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 Kotuko . They will show him open ice . He will bring us the seal again ! '' Their voices were soon swallowed up by the cold , empty dark , and Kotuko and the girl shouldered close together as they strained on the pulling-rope or humoured the sleigh through the ice in the direction of the Polar Sea . Kotuko insisted that the tornaq of the stone had told him to go north , and north they went under Tuktuqdjung the Reindeer -- those stars that we call the Great Bear .
No European could have made five miles a XXXXX over the ice-rubbish and the sharp-edged drifts ; but those two knew exactly the turn of the wrist that coaxes a sleigh round a hummock , the jerk that nearly lifts it out of an ice-crack , and the exact strength that goes to the few quiet strokes of the spear-head that make a path possible when everything looks hopeless .
Inuit Place angekok day days reindeer second sorcerer tornaq year