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Updated: June 11, 2025
Soon a little smoke came curling up round the stick. Koolee dropped some dried moss on the smoking spot. Suddenly there was a little blaze! She fed the little flame with more moss, and then lighted the moss on the stones of the fireplace. She put a soapstone kettle filled with water over the fire, and soon the kettle was boiling.
While Koolee and Koko and Menie were getting the sledge and dog-team ready, the rest of the women set to work with their queer crooked knives to take off the bear's skin. The moon set, and the sky was red with the colors of the dawn before this was done. At last the meat was cut in pieces and Kesshoo and Koko's father held the dogs while the women heaped it on the sledge. The dogs wanted the meat.
He had made a beautiful one when the first heavy snows of winter had come, and the family had lived in it while Koolee finished building the stone igloo. The twins had watched him make it. It seemed so easy they were sure they could do it too.
While all this was going on down on the beach, the men took their salmon spears and went up the river, and Koko and the twins went with them. The wives of the Angakok went to find moss to feed the fire. They brought back great armfuls of it, and put it beside the fireplace. Koolee was the cook. She stayed on the beach and looked after the babies and the dogs, and the fire.
She said, "That is the dance of the Spirits of the Dead! Haven't you ever seen it before?" "Not like this," said the twins. "This is so big, and so red!" "The sky is not often so bright," said Koolee. "Some say it is the spirits of little children dancing and playing together in the sky! They will not hurt you. You need not be afraid. See how they dance in a ring all around the Edge of the World!
As fast as they came in, the women and children packed themselves away on the sleeping bench. The men sat along the edge of it with their feet on the floor. The smell of food soon made everybody cheerful. When at last they were all crowded into the room, Koolee placed the bear's head and other pans of meat on the floor. Then she crawled back on to the bench with the other women.
While the twins were away giving the invitations, Kesshoo carried great pieces of bear's meat into the house. Koolee put in the cooking pan all the meat it would hold, and kept the blaze bright in the lamp underneath to cook it. Then Kesshoo took his long ivory knife and went out to help the twins with the snow house, as he had promised. "See, this is the way," he said to them.
Kesshoo and Koolee and the wives waited until his feet disappeared, and they heard him scraping along through the tunnel. Then they breathed a great sigh of relief, and the two wives popped down after him. The last Kesshoo and Koolee heard of the Angakok, was a kind of muffled roar when a piece of ice fell from the top of the tunnel on to his bare back.
Nip even snapped at the Angakok's ear! That made the Angakok more angry than ever. He reached into the room, seized Nip with one hand and flung him up on to the sleeping bench. Nip lit on top of Menie. Nip was very much surprised, and so was Menie. Now, whether the jerk he gave in throwing Nip did it or not, I cannot say, but at that instant Kesshoo and Koolee both gave a great pull in front.
Everybody in the village had seal meat that night, and the Angakok had the head, which they all thought was the best part. He said he didn't feel very well, and his Tornak had told him nothing would cure him so quickly as a seal's head. So Koolee gave it to him. The skin of the little white seal Koolee saved and dressed very carefully.
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