Ithaqua (story)

Ithaqua
Author	August Derleth
Language	English
Publication	Strange Stories
Date of writing	1933
Publication date	February 1941

"Ithaqua" is a short story by August Derleth, written in 1933, that first appeared in the February 1941 issue of Strange Stories. The story further develops the entity Ithaqua, introduced in Derleth's "The Thing That Walked on the Wind" (1933). As the tale itself says, it's the "incredible story of a Snow-Thing, the story of a strange god of the great white silence, the vast land where snow lies for long months beneath a limitless, cold sky."

Characters

• John Dalhousie: Division Chief of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, from temporary quarters at Cold Harbor, Manitoba
• Constable James French: An investigator for the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, looking into the disappearance of Henry Lucas.
• Constable Robert Considine: Sent to Cold Harbor after French's disappearance.
• Henry Lucas: He is the first white man in a string of disappearances. Considered highly popular because of his cheating the Indigenous.
• Randy Margate: Henry Lucas' brother-in-law, who reports him missing.
• One Medicine Three-Hat: A First Nations man who tells French that Ithaqua is something "no man may look upon without worship. Only to see him is death, like frost in the deep night."
• Father Brisbois: An itinerant priest who reported the disappearances of children, and later tells French about Ithaqua.
• Doctor Telfer: A skeptical doctor in Cold Harbor.

Timeline

• 1932: Father Brisbois twice reports the disappearance of Indian children from Cold Harbor, Manitoba.
• February 21, 1933: Henry Lucas disappears from the town of Cold Harbor.
• February 23, 1933: Brother-in-law Randy Margate reports Lucas' disappearance.
• February 25, 1933: Constable James French arrives in Cold Harbor.
• February 27, 1933: French talks to Brisbois about the disappearances, and altars along the old Olassie trail.
• March 3, 1933: French issues his last report.
• March 5, 1933: French's report reached Division Chief John Dalhousie.
• May 7, 1933: French's body is found encased in spun snow.
• May 11, 1933: Dalhousie releases a statement about the Lucas investigation.

Publication History

After its initial appearance in Strange Stories, "Ithaqua" appeared in Derleth's collection Something Near (Arkham House, 1945). It later appeared in Windigo: An Anthology of Fact and Fantastic Fiction (Western Producer Prairie Books, 1982). Robert M. Price selected it for his anthologies Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos (Fedogan & Bremer, 1992) and The Ithaqua Cycle: The Wind-Walker of the Icy Wastes (Chaosium, 1998). It's found in two collections of Derleth's Lovecraftian fiction, The Cthulhu Mythos (Barnes & Noble Books, 1998) and In Lovecraft's Shadow: The Cthulhu Mythos Stories of August Derleth (Mycroft & Moran, 1998).