Amalik hadn’t left the house in four days. The ice storm had started on the stroke of noon five days before and Mother Winter had shown no sign of relenting since. Just hours before the snow fell, Amalik had managed to lock the dogs in the sled barn which was sheltered from the worst of the wind between two finger-like granite protrusions at the western limit of the village. He knew they’d be safe for another couple of days; they’d lived through worse and he’d left enough clean straw and food to last a week.   

            His own provisions were running low, but he wasn’t desperate, not yet. The storm had come in quick and taken the whole town by surprise. The villagers had been waiting expectantly for the supply vessel’s biyearly visit so they could line their larders in preparation for the months of cold darkness ahead. It was too early for heavy snows and he’d expected the weather to move on just as quickly as it had arrived. But for now it seemed like it was here to stay. Amalik wasn’t too concerned, though: he still had reserves of seal meat and mattak in the freezer which, with the rest of the soy sauce, would see him through the days ahead.

            It had been seven months since he’d spent more than 24 hours inside his small, timber-clad house and, on that particular occasion, he’d been running a fever of over 104 and his mind hadn’t been concerned with a lack of occupation and space. Now, the house and each of its three rooms felt like an extension of his very being; he knew the dimensions of the living room like length of his own arm, the red of the table lamp like the pale blue of his own eyes. He’d spent hours considering his reflection in the bathroom mirror and had counted freckles and eye lashes just to pass the time. He’d also discovered a talent for distorting his already uneven features into grotesque creations and had made a mental note to amuse his nieces with some choice examples next time he saw them.

             Amalik wore a totem around his neck, polar bear incisor threaded on a piece of twisted cord. The tooth was passed to him by his grandfather, a great Inuit hunter, as a symbol of strength and endurance. Under normal circumstances, he never took it off, but on the third day of his confinement he removed the tooth from its chain and began threading it between his fingers, absentmindedly. After tiring with the game, he rose to look out of the window and placed the tooth on the sill. Seeing no change in the weather, he went to the kitchen and made a pot of black tea. When he returned to collect the tooth it had vanished from its spot on the windowsill. He searched the floor beneath the sill, even running his fingers along the narrow gap between the coarse carpet and the wall. When he couldn’t find it there, Amalik looked under each and every piece of furniture in the small room, but after an exhaustive search there was no sign of the incisor.

            Dejected and hot from his efforts, Amalik stumbled to the bathroom and threw some cool water on his red face. He ran his wet hands around to the base of his neck and there his fingers alighted on the familiar texture of the cord. Amalik looked into the mirror as his fingers traced the thread round to his collar bone and then pulled out from beneath his sweater the polar bear incisor hanging where it had always been.