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Updated: June 11, 2025
Their voices rose with eager, glad calls to vengeance; they demanded the life of Annadoah's child without delay. The shrill howl of their dogs was mingled in that vindictive, savage chorus. "Little Blind Spring Bunting," Annadoah murmured, awakened from her trance by the approaching calls. Opening her eyes she saw the troop descending.
Ootah asked himself all the questions men ask in such a crisis; why, when he loved so indomitably, the heart of Annadoah should stir only with the thought of another; why the spirits that weave the fabric of men's fate had designed it thus.
"No, no! No, no!" the girl pleaded, falling on her knees and weeping. Although they suddenly ceased their reviling, hearing outside the barking of dogs, the women thereafter in secret often assembled together; there were ominous whisperings; and each time a child died visits were paid to the angakoq, and the unseen powers were invoked to bring misfortune to Annadoah.
It seemed as though the spirit revellers were pouring fiery jewels from the skies. Ootah stood before that revealed and radiant land of the dead the dead who danced and were happy his hands clenched and upraised above him. "Annadoah! Annadoah!" he sobbed the name again and again, and in his voice throbbed all the piteousness, all the bitterness of his utter heartbreak.
That was fate. A frail, pitiful figure, Annadoah stood on the cliff, wringing her hands toward the declining sun. In the midst of that wild golden-burning desolation, Annadoah felt her utter loneliness, her tragic helplessness. In all the universe she felt herself utterly alone. Far away, awed by the heroism, the very splendor of the bravery of the man who had perished, the tribe stood murmuring.
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.
Never had Annadoah caressed him before, never had he felt the tingling thrill of her tender hands, never had her breath so perilously warmed his face. For an hour she sat by him, perfunctorily bathing his wounds with the white men's ointment and rubbing a yellow salve upon his face. And while she did this, often, very often, she closed her eyes.
Once, half-hesitating, she looked into his eyes, and as though she had a confession to make, said quietly: "Thou art very brave, Ootah." This pleased him once she had said he had the heart of a woman. He had thrilled when she soothed him, and now he was half sorry that the injuries no longer needed attention. He loved Annadoah more deeply than ever, and his greatest concern was for her.
Then a grinding crash rent the air. The spirits of the mountains had engaged in combat. And in the swift downward surge of the glacial avalanches Annadoah saw tribes wiped from existence and villages swept into the sun-litten sea.
"The thought of Annadoah in the embrace of the big blond man, of her face pressed to his in the white men's strange kiss of abomination, aroused in Ootah a sense of violation. . . . He heard Annadoah murmur tenderly, 'Thou art a great man, thou art strong; thy arms hurt me, thy hands make me ache." Slowly, with silent paddles, the hunters moved over the limpid waters to the north of the floe.
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