All of us had been loosely stitched together from mismatched parts. An Inuk with a man’s spirit and a woman’s body. Three animals caught between dog and wolf. A stranger with a giant’s frame and a man’s heart. Yet somehow, we were becoming a seamless whole.
We journeyed swiftly for many days before our surroundings changed again. Slender, white-barked trees nestled in clusters amid the surrounding darker forest. Their leaves, delicately pointed like the old quartz blade in my amulet pouch, fluttered in the breeze. Like children of Malina the Sun Woman, the bright yellow leaves continued to shield me from Taqqiq’s eye. When a strong wind blew, they fell like rain, settling on our shoulders and hair like molten drops of sunlight.
We had eaten the last of the dried fish, and still we had not found Kiasik. But for once I didn’t worry about food. Animals crowded this forest. Small, shy ones that looked like caribou calves. Great lumbering ones with antlers so wide and broad they reminded me of whale jaws. Brandr was no hunter, but between my bow and my wolfdogs, we ate well.
In the dappled shade of a white-barked tree, we feasted on one of the smaller creatures, stealing a brief respite from our hurried pace. I pulled the meat apart with my fingers and dropped it into my mouth, enjoying the rich blood. Brandr, as usual, made a small fire and turned his portion to an unappetizing gray lump, gnawing the meat off the bone with all the manners of a ravenous dog. After so long, he no longer stared at my bloody meal with surprise. I still couldn’t repress my grimace at his strange way of eating ruined flesh—but I was getting used to it.
After finishing her own gobbled meal, White Paw didn’t lie down beside us. She paced a wide circle, sniffing every tree and rock. Floppy Eared soon joined her, tromping through the fallen leaves with his broad paws, making more noise than any wolf should make. Sweet One watched them both carefully, but stayed in her favorite spot: sprawled beside Brandr, one paw resting on his leg. When he shifted, so did she, always touching him.
Brandr’s eyes drooped shut, his back propped against the smooth trunk of the tree. The light played on his long orange hair. Strands drifted across his face like tiny sunbeams. His eyes were closed—he wouldn’t see me staring. His thick beard and bony nose, once so strange to me, were more familiar now than the dimming memories of my family’s faces.
The day was uncommonly warm for so late in autumn, and he sat with his outer garment unlaced, his white shirt open at the throat, and his blue cloak loose beneath him. This close, I could watch the slow, steady pulse between his collarbones, where pooled sweat glistened in the sun.
A short yip from White Paw shook me from my reverie. Brandr’s eyes sprang open. I looked quickly away and went to join the wolfdogs. White Paw and Floppy Eared stood amid a cluster of trees, sniffing the ground. I crouched beside their discovery. Human footprints.
“Your people?” I asked, motioning Brandr over. As I waited for his answer, my heart thundered with anticipation. He knelt beside me, wincing slightly as he bent his bad leg.
“No. No Brandr men.”
Then who? With Issuk’s family dead, only one other group existed: my own family, far to the north. Then Ataata’s words returned to me: No land is empty.
“Bad men.” Brandr pointed toward my bow and spear and swept his hands around the forest. “Bad. They… they… skít! No words,” he growled in frustration.
“You know these men?” I asked, pointing at the footprint. “But they’re not your people?”
“Stay,” he said firmly, more commanding than pleading. “Bad men.”
“As bad as your own men?” My anger flared. I had not forgotten Nua’s murder, or the baby’s crushed skull.
Now, for all his long knife and his violent ways, Brandr feared facing these new strangers. But why should I trust what he told me? The enemies of his people were most likely the allies of mine. Besides, hadn’t I waited my whole life to meet more Inuit? So far strangers had brought me grief. But maybe, just maybe, my luck was about to change. Maybe Taqqiq no longer controlled my destiny.
And so, ignoring Brandr’s protests, I set out along the faint trail, looking for the scattered footprints that denoted the passage of men. Many different tracks dotted the ground. More than one family lay at the end of this path. My confidence began to waver. I considered turning around, or at least pausing to rethink. But I could hear Brandr walking behind me, following despite his trepidation. I didn’t want to admit any weakness to him. I pressed on. My spear and bow rested across my back, and Brandr’s sharp knife lay secure at my side. This time, I would not be defenseless.
Suddenly I heard the laughter of children. Creeping forward as quietly as I could, I peered through the trees. A small camp nestled against the shore, round igluit made not of snow or sod but of narrow white sheets of curling bark. Between the huts, a band of children danced and played. At least, they moved like children, and were the size of children, but they did not look like children. They did not look like humans at all. They were bright red from hair to toes, like the belly of a trout. Only their eyes and teeth shone white. Were they demons? Ghosts? Red where Brandr’s people were pale? My head whirled. How many types of humans were there in the world?
Despite their monstrous appearance, the boys shot toy arrows not unlike those Ataata had carved for me a lifetime ago. Mothers, equally red, sat outside the huts, pounding bark, sewing hides, butchering animals, while a few men lounged nearby, sharpening spears and tools.
I’d taken only a few steps toward the clearing when I realized that White Paw wasn’t beside me. She sat on her haunches next to her brother and sister, staring at me, ears swiveled forward. Brandr stood beside them, his arms crossed.
“I’m going either way. But I’d rather not go alone.” I directed my whispered comments to my wolfdogs. Brandr could make his own decisions, and I was loath to ask for his help. In the forest, I’d depended on him to guide me. I longed to make my own way again.
“Let’s go,” I ordered more sternly. White Paw didn’t move. She simply lay down and rested her chin on her forepaws, her ears swinging backward in defiance. I could’ve tried to force her, grabbing her by the ruff, baring my teeth and growling. But she stared at me so fixedly that I felt she must have a good reason for ignoring my commands.
“You’re staying. Fine.” She didn’t yip or whimper. If she had, I might’ve stayed. Instead, I walked into the clearing with my arms raised, letting the sleeves of my parka fall back to show I had nothing to hide.
A little girl saw me first, freezing in the middle of her dance with her arms upraised like wings, her knees bent. Her black eyes were round and bright in her red face as she opened her mouth and screamed. I stopped only a few paces from the woods, suddenly unsure, as the camp’s men leapt to their feet, snatching bows and spears. Most wore trousers and nothing else, the muscles of their chests and arms taut and gleaming as they rushed toward me. There were more of them than I’d thought, spilling from the huts and the surrounding forest like wasps shaken from a nest.
I felt one of them rush up behind me and whirled to face my attacker.
Brandr. He didn’t look happy.
I turned back to the red strangers before he could read the relief on my face. His long blade remained sheathed, but I was glad to know it was there. I hadn’t forgotten his fearlessness when he faced the bear.
As they came within bow range, the young men slowed like a wolf pack stalking a hare, every step deliberate. Two older men stayed behind them, jabbering in an unknown language. Though they gestured angrily at my fur clothing, so different from their own light hides, they seemed particularly enraged by Brandr. They pointed and shouted at him. What a pair we must be, I thought. Me dark and short. Him so red and hairy, a full two heads taller, with clothing from another world.
I couldn’t resist returning their scrutiny. Up close, the red was just paint, not unlike the dried clay that sometimes stained an Inuk’s flesh after a day of digging for clams. The patches of flesh showing through the mottled ochre were the li
ght brown of wet sand, just a shade darker than my own, and the hair beneath the caked red powder was black. They wore a crude mixture of hairless hides and woven bark.
Despite the roughness of their garb, the men, and most of the women, were taller than I—although few stood as tall as my companion. The men slid into a slowly tightening circle around us. I felt like a ptarmigan who’d walked blindly into a snare. A very stupid ptarmigan.
Just as I grew convinced that my journey south was about to meet an untimely end, a thin voice called out from behind the crowd, and the men parted for a stooped old woman.
She, too, was painted red; no white hair betrayed her age. But the ochre had settled firmly into the deep creases of her face, as if someone had drawn the wrinkles on with a bloodied brush. The little girl who’d first spotted me held the old woman by the elbow and guided her carefully across the uneven ground. The woman was barely taller than the child who led her, and her eyes were white stones on a red field, clouded with age and blindness. Despite her infirmity, the men fell silent at her approach.
She stretched a bony arm toward us. The little girl guided her hand to Brandr. He stiffened but let the crone rest a palm upon his chest. She stroked the strange woven material of his shirt, then crawled her fingers upward until they rested in the hollow between his collarbones. She was far too short to reach his face.
It took three red men to push Brandr roughly to his knees. My giant grunted as his injured leg slammed against the earth. Only I knew what it cost him not to cry out. Kneeling, Brandr was at eye level with the old woman. She explored his face with her fingertips, muttering to herself as she felt his heavy beard. She pulled on it experimentally.
“Ow!” Brandr sounded more surprised than hurt. The old woman gave a croaking laugh and spoke to the surrounding crowd. The villagers gasped and whispered to each other. I didn’t like the fear I saw in their eyes.
Then she moved on to me. Her fingertips, soft as the pads of a puppy’s paw, skimmed across my cheekbones, eyes, lips. Her touch felt like a bird’s wing fluttering against my cheek. Then, as her hands explored the fur lining of my atigi’s hood, her expression froze into a mask of terror.
She spoke tersely to the little girl, then hobbled off with her toward one of the huts. The red men seized Brandr and me and dragged us after them.
We ducked through the opening of her bark dwelling. Inside, a small fire crackled in the center, the smoke rising up through a hole in the roof. The crone eased herself down beside it, the flames turning her face an even more brilliant crimson. Brandr crossed his legs and sat awkwardly beside me, his frame filling up a full half of the tiny hut, his hair brushing the domed ceiling. The little girl knelt in the shadows behind the old woman.
The crone stared at us for a while with her sightless eyes, then said something to the little girl. The child moved around the fire toward me and began, without warning, to pull my atigi over my head. I grabbed the hem and snarled at her like a wolverine. If keeping my secret meant harming this little girl, so be it. She backed away, then spied my outer parka lashed to my pack and took that to the tiny old woman instead.
The crone stroked the thick caribou fur thoughtfully and lifted it to her nose to smell.
“Inuk?” she asked finally.
“Yes!” I replied. “You speak my language?”
The woman stiffened and didn’t reply. “Where your people?” she asked instead, her words slow and strangely accented.
“North,” I said, pointing. “Very, very far.”
“Come find you?”
“No.”
“No Inuit come?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“How do you speak like an Inuk?” I asked.
The old woman stretched an arm across the low fire. Faint tattoo lines crossed the back of her hand and ringed her fingers.
“You’re an Inuk, too!” I said, reaching for her.
“No,” she said firmly, snatching back her hand when I brushed her fingertips with my own.
“Then who are you?”
She shook her head wearily. “Too hard. No words.” From a bark container, she pulled out a bundle of dried flowers and a small, swollen bag made from an animal’s stomach. She tossed the flowers into the fire. The flames rose higher as acrid smoke filled the hut, stinging my eyes and throat. The old woman pulled the wooden stopper from the bag and passed it to the little girl, who scuttled around the fire to hand it to me.
“Drink,” ordered the woman.
Brandr’s hand rested on my arm. He stared at me, eyes wide with warning. I looked back at the girl, who crossed her arms impatiently. She spoke to the old woman, who laughed her strange croaking laugh, took the bag, and drank deeply, as if to show me not to fear. The girl passed me the bag once more. I offered Brandr a shrug—and took a sip.
I choked as the stinging liquid coursed down my throat.
As soon as the burning subsided, the dizziness began.
The last thing I heard before I passed out was Brandr calling my name.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A slavering mouth full of teeth snapped at my face. I thought White Paw had come to save me.
But I sat not in a bark hut, but in a sod-and-stone qarmaq. Dark and cold. The ceiling low with only lashed antlers—not whale bones—to hold it up, and the walls nearly straight rather than curved. The barking and snarling roared in my ears like thunder.
A gray dog stood atop me, its gaping maw a handbreadth from my face. Not White Paw. Its snout was too round, its legs too short. An Inuk’s dog, yet somehow monstrous. Strange. Terrifying.
This was not my memory.
“Nooooo!” A man hurtled toward me from the corner of the qarmaq. He plunged a spear into the dog, the stone point a sharp triangle, just like the quartz blade I carried in my amulet pouch.
The dog howled in agony and fell to the ground, whimpering.
My savior crawled to me. He spoke in a language I’d never heard before yet understood perfectly. “Are you hurt?”
I sat up gingerly. My body felt small but strong. Indeed, my limbs were strangely thick and short, clad in rough furs and pelts.
“I don’t think so,” I said, surprised that the strange tongue came so easily to my lips.
The stranger clasped me to his broad chest for a moment. I wrapped my arms around him, my body beyond my control though my mind floated free.
“Stay here,” he whispered.
“Where are you going? What’s happening?” But he left the qarmaq, taking his spear with him. I crawled after him. As I reached the front of the tunnel he turned toward me.
“I said stay!” The sounds of terror drowned out his cry.
Another man in rough pelts lay sprawled in front of a neighboring qarmaq, blood seeping from an arrow wound in his chest. Beside him lay a woman and three children, their throats ripped out. A sled dog, oblivious to the chaos, feasted on their flesh. The man from my own qarmaq pushed me back into the tunnel and turned to the fray.
A small woman ran by, screaming, followed by a taller hunter with a raised spear. As my man bowled the hunter into the snow, I saw the taller man’s parka and knew him for an Inuk. The two men rolled together, their long spears useless at such close range. The fleeing woman, safe for a moment, looked around her, searching for shelter. I crawled out just far enough to beckon her into my qarmaq.
She began to run toward me, but another Inuk grabbed her from behind. She screamed and fought before he thrust his short slate knife into her ribs. She melted at his feet like snow above flame.
I scuttled back into the tunnel’s mouth, wondering how long before I’d meet the same fate. Before the entrance, the two men had ceased their struggling. The Inuk straddled the smaller man, his knife pointed at the man’s throat. He spoke a few words in a language I’d known all my life yet that now sounded only like the rasp of gravel on stone.
“Why?” the small man demanded, breathless. “We taught you to build homes out of snow when you
travel the sea ice, taught you the best places to hunt the seal! Why do you—” His voice cut off in a gurgle of blood as the Inuk’s knife passed through his throat.
I screamed. The Inuk turned toward me. I scrambled out of the qarmaq, my feet churning through soft snow. Then all went black.
When I woke again, I thought I’d be back in the bark hut with Brandr at my side. Instead, I felt the familiar motion of a sled beneath me and an unfamiliar wetness on my scalp.
One more vision left to see.
A young boy sat beside me on the sled, patting my arm as if to soothe my fears.
He had Ataata’s smile.
I woke again. Screaming this time.
“Omat!”
I was hot. Something held me down. I struggled, and the bonds loosed. My vision cleared—Brandr sat beside me, his face twisted with fear.
I took a deep breath. The fire had died. A single ray of dusty sunlight streamed through the smoke hole. My body was my own again, my limbs lean and long. I knew now why White Paw had chosen to stay outside the village. Her people had a history with the old woman.
So did mine.
The rectangular qarmaq, the terrifying dogs—I had seen it all before in a single flash when I found the quartz blade buried among the dwarfs’ ruin. Ataata had told me the little creatures had taught our family to build igluit from snow, then long ago disappeared from our land. He lied. My own ancestors had killed some, probably chased away the rest. And they were not dwarfs at all—no more than Brandr was truly a giant.
“Where’s the old woman?” I asked in my own tongue, knowing Brandr couldn’t answer. I was too tired to act out what I wanted. I could hear men moving outside the hut. We were alone, but guarded. Who could tell what plans these painted men had for us? I knew now that the old woman had reason to hate me.
The Wolf in the Whale Page 25