“Ravens come where there’s food. They follow the wolves, or sometimes the bear. They don’t come when you call them.”
“You never summoned a raven?” she asked.
Kiasik, coming around the iglu with a snow block for the entrance tunnel, interrupted. “Don’t ask Omat about such things.”
Immediately Nua’s expression closed into the same solemn, frightened mask it always wore when a man came too close. Her hands dropped to her sides like the wings of a wounded bird.
“She’s no angakkuq,” Kiasik went on, oblivious to the girl’s discomfort. “Omat has no more magic than I do.” I hadn’t heard such spite in his voice since we were children, fighting for Puja’s affection.
He hadn’t spoken to me directly since our last argument. My words had clearly wounded him more than he’d let on, and he’d sought friendship elsewhere, following Kidla’s every movement with bright eyes.
To my surprise, Issuk came to my defense. “All women influence the spirits, Kiasik.”
My cousin turned quickly toward the hunter like a shamefaced boy caught shirking his chores.
“If our women are not very careful to obey the special aglirutiit,” Issuk continued sternly, “the whales won’t give themselves to us.”
I wasn’t sure which rules he spoke of, but a lifeless woman like me wouldn’t bother to ask.
Tensions in the iglu that night ran high. The men sharpened their harpoons while the women checked the hide ropes for fraying. Kiasik and Kidla sat apart from each other, eyes averted, yet I could feel the heat between them, as palpable as if it rose from my own body.
Excited about the forthcoming hunt, I woke many times to find the others also rolling beneath the sleeping furs, sighing heavily or choking on interrupted snores. Had his desire not so clouded his judgment, Kiasik never would’ve chosen such a night to steal what belonged to Issuk.
I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until a sudden draft pulled me awake; the place beside me on the sleeping platform lay empty. No Kiasik. No Kidla.
Only her sleeping baby remained, his mouth open in a wet circle. I lay still for a moment, listening, but heard only the steady drone of Issuk’s snores.
I don’t know why I went to look. I was as stupid as Kiasik. Even as I rolled silently off the platform and tiptoed across the iglu floor, I told myself I was Ilisuilttuq indeed.
I bent to glance down the tunnel—empty. I should have stopped there.
I slid my boots from the drying rack and crawled outside.
A whispered moan stopped me at the iglu entrance. I thought they must be coupling in the snow. Yet when I peered out beyond the rim of the tunnel, I saw no bodies writhing in the moonlight. They simply stood there. Holding each other. Nose pressed to cheek. Kiasik stroked Kidla’s hair gently away from her temple, his fingertips light on her skin. She moaned softly and wrapped her arms more firmly around his back, her fists grabbing at the fur of his parka. He whispered something to her, too softly for me to hear, and I saw her smile before she nuzzled her face into his neck.
I backed up slowly, more upset than if I’d seen them straining together. I’d never seen Kiasik so gentle, so caring. His rare flashes of affection for me had never involved caresses. Had he simply taken Kidla’s body as Onerk and Patik had, I would have felt no jealousy. I had no desire to lie with any man. But Kiasik did not just want Kidla—he loved her.
Uimaitok rolled over when I crawled onto the sleeping platform. Perhaps she too had spied on the couple, perhaps not. I couldn’t bring myself to care. Envy burned in my gut like a sparking willow fire. I lay with my head under the furs, my eyes burning, until the dawn.
The next morning, I’m sure only I noticed the new softness in Kiasik’s glance when he looked at Kidla. Everyone else was too busy readying for the hunt.
Finally, when the men set out across the ice carrying the umiaq on their shoulders, I found out just what Issuk had meant about the power of women to influence the hunt. I started to leave the iglu, planning to walk to the floe edge to watch the chase. On the way, I might kill a bird or a lemming before my skills faded from disuse. Sanna’s curse would keep me from capturing any sea animals, but I might have more luck with the creatures of land. I picked up a length of sinew and an ulu, hoping to fashion a crude spear if I could find driftwood or an antler.
“Ilisuilttuq!” Uimaitok screeched. “Don’t touch that ulu! Don’t you know anything?”
I dropped the knife in shock.
“You’re a whale hunter’s wife! If you cut anything, even a length of sinew, the harpoon line will be sliced and the whale will escape!”
Though Nua played at string figures, the women had been strangely inactive all morning. I’d assumed that after so many days of ceaseless work on the umiaq, they were simply enjoying a rest.
Uimaitok patted the furs beside her. “No wife should work while her husband is at a whaling camp. Better to sit quietly and wait for him. The whale will learn from us, and be quiet and still when the hunters approach.”
“Who told you such a thing?” In Ataata’s story of Sanna’s marriage, the bird demon told her to stay inside while he hunted, but I’d assumed this rule applied only to spirits, not to Inuit.
“That’s always been the way,” Kidla chimed in. “No one needed to tell us. We watched our mothers.” She glanced worriedly around the iglu and whispered conspiratorially: “I remember once when the men were whale hunting, we heard a dog whining outside our qarmaq. It sounded so pitiful that my mother sent me to check on it. It was caught in its traces. The more it struggled, the more the traces tightened around its throat. I was very young—I didn’t have the strength to cut the dog loose. Finally my mother couldn’t take the crying.”
“Your mother was always too soft with her dogs,” Uimaitok muttered.
“She went out, made sure no one was looking, and cut the dog free with her ulu.”
“The Moon Man always sees,” the older woman interjected.
“Uimaitok is right. When my father returned, he told us they’d harpooned a whale. It dove, but they watched the drag-float and followed its path. They waited and waited for it to surface again, but eventually they realized that the float wasn’t attached to the whale anymore. The line had been cut, and the beast had swum away. My mother never told him it was her fault—but she never again disobeyed the agliruti.”
The women’s caution extended even to trimming the lamp wick, and with only Nua to mind the flame, the iglu grew smoky and hot. Drowsily, the women spoke of what they would do when the men returned. “I haven’t eaten maktak in many moons,” Uimaitok said wistfully.
Kidla smiled softly, her eyelids drooping. “With Kiasik to help,” she mused, “I’m sure they’ll bring back a bigger whale than ever.”
I looked at the young woman sharply, but she was already asleep. Soon Uimaitok drifted off as well. Haunted by memories of last night, I could find no such escape. I longed to do something with my hands. I reached over to help Nua with a string figure she was creating, but she yanked it out of my reach and whispered, “You mustn’t! The Moon Man will tangle the harpoon lines.”
I lay back on the sleeping robes and threw an arm over my face. Kidla’s baby cried for a moment; she rolled over, still half-asleep, to offer her breast. Again, all was quiet.
I couldn’t bear it. I slipped off the edge of the sleeping platform, careful not to disturb the women.
“Where’re you going?” Nua whispered.
I held a finger to my lips.
She turned to wake her mother, and I grabbed her arm, hard. “Don’t say a word,” I hissed, “or I’ll transform into a wolf and bite you in your sleep!”
The little girl trembled in my grasp. Obviously she didn’t trust Kiasik’s assurance that I’d lost my magic, because she stayed quiet as I pulled on my boots and crawled outside.
As an angakkuq, it was my solemn duty to prevent my people from disobeying the aglirutiit. Yet all that time, I’d been the worst offender of all. It f
elt somehow liberating to finally break a rule of my own volition, to spit in the faces of the spirits who’d destroyed my life.
If the harpoon lines snap in punishment, I decided, Issuk should blame Taqqiq. He’s the one who created such a stupid rule in the first place.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I slipped past the tethered dogs and scrambled up the low hill that separated our bowl-shaped valley from the sea. The glaring sunlight bounced off the ice, lightening the lower edge of the scattered clouds so they glowed like the bottom of a stone pot above a lamp. Farther out, the clouds darkened into water-sky, where the black water in an open lead reflected less light than did the ice surrounding it. The men had seen it, too, for they moved in that direction. Carrying the umiaq over their heads, they looked like a fat, many-legged beetle scurrying across the ice.
I squinted against the glare, wishing I’d remembered to bring my eyeshields. A true hunter would not have ventured out on so bright a day without them. I dared not go back to retrieve them for fear of waking the women. For a moment, I felt paralyzed.
Then, with a grunt of disgust at my own helplessness, I remembered Ataata’s words: An Inuk can always make something from nothing.
In one of my favorite tales, a little boy lost his family and had to find his way down a mountain without a sled or dogs. Alone amid the ice and snow, he had no driftwood, no bones, no tools. So he shat onto the ground and formed his warm dung into a small, flat disk. It froze moments later—he had a sled. He peed along the bottom, and his piss froze into runners. He slid all the way down the mountain and into the safe arms of his family.
Trotting down the hill and onto the shore, I felt the crunch of gravel beneath my feet. The ocean winds had blown away much of the snow. I knelt and brushed away the white dust, uncovering a bed of stones and mostly unfamiliar shells. Using my ulu, I scraped a narrow slit, like the horizontal pupil of a musk ox, into two shells. Carefully I spun the corner of the blade to create ragged holes on either side, then threaded the sinew thong from my hair through the holes and tied the rough goggles onto my head. The ungainly contraption pressed into the bones of my face, but at least I wouldn’t go snow-blind.
I must look like Sanna, I mused. With shells for eyes and my hair loose and windswept. I needed only frozen seaweed around my neck to complete the picture. Yet I couldn’t help a surge of pride; my accomplishment, however small, proved I’d not yet lost my wits or skills.
I walked across the ice not with a woman’s glide or an affected stumble, but with my own sure step. A hunter’s walk. I longed to pull off my woman’s parka and move without the encumbrance of the fringed tails and heavy hood, but some shred of common sense remained. The spring Sun warmed my face, but the cold air still nipped at my cheeks and nose. I had no spiked harpoon shaft with me to test the ice, and I remembered the lessons of my father’s and grandfather’s demise. As buoyant as I felt, I moved carefully. Still, this close to land, the ice would be quite solid, and I didn’t intend to get near the dangerous edge. I’d walk only far enough to see the hunt.
Large ridges of pressure ice rose up to block my way time and again, slowing my progress. Yet I thanked Sanna for sending them—the ice hid me from view. I heard the hunt before I saw it. The splash of paddles in water, the low murmur of men discussing their plans.
Creeping behind a jagged tower of ice, I looked toward the small umiaq floating high in a wide lead. Hunting whales in the wide-open ocean, I’d heard Issuk explain to Kiasik, was nearly impossible. The whale could simply dive below and emerge too far away for even the swiftest paddlers to reach. But in a lead, the whale had few options. No matter where it surfaced, the men waited nearby.
Kiasik, Onerk, and Patik sat with paddles poised, their eyes scanning the surrounding water. In the bow, Issuk knelt with his long whaling harpoon raised. Its ivory head gleamed in the sunlight as if already wetted with blood. A good sign.
When the whale surfaced, I almost cried out in surprise. A loud exhalation, like the roaring of the wind. A sudden torrent of wetness thrust up into the air, a rainstorm reversed. The glint of slick black skin rolling through the water. This far away, I couldn’t see its pair of yawning blowholes, but as the wind blew the whale’s breath toward me, I could smell it—not fishy like a seal’s, or bloody like a man’s, but deep and dark like the sea. As I imagined Sanna herself would smell.
“Alianait!” Kiasik cried as the whale dove.
Issuk gestured sharply for silence, his eyes never leaving the spot where the whale had vanished. He pointed to the north.
The others paddled furiously. I watched, awestruck; the next time the whale appeared, the umiaq waited a mere boat-length away.
I scurried along the ice, dashing from ridge to ridge, trying to follow the hunt’s progress while remaining hidden. The eyeshields I’d been so proud of became more burdensome than helpful, jostling when I moved.
Just as the whale rose again, I untied the sinew thong and let the eyeshields drop to my side. The shells slipped from the dangling cord, clattering onto the ice. I had no time to gather them—I dared not turn away from the hunt.
This time, the great animal rose farther from the water, revealing the black curve of its skull, its white, barnacle-stubbled jaw, even its small brown eye. Issuk hurled his harpoon. The blade struck true, right above the eye socket, and sank deep into the corrugated flesh.
The harpoon head twisted inside the beast like an anchor, while the driftwood pole fell away to float nearby, a narrow line still connecting it to the fore-shaft. A longer harpoon line unfurled behind as the animal disappeared once more beneath the water. Attached to the end of the rope, the inflated corpse of a seal bobbed on the surface. Even when the whale dove, the sealskin would stay afloat, marking the animal’s location and preventing it from swimming too deep. But then, even as Kiasik shouted congratulations to Issuk, the float came loose from its line, bobbing quietly on the current to bang against the side of the umiaq like a seal begging to be killed. The harpoon line, which the women had spent so long carefully strengthening, floated for a moment longer, empty and loose, then slid after the whale.
As Issuk’s angry voice carried across the water, I looked down at the empty sinew cord dangling loosely from my hand.
“Pull in the float!” he ordered Onerk. “Tie another line to it, and this time, make sure it’s tight!”
He picked up Onerk’s paddle and drove the boat forward, no doubt hoping for one more chance. Just as Onerk finished securing the new line and passed the last harpoon to Issuk, a blast of red spray shot up before them, raining droplets of blood. Issuk leaned back for an instant, then pitched forward to hurl the shaft. The rope streamed behind the harpoon, uncoiling like a whip; Onerk held up the seal float, ready to throw it overboard.
I’ve never forgiven myself for what happened next. Onerk had never paid me any mind, never been particularly cruel or kind. I didn’t seek to harm him. I wasn’t even aware that I wanted him dead. And yet at the sight of the excited grin on his broad face, envy surged through me, so raw my throat burned.
I should’ve been in that boat.
Before I even understood my actions, I’d tied a small loop in one end of the sinew cord.
The seal float still clutched in his hands, Onerk flew overboard, his feet yanked out from under him by a loop of the quickly vanishing rope.
For a moment, I could still see his arms wrapped around the drag-float as it tore through the waves behind the whale. The blood from the whale’s spray stained the sleeves of his parka, and his thick hands gleamed red.
The whale, enraged by the second harpoon, thrashed and rolled, rocking the umiaq violently in its wake. With a slap of its massive tail, a wall of water swelled skyward and crashed onto the boat.
I tore my gaze from the foundering umiaq and searched for the bobbing seal carcass among the peaks and troughs of the roiled sea. The small gray float soon reappeared, moving swiftly southward as the whale made its final attempt at escape. Onerk had vanished
.
“Keep paddling!” Issuk’s voice was rough with anger and fear.
“There he is!” Patik called, pointing ahead with his paddle.
Onerk’s black head floated on the dark waves, his body buoyed by his clothes. The men grabbed him by the hood of his parka and dragged his limp form into the umiaq. Even from my distant vantage point, I could see his skull lolling upon his snapped neck.
The bobbing seal float had finally stopped moving.
Slowly the water near the float swelled upward like broth in a pot. The whale’s body rose to the surface. Issuk leaned from the boat to slam a long lance just behind its huge head, into a heart that had already slowed its beat. After a moment, the whale rolled to the side to expose its long white jaw, its glazed brown eye. The bloody lance protruded like a lonely inuksuk on an empty plain.
I’d seen enough.
My easy stride gone, I staggered back toward the camp, heavy with the weight of my guilt. For so long, I’d wanted nothing more than the return of my magic. Instead, I’d been given a power I never knew existed, much less thought I could possess.
And I didn’t want it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I’d left my makeshift eyeshields in a tumbled heap on the ice when I fled, and I returned to the camp with my throat burning from the cold air and my eyes stinging. The tethered dogs raised their heads, tracking my passage as if they smelled blood upon my skin.
The iglu was cold. The lamp had sputtered out under Nua’s inexpert care. In the faint sunlight streaming through the ice window, I could see her eyes glinting in my direction from beneath the sleeping furs. Before she could say a word, I whispered fiercely, “You let the lamp go out.” She shrank back as if I might strike her, huddling close to her mother’s sleeping form.
“I tried,” she murmured.
“If I light it for you, and I don’t tell anyone what you’ve done, will you stay quiet about my leaving?”
The Wolf in the Whale Page 17