The dark man’s face is fading.

The years disperse in a blizzard of fragmentary images, and then I am six years old.  Around me the walls are ice blocks and frozen peat, the roof fortified by whalebone.  The floor is a rubble of stones and I am looking down at a figure on a sealskin pallet who is glistening with sweat, forehead matted with black hair.

I hold tightly to Qunualuq.  He is now brown and ragged, seasoned by years of saliva and snow, frozen and thawed and often repaired.  I’m in the igloo of my father’s friend Nuktaq.  The figure is my mother.

The dark-skinned man speaks to me again, comforting words in Eskimo language.  He is the only one of the qalunaaqs who has learned to do this. 

We call him Mahri-Pahluk.  It means Matthew the Kind One.  He is Matthew Henson and he takes orders from the man we know as Piuli – Robert Peary.  This amuses my father, the idea of one man making decisions for others.  We do not operate this way.  Our men and women hunt, sew, flense, build, sing, dance, tell stories, each to the extent of his or her skill.  Nonetheless, we do Peary’s bidding, because he has become our friend, because he gives us things we need, and because pleasing our guests is simply our way. 

It has been three years since the first time I saw the qalunaaqs.  I am no longer scared of them, or of biscuits.

I am, however, scared of death.

My mother is very, very ill.  She has been sneezing, coughing.  I kneel and take her hand, which has grown cold. "Qunualuq will take care of you," I say.

"Yes, I will!" I say in Qunualuq's voice, which sounds very much like my father.

My mother does not respond.  Behind me Nuktaq’s wife, Atangana, lets out a moan.  She is a powerful shaman and has been calling on the toorngat, the helping spirits.  Her work is exhausting, and she has collapsed against the wall.  I stare at my mother, expecting her to rise, waiting for the spirits to enter her body.

“Please, little one,” my father whispers thickly, “the burial must be right away.  We cannot allow her spirit to wander in anger.”

He takes me gently in his arms, but I cannot feel him at all.  I cannot feel anything. 

As I back away, I realize that others have entered the igloo.  Peary stands erect, his brow furrowed as if examining a chart.  I have grown used to seeing him with Aleqasina, but he has avoided her since the arrival of Mrs. Peary.  She stands beside him now, looking grim and uncomfortable as she always does.  The Pearys’ little daughter, Marie, who like to think she can speak “Eskimo,” says, “Ak…ok…took…meek,” until Mrs. Peary quietly scolds her.

Peary announces something to Mahri-Pahluk, who translates: “Mannik was the best seamstress in the colony.”

“Qajanaq,” says my father.  Thank you. 

But I think of a day last Arctic winter when I wandered sightless and lost, the blowing snow black as the sky.  To walk would have been futile; to yell would have meant choking on snow.  So I stood, awaiting the spirit of Death, and soon saw a figure bright as fire in the darkness, hovering closer.  “Come,” the glowing vision said, taking my arm.  It was not Death but my mother, who gently lead me home. 

I remembered a storm that piled snow against our walls too thick to dig through.  We took shallow breaths, fearful of using up the air and being buried alive.  But the Eskimo word for breath, anerca, also means poetry, and as my mother prepared our seal meat, she began to sing.  Soon the storm quieted its shrieking to listen.  She lowered her sweet voice until the wind, no longer able to hear, blew away the muffling wall of snow and the sun streamed through the opening.  And we ate.

A seamstress, yes.  But more.  She was sunlight and music, food and warmth, strength and love. 

I bury my face in my father’s coat and breathe deeply, taking what comfort I can from the familiar sweetly bitter mix of bearskin, smoke, and dried blood.  It is a different smell from my mother’s.  I realize that in the dark this is how I know my parents.  It is by their smells that I know the borders of my world.

Soon my father rises and the ceremony begins.  He speaks to my mother’s body in a stern voice, daring her to waken.  Then he commands her spirit to visit only in dreams, never while he is awake.  He and Nuktaq lay her body on a bearskin, place a mask over her face, then lay another skin over her.  They carry her outside, placing her on the ground.  Making sure her head is pointed away from the sea, they cover her body with stones.  My father makes a mark in the ground, between her and our house. 

I have seen the ritual.  Others have died recently, from the same sickness.  I know that over the next ten days my father will stay indoors, always wearing a hat, with a cord tied around his waist.  In the mornings he will make a mark on the ground with a bone fragment, then take a walk around the igloo.  Each morning the circle will grow wider until, on the tenth day, he will visit the grave.

Atangana has revived, and now she is wailing, over and over, “Tornarsuk!” Evil spirit!

“She is crazy,” Uisaakassak whispers to me, brushing away tears.  “Seven others had died, also.  Healthy people who have worked hard and never been sick all their lives.  Tornarsuk has never caused sickness like this.”

When I look at him, baffled and confused, he scowls at me. 

“It only happens,” he says, “when the qalunaaqs are here.”