Book: The Eternal Maiden

T >> T. Everett Harre >> The Eternal Maiden




"The mouth of Annadoah is very red--red as a wound in the throat of a
deer . . ." and then sibilantly--"softly beats the heart of Annadoah
against the bosom of Olafaksoah." Then every fibre of him burned and
ached.

One day the radiant valley darkened . . . Out of the sky, as if rising
from worlds beyond the horizon, a cyclopean phantasm of clouds took
form. Rising higher and higher toward the zenith, ominous and
sinister, it gathered substance and spread across the glowing heavens
like a film of smoke . . . It took upon itself the awful semblance of
a mighty thing, half-beast, half-man. As if to strike, it slowly
lifted the likeness of a gigantic arm shrouded with tattered
clouds . . . The baleful shade shut off the sunlight from the
earth . . . Ootah's heart quailed . . . Terror gripped him . . . For
he saw--what few men had ever beheld--the shadow of _Perdlugssuaq_, the
Great Evil. Finally he found voice.

"O most dreadful of the _tornarssuit_ (spirits)," he called, grovelling
on his knees, "smite me! Smite me!"

During the tragic days of his isolation the full realization of all
that he had lost had come to Ootah. He fed upon the memory of
Annadoah's face. He remembered how, with the vision of that face
before him, he had excelled in the hunts and games, and for many moons
had felt confident of winning her. He dwelt for hours upon her
stunning rejection, of how she clung to the white man; he visioned with
heart corroding bitterness her days with Olafaksoah, and he burned with
unnameable anguished pangs as he conjured her nights. Now, the
violence of his grief exhausted, he invoked death.

Expectant, fearful, with closed eyes, he waited.

In the valley a storm gathered, and the low whine of the winds Ootah
believed to be the breath of the descending terror. The air became
unbearably colder as the dreaded creator of death, darkness and ice
descended. The taut suspense was terrible. Finally Ootah reached the
limits of human endurance--merciful unconsciousness blotted out the
long agony.

When he recovered the storm had passed. Scores of birds, driven
against the rocks by the terrible winds, lay dead at the entrance of
the cave. Surely the Great Evil had struck, but he lived. Hunger
stirred within him and he fell upon the birds.

Later he sought game in the lower valleys. He had lances and bows and
arrows with him. He found an inland vale, where a patch of green grass
was exposed despite a recent fall of snow--there a herd of musk oxen
grazed. He drew his bow of bone and sinew. One fell after the first
quiver of his arrow. His skill was marvellous. He had struck a vital
spot. He finished his killing of the fallen animal with a lance. He
feasted upon the raw meat, and carried away with him up to his eyrie
enough to last for many days.

The sun meanwhile sank lower and lower; there were long hours of
twilight; snow storms came; the cold increased. Ootah felt the first
whip of approaching winter. Ootah's spirit melted. Disquieting
messages came in the cold winds and darkening clouds. His heart beat
quickly at what the frightened birds told him. Olafaksoah, they said,
struck Annadoah. As she lay on the ground he kicked her. In the
snow-driven wind Ootah heard the echo of her heart-broken weeping. He
revoked the curses he had uttered; he cursed his own weakness whereby
he had invoked harm to her. Then in the winds Ootah heard the beat of
drums. In the clouds he saw the white men dancing with the Eskimo
maidens. Day after day they danced--day after day Annadoah wept.
Olafaksoah had become wearied. Disappointed in the failure to secure
greater supplies, he vented his impatience upon Annadoah. Cruelly he
bruised her little hands, he mocked and jeered her when she pleaded
with him. In fits of anger he often struck her. Finally, one day, in
the cloud phantasmagoria, Ootah saw Olafaksoah reeling from the strange
red-gold water the white men drank. He entered Annadoah's tent. She
crouched, terrified, in a corner. With him were three of his rough
blond companions. They staggered--and in the winds they sang.
Olafaksoah pointed consentingly to Annadoah. One of the men attempted
to embrace her. Then she rose defiantly and did what few Eskimo women
ever dared. She smote the man's leering face and, sobbing, sank on her
knees before Olafaksoah. He roared out things the Eskimos do not
understand. "_Goddlmighty_!" and more awful words. His fist
descended. In the winds Ootah heard Annadoah scream and call his name.

That day he descended from the mountains.


Much that Ootah conjured in his mind, or imagined he saw in the clouds,
really happened. Whether he actually sensed these things by some
wonderful power of clairvoyance, which the natives themselves
believe--or whether he just accurately guessed what occurred, I do not
know. But of this I can tell:

By that strange contradictoriness of the feminine--much the same all
the world over--by that inherent, inborn desire of subjugation to the
brutal and domineering in the male, Annadoah had given herself
unreservedly to Olafaksoah. At the sound of his firm step she
trembled. His hard, brutal embraces caused her heart to flutter with
joy. At first he told her he would take her with him to the south.
Annadoah believed him. Then he changed his mind, and said she must
wait until the next season for him. She silently acquiesced. She
called upon all her simple arts to please him. Carefully she oiled her
face and made the golden skin soft by rubbing it with the fur of
animals; with a broken comb, left with her mother years before by a
party of explorers, she combed her long, black and wonderful hair and
elaborately arranged it behind her. About her forehead she bound a
narrow fillet of fine, furry hares' skin. She donned new garments; her
_ahttee_ was made of the delicate skins of birds, her hood of white fox
hides. To all this Olafaksoah seemed blind; at times, with coarse,
half-maudlin tenderness, he caressed her, called her his "little girl"
and promised to "come back next spring." But Annadoah was useful to
him otherwise.

During the days when Olafaksoah and his men were hunting or gathering
furs and ivory at nearby villages along the coast, Annadoah sewed skins
into garments for Olafaksoah and his men. Sometimes she went with
Olafaksoah on his expeditions and employed her coquetry upon the
susceptible men of the migrating tribes to secure bargains for him.
For a box of matches she would cajole from her people ivories worth
hundreds of dollars. She persuaded them to rob themselves of the
walrus meat and blubber they had gathered for winter and give them to
her master in exchange for tin cups and ammunition, all of which would
be useless when the night came on. To Ootah she gave no thought until
one day the white man struck her. As he vented his rage at not
securing more riches upon her during the ensuing days, her heart more
and more instinctively turned to the youth "with the heart of a woman"
whom she had rejected. When Olafaksoah brought his companions to the
tent her soul rose in rebellion. In the camp there was an orgy. None
of the married men, who for a slight consideration were willing to
permit their wives to dance with the traders, objected to the drunken
carousal. Ribald songs sounded strange in this region of the world.
Yet after Olafaksoah had kicked her and left her lying in the tent,
high above the sound of the sailors' doggerel songs, Annadoah
frantically called aloud:

"Ootah! Ootah!"

For a long time she lay in a stupor. Her face was bleeding. When she
regained consciousness the white chief and his men had left. They had
taken with them all available furs, ivories and provisions in the
village.

At the door of her tent Annadoah stood, dry-eyed, her hair dishevelled.
To the south she yearningly extended her arms. Her heart still ached
toward the man who had lied to her and deserted her. She was left, a
divorced woman, alone among her people, with no one to care for her
during the long winter night.

As she stood there the light of the descending sun, which was now far
below the rim of the horizon, paled. Driven by a frigid wind, howling
raucously from the mountains, great snow clouds piled along the sky
line. Out at sea the tips of the waves became capped--leprous white
arms seemed reaching hopelessly for help from the depths of the sea.
The sky blackened. The increasing gusts tore at the frail tents. The
wolf-dogs crouched low to the ground and whined. A tremor of anxiety
filled the hearts of the tribe. Presently the clouds were torn to
shreds and whipped furiously over the sky. In the thickening grey
gloom Annadoah watched the men of the tribe fastening their sleds and
belongings to the earth . . . mere dark shadows. Above her tent,
tossed by the wind in its eddying flight, a raven screamed.

Annadoah finally entered and threw herself upon the rocky floor of her
dwelling. As the furies were loosed outside her voice rose and fell
with the wailing grief and wrath of the wind. "Olafaksoah!
Olafaksoah!" But only the hoarse evil call of the black bird answered
during lulls in the storm. And Annadoah heard it, with a sinking of
her cold heart, as the voice of fate.




IV

"_'Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?' she
asked, simply. . . 'The teeth of the wolves are in my heart' . . ._"


Desolate and alone, Annadoah walked along a crevice in the
land-adhering ice of the polar sea.

The prolonged grey evening of the arctic was resolving into the long
dark, and the Eskimo women, as is their custom at this time of the
year, had gathered along the last lane of open water--which writhed
like a sable snake over the ice--to celebrate that period of mourning
which precedes the dreadful night, and to give their last messages and
farewells to the unhappy and disconsolate souls of the drowned, who,
when the ice closed, should for many moons be imprisoned in the sea.

An unearthly twilight, not unlike that dim greenish luminescence which
filters through emerald panes in the high nave of a great cathedral,
lay upon the earth. The forms of the mourning women were strangely
magnified in the curious semi-luminance and, as their bodies moved to
and fro in the throes of their grief, they might have been, for all
they seemed, shadowy ghosts bemoaning their sins in some weird
purgatory of the dead.

In the northern sky a faint quivering streak of light, resembling the
reflection of far away lightning, played--the first herald of the
aurora. To the south a gash of reddish orange, like the tip of a
bloody-gleaming knife-blade, severed the thick purple clouds. There
was a faint reflected glimmer on the unfrozen southern sea.

Snow had fallen on the land, igloos had been built. Over the village
and against the frozen promontories loomed a majestic yet fearful
shadowy shape--that of a giant thing, swathed in purple, its arm
uplifted threateningly--the spectre of suffering and famine.

This wraith, brought into being by the gathering blackness in the
gulches and crevices of the mountains, filled the hearts of the natives
with unwonted foreboding.

Profound silence prevailed.

Already the sea for miles along the shore was frozen. The open water
lay at so great a distance from the land that the sound of the waves
was stilled. The birds had disappeared. Even the voices of the
sinister black guillemots and ravens were heard no more.

Annadoah's sobs rose softly over the ice.

"Spirit of my mother, thou who wast carried by the storm-winds into the
sea! Hear me! Annadoah loved one Olafaksoah, a chief from the south;
for him the heart of Annadoah became very great within her. And now
the heart of Annadoah aches. For he hath gone to the south. And not
until the birds sing in spring will he return. And Annadoah is left
alone. _Ookiah_ comes with the lash of wicked walrus thongs, and there
is no blubber buried outside Annadoah's shelter. Neither is there oil.
And the couch of Annadoah is cold--so very cold. Yea, listen, spirit
of my mother, and bring Olafaksoah back, that he may bruise Annadoah's
hands, that he may cast Annadoah to the ground and crush Annadoah if he
wills with his feet! Io-oh-h!"

She moaned this in a curious sing-song sort of chant. Over the ice the
voices of the other women rose, and each, to her departed relatives and
friends who had died in the sea, told about the important incidents of
the year and the misgivings for the winter, in a varying crooning song.

Annadoah passed Tongiguaq, who jumped and danced in a frenzy of grief.
Tongiguaq had lost three children; two had been drowned, and a new-born
baby, three months before, was born maimed. According to the custom of
the people, a fatherless defective child is doomed to death. So
rigorous is their struggle to survive, so limited the means of
existence, that a tribe cannot bear the burden of a single unnecessary
life. So in keeping with this Lycurgean law, worked out by instinct
after the stern experience of ages, a rope had been twisted about the
neck of Tongiguaq's baby and it had been cast into the sea.

All this the weeping woman told in her chant to the departed. When she
saw Annadoah approaching, she paused.

"Here cometh the she-wolf that hath devoured the food of our tribe,"
she wailed, intense bitterness in her voice. "Yea, by her cajolery she
persuaded our men to give unto the traders from the south our precious
food. And now we starve! Yea, she hath robbed us. She is as the
breath of winter, as the blackness of the night."

Along the line of wailing women Tongiguaq's reproach was suddenly taken
up. As Annadoah walked by them they did a strange thing. The natives
fear their dead--they never even mention their names. For possessed of
great power are the dead, and they can wreak, as befits their moods,
unlimited good or ill. Believing they could persuade the dead to array
themselves against Annadoah, the women took up Tongiguaq's denunciation
and reviled Annadoah in their weird chant to the departed. Annadoah
wrung her hands and wept. Bitter and jealous because the white chief
had selected her during his stay, their bosoms full of the harbored ill
will and envy of years because she had been the most desired by the
young men of the tribes, the women now invoked curses upon the deserted
and unprotected girl through the medium of the incorporeal powers.

The dread of it filled poor Annadoah's heart. She quailed at the
bitter execrations called upon her head. Instinctively her hand
reached through the opening of her _ahttee_ and she clutched at a piece
of old half-decayed skin. This was a remnant of her mother's father's
clothing, a amulet given her as a child, when saliva from the maternal
grandfather's mouth had been rubbed on her lips, and which she believed
protected her from ill fortune.

"Io-ooh! io-oh!" Annadoah moaned in pain.

The women forgot their own tragedies. They forgot the messages they
were imparting to the dead. Directly they might not be able to invoke
any effective curse upon Annadoah; but well they knew, indeed, the
awful power of the disembodied. And to the dead in the cold shuddering
sea they told how Annadoah had played with the men, how she had
betrayed them to the white traders, cajoling them to rob themselves of
food, and how, because of her, famine now confronted the tribe; they
told of the long devotion of Ootah, the desired of all the maidens, and
how Annadoah had rejected him.

Possessed by a frantic contagion of released rage, their voices rose
and fell in a frightful chanting malediction. In the weird gloom their
vague forms leaped about, their arms writhing like black things in the
air as they called the names of their individual dead to hear.

As their voices approached a crescendo they danced with increasing
hysteria. Some shrieked and fell to the ice groaning, their bodies
twisting in convulsions. Others laughed madly--laughed at the
dreadful horrors with which the dead would smite Annadoah. Losing all
control they were carried away by their delirious malevolence; their
voices reached a high shrill pitch. Their arms clawed the air.
Through the dead curses were invoked upon Olafaksoah, the great trader,
who had cowed them and robbed them. They begged of the _tornarssuit_
that he might be rended by wolves, that his body might rot unburied,
and that the spirits of his limbs might be severed and be compelled to
wander in restless torment forever. They called anathemas upon his
unborn children; and of their dead, who should be imprisoned in
darkness in the depths of the sea, they furiously invoked upon
Annadoah's offspring the curse of the long night . . . Their voices
shuddered over the ice as they demanded that most dreadful of all
dreaded evils--that Annadoah's child might be born as blind to light
and the joy of light as the dead in the sea.

Annadoah crouched in frantic terror upon the ice. From the Greenland
highlands a moaning echo answered the women. To Annadoah the hill
spirits had joined in cursing her--all nature seemed to upbraid her.
Tremblingly, with a last lingering hope, she crept on her knees to the
edge of the lane of lapping black water. She whispered a pathetic plea
to _Nerrvik_, the gentle queen of the sea, whose hand had been severed
by those she loved, and who felt great tenderness for men. Annadoah
listened.

"Thou art cold of heart to him who loves thee, Annadoah," a voice
seemed to whisper in the lapping waves. "Thou art beautiful as the
sun, but as _Sukh-eh-nukh_ shall thou be eternally sad. Thou shalt
lose because of thine own self the greatest of all treasures. That is
fate."

Far out on the open ocean spectral fire-flecks flashed like mast-lights
on swinging ships. These mysterious jack o' lanterns of the arctic are
caused by the crashing together of icebergs covered with phosphorescent
algae.

To Annadoah the dead were lighting their oil lamps for the long night.
As she watched the weird illuminations a paralyzing fear of the vague
unknown world beyond the gate of death filled her, and her blood ran
cold. She felt utterly crushed, utterly helpless, and utterly
deserted, both in the affection of the living and that of the dead.
She uttered a despairing cry and fell back in a cold faint. The women
drew about as if to leap upon her.

A momentary wavering of the northern lights revealed her face grown sad
and wan. The women stood still, however, for approaching in the
distance they heard a man's voice calling:

"Avatarpay--avatarpay,
akorgani--akorgani,
anagpungah . . ."

Those mystic words, believed to give magic speed to the one who utters
them, came in the well known tones of Ootah. A joyous cry went up from
the women.

When Annadoah opened her eyes Ootah was bending over her.

"I was held in the mountains, Annadoah. The hill spirits were at war.
The snow came, the storm spirits loosed the ice. I fell into an abyss
. . . I lay asleep . . . for very long. It seemed like many moons. I
could barely walk when I awoke. I had no food. I became very weak,
but I uttered the _serrit_ (magic formula;), those words of the days
when man's sap was stronger, and the good winds bore me hither."

A mystical silver light had risen over the horizon, and in the soft
glimmer Annadoah saw that the face of Ootah was haggard and drawn. His
voice was weak.

"The sun hath gone," murmured Ootah. "The long night comes. Ootah
heard thy cry and has come to care for thee, Annadoah."

His voice was a caress. His face sank dangerously near the face of the
girl. She panted into full consciousness and struggled to free
herself. Ootah helped her to her feet.

"The winter comes . . . and famine," muttered Annadoah, hopelessly.
She pointed to the gaunt, hollow-eyed shadow, empurpled-robed, against
the frozen cliffs. "My heart is cold--I am resigned to death."

"But I have come to give furs for thy couch," murmured Ootah, a
beseeching look in his eyes. "Thou wilt need shelter--I shall build
thee an igloo. Thou wilt need food--I shall share all that I have with
thee and seek more. Thou wilt need oil for heat. I shall get this for
thee."

Annadoah made a passionate gesture. A curious perverse resentment for
the youth's insistent devotion rose in her heart.

"Nay," she said, warding him away. "My shadow yearns only to the south
. . . the far, far south."

"Thy soul yearns to the south--forsooth, will I all the more cherish
thee. Thou art frail, and the teeth of _ookiah_ (winter) are sharp."

"The teeth of _ookiah_ are not so sharp as the teeth in my heart,"
sobbed Annadoah.

Ootah felt a great pity for her--a pity and tenderness greater than his
jealousy.

"But I shall teach thee to forget, Annadoah."

"I cannot forget. Even as the ravens in their winter shelter dream of
the summer sun, so my soul grows warm, in all my loneliness, in the
memory of Olafaksoah."

Ootah groaned with an access of misery. Frenziedly he caught her hands
and pressed them. Annadoah struggled. His words beat hotly in her
ears:

"But I want thee. My blood burns at the thought of thee. It is
against the custom of the tribe that thou shouldst be alone. Thou must
take a husband."

"No--no," she shook her head.

"But some one must care for thee. I love thee. Thou wilt forget
Olafaksoah. Thy hurt will heal."

Annadoah shook her head piteously.

"Do the gulls that freeze to death in winter fly in springtime?" she
asked, simply.

Ootah did not reply.

"He was strong," she murmured. "His hands bruised me. He was cruel.
He hurt me. Yet he gave my heart joy. My heart is dying--dying as the
birds die. I feel the teeth of the wolves in my heart."

Ootah pointed to the women. The soft crooning of their voices reached
him as they resumed the dismal dirge of their own woes.

"They hate thee," he said. He pointed to the constellation of the
Great Bear which glittered faintly in the sky. "Yonder _qiligtussat_
(the barking dogs) would rend the gentle bear. Thou rememberest the
old men's tale. A woman ran away from her family. She was false at
heart. The good mother bear protected her and gave her food. But
yearning for her husband, she returned and to gain his favor betrayed
the hiding place of the mother-bear and her young. Then the husband
drove out with sledges. His dogs attacked the bear. But they all
became stars and went up into the sky. Even as the bear was good to
the false woman so hast thou made clothing for those yonder, and now
they would as the dogs rend thee. Thou needest a husband."

"They would be bitter to thee," she argued.

"Perchance, but I would protect thee. I love thee."

Annadoah shook her head. "The teeth of the wolves are in my heart,"
she said. "And I no longer care."

"Yonder _Nalagssartoq_ (he who waits and listens) bends to hear thy
reply." Ootah pointed to Venus, the brightest of the stars--to the
Eskimos an old man who waits by a blow-hole in the heavenly icefloes
and listens for the breathing of seals. "Thou wilt come to Ootah, who
loves thee? Answer, Annadoah! Ootah listens."

He soothed her little hands. A wondrous light burned in his eyes.
Every fibre of his being yearned for her. But Annadoah's hands were
cold, her eyes were sullenly turned away. In her heart a vague fear of
him, a resentment of his very love, stirred.

"My shadow yearns to the south," she repeated pathetically. "I shall
wait. Perhaps he will come as he said when the spring hunting sings."
In her heart she feared that he would not.

Ootah in utter anguish dropped her hands. Annadoah sadly turned away.
Falling to his knees on the ice, he covered his face with his arms.
The sound of his heartbroken sobbing was drowned in the funereal chant
of the women as, in a long procession, they passed near him on their
way to the shore.

When he raised his head, the rim of the moon, a great quarter-disc of
silver, peeped above the horizon. A mystical melancholy light flooded
the gloriously gleaming desolate white world. The ice floes glistened
as with the dust of diamonds. The ice covered faces of the
promontories glowed with the sheen of burnished metal. The clouds
became tremulous masses of argent phosphorescence. Far away the
women's chants subsided. One by one they joined the men in their
grotesque dances in the distant igloos. Ootah was left alone.

He gazed long upon the pearly lamp of heaven. The subtle sorrow of
this world of magical moonlight filled his soul. Then the hopelessness
and tragedy of all it symbolized were unfolded to him, and, extending
his arms in a vague wild sympathy, in a vague wild despair, he moaned:

"Desolate and lonely moon! Oh, desolate and unhappy moon! . . .
Desolate and unhappy is the heart of Ootah!"

Far away, in her shelter, Annadoah heard the sobbing voice of Ootah.
And nearer, in an igloo where the men beat drums and danced, she heard
the voice of Maisanguaq laughing evilly. Of late Maisanguaq had gibed
her with her desertion; he was bitter toward her. But nothing mattered
to Annadoah. She thought of the blond man in the south, and the
pleading of Ootah. As she heard his weeping, she shook her head sadly.
She beat her breast and muttered over and over again:

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