This is another random sample from the book for your interest:
A
sudden chilling thought came into Epp’s mind. Was this old hag really there?
Was she an apparition? She must be real. She was holding the large fish in her
hand. But she hadn’t moved since he got there. She just only sat quietly at the
corner of the stoop without moving and she wouldn’t go inside the building. And
the dogs who were ravenously chewing on their fish never took any notice of
her.
“Here,
let me help you up. We’ll go inside where it is warm,” said Epp and he reached
out to take her hand. She and the fish in her hands vanished into thin air.
What the . . . . That the old woman could vanish was one thing, but that the
fish too would disappear was quite another. Epp had a few Mennonite
exclamations that wouldn’t mean anything in English and sat on the stoop,
staring at the place where the apparition had been.
Slowly,
out of a mist the old woman reappeared holding the fish in her hands. “You are
not real” Epp muttered, unable to think of anything else to say.
“Oh,
I’m real alright, only from a different time. There are things that happen here
in Greenland with the indigenous people that the Europeans don’t understand. I
guess I’m one of them.”
“Then
you must be very old”, said Epp, not sure of what he should begin to ask.
“Do
you have a name?”
“It
is Aleka. Means older sister,” she said matter of factly.
“How
long have you been here in this place?”
“I’ve
been in this place since after the last ice age affected Greenland.” She
replied.
“That
must be a long time,” mused Epp.
“Yes,
it was a long time ago. I remember the terrible cold. It was so cold it was
hard to survive outside. My young brother went outside after me telling him not
to. After a while I went out to find him and all I saw was little pieces of his
mitts lying in the snow. That’s when I first saw the giant Square Bears. It
looked as though they had eaten my young brother. I called and called, but he would not answer.
He must be inside them somewhere.
“Well
of course, they had to eat too or they would starve so I had no choice but to
forgive them. I asked them to eat me too so I could be together with my brother
but they would not. They said I must help them to survive until this cold went
away and then they could separate and become ordinary bears again. When that
happened my brother would be released. “
“I
don’t understand what you mean by the bears separating,” said Epp.
“When
the ice age descended on us, the bears, which were ordinary bears at the time,
huddled together to keep each other warm. They stayed together so close and so
long that they fused into giant Square Bears which are the bears you see today.
They could not separate anymore.”
“Why
not?” Epp was puzzled.
“It
seems they were fused so tightly together their fur intertwined and became
brittle. It was impossible to get them apart. As time went on, they grew into
one body to be the giant Square Bear seen around here these days with no
possibility of seperation.”
“So
these are then more than one ordinary bear?” Epp asked.
“Yes,
at least two, sometimes even more. There could be whole families.”
“That
must have been awkward for them to be able to eat then. What did you do?”
“In
those days I was still young and strong enough to be able to fish for them so
that’s what I did. It was awkward for them to eat out of each side of their
mouth but at least they managed it. They could not hunt for themselves and thus
would have starved unless I had been able to fish for them. This I did gladly in
the hope of seeing my little brother again.”
“Then
how did you end up here?” Epp asked curiously.
“There
was a man who came up here a long time ago. He said he had studied apothecary
medicine at the university in Prague. I don’t know where that is, but that’s
what he said. He has a picture of himself on the wall inside with some sort of
writing on it. You’ll see when you go in.”
Epp
pondered, “You say he built this place?”
“Yes
he did. It’s a very strange building. Something like white men would build. Not
very warm I think, but it keeps the flies away in summer.”