Wanna hear a cool Eskimo demon story? No, seriously. I’ll tell you one. But I warn you, there are some issues with it.

First of all, the right word is Inuit, not Eskimo. First problem.

Secondly, I heard it as a witch story, but for my blog, I’ll change it to demon. Because, of course, Mondays are hell.

Thirdly, I read it when I was in the sixth grade, which is a whole lotta’ sleepless nights ago. So this isn’t precisely the story, but close enough. My daughters and I were playing hellish tundra, such a fun game, and I re-told them this story. Here it is. But I warn you, it is a grisly tale.
* * *
The storm, oh the storm. The wind, oh the wind. The snow, oh the snow.

It was the worst storm anyone had ever seen. It was a storm that would freeze the spit in your mouth if you left your igloo. It would turn your blood to ice. It would harden your eyeballs until they popped out of your head. It was a hellish storm.

And it brought demons.

A father and his family were huddled in their igloo, fearful over the storm. And the children cried out, holding their bellies, complaining. “Father, go out and bring us fresh food!”

“Wife,” the father said, “I must go out and brave the storm to feed my children.”

“If you go, we’ll die,” the wife said, for she was very wise. “Let the children eat the leftover fat.”

“My children deserve fresh meat,” the father said, for his wisdom was yet to come.

He left his family and fought through the wind and snow and the ice and the freeze. He found a seal hole and with his harpoon freezing to his hand, waited, praying, waited, praying. Please, God, bring me a seal. Please, God, protect my family. Please, God. Please.

But sometimes God does not listen. For a demon, riding gleefully on the killing wind, found the igloo of the family. With the father gone, the she-demon broke through the snow door and killed the wife and ate up the children.

This demon was clever and deceitful. She cut off the skin of the wife and dressed herself in the wife’s face in order to trick the father.

Sometimes God does hear a father’s prayer, and the father caught a seal, and with the seal freezing in his hands, the father returned to his igloo and found his wife, huddled by the seal-fat fire, warming her hands. It was dark, so the father couldn’t see the seams of his wife’s skin covering the demon. But he knew something was wrong.

“Where are our children?” the father asked.

“Oh, they are outside playing,” the demon-wife said.

And the father became a little wiser. “I brought a seal. Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m quite full,” the demon-wife said.

And the father became a little more wise. Wise enough to know that his family was dead, and he would die too if he weren’t clever enough to outwit the demon. “Help me with my harpoon,” the father said. “We can sharpen it together, my good wife whom I love so much.”

And when the demon took a hold of the harpoon, the father drove it into her belly to find his children still alive. He took them out, but when they unwrapped their mother’s skin from around the demon, the children cried fretfully, “Our mother is dead! Our mother is dead!”

But the father had learned wisdom, and he took his wife’s skin and sewed it around the seal he had caught. And once he tied off the last piece of seal gut, his wife opened her eyes. “Husband, you have come back. Did you find a seal?”

“No,” the father said, “but I learned wisdom. Sometimes it is good to listen to one’s wife.”

And the family ate the leftover seal fat, and the wind blew, and ever after, the father’s wife always knew where the best seal holes were, and no one could match her skill at catching them.

“You have a good wife,” people would say to the father.

The father would nod. “Yes, she is a good wife. And very, very wise.”