The Ice People

A captivating short story with a strong message. For people who simply want a normal, but powerful reading experience. Explore the Inuit Ice People...

“The Ice People”

Was it a wolf that fluttered across the ice, so softly, like a falling leaf? Or was it a dog, carved through natural selection, to serve as an eerie reminder of the ancient past? Bright blue eyes bulged inside its head, white and gray pattern lay across the animal's body, rough, but orderly fur coats its’ body. So quickly it passes the eye, of the man looking out from behind it. Reaching out with it’s wide paws, taking a stride with each breath. Cold air seeped into its mouth, like a heater, warmth seares outward. It darted quickly onto the breaking ice, its’ jaws sunk into flesh.

The beast, with sleek gray splotchy skin wrangled back and forth. It moaned in disparity, but soon the others were upon him. Tato came forth, spear in hand, and looked the creature in its’ eyes. So deeply he seemed to stare, looking for a sign of emotion. The beast began to wail, though the frenzy did not conjure prevailing human emotions in stern Tato. Into the seals’ neck went the spear, bloody falling down from the wound, freezing onto the ice.

Behind, strong Tato, the wolf-dog hunched down, eyes glaring sharply at the meal to come. Tato ripped off the hanging blubber, let loose from the wound whole, and swiftly threw it to the dog. “Be gone, get. You’ve done your job”. Like a hired assassin, the dog tooks its’ meat, but go it did not. It lay flat down on the ice, and began to chew deep into the tough fat. Tato took out his knife, carved out of the bone of whale, and slowly began to dissect the fallen being. Under his breath he muttered a prayer “Ice and sky, moon and sun, forgive me”. His wife came forth, a young child tugging at her hand, “Tato, he is young, why didn't you tell me this was a hunt?”.  Tato did not answer, instead he stood by the seals side and began to prepare its’ meat for the journey home, all the while humming prayers.  “Tato, perhaps we shall go”. Tato at this time got up and spoke somberly “Juni, my dear if you are to go, leave. Give to me the child. He must know what exactly the earth has given us. He must know what it costs to keep him alive”.

Juni walked away, light bouncing off her from the reflective white ice at her feet. The delicate flower of a child was left with Tato, his dark brown eyes glinting into the deep blue eyes of the great figure above him. “My son, come here”. Waddling over like a lost penguin, he slid down on his knees by the carcass. “You see the skin on this seal”, Tato spoke softly all the while removing the layer of fatty hide from the meat below. The youngster Uki, only nodded. “That is what makes your cloth”, dried skin fashioned gloves for Uki’s hands, a jacket with thin hairs still visible. “See for yourself”, Tato handed the youngster the knife, it fumbled out of his small five year old hands. Tato grabbed the knife with his hand, and began to carve the skin, until it was completely off. “Now we take out the guts, to leave us with the edible meat”, Uki’s face turned sour as the bladder and intestines were removed. “Look not upon death with disgust, but with necessity”. Once done Tato threw the guts to the dog, who consumed it all, but too happily. Tato walked with the heavy seal meat, and skin on his shoulder. The little penguin of a child waddling behind him back home.

Fifteen years later, Uki looked back on that memory as he looked across the old, splintering wooden table to his mother. Her gray eyes, looked like melting ice, as water trickled from them. “Don’t cry, the earth has him”. Juni looked past her son, and out to snow packed wall surrounding her, in the small ice hut. She stood up for a second, and began to pound her fists against the wall, blood trickled from her knuckles. “Mom, stop, pleases, mom”. She broke out in hysteria, “Gone. Gone. He's not, he won't come back”. “Mom stop” Uki screeched, this time grabbing his deteriorating mother with all his might. Slowly, she sunk back into reality, and the two of them embraced in a sad hug. “I will find him mom, for you, for me”.

Uki ran out the front door, to an ice stash hidden in a dugout hole covered by a thin piece of wood. Three dogs looked at him expectantly “Not for you, for me”. The skinny dogs got the idea, and sulked back into rest. Juni burst out to him, falling back into hysteria, “My child, don't. Don't leave, my Uki. I will live without him, but I will surely die without my son”. Uki looked up to his mom, until she fell down upon her knees, she began begging “Please, no. Don’t do it, please”. Watery eyes broke into tears, but were quickly brought back. “I am a man, and I must save my father”. “You are my son”. “And this is why I must do this”, without another moment for either of them to grieve, he set off for his father, knowing not where he would be.

Trailing behind Uki, was his dog Kito, bright eyes pointing forward, asking for nothing, but companionship. Uki looked back and smiled upon seeing Kito, if he were to have a tail it would wag like his dog’s. He then turned his head back further, his mother was praying once more, to the world around them, hoping it would not serve them a fate similar to her beloved husband. Uki could not look back much longer, he could only look forward, at the ice capped hills, that hid behind them breaking ice. Somewhere far off was his father, drifting away on a patch of ice, dead or alive. Uki knew for one sole reason, Tato’s dog came back badly hurt and near death, as a testament that something out their attacked him and his owner. The dog upon fulfilling its’ duty died. The dog was hidden under a large tarp, it would be buried upon thawing.

Uki could only keep one thought in his head as he climbed up the steep hills. “This land does not care for me, yet it is beautiful”. Into the sky he seemed to reach, Kito surely behind him. Wind whipped at his face, and every once in awhile it cracked him down to his knees. Uki, was being broken slowly by the hills around him. Off in the distance a snow capped peak rumbled, as snow flew down its side, and to the ground below. Jagged rocks jutted out from the snowy landscape, when visible were always accommodated by ice. The stars shone down, as if to mock him at the ease to which they rise and fall with the natural cycle. Yet Uki knew, his father was out there, he would be found.

Kito began to bark upon their descent down the lonesome mountain. A white fox trailed not so far away, navigating the steep terrain as a child would hopscotch. The only difference is that this creature did not make a mistake, it acted as if a mistake would mean its’ end. Surely it could, for a broken leg in temperatures falling far below zero, mean death without help, always. “Calm”, Uki brushed his hand down Kito’s back, and began to pick up the pace. For him the fox was only a reminder, of the larger white creature that truly roamed this land.

Into sunrise Uki walked, and by this time he was farther than he deemed believable. No rest for the weary, Uki took out a frozen piece of cured meat from his cloth bag and began sucking on it until it became chewable. He passed a smaller piece of meat onto Kito, who although tired, accepted it happily. The ice met them like a wall, which came to Uki’s perception as soon as he finished his hunk of meat. Lying a mile out he could see a stain of blood, across the a detached sheet of ice. Uki broke into sprint, Kito lie at the shore waiting.

Hopping from ice patch to ice patch, each sheet rocked back and forth. Uki could see seals, the ones his father came to catch wobble off the slippery sides. The sun made clear reality, miles of visible ocean and ice, and a stain of red sunk into one single sheet. Uki would not accept this, he jumped further onto destabilizing ice, every once in awhile, his boot meeting the cold water’s grasp of death. In fifteen minutes he was there, at the site of the grave incident, but the tears had met his eyes in ten.

“Father, the beast who did it I will slay. Why leave a body so scourged, but not eaten”. Uki looked down upon the mangled corpse, Tato’s eyes were upon and staring into the sky above. A leg was missing, and gashes were imprinted across every other inch of body. To shreds he had been turned, grinded up like meat. Uki, saw next to him the skull of a seal, left as an indicator as to what happened. “Attacked you were father, by the great white bear. Your kill stolen from you”. Uki dropped down and grasped his father's broken hand, tears and screams came from him. Anger boiled inside him, like steam in a pot, and he was about to break. But, before his heart opened to the world, before he plotted his revenge, he felt something. Sleek bone narrowed into a sharp blade, capable of harboring death. It was Tato’s carving knife.

Uki, did not feel pain, he instead was brought back to his childhood memories, his inner peace. He remembered there was writing on the knife, that as a child he could not read, nor would his father in later years let him know. “You can know when I am dead” Tato would always joke. A smile crept across Uki’s face, meeting with the salty tears still flowing. Uki read the inscription “There is the Earth and there is me, we are one, happily”. Uki knew what he had to do, he walked away. Uki left the body, and the head of the seal, with the earth. Revenge on his life would be a mockery to his father’s life, his anger subsided. Animals kill of necessity, not of desire. The great white bear must have needed the seal meat, as much as his father. Right?

Uki made the long walk home, with his dog by his side. He was near dehydration and death by the time he collapsed into his sealskin hammock. Juni came to him, she knew what he had seen from the disparity of his expression upon entering the house. After sleeping for a few hours, Uki woke up with a smile on his face. He came to his mother and planted a kiss on her cheek, she looked up as if he was insulting the death of his father. Uki handed her the knife, she smiled deeply, happiness resonated upon seeing the timeless inscription. “He is where he always was. Where we are right now”. Uki began, together in harmony mother and son finished the last word “Earth”.