It continued to cry and grab at my hair like an evil spirit on my back, a tangible reminder of my newly imposed womanhood. Yet I couldn’t escape to the past while the babe slobbered so prodigiously onto my present. Its crying and clutching grounded me in my own body—a body I wasn’t happy to be in, to be sure, but mine nonetheless.
We didn’t stop to eat. The ice wouldn’t melt so deep in the winter, but at any moment the currents could break it beneath us—we kept moving while we could. I dimly remembered that the journey had started on landfast ice and followed the shoreline south. Now no land appeared either behind or before us, only the desolate landscape of the frozen sea and the piled ice mountains.
The Sun wouldn’t last much longer—the overcast sky already grew dark. The lack of bright light made the ice a treacherous, uniform gray, with no shadows to warn of crevasses. Our pace slowed. Eventually I caught up to Uimaitok.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked diffidently.
“South,” the older woman grunted.
Even a babe would have known that. “But how much farther?”
“We go until we find enough open water for whale hunting,” she answered without looking at me. “We’ve already spent two days on the pack ice. I don’t know how many more it will take.”
“We slept on the pack?” I asked incredulously. From winter to winter, some leads—or open channels—in the ice reappeared at predictable spots, but others formed and shifted without warning. Ataata always taught that a wise Inuk camped only on landfast ice, lest he float away in the middle of the night, lost forever on the ocean.
“You didn’t notice?”
I didn’t reply, too ashamed of the weakness that had kept me so dim-witted.
Uimaitok lifted her chin. “Issuk doesn’t believe in hiding in the ground like a lemming when good hunting waits farther out.”
I ignored the insult to my family. “Aren’t you afraid the ice will crack or move while we sleep?”
“We trust the Moon to guide us. We travel across the pack ice because it’s faster than sticking to the landfast ice at the shoreline. Issuk doesn’t wait in camp like others for the whales to pass by. He chases them down, no matter what stands in his way.”
I’d never heard her speak so freely. Although she clearly bore little love for her husband, she spoke of his daring with pride. She owed the wolverine fur that edged her parka and the strong baleen twine that fastened her bags to her husband’s audacity. Peace reigned in my sad little camp, but we were slowly disappearing on the edge of the world, starving and childless, while Issuk led his people to rich hunting grounds. There’s more than one kind of leader, I realized, and sometimes it’s the worst of men who make the best of situations.
We camped on the pack ice that night, just as Uimaitok had foretold. Issuk ventured in a wide circle from his chosen spot, looking for cracks that might break the pack into smaller drift ice. Satisfied with the relative safety of our camp, he signaled his wives to unload the sled. I could barely lift my own feet to take another step, let alone help with the heavy sleeping furs and the soapstone lamp. Panting, I sat down on the snow, the baby finally motionless against my back. Kidla roughly flipped back my hood and retrieved her child. Soon the babe nursed loudly at its mother’s breast.
The other two sleds skidded to a stop. Onerk and Patik stood beside one, checking the lashings around the small, fat umiaq wobbling on top. Kiasik unloaded supplies from the other, his familiar dogs sniffing in my direction. One let out a cheerful yip and wagged its tail. I got no such greeting from my milk-brother.
No. He is not my brother, I realized. Not anymore. Only a cousin.
While Kiasik staked his team, he watched me from the corner of his eye. I didn’t recognize his expression at first. It was one I’d never seen him cast in my direction before: pity.
“You’ve been sick,” he said finally, his voice carefully neutral. “Get some meat in you. Get some sleep tonight.”
Kidla looked up from her nursing babe, and an easy smile flashed across her face. “We’ve slept warm and well since you’ve joined us, Kiasik.”
Smiling in return, my cousin ran his tongue along the blade of his long ivory snow knife, creating a thin coating of ice. Glowing with pride, he bent to carve large blocks from the hard-packed ground. He tried to catch my eye; he hadn’t yet lost the habit of sharing his triumphs with me. I looked away.
Together the men propped the snow blocks upright in a large circle. Tall Patik and hulking Onerk came to assist, and the iglu quickly took shape, the walls slowly spiraling upward until they met in a neat dome over the men inside.
As Kidla and little Nua pressed loose snow into the cracks between the large blocks, Kiasik cut a small vent through the roof and erected a miniature windbreak around it. The other men dug out an entrance passage. Uimaitok procured a translucent square of scraped caribou hide to serve as a window.
Throughout, they left me alone. Kiasik laughed and joked, securing the window into the domed roof and waving through it at the women, who’d already lit the oil lamp inside.
Night had fallen when they finally completed the iglu. Issuk crawled out to where I sat beside the sled. He stood and stared down at me, his long mustache mirroring the frown on his too-red lips. “Kiasik has carried you inside long enough. Tonight you walk.”
I didn’t remember my cousin helping me every night. The thought brought me no comfort, only disgust at myself. I hurried to my feet.
Inside the iglu, the women had already hung the men’s boots on the drying rack above the lamp. I missed Puja. Ever since I’d reached manhood, she’d removed my boots and warmed my feet.
I crawled onto the farthest corner of the fur-covered sleeping bench and looked down at my own boots. I didn’t want to pull them off, afraid of what I might find underneath. Sitting motionless on the sled had likely led to frostbite. To stay warm in winter, I needed to move, to run, to build.
I pulled my hands slowly from my large seal fur mittens and bent my fingers until the feeling returned. Gingerly I pulled off my boots and the fur liners underneath. The ends of my toes were white and swollen but not yet black. Frozen, not dead. The iglu air wasn’t warm enough yet to help, and I couldn’t ask Uimaitok to add more moss to the lamp wick—if the oil burned too hot, the iglu would melt above it. My numb toes felt like meat in my hands, and my cold palms couldn’t warm them. All those nights I hid in my dreams, I must’ve slept in my boots, never drying my feet. Each day on the sled, my toes had frozen a little more. Tears pricked my eyes—only the youngest or stupidest of hunters got frozen feet.
My flesh has become ice, I thought, earthbound and heavy and hard as stone, but so brittle it will shatter with the slightest force.
I rubbed the white flesh gently, careful not to snap off an entire toe. Still I felt nothing.
“Here—” Uimaitok crouched beside me, offering a piece of thawed seal from her cooking pot. She took one look at my stricken face and my white toes and let out a loud humph. Sitting with her back to me, she grasped one of my feet with surprising gentleness, raised her own parka, and placed my foot in the warm hollow of her armpit. She squeezed her arm against her side to hold my left foot in place and did the same with my right. I fell awkwardly onto the sleeping furs, this strange woman clasped between my legs. Slowly I chewed my own small meal, holding back cries of pain as the feeling gradually returned to my feet, burning and stinging like splatters of hot seal oil against flesh.
The others ignored me, busy with their food. All except Kiasik. A faint, relieved smile touched his lips as he watched me eat. So he cares if my woman’s body survives, I realized. But not my man’s spirit.
When he lay down beside me on the sleeping platform, I looked away from him, my heart as numb as my toes.
By the time I drifted toward sleep, my icy flesh had melted, and with it my resolve to survive and seek revenge. I was water. Formless and vulnerable. I wanted to sink deep into the earth, or turn to vapor and disappear into n
othingness. Wishing for death. Wishing for escape. Not sure if I could have one without the other.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
That night I dreamed that Issuk took me, only to wake to the sound of his rhythmic grunting coming from the far side of the sleeping platform. I did not move. The others slept on.
When it was over, Uimaitok whispered, “Will you let Kiasik lie with Kidla?”
Issuk grumbled, “All my men want to lie with my wives. After I lent Kidla to Patik, he followed her around like she was his seal mother and he wanted to suck at her teat.”
“Kiasik has never lain with a woman,” Uimaitok urged. “It’s not right. Easier to lend him Kidla—otherwise he may try to take her without your permission.”
“Let him try. Now that we know how to build his snow iglu, we don’t need him. If he doesn’t respect me, then he has no place with us.”
They were silent for so long I thought they’d fallen back asleep. Then, more softly, Uimaitok asked, “When will you lie with Omat next?”
“I should do it soon, just to remind Kiasik whose wife she is. He lies next to her each night, and I don’t like the look he gives me—like he’s built one of his igluit around her and won’t let me through the entrance tunnel.”
“So you will claim her again?”
Issuk snorted. “Let Kiasik have her for now. I’m not interested in one who can barely walk or speak. When she acts like a person again, I’ll take her. Until then, even you please me better.”
Next to me, Kiasik didn’t stir, but his broad shoulders rose up like a wall between me and my new husband. I hadn’t noticed his efforts to protect me. Or perhaps, in my blindness, I’d actually seen the truth: my cousin couldn’t save me, even if he wanted to.
The next day I walked beside the sled rather than lay upon it. I forsook the sure hunter’s step I’d learned from my grandfather. Nor did I move like Kidla and Uimaitok, with the knees-inward gait of a woman. Instead I shuffled a little, tripping often, as if every step hurt—which was not too far from the truth. If Issuk wanted me to act like a person, then I would be a walking corpse.
Even with my awkward movements, I easily kept pace with the sleds. The men stopped frequently to hunt at breathing holes. Occasionally we saw the telltale frost smoke of a lead, a cloudy haze where the warmer water of the open channel met the frigid air. None of the leads were large enough for a whale, but Issuk stopped us with a raised hand when his keen eyes noted a tiny dot on the horizon—a basking seal.
Watching from afar, I had to admire his skill. Long before the seal would notice him, he lay down on the ice and scuttled forward on his stomach. He wore a set of seal claws tied to each mitten, and he scratched the ice as he went, turning himself sideways to mimic a seal’s length. The seal strained its head upward to watch his progress, its body tense and ready to flee back into the misty lead. Issuk lay perfectly still, unthreatening, convincing his prey that he was just another seal. It lay back and closed its eyes. Only then did the hunter leap up in one swift movement and thrust his harpoon through its neck.
The wounded animal humped across the snow and splashed into the water, but Issuk had wrapped his harpoon line around his waist, and the bone cleats on his boot soles kept him from sliding after it. He used his whole body to anchor the seal as it thrashed in the lead, kicking up fountains of spray. Finally, when the water welled up red over the ice, and the line ceased its jerking, Issuk hauled up his prize.
Uimaitok offered me an upper vertebra. A woman’s portion, but nourishing nonetheless. I gorged myself on the dark, hot meat. I was not too proud to enjoy Issuk’s bounty.
An Inuk survives.
One night a howling, snarling clamor awoke us. As the only one to sleep clothed, I made it through the entrance tunnel first. While the others pulled on their parkas, I alone witnessed the cause of the uproar.
All the dogs remained tied up, their eyes trained on the swiftly departing shape of a scrawny white wolf. He was almost invisible against the ice; only his moonshadow gave him away.
The slavering dogs growled in chorus. There is nothing a dog despises more than a wolf. Having once been a wolf myself, I couldn’t share their distaste. But I thought perhaps I understood their anger: the dog and the wolf are cousins, yet the dog remains tied while the wolf roams free.
Black Mask alone lay peacefully in the snow, tongue lolling, jaws slightly agape in a gesture I recognized from my wolf journeys as a sign of pleasure. I thought little of it at the time. The men came outside and busily whipped the dogs into silence. They never saw the wolf, and I didn’t enlighten them.
Black Mask wasn’t the only one finding pleasure in the arms of a stranger.
It happened naturally enough. After another long day of traveling across the ice, Kiasik settled himself on the iglu’s bench beside Kidla on the pretense of playing with her baby. Never having seen a mother and infant before, I wasn’t prepared for the glow that lit her face when someone praised her son.
Kiasik lifted the baby’s arms, crowing, “Such a strong little man! He’ll grow to be a great whale hunter!”
The little boy smiled and gurgled. My cousin threw the child into the air as if he were a ball for games, catching him and tossing him aloft once more as the baby screeched with laughter. Kidla’s smile broadened as she watched Kiasik. With only old men and soft Tapsi to compare him with, I’d never realized quite how handsome my cousin really was.
Patik’s nose sat crookedly in his face, and his habit of holding his gap-toothed mouth open reminded me of a dumbstruck walrus. Onerk, with his tiny eyes and broad frame, still reminded me of a shark. Or perhaps his heavy brows and shaggy mustache were those of a lumbering musk ox. Kiasik’s oval eyes, on the other hand, glimmered beneath arching eyebrows, his nose flanked by wide, expressive nostrils. I’d seen him flare those nostrils at me with both anger and humor—and, occasionally, with something akin to desire. When he met Kidla’s frank gaze, they flared anew.
The women trimmed the lamp wick for the night, and Kiasik took his usual place next to me on the sleeping bench, still holding the baby. An innocent enough reason for Kidla to slip beneath the furs beside him.
I awoke to giggling. Kidla and Kiasik, whispering to each other. Then the distinct sound of flesh sliding against flesh. I stiffened, willing myself not to turn around, not to hear it. I didn’t want to witness their transgression, lest Issuk somehow read it in my face later. They were taking a terrible risk; Issuk slept on Kidla’s other side, a mere handbreadth away. He sleeps heavily and snores loudly, I reminded myself. If he wakes, they’ll know.
The sounds continued. Not rhythmic enough for sex, but from the twitching motion of the sleeping furs, I knew their hands were all over each other. The heat from their bodies sent sweat running in rivulets down my own.
The snoring stopped.
The pace of Kiasik’s panting breaths only quickened. He was too wrapped in his own pleasure to notice. I wanted to scream a warning. To kick him into silence. I lay frozen instead, bracing for the worst.
A harsh intake of breath from Kidla, followed by a sudden quiet. I felt Kiasik’s body tense beside me. They knew Issuk was awake.
I expected shouting. Blows. Instead, Issuk merely rasped out Patik’s name.
“What?” the gangly hunter slurred sleepily.
“Tomorrow night, you may borrow Kidla.”
Unable to restrain my curiosity, I rolled over slowly to face my cousin.
Eyes wide and full of hate, Kiasik lay with his back to Kidla and Issuk. I met his gaze for an instant, but he looked away and locked his fists on the sleeping fur at his chin. In my camp, hunters asked their wives’ consent for such an arrangement; Issuk had said nothing to Kidla—and she had said nothing to him. I peered over Kiasik’s shoulder at her. She stared upward, the fur pushed away from her body, the sweat on her breasts shiny in the dim light of the oil lamp.
At the far end of the platform, Patik sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Hnnnn?”
“
Kidla will lie with you tomorrow, yes?”
Patik grinned hungrily, now completely awake.
He did not wait long. As soon as we’d chosen our next camp and finished our iglu, he took her inside. The rest of us stayed on the ice, skinning the men’s latest catch and feeding scraps to the dogs. The two returned before long.
Issuk snorted. “You’re as quick as a lemming.”
“Yes, in and out of your hole so fast it’s over before it began,” Onerk added with uncharacteristic humor.
Patik managed a gap-toothed smile and mumbled, “It’s been a long time.”
Kidla didn’t look particularly upset. This wasn’t the first time the men had shared her. Still, I caught the glance she cast at Kiasik, who stood frozen beside the butchered seal with blood coating his clenched hands.
“I haven’t lain with a woman in just as long,” Onerk reminded Issuk.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Issuk replied. “You can have her tomorrow—you’ve hunted long and loyally by my side. It’s what one friend does for another.” He turned his back on Kiasik, his meaning clear.
The next morning, I awoke to the sound of Onerk’s moaning. The coupling had ended by the time I came fully awake. Kiasik lay stiffly beside me, his narrow gaze fixed on the ceiling as if he would punch right through the snow blocks. Does he truly want her? I wondered. Or does he just want her all to himself? Most men didn’t feel possessive about their wives. A woman was like a weapon or a sled or a seal—an Inuk shared everything with his partners. Whoever needed it used it. Even children could be shared. My adoption by Puja wasn’t unusual; even if my parents had lived, another childless couple might’ve reared me as their own.
Issuk didn’t offer his wife to my cousin the next day. The stolen glances between Kidla and him ended. But I remembered Kiasik’s jealousy when Ataata had shown me special favor.
My cousin always liked to win.
I could only hope that Kidla had sated the men’s appetites, not whetted them. I spent the next several nights in a state of constant vigilance. At any moment, one of them might come for me. Kiasik hadn’t saved me from Issuk the night Ataata died; he wouldn’t be able to save me now. I felt like Black Mask, curled up outside with her nose under her tail, one ear pricked for the approach of the other dogs.
The Wolf in the Whale Page 15