Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
So she said to the twins, "Come, children, let's go up to the tent." She took their hands and led them up the slope. "We're not sleepy," the twins declared. "I am," said Koolee, "and I want you with me." They went into the tent, which was not so light as it was out of doors in the bright sunlight. Then they undressed, crawled in among the deerskins, and were soon sound asleep, all three of them.
Koolee set up the tent beside their old igloo, and there they lived while the men of the village went out every day in their kyaks for seal and walrus, or back into the hills after other game to store away for food during the long winter. The women scraped and cured the skins and cut up the meat and packed it away as fast as the men could kill the game and bring it home.
"Here's where we stay." The women jumped up and ran to the woman-boats. They got out the long narwhal tusks, and the skins, and set them down on the beach. "Come with me," Koolee called to the twins. She gave them each a long tent pole to carry. She herself carried the longest pole of all, and a pile of skins.
"Oh, Mother, what is the matter with the sky?" they gasped. Then Koolee looked up too. The long streamers were still flinging themselves up toward the red dome overhead. We call this the "aurora," or "northern lights," and know that electricity causes it, but the twins' mother couldn't know that. She told them just what had been told her when she was a little girl.
It was an accident, but Kesshoo reached up and took hold of Menie's foot and pulled him down on to the sleeping bench and rolled him over among the skins. "Crawl in there and go to sleep," he said. Monnie let herself down through the roof by her hands and crept in beside Menie. Then Kesshoo and Koolee wrapped themselves in the warm skins and lay down, too.
Monnie gave her a leather string with a lucky stone tied to it. Koolee put that on the bear's head too. Then she said, "There! In five days' time the bear's spirit will give the shadows of these things to your grandfather. Then we can eat the head, but not until we are sure the bear's spirit has reached the home of the Dead."
The first thing Koolee knew something thumped the musk-ox skin on the under side, and the knives and thimbles and needle cases and other things flew in all directions. Up through the hole popped the faces of Menie and Monnie! "Oh, Mother," they shouted. "We're going off on the woman-boats! After only one more sleep, if it's pleasant! Father said so!" Koolee laughed. "I know it!" she said.
When Menie called the dogs, the dogs thought they were going to be harnessed, so they hid behind the igloo and pretended they didn't hear. Koko and Menie followed them, but the moment they got near, the dogs bounded away. They went round to the front of the igloo and ran into the tunnel. Koolee was just turning the meat in the pan with a pointed stick.
They ran away up the beach with Tooky and the other dogs the moment they were out of the boats. They did not stay with the twins all the time now, as they used to do. The twins were much bigger, too. Koolee looked at them as they helped her carry the tent-skins up from the beach, and said to them, "My goodness, I must make my needles fly!
And when she opened her mouth to yelp, of course she dropped the meat. Just at that instant Kesshoo's whip lash came singing about the ears of all three dogs. "Snap, snap," it went. They jumped to get out of the way of the lash. Then Koolee leaped forward and snatched the meat from under their noses, and scuttled back with it into the tunnel before you could say Jack Robinson.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking