Brother Wind

by Sue Harrison

  When Pogy saw the walrus, she lifted her voice in mourning, cried out as though it were the first day of her loss, and when Kukutux moved to put an arm around her shoulders, she pushed Kukutux away.

  “I do not want it. I do not want it,” she said.

  But Red Feet’s mother tottered out onto the beach, walked up to the walrus, the red-and-brown animal larger than the largest man. She planted her feet solidly beside it and called out, “My son’s last kill. It is mine, as was his first kill. The meat is mine and I will share it with no one.”

  Hard Rock left the gathering of men, went to the woman, bent down, hands on knees, to look into her wrinkled face. “Grandmother,” he said, “you cannot eat a whole walrus. Share it with all the village so your son will be able to hold his eyes forward in pride among the hunters of the Dancing Lights.”

  The old woman sighed, then lifted her hands and dropped them to her sides. “I will share,” she said, and she stepped back from the carcass.

  Hard Rock turned to the women on the beach, many already holding butchering knives. “The shaman says there must be prayers.”

  “He is not shaman; he is trader,” Most Hands said, squinting at Waxtal.

  “He called the walrus to our beach,” Hard Rock said.

  “It is a gift!” the old woman screamed. “It is from my son. It is a gift.” She lifted one curled hand toward Waxtal. “He did not do it!”

  “He has great powers,” Hard Rock said. “He talks to spirits. He …”

  Then Waxtal was beside Most Hands. Lifting a necklace of birdbones from his neck, he draped it over the old woman’s shoulders. “I spoke to your son,” he said. “In the days of mourning, before he went to the Dancing Lights, I listened to what he told me. He wants you to have this necklace. He wants you to gather berries and sea urchins to help feed his son.” Waxtal looked over his shoulder at Pogy standing with the baby on her hip. “He wants you to have this walrus, you and his wives and the people of this village. He asked me to call it here for him. I have done that.” He cleared his throat. “My powers are only the powers of a shaman,” he said, “so the calling took four days, but now the walrus is here and the meat is for all of us to use.”

  The old woman clasped the birdbone necklace with both hands, stepped away from Waxtal, and said in a quivering voice, “You take the hunter’s share.”

  Waxtal smiled, and the smile made a shiver come to Kukutux’s arms. Was the man as powerful as he claimed? Could he talk to dead men and yet not fall under their power to pull him into the Dancing Lights? How else would the walrus have come except by someone’s power?

  But in Waxtal’s eyes, in the set of his teeth, the smoothness of his words, she saw only greed. Even now, as she stood under the curve of the sky, it seemed as though all things—the sea, the beach, the ulas, even the ikyan on their racks—were pulling toward Waxtal, as though he had the power to take them into his soul, as easily as a man drinks soup from a bowl.

  Waxtal walked to the edge of the waves, reached down to cup water in his hands, then carried it back to the walrus and splashed it over the animal. Again and again, four times, he carried water. Then, calling to the women, he said, “I need something from the sea, mussel or clam.”

  One of the women held up a jointed chiton from her gathering bag, the dark shell curled almost into a circle.

  “Good,” Waxtal said. He took the chiton and put it into the walrus’s mouth. Then he began a chant, something in a language Kukutux did not know, the words too harsh to be the Caribou tongue spoken by Owl and Spotted Egg.

  When the chant was finished, Waxtal reached out to one of the women, who gave him her butchering knife. Waxtal bent over the walrus, made the first cut, working to get the knife through the thick hide, cutting a few strokes, then stopping to hold out his hand toward another woman and continuing with a fresh sharp blade, slashing from neck to anus, along the belly.

  Waxtal spoke to the old woman as though he had just heard her words, as though he had not spent time in chants and rituals. “No,” he said, “the hunter’s share is yours. I do not want it. I do not need it. You and your son’s wives should have that share.”

  “Then the chief’s share,” the old woman said.

  Pogy’s eyes widened, and she looked at Hard Rock. Both hands flew to cover her face.

  Kukutux wondered what Hard Rock would say. An old woman could not give away the chief hunter’s share. But Hard Rock said nothing.

  Waxtal shook his head. “I will take no share, none of the meat,” he said. “It is not for me but for the village.” He walked several steps toward his ulaq before turning back, reaching out to stroke the walrus tusks, one, then the other. He smiled up at the old woman, who stood with a knife in her hand, hers the right of cutting and dividing. “The tusks are beautiful,” he said. Then he walked back up the beach, looking at no one, speaking to no one. Kukutux turned her head to watch him until he climbed up the traders’ ulaq and disappeared inside.

  CHAPTER 60

  WAXTAL SAT DOWN beside the oil lamp. The wick needed trimming. He took out his sleeve knife and pushed himself to his feet, looked at the braided moss wick, at the thin spire of black smoke that circled up from the sputtering flame, then sat down again, put his knife away. Who could say what would happen to that knife if he used it to do woman’s work? Why risk a curse, especially on this island of curses?

  He thought about getting something to eat, but the woman had left him only half a sealskin of dried fish and a handful of seal meat. What a fool she is, Waxtal thought. Women never had vision for things of the spirit. But what could he expect? Even most men did not.

  He crawled over to his walrus tusks, sat down beside them, and laid his hands against the cool ivory. He closed his eyes and pictured the dead walrus on the beach. Perhaps he had called it. Who could say? Why else would it wash up here, an animal that did not float when dead? What could have brought it here except his own powers?

  He thought back to his own poor village. Perhaps they were all dead, starved during their first winter away from Tugix’s island, without food or oil. It would not bother him to return to a death ulaq filled with their bones, even those of his own wife Blue Shell. Let them all be dead.

  But what about Samiq? Waxtal smiled. No, he did not want Samiq dead. Samiq needed to see Waxtal as shaman, needed to see his power. Then let the man die, let Waxtal’s own spear kill him. Of course, if all those people were dead, who would be left to live in his village? But why worry? He had called walrus to the Island of Four Waters and a dead walrus to his beach. Yes, he had called all of them. Who else could have done so? If Hard Rock was able to call an animal, it would be a whale.

  I called them, Waxtal thought. I called the walrus. And if I can call walrus, I can call men, hunters and traders who will come to my village. And because I call them, I will be chief. Waxtal’s stomach growled. He laid his hand over his belly and said, “Wait, soon you will have food. They will bring more than if I had taken the hunter’s share.” So he sat and waited until sleep reached out to claim him.

  He awoke to a voice calling from the top of the ulaq. It was the widow Pogy and the old woman Most Hands. Each carried fresh meat, sliced and cooked, dripping with oil. Pogy also carried a bladder of cooked bitterroot bulbs, which she handed Waxtal as she came down the climbing log. The bladder was warm from the bitterroot, and also carried the rich smell of smoked fish. He opened it and saw that the woman had flaked the fish into the root and also sifted in dried ugyuun leaves. He reached to scoop out some of the bulbs, licked the food from his fingers.

  “For you, for the meat you gave us,” Pogy said, and though her eyes were swollen from her mourning, Waxtal saw that she was a beautiful woman, tall and strong, the bones of her face tight under her skin, her eyes large, her nose small.

  Too bad, he thought, that Red Feet had not died sooner. If Pogy were not in mourning, Waxtal would ask for her as wife rather than the one they called Kukutux. Though Kukutux was not ugly, her bent a
rm would hinder her strength, and she was a woman of sharp mouth and bitter words. But who could say? If Waxtal decided to stay on this island for the winter, perhaps he would take Kukutux for a short time, then when Pogy had completed her mourning, he would throw Kukutux away. Who could blame him? Even Hard Rock complained about Kukutux’s temper.

  “Thank you,” Waxtal said, dipping his fingers again into the bitterroot. “It is good.”

  “It is I who should thank you,” said Pogy. “It is not easy for a woman alone to get meat.”

  The two women left, and Waxtal’s eyes followed Pogy as she went up the climbing log. His eyes lingered on her feet and legs, and he wished he could see higher up into her suk, but the shadows let him see no farther than her knees. Still, even that made Waxtal forget for a moment about his empty belly. But when he could no longer hear the women at the top of his ulaq, he sat down beside the oil lamp and ate.

  Three women came that night, all bringing cooked walrus meat, the meat strong in flavor, perhaps not as good as seal meat, but better, Waxtal told himself, than whale. One woman promised him a seal belly of walrus oil, and looking at his lamp, took her woman’s knife and trimmed the wick. Another brought walrus meat cut very thin, between each piece a slice of raw fish, the walrus cooked in oil until a crisp crust formed to hold in the juice of the meat. Another brought a stew simmering in thick broth, and hung the container from a rafter.

  When each woman left, Waxtal took the food she had brought and put it into one of the empty sleeping places. Why have extra? If some of the men stopped later—to talk about hunting walrus—why have food that they would eat, they who had wives and mothers to cook for them?

  Waxtal ate until he was full, then laid what was left of the meat that Pogy had brought on a mat, rolled up the mat, and pushed it into the food cache. He sat down, cross-legged, and looked long into the flame of the oil lamp. And as though he were in a dream, he heard voices.

  At first he thought it was someone else bringing food, but then he realized that the voices came from within the ulaq itself. Moving carefully toward the sound, he finally came to the carved tusk. He bent his head, listened to the voices that were little more than a whisper.

  “What?” said one voice. “You leave nothing for those who might come?”

  “Why should I?” Waxtal asked, also whispering. “I gave them a walrus and took nothing for myself. What more should I do?”

  “You called the walrus?” the voice asked.

  “Who else?”

  “Selfishness earns nothing but regret,” the voice said, words that Waxtal had heard before, from grandmothers teaching grandchildren.

  “Am I a child that you must tell me that?” he asked, but he went back to the food cache, pulled out the mat, and laid it on the floor beside the tallest oil lamp. “There,” he said and said it loudly. “There is food.”

  The voice did not answer, and though Waxtal went back to the tusk, squatted beside it for a time, the voices did not speak again. Finally he went into his sleeping place, took out his packet of carving tools, and settled beside the brightest oil lamp. He reached for a bit of walrus meat and chewed it as he brought the carved tusk over to the lamp and set it on the floor beside him.

  He closed his eyes to see if some picture would come to his mind, some idea of what he should carve next. Soon he was making lines, pictures of Samiq, the man with one hand short and drawn in against his chest, with marks like spears for the curses that were being thrown against him by spirits.

  Waxtal heard Hard Rock call from the top of the ulaq. Waxtal set aside the tusk and laid his tools beside it.

  “Come in; I am here!” he called up to the man.

  Hard Rock came, pulled off his suk. The man was barely sitting before Waxtal offered him the remains of the walrus meat Pogy had brought.

  Hard Rock took a piece, chewed it slowly, swallowed slowly. Finally he gestured with his chin toward Waxtal and said, “You called the walrus.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is good you are here. At least our village now has fresh meat.”

  Waxtal inclined his head, set his mouth into a smile.

  “Our hunters,” Hard Rock said, “they do not know how to hunt walrus. You can help them?”

  “Some. I have hunted with the Walrus men, but I do not know all their secrets. I do know they do not hunt with seal or sea lion harpoons. I have told you that already.”

  Hard Rock nodded.

  “You must have your men make weapons for walrus. Long shafts of the strongest wood. Bone foreshafts as long as a man’s forearm. Spearheads should be as long as a man’s hand, wrist to the end of his longest finger.

  “Also tell your men that walrus are taken from land,” Waxtal said. He looked away from Hard Rock and fixed his eyes on the oil lamp. “Do I need to tell you why?”

  “I saw what happened,” Hard Rock said. He picked up another piece of meat, and though Waxtal’s belly was so full it pressed uncomfortably against his ribs, he too took a piece of meat. “If we do all these things, will you bless our weapons and make chants for our hunts?”

  “Yes,” Waxtal said. “The Whale Hunters have been good to me.”

  He moved his hand in a wide sweep. “You allow me this ulaq.” He smiled, knowing that Hard Rock would see the bareness of the room.

  “The women brought you food?” he asked.

  Waxtal pointed to the mat beside Hard Rock. Hard Rock looked at the few pieces of meat and raised his eyebrows.

  “I ate some before you came,” Waxtal said. “I would have saved more if I had known you were coming.”

  For a time there was silence, then Hard Rock asked, “If we do these things, we will be successful in the hunt?”

  Waxtal opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He shrugged. “Who can say?”

  “There is still a curse,” Hard Rock said in a quiet voice; the voice of a man who has worked too long, too hard, without sleep.

  “Yes,” said Waxtal. “Why do you think your hunter was killed?”

  “Because of his harpoon. Because we did not offer prayers.”

  “That is enough to curse a man’s hunting,” Waxtal said. “That is enough to make him return from days on the sea with nothing—perhaps for one summer, even two. But to kill him?” Waxtal shook his head.

  “Is it the same curse that has plagued this island these two years?” Hard Rock asked.

  Waxtal lowered his head, and for a long time did not speak. Finally he closed his eyes and began a long chant, something in the Walrus tongue, followed by words and phrases in the First Men language, then again in Walrus, the words blending like braided strands of twisted sinew. When he had finished the chant, he opened his eyes and said to Hard Rock, “You must leave this island.”

  Hard Rock’s eyes widened. “I must leave this island?”

  “You and your strongest hunters. It is the only way.”

  “If we leave, will the curse leave our people?”

  “If you do what must be done.”

  “What must be done?

  Waxtal bowed his head, waited a long time before answering. Finally, he said, “Sometimes the spirits do not tell everything that needs to be told.”

  “If we do not know what to do, what sense is there in leaving our island?” Hard Rock asked, anger hardening his words.

  Waxtal held his hands out, palm up. “Go to each ulaq, to each hunter in this village. Ask each man to spend the night praying. I will do the same, and in the morning I will tell you what must be done.”

  Hard Rock stood, and Waxtal pushed himself to his feet. He waited as the man pulled on his suk, then walked with him to the climbing log. At the top of the log, Hard Rock turned back, looked down at Waxtal. “I came to tell you that the people want you to have the walrus tusks.”

  Waxtal raised one hand. “Tell them I said thank you. You go now to your men. You pray. Tell them to pray. Tell them that I, too, will spend the night in prayer.”

  Waxtal climbed the log, crou
ched at the top of the ulaq, outside in the cold wind without a suk, and watched as Hard Rock went from ulaq to ulaq.

  Later, back inside his own lodge, Waxtal warmed his hands over an oil lamp flame and laughed. “Four tusks,” he said. “Even the spirits will not be able to stand against my power.” He went into his sleeping place, curled himself up into his robes, and slept. He was shaman. His dreams would be his prayers.

  CHAPTER 61

  WAXTAL LOOKED AROUND the circle of men. Their heavy eyes answered his question, but still he asked, “You prayed?”

  “Yes,” Hard Rock said and paused to let each man answer for himself. “Have the spirits spoken to you?” he asked Waxtal.

  He nodded. “They spoke.”

  The men waited, their eyes fixed on Waxtal’s face. He felt their nervousness, the energy of their questions. It brought strength to his hands and arms, to his back and legs, and so for a moment he said nothing, only waited while their power flowed to him. Finally he said, “I know why you are cursed.”

  A groan rose from the men in Hard Rock’s ulaq. “Everyone here knows why we are cursed,” Hard Rock said. “If that is what the spirits told you, then you have nothing important to tell us.”

  The men around Waxtal suddenly seemed larger, stronger. He flexed his hands into tight fists, but still he could feel his power ebb. “Samiq,” Waxtal said, and the word did what his hands could not—pushed the Whale Hunters back to the size of men.

  Hard Rock hissed, as did several of the others. “You curse us with his name,” Hard Rock said.

  “The spirits have told me what you do not know,” said Waxtal. He paused, looked into the face of each hunter. “I am a trader as well as a shaman. What will you give me for the power to end the curse?”

  “Tell me first what I need to know,” Hard Rock said, leaning forward and looking long into Waxtal’s face.

  Waxtal laughed. “If I tell you, then why give me anything?”

  “And what if your knowledge does not lift the curse?”