The Wolf in the Whale

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  She widened her eyes in agreement. I moved toward the lamp and reached for the bow drill and the moss.

  “Wait!” she hissed. “Don’t tear the wick, only light it.” I grunted my acknowledgment. Nua couldn’t know it was too late to worry about breaking an agliruti.

  I went through the motions of starting a fire like one asleep, my mind elsewhere. I took up the bow drill—a small, pitiful copy of the hunting bow I could no longer wield—and twisted its sinew string once around a short antler shaft. Pressing the bottom of the shaft into the moss on a board of driftwood, I slotted the top into an indented piece of bone clenched between my teeth. With the board in one hand and the drill in the other, I sawed briskly, the twisted bowstring spinning the shaft one way and then the other, the antler squeaking as it scraped against the bone in my mouth.

  “Ilisuilttuq!” Nua put a hand tentatively on my arm. “You’ll burn through the board!”

  Smoke rose in low gray billows, threatening to suffocate us all. I stopped abruptly, my mind restored, and carefully tipped the black coals onto a flat stone.

  Nua blew on the ball of moss tinder to create a flame while I stumbled onto the bed platform and wished for sleep.

  The ceiling above me glistened wetly in the lamplight as the air warmed. In the flicker of ice crystals, I imagined the midnight stars.

  Somewhere, in the limitless reaches above my head, Ataata’s spirit inhabited one of those points of light. Beside him flickered the spirits of my parents and all my ancestors, looking down upon me. Upon this thing, this monster. Not woman. Not man. Just a murderer too obsessed with power to be trusted to wield it.

  I lay on the sleeping bench for the next full day while we waited for the men to return. I tried not to imagine the worst. I knew the men had caught a whale, and it would take a very long time to drag it back, yet I worried that my magic had continued its evil work. Perhaps they all floated as Onerk did, dead on the waves.

  Finally a holler echoed through our small valley. Racing from the iglu, we scrambled up the low hill. The landfast ice was weaker than we thought; a wide lead had opened nearby, allowing the men to tow the whale through the water right up to the shore. Kiasik sat in the prow, a wide grin on his face. Once I might’ve derided my cousin’s smile as a sign of arrogance. Now I welcomed it. At least I hadn’t killed him, too.

  The giant whale carcass, three times the length of the boat, floated calmly behind like an obedient dog on a leash. Uimaitok and Kidla let out a bellowing cry, welcoming the men. The older woman licked her lips, anticipating the taste of fresh whale flesh.

  Soon they would notice Onerk’s body. I could see it already, wrapped in sleeping furs in the back of the umiaq. Nua’s quick eyes had noticed the corpse, too; her smile evaporated. She turned to me. She knew.

  I scowled at her until she looked away.

  As Kiasik and Patik lifted Onerk’s body from the boat, the women pulled their hoods over their faces, their joy dissolving into grief. Issuk stood before us, glowering. “Twice our lines failed us on this hunt. First one came untied, and then the next caught Onerk by the foot and dragged him off the boat.”

  “Ia’a!” Uimaitok cried. “We did no work, husband! We lay on the sleeping platform and neither cut nor untied string or wick!”

  Issuk glared at each of us in turn. Kidla slashed the air with her hand. “No, no, not me.”

  “And you, Ilisuilttuq?”

  “I lay in the iglu, as you asked,” I murmured humbly.

  Nua squeaked. Her father rounded on her and she flinched backward. “Yes? Speak!”

  The little girl’s eyes glistened with tears. Her mother whispered, “Have no fear, child. You’re no woman yet. You can’t be blamed.”

  But Issuk stepped toward his daughter and grabbed hold of her parka. Her head barely reached his waist. “Your face is open to me. What do you know?”

  Nua didn’t spill my secret, but I had no delusions: she didn’t wish to protect me, only to avoid whatever punishment she feared I’d mete out. Still, her eyes betrayed her, shooting in my direction. Her father spun to follow her glance.

  Before I could raise my arms to defend myself, Issuk struck a cracking blow against my jaw. My body twisted; my knees buckled; the earth rushed up to meet me.

  Kiasik caught me just before I slammed into the ground.

  Issuk bent toward us, close enough that I could smell his stale breath. “We called you Ilisuilttuq for your clumsiness, but we should’ve known you were still a danger.”

  Kiasik’s arms tightened around me. “Issuk, she doesn’t know your ways. She didn’t mean—”

  “Quiet! She knew full well what she did.” Even then, Issuk knew me better than the others. “So, Omat,” he growled, speaking my name like a curse. “You pretend to be a humble wife, but you think yourself an angakkuq still, meddling with forces better left alone.” I clutched my throbbing jaw and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

  Uimaitok spoke. “Husband. The whale…”

  Issuk grunted and stepped back from me. “First we mourn Onerk. Then we butcher the whale. This woman’s folly must not disturb the joy of the hunt. To let it do so would insult the whale. Then… then we will deal with her.”

  He moved away, back to Onerk’s corpse, and the others followed. Only Kiasik remained.

  I said nothing for a long moment, just let myself slump within his arms. I had forgotten what it felt like to be held.

  “What did you do, Omat?” he asked finally, his breath warm in my ear.

  “I didn’t mean…,” I murmured. “I didn’t realize.”

  He sighed. “I know. You’re no murderer.”

  I glared at Issuk’s back. “But he is.”

  Slowly he released me from his embrace and stepped away. He, too, stared at Issuk, his eyes narrowed. “I didn’t see him push our grandfather into the water.”

  “But you didn’t see Ataata slip, either.”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “So why don’t you help me confront him? We could avenge—”

  He spun back to me. “For the same reason I didn’t fight Issuk just now, when he hit you! For the same reason I let him tie you to that sled!” His nostrils flared. “He and his men are our only chance to learn how to hunt the whale. Have you already forgotten how the seals fled from your harpoon? You brought ill luck to our camp. You must admit that!” He sounded more desperate than angry. He wanted me to agree with him.

  When I remained silent, he lifted a hand, as if he would lay it on my cheek. “Everything I do,” he murmured, “I do so I can help provide for our family when we return.”

  “Everything?” I demanded, flinching away before he could touch me.

  He let his hand fall. “There is pleasure,” he said, “in being good at something.”

  “At being better than me, you mean.”

  I expected him to grow angry. To lash out—or walk away.

  Instead he simply stared at me for a long moment, his eyes full of pain. “Our grandfather, Ququk, Ipaq—even my own mother—never thought I was good enough. Too rash, too impatient, too arrogant. Here… they like me.”

  “Some like you very much,” I said without thinking.

  Kiasik’s jaw tightened.

  I moved close to him, nearly as close as Kidla had been. “I saw you the other night.”

  “You won’t—”

  “No, Sister’s Son. I won’t.” He had tried, in his own way, to help me. I would not throw him on Issuk’s mercy.

  Kiasik darted close and pressed his cheek to mine. I did not pull away. “I would never have survived my first caribou hunt if it weren’t for you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry I never thanked you for that.” I felt some of the frozen space between us begin to thaw, the long winter giving way to the first trickles of spring. “You and I,” he went on, pulling back so that his eyes met mine, “we have always saved each other. We always will.”

  “Kiasik!” Patik’s call sent my cousin jogging back to the umiaq. I wanted to reach
after him, to drag him into my arms and tell him that he didn’t need Issuk or Kidla to tell him he was worthy. I had always loved him. That should have been enough.

  But I had no time to worry about Kiasik or Issuk or anything else. After we laid Onerk upon a pedestal of snow, where the ravens could take his spirit to the sky, we returned to the whale. Only butchering mattered.

  Under Uimaitok’s direction, we sewed every available line into one long rope and threaded it through a hole in the whale’s tail. We harnessed the dogs to one end and reached for the middle of the line ourselves.

  “Up!” shouted Issuk. We all held the rope at waist level. “Now!” Straining as one, we leaned back against the rope, using the weight of our bodies, the strength of our arms and legs and hearts. Issuk shouted commands at the dogs and at us with equal ferocity. “Hut! Hut! It’s moving! Don’t stop!”

  Kidla slid to her knees, threatening to bring us all down, but was soon up and hauling again. I imagined myself as Black Mask, pulling beyond her strength, pulling until she nearly collapsed, but never giving up.

  When the whale lay halfway on the ice, its bulk looming over our heads, Issuk finally cried, “Good! Stop!”

  Gratefully we all sank to our knees and released the rope. Like water poured from a skin, the rope slid past us as the whale carcass slipped backward, dragging the helpless dogs yelping and squealing toward the sea. As one, we threw ourselves on the line, digging with our heels into the rough ice, but the beast’s momentum was too great. The whale slid back into the water with a loud plop. It floated meekly, the rope line now slack, the team safe. We lay on the ice beside the dogs, panting along with them.

  Once more we picked up the rope. Once more we pulled with all our strength. This time the agony lasted longer, for Issuk wouldn’t take any chances. He was as merciless with us as with the dog team. Finally he deemed the whale secure. Patik loosed the dogs and led them back toward the iglu, where he could tether the team far from the tempting whale carcass. Issuk and Kiasik tied extra lines around the whale’s flippers, staking the lines deep into the snow onshore so that even if the sea ice broke, we’d save our catch. We stood back to admire our handiwork.

  It was a massive beast. I’d never seen one out of the water before. Once, when paddling along the coast, I’d seen a whale burst from the sea, flinging its body in an arc through the sky, rainbows forming in the spray and then disappearing just as fast. But that quick glimpse paled next to seeing it up close. The towering head made up a full half of its length; even Patik could reach the top of its skull only on tiptoe. Its bowl-like lower jaw, striped white and gray and encrusted with barnacles, curved up like an umiaq to join a long, narrow upper jaw that sat like a lid on a cooking pot.

  Issuk pried the beast’s mouth open: long, brown spears of baleen hung like seaweed inside. Tiny sea creatures moved about in the feathery curtain, unaware that their rescue from the jaws of the whale would be short-lived. Uimaitok eyed them with interest, no doubt wondering how best to prepare them for a meal.

  But Issuk had other meals in mind. Why settle for tiny creatures when we could have rich meat and blubber? With his longest knife, he sliced deep into the whale’s skin. Using a hook, the women pulled back the long strips of thick black hide backed in even thicker fat.

  “This isn’t just skin, like you get from a narwhal or white whale,” Uimaitok corrected me when I admired it. “This is maktak.”

  All day and into the night we pulled the maktak from the beast, the blubber faintly pink and as deep as a man’s forearm. We cut slivers of it and ate it raw, our exhaustion tempered by the sustenance. It melted on my tongue, rich and mellow and delicious. Yet every time I thought of my family, it turned to ashes in my mouth. Puja has never tasted maktak, and if we don’t make it back to her, she never will.

  Soon the whale lay in a bloody heap on the reddened ice, scrawny and pitiful without its fat. We dared not stop to rest: if we abandoned our kill now, foxes and bears would happily steal it.

  We cut away the meat, storing it in ice pits, and chopped off the flippers and tail, laying them in the sun to ferment. Finally only the skeleton remained, dripping with strips of tissue and organ. The skull, as big as an iglu, still supported the wide curtain of baleen.

  “We have to harvest it soon,” Uimaitok told me. “Once the baleen dries, it’s no good for bending into tools and containers.” Tireless, she prepared to cut it off, but Issuk laid his hand on her shoulder, a gesture of surprising warmth.

  “Later,” he said, his usually raspy voice made even rougher with fatigue. “Now we sleep.”

  When we woke next, Malina’s rays once again crept steadily above the horizon. A mist rose off the water, shrouding the whale carcass in filmy cloaks of swirling white, as if its own breath once again sprayed forth in a cloud. Soon we’d finish the butchering. By then Issuk might have forgiven me for breaking the agliruti. Perhaps Kiasik and Kidla would cool their passion, or find a way to love each other without risking Issuk’s wrath. The southern lands weren’t barren after all. We would take the meat north, returning home to my family. Soon. Soon.

  Then we heard the sound—a strange, uneven creaking. We knew the sounds of all the animals—the wavering bugle of caribou, the rising howl of wolves, the percussive rumble of musk oxen. This was none of those. But it was loud… and growing louder.

  We stopped dismembering the whale skeleton. We tried to peer through the mist but saw only swirling white.

  None of the men considered hiding or running. They were hunters, and whatever appeared must be prey. The fearsome ice bear would fall beneath enough arrows. Even the great whale fears our harpoon. Only the ice was unconquerable, and this new sound bore none of its familiar rhythms or melodies. We knew its growls, screams, groans. It could even creak. But never was that creaking accompanied by the sound of a loose hide flapping in the wind and the splash of countless flippers hitting the water.

  Though Issuk looked more curious than afraid, I found myself suddenly shivering. As surely as if I’d heard the warning from Singarti himself, I knew danger approached. A danger far worse than cracking ice or blinding fog. Worse than jealous husbands or straying wives. It would tear our lives apart more swiftly than any woman’s thoughtless string magic.

  And nothing would ever tie them back together again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  As the strange creaking and splashing continued, Issuk gathered his bow and arrows and motioned for the other men to join him. Another gesture sent the women and children scurrying back over the hills toward the iglu, the whale carcass abandoned.

  I stood my ground. Kiasik frowned at me.

  “You might need my help,” I whispered.

  That look again. Pity. “This is man’s work. You might get hurt, Little Sister.”

  Sister. The word drove me away as swiftly as a lash. If this is what he means by saving me, I would rather he didn’t even try.

  Seething with anger, I returned to the iglu but remained outside. No matter what Kiasik believed, I was a hunter still. I would stay ready to rush back over the hill if something threatened our catch—or my brother.

  It might be a spirit, I thought, squinting toward the distant sound. Or a giant, or some creature half walrus, half bear, created in the womb of Sanna herself. This was a new land—perhaps it held new monsters. But it never occurred to me that the sound could come from other men. The only other Inuit besides my family were those far to the west, where Issuk and his people had lived. Here, in the south, no other men existed.

  Patik had taken his bow and a sheaf of arrows but left a harpoon stuck in the snow beside the iglu. If the men came back and saw me with the weapon, I’d be punished—but I’d rather face their wrath than meet a strangely creaking animal unarmed. I pulled it from the snow, comforted by the solid shaft of driftwood in my hands.

  A scream pierced the air, high and shrill, like the cry of a bird. It came from the water’s edge. I tensed, ready to run.

  Shouting. Sever
al voices speaking nonsense. A loud splash, like a boulder falling into water. Another scream. This time, a voice I recognized.

  Kiasik.

  I ran forward, an instinct deeper than self-preservation urging me toward the sound of my milk-brother’s cry.

  Up over the first low hill, over the rise beyond it, my legs slapping against the heavy apron of my woman’s parka. Out of the mist loomed the whale carcass, a third hill. I skirted the bloody pile, past the beast’s gaping maw.

  A few steps past the carcass, Patik materialized from the whiteness, nearly bowling me over.

  “Run!” His last word.

  As I lurched to the side, slipping on the frozen puddle of whale blood, an arrow flashed from the mist. With a thud, it sank between Patik’s shoulder blades. He tumbled to his knees.

  The fletching of a second arrow slashed across my face like a knife.

  With blood trailing down my cheek, I ducked low and scuttled behind the looming whale head. Footsteps crunched toward me across the snow. A slow man, or one with an impossibly long stride. I dared to move my head so I could peer between the whale’s jaws, hoping the curtain of baleen would obscure my face. The mist thinned—I could make out the dark shape of a man striding toward the fallen Inuk, who lay facedown, his own blood mingling with the whale’s.

  The stranger was tall, taller even than Patik. A spreading beard covered his pale face like an animal’s pelt. In the light of the foggy evening, his hair looked white, like an old man’s, yet he moved with the sure stride of youth. He pulled a weapon from a sheath at his waist—a short spear, or a very long knife, I couldn’t tell which. Though it glinted like obsidian, it was the light-gray color of normal stone. But no stone blade could have so easily severed Patik’s head from his body.

  I stifled a gasp.

  The tall stranger turned at the sound of my breath, but I ducked just in time. He stood still for a long while, looking in my direction, but finally a shout from the beach drew his attention. I heard him turn on his heel and move back to the shore.