Brother Wind

by Sue Harrison

“I have never convinced myself that we should be the ones to make that choice. So do not blame yourself,” Woman of the Sky said. “I also knew Takha was alive.”

  “How did you know?” Woman of the Sun asked. “You do not have dreams.”

  “No, I do not have dreams. But I know you. I know what I see in your eyes, and I knew that Kiin’s sons were alive.”

  “The one was evil. He should have died.”

  “No, sister,” said Woman of the Sky. “He was not evil. In that, your dreams are wrong. Evil uses what it can to cause pain. The evil is in Raven. If anyone should be dead, it is he. If Kiin’s babies had died, the evil would have come to us some other way. Why else these?” she asked and lifted her arms, pointed with her chin to the death mats she carried.

  Kukutux sat with the other women in the ik. From the water, the village was only a darkness on the shore, but as the fires caught and the flames rose, she could see the mounds of the ulas, could see the people gathered on each ulaq roof. Kukutux hunched her shoulders, and the cramp that pulled at her back muscles eased.

  I should have stayed with She Cries and Many Babies in the Walrus village, she told herself. I need to spend days on the beach; I need to sew and weave, dig clams and gather sea urchins.

  But Waxtal had wanted her to see the village where he would be chief, and he did not want to go back to the Walrus village to get her once the battle was won.

  Kukutux shook her head. This was no village—four, five ulas, a few drying racks, and a handful of hunters. But it was not much worse than the Whale Hunter village, she thought. And the ulas were in good repair; the people, what she could see of them, looked strong and healthy.

  “There is no curse here,” she whispered.

  But Samiq was here. She had heard his voice, and she remembered him—the Seal Hunter man who had come to their village, who had called so many whales. Had Hard Rock forgotten that? Had he forgotten the whales the young man brought them? The village had never been stronger. The curse had come when Hard Rock made Samiq stop hunting, when he gave him boy’s work to do instead of honoring him as a man. Perhaps the curse was as much Hard Rock’s as Samiq’s.

  She kept the ik well back from the beach, she and the women with her, so the fire would not show the First Men that they waited.

  Raven would fight, Hard Rock had agreed. Then if Samiq was not dead, Hard Rock would fight, then another hunter, and another, until Samiq died and the curse was lifted from the Whale Hunters.

  But, Kukutux thought, what if there is no curse?

  CHAPTER 98

  HE CAME IN BLACK FEATHER CLOAK, a knife in each hand, hair flowing like water over his shoulders. He was a tall man, but thin. One of Samiq’s arms was as thick as two of Raven’s, but Samiq could not keep his eyes from the man’s hands, each whole and strong, each gripping a long-bladed knife.

  Two strong hands, said some voice in Samiq’s mind. Two strong hands against your weakness. Samiq shook his head to clear the doubt and untied the straightening bone from his forefinger. He placed Amgigh’s knife in his right hand and tightened his fingers on the handle.

  “You, Raven of the Walrus, you have two knives,” Samiq called. He waited for some voice to translate his words, but Raven answered with no translation.

  “Get another knife,” he said and laughed. “I will wait. The fight must be fair.”

  Samiq heard the taunting in his words and with sinking heart understood that Raven knew about his hand. He turned to the men gathered near him on the beach, to those who stood in the orange light of the beach fires, and stretched out his left arm, asking for a knife. His father offered his knife, one also made by Amgigh, but then Small Knife came from the ulas. Lifting his knife from the scabbard that hung from his neck, Small Knife said, “Father, you are a man of two people. Let your strength come from two tribes.”

  Kayugh nodded and stepped back, and Samiq accepted Small Knife’s weapon. It was a short knife. The blade, thrusting out from the space between his thumb and forefinger, was no longer than Samiq’s thumb, and the handle tucked easily into the palm of the hand. The andesite blade was crudely made, but the point was as sharp as the end of a whale harpoon.

  Samiq turned to face Raven, but Small Knife caught his arm, turned him back, and said, “Wait. It will be better this way.” He moved the knife so the blade pointed down from Samiq’s fist. “To thrust,” Small Knife said and made a downward motion with his hand.

  “Yes,” Samiq said. “Yes.” And he turned again to Raven.

  Raven threw off his cloak, stretched himself tall, and waited. Samiq slipped out of his parka. The night wind was cold against Samiq’s skin, but he felt only the hardness of the knives in his hands. He held his right hand out, blade up, kept his left hand down at his side.

  “You said the fight must be fair,” Samiq said to Raven.

  “You complain about your hand?” Raven asked. “I do not force you to fight. Give me Kiin. I will leave.”

  “The fight is not fair because I have strength earned in prayer, in fasting.”

  “You think I do not pray?” Raven asked.

  “A man who seeks that Spirit greater than himself does not need a knife to prove his power.”

  “Fool!” said Raven. “No one is greater than I am!”

  “You say your power is equal to the power of the spirits?” asked Samiq.

  “Yes,” said Raven. “I call spirits. They do what I ask. You do not see them, but there are spirits in the fires, spirits hovering in the darkness. Listen.”

  Suddenly a voice called from beyond the fires, a cry like a woman mourning.

  “Already your grandmother’s spirit mourns your death,” Raven said.

  A second voice came from the fire behind Samiq. “There is no hope for you, Samiq,” the voice said. “Soon you will be with me in the spirit world.”

  Almost, Samiq turned, but a quietness came to him, an assurance of his own strength.

  A third voice spoke, and this time Samiq watched Raven, watched carefully how the man held his head. He watched his mouth, the stiffness of his lips. It is a trick, Samiq thought. Only that—a trick.

  Samiq spoke as if there had been no voices.

  “Kiin is my wife,” he said. “She will stay here with me.”

  “She is worth your life?”

  “Yes,” Samiq said, “and she is also worth yours.”

  “You have learned then to fight with knives?”

  “I fight with more than knives,” Samiq said. He held up the knife in his right hand. “This blade cries for your blood,” he told Raven. “With this blade you killed my brother—a blade he himself made. Since that day, this knife in all its spirit thoughts has wanted nothing else but to taste your blood.”

  “Your many words only show you are afraid of my knives,” said Raven. He stepped forward, swung his blade in an arc toward Samiq’s belly. Samiq jumped back, made a sound of disgust low in his throat.

  Samiq took three quick steps, turning his body sideways to give Raven’s blade less chance to strike. When Raven advanced, Samiq slashed with his left hand, drawing blood on his first attack, a thin cut along the bone of Raven’s right forearm.

  Raven leaped back, and Samiq jumped forward again, blocking Raven’s right arm with his left, arm against arm, bone against bone. Then he slashed in toward Raven’s belly with his right hand, with the long black stone of Amgigh’s obsidian blade. Again Samiq drew blood, and this time, as the wound opened across Raven’s belly, Samiq heard the hiss of breath from those standing near.

  “You are slow,” Samiq said and moved in again to draw blood, this time from a cut across Raven’s cheek.

  Raven did not flinch. Instead he came forward to meet Samiq’s thrust and to slash with his right hand, a long stroke that caught Samiq’s side, the blade going through skin to grate along Samiq’s ribs. But Samiq ignored the pain and tried to slash Raven’s neck. Raven spun, turning so quickly that Samiq’s knife met only air. In the turn, Raven thrust toward Samiq’s s
houlder with the blade in his left hand, but Samiq let himself fall, and, in falling, tangled Raven’s feet with his own. Raven landed heavily on his belly, and his left-hand knife was thrust to the hilt into the beach sand.

  Raven pulled out his knife, then both men were again on their feet, both with bodies marked by blood, both with sides heaving as they drew in long breaths of air.

  “You have learned much,” Raven said and paused as though to give Samiq time for words, but Samiq said nothing. Then Raven, knees bent into a crouch, said, “There is more to power than strong arms and good knives, Seal Hunter.” He lifted his voice, called out toward the darkness, the words in the Walrus tongue.

  Samiq saw the ikyan he had known were there, not only the long, clumsy ikyan of the Walrus Hunters, but the fine, sleek ikyan built by Whale Hunters.

  “You think you could run from such a people, Seal Hunter?” Raven asked.

  But Kayugh’s voice rose above Raven’s: “Samiq, think only of this fight, of these knives.”

  Then a voice came from the ikyan, a voice Samiq knew. Hard Rock. “Die now. Die quickly, Whale Killer,” Hard Rock said, using Samiq’s Whale Hunter name. “My revenge will not come so easily as Raven’s. You will wish for the quick cut of the knife if you wait to die by my hand.”

  Kayugh’s voice came again: “Samiq!”

  But the warning came late, and before Samiq could raise his own knives, Raven’s blade had slashed Samiq’s right arm, and his left-hand knife was at Samiq’s neck.

  Samiq gathered his strength, thrust the man away before he could cut again, then, with his own left hand, caught Raven across the chest, but it was a shallow cut that drew little blood.

  Both men circled; and Raven began to chant, something in words Samiq did not understand.

  Another voice came, a woman’s voice, loud, from the First Men ulas: “Raven, you won the last fight by my power, by the power of my carvings.” Kiin came and stood beside one of the beach fires, her sons in her arms. The fire lit her face, the faces of her sons. “Raven,” she called, “this time my power stands on the side of Samiq, my husband, father to Shuku and Takha.”

  Samiq saw the surprise on Raven’s face and knew that Raven had thought Takha was dead, that Shuku was with the River People.

  Others from Samiq’s village came, women and children, each carrying carvings, and they set the carvings at Kiin’s feet, a circle of animals and men, a circle of spirits caught in ivory, in wood. And in the shadows of the fire each carving seemed to move.

  Samiq watched his wife, and fear drained his strength as she stood with both sons. Why show Raven what he would gain in this fight, why give him more to fight for? But then Kiin looked at Samiq, her eyes bold, and he understood that this was Kiin’s strength—her sons, her carvings. She gave that strength to him. Kiin would not show Raven Shuku and Takha if she thought Raven would win.

  The pain of Samiq’s wounds was suddenly gone. “You are dead,” he said to Raven and lunged forward. Raven stepped aside, raising his left arm to cut as Samiq moved by, but Samiq spun and turned, plunging Small Knife’s short blade into Raven’s neck.

  Samiq jumped away and stood, the fingers of his right hand still gripping the baleen-wrapped handle of Amgigh’s knife.

  Samiq held up the knife and called out, “Kiin does not belong to you, Raven. Her power is her own. If you want such power, you must find it in your own prayers, in your own visions.”

  Then Raven turned, picked up his feather cloak, and pushed past the men of his village, past Ice Hunter and his sons, and went to his ik. Ice Hunter walked toward him, but Raven waved him away, then dragged the ik out into the water. Raven climbed in and picked up his paddle, then moved with the ik into darkness.

  “See, Raven,” said Samiq in a quiet voice. “Even a tiny blade is greater than you are.”

  Waxtal watched as Raven’s ik slipped between the ikyan of the Whale Hunters. Hard Rock called to the man. Raven turned but then slumped into the bottom of his ik, and Waxtal saw that his eyes were fixed and staring, the eyes of a man already dead.

  Large wet flakes of snow began to fall from the dark sky. At first Waxtal thought they were ash, like the ash that had fallen the night Aka and Okmok erupted. But then the snow was on his face, cold, wet. A bird swooped down into Raven’s ik and flew out again. “A raven,” he heard the carved tusk murmur. But what raven flew at night over water?

  Waxtal set his paddle to follow the shaman’s drifting ik. Raven no longer needed his cloak, his amulet. Why not take them? They should belong to another shaman, someone who would use their power wisely.

  But then Hard Rock called out: “You have fought one, now fight another.”

  Waxtal waited to hear Samiq’s answer, but Samiq said nothing.

  The sky was beginning to lighten, and even though the fires had burned down to coals, Waxtal could see the beach more clearly. Kiin stood beside Samiq, her twin sons in her arms. Samiq’s Whale Hunter wife was also there with her baby and with Small Knife.

  Hard Rock moved into shallow water, then, gesturing for his hunters to follow, he beached his ikyak. Waxtal waited. Why get close to the fighting when his own power was in prayer, in the calling of spirits?

  He reached into his ik, pulled out the animal skin Raven had given him. “The man was a fool to give me this much of his power,” Waxtal said to his tusks. “Now I have the power I earned by my carving, and the power I bought in trade from Raven.”

  Waxtal waited for the carved tusk to speak, but whatever answer it gave was lost in the loud anger of Hard Rock’s voice as he called to Ice Hunter and his sons, “What will you do, Walrus men? Will you fight for the honor of your people, or shall I fight?”

  “My people do not measure their honor by men killed, or the power of knives over flesh,” Ice Hunter answered. “I will not fight, but my sons are grown. Each must speak for himself.”

  Ice Hunter’s sons turned their backs on Samiq, stood by their ikyan at the edge of the water. “We have no argument with this man or his wife,” the son with the scar said.

  “Then I will fight him myself,” said Hard Rock.

  Samiq stepped away from his wives, went forward to meet Hard Rock. But Kayugh, coming from the shadows, pushed ahead of him. “My son did not curse your village,” Kayugh said. “Would he have called the mountains’ anger to his own people as well as yours? Do not forget our village was destroyed as well.”

  “You, Kayugh, did you lose all your hunters? Did your children die? Your women?”

  “We lived because we chose to leave our island. You did not make that choice. Now you blame another for what has happened to you.”

  “I blame a man who brought a curse to us, and I will kill that man.”

  “You will fight me before you fight my son.”

  Hard Rock laughed, and during his laughter Samiq stepped forward to stand beside his father. “I will fight him,” Samiq said in a quiet voice, words spoken only to Kayugh.

  “You are tired,” Kayugh said.

  “I will fight. If I die, I die.”

  Kayugh lowered his head, waited for long moments, but finally stepped away.

  “One knife?” Hard Rock asked.

  Samiq held up Amgigh’s obsidian blade. “One knife,” Samiq said.

  Then again Samiq was circling with knife blade held forward, but from the sides of his eyes, he saw someone move, saw someone come into the circle of scuffed sand. He turned his head, thinking another of the Whale Hunters had come to help Hard Rock in the kill, but then he saw that it was Small Knife, and his heart twisted in fear for the boy.

  “It is my fight. Stay away!” Samiq called to him.

  “I will do nothing unless he does,” Small Knife said, and pointed his spear at a man who stood behind one of the beach fires. It was Crooked Bird. He held spear and spear thrower lifted in his right hand.

  “Hard Rock, you must have your hunters fight your battles?” Samiq asked.

  Then Ice Hunter and his sons, men of the Walr
us, were beside Small Knife, weapons ready. “No curse is broken by cheating,” Ice Hunter called out.

  Dying Seal came forward. He laid his weapons at his feet. “We came only to end the curse on our people,” he said, “not to bring that curse to others.”

  “Crooked Bird, you are a fool,” Hard Rock called out. “I am strong enough to take him. Why doubt?”

  “There is no curse. There should be no fight,” Kayugh said.

  But Hard Rock answered, “Seal Hunter, you have not seen my island. We die still, even though the mountains’ anger has lifted. How can you say there is no curse?”

  “And if there is a curse,” Kayugh answered, “how do you know it is because of my son?”

  “We had no problems before he came.”

  “You had a different chief then, a man who respected the spirits. Perhaps the curse is something you yourself brought to your people.”

  Hard Rock threw down his knife. Samiq watched as the man walked away, as he went to Crooked Bird, spoke to the man in hard, yelling words. Samiq turned his back, joined Kayugh and Small Knife, Ice Hunter and Dying Seal.

  In his weariness, Samiq said nothing, only stood, trying to keep his legs and arms steady against the shaking spirits that had entered his body. So when Small Knife’s quiet groan mingled into the words of those beside him, Samiq did not even turn toward his son. But seeing the horror come suddenly into Kayugh’s eyes, Samiq understood and caught his son as he fell, a spear in Small Knife’s back.

  Small Knife’s weight carried Samiq to his knees, and he cradled the boy across his lap, speaking words and promises he could never keep, until he realized that the boy’s spirit had already left, pushed from his body as soon as the spear hit.

  Samiq looked back at Hard Rock, at Crooked Bird. Hard Rock stood with spear thrower in hand, and Crooked Bird was saying, “Your spear took Small Knife. Samiq still lives.”

  Ice Hunter threw his spear. It took Crooked Bird in the throat. Another spear flew, and both Crooked Bird and Hard Rock were on the ground, lying in their own blood. Samiq looked up, saw that Dying Seal had thrown the second spear.