Macaq and Iraluq

The Mother turned the page. "This story is called Macaq and Iraluq."

She began to read, and the Child listened.

"Once upon a time, there was a family that lived in a village by a great river. There were four brothers, who from childhood helped their parents fish and hunt and gather plants and berries in the fall. The youngest brother was called Macaq. There was another boy his age nearby named Iraluq. Macaq and Iraluq met when they were small and became fast friends. Any time they were not working with their families to collect and store food, or repair their homes, they would find each other. They spent long days chasing each other in circles and lying on the ground watching the clouds pass.

"As they grew older, they continued to spend time together in this way, and their interests slowly changed: their days of catching bugs and minnows faded away and they began to talk about more grown-up things. Before they knew it, the boys had become young men, and what’s more, they had fallen in love. Now, when Macaq looked at his friend, he saw also his lover and partner in life, and Iraluq saw the same. They were inseparable.

"One day in the late summer, Macaq and his brothers had returned from a long, successful caribou hunt and were preparing to cure the meat for storage. Though it was evening, it was still light, and there was a gentle breeze blowing cool air from the river into their little village. Macaq wished to bring some meat to Iraluq and his family, so he prepared a skin bag with some of the caribou meat and set out to walk the short distance between their families' homes.

"Just outside his house, he encountered something he had never seen before. There was a tall ladder rising out of the ground, leading farther up than he could see. Macaq felt curious, and he began to climb the ladder with the skin bag in one hand. Macaq’s brothers happened to look out the window at that time, and they became concerned. They called Macaq’s name, but he was already too high up to hear them. They rushed out to follow their youngest brother and bring him home, and they found that Iraluq had already arrived at the base of the ladder. Iraluq looked up into the quickly dimming sky to see where his loved one was going, but Macaq had disappeared from sight.

"‘Iraluq,’ the brothers pleaded, ‘you love our brother as much as we do. Please, go up that ladder and find him and bring him back to us.’

"Iraluq agreed and started up. He climbed for hours, his arms growing more and more tired, and when he finally caught Macaq, the two young men had left the earth and found themselves in the sky. There they stayed: Macaq became the sun and Iraluq became the moon and they are there still to this day, chasing one another in circles just as they did when they were children. "

The Child yawned.

"Are you ready to go to sleep now?" asked the Mother.

"One more," said the Child.

Author's note: This story is based on The Boy in the Moon from the Alaskan Legends unit (stories by Katharine Berry Judson, 1911). In the original story, Macaq's character is a young girl and the neighbor boy is in love with her. When she goes up the ladder, the boy follows her and is doomed to chase her perpetually, as the sun chases the moon. I chose to put a positive spin on the relationship. Along with making their love mutual, I reframed the ending so that they were spending eternity together, rather than apart.

In terms of cultural factors, the original story is of Yup'ik origin, and contains culturally specific details such as caribou hunting, fishing, and foods like meat and berries. I attempted to continue with this theme, using setting details from the Yukon region in Alaska. The names Macaq and Iraluq are Yup'ik words meaning Sun and Moon.

Finally, as with the previous story, I modified the gender of Macaq's character. I also included the family's support of their relationship in order to show a same-gender relationship in the context of a healthy, supportive community.

Image: Skipnes by Hakon Iverson Photog