The Eiders

One day long ago the sea was as blue as the sky around it.

As the red sun rose from the eastern horizon far away, there were 2 common eiders paddling a boat in the vast sea. While they were paddling the boat the younger brother of the eider started to cry, so his older brother sang him a song to try to cheer him up.

The song went like this, "Angiiriya hangara Angiiriya hangara Paugtu Mauku nunalarrku Mauku Ai-yi. Young eider, stop crying, something terrible might happen to us."

But he did not stop, so again his older brother sang. "Angiiriya hangara Angiiriya hangara paugtu mauku alalrratu mauku aiyi." He stopped crying then because his older brother had warned him.

After a while they hear another song that went like this, "Quartagyakmakut quarytut makut quartaryagtut makut quartaryagtut illiat uiknaiykenka taugia-a."

The song sounded like it was coming from the sky and they looked up. There in the dark blue sky coming down was a person holding the front end of it's shirt tail. The older eider then said to the younder eider, "Younger eider you have cried too much. Look what has come upon us."

When it came down they saw it was a woman. When the woman was near them she dropped whatever she had in her front pocket into the sea, and when it fell in it turned part of the vast sea into land and there they found them-selves in a boat on the beach.

Soon the young eider's older brother got married to the woman and they lived in a little house on the beach.

One day the eider and his younger brother went hunting for reindeer and caribou. They went into the forest and there they saw 3 caribou standing. The younger brother took aim but suddenly his bow string broke.

When they came back home and the older brother told his wife all about their misfortune, right away she started to make a new bow string.

Before they went on their next hunting trip the older brother had told his wife not to poke at his younger brother's face no matter how childish his younger brother acted. But while she was trying to braid the sinew for the bow-string, the younger brother started to bug her, I mean really bug her, until she poked in the face with the needle. Instantly he fell dead and when she turned him over she found many needle holes in the young eider's face.

Being very scared, the woman buried the eider in the back of the house where she kept piles of grass, and that's where the young eider was hidden, but not very well. When the husband came in looking for his younger brother, the woman said she did not know where he was. But while he was looking around toward the back of the house he saw the knees of his younger brother, which had not been hidden very well. He then said to his wife, "I thought I told you not to poke his face with your needle." And while he was looking at his dead younger brother the woman was so scared she ran up into the hills on the beach carrying her pike fish parka with her.

Immediately the man ran out after her, yelling to her that he would not do anything to her and that he needed her to stay with. But she did not listen and ran up into the hills until she was out of sight. Then the older brother picked up his younger brother's body and put it in his kayak and they both went back to the sea from where they came.

By Teddy Sundown