I closed my eyes to block the sight of his face and deepened my breath.
I don’t know how long I lay there, listening to the sad remains of my family chanting around me. Puja’s voice rang sharp and clear; Kiasik’s was hesitant. The others of my camp tried their best. The strangers stayed silent, but they did nothing to prevent my success. Still, I could feel Issuk’s gaze upon me, hot as a new-fed lamp.
I called upon Singarti to lift me into the sky where I might speak with my grandfather among the stars and learn the truth of his murder.
But nothing happened.
I remained trapped in my own body, my soul tethered to the ground.
The voices died away. Puja’s went last, hoarse by the end.
“Enough.” Issuk chuckled low in his throat, more growl than laugh. “Can’t you smell it?”
Silence.
“You’re no hunters, then.” I heard a small sound of protest from Kiasik, but Issuk wouldn’t stop. “I can smell the blood of a wounded seal beneath the ice. I can smell the blood of a harpooned whale beneath the water. I can smell the blood of a woman beneath her clothes.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to disappear.
“Omat, tell him that’s not true,” Puja pleaded. But I wouldn’t lie, not anymore.
Again, that low laughter. “You wonder why you don’t succeed at the hunt. Why your angakkuq fell through the ice This woman has deceived you—played a man’s part despite the blood on her thighs. She doesn’t have the ear of the spirits. She is nothing. With every harpoon she throws, she defies the agliruti.” I heard him rise. “Come. We feast tonight on the meat that men have brought.”
Hot tears leaked between my lashes; I turned my cheek against my knees so no one might see. One by one, I heard the members of my own camp leave the iglu.
“Come, Anaana,” Kiasik said to his mother. I had heard my cousin speak with annoyance, with envy, even with anger. But never before with contempt. “Leave her.”
My milk-mother’s tears fell warm against my hands as she untied the ropes at my wrists and feet.
Released from my bonds, I curled into a ball like a snail seeking its shell. Puja didn’t touch me again. Instead I heard the familiar tap tap tap as she shaped the moss wick in my lamp. Giving me light. Keeping me warm. Before she left I heard her inhale sharply, as if she might speak, but whatever words she wanted to say, whether of comfort or accusation, she bit back.
I pressed my fingers against my face and breathed heavily, so that my whole world shrank to the resonance of air between my nostrils and hands—to the rushing inhalation, the quavering exhalation as I tried desperately not to scream. I control nothing. Not the spirits, not the hunt… not my own flesh. For so long, I’d felt like a spider standing astride a web of life. I could feel the tremors of the whole world—wind, sea, sky, animals—in my own flesh. Now Issuk and Taqqiq had torn the web asunder, leaving me dangling from a single silken thread, spinning helplessly above rocky ground.
Eventually my body took pity on my dizzy brain, and I sank into sleep. Even then, I remained rooted to my human form, unable even to dream, blind to the spirit world.
When I woke sometime later, I thought for a heart-stopping moment that I’d lost my sight in the mortal world as well. Without anyone to tend it, my lamp had gone out. Then a cloud moved aside, and Taqqiq’s eye blazed through the ice window. His cold beam illuminated the iglu for an instant before another windblown cloud doused the light once more.
Only then did I realize why I’d woken. Someone had entered my iglu.
“Puja?” I called softly into the dark. No one else might seek to share my twofold grief—for my grandfather and for myself. “Is that you?” But I knew my mistake before the words had left my lips. I needed no angakkuq’s nose to smell my visitor’s excited sweat. “What do you want, Issuk?” I asked, somehow keeping my voice steady.
“I won our little bet after all,” the darkness answered me.
Without my heightened senses, I couldn’t tell his exact position, but his voice came from very close by, and I could feel the cold air still clinging to his parka. Carefully I shuffled a little farther away. No matter what, I vowed, I won’t scream. In that, at least, I was a hunter still.
His voice rasped on, grating like fine gravel on my skin. “The elders say the best wives are those who fight the hardest. I’ve always wanted to bed a woman who didn’t shrink before me.”
Even in the dark, I knew every part of my home, knew exactly where my knife lay. Its grip was cold and smooth in my palm.
“Leave now, Issuk. This is your only warning.”
“You think to defend yourself against me?” His voice grew moist, as if he sucked the saliva from the corners of his too-red mouth. “Good. I hoped you would. I could’ve tied you up while you slept, but I wanted to see you fight. Wanted to bed a woman with the heart of a man.”
I lunged toward the sound of his voice, leaping off the sleeping platform with my knife outstretched. In my fury, I forgot all Ataata’s long lessons on patience. I landed on nothing but fur-covered snow.
His laughter rose from somewhere behind me. I spun to face him, and felt his hands, as cold and hard as the Moon’s, seize my wrists.
“You may not be able to see in the dark,” he said softly, his breath damp and hot on my face, “but I can. They say my father was the Moon’s demon son, for my mother died when I was born, and her husband claimed I wasn’t his. You and I have more in common than you think. Dead mothers, lying in pools of their own blood. The spirits and demons, wolves and ravens, creatures of this world and the other—they waited in the cold, listening to our infant wails. I may not be an angakkuq, may not speak the sacred speech or have the Wolf’s ear—I may even need to cheat at games—but that doesn’t mean I’m powerless.”
Perhaps it was a trick of the dark, but his eyes sparked red, more animal’s than man’s. As he spoke, he tightened his grip on my wrists until my hands grew numb. My knife dropped with a dull thud.
I had told stories of rape all my life. Sanna and the bird-man, Malina and her brother.
That night, I became one more story.
Never before had I felt my female flesh more acutely or resented it more. I won’t tell the details here, for they’re hard to tell, and I’ve told them only once. Enough to say that he bound and gagged me with my own ropes, the same ones I’d used to secure my body as my mind flew aloft. That I fought with all my strength, but it was not enough. Too long had I relied on my angakkuq’s senses, my spirit helpers. My own skills were weak. He ripped me apart as easily as he would split a seal carcass. And some time in the middle of it all, I simply left. Not to the spirit world, but to a dark corner of my own mind.
When he finished with me, I lay bloodied and torn, inside and out, too weak even to drag myself beneath the furs.
Puja found me in the morning, I think, but the visions of that time are hazy, as if I looked at the world from beneath the dark water, drowning in Sanna’s black lair. I don’t know if Puja cried or screamed. But I imagine she did.
When Issuk left our camp a few days later, he took me with him as his third wife.
He tied me to the sled to make sure I couldn’t run away, though I’m not sure why he bothered; I would not move or talk. Puja begged him to leave me behind, saying that I’d be a burden, that I might never recover my wits—that he himself had said I brought bad luck. But perhaps Issuk knew me best of all, because he felt sure that before long I’d fight him again, just as he wished. As for bad luck, he merely laughed. “The spirits are done with her. They no longer care what she does.”
The others simply stood mutely. They might not like what Issuk had done, but punishing him would mean losing the food he promised to bring them. The camp’s need to survive outweighed any desire for vengeance.
Kiasik would travel with us, leaving only Tapsi and Ququk to provide for our women. But Issuk had left a large cache of meat behind to supplement my family’s dwindling supplies. Plenty o
f food for two moons. With Ataata’s dogs divided among the other teams, Issuk assured them his sleds would move swiftly across the sea ice. The hunters would return.
My people finally had hope for the future. I did not.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
As a very small child, I once hid inside the prow of my grandfather’s kayak, desperate to go with him on a walrus hunt. He got in and paddled around the bay for a while, pretending not to notice the boy curled tightly between his feet until he came back to shore with a laugh and deposited me with Puja. I had to wait many more seasons for my first walrus hunt, but I still remember that short trip inside the kayak.
The dim light that penetrated the thick hide created a soft, orange glow. If I stretched my hand above, the skin felt warm from the Sun; beneath me, the ocean chilled the boat’s hull. The driftwood frame curved around me, the slats silhouetted against the light like the ribs of some great sea creature seen from within. I used to imagine a narwhal had swallowed me whole. The thought didn’t distress me—I felt warm and safe in its belly, protected from the cold sea water that lapped and sloshed at its sides, with Ataata to guard me from the monsters of the deep. His feet, encased in his sealskin boots, were all I could see of him. The rest of his legs disappeared into the darkness, and the seal-intestine anorak tightly tied to the cockpit hid his torso. But even from that angle, I didn’t find the view frightening. I knew every inch of him, even the soles of his feet.
Lashed onto the back of Issuk’s sled, heavy pelts covering my body and face, I willed myself back into the belly of Ataata’s kayak. But the sled careened over the rough ice with far more violence than a boat rocking on the waves, and the darkness beneath the furs suffocated me as the orange glow inside the kayak never had. Even if I could’ve snapped the ropes that held my arms in place, I didn’t want to move the pelts from my face. As much as I might long to breathe fresh air, I couldn’t bear to see the man running nearby.
Occasionally the sled jerked as Issuk climbed on board, and my body stiffened in response. Not soon enough, he’d leap off again to whip his dogs and push at the sled. The ice piled around us in great heaps, buckled and jagged where the currents slid the great frozen pans against each other, creating teetering blue mountains that would last only until the next strong current mowed them down, or until the summer Sun melted them back into the sea.
I knew the strain of running beside a sled. Boots slipped on the ice, shortening every step, lungs burned with exhaustion, and sweat rolled beneath heavy parkas despite the winter air. Yet I would’ve given anything to run beside Ataata’s sled right now, rather than lie helpless and bound on Issuk’s.
I’d lost count of the days on our journey—everything was darkness and sleep. One of Issuk’s wives would shake me when we stopped and press some meat or blubber to my lips, forcing me to eat just enough to stay alive. Then I’d sink back into oblivion, burrowing beneath the furs on the sled like a bear in its den.
Issuk’s young daughter rode beside me, as silent and still as a seal carcass or a pile of hides. The women ran with the sled, helping to push it over the hillocks. Like Issuk, they took turns hopping back on board when the ice smoothed, their breathing rough and labored as they stole a brief rest. When round-cheeked Kidla drew near the sled, I could hear the thin cries of the baby rising from the warm embrace of its mother’s hood. The two women said little, but when they did, they spoke of me.
“Why’d he bring her?” Uimaitok complained under her breath.
“She’s nothing but a burden,” Kidla agreed. “In my camp, we’d leave her to Sila.”
My body still sore, I drifted in and out of sleep. Even if they hadn’t tied my arms and legs, I was too weak to escape or to rail against my captors. Something deep inside me felt torn and bruised. When I tried to move, pain pierced my gut. So I didn’t try.
Exiled from the spirit world, I wanted only to return to my own dreams—where Ataata lived and I was a child in his care. I’d nearly blocked out the crack of the whip and the hissing ice beneath the sled runners when Issuk ripped away the fur blanket covering my face. The sled skidded to a stop, the dogs yelping in their tangled traces. Kidla stood nearby, bent with exhaustion. Her baby rested against the nape of her neck, a long line of mucus running from its nose into her hair.
Issuk slashed the ropes from my limbs. “We’re far from your camp. There’s no use trying to run.”
I didn’t move.
“Did you hear me? You don’t have to be tied anymore, and the sled’s too heavy. Get up!”
I raised my eyes to him slowly—I had no intention of obeying.
He prodded my shoulder with the butt of his whip. “You like being tied up, is that it?” A sneer tugged at his red mouth. “Or are you so weak you can’t even leave the sled? What happened to Omat, the strong man? You’re like an old woman, or a very young child. Even Nua could run if I made her.” He gestured disdainfully toward his daughter; I could feel the child trembling through the furs between us. “Nothing’s wrong with you.” His voice and whip rose as one. “I’ve done nothing to you that I don’t do to my other wives nightly!”
Other wives. I was one of them now.
“Get up, dog!” The handle of his whip cracked against my shoulder. I cried out and curled even tighter. Had he come at me in my previous life, I might’ve reached up and grabbed the whip from his hand, swinging the long strands through the air until they hissed down upon his flesh. But I’d lost the will to fight. I wanted only to hide—one step away from wanting to die.
Issuk dragged me from the sled, heaving my limp body upright until I swayed on my own feet. Erect, I could feel the pain more sharply, and hot blood leaked against my leg—whether from his violence or my own body’s betrayal, I didn’t know. And I was too weak to care. The fringed woman’s parka they’d dressed me in felt awkward, the long front and back flaps cumbersome against my legs, the weight of the huge hood heavy on my back.
Issuk flicked his whip at the lead dog and shouted hoarsely for it to move on. I looked back at the other sleds—two dark dots on the horizon. But the thought of Kiasik’s nearness only made me feel worse. If I couldn’t even turn to my own milk-brother for help, then I was truly alone.
One foot in front of the other, I made my way across the ice, following the sled tracks blindly like a newborn pup grappling toward the teat. Only the movement mattered.
With each step my thighs rubbed against my wounds. Every motion reminded me of my shame, my womanhood.
We came to a brief stop so Issuk could scan the surroundings from a tall ridge of crumpled ice. I stood panting, chin on chest, eyes closed against the snow glare. A slight pressure on my mittened palm and my eyes flashed open. A familiar grizzled muzzle.
I pulled off my mitten so Black Mask might lick my bare hand, her tongue warming my cold flesh. Uimaitok, the older wife, jerked on the harness line. The dog growled low.
“Go on, girl, go on,” I whispered hoarsely—the first words I’d spoken since I’d left my home.
Uimaitok tugged on the line again, and Black Mask plodded back toward the front of the sled as the team moved out once more.
I watched the black-and-white dog moving among the rest of the pack, enduring their nips and growls, always pushing forward. Issuk had demoted her from lead dog to one of the pullers in the back. In my camp, three or four dogs would pull a sled, but Issuk’s sled was nearly twice as long as one of ours, and eight animals stretched ahead of us, their long traces fanning across the whiteness like dark cracks in the ice. Still, Issuk should’ve taken one of our bigger, male dogs if he wanted more power. The choice of Black Mask made sense only as a warning: he’d killed my grandfather, taken my body, and now debased our dog. He demanded she fill a role she hadn’t been bred for. If she kept falling behind, he wouldn’t hesitate to leave her on the ice. No doubt he’d do the same to me.
A sudden spark of defiance kindled the ashes of my heart. Black Mask had survived worse days than this. I would, too. I thought of Ataa
ta’s face, black and swollen, and fixed my gaze on my feet, willing them to keep moving. If I die now, I realized, I’ll never have my revenge. I had found something to live for.
I lifted my head only when I saw Issuk coming toward me with the fur-clad baby dangling from his outstretched arms. Its legs pumped weakly, its face scrunched as it looked everywhere for its mother.
“Take the child. Kidla is tired of carrying it.”
The young wife slipped her own carrying harness from her parka and handed it grudgingly to me. I stood stupidly, the leather thongs dangling from my hand.
“Help her.” Issuk snorted with disgust. “She doesn’t even know that much.”
Kidla secured the harness to my shoulders and chest. Uimaitok’s hands were cold as she dropped the baby into the carrying pouch inside the back of my parka, while Kidla cinched the straps tight to distribute the weight and keep the squirming baby from slipping free. She pulled the large hood over my head to create a warm cave where the baby might look out past my shoulder. Its tiny fists beat against my back.
The whole procession began again: Issuk running, his long whip cracking at the panting dogs, his two wives trotting after him, the silent little girl sitting wide-eyed on the sled, and me—walking even more slowly now with my extra burden. Kidla had been tired, true, but I knew Issuk had given me the baby more to shame me than to please her.
As I walked, the baby mewled in my ear and grabbed my short hair with surprisingly strong fingers.
“Stop that!” I shrugged my shoulders violently, hoping to jerk it into silence.
Its wails only grew more insistent.
“I have nothing to feed you,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. I’d seen Kidla simply pull her arms inside the parka’s wide shoulders and swing the baby around her body to nurse, but my own flat breasts contained muscle—not milk. I learned quickly that babies are difficult to reason with.
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