The Norsewoman alone kept still. She wore the same skin coat md trousers and footgear as the rest, she was as greasy as they, but her gaze burned blue. That, her fair and cleanly molded face, ler stature and slenderness, roused longings in Tauno which no nuk woman could altogether quell. He draped a hand between lis thighs to hide those thoughts, and took the word:
“Forgive how lamely somebody talks. We learned among a listant band of the People. With them we hunted, fished, feasted, swapped gifts, and became friends. Here we will not linger. We search for our family, and ask no more from you than whatever knowledge you may have of it.”
Wind blew, waves trundled, the boat swayed in shrill cold. I Jut it was as if the blond girl spoke through silence, in her birth- ongue: “Who are you? What are you? Not true merfolk. . .I think. Your feet are not webbed.”
“Then you know of our kind?” Eyjan cried gladly.
“Through tales I heard at the fIreside, most from the old coun-
try. Naught else.”
Eyjan sighed. “Well, you are right about our nature. But see how you bewilder us, even as we bewilder you.”
The woman hugged to her an infant that, like most of her ellow paddlers, she had along. Hers was towheaded. “Can we ndeed talk freely?” she breathed.
A couple of men objected to this lingo they did not understand. “Here things not uncanny enough already? She answered them Dore handily than the halflings could have done. These swimmers could best use Danish. Was it not wisest to let them, so that they night explain swiftly and rightly? Afterward she would make clear what they had told. She appealed to Minik and Panigipak. The mgakok’s jet eyes probed at the strangers. After a while he agreed.
Minik was her man, Tauno realized. How had that happened?
“I, I bight Bengta Haakonsdatter,” she stammered. A pause,
a clouding over. “I was Bengta Haakonsdatter. I am Atitak. And my daughter”-she held the one-year-old very close-“she was Hallfrid, but we call he! Aloqisaq for Minik’s grandmother, who died on a floe soon before we came to him.”
“Were you stolen away?” Eyjan asked low-voiced.
“No!” Bengta’s free hand snatched over the side, caught
Minik’s shoulder, and clung fast. He flushed, embarrassed at a show the Inuit did not put on; but he let her hand upon him remain. “Tell me of yourselves,” she begged.
Eyjan shrugged. “My brother and I are half human,” she said, and went on to relate briefly what had happened. She finished in a tone not quite steady: “Have you heard aught of merfolk ar-riving?”
“No,” Bengta mumbled. “Though I may well not have, the way my life has gone of late.”
“Speak to your comrades, dear. Tell them merfolk are not their enemies. Rather, sea dwellers and air breathers together could do what neither alone is able to.”
The singing language went back and forth. Often Panigpak put a question straight to the halflings, aided at need by the Norse-woman. The facts emerged piecemeal. No, these Inuit knew noth-ing of any advent. However, they spent most of their time ashore, hunting, and seldom went far out at sea-never as far as the white men, who in days gone by had sailed beyond the horizon to fetch lumber (Bengta spoke of a place she called Markland) and were still wont to take their skiffs on recklessly long journeys in sum-mer. (They huddled at home throughout the winter, which was when the Inuit traveled-by dog-hauled sleds, overland or across the ice along the coasts.) Hence they in the Bygd might have ken of happenings on some island of which poor ignorant people in kayaks could say naught. Were that so, surely Bengta’s father would know, he being the mightiest man in the settlement.
Tauno and Eyjan could not miss the horror wherewith the name of Haakon Amorsson was uttered. His own daughter flinched, and her voice harshened.
Just the same- “Well, we had better go to see him,” Eyjan murmured. “Shall we carry a message from you, Bengta?”
The girl’s will broke. Tears burst forth. “Bring him my curse!” she screamed. “Tell him… all of them. . . leave this land… before the tupilak dooms them. . . that our angakok put on them for his misdeeds!”