WHEN YOU WALK across the wide sheets of ice and into the hard snow, sometimes you see someone else's tracks, even when you know there is no one else around. You kneel down and look at these footprints, but you do not recognize them. These are the tracks of the Ghost People, invisible people who move about us all the time, like our shadows on a clear, starlit night.

The Ghost People have bodies just like ours and use the same kind of curved-bladed ulut knife that we do, but they cannot be seen. Sometimes you can even pass an igloo they have built, but you will never see the invisible people themselves until they die. Then, they become visible to us.

Once a ghost person saw a beautiful woman of the Netsilikmiut, the Netsilik Eskimo people. He could not resist the temptation and touched her to get her attention. They fell in love even though she could only hear the sound of his voice. They were married and lived happily for many years. The invisible man was a good husband to the Netsilik woman. He hunted and brought them food and used his ulut to cut snow blocks and build them a good igloo to live in.

As time went by, the woman could not bear not knowing what her husband looked like. Finally, she took the ulut while he was sleeping and cut where she knew he was lying. Slowly the dead man became visible. He was young, strong, and handsome, everything a woman might want her man to look like. But he was also dead and the woman realized how foolish she had been. She knelt beside the body and began to weep.

The invisible people knew that one of their people had been killed and came out of their faraway igloos to the igloo of the weeping widow. Their bows and arrows moved in the air as they traveled like tufts of light fur floating on the wind. The bowstrings stretched back as the invisible people notched their arrows to shoot the woman. Some of her family were nearby, and they came to the sound of her weeping.

The Netsilik men stood with their harpoons raised, looking into the empty air where the invisible people drew their bows. The arrows were aimed at the woman and her brothers and cousins, but the Netsilik did not throw their harpoons. Slowly, the invisible people lowered their bows and relaxed their bowstrings.

The leader of the invisible people spoke with the oldest of the Netsilik men. They made an agreement: the Ghost People would never again have direct contact with the Netsilik people. Should their paths cross, they would not touch or speak.

The arrows disappeared back into the invisible people's clothing, and the bows floated away as they walked back across the snowpack. There was no battle and everyone returned to their everyday lives. The invisible people went back to their igloos, and the Netsilik went to bury the dead man.

Now, as you walk alone, or just before you fall asleep, you may hear a sound like distant voices. If you call out to see who is there, these night voices will not answer. They are the Ghost People, and they will no longer speak to us.