I i inaq

40 Short Story

One can walk through the settlement in less than half an hour, from end to end. The sea lies to the west and curves with the globe, its obsidian waves falling off the edge of the world. To the east is an endless tundra of grey—bleak white if it is the season. Only a native with accustomed eyes can judge how far away the mountains are, for everything appears as the same colorless permafrost, a neutral canvas without depth.

Ajuna knows nothing other than that canvas and the animals her father catches, strung up and skinned in front of the house every day. Her black-beaded eyes take it all in through calloused squints: ice, snow, rock, water, and reindeer carcass. She knows how to handle a gun and stare down the length of the barrel, how to fasten a line to a pole and be patient after a cast, how to dispose of the sewage bags after a week, and how to brew coffee for her father before he leaves to hunt. And her father never asks her to do anything—but she was taught. Ajuna walked herself to the settlement’s only school every day until she was twelve. She learned how to speak words like fiah and jage, how to use simple math, and how to read. Only what was necessary. One of her classmates left for Ilulissat to continue his education in the city.

Ajuna comes to sit on a stone slab behind the house and stares at nothing, her thick black hair in a traditional braid that weighs heavily upon her back. Everyone in the settlement has left home for work—hunting and fishing, nothing else. There is emptiness beyond the settlement in the tundra, but Ajuna never has to look there to see it. She brings a bucket with her if her father had been skinning the night before. Red. She hates the color—it reminds her of death and home. But it is the only color Ajuna has.

A boat may come from Ilulissat once or twice a month, filled with necessities—building materials, medical supplies, coffee beans—breaking up the isolation of the settlement. When the bell sounds, Ajuna runs to the dock. She is handed packages of things from another world. Canada. She asks the captain what it’s like in Canada. “Not as cold as it is here,” he replies with a warm, chapped smile.

Ajuna asks about Ilulissat. “Lots of tall buildings, with paved roads and restaurants and stores.”

The captain begins helping others unload supplies, leaving Ajuna to ponder what a tall building looks like.

Ajuna watches as the boat pulls away, its foreign products fully unloaded. She stares until it disappears and falls off the edge of the world. She turns and walks back to the house with a blank canvas in the background.

Ajuna’s father has strung up and skinned the day’s triumphs in the front yard—she thinks of tall buildings, and how one could paint them.

41 Watercolor