Inuksuk

An inuksuk (inukshuk), in Inuit culture, is used to guide a traveller. It can also represent someone's spirit.

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The boy stood at the edge of the frozen bay.

"I have heard that there is a place where the Devil is charismatic; where I can drink the stars, one for each dream in my heart," he said to no one in particular.

But the Arctic wind heard him and it answered, "What do you expect to find there?"

"Happiness, I suppose," the boy answered without thinking.

"I can show you the way, if you give me something in return."

"What would you like in return?"

"The pointer finger of your right hand, so I may point the way for those as lost as you."

The boy thought for a long moment, and then he pulled a fishing hook from his pocket and hacked at his right hand. The wind panted and puffed onto his hand so he would not feel the pain.

The boy gave his finger to the wind, and the wind said, "Go find a place that hugs the horizon like a chrysalis hugs a leaf."

The horizon looked far away, but the boy headed there anyway, crossing the frozen water. The Northern Lights, accustomed to watching lone wanderers from its lofty throne, rippled overhead. After a few years, the boy finally stopped, disheartened, and cried, "Sea ice, oh won't you help me?"

Surprisingly, the sea ice answered. "I will help you, if you give me something in return."

"What would you like?" The boy smiled tentatively at the sea ice, but the sea ice did not smile back.

"One of your eyes, so that I may help a lost traveller see better."

The boy thought about this for a while. Then he pulled the rusted hook from his pocket and gouged an eye out, and the sea ice turned colder so he would not feel the burn.

The boy gave his eye to the sea ice, and the sea ice said: "Keep going in the direction you have been going in until you see the inuksuk."

So the boy kept going for many more years until he thought that he must surely have passed the North Pole, and the Northern Lights of the plastered firmament mocked him with its serpentine freedom. Where was the place the wind had mentioned?

As he wondered, he heard someone whisper behind him. The boy turned to see an inuksuk, standing tall and crooked in a prairie of ice and snow, outlined against the bloodshot dawn.

"The Devil is already charismatic enough," the inuksuk said, "and the stars are always there for you to drink. The oldest ones taste the finest, even though they might be dead by the time you see their light. How, then, are you lost?"

"Will you help me, inuksuk?"

"Of course," the inuksuk replied. "But I want something in return."

Oh dear, the boy thought. "Well, what bibelot would you like?"

"Your heart," the inuksuk said, "so that I may give it to someone who does not trust their own."

I've been told that to trust your heart is to trust a leviathan, the boy thought, but he said nothing. He took out his trusty hook. But just as he was about to pull his heart out, the inuksuk collapsed into a pile of stones, its limbs ringing against the ice like a steel gauntlet against metal. Then it morphed into the sound of cracking glacier in water, and it rung out clear, a crystalline voice through glacial air: "Every single bit of Earth hugs the horizon like a chrysalis hugs a leaf. It's just a matter of where you're standing."

The boy stood still, listening, contemplating. Then just as he turned back the way he'd come, his right eye, which had been missing for several years, suddenly returned; and he cried out in surprise as the Northern Lights seemed to brighten and deepen even as they slipped away through the velvet folds of the sky.

"Hello," the sea ice said. "The wind is waiting for you. I believe it wants to point you the way home."

The boy looked at his right hand and remembered the deal he had made with the wind. He started to walk.

He walked and walked for a long time, but he realised he was exhausted, so he stopped and extracted his blistered feet from his boots. And then the boy lay down for the first time in years, in a spot that hugs the horizon like a chrysalis does a leaf, and the sea ice held him tight.