Week 10 Story: A Mother's Love

They say a mother's love can heal all wounds, but how can a mother heal her own heart after losing a child? Thirty years ago today, my precious son Ailaq was born, a beautiful and inquisitive boy who made my life a whirlwind of happiness and joy. Ailaq was truly the most loving son a mother could ask for and grew into a brave and kind young man who cared for me and his sister upon the death of my husband. Ailaq stood in sharp contrast to the lazy, no-good man my daughter married against my wishes, a man named Papik. Yet Ailaq tried to guide his brother-in-law, even taking him hunting despite the fact that, while Ailaq himself was a brilliant hunter, Papik was an incompetent one and never caught a single animal. My son's catches sustained us all, including the ungrateful Papik who grew increasingly jealous of Ailaq's skill and popularity in our village.

One day, after a long day of hunting, Papik returned without Ailaq. He denied any knowledge of where my son was and furiously attacked my after I confessed my suspicion that he had murdered my child. Papik claimed I was a senile old hag who never liked him and was looking to blame Ailaq's disappearance on him in order to chase him out of the village. My daughter, always lacking in judgment, took her husband's side, leaving me to exact revenge against the villainous Papik myself. But I was determined that, no matter what it took, I was going to avenge my precious son.

After several days of coming to terms with the inevitable, I decided that the only way for me to take revenge on Papik was to become a spirit myself. Without my beloved husband and son, and with only a foolish and disloyal daughter, there was really no purpose to my life anymore. I hoped to find my husband and son in the afterlife, but only after making Papik suffer for his crimes. So I allowed myself to drown in the tides and my spirit ascended from its earthly prison to the heavens above. But my journey to peace had only just begun.

In my fury, my spirit took on a rather monstrous form, one which I am glad my family did not witness. The anger of a mother grieving her murdered son is not a force to be trifled with, as my furious and vengeful spirit made clear to Papik. That pathetic man grew ever more fearful of experiencing my wrath as the days went on--he even refused to hunt with the other men for a few weeks after my passing out of fear my spirit would take him in the woods. So I merely waited for the opportune time.

And that time came when Papik decided it was safe enough for him to go ice fishing with the other men. Out on the ice, far from the village, he and three other men set up their fishing equipment and went to work while I began my assault. First, I flooded the area with fog so thick, the three men could not see each other despite standing a few feet away. After several minutes, all three were thoroughly lost and disoriented and Papik had been successfully separated from the other two. My ferocious spirit tore him to shreds in a matter of seconds, his screams alerting the others to his fate and filling their hearts with terror. But I had only come for Papik, and come I did--when I was finished, not a single part of him was in tact.

After chasing off the other two and scaring the villagers a bit (a spirit should have some fun, after all), I finally felt at peace and was reunited with my loves once more. Let this be a lesson to all who entertain the thought of murdering an innocent person--that person is someone's child and that someone will avenge their loved one, in this life or in the next.

Photo of Inuit mother and child, taken by Edward S. Curtis. Source: Wiki Commons

Author's Note:

I kept the main points of the story of Papik, Who Killed His Wife's Brother the same, only changing the point of view to that of Ailaq's mother. I thought her character would be the most interesting to explore as she kills herself so as to exact revenge on her son's murderer, which is pretty intense. I also left out the later details about her spirit-monster-thing attacking the villagers and being overtaken by the group only for them to find simply the old woman's clothing and some human bones and not the bear they believed was attacking them. I was a little unsure what exactly the monstrous force was, but it is clearly connected to the mother and so I went with that and did not focus on its form or exact nature, only on the mother's view of events as a general spirit-force seeking revenge on Papik. I also added some information to show her attachment to Ailaq and how she perceived her daughter's role in the whole affair. 

Bibliography: 

Eskimo Folk-Tales by Knud Rasmussen and illustrations by native Inuit artists (1921).