Kiasik was more than my cousin. He was my milk-brother. Wanting him was little better than Ququk’s desire for his own daughter. And though Kiasik could be brave and generous and kind, he was also a vain fool. With my man’s spirit, I shouldn’t think of such things in the first place. I knew I should want Millik; her woman’s walk, smooth and swaying even over rough ground, had drawn the other men’s attention of late. The radiating lines of her recent tattoos accented her cheeks and eyes. Her neat braids reached nearly to her waist, and her father had given her a handsome wolverine pelt for the cuffs of her parka and the border of her hood. Yet while Kiasik looked at her—I looked at him.
For most of the trip inland, I avoided the problem by walking far from my milk-brother. Following the signs of foraging, we’d taken a different path than usual. As we came upon new valleys and skirted unfamiliar hills, the same thought obsessed us all: perhaps we’d finally discover other Inuit. Then the heat in our bodies could be released, and children would play once more amid our tents. Hope made us giddy. The dry ground made us swift. The long days were filled with laughter, and even when we stopped to rest, we disdained sleep, spending the sunlit nights telling stories and playing games instead.
Ipaq, even in his dotage, usually won the strength contests, although Kiasik occasionally bested him. I excelled at the balance games, perching on one foot and hand while holding the other leg extended, walking on the knuckles of my toes, fixing a knife hilt-first in the ground and bending over it backward until my body arched a mere handbreadth from the point.
Only one of our games involved striking another person: the head-butting test. After Ataata and Ququk had competed, gleefully ignoring the women’s admonishments to be careful of their old bones, Kiasik rose to choose a challenger. Had he chosen Ipaq, he might have lost; the old man’s weight alone would have bowled Kiasik over. Tapsi always flinched away too early; Kiasik would find no joy in defeating him. So, as usual, he chose me.
We faced each other on all fours. A lock of hair fell across Kiasik’s flashing eyes; he pursed his lips to blow it away. That just made me stare at his mouth. I’d never noticed before how full his lips were.
Sensing my distraction, he charged toward me, slamming his head against my chest. I grunted but held my ground. He backed away, looking impressed.
“My turn,” I said, barreling forward. My shoulder crashed into the hard planes of his stomach. He wheezed through his laughter, staying firmly planted on the ground.
Tapsi shouted encouragement to Kiasik. Saartok cheered for me instead. The others joined in, crowing for more. Back and forth we went, taking turns slamming into each other like musk oxen in rut. My chest ached. I knew I’d wake tomorrow covered in bruises. Kiasik’s good cheer had grown thin. He hadn’t expected to have to work so hard.
His turn. He pawed the ground and lowered his head.
I forced myself not to flinch as he hurtled toward me. His attack lifted me clear off the ground. My breath knocked away, I crashed onto my back—Kiasik landed on top of me. I could feel his hardness against my leg, even through our trousers. Perhaps only the excitement of the match caused his arousal, but for a brief moment, his eyes burned with a strange fire. More disturbing still, something between my legs twitched in an unfamiliar spasm of pleasant pain.
“A’aa! I give up!”
Kiasik released me quickly, blinking away the interest in his gaze, and I rolled to my feet.
From that moment, he seemed as uncomfortable around me as I did around him. We never spoke of it. No one else noticed the exchange. But I grew even more convinced that we needed to find other Inuit.
As we continued toward the caribou’s calving ground the next day, the night’s warning hung in my mind. I kept a wary eye on the earth, looking for any sign of other travelers. I found only lichen, fox scat, and the occasional patch of yellow poppies, spinning on delicate stalks to turn their petals to the Sun.
Ataata walked nearby, leaning on his harpoon shaft for support on the uneven ground. He could still walk all day without complaint, but he’d lost much of his speed, and without something to test the ground before him, he became even more hesitant.
“Tell me the story of how our people came to be here, alone on the edge of the world,” I asked as we traveled, more to distract him from his aching joints than because I needed to hear the story again. Even if he was tired, I knew he’d comply. An angakkuq never refuses a tale.
He licked his lips, as if considering the story’s flavor. A single deep breath, then he began. Even without his drum, his voice took on its old resonance. “My father was a great angakkuq. Some say he could even travel to the Moon itself. When he was still a young man, the whales started moving toward the sunrise. Qangatauq the Raven told him to follow them. The others said only ice lay in that direction, ice so solid it could not crack to allow the animals to breathe. But though Raven is a cunning bird, known for trickery and mischief, he was my father’s helping spirit. So he and a few companions set out with their families to follow the whales. Ipaq had just learned to walk, and I was a mere babe beneath my mother’s hood. The ice opened before the hulls of our boats, and we traveled that whole summer. When the ice froze again in winter, we were farther than any Inuk had ever been. With every warm season, my father paddled farther, until finally we came here, to the edge of the open sea, where there were no more islands on the horizon. He thought perhaps he’d circled back to the sea of his fathers. But the Sun rose above the waves rather than set, and so he knew this was a different ocean. The waters teemed with life, and his women were tired, so finally he stopped.”
“Why do we no longer hunt the whales?” I asked, not for the first time. We saw them spouting sometimes in the distance, but no one from our camp ever ventured after them.
“The knowledge is lost to us. Ququk’s father died young. Before I could walk, my wife’s father and your mother’s grandfather were lost when their umiaq capsized on a whaling trip. And by the time Ipaq and I learned to hunt, our own father had maimed both his arms after falling down a cliff. He described it to us—but that’s no substitute for showing. Ipaq and I tried it once, when we were very young and very foolish. The first time we got close to a whale, it nearly knocked over our boat with its head. We knew that if we drowned, there’d be no one left to hunt for our families. Better to take the seal and walrus Sanna offered us freely and not court disaster.”
I looked over the tundra, imagining the open ocean instead. “Maybe if we meet other Inuit, they can show us how to hunt the whale.”
He smiled gently. “Perhaps.”
“And do you ever think of journeying as your father did? Going far to the west? Or south perhaps? Maybe there are rich hunting grounds there as well. Maybe there are even other Inuit?”
“No.” Ataata frowned. “My father made many journeys. To the west there is no sea and to the south there is no ice, and so the seals cannot be caught. Uqsuralik doesn’t venture there. They are barren lands promising nothing but starvation. No Inuk can live there.”
We walked on in silence, his sadness palpable.
In my distraction, I nearly tripped over a large rock in my path. I chided myself for not watching where I was going, then sucked in a breath when I looked more closely. The rock was part of a large, nearly rectangular border around a shallow depression in the earth. Other stones lay in neat rows, dividing the rectangle into two parts, and I recognized the soot-stained slab in the center as a hearth, though I had never seen one inside a qarmaq before. There was no sign of the turf-and-whalebone walls that should’ve risen above the rocks. Every one of our own qarmait sat upon similar stones, with one vital difference. Our dwellings were circular. Surely my own ancestors hadn’t built such a strange straight home.
I knelt down eagerly beside the depression. “Do you think it could be an old campsite built by strange Inuit?” I asked excitedly. Ataata approached more hesitantly, reaching down to touch the flat rocks briefly with his palm.
“No, not Inu
it,” he said slowly. He raised his palm a hairbreadth above the stones, as if to feel the heat rising from them.
“Do the stones speak?” I whispered.
He winced and withdrew his hand. The rest of our family had stopped to watch us. Before he answered, Ataata looked up at their curious faces. Straightening, he said in a loud, clear voice, “An old dwarf camp.”
Everyone hurried over, curious to see a trace of the creatures we’d only ever heard about in stories.
“I thought the dwarfs were like animals,” Puja said, crouching beside the neat row of stones.
“Not animals. Not Inuit.” Ataata, for once, sounded impatient. “Creatures that look like small men—but are not men at all. Or so the Ice Bear Spirit has told me. They disappeared long before real people came to this land.” He lay a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Come. Don’t disturb their spirits.”
Never before had I ignored Ataata’s wishes, but as everyone moved away, I couldn’t resist lingering at the site a moment longer. The pattern of stones looked like the bones of a fallen animal, moss growing in the crevices where the joints would be. Flowers no bigger than my smallest fingernail dotted the interior with white. So it had always been—life attracted life. Plants grew in the remains of our fires or midden heaps, creating soil where before there was only gravel. More plants would come, then hare and caribou to eat the plants, then Inuk and wolf to eat the caribou, then raven and fox to clean the bones.
I glanced up—everyone had moved on, their backs to me.
I stepped very carefully into the ruin, sending a silent plea to the spirits of the place to pardon my trespassing. One side of the depression was still covered in a pallet of dried willow twigs and moss, just like a sleeping platform in our own sod qarmait.
I placed my hand upon the border of stones; it gave back the Sun’s heat, but more than warmth coursed through me. I felt what my grandfather must have: a deep sadness, a great fear. Then I saw it—a shard of ice buried among the moss where no ice should be. I pulled it free. Clear as a frozen stream, but warm to the touch. Not ice at all, but a perfect triangle hammered from a vein of clear quartz, the kind I’d seen running through darker stone like a river through silt. It was shorter than my smallest finger, but a quick touch of its edge proved it as sharp as any slate blade. Unbidden, a vision flashed before my eyes: blood… screams… the howling of dogs.
No dog’s howl had ever scared me before, but my gut clenched at the sound.
A pack of wolves moves at the command of men, I knew, coming to tear me to pieces, coming to kill my child—
I dropped the quartz blade to the ground, my throat raw with unshed tears, my breath burning my nostrils. The spirits of the dead had possessed me—I heard through their ears.
“Omat!” Kiasik called. His figure was small against the vast mountains, hanging back to wait for me.
“Coming!” I cried back. I bent to pick up the blade, begging its secrets to stay silent for now, and slipped it into my amulet pouch before any more memories could overcome me.
All day, the visions swam through my head. Around me, the faces of my family seemed like those of strangers, as if I saw through the eyes of long-dead dwarfs. Yet the emotions swirling through me were certainly those of a human, not just a small, man-shaped creature. A growing uneasiness twisted my stomach.
Black Mask, laden with tent poles and bundles of hides, came to trot beside me. She’d remained smaller than most dogs, still completely white but for the black that stretched from nose to ears. After surviving that first terrible summer in my childhood, Black Mask had shown such intelligence that she’d become Ataata’s lead dog. She was his favorite, and mine, too, yet with the strange memory of snarling dogs still so sharp in my mind, I couldn’t bring myself to smile at her or scratch her ears. I could only shudder.
By picking up the strange blade, I’d ignored Ataata’s warning and disturbed an evil spirit. I knew I should toss it aside at once. But I didn’t. It had a story to tell.
As we walked, I wrestled with the understanding that this land had not always lain empty. Others—not Inuit, perhaps, but some kind of humans nonetheless—had walked across this tundra before us. A sudden hope surged through me: if we were not the first, then surely we would not be the last. We wouldn’t be alone forever.
Then again, I realized with a jolt, if one people can disappear—so can we.
BOOK TWO
WHALES
The old Inuk stands vigil on his qarmaq roof, watching for the stars that herald the Sun’s return, his gaze constantly drawn to the birthing iglu outside his camp, where a child named Omat will soon be born. But he does not watch alone.
Taqqiq the Moon Man also watches the child’s birth.
His ascendance is coming to an end—soon he will share the sky with his sister Sun once more. For these last solo journeys, he revels in his power, but he is restless and lonely as well, bereft of the eternal chase.
The Moon sees much from his perch among the stars. He wishes he could see even more. Only for these few days each winter does he circle the earth at full strength without setting. At other times, as his white eye waxes and wanes, so too does his vision.
The Moon does not watch as a man watches. He is not limited in his sight to the Inuit struggling below, calling out to him for help. Instead, he sees the present, the past, and sometimes even the future, all melded into one. He sees far to the west, to the edge of a great ocean, where many Inuit thrive. He sees far to the east, where one lonely band makes its home on the edge of another great ocean—and he knows that they are only the first of many who will one day come to hunt there.
But when he peers across that vast eastern sea beyond the Inuit camp, his sight fails him. He feels a deep dread of this unknown realm. He feels something approaching. Something that threatens his reign. Something more powerful than anything he has ever encountered.
For many seasons Taqqiq has watched the little band of Inuit on the eastern shore with pleasure, for their worship of him spreads his power to the very edge of the known world. But now he looks upon the frozen land and sees a future he did not expect. A future that lies within a tiny girl child born with her mother’s dying gasp. Taqqiq cannot see all—he does not know what role this child will play—but he knows that her fate is tied to the unknown evil across the sea. Such a little child, so pale and weak, covered in blood, but containing the potential for untold destruction.
She cannot be allowed to survive.
For nine wanings and nine waxings, he has done his utmost to prevent the girl child from ever being born. First he sent a great tide that shook the ice itself, so the young hunters of her camp would slide to their deaths, joining the Sea Mother’s watery realm as her consorts. Then, although the old angakkuq, her grandfather, has worshipped him faithfully, Taqqiq stole away his powers. Now, as the girl is born, he commands the stars themselves to withhold their spirits. The dead, living in the night sky, waiting impatiently to be reborn, will have to wait a little longer. This girl will be born with no soul at all.
The Moon watches as the woman Puja carries the baby girl into the snows. His cold eye gleams on the bloody form. Soon, he thinks contentedly, the child will be no threat to him.
As the Moon looks down from above, Sanna the Sea Mother looks up from below.
Around her the ocean sings. Seals bark and moan. Walruses roar and grunt. The whales whistle and click. The sea ice itself squeals and groans in its slow collisions. But Sanna has ears only for Omat, the handsome young hunter who sits beside her.
His tears shadow his sister Puja’s. “My wife is dead,” he grieves. “Her spirit ascends now to the stars while I wait here below the sea. Will you let the Moon take my child as well?”
Sanna places her fingerless hand upon his soft cheek, so different from the taut, slick skin of a whale. She longs to scrape her tongue across it and feed on his warmth. Even after three moons with him beside her, she has not sated her hunger for him. The salty-sweet taste of him
is like a current eddying just out of reach—if only she could lose herself in its flow, perhaps it would carry her back to her own humanity.
“The Moon sent you to keep me company here in the deep,” she reminds him, licking her lips. “Would you have me disdain his gift?”
“Sanna, most beautiful and powerful of all spirits, mistress of the seal and creator of the whale, surely you’re more powerful than the Moon!”
Some part of her knows Omat flatters her for his own purposes. She enjoys it nonetheless. Still, he is only an Inuk. He does not understand the ways of the spirit world. “The Moon controls the tides,” she explains. “Even I must bend to his will.”
“Can no one stop him?”
“Sila the Air, which has always been and will always be. But It does not involve Itself in the world of men.”
“And so my child is alone.”
She runs her palm across his cheek once more, catching the hot tears before they dissolve into the cold deep. “You cry now. I have cried for an eternity.” She sweeps an arm at the dark ocean around them, her movements slow in the weight of the water. “Do you see my tears? So many they cover the world. Your few will be lost amid the boundless depths of my grief.”
Yet Omat’s weeping does not cease.
Sanna frowns, growing impatient. He is supposed to bring her pleasure. To be a companion whom she controls, not a bird-husband who brings her nothing but misery. “You have no right to be sad in my realm. No grief can compare with my own.” She turns her eyes up to the surface. “The Moon has foreseen that your daughter will bring great destruction to this world. Would you ignore his warnings?”
The Wolf in the Whale Page 9