Kotuko grieved more for the loss of his dog than anything else ; for though an Inuit eats enormously he also knows how to starve . But the hunger , the darkness , the cold , and the exposure told on his strength , and he began to hear voices inside his head , and to see people who were not there , out of the tail of his eye . One night -- he had unbuckled himself after ten hours ' waiting above a `` blind '' seal-hole , and was staggering back to the village faint and dizzy -- he halted to lean his back against a boulder which happened to be supported like a rocking-stone on a single jutting point of ice . His weight disturbed the balance of the thing , it rolled over ponderously , and as Kotuko sprang aside to avoid it , slid after him , squeaking and hissing on the ice-slope . That was enough for Kotuko . He had been brought up to believe that every rock and boulder had its owner -LRB- its inua -RRB- , who was generally a one-eyed kind of a Woman-Thing called a tornaq , and that when a tornaq meant to help a man she rolled after him inside her stone house , and asked him whether he would take her for a guardian spirit . -LRB- In summer thaws the ice-propped rocks and boulders roll and slip all over the face of the land , so you can easily see how the idea of live stones arose . -RRB- Kotuko heard the blood beating in his ears as he had heard it all day , and he thought that was the tornaq of the stone speaking to him . Before he reached home he was quite certain that he had held a long conversation with her , and as all his people believed that this was quite possible , no one contradicted him . `` She said to me , ' I jump down , I jump down from my place on the snow , ' '' cried Kotuko , with hollow eyes , leaning forward in the half-lighted hut . `` She said , ' I will be a guide . ' She said , ' I will guide you to the good seal-holes . ' To-morrow I go out , and the tornaq will guide me . '' Then the angekok , the village sorcerer , came in , and Kotuko told him the tale a second time . It lost nothing in the telling . `` Follow the tornait -LSB- the spirits of the stones -RSB- , and they will bring us food again , '' said the angekok . Now the girl from the North had been lying near the lamp , eating very little and saying less for days past ; but when Amoraq and Kadlu next morning packed and lashed a little hand-sleigh for Kotuko , and loaded it with his hunting-gear and as much blubber and frozen seal-meat as they could spare , she took the pulling-rope , and stepped out boldly at the boy 's side . `` Your house is my house , '' she said , as the little bone-shod sleigh squeaked and bumped behind them in the awful Arctic night . `` My house is your house , '' said Kotuko ; `` but I think that we shall both go to Sedna together . '' Now Sedna is the Mistress of the Underworld , and the Inuit believe that every one who dies must spend a year in her horrible country before going to Quadliparmiut , the Happy Place , where it never freezes and the fat reindeer trot up when you call .
Through the village people were shouting : `` The tornait have spoken to XXXXX .
Amoraq Kotuko day hours night reindeer seal-holes second sleigh tornait