. You might know it, in your time, as the Viking colony of Greenland. Just as you’d call Kannujaq’s area Baffin Island. If you could talk to Kannujaq, you might at least offer him some comfort. You could tell him that he was being paranoid. That his own people were destined to travel freely over the next three centuries. That they settled the Arctic. Not only Greenland, but all the lands where the Tuniit had once lived.

  But that’s where you’d sadden him a bit. Because you’d have to explain that there were no Tuniit in your world. Not all of us make it, you see, especially with so many people pushing at each other on the Land. And Kannujaq’s folk would remember the poor, shy Tuniit only in their own stories. In a sense, you might say that Kannujaq’s story was of the moment when his world had started to turn into yours.

  Kannujaq had worked hard enough. He had been brave enough. Why make his head spin with tales of the future? Besides, at the particular moment where we left him, he was busy concentrating. If you must poke into his life again, you might as well know: Kannujaq was trying to make sure that Siku did not pay too much attention to how he packed his equipment onto the sled.

  Why? Well, please remembe
r that Siku was an angakkuq. The boy was pretty insistent that Angula’s old treasures had been the source of trouble among the Tuniit. Even the stuff left from the latest raiders was a danger. Basically, the boy was convinced that every remaining tool or weapon equalled sheer evil.

  The Tuniit were all in agreement with their camp’s shaman. So, nobody made the slightest move to stop Siku when he tossed the treasure, in nine great loads, into the sea’s freezing embrace. Kannujaq didn’t help. But he watched, whimpering a bit, as the stuff was hurled from a cliff, into deep water. Forever.

  By now, Kannujaq had not only come to know that the Tuniit were human beings. He had also come to respect them. He respected Siku, as well. He even liked him. So, he hoped that the young shaman would not be too upset when he at last discovered that Kannujaq had kept a knife. It was the one that Angula had carried. Kannujaq had found it at the edge of the community, lying forgotten in the snow. It was a small reward, Kannujaq supposed, for his help against the Glaring One. And he could hardly wait to use it for iglu building when the next winter arrived.

  Give Kannujaq a break! He’s not a Tuniq. Nor are his descendants. To this very day, Inuit are a sensible folk.

  Pronunciation Guide

  We hope you’ve liked the story, but it’s time to be a drag: We thought we’d let you know what the names and words in Kannujaq’s tale actually mean. We also thought that, for those unfamiliar with Inuktitut, we’d give you an idea of Inuktitut pronunciation. Meanings aren’t a problem, but pronunciation always sparks a fuss. Inuktitut speakers always want their own dialects presented, their own way of saying things in their region or village, and we just can’t provide that.

  It’s like when a given person says, “You all.” Then another person says, “Y’all.” Who is right? Well, they both are, from the point of view of their way of speaking. We’d love it, if by some magic, we could present every mode of Inuktitut (writing “Hila” instead of “Sila,” for example); but in order to tell a story, we have to pick one way and stick to it.