by Sue Harrison
The heat of the flames tightened the skin on her face, and she lifted her suk so Shuku could feel the warmth. She was tired and wanted to rest, but she must first think about food.
She did not want to waste a day fishing, so decided to make traps for pogy and cod by carrying rocks from the river and stacking them into piles curved to hold small pools of water that would trap fish as the tide went out. At the next low tide, she would spear the fish with her walking-stick spear, cut two flat strips of meat from each fish, and tie the meat to the outside of her carrying basket where the fish would dry as she walked.
Shuku wiggled one hand from Kiin’s suk and reached toward the fire. “No, Shuku,” Kiin said and caught his fingers in hers. “Hot. It is hot.” She stood and turned her back to the fire, pointed out toward the water. “See, Shuku,” she said. “High tide will come tonight, but now we must build fish traps. In the morning, we will gather and clean fish, then begin our journey. It will be a long walk, but we are strong, Shuku.”
Shuku babbled—his words in the language of babies, something understood only by spirits—and Kiin smiled. Almost she let herself think of Takha, wonder about the sound of his voice. But a darkness on the water suddenly drew her thoughts back to the salmon camp bay. An ikyak? Someone—perhaps Ice Hunter—looking for her? She sucked in her breath, then realized it was only a harbor seal.
She scanned the bay, studying each break in the ruffled surface of the water. If someone were following, she told herself, he would have caught her by now. A hunter’s ikyak was much quicker than a woman’s fishing ik, and almost any man in the village was a stronger paddler than she was. Even so, this journey would be much easier if she used the ik. With the ik, in less than a moon she would be at the Traders’ Beach. But the Raven would look for her there first, and what would happen to Samiq, to Shuku and Takha, if he found her with her people?
“We must leave the ik,” she said to Shuku, and squatted down on her haunches, her back warming in the heat of the hearth fire. “It is the only way we can be safe. By the time we get back to our people, the trading season will be over, and we will have the long winter together with your father to decide what to do about the Raven.
“If we are lucky, the Raven will find our ik here and think we have drowned.”
She stood and used the butt end of her walking-stick spear to stir the fire, but a strong gust of wind blew in from the bay, and the flames pulled back into themselves, flattening against the char of the wood. Kiin slipped her suk down over Shuku and shielded the fire with her body. When the wind calmed, she went back to drag the ik to the camp. Staked beside the fire, it would keep her and Shuku dry and warm, and protect the flames against the wind.
By the time Kiin returned with the ik, the fire had burned some of the driftwood into coals, and she banked sand over them, smothering the flames until only a few sparks remained. It would be best to save the wood until night. Now she must find rocks and make fish traps while the tide was out. She took Shuku from her suk where he had nursed himself into sleep. She laid him in the curl of the ik’s hull, bundling a warm fur seal pelt around him, then wrapped him with a kelp line, arms to his sides, as though he were bound into a cradle.
She walked the beach, gathering as many stones as she could carry, then clustered them around boulders sunk deep in the sand. As she worked, Kiin lifted her voice to any spirits, asking that the pull of waves and tide would not take the stones, at least until the next storm. She made three traps, curved enclosures that would hold the fish long enough for her to spear them during the next ebb tide. Then she went back to Shuku. He was still asleep. She squatted beside him, picked up the bag of sea urchins she had gathered early that morning on the Walrus beach, and cracked one open.
The urchin eggs were good, filling her mouth with a rich fishy taste. She closed her eyes as she sucked her thumbnail clean. Yes, she thought, I did the right thing for Shuku and for me. It will not be an easy walk, but we will get back to our own people.
This time she promised herself she would not be afraid to tell Samiq what she wanted—to be his wife, second to Three Fish, but still his wife. What would be better than to spend days preparing food for Samiq, evenings sewing his parkas and chigadax? What would be better than nights spent with his arms close around her? What would be better than to carry his sons under her heart?
Kiin awoke to the scolding of gulls on the beach, the chattering of teal on the river. She glanced at the sky and saw that the sun was already above the horizon. She had slept longer than she had meant to, and she bit her lips as she looked out over the tide flats. The water had risen to ankle depth, and she knew some of the fish might have escaped from her traps.
“Less food for the journey,” she said, the words a sigh that blended with the wind.
She stood and untied the ik, then flipped it upright. She reached for Shuku in the warmth under her suk, felt the sudden pop of his mouth as she pulled him from her breast. She ignored his cries as she set him into the ik. The sides were high enough to keep him from crawling out. She would change his sealskin wastecloth later. Now it was more important to catch fish. She picked up her walking-stick spear and a large carrying net from her supply basket and ran out onto the tide flats. A cod flipped in the shallow water behind the closest stone weir. She speared it and slipped it into her carrying net, then went on to the next trap. Four fish there. All pogy. There was one large cod in the third trap. The fish was too long to fit into her carrying net, so she left it on her spear and walked back to Shuku. He had stopped crying and sat with his thumb in his mouth watching her as she walked. When she came close, he began to cry again.
Kiin crouched beside him and slipped her hand over his mouth, using her thumb to pinch his nose shut. He stopped crying and she removed her hand. “Shuku, do not cry,” she said. “If you cry, someone will hear. Maybe wolves. Maybe some spirit. Be quiet, Shuku, be quiet.”
Shuku listened, but when Kiin was finished talking, he pulled his face down into a frown and began to cry again. Once more Kiin clamped her hand over his mouth and Shuku stopped. Kiin pulled her hand away and picked him up. “Ah, you are a brave boy, Shuku,” she murmured as she held the baby close. “You are brave. No wolves will hear us.”
She set Shuku back inside the ik and split open one of the pogies. With the curved blade of her woman’s knife, she removed the innards, leaving the firm green flesh under its tent of bones. She slipped the innards into a clean clamshell, tied the shell halves together with a sinew line, then slipped the shell back into her basket. She would use the innards for bait tomorrow or the next day. She looked down at Shuku, at the clean trails his tears had left across his face. His breath came in shuddering jerks, but he did not cry.
“Ah, Shuku,” she said. “You are a good boy, already learning to be a man.” She picked up the pogy and used her thumbnail to pop out its eyes, then pressed them into Shuku’s mouth. Shuku’s lips quivered into a smile, and Kiin let herself laugh. What child did not like fish eyes? A bubbling of joy began to grow next to her heart. It was good to be able to give Shuku treats without having Lemming Tail demand a portion for herself.
Kiin wrapped the fish in grass and laid it over the warm coals of her night fire. While the fish cooked, she repacked her supplies in the large basket, filleted all but one of the other fish, then tied the strips of meat to the outside of the basket.
For a moment she allowed herself to sit beside the coals, to smell the fish cooking, then she stood, took her spear and woman’s knife, and went over to Lemming Tail’s ik. She let her eyes follow the ik’s smooth cedar ribs, the kelp lashings that bound each joint, the oiled split walrus hide covering. It was a good ik, watertight and easily balanced, light enough for two women to lift.
She picked up Shuku and slung him in his carrying strap, his legs straddling her left hip. She looked up into the sky, at the clouds moving in a gray line to cover the sun, as the tide moves to cover a beach.
Perhaps clouds are like the tide, Kiin thou
ght, and perhaps the spirits who live at the Dancing Lights understand the clouds, use them in their fishing as easily as people on the earth use the tides.
She looked down again at Lemming Tail’s ik and felt its spirit hovering.
She raised her spear to slash the hide cover, but stopped when her inner voice said, “Leave it, Kiin. It has a spirit, as all iks do. Who can say what that spirit will do to you if you destroy the ik?”
“Qakan destroyed our mother’s ik,” Kiin answered.
Her spirit moaned, its voice like the voice of someone afraid. “And remember what happened to Qakan,” her spirit said. “Even now his bones lie on the Traders’ Beach protected only by the rocks you heaped over him. The Raven cursed him, and his spirit cannot fly to the Dancing Lights. What will he do when your mother dies and there is no one to remember him?”
“I cannot leave the ik here,” Kiin said aloud, speaking to her spirit as she would speak to another person. “What would the Raven think if he comes to the salmon camp and finds the ik, whole, without damage?”
Would he suspect she had gone back to her own people? Would he go to the Traders’ Beach, find her and Shuku and Takha, kill Samiq?
She raised her spear again, then remembered that if the ik were destroyed on rocks, the rock would break through from the bottom. She turned the ik over and, closing her mind to her spirit voice, thrust her spear through the walrus hide, then used her woman’s knife to enlarge the tear. “I release your spirit,” she said to the ik. “I release your spirit. Stay here until the Raven comes. Stay here and call him to this beach. Make him believe that I and my son Shuku are dead. Then go with the wind to my people the First Men. Tell them I am coming. Go there and wait for me. When I come I will build you another ik. I will decorate it with sacred things—shells and puffin feathers, seal teeth and all things beautiful. I will honor you, and you and I will be together as long as my body lives. And when I die, I will ask that you be buried with me so I can take you to the Dancing Lights.”
Then Kiin dragged the ik down to the edge of the high-tide mark, settled it into the beach grass. She walked the beach until she found a rock, something heavy, but not too heavy to carry. She brought it back to the ik, lifted it above the ik’s center thwart, and dropped it again and again until the thwart splintered. She took one of the necklaces the Raven had given her and used her knife to cut the sinew thread that held the beads together. She rubbed the necklace in the sand, slipping most of the beads from the cord, scattering them over the tide flats, then wrapped what was left of the necklace around the broken thwart. She stood over the boat, trying to put herself into the Raven’s mind, trying to decide what he would think when he saw the ik.
She carried the stone back to its place on the beach and went to her supply basket. She pulled her amulet from her neck, ignoring the shiver that moved down her arms when its familiar weight was no longer against her chest. Working quickly, she used the pouch as a pattern and cut another from a piece of sealskin, punched awl holes along both sides, and sewed up one side with sinew thread, leaving the other open. She put a black stone and several shells she found on the beach into the pouch, then took it to the ik, wedged it under some of the bow lashings. She pulled long strands of hair from her head, twisted them into the splintered ends of the broken thwart, then took out her woman’s knife, raised her left hand, and made a cut on the inside of her left arm. She bent over the ik, letting her blood drip against the walrus hide, over the amulet pouch, over the shell beads of her necklace. Then, kneeling in the sand, she prayed to any spirit listening, “Protect me, protect Shuku. Do not let the Raven know what I have done.”
CHAPTER 32
The Whale Hunters
Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain
WAXTAL STROKED THE WALRUS TUSK. He had never done better work. He ran his fingers over the incised people and animals, moving his hands lightly, as though he were touching a woman. Even with that gentle touch, he felt the power of the ivory reach through his hands, and it burned as though he held his fingers near smoldering coals. He sighed and closed his eyes, felt a surge of blood strengthen his man part. He lay one hand on the walrus tusk, rubbed it as though it were a part of himself.
“Those fools,” he said aloud, thinking of Owl and Spotted Egg. “They do not begin to understand the power of my carvings. And they do not begin to understand the power the Whale Hunters still have.”
A voice seemed to answer him. Waxtal shook his head. He was alone in the ulaq, but perhaps it was some spirit brought by the power of the walrus tusk carvings. Waxtal’s heart quickened, and he stood, straightening his grass aprons. He stroked his hands through his hair and over his long chin whiskers. The voice called again, and Waxtal realized that it came from the ulaq roof. Waxtal looked up.
It was Hard Rock.
Disappointment brought anger, and Waxtal squatted down again beside the walrus tusk, his back toward the climbing log. Then he remembered the woman Hard Rock had promised him. Good, he thought. There are times for spirits and there are times for women. “I am here,” he called out.
As Hard Rock climbed down the log into the ulaq, Waxtal pulled his carving knife from a pouch at his waist, leaned over to make a line on the tusk.
Let him know he has interrupted my work, Waxtal thought. Let him know I have more to think about than a woman coming to my bed.
Waxtal looked back over his shoulder and frowned. The woman with Hard Rock was Many Babies. She was old and she was loud, but Waxtal did not let his displeasure show in his eyes. It was an honor to be offered Hard Rock’s first wife.
Many Babies made slow eyes at him, then opened her mouth to touch her tongue to her top lip. Waxtal could see that she had once been a beautiful woman. Even under the loose lines of her suk he could see the wide curves of her hips, the bulge of her breasts.
Hard Rock stood beside his wife. The man kept his eyes on Waxtal, his head turned as though he did not even see the woman at his side. “This is your carving,” he said. He walked over to Waxtal, squatted on his haunches.
“Yes.”
Hard Rock reached to touch the tusk, but drew his hand back when Waxtal hissed. The man looked at Waxtal, brows drawn together, lips pressed into a firm line.
“It has a spirit,” Waxtal said. “It is … it is alive.”
“How do you know what to carve?” Hard Rock asked and crossed his arms over his chest.
Waxtal narrowed his eyes, thought for a moment. There was always danger in telling too much.
“It is a story,” Waxtal finally said. “It tells what has happened to my people.” With the tip of his carving knife, he pointed at a series of crosshatchings on the base of the tusk. “This is a far beach, east and south of here, close to the ice walls that mark the edge of the earth. Next you see the waves that destroyed our village.” He pointed to a series of wide slashing lines rising up over circles that were a group of ulas. “Here is where we take our ikyan and travel to the beach of the old man, the shaman carver.”
Hard Rock nodded.
“Here we trade with our brothers the Whale Hunters, and this is the battle with the Short Ones. This man is you.” Waxtal laid the blade of his knife against one of the man figures, larger than the others, a man gripping a lance in each hand.
Hard Rock leaned close to study the carving, and Waxtal raised his hand to cover his smile. Why tell Hard Rock the truth, that the man carved was Waxtal, that the story told was Waxtal’s story?
Many Babies leaned over her husband to look at the tusk. She smacked her lips together and asked, “Do you pleasure women as well as you carve?”
She reached out to stroke Waxtal’s hair, laughed, and curled her fingers around his ear. Hard Rock rose to his feet and pulled her arm away from Waxtal.
“I am sorry to make such a poor trade for your oil,” he said to Waxtal. “Perhaps you will find pleasure in the fact that she is my first wife. If not, choose any woman you want in the village. I will bring her to you.” Without looking bac
k at either Waxtal or Many Babies, Hard Rock climbed from the ulaq.
Waxtal leaned over the walrus tusk, used his knife to shave out a line on the yellow ivory. Many Babies knelt beside him. She moved her hands slowly up under his suk, stroking the insides of his legs. Waxtal’s man part hardened, but still he kept his eyes and hands on the ivory. Let the woman wait.
A woman must understand that there are things more important to a man than she is. Tonight he must carve.
Soon Many Babies’ hands were squeezing, rubbing. Waxtal’s fingers grew cold, and he knew his spirit had left his hands to find joy between his legs. He sighed and set down his knife. Sometimes he had to think of others before he thought of himself. What woman, seeing this tusk, would not want him, even for one short night? What woman would not want the chance to carry his child?
He turned and pulled off Many Babies’ suk, then laid her back on the floor mats. She opened her legs, and again he sighed. Why refuse the woman? There would be time again to carve. Besides, he did not want to insult Hard Rock.
CHAPTER 33
THE WOMAN’S SNORES WOKE WAXTAL. He groaned and shifted on the sleeping robes. If she had been his wife, he would have kicked her awake and made her move to her own sleeping place, but a trader cannot kick the alananasika’s wife. He nudged her and pushed her slowly to her side. She snorted and for a moment was silent, then started snoring again.
Waxtal moved as far from her as he could, close to the curtained door that led into the ulaq’s main room. Through the grass curtain’s rough weave he could see the glow of an oil lamp. He squeezed his eyes closed, then heard the voices—Owl and Spotted Egg, their words nearly whispered.
Waxtal shook his head. Let them spend half the night talking. They passed their days in bed with one woman or another. He had better things to do. How could a man greet the sun with the Whale Hunters if he was awake all night talking? Besides, tomorrow he must seek a place in the hills to meditate and fast and speak to the spirits. What did Owl and Spotted Egg know about things of the spirit? They thought only of their bellies and their loins.