Those Who Run in the Sky by Aviaq Johnston

Author:Aviaq Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inhabit Media
Published: 2019-08-11T21:18:29+00:00

He thrashed against the giant, trying with all his might to squirm free. The struggle was useless. Pitu decided that it would be more frugal of him to save his strength. The giant picked him up and shifted his arms and legs as if checking to see how well they could move. As the giant inspected Pitu, he began to inspect the giant, too.

He couldn’t tell whether it was male or female. Though the voice was high and relatively soft—for a giant—it had prominently male features. It was large enough to make a fully grown beluga appear as a seal, a polar bear as a puppy. The clothing was shabby; the upturned caribou hide fading with age and the residue of a thousand messy meals and unkempt days. Pitu wondered how many caribou it had taken to make the parka in the first place. There were stitches all over it.

The giant smiled widely, its breath fuming out of its mouth in stinking wafts. Pitu almost gagged on the smell. The giant spoke in an ancient dialect of Inuktitut, so Pitu struggled to understand all that was coming out of its mouth. To distract himself, he again asked the giant, “Who are you?”

The giant chuckled with pure mirth. “Ah! When you speak it makes me so happy!” The giant stomped its feet in a giddy fashion, then it began to walk away from the little shelter Pitu had made, leaving Pitu’s knife and harpoon behind. “I am Inukpak!” the giant said. Inukpak, thought Pitu, a giant named Giant. “Tiny Hunter, that is you, and I will keep you to hunt for little things!”

“Inukpak, my tools!” Pitu shrieked. “I cannot be a little hunter without my tools!”

He felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment as he referred to himself as a “little hunter.”

Inukpak laughed again, bouncing Pitu around in a disorienting jaunt. The giant continued forward, moving with incredible speed. “Silly little hunter!” Inukpak cooed. “I will make new gear. Ones that are not so sharp. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“How can I hunt without a harpoon sharp enough to pierce a seal?” Pitu countered. “Or a polar bear?” Or a giant? he thought to himself.

“It’s okay!” Inukpak still seemed far too cheery for Pitu to truly believe. No one could be that happy. “You’re just going to be playing!”

Pitu tried to think of more ways to convince Inukpak that he needed to get his weapons, but he was still tired from the day before and his mind was slow. He couldn’t come up with a plan that would leave him in one piece. He knew that if he could just get out of Inukpak’s grip, he could run back to his makeshift shelter and retrieve his tools and find a way to outrun the giant.

Pitu looked over his shoulder and was disheartened to see that his shelter was no longer anywhere in sight. They had gone much farther, with much greater speed, than Pitu had ever thought possible. Suddenly, he grew incredibly tired, without any energy to become angry.

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