The Wolf in the Whale

by Jordanna Max Brodsky

  “Já. Nu thess er knífr thinn. Thu bargt mér. Takk.”

  I still didn’t understand, but I somehow knew he was letting me have the knife. First the strange white string. Now another gift. I must’ve looked as confused as I felt, because he smiled and lay back down, gesturing weakly to his wrapped leg, then to me.

  “Takk,” he repeated. “Hvar er sverthinn mín?” When I didn’t respond, he held both hands before him in an imaginary grip, as if swinging his long blade.

  I motioned outside, shaking my head as I’d seen him do. “It’s gone. You won’t find it.”

  Rather than protesting, he merely closed his eyes. He looked both more exhausted and more at peace than before.

  “Takk,” he murmured once more.

  Here he was, wounded and weak, yet seemingly content to put himself completely in my power. He’d given me his only remaining weapon. What kind of man was he? What kind of man could make music like a bird and kill like a bear?

  I stared down at his gift. A small, sharp knife with a straight blade.

  I didn’t understand him.

  But perhaps he understood me.

  He’d given me a man’s knife.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  A knife and a whistle. I never ceased to wonder at them both. Brandr’s small blade never chipped the way my slate tools did, and its keen edge put bone and antler to shame. The whistle stayed with him always. I didn’t try to blow into it myself. I dared not steal the voice of the bird from whose leg the instrument was carved. Just because I didn’t know the agliruti for such a thing didn’t mean there wasn’t one. Yet when Brandr played his music, I didn’t tell him to stop. Instead I found myself pausing in my tasks, letting the melody carry my spirit into the sky as surely as the raven wings I’d once worn.

  My body, on the other hand, stayed in one place. “I’ll wait until the fish has dried,” I told Sweet One. “Then we move on. Kiasik needs me.” It seemed only fair to warn her. The moist wind slowed the drying. Five more days. Seven at most. And then she would have to be healed enough to walk. Perhaps she understood—she ate ravenously and grew stronger every day.

  Brandr’s leg healed more slowly—perhaps because he insisted on cooking all his meat, even the fresh prey I snared to supplement our dwindling supply of bear. He’d watched me swallow the raw red flesh of a small brown hare with a look of pinched revulsion; I watched him char his portion with similar disgust.

  After two days of food and rest, he still couldn’t walk easily, but he began hobbling around the camp, leaning on a staff of driftwood. His immobility had its benefits: I could easily avoid him, cleaning my clothes and relieving myself out of his sight.

  I still hadn’t learned anything more from him, although I didn’t stop asking about my brother. I tried to teach him to speak like a real human, but he learned only a few scattered words. My own understanding of his tongue was equally poor. As I had with the Wolf Spirit, I learned to speak a different sort of language with him instead, watching the subtleties of his gesture, the way his brow would furrow or his mouth quirk. From his posture, I knew when he hurt and when he healed. From his music, I knew when he mourned and when he dreamed.

  Eventually I felt comfortable enough with my new stranger that I let him show me how to whet the small knife against a stone, and sometimes I even let him use it. He always returned it to me when his task was done; he seemed almost glad to have it out of his possession.

  As the days passed, I was desperate to keep moving, but I’d learned long ago that some things were out of my control. I waited for my dried fish as patiently as I’d once bent over a seal’s breathing hole. The fish would let me travel much faster than I had before, giving me strength and, most important, letting me forgo the slow, uncertain process of snaring my food. Brandr, despite his weakness, seemed equally impatient to leave. He grew restless, gazing out across the tundra with something more than boredom. Sometimes in the night he cried out in his sleep and lurched upright, chased by some unknowable nightmare. I often woke with him, listening until his breathing slowed and he fell back asleep. I didn’t let him know I heard his cries—no man wants to show weakness in front of another.

  By the time the fish had dried into stiff, flaky hunks, Brandr could finally walk without his staff—although he still moved haltingly. Sweet One, his constant companion, began to run and hunt with her siblings again.

  It was time to move on.

  And I needed answers.

  He sat beside the tent, whittling a scrap of driftwood with the small knife. Malina, still low on the horizon, bathed his face with her orange glow. The bear meat had filled the hollows beneath his cheeks. His skin, though still roughened and pink, no longer burned quite so bright.

  “Brandr.”

  He looked up at me. I preferred him this way, sitting rather than towering over me. He balled his hand loosely to hide the carving, but I didn’t worry. Whatever he was making, it was too small to be a weapon.

  “I need you to tell me where your people are,” I began, trying one last time to make him understand. “I promise I won’t hurt them if they release my milk-brother to me.” He stared at me blankly.

  I crawled into the tent and packed my few belongings. When I rejoined him outside, I dropped the pack beside him. His eyes flashed from the bundle to me, his brow furrowing.

  “I’m leaving,” I insisted. I began to remove the rocks that weighted the hem of the tent. He finally understood.

  “No,” he said quickly, using one of his few words. He scrabbled awkwardly to his feet and placed a hand on my arm. “Stay!”

  I pointed south. “My brother is with your people.”

  He shook his head violently, brow knit in confusion.

  “Men. Your men.” I raised a hand to his broad chest and then pointed south once more. “I have to go there.”

  “No, no,” he repeated. “No understand.”

  “My brother.” I reached for the knife in his hand, and he gave it willingly. I pretended it was long and heavy, like the weapon I’d buried. I pointed once at Brandr and once at the imaginary blade in my arms. He nodded, understanding. Then I swung my phantom blade as I’d seen the yellow-haired giant do. Then, kneeling on the ground as Kidla had, I keeled over, feigning death. Brandr’s eyes widened. Rather than help me up, he took a cautious step backward.

  “I’ve tried to explain: I was there, that day on the beach. When your boat arrived.” I scrambled back to my feet, searching through my memories until I recalled the yellow-haired giant’s chant. Sticking out my chest as he’d done, I placed one hand over my forehead and nose to resemble the giant’s horrible hat. “Drepa! Drepa! Drepa!”

  Brandr stiffened, comprehension widening his eyes.

  I gestured low to the ground, the height Nua had been. “There was a little girl.” Then I slashed the air with the knife. “There was a baby.” I rocked the imaginary child in my arms and flung it to the ground, crushing its head with the heel of my boot.

  Brandr grabbed my hands, careless of the knife I still held.

  “Stop,” he said, his voice low. “Understand. You. Me. Understand.”

  I pointed at my forehead, the place where blood had poured into Kiasik’s black hair. “My brother was wounded. You took him.” Again I gestured to the south. “I need to go find him.” Try as I might, I couldn’t make him follow my words.

  He released me and looked north hopefully. “Go. Yes? Good?”

  I longed to do as he suggested. To travel toward the ice. Toward Puja and Saartok and Tapsi, and even crotchety Ququk. Toward home.

  “No,” I said finally. “I can’t turn back now.”

  Brandr frowned, and for the first time since he’d recovered from his injury, fear tightened his face.

  “Just tell me where they are. Where?” I repeated. I tried the simple words he knew: “Where. You. Camp.”

  “Much days,” he responded hesitantly. “Much walk. Much water.” He grimaced. I thought him merely frustrated with his lack
of words, but then his eyes narrowed again. He was scared. “Much walk. No. No.”

  I felt only hope. His camp was far, but for the first time, I knew for sure that it existed.

  “Water?” I pressed. “Do you mean a river? The ocean?”

  “Water,” he said again, gesturing expansively. So, not a stream, but something larger. Maybe a lake. Whatever the obstacle, I’d find a way to cross it. I’d come this far, after all.

  “Takk,” I said, using his word for gratitude. It was barely more information than I’d had before, but it was all I was likely to get. It would have to be enough. The time for waiting was done; I wanted to start walking right away.

  Brandr helped me take down the tent. We stood in the barren camp, the fish split between the panniers I’d rigged on White Paw and Floppy Eared’s backs and my own heavily loaded pack. I gifted Brandr with a waterskin made from the bear’s stomach and a sleeping fur made from its heavy pelt; he rolled the fur around his portion of fish and slung it across his wide chest. He tucked his whistle into his belt and draped his tattered blue cloak over his shoulders. He’d never questioned its ripped hem.

  I heaved my own pack onto my back and secured the carrying strap across my forehead. I took a few steps, both chagrined and thrilled by the unaccustomed weight of so much dried food.

  Brandr’s gaze kept drifting from me to the north. I knew he’d leave me to continue his own journey, although I still didn’t understand why he’d left his people in the first place, or why he insisted on traveling away from his camp, not toward it.

  “This is where we part,” I said, meeting his solemn blue gaze.

  I waited for him to say he’d come with me. I wanted him to say it.

  Not because I’m lonely, I assured myself. Not because I’ve grown used to sleeping beside another human’s warmth or listening to his music or meeting his smile with my own. I just need him to guide me to his people’s camp. Otherwise I saved his leg for nothing. I might wind up wandering for many winters without ever finding Kiasik.

  But I didn’t know how to tell him any of that. I didn’t know how to beg—and I’d long ago given up on the idea of forcing him to come. He was too strong, too large. He needed to join me of his own volition or not at all.

  I stood, waiting for a moment longer for him to change his mind. Then I adjusted the straps of my pack one last time, ready to go.

  “Tapvauvutit,” I said to him. The word we always offered Ataata when he left our camp for a long hunting journey. Not “You are leaving,” but rather “You are here.” There is no final parting; even after death, the spirit always lives on in the body of the newly born, and so loved ones never really leave. But I could not know if Brandr’s life followed the same rules as my own. While mine ran in a circle, perhaps his moved in a straight line. Had he been family, I might have placed my nose upon his cheek or held him in my arms, to express my wish that he stay well. But I’d never touched my stranger so intimately, never dared get too close for fear he might recognize the woman’s body beneath my loose atigi. So I merely laid my hand briefly upon his arm, looked up once more into his eyes, and turned to leave.

  I felt his presence behind me—silent, unmoving, watching my every step. I felt the emptiness of the path ahead, where I would be alone once more with only the wolfdogs for company. Then I thought of my milk-brother as I’d seen him last, bleeding on the beach beside the whale carcass, and my steps grew sure.

  Still, I couldn’t resist one final glance back at Brandr. I don’t know what was in my eyes. I’d like to think it was courage. Determination. Hope. But if I’m honest, I know he saw my loneliness—and my longing. Perhaps that’s what decided him.

  With a deep breath, he limped toward me. I smiled encouragingly and saw his mouth quirk in response.

  He placed a hand on my enormous pack as if to take it from me.

  “You…” He gestured to the middle of his rib cage with the flat of his hand—exactly where the top of my head reached when I stood close to him. “Me…” He puffed out his chest.

  “I can carry my own pack,” I huffed. “I don’t care how tall you are, you can barely walk.” I limped around the camp in a perfect imitation of his halting gait. Among my people, such teasing was normal, but Brandr’s already-pink face turned that deep shade of crimson no Inuk’s could match; I worried I might’ve offended him. Instead he simply got down on his knees and pretended to be a very short person carrying a very large pack. I didn’t quite understand until he started speaking in a gibberish version of my own tongue. Only then did I realize he was making fun of me. I laughed. A great gut laugh I hadn’t enjoyed for many moons. No wolfdog, no matter how amusing, could make me laugh so hard.

  Brandr grinned and made to get back on his feet, toppling unsteadily.

  “Ia’a!” I lent him my arm, and he steadied, looking down at me from far too close. “No joke is worth undoing all my hard work.” I pushed him gently away.

  As we left the camp, I led my stranger to the cairn where I’d buried his long blade the day he’d arrived. When I unwrapped it from the fur and offered it to him, he took a step backward.

  “Are you scared of your own weapon?” I teased. I could afford to be lighthearted; during the many days we’d spent in the same tent, surrounded by my spear and bow and knife, he could’ve easily killed me.

  He took the weapon gingerly. Where I needed both hands to hold it, he wielded it in one. He rubbed at a speck of orange that discolored the blade like lichen on stone, then ran his thumb down the edge, drawing a single drop of blood.

  “Takk.” His brooding expression belied the word. This was not a gift he wanted, but he must have known it was one he needed; he rewrapped the weapon and strapped it against his shoulder blades.

  Together, we set out southward. My stranger walked with a ponderous tread, bent with some burden heavier than the blade on his back.

  I should’ve taken his reluctance as a warning.

  Instead, despite the weight of my pack, my steps were light. Brandr would find the camp. I would find Kiasik.

  And I would not be alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  There are few sounds at night on the frozen sea besides the roar of the wind. No plants to rustle, no waves to crash upon the shore, no birds to caw. The white owl flies on hushed wings. The white fox walks with silent tread. Even Inuit move as softly as spirits, the snow too hard to yield and crunch beneath our boots. We hear little, but what we do hear is vital: the exploding breath of a surfacing seal, the shift and crack of drifting ice. But in the forest there is always sound. The trees, even in their shrouds of snow, are alive, and their voices—groans, creaks, screams—never cease.

  Before, I’d seen tall trees only as naked trunks washed upon the shore. Now I witnessed them in all their terrifying glory. The farther south we walked, the taller they became, until finally we entered a forest of trees covered in sharp green needles like walrus whiskers. Above me the thick branches swayed with every breeze, nearly blocking out the sky. As autumn approached, we were constantly in shadow.

  I was used to looking out across the expanse of tundra or ocean, scanning all the way to the horizon, my vision never impeded except by hill or iceberg. Suddenly I could see only a few paces in any direction, hemmed in by the towering trunks. I could hear the stirrings of life around me—a solitary bird skittering in the treetops, small animals running along the branches, the rare crunch of heavy paws on fallen tree needles—but I couldn’t see it. If becoming a wolf had shown me the inadequacy of my human senses, the forest made me feel as if I had transformed from human to lemming. Everything was vast, overwhelming. The world moved too much and too fast and too loud. I wanted to crawl into a hole and hibernate for the season.

  Brandr seemed to understand my unease but not to share it. He walked confidently through the woods, though the farther we traveled, the more frequently the shadow of fear crossed his face.

  Without him I would’ve been hopelessly lost. All this time, I�
�d followed the nearby shoreline. When that failed, I navigated by the Sun or the wind or the stars. But now the trees blocked everything from view—even the sky itself.

  By the third morning after we entered the forest, the trees stretched even taller. I stood directly beneath one and looked straight up, growing dizzy. From the outside, the branches seemed thick and unruly, an incomprehensible mass of wood and needle. Now I saw that they spiraled up the tree in neat, regular rows, thinning as they went. Like the spirals in a seashell, I thought, each building on the one before. Like my grandfather and my father and myself, all springing from the same trunk.

  At least the trees gave me somewhere to hide when I needed to relieve myself. On the tundra, I’d managed to convince Brandr, through a series of gestures we both found highly humorous, that my people preferred not to watch each other piss or shit. Ridiculous, but he believed me. After that first trick with the waterskin, I took to ducking behind the nearest boulder or hummock, and he’d gamely turn around and occupy himself elsewhere.

  When my moon blood flowed—not often and not regularly—I stuffed dried moss in my trousers. At first I worried he’d smell the blood on me as Issuk had, but he never did. I kept hunting even while I bled. I disobeyed a great agliruti to do it, but I had no choice if I was to survive.

  The forest screened me not only from Brandr’s questions, but from Taqqiq’s gaze. Even when the trees thinned, and I glimpsed his shifting white eye, I no longer felt his power. The farther south we went, the weaker the Moon Man became. The animals, though rare, no longer shied from my bow, and fresh meat supplemented our ever-smaller store of dried fish.

  Yet we did not travel in peace. The spirits that had ceased to haunt me turned on Brandr instead. The nightmares that had always plagued him grew more frequent, and the longer we traveled, the worse they became. Still, I didn’t mind being woken by his thrashing. The forest creaked around me like the footsteps of the bird-man coming across the ice to steal me away, and I was glad for Brandr’s presence beside me in the night. I never removed my clothes, no matter how warm the tent. Following my lead, Brandr wore his own shirt and trousers. Perhaps he thought sleeping clothed was yet another strange custom he should follow. Sweet One slept between us, with Floppy Eared and White Paw curled at the tent entrance.