During the day, the ice beneath my feet only added to my unease. Sometimes I would catch sight of land again, far to the west, but Issuk stayed upon the frozen ocean where our path was smoother. Still, every time I slept, I worried we might awaken on a piece of drifting ice, carried to a whole new world with no hope of ever finding our way back home. But when I woke each morning, the ice remained firm, and Black Mask sat outside the iglu, unharmed. Her tail thumped weakly in greeting. Unseen by the others, I would slip her whatever meat I could spare.
We’d made it through another night.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We traveled for another moon before the sleds started splashing through turquoise pools of meltwater. Issuk guided us closer to the shore, finally consenting to stay upon the safer landfast ice.
But when the shoreline curved sharply westward, he kept heading south. I thought we were simply crossing a deep inlet, as we had several times before. Yet no more land appeared, and the ice grew steadily softer beneath us. The narrow leads we were used to became chasms too wide for the sleds. For the first time on our journey, we used the small umiaq. Patik and Onerk stowed their sled and dogs inside the boat and paddled it across the stretch of open water. They returned for Kidla, Uimaitok, and the children. It took several more trips and most of the daylight, but eventually everyone—including all our dogs and supplies—had crossed the channel, and the men lashed the dripping umiaq back atop their sled.
“There are more big leads like this ahead,” I heard Patik say to Issuk as we harnessed the dogs once more. “The farther we get from land, the more dangerous this becomes. I’ve never seen ice so soft this early in the spring. What happens if we hit wide-open water—with no ice at all?”
“Then we will use the umiaq again and paddle for as long as it takes to find land.” Issuk sounded unconcerned.
“It’s not big enough to take everyone at once.” The gangly hunter glanced at me and Kiasik.
“Then some will get left behind.” Before Patik could protest, Issuk went on. “The faster we move, the farther we get before it all melts.” His whip licked over his lead dog’s flanks, and the sled jerked into motion. “So if you want us all to cross, then stop complaining and start running.”
And run we did. We splashed through deep pools of water. We helped the dogs drag the sleds through slush. Often, whole pans of ice would crack beneath us, forcing us to leap from one floe to another just to keep going in the right direction. When the leads grew too wide, Patik and Onerk would paddle one group across in the umiaq while the rest of us waited our turn, hoping the ice wouldn’t crumble away beneath our feet.
Never had I seen such recklessness. We should have turned around and headed back to shore. Instead, we found ourselves in the middle of a quickly melting sea, struggling just to stay alive. If we lost the ice before we reached land, everyone who didn’t fit in the umiaq would drown. I was too angry and afraid to say much, but when Kiasik ran beside me, I couldn’t help myself. “This is what Ataata’s father warned of,” I hissed at him. “A sea that never freezes fully, not even in Seal Birthing Moon. Issuk will find no whales here.”
“You’re right.” A quick, confident smile. The kind he had always reserved for me, and that I’d never thought to see again. “I will find them all. So many I’ll build a huge umiaq from their ribs and paddle us all back home through the summer sea.” He laughed at his joke.
I did not. “You know better than to boast like that.”
His smile vanished. “And you know better than to sulk.”
“So my sorrow is my own fault,” I retorted. “Then go ahead, stop sleeping between me and Issuk. Why protect me from something you think I should enjoy?”
“I have always protected you,” he shot back. “Ever since we were—”
“Then where were you?” I had never asked him. “When Issuk came into my iglu that night? Where was my older brother?”
He stiffened. “No one knew—”
“And did you still not know the next morning? When he tied me to his sled like a dead seal?”
“Our grandfather always taught us not to fight what we cannot change.”
“And you chose now to listen.” I wanted to laugh at the absurdity. “I remember a different lesson: Ataata taught me to be a man. One better and smarter than you.”
I wanted him to snap back at me. Once, he had done more than protect me—he had thought me an equal worth wrestling with. Now he merely flared his nostrils and picked up his pace, leaving me to sweat and struggle alone.
Night and day we moved. We took turns sleeping on the sleds, but the sleds never stopped. The men rotated the dogs, tossing some into the umiaq to rest while the others kept pulling. At any moment, I was sure we would all crash through the ice and drown. None of us knew how to swim, and the weight of the sleds would pull the dogs under, too. But Issuk kept moving, never complaining, never showing any sign of fear. The Moon guides him indeed, I thought. There was no other explanation for his confidence.
Black Mask struggled to keep pace. Unable to compete with the stronger dogs for meat, she lost her flesh over the course of the moon—but gained a belly. She was unmistakably pregnant. The others assumed another dog had mated with her before anyone noticed she was in heat. Only I had seen the wolf. Only I knew the truth.
Normally we’d leave a pregnant bitch behind in camp, but we had nowhere to leave her. She was too weak to run for long, and we needed room in the umiaq to rest the other dogs. Finally Issuk pulled his harpoon off the sled and splashed across the melting ice toward her.
She sat back on her haunches and began to howl. The hunter stood, arms crossed across his chest, staring down at her; she stared right back, panting a little, then lifted her head to howl again. He stepped closer, his harpoon in one hand and his whip in the other.
She growled and bared her teeth. He slammed the whip down hard, but she ducked out of the way, moving faster than she had in many moons.
I knew full well that Issuk had little choice. He couldn’t keep her; she slowed us down when we needed all our speed to cross the ice before there was no ice left. To free her would waste good meat and fur, from both her and her unborn pups. Either Black Mask must die, or we all might. Yet I found myself leaping to her defense. “You don’t want to lose a whole litter!”
“I have too many dogs already.”
A blur of fur and fangs, Black Mask lunged forward; her jaws snapped around his leg. Issuk yowled in pain, slamming the butt of his whip onto her head and shoulders.
Knife drawn, Onerk rushed forward and grabbed her by the ruff, yanking her head back as he swung his blade toward her throat. At the last moment, Black Mask jerked aside, sending Onerk’s knife slicing neatly through her lead.
The dog bounded away.
“Aii!” Issuk launched his spear at her. Too late. Black Mask was long gone.
Issuk’s wounded pride clearly hurt worse than his injured leg. The dog’s sharp teeth couldn’t penetrate his double-layer sealskin trousers. Watching from the iglu entrance as Ataata’s favorite dog disappeared southward, I cheered silently. But I couldn’t help feeling that I’d lost my only remaining friend.
Not long after Black Mask’s escape, we saw our first sign of a whale passing through a distant lead: a plume of wet breath exploding into the air. We heard the great exhalation, then the patter of drops falling into the water. Our first sighting of many. But always, when we finally reached the open lead, the whales were gone.
On the third morning of our journey across the melting ice, the dawn haze lifted and the shadows of mountains appeared in the distance, looking more like clouds than stone. But as the real clouds shifted, the mountains stayed put.
The black peaks remained visible for a full day before we reached the snowy shore. Steep sided, limned by the trailing tongues of glacier ice—not so different from the mountains I knew.
When we finally dragged the sleds onto shore and began to unload, Uimaitok and Kidla glanced at the mountains on
ly briefly. Like my own family, Issuk’s people preferred to stay by the shoreline or in the valleys. They might scramble on the lower slopes where the birds nest and the lemmings burrow, but they’d never ascend onto the slick glacier, where our knowledge of sea ice couldn’t stop us from plunging into a glacier’s hidden abyss.
Nevertheless, I found myself staring at the mountainside rather than at the tasks before me. As the Sun sank, the stark black-and-white cliffs softened into shades of gray. Thick clouds hid the summit, and wisps of white vapor encircled the slopes. Once, I’d flown above a mountain on raven wings. Invincible. Omniscient.
I still have my legs, I reminded myself. If I could climb to the very peak, I might reach the sky. I could beg the Moon Man to give me back my magic. But my legs were too sore and Taqqiq too stubborn.
I kept unloading.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Not like that, Ilisuilttuq,” chided Uimaitok, yanking the sealskin away from my clumsy hands. I’ve had many names in my life—Son, Grandson, Brother; now I had another, and every time I heard it, it stung. Ilisuilttuq. Stupid One.
To me, it was still Seal Birthing Moon, when the Sun and Moon finally split the day between them. At home, the ice bears would stomp on the sea ice to break into the seals’ dens and steal their pups. But I hadn’t seen a bear since we crossed the melting strait, and when I mentioned it to Uimaitok, she laughed and corrected me. “Ilisuilttuq, this isn’t Seal Birthing Moon. This is Whaling Moon!”
In preparation, we spent our time strengthening the walrus-hide harpoon lines and repairing the damage the umiaq had suffered on our crossing, patching it with new sealskins and waterproofing the seams. It was tiresome work, and my jaws ached from chewing the hides until they were pliable enough to stretch around the driftwood frame. The women laughed at my efforts.
The first time they placed a crescent-shaped ulu in my hands, I stared at it dumbly. This was a woman’s blade. I yearned for my long, straight hunting knife. But when Issuk had packed me aboard his sled, he’d left my weapons behind. And even if I’d had my hunting knife—would using it break an agliruti? Would using an ulu? A woman carried one tool. A man another. But what if I was both? Or neither?
The women watched me impatiently.
“I don’t know how to use it,” I finally admitted. “Will you show me?”
A successful hunt would let us return to my family’s camp. If that meant scraping hides and learning to sew, then so be it.
Little Nua, expertly working the walrus skin with her own small ulu, giggled at my plight. But Uimaitok wrapped my fingers around the blade’s handle and set it to the hide at the proper angle.
“Gentle,” she chided, rocking my hand back and forth. “You clean, you soften. You don’t tear.”
We continued along the shore. The mountains loomed to the west, and an unending expanse of sea stretched to the east. Landfast ice hugged the coast, but beyond it floated great pans webbed with wide leads. Further out, towering bergs and broad floes churned past. A perfect feeding ground for whales, but far too treacherous for a dogsled. To my relief, we stayed on the beach. But we did not stay in one place. Every morning, we packed up our camp and moved farther south in our perpetual search for the whales.
While the women continued to work on the umiaq, the men left every afternoon to seek out food. They ventured onto the narrow landfast ice looking for seals or traveled inland tracking fox and musk ox. Most of the time, they came back empty-handed.
My lessons continued. The women taught me to sit as they did, legs tucked beneath me, so I might bend over needle and scraper and ulu more easily. But Kidla’s son made a mockery of my efforts, crawling into my lap just when I’d finally gotten the knack of separating the strands of caribou sinew for sewing. I suffered his attentions only because staying in his good graces ensured I stayed in Kidla’s as well. He clambered onto my pile of sinew, clearly thinking he’d found a very comfortable place for a nap. I gently pushed him off my work and back onto the small fox fur his mother had set out for him. He crawled right back, reaching one chubby hand toward me.
“He wants to be picked up,” Kidla said mildly. I sighed in exasperation, hoping she’d volunteer to distract her son. But with no help forthcoming, I slipped him into the pouch in the back of my parka, where he promptly began to play with my hair. It’d grown long enough that Kidla had insisted on fastening it into a small tail at my neck.
“Soon,” she said with a smile, “I can loop your hair in braids like mine.”
For once, the baby knew my mind; he began to pull each hair out by the root.
When the men returned from yet another hunt with only a skinny white hare for their efforts, I was in the midst of a familiar—and fruitless—argument with the evil spirit on my back. Kiasik laughed and settled down beside us. “You have a new friend. Next thing you know you’ll be having a child of your own. You’re a good mother.”
I gripped the ulu tight, my knuckles whitening. The baby, sensing my anger, began to whimper. Kidla hastily pulled her son from my parka and placed him on her breast.
“What?” Kiasik persisted. “You’re still angry with me?”
“I should be hunting,” I said finally. “I’d bring back more than that hare.” Pride—an emotion I’d thought lost—welled once more beside my bitterness.
“I see.” He was angry now. Defensive. He picked up our argument where we’d left off, as if he’d been chewing over my words for days. “Because you’re a better, smarter man than I. Is that it?” He threw his own small catch onto my lap. “Clean it, Little Sister,” he said, rising to go.
“I remember my father’s words better than you do, Sister’s Son,” I spat back, my voice rising now. “Our ancestors warned that this land was barren. You follow Issuk into nothingness! We’ll starve here. And if we all die, hope for our people dies with us. We’re going the wrong way! The seals are in the north with the ice. Why do we go south?”
Issuk’s calm rasp interrupted my tirade. “Because, Ilisuilttuq, the whales are south. So south we go.” He looked at me keenly, and I felt the flush of life upon my cheek drain away. I dared not let him see my spirit return. I slumped my shoulders and willed my eyes to grow dull. Only once he released me from the pressure of his stare did I breathe easier once again.
The next day, we completed the repairs on the umiaq. We walked more quickly now, sure that when the next whale appeared, the men would be ready to chase it. I still didn’t understand why they didn’t just hunt from kayaks and spare themselves the trouble of hauling the larger boat, but Uimaitok laughed when I mentioned it.
“You can’t hunt a whale from a kayak! One breath and it’d blow you out of the water!”
She turned to Nua and exhaled loudly through her mouth, making a sound surprisingly like that of a whale. The little girl giggled. Uimaitok swept her up as we walked and blew again, vibrating her lips against her daughter’s belly until they both convulsed with laughter.
As if called by Uimaitok’s mimicry, a great plume of water burst offshore. We stopped walking and stared, inhaling as the whale exhaled, sighing out as it sucked air. A round hump of black rolled amid white ice, then sank once more into an open lead. I was sure it was just another lone whale like those we’d seen before. One that would disappear long before the men could gather their harpoons and paddles.
Instead, another wet rush of air, and another. The quiet plash of bodies curving through water, the loud thump of their strong heads against the floes, the sharp crack as they broke the lead wider to help their calves breathe.
For the first time, a true grin split Issuk’s face.
To my surprise, I found a smile to answer his own.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Issuk steered us to a bowl-like valley where two low hills would shield our new camp from the worst of the seaborne wind. From the hilltop the men could see all the way across the ice to where the whales fed along the floe edge. I wondered that they didn’t leap into the umiaq right away, but Uimai
tok assured me that, having found the whales’ feeding ground, we must prepare carefully for the hunt ahead. A reckless chase was bound to fail.
Kiasik, Patik, and Onerk built a roomy iglu for us while Issuk readied the umiaq for its voyage. Revived by the hope of whales to come, the men laughed at their tasks, the sound echoing off the surrounding hills in a cacophony of overlapping voices. Our own camp must’ve sounded like this before the death of my father and his age mates, I realized.
The women caught the joyful spirit, smiling and giggling as they chinked the iglu cracks and set up the stone lamp and the drying rack.
Nua, arms outstretched, ran in tight circles around the outside of the iglu, despite her mother’s efforts to get her to help set up the camp. She cawed like a raven, laughing in delight as the sound bounced back to her, mistress of a whole flock of invisible birds.
“I’m protecting our iglu from danger!” she cried, imitating the ritual of an angakkuq she’d seen in days gone by. At one time, I might’ve taken offense that a child would claim to have magic, or worried that her actions might thoughtlessly offend some spirit, but now I simply shrugged when the little girl turned to me and asked, “Am I doing it right, Ilisuilttuq?”
“I wouldn’t know.” I had no desire to relive my own failures. I continued searching the ground for a frozen pond, seeking clear ice for our window and drinking water.
“I’m trying to summon a raven,” she explained, her lips pursed like a serious old woman’s. I looked up at the empty sky, a flat expanse of dull gray cloud. She followed my glance, frowning. “It’s not working yet.”
The Wolf in the Whale Page 16