Long ago, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, two Eskimo boys were
walking from their own home to a far-away village. While they were going
along, a terrible storm overtook them and they had to hold each other by
the hand to keep from falling. Pretty soon the wind rose so high, and
the snow fell so fast, they felt they could go no farther. In despair,
they clung to each other, blinded by the snow, when a tremendous gust of
wind suddenly caught them, and blew them against the side of a little
snow house. How glad they were to find shelter!
Inside the house was an old woman, living all alone. She was very kind
and invited them to sit down and rest; then she gave them something to
eat, and told them that she was going out.
“Do not look after me to see what I am doing,” said she, “or you will be
sorry.”
She put on her parka and mukluks, and took her stone skin scraper in her
hand and went out the door.
The Eskimo women have a scraper which they use to scrape the flesh, or
meat, from the skin of the animals they prepare for clothing. This
scraper is somewhat the shape of a carpenter’s plane. The blade is made
of a sharp piece of stone. That was the kind of thing the old woman took
out with her.
The boys were devoured with curiosity, and after she had gone the oldest
one said, “Let us go out and look at her.” But the younger boy
whispered, “No, no.” He was afraid; but his brother was determined to
see what that old woman was doing out there with her knife, so he
persuaded the little one to creep softly to the door with him, and peek
out.
Where do you think the old woman was? And what do you think she was
doing? Way up in the sky she sat, scraping away at the clouds. She had
already scraped off half the clouds, and where she had scraped, the sky
was as blue, as blue as could be, but the other half was still covered
with thick black clouds.
When she saw the two boys peeping at her, she let go of the sky and fell
down. As she came into the house, the boys were sitting on the floor,
just as she had left them, hoping she had not really seen them looking
at her.
“You rascals! You bad boys!” she cried. “You did just what I told you
not to do. If you had not looked out at me, and made me fall off, I
would have cleaned all the clouds away, and we should never have had any
more storms. But alas! I cannot go up there again, and now we shall have
both clear and cloudy weather.”
Ever since then it has been sometimes clear and sometimes stormy,
because the old woman had only had time to clean off one-half of the
sky.