The Wolf in the Whale

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “She’s just a child,” Omat begs, passing his fingers through her tangled seaweed hair.

  Sanna sighs and closes her eyes at his touch. He plays with her—she doesn’t care. She has been alone for so long. The waves swell with her quickened breath.

  “I will speak to the whales, who will speak to the wolves,” she says finally. “The Moon Man has ruled since there were men to worship him. But Wolf and Whale were here long before. They will help the child.”

  “Thank you, great Sea Mother.”

  Sanna brushes away his thanks with her fingerless hand, and the ice cracks on the frozen sea. “It is a small thing. What do I care what goes on above when I have you with me here below?”

  With another wave of her hand, Sanna restores the old angakkuq’s powers so he might protect his camp. Then she whispers to the Whale, who speaks to the Wolf, and Singarti guards the child from the Moon’s baleful eye.

  The baby breathes the Wolf’s hot breath, sucking the life-giving spirit into its breast.

  For an instant, the young man smiles at the Sea Mother, and her lips curve in response. He is happy—truly happy—for the first time since he arrived in her realm. His joy is even more delicious than his skin. But in that moment, the baby pulls its father’s soul from beneath the waves.

  Deep beneath the frozen sea, a cry rings out. A shrill scream more piercing than any whale’s whistle. The seals scatter in fear. With useless palms, Sanna clutches at her pale breast and seaweed hair. She has restored the old man’s magic. She has allowed the Wolf to save the child. And for all her generosity, see how she is repaid! Omat is gone, returned to the surface to live again in the body of his child.

  The waves swell, tumbling Sanna across the sea floor like an empty shell. The Moon has called his tides to punish her for her treachery. She raises her palms in supplication. “Taqqiq, Moon Man, I too am angry! The hunter lied. I will not be so easily deceived again.”

  “You have let the child live!” he cries. “Now you must help me hunt it down.”

  The Sea Mother promises to be loyal, shouting her oath through the rocking waters until the tides finally calm and her realm is her own once more. Then, before Taqqiq’s ever-turning wrath renews, she flees to a cave deep beneath the waves, out of his reach.

  She is alone once more.

  Inside his iglu, Taqqiq paces. “I long for the day when my sister and I need not share power with creatures such as Sanna and Singarti,” he fumes. “They do nothing but stand in our way.”

  He does not know yet how to rid himself of the other spirits—and with the Wolf to protect it, the child is also beyond his grasp. The Moon fears that his doom draws nearer with each journey he takes across the sky.

  But he has ruled for as long as Inuit have dreamed.

  He has learned patience.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ipaq left us. My large uncle, always laughing, had lost all his teeth long before. It was hard for him to eat. The flesh sagged on his frame. He grew weak.

  One winter morning, he came back to the camp from fishing through the lake ice with his parka frozen stiff around him. He’d lost his balance and fallen into the water. No Inuk can swim; he’d survived only by grabbing on to his dogs’ traces so they could haul him out. After that, he never really recovered. For many days, we brought him what food we could spare and tried to keep him warm. Ataata and I used our medicines and amulets, trying to summon the helping spirits to his aid. But finally Millik came running to our qarmaq, her face wet with tears, and told us her father had disappeared. We found him later that day, sitting up in the lee of a tall ridge, his body as cold and hard as the ice at his back. He’d taken himself there with the last of his strength.

  We placed his body, feet facing southward, on a high platform of snow, so it might be safe from the fox and the bear. We walked slowly three times around it in the direction of the Sun.

  Day after day, the ravens came and took pieces of Ipaq with them as they flew into the sky. There, they’d reassemble his spirit as a star. I knew he’d watch over us in the long winter night, but still—I missed his laughter.

  Without Ipaq, the spirit of the camp grew heavy. Ataata seemed older, using his walking stick to make sure of himself rather than of the ice beneath his feet. Ququk’s frown was etched upon his face, as deep and permanent as a scar.

  The Moon of the Sun’s Rising failed to bring the usual relief. Despite the increasing daylight, we felt spring would never arrive. We built snow igluit on the landfast sea ice and readied our dogsleds and harpoons, but the seals didn’t come to us as they usually did. Ataata said our grief for Ipaq kept the animals away; seals always refused to give themselves to those who didn’t enjoy the hunt. Not everyone believed him. We knew that bad luck came to those who disobeyed an agliruti. If the seals stayed away, then someone must be to blame.

  I stood beside my seal hole, staring down at the piece of dark feather on the slim probe until my back ached and my feet grew numb, watching for the slightest movement that might indicate a seal’s breath. Never before had hunting on the sea ice seemed so torturous. I’d seen more than eighteen winters; I understood the importance of patience. But something in me knew this hunt was hopeless.

  Every time the dogs sniffed out a breathing hole, I closed my eyes and whispered the seal’s secret name. If the animal had swum nearby, I’d have heard its response. And yet I heard nothing.

  No ice had covered my breathing hole when we arrived, a sure sign that a seal had recently gnawed its way to the air. Standing on a square of bear fur to protect my feet from the chill, I bent low, resting my elbows on my knees and gazing fixedly at my feather. But even as I watched, the frost began to spread. Wind no longer rippled the surface. No seal came to break the thin crystal skin. Soon the hole would disappear entirely.

  I glanced up at the Sun; it hung low in the sky, its shape distorted, flattened like a wavery egg yolk. I rose finally, rubbing the small of my back, and looked over at the other three hunters crouched over their own holes. Ataata saw my movement and stood, moving slowly. Even to his weak eyes, my defeated posture spoke volumes. But as badly as my own back ached, I could only imagine his pain.

  “Come,” he said to the others. “We go back to camp.”

  Kiasik looked up in shock. No one ever spoke during a seal hunt, for the slightest sound would scare off animals alert to the ice bear’s footsteps. He glared at his grandfather, then at me, and then at the Sun. Of us all, only he didn’t look tired. He always believed a fat seal was wending its way toward him. “There’s still light enough.”

  “But there are no seals,” I said wearily.

  “You can’t know that.” He clutched his harpoon, his knuckles white.

  “I’ve listened, and they’re not here.”

  “Then call them! If you’re so wise that you can speak to seals, tell them to come to us.” Hunger made him angry. Like the rest of us. We’d had no fresh meat for many days, and our supplies of frozen caribou and dried char ran low. We missed Ipaq, our most able fisherman.

  “They’re not here to be called,” Ataata said softly, walking back to his sled. “We cannot fight what we cannot change.”

  “I’m not giving up!” Kiasik shouted at his grandfather’s departing back. I turned to stare. A grown Inuk should never raise his voice to an elder. I’d never wanted so much to shake him.

  Ataata didn’t turn, simply continued to load his sled. When he spoke, I could hear the smile in his words. “Little Grandson, go ahead and stay if you want. We will still have no seals to eat, but we may have frozen Kiasik to fill our bellies.” He laughed at his own joke, and I managed a grin for my grandfather, but Kiasik, who knew well the reproach hiding in Ataata’s words, now refused to back down.

  “You and Ququk are old men, Grandfather. If your bones are cold, go home.”

  “You go too far, Sister’s Son,” I warned him. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I’m saying I won’t let my mother starve.”<
br />
  If I were a sled dog, the hair on my back would have stood up straight. Puja’s survival was as much my responsibility as his. “You cannot catch a seal with foolishness,” I snarled.

  “Foolishness!” He snorted. “I call it strength. So go on back to camp, Omat—if your woman’s flesh is too weak.”

  I knew he spoke thoughtlessly, driven by desperation and hunger. That didn’t stop my heart from thrashing inside my chest. I felt like a storm-tossed raven, helplessly flapping my wings against Sila’s merciless breath. There’d never been violence among the members of our band—we made our harpoons to pierce the skin of beasts, not men—but my hand balled of its own accord.

  “Come,” Ataata said, his voice still composed. “We’ll return to camp, and Omat and I will call upon our spirit guides to help us.”

  “I’ll stay,” Kiasik insisted. “Maybe the seals will return once you’re gone.”

  Blood flushed my cheeks. To say the seals would come once we left meant that our presence brought bad luck—that somehow the spirits punished us. I waited for Ataata to refute him. Instead, Kiasik’s words hung in the air like a heavy fog that refused to lift—until even I had to admit he might be right.

  We were used to the threat of starvation. Sometimes we caught prey easily; sometimes the prey made us wait patiently for many days. But never before had it seemed as if the seals avoided us on purpose. Whenever we found a breathing hole that looked newly visited, no seal returned to it. I’d set traps for fox, but the bait remained untouched. Even the lemmings somehow knew to avoid our snares. Something—or someone—had told the animals to stay away from us.

  We left Kiasik next to a breathing hole, a small, dark form bent at the waist against the white expanse.

  Ataata’s dogs seemed eager to get home again, and the journey was short. I felt a spark of hope that Uqsuralik or Singarti might have the answers we sought.

  I never got the chance to find out.

  As I staked Ataata’s team for the night, I watched for Kiasik’s sled. Despite the tension between us since the summer games, he remained my closest friend—my only friend, in truth.

  In the last glimmers of twilight, the sky gleamed like a cluster of wet blueberries ready for picking. Soon the Moon would shed enough light for traveling, but no sane Inuk would choose to journey at night if he could avoid it. This was a familiar feeling—waiting for Kiasik to return home so I might tell him all would be well—and yet I didn’t resent my role. He had done the same for me when we were children. He was my milk-brother, after all, and my cousin and my sister’s son, too. Sometime, in the not-too-distant future, the two of us would have to provide for the whole camp. We needed each other. No Inuk hunts alone for long.

  I pulled off Black Mask’s harness and ran my hands through her thick fur, scratching at the base of her tail until she pressed her flank against me in pleasure. Although gray now flecked her muzzle, she still led Ataata’s team. “How do you do it?” I asked. “Leading all the other dogs even though you’re half their size?”

  She panted at me and blinked. Not much of an answer. On my spirit journey, I had understood Singarti, but wolves and dogs do not speak the same tongue. Still, as I unfastened the other dogs’ harnesses and combed out their tangled traces, I started to understand. The lines all led to the fan hitch at the front of the sled. Black Mask had the longest rope so she could run in front. The other lines were each a different length to distribute the weight among the dogs. And although the lines all fed through the same hitch, although all pulled the same sled, no dog was tied to another. Fanned out across rough ice, each had enough slack to move at its own pace, to find its own way, to avoid its own obstacles. If a dog stopped to shit or sniff or scratch, the momentum of the sled would eventually yank it forward. Black Mask’s job was simply to keep the team headed in the right direction.

  “I can do that,” I murmured, more to myself than to the dogs.

  Black Mask yipped. Not agreement, but alarm. I followed her gaze to the horizon.

  The long-awaited sled appeared. First just a speck; then, as it turned to skirt the base of an ice hummock, the shape stretched out into a ribbon of dogs and cargo. My breath caught in my throat; too many dogs, too long a sled to belong to Kiasik. And then, instead of one strange sled, there were two.

  “Strangers!”

  I ran toward the iglu, stumbling in my panic, and ducked my head inside. “Ataata! There are strangers coming!”

  By now our dogs had caught the scent of the strange teams and joined their frantic howling to my own cries. They pulled at their leads, cracking the ice that held the stakes in place. Ataata and Puja crawled out of the iglu to join me. The other families hurried close behind.

  Puja clutched her arms across her chest. Never had she looked so thunderstruck—or so excited.

  Ataata grinned broadly. “The Ice Bear has answered my prayers before I could even speak them. Our luck has changed!”

  Ququk whipped the dogs until they quieted, then turned brusquely to Ujaguk. “Go. Prepare what food we have for the visitors. Or has it been so long that we’ve forgotten our hospitality?” His wife scurried inside their iglu.

  “Ququk is right!” Ataata clapped his mittens together. “They’ll be hungry after their journey. Bring fish and meat to my iglu. We’ll feast them properly.”

  “Can we spare the food?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “The spirits wouldn’t send us such good fortune if they weren’t pleased,” he chided me. “We must light our lamps and put them close to the windows so our guests will see the glow and know where to come.”

  Soon I was alone again outside the igluit. Everyone else had hurried inside to prepare. I waited, watching the strangers approach across the flat white expanse. Distance is deceiving on the frozen ocean; though I could see the two sleds clearly, I had a long wait before they arrived. By the time they reached us, the Moon, already full and bright above the horizon, would rule the sky.

  The dogs paced on their leads, tails up, noses sniffing the wind. Black Mask whimpered a little, and I put a hand on her head.

  “I know. I’m excited, too.”

  Ataata often told tales of life in the distant camp of his birth, before his father had led his family on their long journey. It sounded like a magical place to me, full of children and hunters. Sometimes they met other families for a season, allowing the young people to play and mingle—and sometimes to marry. If their hunting failed, Inuit from a neighboring camp would bring them food from their own caches. And every Moon When Birds Fly South, many families would come together at the shore so the men could ride out in their umiaq and hunt the whale.

  As a child, I often dreamed of strangers appearing over the crest of a hill. I imagined running to greet their sleds, then feasting them long into the night while they shared new songs and dances. In the morning, they’d announce a whale hunt, and Kiasik and I, of course, would go with them.

  I could hear them coming now, their runners squeaking over the ice, their dogs panting, the rough voice of a man calling commands to his team.

  As my family emerged once more to meet our visitors, clouds scudded across the Moon, dousing his light, but the women had added extra moss to the lamp wicks; a warm yellow glow poured through the ice windows and limned the chinks between the snow blocks. Puja stood beside me, her lower lip pulled up in a familiar half smile, half frown that meant she was happy and concerned all at once. Ataata’s expression held no such ambivalence. Clutching his bear claw in his fist, he murmured his thanks to Uqsuralik.

  The strangers arrived through the darkness as if through a heavy fog. At first we saw only the lead dog trotting toward us with its tongue lolling. A whip whistled past its ear. Then the other dogs appeared in a wide fan, straining at their traces.

  And then, finally, the sled itself came into view, laden with furs and meat. Among the cargo, two women huddled close together beneath a thick bear pelt. Last, the hunter, running behind with the whip. Long white fox tail
s streamed from the neck of his parka.

  “Hoa!” He called his dogs to a halt and slammed the ice hook into the ground. His team jerked to a stop out of reach of our own tethered dogs. All the animals yowled and whined as if tormented by evil spirits.

  We barely knew where to look first: The sled laden with caribou and seal meat that promised an end to our hunger? The fine parkas and large dog team that would bring prosperity and luck to our own hunting? The strangers themselves, future wives or husbands who might allow the continuation of our people? Then all our attention snapped toward one sound: a whimper, a cry. A puppy, I thought. Then Puja gasped and took a hurried step forward. One of the women on the sled reached behind her head, into her voluminous hood, and drew out a squalling infant. The first baby I’d ever seen.

  “Anaana?” A high-pitched voice rose above the infant’s wailing, a child asking for her mother. “Are we going to rest now?” A little girl peered out from behind the other woman on the sled.

  I was no judge of children’s ages, but she looked only a few winters out of her mother’s hood. Two children in our camp, when for so long there had been none.

  Ataata raised both hands overhead, letting his sleeves fall away from his wrists to show he had no weapons. “You arrive,” he greeted them. His broad smile belied the formality of his words.

  The hunter, his face still shrouded in darkness, stepped out from behind the sled, raising his arms in return. “I arrive.” His voice rasped as if he’d once been caught by the throat and had never recovered.

  Ataata introduced himself and then the rest of us. When he got to me, he said proudly, “This is Omat, my grandson, also an angakkuq.” A sudden sound caused him to lift his head. Two more sleds, the first one familiar. “Aii! And this is Kiasik, my other grandson. A great hunter! Look at the fine seal he caught. I knew our luck had changed!” Indeed, a large male bearded seal lay across the sled. On any other occasion, Kiasik would have grinned with pride, but tonight he simply stared dumbfounded at the strangers before us. When he finally tore his gaze from them, he looked to me, his slow smile of astonishment matching my own. Our argument at the breathing holes meant nothing now. We would face these new arrivals as we faced everything else: together.