Some time afterwards she did conceive and bear a child. She said to her sister, “I have a child now,” but neither she herself nor anyone else had ever seen it, for as soon as it was born she had wrapped it up in a sealskin without looking at it and had never unwrapped it afterwards. In moving about she carried it on her back underneath her hood.

    One day she went outside to cook, and laid the baby, still wrapped in the sealskin, on the drying frame. The people living in the house wanted to open it up and look at it, but the mother, before going out, would not let them, saying, “No, it is better that you should not see it.” Suddenly as she was cooking outside she heard a loud report and a cry ma·a ma·a. She rushed inside and found all the inmates cut in two; they had tried to open up the baby and it had killed them.

    This made the mother more careful than ever not to unwrap her child. She stayed but a short time in that place, then took the child on her back and went away along the coast. She reached some people and arranged to stay with them. They too wanted to see her baby, but she told them “No, it is better not to look at it; it has already killed others who tried to see it.” However, while she was outside the house cooking, and had left it on the drying frame, they too tried to unwrap it and were killed in the same way.

    The mother was so alarmed and distressed that she left the place without eating at all, and wandered about with the stone baby on her back until she was tired out and very hungry. She saw some caribou and said to herself: “I wonder how I can get something to eat—I am very hungry.” She laid the baby on the ground behind her back and, without looking at it, removed its wrapping; then she went off to one side. After a time the caribou approached the baby and looked at it. Immediately they were all cut in two and fell dead.

    The woman returned, recovered her child and wrapped it up again without looking at it. For a long time she stayed there, living on the caribou, but at last all her meat was consumed and she had to move on. She went down to the sea and saw a house. No one was about, so she went inside and sat down. There was plenty of food in the house, but she was afraid to touch it lest its owner might be angry and kill her. She waited a long time, then at last a man appeared—a powerful shaman who had already killed many people. He said to the woman, “You had better stay with me and be my wife.”

    When they rose in the morning the man wanted to see her baby. “You had better not see it,” the woman told him. “It has already killed a great many people who tried to look at it.” A few minutes later she laid it on the drying frame and went outside to cook. Soon she heard a loud report and the cry ma·a ma·a, then a hard crash inside the house; the earth too began to rock up and down like the waves of the sea. After a moment or two it ceased, and everything was still again. The woman looked all round for her baby, but could not find it. At last, after searching about for a long time, she found it, but the shaman had been so powerful and the struggle so tremendous that the wrapping had been torn off and the woman herself was killed by the sight of her own child.