A desert god doesn't know how to hunt seal or walrus, or fish under the sign of the Pisces. He is not skilled in controlling sled-dogs, or navigating over trackless snow. This god can walk on water. Here, in winter, so can everyone else. When he points his finger to admonish, it blackens and falls off. When he opens his mouth to judge, his tongue freezes to ">nothing but empty sky." His priests may pray for the fallen, but "the shaman’s faith in his magic words was so enormous that he actually believed they had the power to stop the bleeding from a wound."

What will happen to the shaman's helping spirits when the animal familiars are no more? How will a young angakok be trained when entrances to the Otherworld have vanished with the frost? Is the warming of the earth Monotheism's victory over Psyche? But what is a soul without Sila's breathy voice? Or Nulijajuk, the Sea Mother who controls wind, weather, and windowless time?

I have seen a beautiful woman Over the North Sea. All the waters were her hair And in her glance turned toward the beaches A bird whistled The waves thunder so hoarsely That my hair has fallen out...

Nunam-shua, " wears a coat that reaches to her knees, from which we know the polar lobe is part of an essential mechanism for development because, as you might guess, when embryologists see such a discrete blob of cytoplasm, they have an irresistible urge to snip it off. It's hanging there by a tiny stalk of membrane, so it's fairly easy to do…and the embryos survive and continue to divide. Unfortunately, they've lost some crucial information. Their anterior-posterior axis is undefined, and among the structures that fail to form hang living miniatures of all manners of land animals." Will she drown in the great puddle to come? And will the innua, "the genius or thinking spirit of the object or spot," be silenced for another 10 million years?

     At night, the White Bear appears and asks, “When will you arrive?” Whales, in their cold depths, sing,
     "When will you arrive?" These are the falling stars I saw long ago on a mountaintop, when Aqsaarniit,
     the Northern Lights, hung before my youthful eyes like a scroll. In those days, I dreamed of roads to
     exotic places. Now, on the threshold of old age, I dream of half-open doors and the darkness within.