by Sue Harrison
Lemming Tail offered the Ugyuun baby her breast. For a time the baby did nothing, only let his lips rest against her nipple, but then he began to suck, not with hard, strong sucking like Mouse, but gently, as though he were a new baby.
Lemming Tail stroked back his hair. He was not an ugly baby, this child of the Ugyuun village. She clasped his hand and waited for him to wrap his fingers around hers, to hold tightly as Mouse did, but the child’s fingers did not move. Lemming Tail frowned and glanced up at the chief’s wife. The woman looked quickly away.
Lemming Tail used a finger to break the baby’s suction on her nipple, then sat him up on her leg. His head bobbled, and he tipped to the side. Again she sat him up, then tried to stand him on his legs. He sank down as though he had no strength.
“This baby is … is sick,” she said to the chief’s wife, but the woman remained with her back to Lemming Tail. “She is too stupid to know the Walrus language,” Lemming Tail said to Mouse, and still the Ugyuun woman acted as though Lemming Tail had not spoken.
When all the oil was in the ulaq, Lemming Tail stood, went to her husband’s side, and pushed the Ugyuun baby into his arms. Raven jumped up, thrust the baby back at her, and shouted out a string of angry words.
“Be quiet and listen to me,” Lemming Tail said. “Look at the child. He is not strong. He is older than Mouse, but cannot even hold up his head. No wonder the father was willing to trade. The child will never be a hunter.”
“Be quiet,” Raven told her. “He is a boy. I do not care if he hunts.”
“Of course you do not care,” Lemming Tail said, so angry that spit flew from her mouth as she spoke. “You do not have to live with the River shaman. You do not have to please him, day by day. He believes he will have two strong sons. What do I say when he discovers that one—”
“Tell him that the child was strong when he lived in the Walrus village. Tell him the child caught the weakness of the River People.”
“You told me that the River People were strong. You said—”
Raven clamped a hand over Lemming Tail’s mouth, but Lemming Tail caught the edge of Raven’s hand with her teeth and bit down hard.
Raven jerked his hand away and slapped her across the face. The Ugyuun men looked aside as though they saw nothing, and Lemming Tail covered her face with her hands.
“This is your choice,” Raven said. “You can be Lemming Tail and stay here with the Ugyuun, or you can be Kiin and go with me and Mouse and the Ugyuun child to the River People. So I ask: are you Kiin or Lemming Tail?”
“I am Lemming Tail!”
Raven turned to the Ugyuun chief. “What will you give for this woman?” he asked, speaking in the First Men tongue.
The man raised his eyebrows in surprise and looked over at his wife.
“What did you say to him?” Lemming Tail asked.
“She sews well and makes healthy sons,” Raven said.
The man pointed to three seal bellies of oil.
“He says he will give me three seal bellies of oil for you,” Raven told Lemming Tail.
“You gave ten for this sick baby.”
“Five,” Raven said to the Ugyuun man and held up five fingers.
“You trade for your own oil!” Lemming Tail said. “What about Mouse and the Ugyuun child? Who will feed them?”
“They will not starve before I get to the next village. I will get a woman there.”
“You think you can get a woman so easily? You think any woman will come with you?”
“You are Kiin?”
“I am Lemming Tail!”
The Ugyuun man pointed at the oil and held up four fingers.
“You should be happy I keep the babies,” Raven said. “With the oil I leave here, you will not starve for the first months of winter. If you fish, you will have enough food to stay alive until next summer. But it is sad to see a beautiful woman hungry. The River People women are fat even at the end of winter.” Raven sighed. “Your shaman husband would have been glad to see your beautiful legs in caribou skin leggings. Have you seen the embroidery the River women do? Their clothing brings much in trade. Each woman has more necklaces than she can wear.”
Raven looked up at the Ugyuun chief, then said to Lemming Tail, “You could have a dog,” Raven said to Lemming Tail. “Most River People wives have their own dog to carry packs and guard their children.”
“I do not want a dog.”
“Four,” Raven said to the Ugyuun man and held up four fingers over the oil-filled seal bellies.
Lemming Tail screeched, “Wait!”
“You will accept the Ugyuun child?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You are Kiin?”
For a long time Lemming Tail stood with head lowered, eyes down. Finally she whispered, “I am Kiin.”
CHAPTER 71
KIIN WAITED, HER FINGERS moving in small, quick patterns over her hands. How long should it take a woman to get a baby? The tiny stinging insects the Walrus People called long noses hummed in her ears, and she slapped at her neck, wondering why these small ones plagued the land of the Walrus and Ugyuun yet did not live on the islands of the First Men.
“Come, Small Plant Woman, come,” Kiin whispered, then, angry with herself for her own impatience, she took her woman’s knife from the packet at her waist and cut several branches from a willow tree. She murmured her gratitude to the tree, then sat on her haunches and used her knife to peel off the bark. The soft spongy inner bark—soaked in water and taken as a bitter tea—made good medicine, something to ease small pains. Besides, who did not know that waiting went more quickly when hands and eyes were busy?
“We are ready, then,” Raven said and motioned for Lemming Tail to follow him up the climbing log.
“Good,” she muttered under her breath. “I am ready to leave the dark houses of the Ugyuun.”
She waited beside Raven at the top of the ulaq as he used eyes and ears to test wind and sea.
“We will return first to our own village?” Lemming Tail asked.
Raven frowned at her and kept his eyes toward the sea. “If the sea is calm, we will stop only for water. We will not stay even a night.”
“I must say goodbye to Shale Thrower,” Lemming Tail said.
Raven looked down at Mouse. With one long fingered hand he tugged at the baby’s hair. “To Shale Thrower or her husband?” he asked. He slid down from the top of the ulaq before Lemming Tail could reply.
Lemming Tail had bound Mouse in a sling at her left hip and carried the Ugyuun baby strapped under her parka as though he were a new infant. She bit at her lip and, tucking an arm around each baby, slid down after Raven. She did not intend to hurry to the beach. Let Raven do the work of launching the ik. So when she heard a man call, she stopped. She looked back over her shoulder, saw that he was speaking to an Ugyuun woman standing atop the next ulaq. A baby was slung against her hip. The man spoke in the First Men tongue, gesturing for the woman to come to him. She set the baby down on the ulaq roof and left him there as she followed the man into another ulaq. The child was only a little larger than Mouse, plump and wearing a parka of soft sea otter skin, only its eyes peering out from the drawstring hood.
Lemming Tail whispered to Mouse, “He wears a Walrus parka. I did not know Raven had brought one to trade.” She went closer, standing on her toes to see the child.
Lemming Tail laid one hand against the baby under her parka, raised her shoulders in a long breath, then quickly scrambled up the side of the ulaq. She grabbed the baby sitting there.
“A boy,” she whispered to the spirits. “Let it be a boy.”
She tipped him over. His buttocks above his leggings were bare. She saw the small pink penis, let out a quick breath of joy, pulled up her parka, and took the Ugyuun baby from the carrying strap. She laid him on the ulaq and slipped the other baby under her parka.
Then she ran to the beach, hugging both children to her, two healthy boys. She waited while Raven made adjustments to the
loaded ik, tested knots.
“We should go, “Lemming Tail said. “Now.”
Raven raised his eyebrows at her. “You are so ready to leave?” he asked.
Lemming Tail set her mouth into a frown. “I itch with their lice,” she said. “My nose is full of the stink of their lodges.”
He laughed. “So you would rather live with the River People.”
“Yes.”
Raven motioned for her to get into the ik, then pushed it from the beach, stepped in, and began the long, strong paddling that would take the ik beyond the pull of shore waves.
Lemming Tail, too, paddled—deep, powerful pulls. Raven laughed and called to her, “So on this trip you have learned something. I can tell the River shaman you are a good paddler.”
But Lemming Tail, looking back over her shoulder, did not answer. She plunged her paddle in hard strokes until the village was only a smudge of smoke in the gray and green of the Ugyuun’s hills.
Finally, Kiin heard someone coming. She stood, her legs stiff from squatting for so long. Her heart beat hard under her ribs. It had been too long. Something was wrong. The Raven knew she was here. Why else would Small Plant Woman take most of the morning to bring her Shuku?
“I am here,” Small Plant Woman called, but her voice was small and thin.
“You have Shuku?” Kiin asked. She stepped out of the willows, around the refuse heap, and onto the path where Small Plant Woman stood.
“The trader is gone, he and his wife,” Small Plant Woman answered.
A quiver in her voice made Kiin’s heart flutter. “You have Shuku?” she asked again.
“Kiin …” Small Plant Woman said, and her voice broke on the name.
The woman’s arms were empty, and Kiin rushed forward, clasped her shoulders. “Where is Shuku?”
“Kiin …” The woman’s eyes were suddenly wet, her shoulders shaking. “The trader, he … he took him.”
The screams began, and first Kiin thought they were Small Plant Woman’s screams, but finally she knew they came from her own throat.
Then there were others—Small Plant Woman’s husband, the chief, and old Blackfish. Their hands were on her, pushing her toward the ulas, and Small Plant Woman was talking, her words coming through her tears. “I left him only a moment on the ulaq, only a moment while I went to help my husband find something. I came out and Shuku was gone.”
Then other voices were speaking, words jumbled together, coming so fast that Kiin could understand little of what was being said. Finally they took her to the chief’s ulaq, guided her with careful hands down the climbing log, and there Broken Tooth told her how he had traded his son, a child of ten moons who still held to the ways of a new baby. The Raven had given ten seal bellies of oil and five of dried meat, but then Broken Tooth showed Kiin that he still had the baby, the boy staring at the ulaq roof as he was held out toward Kiin.
“They must have come back and taken Shuku instead of my son,” the man said. “I did not mean for that to happen.”
“Here,” he said. “You choose. My son or the oil.” But at his words the screams began again and would not stop.
CHAPTER 72
The Walrus People
The Bering Sea
LEMMING TAIL KEPT the Ugyuun baby under her parka all that long day of paddling, but the child’s wriggling almost made her wish she had chosen to keep the first baby.
“Think of your place as shaman’s wife,” she said into the wind. “It is worth a few days with a struggling baby.”
Finally Raven called out to her, pointed at a long sloping shore, and paddled the ik toward land, where they would spend the night.
Lemming Tail helped Raven beach the ik, then turned her back on him and walked to a sheltered place of thick boulders. At Raven’s protest she called out, “You want me to have two sons. I must feed them both. Are you not man enough to unpack a belly of oil and some dried fish? Are you a little boy who needs a mother?”
Raven spat out several insults, but dragged the ik farther ashore and untied a seal belly of oil, another of dried seal meat. He took what he needed for himself, then squatted beside the ik and ate.
“You can bring me nothing?” Lemming Tail called.
“Are you a little girl who needs a father?” Raven answered.
Lemming Tail leaned back against the boulder and checked both boys. Each suckled, hands cupped around a breast. The Ugyuun baby glanced up at her, his eyes wet with tears. He shuddered and looked away, but did not release his hold on her breast.
“Greedy,” Lemming Tail said. “You will get used to me. Remember, you drink my son’s milk. Do not take more than your share.”
Suddenly she jumped up, jerked the baby away from herself while urine dripped from inside her parka onto her leggings.
“You stupid child!” Lemming Tail screamed. “Did your mother teach you nothing? I told Raven he was foolish to take an Ugyuun boy. You are older than Mouse, yet you still wet your mother’s parka!”
She pulled the baby roughly from his carrying strap and set him on the ground. She ignored his cries as she carried Mouse, still nestled at her breast, back to the trading ik, found a bundle of sealskins, and pulled one out of the kelp twine that bound the pack. She peeled off the parka, set Mouse beside the ik on the beach, and went to the edge of the water. She waited until a wave washed close, then dipped in the sealskin. She used it to wipe off her breasts and leggings, then to wipe the urine from the inside of her parka.
Shivering, she slipped the parka back on over her head, picked up Mouse, and went back to the Ugyuun baby. He had curled up on the sand, bare rump up, his legs, clad in sealskin leggings, tucked under his chest. He had soiled himself. Lemming Tail snorted, then bent over him, used the wet sealskin to wipe his buttocks, and left him there again as she walked down the beach to a tide pool, where she rinsed the sealskin.
She looked for Raven but did not see him, so she shrugged her shoulders, took a food pack from the ik, and brought it back to where she had left the Ugyuun baby. She pulled out smoked fish, a strip of dried seal meat, and a container of berries mixed in fat. She gave Mouse a piece of dried fish, took one for herself, then reached over to shake the Ugyuun baby.
The baby moaned, hiccoughed a sob. Sighing, Lemming Tail picked him up. She turned the baby to face her, loosened his parka hood, and gasped.
“Shuku!” she exclaimed. She shook her head, closed her eyes, and opened them again. “No,” she said, laughing. “My eyes play tricks. You are bigger than Shuku.” With the tips of her fingers, she felt at the baby’s neck. There was a braided sinew cord, and she pulled it out from beneath his parka. An ivory carving—half an ikyak—dangled from the cord.
For a moment, Lemming Tail sat very still, forehead furrowed, then she said to the baby, “How did you get to the Ugyuun village? Is your mother there?” Her eyes narrowed. “If your mother is there, what do you think Raven will give for that knowledge?”
The baby hiccoughed again, reached for the chunk of dried fish in Lemming Tail’s left hand.
Lemming Tail gave him the fish. Mouse dropped his piece of fish and tried to pull himself into his mother’s lap, pushing against Shuku with one hand and one wide little foot.
“Mouse, no,” Lemming Tail said. “You can both sit here.” She picked up the dried fish Mouse had dropped, brushed the sand from it, and settled the babies, back to back, each with fish.
Leaning her chin against Mouse’s head, she said, “If I tell him I have Shuku, we will go back. The Ugyuun People will hate me for stealing this child, and Raven will take no part of the blame. If Kiin is not there, Raven will be angry with me, maybe even angry enough to leave me with the Ugyuun.
“And if Kiin is there, if the Raven can make her come with us, he will trade her instead of me to the River shaman. Then Kiin will have the honor of being a shaman’s wife, and Raven might yet decide to leave me with the Ugyuun.”
With an arm around each baby, Lemming Tail stood, again looked up and down
the beach for Raven, then set the babies on the ground and used sealskins to make a windbreak for them. She tucked them inside, then set out food on a mat for Raven.
When Raven returned from walking the beach, Lemming Tail met him with a smile. She gave him dried fish softened in seawater, and seal meat chopped fine and mixed with berries and fat. As he ate, she rubbed his shoulders, until finally he set aside his food and took her there on the sand, and did not ask about the babies until they had finished.
She said, “The one you brought from the Ugyuun People, he is better than I thought. He is not as good as Mouse, but then he is not your son as Mouse is.”
“I know well whose son Mouse is,” Raven said. “I do not need any more of your lies.”
Lemming Tail turned her back to the man, took the babies from their shelter, and tucked them under her parka to nurse. She lay down on her side, moved the babies so that one supported the other, and did not reply to Raven’s accusation.
CHAPTER 73
The First Men
Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula
“I AM STRONG ENOUGH NOW,” Samiq said to his father. He squatted on the beach sand and stroked the fingers of his right hand, the index finger tied to a birdbone, the other fingers curled into his palm.
Kayugh shook his head. “Remember how quickly Raven moved, even after fighting long and hard with your brother.”
“I had never fought with knives. Now I have. Each day Small Knife and I, we fight.”
“With knives?” Kayugh asked.
Samiq laughed. “With wood, shaped to the size of a knife, but blunt.”
“You tell me this so I will say you should go to the Walrus People, so I will agree you should fight Raven for Kiin?”
“I tell you this so you know that I am going.”
“You think the boy Small Knife can prepare you to fight the shaman Raven? He has powers beyond the strength of his arms. Have you prayed? Have you fasted?”