by Sue Harrison
And though Kukutux clung to Old Goose Woman’s words of hope, fixing her eyes on the woman’s thin and matted hair, the dark and grease-stained fur of her ankle-length suk, she heard the mourning chant in her head as though the women still sang it.
It is for your son, Kukutux told herself. The mourning chant is for your son, that strong, dark-haired baby, gone now three moons, his breath stolen by the mountain’s ash that still covers the beach and the hills behind the village. You mourn him. The chant is for him. The spirits would not take another of the Whale Hunter men. They would not. Too many men have died, in hunt after hunt. How can the village survive if more men die? The mountain has taken enough. And this spring, the whales did not come. Even the beach geese—those winter-breaking birds, their voices loud enough to scare away the snow—have passed the Whale Hunters’ island, the geese flying so high that the women’s bird nets, the men’s bird spears, could not hope to take them.
Kukutux scraped at the beach gravel with her feet and did not let herself look at the sea. Perhaps her own eyes were the curse. Perhaps if she did not look, the fourth ikyak would appear. But then she heard the women’s voices lift in questions, their words edged with the hard sharpness of fear, and she could not keep her eyes from looking.
Finally Old Goose Woman said, “Tell us, Kukutux. It is better to know than to be caught between hope and fear.”
So Kukutux said, “There are three, only three, and the first two ikyan are tied together. Something lies over their decks.”
“A seal?” Speckled Basket asked and reached up to clasp a strand of her hair taken by the wind.
“A man,” Kukutux said. Then the ikyan drew near, and she felt all strength leave her knees so that they folded and let her drop to the ground.
“Who?” came a woman’s voice, then another, all calling her, as though they did not notice she had fallen. The words, like sharp-nailed fingers, picked at her suk, her hair, her skin, until Kukutux closed her eyes, cursed their far-seeing in her heart, and whispered the name: “White Stone.”
She tried to begin a mourning chant, tried but could not remember the words. The women’s voices were only a rush in her ears, like wind roaring; and lifted above all other sounds was her own voice crying out, “White Stone, my husband, my husband White Stone.”
PART ONE
Summer, 7038 B.C.
CHAPTER 1
The First Men
Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula
KIIN PUSHED HER WAY through the circle of men gathered on the beach. When she reached open ground, she saw the Raven. His chest was bare, his skin glazed with sweat, flecked with blood. He lifted a long-bladed obsidian knife as though to greet her. It was Amgigh’s knife, one Amgigh had made, and the blade dripped blood.
The Raven sucked in his cheeks, let the lids of his eyes nearly close. “Your carvings, wife,” he said. “They gave me power.”
He pointed, and Kiin looked back at the edge of open ground, where a line of her carvings divided those men who watched from those who fought. The carvings were the ones she had made and traded for meat and oil so the First Men could live through the winter.
“Where …” she began, then shook her head and said to the Raven, “I am not your wife.”
The Raven snorted. “Go then to him.” He raised the knife, used it to point, and Kiin let herself look where she did not want to look, let her eyes see what she did not want to see: Amgigh lying in the sand, Samiq kneeling beside him. Then Kiin, too, was beside Amgigh, her arms over Amgigh’s chest, her hair turning red with Amgigh’s blood. She clasped her amulet, rubbed it over Amgigh’s forehead, over his cheeks.
“Do not die, Amgigh,” she whispered. “Do not die, oh Amgigh. Do not die.”
Amgigh took one long breath, tried to speak, but his words were lost in the blood that bubbled from his mouth. He took another breath, choked. Then his eyes rolled back, widened to release his spirit. Kiin moved to cradle Amgigh’s head in her arms, and began the soft words of a song, something that came to her as she held him, something that asked spirits to act, something that begged her husband’s forgiveness, that cursed the animals she had carved.
When the song was finished, Kiin stood, wiped one hand over her eyes. “I should have come sooner,” she said. “I should have known he would fight the Raven. It is my fault. I …”
But Samiq came to her, pressed his fingers against her lips. “You could not have stopped him,” he said. “You are my wife now. I will not let Raven take you.”
Kiin looked into Samiq’s eyes, saw how much of him was still a boy, and how little he knew about the kind of fighting that had nothing to do with knives. “No, Samiq,” she said. “You do not have the power to kill him.”
Samiq’s jaw tightened, he shook his head. “A knife,” he said and turned to the men gathered around him.
Someone handed him a knife, poorly made, the edge blunt, but Samiq grabbed it.
The Raven clenched his teeth, screamed in the Walrus tongue, “You, a boy, will fight me? You, a child? You learned nothing from that one there, that dead boy in the sand?”
“The Raven does not want to fight you,” Kiin said, her breath coming in sobs. “Samiq, please. You are not strong enough. He will kill you.”
But Samiq pushed Kiin aside, lunged forward, wrist cocked with the longest edge of the blade toward the Raven. The Raven crouched, and Kiin could hear him mumbling—shaman’s words, chants and curses, prayers to the carvings she had made. She ran to her carved animals, knelt among them, heaped sand over them.
She looked up, saw Samiq slash his knife in an arc toward the Raven. The blade caught the back of the Raven’s hand, ripped the skin open, drew blood. But the Raven did not move.
“Kiin,” the Raven called out, “this man, he is your ‘Yellow-hair,’ is he not?”
And Kiin, remembering the Raven’s love for his dead wife Yellow-hair, said, “Do not kill him. I will be your wife, only please do not kill him.”
The Raven moved, his movement like the dark blur of a bird flying. The long blade of his knife bit into Samiq’s flesh, into the place where wrist joins hand. Then Kiin was running across the sand, through blood from the first fight, to stand between Samiq and the Raven. Small Knife, Samiq’s adopted son, was there also, gripping Samiq’s arms.
“You cannot win,” Small Knife said. “Look at your hand.”
Samiq glanced down, but said, “I have to fight. I cannot let him take Kiin.”
“Do not fight,” Kiin said. “You have Small Knife. He is your son now. You have Three Fish. She is a good wife. Someday you will have the power to fight the Raven and win. Until then I will stay with him. I am not strong enough to stand against him, but I am strong enough to wait for you. I have lived in the Walrus village this past year. They are good people. Come for me when you are ready.”
Then Ice Hunter, a man from the Walrus village, was beside Kiin. He reached for Samiq’s arm, wrapped a strip of seal hide around the wound, pulled it tight to stop the blood. “You have no reason to fight,” Ice Hunter said. “The first fight was fair. The spirits decided.”
Kiin looked into Samiq’s eyes, saw the emptiness of his defeat. She pulled off the shell bead necklace he had given her the night of her woman’s ceremony. Slowly she placed it over Samiq’s head. “Someday you will fight him,” she said. “You will fight him, and then you will give this necklace back to me.”
She turned to the Raven. “If I am to go with you, I must go now,” she said, and she spoke in the First Men’s language, then repeated the words in the Walrus tongue.
“Where are our sons?” the Raven asked.
“Shuku is here,” Kiin answered, and raised her suk so he could see the child. “But I gave Takha to the wind spirits as the Grandmother and the Aunt said I must.” Kiin took Shuku from his carrying sling. “This is your son,” she said to the Raven, “but he is no longer Shuku. He is Amgigh.”
Kiin saw the Raven’s anger, the clouding of the Raven’s eyes, but s
he did not look away, did not flinch, even when he raised his hand as though to strike her.
“Hit me,” Kiin said to the Raven. “Show these people that a shaman has only the power of anger against his wife, the power of his hands, the power of his knife.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “A man does not need a strong spirit when he has a large knife, a knife stolen from someone else.”
The Raven threw the obsidian knife to the ground. Kiin picked it up, walked back to Samiq, placed it in his left hand. Her eyes met Samiq’s eyes. “Always,” she said, “I am your wife.”
The Raven gestured toward Ice Hunter, toward the other Walrus men who had come with him. One picked up Kiin’s carvings, another brought the Raven’s ik to the water.
“We will not return to this beach,” the Raven said.
But Kiin bent down and picked up a handful of pebbles from the sand. She waited as her mother brought Shuku’s cradle and a bundle of Kiin’s belongings from the ulaq.
Once more Kiin looked at Samiq, tried to press the image of his face into her mind, then she turned and followed the Raven to his ik.
CHAPTER 2
The Walrus People
The Bering Sea
SHE HEARD NOTHING. NOT the full round voice of the wind nor the high, curling cries of oyster catcher and gull, not the dip and splash of paddles nor the soft throat purr of Shuku nursing. But the silence was as sharp as obsidian, as dark as old blood. Even Kiin’s spirit was still, so quiet that if she had not felt its ache in her chest, she would have believed it was gone—passed on to Three Fish along with the gift of Kiin’s son Takha, along with that carving of man, woman, and child made long ago by the great shaman Shuganan.
She had not offered to paddle, nor had she looked back at the Raven, nor at the ikyan that skirted the Raven’s trading ik.
Kiin pulled herself away from what her eyes were seeing, what her ears were hearing, until there was nothing but the throb of her spirit, pulsing like a wound. At first, its rhythm was the sound of her loss: Amgigh, Takha, Samiq; Amgigh, Takha, Samiq. But now there was silence, and Kiin wondered if she and the Raven and the Walrus People traders were no longer a part of the seen world, but instead had paddled into some world of story or song. Perhaps even now they were carried in the mind of a storyteller, alive only when words fell from the storyteller’s mouth into the ears of those who listened.
When the Raven finally spoke, Kiin did not hear him, but instead, in a rush as harsh as storm wind, heard the noise of the sea. Then she felt the cold of spray against her cheeks, and she knew the choice she had made was not merely a story to be told on winter nights, but something so real that it could separate her mind from her spirit until the emptiness was complete.
So as the Raven called to his men, pointing with his paddle toward an inlet that broke the gray line of the shore, Kiin called to her spirit, until she heard the thin whispers of her spirit voice, its first word, a name—“Takha.”
And Kiin answered, “No, Shuku.”
Then the Raven’s ik touched shore, and Kiin, arms careful of Shuku asleep in his carrying sling under her suk, leaped ashore. She gathered driftwood and watched as the men made a beach fire, and when Ice Hunter handed out pieces of dried fish, Kiin did not ask or wait, but took fish as though she were one of the traders.
Ice Hunter did not speak, but raised eyebrows at her, so that Kiin, biting into the firm, smoky meat, said, “I carve,” and before he passed on to another, she reached out for a second piece.
They used the ik for shelter, tipping it to lie with its broad bottom toward the wind. The Raven hung the rectangle of wood that was Shuku’s cradle from the ik ribs, then motioned for Kiin to pull off her suk. Kiin looked hard into the Raven’s eyes and did as he asked, but she did not put Shuku into his cradle. He would be warmer strapped against her chest.
The Raven pulled off his parka and pushed Kiin into the shelter of the ik’s bow. Kiin turned so her face was toward the ik, her back to the Raven. He lay down beside her, draped his feather cape over them, and pressed his body against hers.
Kiin waited, her flesh prickling with the touch of his skin. She laid one hand over Shuku, the other against her belly, and remembered when she had carried both her sons warm and safe under her heart. Then she felt the push of the Raven’s man part, hard against her back, and she lay very still, scarcely allowing herself to breathe. But he did not try to enter her, to claim her as wife. Finally, he relaxed, his arm heavy against her ribs, and the rhythm of his breathing smoothed into sleep.
The Raven’s warmth softened the darkness, until the night, like fingers weaving, twined dreams into Kiin’s thoughts. But then Kiin’s spirit spoke, jerking her awake with a voice as shrill as an oyster catcher’s cry. “Amgigh, Amgigh, Amgigh.” A mourning song.
Kiin let the sorrow fill her until it pushed tears from her eyes. Once again, she saw Amgigh dead on the beach, but she also pictured Samiq, Takha in his arms, the two safe with Three Fish in the shelter of Samiq’s ulaq.
Kiin took a long breath and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I am strong,” she told her spirit. “They are safe, and I am strong.”
Turning her head in the direction of the Traders’ Beach, where the mound of Samiq’s ulaq rose from the earth, she whispered the same words to the night wind.
Who could say? Perhaps the wind would carry the words to Samiq. Perhaps someday it would bring his words to her.
CHAPTER 3
KIIN GUIDED HER SON’S HEAD to her breast. He drew the nipple into his mouth and sucked, bringing a twinge of pain and then the release of milk. Shuku’s body relaxed against her own.
Though she had awakened to the words of a mourning song, Kiin had held those words within until she and the Raven had launched the ik. Now the song filled her mouth and she sang. She rocked, and her rocking joined the rhythm of the Raven’s paddle, the swell of waves.
“I hope you mourn our son,” the Raven called to her.
A sharp thrust of anger pierced Kiin’s pain, and she turned to face him.
“You would tell me to mourn?” she said, spitting the words out toward the man. “You would have allowed two old women to kill our sons. You tell me to mourn?”
The hood of the Raven’s chigadax covered his dark hair, and the wooden visor he wore against the glare and spray of water shaded his eyes, but Kiin saw the tight working of his jaw.
“Our son Takha is dead,” the Raven said. “You were the one who gave him to the wind spirits!”
Kiin clamped her teeth together to hold in her words.
“Why did you go with your brother?” the Raven asked. “He stole you from your father. He tried to sell you as slave. Why trust him after he had done those things to you? I told you I would let you go back to your First Men husband if you left Shuku and Takha with me. Instead you chose to kill Takha. Now you have lost both son and husband. Did you also help your brother kill my Yellow-hair?”
Kiin’s anger filled the emptiness left by her grief. “You were going to kill my sons. You had chosen to believe the Grandmother and the Aunt. You had decided your power could not stand against their curse. You are no shaman!”
“You fool, Kiin!” the Raven hissed. “Why would I kill our sons? I am a shaman. I need their power.”
“See!” Kiin said, her arms tightening around Shuku. “You do not care about them except for yourself, for your own power. When the Grandmother and the Aunt made you believe my children could bring a curse to your lodge …”
“Who told you I would kill our sons?”
“My brother Qakan.”
The Raven’s face twisted. “When did Qakan ever speak the truth?” he snarled. “If a man uses his sister like a wife, can he do anything but lie?”
The Raven’s words moved over Kiin like the dense wetness of fog. So the Raven knew about Qakan, knew that Qakan had forced himself on her. Perhaps that was why he had never taken Kiin into his bed even though he called her wife.
Kiin pressed her hands into t
ight fists. “He told the truth to save his sons,” she said. Her words were quiet, so that the Raven leaned forward, and for a moment stopped paddling.
“He believed the babies were his?”
“Yes.”
The Raven dug his paddle down into the water and for a long time did not speak.
Finally Kiin said, “I did not know Qakan killed Yellow-hair. I did not know she was dead until I saw you and Qakan fighting on the beach, until I heard you accuse him as he died.”
“You were there on that beach?” the Raven asked.
Grief closed Kiin’s throat. If the Raven had found her, he would have taken her back to the Walrus People. There would have been no fight at the Traders’ Beach, and Amgigh would still be alive.
Then her spirit whispered, “But perhaps one of your sons would be dead.”
“So you believed Qakan,” the Raven said. “But if you left me in order to save our sons, why did you give Takha to the wind?”
“His spirit is with his own people,” Kiin said, “with the First Men. He does not belong to the Walrus People. I have saved one son, and if the Grandmother and the Aunt were right, if their visions and dreams were true, my people do not have to fear a curse, nor do yours.”
The Raven only grunted, then pointed with his chin toward a paddle that lay in the bottom of the ik. Kiin picked up the paddle, turned around, and plunged the blade into the water.
“Be thankful I did not leave you with the First Men hunter Samiq,” the Raven said. “The wound he carries—I have seen such wounds before. The hand is useless. He will never throw a spear again. He will not be able to hunt. His wives and children will starve.”