Santa Claws

by Gabriela Harding

  “But isn’t raw meat bad for you?”

  “No, Clem, it’s not. Wasn’t that raw walrus skin you’ve just eaten? You’re alive, aren’t you?” He sighed. “Kids today. Too used to commodities. Their hunting spirit spoiled beyond recognition. Take their stomachs. So weak from the useless process of adaptation to the unnatural. They’ve become a kind of hybrid, some sort of urban parasite. People mock their meat by cooking it in lots of different, fascinating, even cruel ways.”

  “Cruel? Isn’t it more cruel to eat animals RAW?”

  “Animal, animal, animal!”

  “You’re dead!” Erasmus pretended to poke Rong’s empty eye socket.

  “Don’t touch me there!” she screeched. “It’s rude!”

  “Mussels are boiled alive. So are lobsters. Lobsters squeak when they cook,” Honey said dreamily, remembering the dreadful rattle of lobster claws on Mum’s pressure cookers, and how bits of their shell exploded inside like popcorn.

  “Eew. That’s disgusting.”

  “How about rabbits? Hung upside down and clubbed to death!”

  Johann engaged in a mute fight, swinging an invisible club in the air.

  “Abattoirs, even in the most civilised countries like Britain, are execution scenes. Animals are not cruel. People are. Say you get caught by a cannibal tribe. What do you prefer, a quick and painless death, or being slow cooked?”

  “Ouch.”

  “I’ve seen that happening in a movie. A samurai cooked in a barrel on a ship, until all the meat fell off his bones. It was revenge. In a war.”

  “You know a lot about cooking.” Fridrik caught Honey’s eye, delivering the line with a thin-lipped smile.

  Honey blushed. “My mum is a chef.”

  “So there was a lot of squeaking in your kitchen.”

  “Not really. Lobsters are not that cheap, and very messy to eat. You have to break their shell with a hammer first. It’s like cracking nuts.”

  “What’s the point in all that? Shouldn’t the hard bit be on the inside, like bones?”

  “Break the bones to eat the chicken? That’s wrong.”

  “I agree. The simpler the better.”

  “Simple! Just like you, Erasmus.”

  “Sir!”

  “Rong, outside.”

  “But sir, it’s freezing!”

  “Go!”

  Erasmus grinned.

  “What happens at the second warning?” Honey felt goose bumps down the back of her neck as she watched Rong scramble out of the igloo. A blast of cold wind whipped around, disturbing the fire. Just the short walk back to the barracks gave Honey the shivers. Standing alone in the cold would drive her mad.

  “Twenty minutes outside…without your parka. The third warning is certain death. Unless you can survive a dip in the sea.”

  Fridrik Helgarsson relit his pipe. Instantly, his head was surrounded by smoke. His golden hair stuck out like a halo of sunlight over a cloud. “Even when they learned how to build fires, and they had spare driftwood to burn, Inuit people still believed raw meat was more nutritious. So, going back to the story, little did the Inuit girl, a shy bride dressed from head to toe in her late mother’s wedding gown – a polar bear skin, head, claws and all – as she sipped the ritual wine from her husband’s cupped hands, know that the handsome hunter would turn out to be very mean. He would treat her very badly, and if Snædis had any idea of what the future held, she’d have walked out right then, and vanish forever into the white mist floating over the sea.”

  A shudder went down Honey’s spine, from the back of her neck down to the tips of her toes. There was mist on the morning Mum went missing, on Christmas morning last year. The fog was so thick you could barely see the oaks in the park. A neighbour saw her walking down the cycling path into the woods. After this she was never seen again. Her cloak, torn to shreds, was later found in the hedges near the river by a police dog.

  “How did her husband treat her badly, sir?”

  “Well, he kept her hungry. He disappeared for days on end. She never knew if he was dead or alive while she trembled all alone in their hut, waiting for him. He never fixed anything around the house, and he expected her to go hunting for their food.”

  Dad never fixed anything around the house, either, thought Honey sheepishly. How about the burnt light bulb in her room? The dining room lights? Worse still, the moth-eaten wardrobe in the cellar?

  “One day, in summertime, when the sea ice melted, Snædis’ father visited in his fishing canoe. The land was just awakening. An explosion of flowers erupted on the arid ground: bluebells, orchids and the bright purple fireweeds. He found his daughter alone, cradling a dead baby in her bloodstained arms. She had given birth that morning. ‘It’s my second one,’ she told her father, who was watching her with tearful eyes. A fierce hunter he might have been, but the sight of a defenseless infant made his knees buckle. The leather boots he’d sewn himself with a fish bone and dried fish intestine suddenly felt like leaden weights. Unlike his son-in-law he was hard working, and, despite having lost his wife during a stormy fishing trip, his home was tidy, neatly stacked with necessities, chunks of dry meat always hanging on a line to smoke. ‘Well, no matter,’ he told his daughter. He patted her back reassuringly and shuddered at how frail she seemed. At the back of the room, he caught sight of an animal ribcage turned upside down, stuffed with the soft fox furs he’d given her as dowry.’

  “Where had the years gone? It was like yesterday when his young wife Aua, barely a woman, had given birth to their first born and, after the baby had her first snow bath, placed her in the scrubbed skeleton to rest. The village had been using ribcages as cots for babies for generations. It made sense. The infants couldn’t roll into the fires in their sleep. Before he could wipe it away, a tear travelled down a deep line in his weathered face, all the way down to his chin, where it was lost in his tangled, lice infested beard. ‘You know they don’t all survive. Some are taken away, and we mustn’t mourn.’”

  The silence in the igloo was so thick it could be sliced with a knife. The wind howled. Honey pricked her ears. She hadn’t been here that long, but already she was used to the long silences of the frozen land. So when the hint of a sound broke the quiet, quickly washed away by the distant thundering of the icebergs, she was the first to hear it.

  “Tonraq looked at his daughter. Her eye was bruised and her beautiful, healthy teeth were chipped and broken. He knew then, even before she burst out crying, falling to her knees, kissing his feet and begging him to take her back home, he knew that his apprentice hadn’t been true to his word. His daughter was beaten and fed on bones. Snædis, the plump and red-cheeked girl, was so malnourished that she almost vanished inside her clothes. ‘I had no milk for the babies,’ she sobbed. There was something disturbing in the hut, too, a malevolent presence her father sensed clinging to the walls, as if the spirit of the dead baby was seeking revenge. He could smell it, too. As he sniffed at the smoky air, Tonraq almost detected the rotten stink of demons. And suddenly, the hunter saw right through his daughter, right to the other side of the room, as if her body was made of glass. He stepped back in horror. The way she clutched at the hem of his parka with her bony, long-nailed fingers, he glimpsed, in a flash, the hideous face of the tuurngait, a bad spirit that hunted the Arctic wasteland in search of humans to possess. Shocked, taken aback by such an outrageous proposal, something no woman in her right mind would ever suggest, not wanting to return the bride price which he had already eaten, Tonraq stuffed a parcel of salted fish in a hole dug in the wall of the igloo, and left. In his haste he missed, behind the curtain of the washing room, the lifeless body of his daughter hanging from a beam in the shabby roof.”

  “He ate the bride price? He ate money?” Fern’s exclamation was met by grins and sniggers.

  “The bride price was food. Even today
, in Africa, brides are exchanged with cows. At the North Pole, we’re talking seals, walruses, polar bears. What makes polar bears so valuable, of course, is that they are formidable killers. Did you know that their favourite prey is humans? The polar bear is the only predator in the world that hunts humans.”

  “That’s not what makes polar bears valuable. They are precious because it’s illegal to hunt them. They’re protected by the law,” said Honey.

  Fridrik tipped his head to one side. “You will find that there are many things wrong with the law, and that a lot of very pleasant things are illegal. Driving, for example, is illegal in some parts of the world, and so is reading. Grocery store grazing, as tempting as it may be to pluck a single grape and munch it by the time you get to the checkout, is not only dangerous because you might be ingesting pesticides, it’s also illegal. Riding a bike without a helmet is illegal, but if you spend your life afraid of breaking your skull at one point or another, you might as well not live at all. And if you let a bunch of people who yawn half the time tell you how to live your life, then you are a fool.”

  Honey gulped, at a loss for an answer. Then Johann began to sing.

  “Living on the edge, right sir, how was that song, living on the eee…”

  “Shut up, Johann.”

  “Rude!”

  “Carry on, sir. We’re listening.”

  “And so, the old hunter left his daughter’s home. He stumbled over to his boat, through the melting snow banks. Snædis ran after him, leaving the baby behind. Tonraq was determined to get as far from his daughter as possible. Marriages, after all, went through hard times, and if wives did not die out of ill treatment, they would survive it. He had given his word to Atka, his apprentice, and there was nothing to be done. To take his daughter back with him, without returning the bride price, was theft. He would lose his honour forever. And, anyway, it was too late. He had seen the tuurngait, the evil spirit born from people’s suffering, gleaming red behind his daughter’s skin, looking at him through her eyes, flicking a forked tongue at him through her broken teeth.’

  “He jumped into his boat. Snædis, in despair, threw herself in the waters of Baffin Bay. You see, the poor girl had no idea that she was already dead. She gripped the edge of the boat, and it toppled madly, threatening to sink. Some of the silver water, carrying thin slivers of ice, was already creeping in, flooding Tonraq’s possessions, making a shallow puddle at his feet. The hunter shivered. There is nothing Inuit men fear more than the sea. In a harsh environment, where only the fittest survive, the sea is a source of life and a quiet grave for all those who don’t pay it enough respect, those who don’t watch out for its moods. Terrified, the man took out his whalebone knife and hacked off his daughter’s fingers. Where the waters swallowed her, the sea turned an angry red. In his haste to get away, the hunter didn’t even notice the four amputated fingers sneaking back into the boat. The sea licked the trails of blood they left behind.

  As the story goes, the evil tuurngait that had sought refuge in Snædis’ body, attracted by her tears and unhappiness, continued to live in the severed fingers. They were alive, those blind, evil stumps, hiding in the crevices of the canoe, behind fishing nets and rods. A sinister pest.”

  Fridrik smiled. The children were quiet, not wanting to spoil the tension by making even the faintest sound. Honey’s eyes sparkled, golden in the shimmering glow of the flames, and suddenly her pupils stood still.

  There was that sound again. Creaking snow. Footsteps. And a muffled cry. Rong.

  “Rong.” Honey sprang to her feet. “I heard Rong!”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Maybe a prank!”

  “She’s probably talking to herself.”

  “Just listen!”

  “Don’t listen! She nearly drowned, so she’s brain dead!”

  “No she isn’t!”

  “Yes she is!”

  Fridrik Helgarsson reached for his rifle. It was hanging on the wall next to a collection of chunky knives.

  “What is it, sir? D’you hear something?”

  “Can Rong come in?”

  “What happened to the girl, sir? Finish the story first.”

  The teacher cleared his throat, his rifle hung over his shoulder. “I suppose Rong’ll be all right for a little while. She needs to learn discipline.”

  “How about Fern, sir? She called me a northern dwarf!”

  “She called me a gipsy!”

  “James called me a Down-baby!”

  “That’s enough.” Fridrik clasped his hands together in annoyance. When everyone was quiet, he closed his eyes and his voice deepened, until the ancient tone was back. “Snædis haunted her father’s boat, holding over it a curse so heavy that even the man’s dogs stayed away. They bristled up, bared their fangs, but Tonraq was too upset, his mind too far away to notice. He had killed his daughter, and she came to see him in the night. In his dreams, she was beautiful once more, with bright eyes and her skin glowing like snow. More and more he wanted to take the hand she offered, a hand where the severed fingers had grown miraculously back…”

  “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I do.”

  “When I die, I hope I turn into one. Haunting people you don’t like would be fun!”

  “Rong will be a ghost; she ticks all the boxes: she’s ugly, mean and she likes to scare people!”

  “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead!”

  “She’s not dead yet!”

  “Sir, what happened to Tonraq? Shut up, everyone!”

  “Soon after, when Tonraq went out in his boat to hunt walruses, the ice closed in on him. He was sucked into the sea.”

  The roar of the wind, the soft hiss of the stove, and the murmurs of the excited children died off, and all Honey could hear was the raging of the stormy sea, and the squeaking of the toppling boat, and the drumming of Tonraq’s heartbeats, like a time bomb ticking away the last seconds of his wretched life: tick-tock, tick-tock, tock…tock…tock…

  “ One moment he was in his boat, looking out at the giant icebergs, and the next, his body was breaking the smooth surface of the water, his hand resurfacing for a few seconds to clutch the edge of the boat in the same way that Snædis’ hand had gripped it only weeks back.”

  “Karma. What you give is what you get,” Zachary commented.

  Honey didn’t really believe in karma, because it kind of hinted at the world being fair in the end, and that was as far from the truth as she could possibly imagine. If karma was a true theory, though, she didn’t much look forward to having her food poisoned with laxatives when she was on a date, although this would probably never happen for the next decade, and it could easily be sorted by never having a date.

  “He was falling, plummeting through the cold darkness, spinning around and around as if caught in the middle of a cyclone. Down and down he sank, his boat upside down above him, the net swaddling him. It was then when he saw the fingers, and the grotesque stump they were twirling towards. The stump was crinkled and blotchy, and Tonraq gasped when he recognised the deformed hand of his daughter.” Fridrik paused for breath. “Then, something rose from the bottom of the sea, smashing the boat into pieces. Tonraq swallowed salty seawater as he screamed. Snædis, ten times bigger than he had known her in real life, her eyes glowing red, her hair flowing around her, her mouth twisted with glee, was before him. She had the teeth of a shark: two rows, sharper than the arrows her father hunted with. She swallowed him in one gulp, along with some chunks of ice, like a drink on the rocks. Gulp. And that was the end of the old hunter Tonraq. He was never remembered. Word got round about what happened, and none of the villagers went near his hut. The place was deserted for so long that it became a lair for wild animals and, maybe, ghosts. Poor Tonraq didn’t really die, though. He continued to live in the hell fire t
hat burned in his daughter’s belly. But Snædis didn’t stop there. Her hatred of men was such that she hunted down her husband, the former apprentice Atka and killed him in a very unpleasant way.”

  “What way?” Clementine wanted to know.

  There were footsteps outside, Honey was sure of it. For a moment, she wondered if good old Santa was coming to check on them. It was way past their bedtime, and Fridrik could be in trouble for keeping them awake.

  “Well, the legend doesn’t really say. It leaves it to our imagination. Snædis continued to drown sailors and explorers, anyone who happened to be in her path, pulling their boats into the sea or opening crevices and dragging them inside with their dogsleds. You have to watch out for Snædis, and always acknowledge her by making a small offering or praying to her.”

  “Pray to a demon?”

  “We pray to the ones we fear, demons or gods.”

  “People can be food, too,” said Erasmus. “Children in Santaville were given to the goddess as offerings, weren’t they?”

  Honey was stunned. “Human sacrifice?”

  “Not exactly, but sometimes, children die, don’t they, and so they’re already dead when…”

  Honey had stopped listening because there, at the back of the igloo, sitting in the shadows, his unkempt hair falling over his sad face, was a boy she’d seen before.

  They say that very significant things come in threes, but they often come in fours.

  So, that winter night in a makeshift home in the wild Arctic, three other things happened.

  Fridrik Helgarsson pointed his loaded rifle at the children, who sat still, too frightened to scream.

  The noise outside boomed louder, louder, and louder still, until the snow walls caved in on them with a shower of ice dust.

  And the last and most terrifying thing arrived as a thunderbolt, when Fridrik pulled the trigger.

  17. An Intruding Visitor

  For the next moments, everything was a blur. Honey had no idea where she was, whether still in the igloo, or out in the raging wind. All she knew was that she swirled around and around, like a flake of snow in a globe.