> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://thedreampedlar.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # books you may love: Taaqtumi compiled by Neil Christopher (part 1) - URL: https://thedreampedlar.com/taaqtumi-part-1/ - Published: 2026-11-09T23:22:03.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-09T23:22:03.000Z - Description: This mind-blowing anthology of Arctic horror stories marks my first foray into reading Indigenous fiction. Reading this book has split my life into a 'before' and an 'after'. For you see, I've fallen in love. - Author: Anitha Krishnan - Tags: books you may love, a year of reading indigenous fiction The first time I've ever used the catalogue terminal at the local library was only a couple of weeks ago. I don't know what prompted me to do so but I wanted to look up any Indigenous fiction books the library had. Again, without knowing why, I landed on [*Taaqtumi*](https://inhabitmedia.com/2019/08/21/taaqtumi/), an anthology of Arctic horror stories, compiled by Neil Christopher. *Taaqtumi*. An Inuit word that [means](https://inhabitmedia.com/inuitnipingit/) 'in the dark'. I guess it's only fitting that I picked up this collection for my leap into the unknown. I've never read Indigenous fiction before, and I'm realizing that short stories are a great way to try reading a new kind of fiction. What I didn't anticipate was all the other 'firsts' that would come about from my reading of this book. - This book contains the first science fiction tale I've ever read to completion and enjoyed! - This anthology also contains the first zombie tale I've ever read and loved! - This is the first time I've read a book categorized into the 'horror' genre and found myself feeling not so much fear but a great deal of concern and compassion for the characters. I often tore through the pages with a sense of urgency to find out whether or not they'd survive their nightmarish experiences. It's been a long time since I felt that way for characters in horror stories. Now that I reflect upon it, in some of the few horror stories by white authors that I've read, while the chills can be nerve-wrackingly scary, the protagonists mostly made annoyingly silly and reckless choices, often out of willful bravado, almost deserving the terrible ends they meet. Why would you want to go and lock yourself up in a haunted lighthouse for three days and record yourself doing that?! Just so you can show the world how ~~brave~~ foolish you are?! But here, in *Taaqtumi*, the characters are at the mercy of the elements or the wild creatures that inhabit the land they live in. For the most part, no one's going out, deliberately seeking trouble of any kind, just because they're bored with their lives or have nothing better to do. The terrifying things and beasts are simply part of their day-to-day existence and stories, belonging to the world these characters live in. - And finally, this collection has prompted me to look up more books of Indigenous fiction and embark on a journey of reading them and writing about them and growing as a human being in the process. Which, I think, is essentially why we read and write. To understand ourselves and each other better, and to shape-shift, even if only very subtly and gradually, into more empathetic and caring human beings in the process. --- Taaqtumi begins with *Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard* by [Aviaq Johnston](https://www.inuitartfoundation.org/profiles/artist/Aviaq-Johnston). It is narrated from the point of view of a young child, Inu, returning home after school is let out early owing to the onset of a sudden blizzard. At first, she is with a group of friends, their homes all generally in the same direction from school. When her friend, Nita, reaches her home, Inu is the last one of the group and she has to make her way home by herself. Nita's grandmother urges her to stay with them. > "Inu!" she calls. "Stay with us! It's too dangerous ... this storm is full of bad things!" > "I'm okay, Grandmother!" I answer in Inuktitut. Having grown up copying Nita, I call her Grandmother, too. "I will be home soon!" I tell her. > She keeps calling after me, but I've gone too far. The wind distorts and carries her words away. > \~ An excerpt from *Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard* by Aviaq Johnston, from *Taaqtumi* --- ![two candles lit in front of a paperback copy of Taaqtumi featuring a black raven against a black background with red and white lettering](https://thedreampedlar.com/content/images/2026/11/Taaqtumi-1.jpeg) Taaqtumi: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories > Once in a while in Inuktitut class, an elder will tell us about a storm that fits itself in among the others. Once in a long time — years and decades in between — this blizzard comes back. It roams through our land; bringing something with it. The elders never tell us what it brings; ghosts or creatures or perhaps it is simply the shadow that I caught a glimpse of in that second. They just say to find shelter and to never be alone. > *This storm is full of bad things.* She had tried to warn me. > \~ An excerpt from *Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard* by Aviaq Johnston, from *Taaqtumi* > \~ My childhood summers were filled with 24-hour-long train journeys from Thane (near Mumbai, Bombay as it was known back then, where I lived) to Chennai (Madras as it was known back then) to spend an entire month with my grandparents, my maternal uncle and aunt, and their two children — my younger cousins. They lived in a small 2-bedroom apartment on the ground floor with one bathroom — housing the shower and the toilet — that now had to be shared among nine of us! The six of them and now my mother, my brother and myself. Of course, as a ten-year-old, that lovely apartment never felt small or inadequate to me in any way. It was a place full of love and warmth and simple adventures and delightful memories. Memories of mangoes and eating on banyan leaves, cut from a tree that grew in the backyard, one of the luxuries of a ground-floor apartment. At night, the adults would bring out thin mattresses and lay them out, side by side, in the living room — the largest room in the apartment. A number of us would sleep together. I often sought to lie down next to my grandmother. *Paati*, as we called her. *Paati* is a Tamil word used for both maternal and paternal grandmothers. Every night I'd ask my *Paati* to tell me ghost stories. She knew the best ones! There are two stories that I recall vividly even now, remembering my 10-year-old self listening with eyes wide open, all senses on high alert. One was the tale of my Paati's own father (or was it grandfather) who woke up one night to the sound of laughter and giggles somewhere deep inside his house in the village. This was during a time before electricity was even a thing. When he went to investigate, he found that a family heirloom — a *kaasumaalai*, which is a necklace made of overlapping gold coins (*kaasu* meaning coin, *maalai* meaning necklace) — was missing! He took a stick and went out into the dark farmland behind his house, following the sound of giggles and laughter. He stealthily reached a tree, where he found two female ghosts sitting on one of the low branches, plucking out the coins from the necklace and distributing it between themselves. *"This one's for you! This one's for me!"* The story goes that my great-grandfather (or was it great-great-grandfather), in a wave of rage, thwacked the stick he held against the trunk of the tree and bellowed, *"How dare you steal from my home!"* The ghosts dropped the loose coins and whatever was left of the necklace and fled without a second glance! That ancestor of mine was the first human being I came to consider as a real-life hero! Another of the many tales my Paati would regale me with featured a fire monster — a human-like creature with a head that was lit with flames blazing *inside* it! (Now that I think of it, that sounds like a jack-o'-lantern with a candle flickering restlessly inside it, doesn't it?) It would come and stand outside the window and look into the bedroom to check if there were any unattended children it could snatch up and run away with into the darkness of the night, never to be seen again. I've never been able to get the image of this creature out of my head. Its entire body is engulfed in flames, but it strides menacingly. Little tongues of fire leap out of its face, flare out of its eyes and nostrils and mouth, never hurting it, but threatening to scorch and unleash unbearable pain upon anyone it touches. I was often the last one to fall asleep on nights like these. Sometimes, Paati would doze off in the middle of her narration. And I'd lie awake, scanning the dark room for shadows moving inexplicably, and repeatedly glancing at a large framed photo of Raam, Laxman and Sita — Hindu Gods — on the wall, lit by a soft green light bulb of low wattage, trusting that those smiling, benevolent but resolutely still faces would somehow keep me safe from harm. Eventually sleep would take over and I'd wake up to find the world around me brightly lit with sunshine, leaving nowhere for the sneaky shadows of the night to hide anymore. My Paati passed away more than a decade ago. Exactly a day before little D was born. I still miss her. The apartment I used to spend my childhood summer months in — in Thiruvanmiyur in Chennai — has long ceased to exist, a builder having purchased all the old buildings there to replace them with new, swanky ones, more than half my lifetime ago now. There was something special about this bond I shared with my Paati, as I'm sure children all over the world, privileged to enjoy a wonderful relationship with their grandparents, can attest to. Even now, there's something about older people that makes me feel more steady and full of faith; they have gone through many years of life and have lived long enough to shed all illusions, making them the perfect companions for little ones who haven't yet been corrupted by the illusory ways of this world. Coming back to *Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq*, at one point Inu reaches home and calls her mother to let her know she has reached home safely. She tries to tell her mother about that inexplicable thing she saw in the blizzard. But her mother is quick to dismiss the child's concerns. > My mother doesn't know. She's too grown up to remember the scary parts of our land. The scary things that hide around us. She thinks that the land is nothing more than the science of the space around us, environment and nature. She thinks this is all that lives outside. > For some reason, elders and children know more than adults do, and I wonder why that is. They act like they know everything, as if everything has an explanation. At some point in their lives they forget the stories children are told, dismissing them as fairy tales and myths. They think that the scary women in the ice aren't real, or that the little folk that you can only see at sunset are just imaginary, or that giants never roamed the earth. Just like all adults, my mother has forgotten all those things the elders had passed down. > \~ An excerpt from *Iqsinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard* by Aviaq Johnston, from *Taaqtumi* --- This was a tale that stayed with me long after I finished reading it. I didn't think a single story would have evoked so many memories in me as I sat down to write about it. But that is the power of stories, isn't it? Which is another reason I loved how this book simply begins with the stories. There is no need for introductions and explanations. No barriers between opening the book and jumping into the first tale, which allows the reader to figure out for themselves what these stories are about and what kinds of memories and feelings these tales evoke in them. But now this means that I'm going to have to alter my initial plan of sharing all my thoughts about *Taaqtumi* in a single post. It might take a few (or several) more posts to share the joys of reading these stories, and that's a delightful task too! You know how people take lots of photos while on vacation or on a trip away. I do too, although I rarely go back to look at those photos again. They crop up in the Photos app like a blast from the past and bring a smile to my face, but that's the extent of it. But KrA's brother does something fun. After almost every outing, he'll connect his phone to the TV and display a slideshow of the images, giving us all a chance to relive the experience. This puts a huge smile on everyone's faces — from the children's to the grandparents' — as they recollect the fun they had, even though the trip would have undoubtedly had its share of difficulties to navigate. That's how I feel about writing these posts. These reflections give me a chance to savour these delightful stories once more. And hopefully they'll linger in my subconscious for longer this way.