The qalupalik waits in the icy shallows, just the other side of a big boulder. She wears an amautik, the coat of mothers, and its big wolverine-trimmed hood hides her slimy green skin and kelp-like hair. She hums to herself as she waits. If she is patient, children will come to her. 

Arctic char fingerlings swim around her ankles, but these don’t interest her. Purple-shelled mussels cling to her legs, and every now and then, she plucks one, cracks the shell with her long fingernails, and picks at the orange flesh with teeth worn-down by chewing countless skins. She smacks her tongue then hums some more.

On the other side of a hill, an anaana warns her children yet again. “Don’t stray too far,” she says. “Don’t go near the water or the qalupalik will get you.”

And in the icy shallows, the humming call comes higher now, the buzz resonating in the qalupalik’s nose. She gets her answer. From off in the distance comes the sound of giggling. Two disobedient children run toward the shore carrying little harpoons, looking over their shoulders to make sure they haven’t been seen. They should know better than to sneak off. They should’ve listened to their anaana, but here they are, instead. Just where the qalupalik wants them. They squat down on the rocky beach looking for smooth pebbles and rare pieces of driftwood beneath a silver crust of salt frost, and the qalupalik hums more loudly.

“What’s that?” asks the girl. She wears a caribou and sealskin parka. Her cheeks are red from the bitter wind and she is still too young for any tattoos of accomplishment. 

“What’s what?” says the boy. He wears his charms around his neck. His eyes squint as he looks out across the water. An iceberg rolls over like a dog and shows its blue belly beneath the low-slung sun.

“That humming sound.”

“I don’t know,” says the boy. “Let’s find out.”

And so they skip from rock to rock, moving their way further from the safety of the shore. Tube-nosed fulmars shriek and take to the air. Their wings flash like the white-tipped surf. The qalupalik shivers, anticipating, clacking her fingernails in rhythms on the rock. She hums lower now in a polyphonic drone simultaneously high and guttural. It comes from deep in her throat. It comes from high in her head.

“It’s over here!” says the little boy, and he clambers atop the boulder slick with seaweed.

“Is it a seal?” asks the girl, climbing up after him. If they harvest a seal, their ataata will be pleased.

The boy leans forward, and his big sister catches his parka so he doesn’t slip. “No, it’s a—”

On the other side of the rock, the qalupalik grows. Quick as the darkness when a fire goes out, the qalupalik grabs. She pounces upon them before they can scream. Though they squirm and fight like the young pups they are, her arms are quicker, still. And once she has them, they do scream. Like a diving seal, she closes her ears to the sound. The wind carries their cries for help out to sea, but it does not carry them to their anaana. From afar, they sound no different than seabirds. The qalupalik forces first one then the other into the fur-trimmed hood of her amautik. She tucks them down her back and wades out toward the frigid channel. 

“No,” cries the little boy. He regrets not listening to his anaana. He does not want to be carried to the bottom of the sea. He struggles to find his way out of the hood as the water deepens and the land grows further away.

But the little girl remembers a story. “You!” she says, addressing the qalupalik. “I heard you can change shapes, but I don’t believe it.” She looks at her brother meaningfully.

The qalupalik pauses. She dislocates the vertebrae of her neck, turns unnaturally far to look at the children. Her neck vibrates like collapsing ice. Her round eyes bulge like guts from a slit belly.

“Yeah,” says the boy. “I’ll bet you can’t turn into a seal.”

“Anyone can turn into a seal,” says the little girl. “Anyone except you.”

The qalupalik growls. The qalupalik turns her head back around and the movement cracks and snaps like breaking bones, and then she sheds her amautik. Its waterproof hood floats in the sea like a qajaq with the children dry inside. She stands naked in the water, skin as blue-green and slick as ice algae. Her long eel-like breasts writhe upon her belly. She grunts and groans, and the skin of her head splits. Out from it protrudes the sleek face of a ring seal, whiskers twitching, nostrils opening and closing. She rumbles and squeaks with the effort. While she is still emerging from the body of the qalupalik, the children thrust their harpoons straight into her nose.

The slate and bone tips lodge inside her brain. The qalupalik judders as she dies. 

When the children pull the dead seal to shore, the boy melts snow in his mouth and dribbles it onto the qalupalik’s cooling tongue. A fair trade of fresh water for a life given. All seals are gifts from Sedna and must be honoured thus. 

The girl growls deep in her throat. Sings high in her nose. Repeats the green woman’s song. She has earned her first tattoo. The flock of fulmars returns to the shore to scream and bow to one another.

* * *

Ⓒ Shantell Powell