White curse
In the cold embrace of the Arctic, a silence heavier and frostier than the surrounding snow held an old native captive. He was the last of a clan that knew the whisper of the wind and the fury of the ice, his ancestors woven into the very fabric of this white, unforgiving land.
His face, a wrinkled map of ancient journeys and memories deeper than the frost, was turned to the thin walls of the tent, as fragile as a spider’s thread. He felt it—a feeling the men of the city could not discern—a chilling sensation that made the air turn black and freeze, like water before it crystallizes. It was a stillness not preceded by peace, but by a terror that left them devoid of hope.
The only companion left was the wind. The endless, icy wind that echoed outside the tent walls, as if the air itself was sighing and wailing in immense pain. As the storm grew fierce, icy needles, driven by the furious gale, whipped mercilessly at the canvas.
It was as if a hundred invisible demonic fingers were drumming on the membrane of a taut drum, heralding the approaching end. The voices of the past, as cruel and relentless as the gale outside, woke in his mind like phantoms and delirious echoes of long-dead souls.
He remembered the day it all started. The day when two strangers arrived at their village, so hidden and remote. Two giants, mighty as bears, athletes with eyes full of fire and a burning desire to conquer the pole.
They demanded draught dogs, sledges, and a guide. He, the last of the tribe to possess such knowledge, was compelled to offer his services. The elders could no longer manage, and the youths? The young men had left. They went to the city, to that noisy, impersonal maelstrom where they sought, as they called it, "a better life."
To him, it was an absurd notion. “A better life?” the old man thought. “What could be better than an honest life in harmony with nature? Do urban people feel the pulse of the earth? Can they read the footprints in the wind? What will be left of them when their noisy, glittering deception is taken away?”
He knew the city was a trap for those who had forgotten the call of snow and wind, for those who had become afraid of nature.
The journey was a white, endless funeral procession. The silence was broken only by the dogs pulling the sleds and their breath turning into puffs of mist. Then he saw the clouds. Not ordinary clouds, but dark, heavy, raging beasts that floated across the horizon with an ominous promise.
He warned them, but they laughed, incredulous and full of arrogance. Then it came. The storm. It arrived faster than he could have ever imagined. The gale overturned the sled, scattering the supplies into an endless white void and burying their only hope of salvation.
He had not expected such speed. Once, they would have had hours to prepare, but not now. The storms were fiercer, colder, and came without warning.
“Maybe the world is truly changing”, an inner voice whispered to him. “Perhaps it is the wrath of the gods, awakened and angry. Perhaps their arrogance was the final drop that overflowed the cup of their patience.”
They barely managed to keep the dogs and stay together. Blinded by the whipping snow, they stumbled into a lee, not even knowing how. There they hid. In desperation, they decided to turn back.
They did not have enough supplies. They could not go on; they would not survive. And there was no chance of finding the sledge with the supplies. The snow had covered everything—tracks, and sledges alike. Some of those white dunes were surely their supplies. But which one?
Fortunately, the wind quickly subsided. It was calm. As they would later discover, it was the calm before a second, even worse storm. They prepared the dogs and began their return journey.
But what followed was even more frightening. A terrible, diabolical darkness preceded the second storm. The silence was heavy and still, as if the universe itself were holding its breath before another blast of fury. They pitched the tent, barely having time to shovel the snow, and it came again. The hurricane, the white demon, was chasing them. They sat and waited.
Sitting in the relentless embrace of a snowstorm, inside the thin tent, several endless, monotonous days had passed. Time had collapsed into a single, freezing moment where there were no nights and days, only darkness and wind.
Hunger. The beast awakening deep in their bowels was no longer a whisper. It was a predatory, voracious monster that had burrowed into their bodies and into their minds. The hunger turned into a living, cold presence that sat with them in the tent.
Their fingers tingled with cold, and their stomachs clenched with pain. The walls of the tent became a canvas on which hunger painted horrible scenes of food—tables full of food that melted like snowflakes if they looked at them too long.
Fear grew with hunger. The storm, that merciless beast, held them in its icy embrace. The wind, which had turned into a hoarse laugh, told them that they would never get away. The fear grew in them, slithering up their spines like a venomous snake seeking its way to their hearts. The fear that the storm would never end. The fear that they would die here, in this white, unforgiving void.
The two of them, trained athletes, once strong and confident, were now unable to move. Their strength was abandoning them, replaced by despair. The battle was not only with the wind and hunger, but also with conscience. They had to do something unimaginable.
Hunger and fear, the two darkest sisters who now sat with them in the tent, whispered a single, horrific solution: sacrifice. They must sacrifice one of the dogs, those holy creatures, messengers of the gods, who were meant to guide them.
Their own logic told them it was the only way to survive, a cold calculation to save their own lives. They tried to banish that thought, but it became more and more pronounced as the hunger grew. With increasing arrogance, it settled in their minds and overwhelmed their wills.
He, with his wrinkled, old face, pleaded with them. His voice was only a faint, uncertain whisper against the roar of the wind. He could not drown out their hunger and fear. He warned them of the wrath of the gods, of the ancient curse that would befall those who broke this most sacred taboo. He told them of demons, of a cold and terrible death, that their souls would have no peace.
But they laughed at him, belittling the old man's wisdom and faith in the old legends. Their arrogance and pride were even stronger than their hunger. They laughed at his faith, his fear of unseen forces. They believed only what they could see and what they could control. They believed only in their power, in their cold logic that had driven them to the brink of despair. Their hearts were pumping in their ears, and they could feel their remorse slowly, but surely, chipping away under the weight of hunger and despair.
And so they made up their minds. They decided to do what fear and hunger told them to do, what their desperate "logic" told them to do. They did what they had to do. They killed one of the dogs.
They shared the meat fairly. They offered him a share, but he refused. He drank only a little blood and swallowed a small piece of meat, for his hunger tormented him, yet his fear was stronger. They cut open its liver and offered it to him as well. "It's full of fat, nutrients, and energy. It will strengthen us, and we will endure," they said. They wanted him to be strengthened too.
He refused. He was hungry, but the fear of the curse was stronger. He remembered the stories of those who had sinned, who had died with their eyes open in horror. Before they died, they saw demons come to take them away.
Then came the night. The worst one. They began to rave. Dizziness, confusion. They saw demons. They saw their homes. They fought. He had to hold them back, for they wanted to run outside, to go shopping in the city where they wanted to buy food. He held them, but they were strong.
He broke one's arm, the bones snapping with a dull, horrible sound, like an old branch under the weight of snow. He did not believe he had such strength. Then they calmed down. Only the coldness remained, heavy and motionless.
They lay side by side, futilely trying to warm each other. He could feel their bodies losing heat, the life draining out of them, turning them into ice sculptures. In the darkness, amidst the eerie silence, he could feel the curse stealing their souls. In the morning they were dead. Their bodies, cold and empty shells, were abandoned by the gods because of their disrespect and arrogance. The demons they had laughed at came to take them. They had forgotten that their willpower was but a speck of dust in the wrath of the frost. And so, here in the white, unforgiving void, they found their last, cold rest.
Now he just sat and waited, in the silence they left in their wake. The remnants of their sacrifice, the sinful flesh, he distributed to the other dogs, their only remaining link to home. He knew they would need the strength to carry him away from this place of death.
He would endure. When the storm passed, he would find moss and lichen and make a soup. And perhaps, with a bit of luck, he would find the sleigh with supplies, which the gods would leave him as a reward for his faith. Or perhaps he would hunt something. And he would go home.
He would bring back the bodies of those who thought they had power over nature and the dark message that their cold logic had betrayed them. Their families would be grateful. They would be able to bury them.
Note: From today's perspective, we would call this story "Hypervitaminosis A". The liver of draft dogs is full of vitamin A, and both men overdosed on it. The curse was just another face of science. But that belongs to another story. Into a story where there is no place for gods and demonsin.
Read more about vitamin A in the article:
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