“Woman!” he spat through gritted teeth, the word a curse. He rose to his feet. “Now who’s the coward here?” He glared around the iglu. “You need a woman to fight for you.”
I clutched the ends of my torn atigi across my chest and somehow found my voice. “I carry a man’s spirit,” I began, but Issuk cut me off with a short, derisive laugh.
“If all men had tits as nice as yours, I’d lie with them more often!”
Patik and Onerk roared with laughter. Kiasik did not. But neither did he defend me.
Leaning heavily on his harpoon shaft, Ataata stood. Silence fell. “Omat is an angakkuq.” His voice was stern. “Beware the spirits who protect my son.”
“One angakkuq is a woman, the other an old man who barely uses a harpoon anymore,” Issuk scoffed. “I’m not worried. Does this camp have no one who can bring down a whale?” He thrust out his chest. “Tomorrow I go to hunt. Who will come with me?”
“Sanna will not yield up her gifts to one who doesn’t respect the angakkuq!” To my shame, my words squeaked out. A woman’s high-pitched complaint.
Issuk spun toward me. “And one who doesn’t respect the balance of man and woman, but tries to be both at once?”
He didn’t wait for my response, but turned instead toward Kiasik, Tapsi, and Ququk. “You—men of this camp. You’ve been too long hungry and too long weak. Come with me tomorrow, and I’ll show you rich hunting. We’ll load our sleds high with seal. Then whoever is brave enough will come with us to the whale hunting grounds. When we return, our umiaq piled high with bones and baleen, Onerk and Patik will marry your women.” Millik clutched her hands tight, as if to stop from clapping aloud. Puja looked to me, eyes wide and scared. She’s the only other unmarried woman here, I thought. And she doesn’t want to share Onerk’s bed.
But Issuk wasn’t done. “And I’ll finally teach this angakkuq of yours how to be a real woman!”
I choked on fear. He’s not talking about Puja, I realized. He’s talking about me.
Issuk tossed Kiasik’s seal amulet at my feet. “Here! You can have it back. I don’t need it—but you will.” With that, he strode across the iglu and crawled swiftly through the tunnel. His wives and companions quickly followed. To my horror, Kiasik and Tapsi rose to join them.
All my childhood dreams of whale hunting lay shattered like slate. But I refused to give up the role I’d fought so long to assume. “Issuk will bring nothing but woe to us all,” I warned, steadying my voice. “We must not go south, to the iceless lands.”
Kiasik rounded on me. “Would you have us surrender the chance of surviving through the winter to save your own pride? We’re too many women and too few men. The seal meat’s almost gone. Grandfather”—he softened his tone as he turned to Ataata—“you were a great hunter once.” This time he didn’t say the rest. He didn’t need to.
Ataata just stood there. He’d known this day was coming for a long time. No man too old to hunt could lead a camp for long. But he’d thought I’d be the one to replace him—not this strange whale hunter from the west.
“Listen.” Kiasik addressed the entire gathering. “We went today to hunt at the breathing holes, but the seals swam away the moment we arrived.”
I felt suddenly unsteady, like a child trapped in a rushing stream, fighting a current that could rip me off my feet at any moment. No, I begged silently, please stop talking.
Kiasik went on, merciless. “But when the others returned to camp, I stayed behind. As soon as Omat left, a giant bearded seal rose through a breathing hole at my feet and offered himself to me. And now Issuk has come, another gift from the spirits, to teach us to hunt the whales and to bring us more good fortune.”
“What are you saying?” I spared a glance at Ataata, at Puja, but both were silent, their eyes on Kiasik.
He took a breath. “Perhaps Issuk is right. We’ve let you live as a man too long—every time you throw your harpoon, you break the agliruti against women hunters.”
Before I could find the words to respond, Ququk broke in. “I always said as much. Our lives are perilous enough already—we should never have risked the wrath of the spirits by allowing her to hunt.”
I tried to stand tall. But keeping my atigi clutched across my chest forced me to hunch forward like a weakling. “Do all my seasons bringing you seal and walrus and caribou count for nothing?” I managed. “You’d turn against me now—because of a stranger?”
“We haven’t turned against you,” Ataata said quietly. How could I have doubted he’d defend me? “But… perhaps Kiasik is right. Perhaps you should stay behind. Just for tomorrow.”
My tongue felt thick in a mouth suddenly dry, unable to form words of anger or entreaty.
“The seals have stayed away,” Ataata went on gently. “Now they’re back. And Issuk says he has the ear of Taqqiq.”
“And you believe him? A cheater? A braggart?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted with a sigh. “But we must be careful with things we don’t understand. He follows the whale, a creature we gave up hunting long ago. I don’t ask,” he continued, taking a step closer to me, “that you change who you are—just that we be cautious.”
I wouldn’t challenge him further in front of the others, but my fury was clear.
“Tonight you will speak to the Wolf Spirit,” he offered in consolation. “We will do as he advises.”
That was good enough for Kiasik. He left the iglu to prepare for the morning’s hunt, followed by Ququk, Tapsi, and the others. Puja, Ataata, and I remained, the sudden silence broken only by my own ragged breathing.
Finally Puja said, “Issuk laughs, but his eyes are cold. He won’t forgive you for embarrassing him.”
“I can defend myself,” I answered shortly, still stung by my family’s betrayal. “I’ll call upon the spirits to help me.”
“And if they don’t heed your call?” She’d never questioned my abilities before.
“They can’t refuse me.” Though I felt as wobbly as a new-fledged chick, I forced my voice to remain calm. “Ataata. You promised me that as long as I didn’t bleed like a woman I wouldn’t have to live as one. Even then, you said, I’d have a choice. Now you turn your back on me.”
Never before had I accused him of failing me. My grandfather flinched as if from a blow. “But Kiasik may be right. The spirits may be angry. All I ask is that we be careful.”
I couldn’t stand to look at them. I crawled into the tunnel and pulled on my over-trousers, boots, and outer parka, raising the hood over my head and pulling it close across my cheeks. The pale moonlight illuminated the sea ice, lighting my way back to the small iglu I called my own. Kiasik stood not far away, icing his sled’s runners so they’d glide straight and true for tomorrow’s hunt.
“Here,” I said, thrusting his seal totem toward him.
He glanced at it, and then turned back to his work. “Keep it.” He took a slow mouthful of water from a musk ox horn cup, then let it dribble through his lips onto the runner. I couldn’t help feeling that he was spitting at me.
“I fought to get it back for you.” All the anger I’d felt at Ataata now burst forth, aimed squarely at the man I called friend. “Would you throw away our grandfather’s gift?”
“Issuk’s right.” For once, Kiasik kept his temper better than I. I found his coolness more infuriating than his anger. “What good is the Ice Bear Spirit? We’re always starving, even with his help. Issuk said he’s met the Moon Man face-to-face. That is power.”
“Issuk’s a liar.” I clenched the seal-bone carving tighter to hide the trembling of my hand. “Only the most powerful of angakkuit could journey to the Moon. Even Ataata has never tried it.”
“Because he’s old, and weak, and scared.” Kiasik spoke the words not as an insult, but as a tragic fact. “We should’ve hunted the whale ourselves long ago. Or journeyed back to the west to find other Inuit. His fear has kept us alone. If not for Issuk, we’d be alone even now. He’s brought us a future.”
Kiasik put down the cup of water and turned to face me. His words were soft, conciliatory. “Would that be so terrible, Omat? To be a mother and hold a babe to your breast? To help secure the future of our people? To love a man?”
I looked at my handsome milk-brother. He’d noticed how I avoided him. How my eyes sparked with a fire like his own.
I tried one last time. “I thought we were going to be great hunters. Together.”
He turned back to his sled. “That was because there was no one else.” Another sip of water. Another long trickle onto the runner. “Now there is.”
I turned and ran, my boot soles squeaking on the hard-packed snow, my breath coming in short, panting gasps. He doesn’t understand. None of them do. I have not bled. I am not a woman at all.
I’d never give up the joys of the hunt for the dubious pleasures of motherhood.
Once inside my iglu, I removed my clothes and sat naked in my womb-like home, the oil lamp casting a red glow on the surrounding furs like sunlight shining through my mother’s stomach.
I looped a rope around my big toes and secured it to my wrists to keep my human body in place, closed my eyes, and began to chant.
By the time I finished my song, my soul flew high over the camp on raven wings.
I hadn’t left my human form for many moons; it felt good to be free once more. For a moment, I allowed myself to revel in the strong air currents beneath my wings, the awareness of each feather shifting so I might stay aloft. Surely, for all his bluster, Issuk couldn’t do this.
I spiraled down to the strangers’ newly built iglu and perched next to the ice window. Inside, Issuk celebrated his humiliation of me—or compensated for my humiliation of him—by violently thrusting into Uimaitok, the older wife. Or perhaps their coupling looked violent only because I’d so rarely seen it done. Maybe I saw hatred in Uimaitok’s stony face because I felt it myself. Whatever the cause, my bird’s heart beat with the frenzy of an insect’s wings in midsummer.
When Issuk finished, he moved to Kidla. He bit and licked at her nipples, milk drooling down his chin. The sight disgusted me, terrified me. Yet I couldn’t look away.
Soon he sprawled across the sleeping platform, snoring loudly.
The women crept to the other side of the iglu, careful not to disturb their husband. They dipped handfuls of moss into hot water. Squatting, they strained until the drops of his seed rolled down their legs.
I watched them wipe away every trace of him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I spread my raven wings and caught a wet ocean-borne wind that carried me high above the camp. With each circle, I rode the wind closer to the stars. Below me, a small wolf ran across the white plain, chasing its moonshadow. A reminder that I could follow my grandfather’s advice and seek the Wolf Spirit. But no—Ataata had failed me. Besides, I knew what Singarti would say: He’d warn me that I was a visitor to the spirit world. Not of it. He thought me too weak to journey to the Moon.
I’d prove him wrong.
Above me, Taqqiq’s shadow-carved face promised power beyond my imagination. Revenge on Issuk. Vindication of my strength.
Ataata had once admitted that he’d tried such a journey in his foolish youth. My owl wings grew stiff, he’d said, and the moonbeams felt like hailstones upon my shoulders. Finally Uqsuralik himself had summoned Ataata back to earth, warning him not to venture farther.
No such heaviness pinioned my raven wings, and the wolf below me was just a wolf. Ever upward I flew, my pride spurring me on until the air grew thin and the breath burned in my beak’s nostrils. The full orb grew larger as I approached until it filled my vision. The dark night dissolved into a field of pale white, the Moon’s familiar face now only a patchwork of gray.
Then, slowly, the shadows shrank, merged, solidified into the figure of a man.
Suddenly, although I have no memory of landing, or even descending, I stood before him in raven form. He was bald, his skin as white as the large snow iglu behind him—except for the thatch of dark hair between his legs and the smear of black soot across his forehead.
Taqqiq. Moon Man.
“Who is this raven who intrudes on my domain?” His voice was sharp, brittle. High-pitched, like the squeal of stone on slate. He spoke in the tongue of the angakkuq.
Ataata taught me never to hide my true form from the great spirits, so I breathed out slowly through my beak, expelling the raven soul and inhaling my own with the dry, icy air. Human once again, I stood clothed only in a cape of raven feathers, the moon-ice burning against my bare feet.
I swayed for a moment, dizzy from the transformation, but then squared my shoulders, willing my shivering to stop.
“I am Omat, son of Omat.”
The Moon raised one hairless brow. “Come to me, finally… after all this time.”
“I wanted to come before.”
“Hnnnn… and why didn’t you?”
“I was told not to.”
A smile played along his lips as he moved closer to me. No scent drifted from his ice-smooth skin, only a palpable chill that raised the hair on my arms. I tugged the raven cloak more firmly around my body, trying in vain to hide my woman’s flesh.
“Told? By the animal spirits, no doubt. They wanted to keep you for themselves. But you finally sought me out. Were they not help enough?”
“I face a danger greater than any I have known before.”
Again his hairless brow quirked upward. He slanted a smile at me. “Yes?”
“There is a man, Issuk, who would lead my family south, into the barren lands. I tried to warn them not to go, but he has bewitched them all. He claims to be a follower of yours, but you would never favor a man so arrogant and cruel.”
“You are not being honest with me. I grow bored.” He yawned hugely, the inside of his mouth as pale as the rest of him. “Why did you really come?”
“I have told you the truth.”
“All the truth? You come all this way to help your family, like the good angakkuq you have trained to be, yes? You fear nothing for yourself, only for them? Good Omat, totally selfless.”
I swallowed. “I am afraid for myself as well.” I spoke reluctantly at first, then with greater urgency. “Issuk threatens to hurt me.” Everything rushed out at once. “He blames me for our hunger. He says I’ve disobeyed the agliruti against female hunters. But I am not a woman! I have never bled!”
“Because the animal spirits have protected you. Your ancestors in the stars as well.”
I lifted my chin. “They want me to remain a man, so I might give food to my people.”
He rolled his eyes slowly upward, as if scanning the sky. But there was no sky, only whiteness. “Do you see any stars here?”
He knew I did not.
“Do you see any animals?”
I said nothing.
“There is only me. If you come to my world, then I am all that matters. Did your grandfather never teach you that all an angakkuq’s powers come from the Moon Man? I, who control the tides themselves, who give you light in the darkness, can also give you the power of flight, the power to speak with the animals.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “And I can also take those powers away.”
“You can… but you would not.”
“I do it all the time. I took the magic from your grandfather before you were born, but that fool of a woman, Sanna, insisted on giving it back. She learned her lesson, though. Your family has caused her nothing but grief. The Sea Mother bears you no love, Omat. It is she who withholds the animals from you now.”
Cold fear tightened my chest. My whole life, I’d thought myself blessed by the spirits. Now I felt their curse like a blade against my throat.
“Why?” I finally croaked.
“Your father’s soul once kept Sanna company in the deep. But your birth returned it to the world above. He was her… special favorite. You took him away from her. She is
lonely now. And you know how childish she can be.” He thrust out his pale lower lip. “She won’t rest until she gets what she wants. Every step you take across the frozen sea in winter, she shadows you beneath the ice. Every stroke of your paddle in summer, she paces beneath your kayak, waiting to strike.”
“Then you must help me!” I begged. “I have done nothing to deserve her rage! Why would she hunt me so?”
He smiled briefly. “Because I told her to.”
His words, so casual, felled me like a blow. I crashed to my knees on the ice, clutching at the raven cloak until the quills cut the flesh of my palms. I wanted to melt into the ground like an iceberg beneath the summer Sun. If even Taqqiq had turned against me, then I no longer knew who I was or what purpose I served. Better simply to disappear.
“Why now?” I asked weakly.
“I told Sanna to bide her time until my plan was in place. Now your family is desperate. They question you. They long for a real hunter to provide for them. They will listen to Issuk—they will let him take you far away, where you will no longer be a threat to me.”
I knew I should run. Turn back into a bird and fly far away. I had always thought myself wise—a wise Inuk would flee. But despite everything Taqqiq had said, I could not yet admit that I’d failed so utterly. “I only came to ask your help with Issuk. Please, I beg you, I will never bother you again—”
“That is the first true thing you have said. You will never even see me again. You are only dangerous as an angakkuq. If I take that away from you—”
“No! I have disobeyed no agliruti—”
An unfamiliar warm wetness slid from between my thighs, and the words caught in my throat.
“You did not think, when you came here. Did you forget? It is I who make women bleed. I have watched you scuttling across the earth, puffing out your too-flat chest, pretending to be a man. I have tried to reach you before, but Wolf and Raven protected you, kept you from my realm.” He spoke of the animal spirits with loathing. “But now”—he stepped closer to me, cold rushing off his body in waves—“you have come to me. Naked. Powerless.”
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