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In the Arctic, You Are Not Alone

A Christmas Tale

The Eskimo carefully extracted his harpoon from the animal's esophagus.

"I must go. The bear had the curse, and it ate my arm," Kamik said.

"But you can't leave me here alone," Justin screamed, his voice carried for miles by air currents.

"I must go," the Eskimo repeated, and turned in the direction of nearby MacInnis Bay, where he climbed aboard an ice floe, drifted off to sea, and rammed his harpoon through his belly.

***

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All Justin saw on the horizon was a white-hot, white desert. Stranded, his food ravaged by the rabid bear, left without an igloo, he felt doomed. His fingers no longer functioned, his features were numb from the incessant cold.

Desperately, he pried open the dead animal's ripped skin, and plunged his hands into the bear's steamy entrails. He felt warm.

***

Crawling toward Hooka on Christmas day, Justin no longer wondered why he had ventured to the Arctic. He didn't hallucinate or talk to himself. He maintained an unreasonably rational state of mind. He thought of nothing but sustaining consciousness.

Finally, he could not go on. A good try, he reasoned, but I just can't go on. Oh well, everything works out for the best. The Arctic has a strange sense of justice, he thought.

Prone, his life rode the coattails of the evanescent, capricious winds. He looked up, eyes glazed, but not tearful. He noticed a strangely lantern-like light.

And in one last burst of passion, he picked himself up and sprinted. His legs churned through the thick snow, deliriously. The light blinded him. Out of breath, he collapsed to his knees, like Clark Gable begging forgiveness in San Francisco but not knowing whom to ask.

***

The Northern Adventures representative of the village of Hooka approached semi-conscious Syd Justin. "Are you all right, sir? We were worried about you."

The funeral of the timid caribou is uneventful. Snow blows gently over their carcasses, until they are buried. Such are the icons of the North: forgotten monuments to the time when all caribou will instinctively step over the pipelines.

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