by Sue Harrison
Paddling toward the Walrus village, Raven seemed to have the strength of two men, so that White Fox in his ikyak paddled hard to keep up with him. And as though spirits sent tide and winds to help in the paddling, they made the journey from the salmon beach to their village in only half a day.
When they arrived, Raven, with one hard push of his paddle, grounded the ik and stepped ashore, then walked in long, quick steps through the village, saying nothing to anyone who greeted him, his eyes fixed on the lodge that he and his wives shared with Grass Ears.
He called out even as he entered the low tunnel that led into Grass Ears’ section of the lodge, shouted for Lemming Tail and Kiin, and did not greet Grass Ears’ wives, the two sisters with eyes as round as their faces. They whispered something, heads bent close, but Raven did not stop to talk to them. He pushed aside the woven curtain that divided the lodge.
Lemming Tail, her son beside her, sat on the sleeping platform. She smiled slowly at him, cocked her head to one side. “You brought me gifts?” she asked.
Raven frowned, wrinkling his brow as if the question puzzled him. “I have gifts,” he said. “Where is Kiin?”
“You do not need Kiin,” Lemming Tail said. “She does not know how to please a man in the sleeping robes.” She stretched out both arms to him. “Come to me,” she said. “I will earn my gifts.”
“Go get Kiin,” said Raven. “I have gifts for both of you.”
Lemming Tail licked her top lip and looked around the ulaq, as if searching for Kiin. She shrugged her shoulders. “You should not have left her,” she finally said. “You know she did not want to live with the Walrus People.”
“What do you mean?”
Again Lemming Tail shrugged. “She is not here. She left only a few days after you did.” Lemming Tail thrust out her lower lip. “She left and took my ik.”
In two steps Raven was across the lodge. He reached for Lemming Tail, but the woman scooted up against the wall. Mouse began to cry.
“You let her go?” Raven asked.
“How could I stop her?”
“You have brothers, and Grass Ears would have helped.”
Lemming Tail covered her face with her hands, but Raven had already turned his back on her, was already pushing his way through the dividing curtain.
He paused long enough to say to her, “I am hungry. Prepare something. I will return.”
The curtain fell into place, and Lemming Tail, ignoring her son’s sobs, scrambled from the sleeping platform to the food cache and began pulling out seal bellies of dried meat.
“Is she dead?” Raven asked.
“Possibly,” Woman of the Sun answered. She did not look up at Raven, but continued to weave the death mat that was stretched across her lap.
“You found her ik?” asked Woman of the Sky.
“White Fox told you?” Raven asked.
“No one told me,” she said.
“We found an ik. It might be Lemming Tail’s.” The ceiling of the old women’s lodge was low, and Raven could not stand to his full height, but he paced with head bent, shoulders hunched. Finally he squatted on his haunches in front of the old women. “Lemming Tail said Kiin stole the ik and left. Lemming Tail said Kiin planned to return to her own people.”
Woman of the Sun shook her head and answered, “Lemming Tail’s brothers forced Kiin from the lodge. They said she must live somewhere else until you returned. Kiin told the women she would go to the River People village to find you. She took Shuku with her.”
“Kiin is not dead?” Raven asked again.
“Kiin?”
“Yes, Kiin!” Raven shouted, his words holding no politeness.
“I have had no dreams,” said Woman of the Sun.
Raven stood, strode from the lodge.
Woman of the Sky turned to her sister. “She is not dead?” she asked.
Woman of the Sun only shook her head slowly. “I have had no dreams,” she said again.
Lemming Tail’s brothers were not hunting. They could have been. Other hunters had seen sea lions that morning at the mouth of the bay, but the oldest brother’s ikyak needed repair, and he and his two younger brothers had stayed ashore, all resewing seams and rubbing the ikyak cover with walrus grease until the skin was nearly translucent.
When Raven had landed the trading ik, the two younger brothers, working near the ikyak racks, had turned questioning eyes toward each other. “My wife needs me,” the youngest said, but the oldest brother said, “Stay here. He is nothing. He pretends to be shaman, but he is nothing. Have you ever hunted with him?” He laughed. “A woman could bring in more meat.”
So they stayed, oiling the ikyak skin and waiting.
When Raven came to them, they were not surprised, but the youngest whispered, “What did she tell him?”
“Our sister? She told him nothing.”
“I have spoken to my wife Lemming Tail,” Raven said. “She told me that you, the three of you, drove Kiin from my lodge, that you used Kiin like a wife to shame me, the three of you, and in her shame Kiin left the village. My wife Lemming Tail says that in her kindness, she gave Kiin her ik. My wife Lemming Tail says she is no longer your sister.”
“We did not,” said the youngest, but the oldest brother, walking up to Raven until there was only a handbreadth between them, said, “I would not soil myself with your woman. She is Seal Hunter. What Walrus man risks a curse by joining with a Seal Hunter woman? But you are not enough even for the Seal Hunters. As soon as you left, Kiin went back to her own people. I did not stop her. Our village is better without her.”
“You say your sister lied to me?”
“I say you lie.”
“You owe me the price of a wife,” Raven said. He ran his hands over the ikyak the were repairing. “I will take this instead.”
“It is not yours to take,” the oldest brother answered.
“Then will you consider this?” Raven said and pulled a walrus harpoon, the harpoon head attached, from its ties on the ikyak deck.
The man reached for the harpoon, but Raven stepped back and turned the point toward him. Raven held up the remains of Kiin’s necklace. “If Kiin had decided to return to her own people,” he said, “why did I find this on the salmon camp beach? It is hers. I gave it to her myself.”
“Many women have necklaces like that,” the oldest brother said. “My own wife …”
“Life for life,” Raven said and suddenly threw the harpoon. The throw was awkward. The harpoon was made for a throwing board. But the point was sharp, and the weapon pierced the oldest brother’s chest.
The man clasped his hands around the shaft, his face twisted in a gurgling scream, and he fell, then lay still.
And as though he had done nothing more than offer a man a fish, Raven said to the other two brothers, “Lemming Tail says he was the one who took Kiin. She says that you two tried to stop him. Is that so?”
The youngest brother drew out his sleeve knife, stepped forward, but the other man clasped his brother’s wrist, held tightly. “That is so,” he said. “We tried to stop him.”
“Then I give you the right to leave this village,” Raven said. “Gather your things, take your wives and children, and go. I do not want to see you again.” Raven prodded their brother’s body with one foot. “If you want, you may take him. If not, the hunters here will bury him.” Without waiting for their answer, Raven turned and went to his lodge.
CHAPTER 67
The Walrus People
Chagvan Bay, Alaska
RAVEN STUCK THE DRIFTWOOD in Lemming Tail’s face and held out a crooked knife, its thin andesite blade set into the side of a caribou rib bone. “Carve!” he demanded.
Slowly she reached for the wood. Raven slapped the rib bone into her hand. Lemming Tail wiped her forearm over her eyes and began a slow, quiet weeping. “What do I carve?” she asked.
“How should I know?” Raven said. “I did not tell Kiin what to carve.”
“I am not Kiin!”
“Woman of the Sun and Woman of the Sky told me what happened. Kiin is gone because of you and your brothers. I promised her and her sons to a shaman of the River People. I will not break my promise to him. So you will be Kiin. Her powers will be your powers. Your children will be her children.”
“You will take me to the River people?” Lemming Tail asked in a small voice.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Carve!”
Lemming Tail, her teeth gritted, held up wood and knife and, staring into Raven’s eyes, gouged the wood again and again.
“Do what you will,” Raven said. “You will be the one who suffers when the River People shaman discovers you cannot carve.”
Lemming Tail threw knife and wood to the ground. “What do I care? If he kills me, he kills me. But before I die, I will tell him what you have done.”
“How will you tell him?” Raven asked. “He does not speak your language. You will have to wait until you learn the River People tongue, and by then I will be far away—too far for an old man to follow.”
Lemming Tail raised her head, took a long breath. “When do we leave?” she asked.
“You need time to pack and to mourn,” Raven said. “Six, seven days.”
“Kiin is dead?” Lemming Tail asked.
Raven shrugged. “Who can say? Woman of the Sun has had no dreams.”
“Then why should we mourn?”
“I did not say I would mourn. You should mourn. Your oldest brother is dead,” Raven said, and stopped to watch Lemming Tail’s eyes. “For what he did to Kiin, I killed him. In your mourning do not forget to pray that your younger brothers will spare you.”
“Why should they do anything to me?” Lemming Tail asked in a small voice.
“Because of what you told me,” Raven answered. “Because of what you said your brothers did to Kiin.”
“I told you nothing! I told you nothing!” Lemming Tail said, her words rising into a scream. She scooped the crooked knife from the floor and lunged toward Raven. He caught her, grasping her arms, his long fingers circling her wrists.
“You think after killing your brother, I could not kill you?” he asked, whispering as though with words of love. He released her left hand and twisted her right arm behind her back until she dropped the knife. He clamped his forearm across her neck. “Mourn,” he said, “then we will leave. It is good you are going to the River village. There you will be far enough away from the Walrus People so you will not have to fear your younger brothers. They have sworn revenge.”
CHAPTER 68
FINALLY THE MOURNING WAS FINISHED. The packing was done, and Raven and Lemming Tail had made a plan—so Dyenen would believe Lemming Tail was Kiin.
They left the village in early morning, telling no one. For a long time Lemming Tail paddled hard and said nothing, a thin, tuneless song coming from her mouth. Finally she began to speak, jabbering about the water and the ik, about the River People; until Raven closed his ears to her voice. But he heard her when she said, “This is not the way to the River People.”
“You are a trader? You know the trade routes?” Raven asked.
“I am not stupid. I see the sun. I know its path in the sky.”
Raven laughed. “You may please the River shaman more than I thought,” he said. “First we will go to the Ugyuun village. The people there are First Men. We will trade with them, then we will go to the River People.”
For a time Lemming Tail said nothing, then finally Raven heard her voice, something almost under her breath. “I have baskets.” Louder she said to Raven, “Do the women make fine parkas? Do they have necklaces?”
“They are First Men,” Raven said, “so the women make birdskin suks, not parkas, and they are poor. Their hunters are lazy, so in winter the women often starve, but they will have many necklaces, also baskets and mats, things you might trade for. Do not trade the carvings you have made. Let me trade those. I will get more for them than you will.”
He looked at Lemming Tail as she dipped her paddle into the water, at the shining black hair that was gathered into a loop of wolverine fur at the back of her head.
“I want to trade my own carvings,” she said in a high, pouting voice.
“You will do what I say,” Raven answered. “You should be dead, you know, your life in trade for Kiin’s.”
The woman seemed to pull herself into a small bundle under the fur of her parka. Why tell her that the carvings were worthless, the wood gouged and splintery? He would not trade them with anyone. He would throw them away, where no one would find them.
Once I have Dyenen’s secrets, he thought, it will be Lemming Tail’s problem to carve what the old man wants. I do not have to go back to the River village. There are other places to trade. Let Lemming Tail suffer for her deceit.
She had not been a good wife. It would be a relief to be rid of her complaints and sloppy ways. Before Kiin came to him, during those days when Yellow-hair and Lemming Tail were his wives, he had been accustomed to the stink of dirty floors and moldy clothing. But with Kiin, the lodge was always full of the good smells of food cooking; the floors were clean, the fleas picked from the seams of his clothing, the oil lamp wicks trimmed and without smoke. It was a good way to live, and he did not want to go back to what had been before.
Once he had given Lemming Tail to Dyenen, he must find another wife for himself. Not a young woman. Young women expected a man to give too much of himself. He did not have time to think about gifts or worry about a woman’s foolish tears.
When he learned Dyenen’s secrets, he must make them a part of his life, must decide the best ways to use them among the Walrus People. He could not do that without long days of careful planning. He could not do that with a young woman who would expect all his thoughts to be of her. He would find a widow, old but not too old. She could cook and clean and sew. When he had all power as shaman, then he would worry about young women for his bed.
When they came to the Ugyuun village, even before they had finished pulling the ik ashore, Raven saw Lemming Tail wrinkle her nose in disgust.
“There is not one good ikyak on the rack,” she said, and pointed with all the fingers of her left hand. “Where are the lodges?”
“There, see?” Raven said. “Those mounds. Did no one ever tell you about First Men lodges?”
“Kiin,” Lemming Tail said. “But who would believe Kiin? You are a fool to come here. They will have nothing to trade.”
Anger rose hot in Raven’s chest. What right did a wife have to question him? But he only said, “You are not afraid to use that dead one’s name?”
“Kiin is not dead. She only hates you and did what she could to get away.”
Then Raven was at Lemming Tail’s side, one hand clamped tightly around her jaw, his fingers biting into the soft hollows of her cheeks. “I am your husband,” he said, his words whispered yet loud. “You will do as I say. You will treat me with respect or I will leave you here with the Ugyuun people and take another woman to trade to Dyenen.”
Ugyuun men were coming to greet them, and both Lemming Tail and Raven faced them with smiles, Raven with hands held out in greeting. “I have come to trade,” he said in the First Men language, and pretended not to see the surprise on the faces of the Ugyuun People. Few traders came to their village. Why go where men have little to trade? Why go to a village so poor that there was little food to share with visitors?
Raven held one hand toward the ik. “My wife and I have food enough to share with any man who will shelter us in his ulaq,” he said, and hid his smile as three hunters stepped forward to offer their ulas, then turned to argue among one another over who would keep the trader and his wife.
We are fortunate, Raven thought when he saw the ulaq that was finally chosen. It was not clean and seemed dark, with only two smoky oil lamps to give light, but it was large. A log with notches cut into it for climbing slanted down from roof hole to floor. Raven heard Lemming Tail mutter angry words und
er her breath as she groped her way down the climbing log.
“Be polite,” he hissed.
“I will not stay here tonight.”
“If I decide we stay, then we stay.”
“They are filthy. Their lodges are not fit to store rocks.”
“Be quiet. They will hear you.”
“They are too stupid to speak Walrus,” she said.
“You do not know,” Raven answered. “Be quiet and offer to help when you can. It will get you better trades.”
Lemming Tail pursed her lips and nodded, then followed him quietly, stood behind him as he squatted on his haunches in the manner of the First Men and began to talk to them.
They spoke of fish, then of seals, finally of a hard rain that had come to the Ugyuun beach the day before. As the men spoke, Raven, his eyes finally adjusted to the dark, sought the corners and niches in the thick earth walls. There were baskets, most old and broken. There were several long straight spear shafts leaning in one niche, something tradeworthy, especially to the people of the islands, those few Whale Hunters who came to trade.
A woven grass mat hung against one wall, perhaps a cover for a storage space. The weaving was in stripes of light and dark grass, and its beauty captured the eyes. River People women would give much for such a thing, Raven thought, though there was little else of value. He doubted that the food cache overflowed with seal bellies of oil. Even the village’s hunters had the pale, unhealthy skin of those who do not get enough to eat.
Finally, when there was a lull in the conversation, Raven pointed with his chin toward the grass mat. “Your wife weaves?” he asked the oldest of the Ugyuun men.
“Yes,” he said.
“She is gifted. Perhaps she would make a trade.”
The man lifted his hands. “You will have to ask her. I cannot give away what she makes.”
Raven nodded, glad that Lemming Tail did not understand what the man had said. The First Men always treated their wives too gently, always gave more than wives should be given.
“She is here?” Raven asked, turning to look around the ulaq.
“No, she is with her sister. She will be back to prepare food.”