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Page 39
Entering her igloo two or three at a time they reproachfully recited in
chiding chants to Annadoah the story of her life; how her worthy mother
and august grand-parents had died, hoping she would choose a husband
from the hunters, and how she had refused all who sought her; they
told, with reiterant detail, how she had caused quarrels among the men,
and sent many of the warriors in their competitive hunts to death; and
how, finally, when Ootah, the bravest of the hunters, wanted to wed
her, she had chosen a foreign man, who deserted her and left her a
burden on the tribe. Sometimes they shook her roughly.
To the native women the brutality and virility of the men from the
south exert a potent appeal; and the fact that Olafaksoah had chosen
Annadoah many moons since still made their mouth taste bitter. This
jealousy rankling within them, they now with angry exultation took
occasion to mock and abuse her. The girl lay still and did not reply.
Her heart indeed seemed like a bird lying dead in wintertime.
Then one of three women who stood by Annadoah's couch leaned forward
and whispered a terrible thing. The others looked at the girl and
fear, mingled with hatred, shone in their eyes.
"Thou sayest this thing," said one, "how dost thou know?"
And the other, pointing accusingly to the girl who lay before them, her
face hidden in her arms, replied:
"The night my baby died . . . I heard her voice."
They stood in silence, rigid, implacable, bitter.
During the latter dark days a terrible calamity had made itself felt
among the tribe. This was the death of many of the newly born.
Outside the igloos during the past months, as the babies had come, the
number of tiny mounds had increased, and when the aurora flooded the
skies heart-broken mothers could be seen weeping over these graves of
snow. It is not uncommon in this land for babies to die at birth or
come prematurely; but the number of recent deaths and tragic accidents
to expectant mothers was unprecedented. This was undoubtedly due to
the depleted vitality of the starving mothers--but to the natives there
was some other, some unaccountable, some sinister, cause. In their
hearts they experienced, each time a new mound rose white in the
moonlight, that tremulous terror of a people who instinctively fear
extinction. The grief of a mother was for a personal loss; to the
tribe each death meant an even greater, more significant loss, a thing
of more than personal consequence.
And when, out of the dim regions of her brain, one of the women now
conjured the terrible thing which she whispered concerning Annadoah, it
was little wonder the other two regarded the girl as a thing hateful
and accursed.
"_She stealeth souls!_"
Nothing more frightful could have been said.
"Yea, the night my baby died I heard her voice," repeated Inetlia
angrily.
And the other, among the superstitious voices in her memory, found it
not difficult to recall a similar thing:
"Methinks I heard her sing the night my own little one came--too soon."
And the third whispered:
"She is as the hungry hill spirit who feasts upon the entrails of the
dead. Yea, she carrieth off the souls of the children. _Ioh_!
_Iooh_!"
Their voices rose in a maniacal cry of terror and denunciation.
Annadoah rose. Clasping her hands, she demanded piteously:
"Why . . . sayest ye this of me?"
And they shrieked:
"Thou stealest souls! By the _angakoq_ shalt thou be accursed!"
"No, no! No, no!" the girl pleaded, falling on her knees and weeping.
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