The Mahaha: The Giggling Demon of the Arctic Ice
The Arctic does not need to invent horrors of cold and hunger; it has the real ones on permanent staff. So when the Inuit of the high North — a people whose traditions look starvation, storm, and drowning full in the face — chose to imagine one more demon for the ice, they built something that no southern nightmare ever thought of, something stranger than any fanged thing in the world's warm-country bestiaries. He is thin as a lash, sinewy, and strong beyond all appearance. His skin is the pale blue of old ice, and he goes naked and barefoot across the frozen sea in weather that kills clothed men in an hour, untroubled, splashing through the freezing shallows. His long stringy hair hangs down over his face, so that he watches the world through a curtain of it with cold bright eyes. His fingers are long, bony, and tipped with hard sharp nails. And he is always — this is the thing, the unforgettable thing — giggling . A high, continuous, delighted tittering that carries over the ice...