I dared to peek out once more as he walked away. The clouds parted, and thick rays of sunlight quickly dissipated the remaining mist. I could see his form clearly now. His clothes hugged his body in a way no fur parka ever could. His limbs were long and lean, his shoulders broad beneath a flapping blue cloak that fell to his ankles. The sun struck his hair, dispelling the white, and it glinted back like fire, orange and gold. This was no Inuk. He must be a giant.
Only a giant could ride in such a boat. I could see it now, the great beast that made such strange sounds. Its paddles jabbed the sky like the limbs of a grasping insect. The head of some spirit—part wolf, part bird—loomed above its prow. The boat was longer than any umiaq and three times as wide. Strangest of all, a tall pole soared from the middle of the boat, hung with a great white wing. On board, four men stood crammed against the rail, looking down at the shore. One aimed a bow. Each of the others held a spear or long blade. The wide lead had opened even farther; the boat drew close to the shore.
The flame-haired giant who’d killed Patik hurried back toward two prone figures lying at the water’s edge. I recognized one of the bodies: Kiasik.
I wanted to scream his name, but at that moment, the sun flashed off the strangers’ drawn blades, and I snapped my mouth shut. I’d be of no use against such a force, and my milk-brother might already be dead. If both of us died, who’d take care of Puja?
Kiasik lay motionless, his face obscured by the wolverine ruff of his hood. Next to him lay another stranger, slighter and shorter than the others, but clearly no Inuk. His hair was as pale as dead leaves, and, like his companions’, his strange garments were blue, red, and yellow. Even in that moment, consumed by fear, I found myself staring at the colors these giants wore. They looked like spring flowers bursting from the winter soil.
The flame-haired giant knelt and gathered the thin stranger in his arms, propping him gently against his chest. Blood trickled down the smaller man’s shoulder, turning his yellow shirt red. The stiff black feathers of Patik’s arrow protruded from beneath his collarbone.
From the boat, the surrounding crowd spoke loudly. At least I thought they spoke; they didn’t say words, just a string of strange sounds. Sometimes melodic, sometimes grating, always as incomprehensible as the roaring of the ocean.
One man, taller even than the flame-haired giant, began beating his long gray blade against a round wooden board and chanting the same few coarse sounds over and over: “Drepa! Drepa! Drepa!”
A hood as hard and gray as his blade covered his head and most of his face, more like a shell than a hat. Long hair, the dark yellow of old piss, streamed from beneath his headpiece, some hanks flowing loose to his back, some tied in intricate braids like a woman’s. The sunlight picked out carven monsters glinting across the headpiece, spirits like the one on the prow of the enormous boat. Only his mouth was clearly visible, a gaping red maw in a jaw as long and thin as a fox’s snout. His full yellow beard hung in a loose braid a handspan beneath his chin.
The other men soon joined in his chant, their voices thrumming like a chorus of angry walruses.
I scanned the rest of the camp and the surrounding hills but saw no other bodies—and no sign of Issuk. The flame-haired giant didn’t join in the chanting. He was too engrossed in comforting the injured man in his arms, speaking to him in soft murmurs as he ripped strips from his own blue cloak to tie around the man’s wound. What sort of hide could split so easily? Or did he possess the power to hunt blue beasts and tear their skin with his bare hands?
Kiasik stirred briefly, his head rolling toward me so I could see the blood trickling from a wound on his forehead. My heart shuddered beneath my ribs—he was alive.
And yet, without help, he wouldn’t be for long.
I tensed, ready to rush to his rescue despite the near certainty of my own capture. Then the fierce hooded giant leading the chanting vaulted over the boat’s rail and onto the ice. He sprinted toward my hiding place, his long yellow hair streaming. The others followed, their chant devolving into a hoarse cry of rage.
I ducked farther behind the whale’s carcass, willing myself invisible. I felt rather than saw the crowd rush by me, their feet kicking snow and gravel. When they were past, I dared to peek toward the boat. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Only the injured stranger and his flame-haired protector remained at the water’s edge. Kiasik lay motionless beside them.
Despite his swift murder of Patik, the giant seemed far less intimidating now. He pressed his cheek against his companion’s. As any Inuk might do for a hunting partner, he stanched the smaller man’s wound with one hand while grasping his limp fingers with the other.
I dared to slip out from behind the whale, my harpoon ready.
A child’s scream ripped the air.
I froze. The flame-haired giant hunched forward as if to shield his companion from the sound.
The dogs, still tethered beside the iglu, soon drowned out the child’s scream with a discordant chorus of yips and howls. One by one, those yips strangled into whimpers, then silence.
I clutched the harpoon so tightly I thought it might splinter in my grasp.
In my concern for Kiasik, I’d left the women and children to fend for themselves. If Issuk were in my place, I knew, he’d let my family die.
At the little girl’s next scream, the giant glanced up. Revulsion and anger flashed across his face, and for a moment I thought he’d rise. But then his gaze met mine. He bared his teeth like a cornered animal, tightening his grasp on the wounded man like a woman protecting her child.
I thought of Uimaitok and Nua. Kidla and her infant son.
I took a step back, lowering my harpoon.
I cast a last glance at Kiasik. His eyelids fluttered; a single line of blood ran from his forehead down the side of his nose, sliding between his parted lips. His arms and legs splayed like the limbs of a fallen caribou.
I sprinted back to the iglu, slipping and sliding on the bloody snow beneath my feet.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I remembered bitterly how carefully Issuk had picked the location of our camp. The two hills that had sheltered us so well from the harsh sea winds now stood between his family and the only rescue they were likely to find.
Nua screamed once more. Circling overhead, a raven cawed harshly in reply.
The little girl’s cry ended in a gurgle.
The bird’s cry went on.
I couldn’t understand the raven’s tongue, but I knew these were bird curses—whether cast upon the strangers or the Inuit, I didn’t know.
Up and over the rise of the first hill I ran, then the second.
I saw the dogs first. Scattered heaps of bloody fur, each body pierced by arrows. A few still whimpered. One kicked its legs spasmodically, unable to rise.
Then Nua. Her tiny body lay in a pool of red slush by the iglu entrance—her head lay a few paces beyond. I staggered at the sight, the bile rising in my throat.
I couldn’t see Uimaitok’s body, but her legs, twisted and still, protruded from the tunnel. Kidla crouched in front of the tall yellow-haired leader, sheltering her squalling infant with her body.
“Please!” She grasped at the man’s trouser leg. “Don’t hurt him!”
He shook her off, throwing back his head and laughing while the sunlight glared from his hard gray hat. He said something in his guttural language; his comrades laughed. Their own blades remained sheathed, their arms full of stolen furs. Only the leader’s weapon was wet with blood.
With his free hand, he wrenched the baby from Kidla’s grasp and suspended it by one tiny arm over his head. The infant swung like a haunch of meat, his mewling drowned out by his mother’s hysterical screams. The giant raised his impossibly long gray knife and pressed the tip against Kidla’s throat.
“Stop!” I screamed. I didn’t think—if I had, I might’ve held on to my harpoon. Instead, I threw the shaft with all my strength. It whirred through the air, a streak of white death, and struck t
he man’s ribs. The driftwood shaft clattered to the ground, but the head remained embedded in his flesh.
He didn’t scream, merely stumbled for a moment, the breath gone from his body. He dropped the baby as his hand flew to his side; the child landed with a sick thud on the icy ground, whimpering.
Through the holes in the strange headpiece, the giant’s eyes met mine. The men around him turned toward me, their voices raised in shock and anger.
I looked around frantically for some new weapon. An Inuk can always make something from nothing. But what good was snow and gravel against these men’s long blades?
Kidla gathered up her unconscious child, rocking it desperately.
“Run!” I shouted. “Don’t just sit there! Run while they’re after me!”
She turned dazed eyes toward me and staggered to her feet. She made it only two steps before the yellow-haired giant’s blade cut into her neck. She sank to her knees, her blood spilling over the clean white pattern on her parka.
He raised one foot above the baby. Its skull cracked open as easily as an eggshell.
“NO!” The scream ripped from my throat.
The men drew their weapons and closed on me.
I sent a silent vow to the spirits of my ancestors. To Ataata and my parents and all Inuit who’d come before me. If I live, I’ll follow the giants to the ends of the world for what they have done. And if I must die, make me an avenging spirit to haunt them unto madness.
A single shouted word from the yellow-haired leader stopped the oncoming men in their tracks. With his hand pressed against his ribs and blood seeping between his fingers, he hobbled toward me.
“Skraeling minn,” he growled. “Víg mitt.”
The men came no closer. They formed a loose circle, their blades pointed at me. I could only assume the giant wanted to finish me off himself.
I wanted to cower. I squared my shoulders instead. I’d only ever fought Issuk, that night he came for me in my iglu. And I’d lost. This giant was taller, stronger—but I’d already wounded him once. I’d killed walruses that were larger. Caribou that were swifter. I might have a chance.
He lunged toward me, swinging his blade in an awkward overhead arc. I sidestepped the blow easily. With the wound in his side, he could barely stand, much less strike quickly. Yet still he fought.
He grunted something to his men. One of them hurried forward to remove the leader’s headgear. I hoped it would rip off, tearing at his flesh like a shell torn from a sea creature. Instead, a man’s face lay underneath, hard boned and thin, the flat cheekbones covered in hair. His long yellow braids whipped in the wind. His eyes, gray as a thunderhead, burned with anger.
Sheathing their blades, two of the men moved to grab me, one young, with a puckered scar across his cheek, the other older, with grizzled hair cut short against his scalp. I ducked beneath the scarred one’s outstretched arm and swung my leg, hoping to catch the older man in the chest. The apron of my parka hampered my movement; I managed only a glancing blow to his thigh before I tripped and fell to the ground.
The yellow-haired giant laughed at my clumsiness. He stumbled toward me with his blade raised. I forced myself not to wince, not to cry out.
An arrow whined past my ear.
A near-silent thunk of blade slicing through flesh.
The grizzled man I’d kicked fell to the ground, clutching at an arrow in his throat. White gull feathers on a caribou-bone shaft. Issuk’s arrow.
Before the men could turn to find their attacker, another arrow, another man wounded, white feathers drenched red as the scarred one’s arm spurted blood.
“Begone! Gone! Gone!” Countless Inuit shouted from the hills, the shore, the distant mountains.
“Leave us! Us! Us! Us!”
The remaining men spun around, searching for the invisible horde. Another arrow whistled by the yellow-haired giant’s head. He dropped to the ground beside me. The shaft clattered onto the hard snow a few paces away, but the giant’s fall had driven my harpoon head deeper beneath his ribs. For a moment, Kidla’s murderer and I lay eye to eye, our faces pressed into the frozen ground. He blinked very slowly, his eyes glazed with pain, but I knew he saw me. Hot and rank, his breath brushed my face.
The other men shouted to each other, their voices pitched high with fear. The scarred man with the wounded arm scooped up the leader’s headgear and blade. Another flung the body of his dead comrade over his shoulder. The other two grabbed the leader under his arms and struggled toward the shore. The yellow-haired giant’s feet left long trails in the snow as they dragged him away.
I lay still until I could no longer hear their crunching steps. Until the slap of oars grew fainter and fainter and finally faded into nothingness, replaced only with the beating of my own blood in my ears. Only then did I dare stir.
“OMAT! Omat! Omat…”
My name echoed off the hills. A desperate, pained cry for help.
Then it too faded away.
I knew that all the voices had been the echoes of Issuk’s voice, and all the arrows had been shot from his bow. And now he needed me.
The first cry came from inland, beyond the iglu. I ignored it.
I ran back over the two hills toward the sea. I could still see the boat, very small and very far away, its massive white wing reflecting the last of the Sun’s rays. But the shore itself was empty. No flame-haired giant or his wounded friend—and no Kiasik.
I knelt beside the snowy rocks that had cushioned my milk-brother’s head. I rubbed my hands into his blood. It outlined the whirls of my fingerprints, as if an angakkuq had turned my flesh to a carven totem, adorned with spirals.
“Kiasik!” I screamed his name at the retreating boat. But my voice did not echo, did not carry. The wind drowned out my cry.
“Omat.”
Issuk stumbled toward me. A long arrow shaft protruded from his gut. Two more sprang from his back. Blood poured down his parka, staining him red from waist to feet. He dragged his bow across the ground, pressing one hand against the wound in his stomach.
Instinctively I backed away from him. “Where were you? How could you leave them alone to die?”
It took him many shuddering breaths before he could speak.
“They shot me and I ran. The next thing I remember…” He paused, a bubble of bloody spittle growing and shrinking with every labored breath. “I was lying on the ground, and I heard their voices near the iglu. I crawled to look… and I saw them around you.”
“Your family is dead.” I couldn’t bring myself to thank him for saving my life. Not after he’d destroyed it in the first place.
He moaned faintly, swaying where he stood.
“You were too late.” My voice was hard, merciless. “Too late for your family. And too late for mine.”
His bow clattered to the ground. He fell to his knees.
“Help me.”
Responses pounded through my mind like a herd across the tundra, so fast and so many they blurred before me. I could try to save him despite his terrible wounds. I could take the knife from his belt and plunge it into his heart, killing him as he’d killed Ataata. I could tell him to call upon his grandfather, the Moon Man, for aid.
But in the end, I chose to do nothing.
Standing over him, I watched him die. Watched the light fade from his eyes and the blood pump more slowly across his fingers and between his lips.
With his head lolling to the side, Issuk’s long mustache fell unheeded into his open mouth, black and wet with blood, heavy like a leech crawling between lips now pale.
I didn’t touch him until his blood ceased to run and his chest no longer moved. Only then did I reach to close his eyes; I couldn’t stand for them to look at me ever again.
I pulled off his boots and trousers, as I had seen Uimaitok do so many times after the hunt. His penis lay white and shriveled on the dark mat of his hair, a root rotting amid wet soil.
If this were a story like those we tell on winter nights, rather than
my own tale, I’d have cut off that root and buried it in the ground that it might grow into something finer than the plant from which it sprang. But it was getting cold and the Sun was low, and I had no time for grand gestures.
I yanked out the arrows, then straightened Issuk’s arms over his head so I could pull the parka from his body. His skull smacked the ground as it came free.
The arrows had destroyed the careful pattern of black and white fur, all his wives’ hard work ruined. I cut Ataata’s pendant from around his neck. Carefully I placed the black bear claw, worn shiny by my grandfather’s fingers, into my own amulet pouch. I dragged Issuk’s corpse across the ice to the edge of the open water.
I kicked it into the lead and watched the current carry it away. His naked body glowed white on the dark waves, growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared.
“The seals will feed on your flesh,” I whispered. “The fish will feed on your eyes and the whales on your blood. Your bones will drift to the bottom of the sea—they will fall as a feast for Sanna’s lair, and she will count me again among her favorite sons.”
I felt an echo of the old power in my words, and for a moment, I wished I could take them back. I’d sent Issuk to my old enemy, hoping to placate her. Had I instead sent the Sea Mother a new ally? If Issuk’s soul didn’t rise into the stars, but instead sank beneath the waves, would he have even more power than before? Ataata might’ve known the answer. All I could do was wait and see.
I slit the throats of the suffering dogs. I dragged Patik’s body to lie beside Onerk’s. I laid the bodies of the women and children on their own tall mound of snow that they might be given to the ravens.
When I returned to the whale’s carcass, Sanna had answered my question.
The umiaq was gone. The fragile sea ice had split asunder, leaving only fast-moving water in a wide lead where the boat should’ve been. The Sea Mother still punished me.
Even if I could build a new umiaq, I knew I couldn’t travel across the sea—not with Sanna hunting me at every step. And a sled was little use without a single dog to pull it.
The Wolf in the Whale Page 19