by Sue Harrison
Yes, she could forget. But one thing, one thing she would remember—the reason she was here. She was a woman. Even without a name, without a soul, without the gift of words. Even so, she was a woman. She hummed under her breath, a small tune, a song without words to the whale’s tooth.
FOUR
ON THE SECOND DAY OF HER BLEEDING, BLUE Shell’s daughter wove hunting belts for Samiq and Amgigh.
She cut sealskin into narrow strips and wove it slowly and carefully. She strung in shells she had drilled for beads, and always kept her mind on seals and sea lions as she worked. She laid a sealskin over her grass sleeping mats, so the belts would not touch the grass, and her mother bound the girl’s hair into a tight braid at the back of her head. If even a tiny piece of grass or a strand of her hair were woven into the belt, the sea animals would know and would not come near the hunter, or worse, would bite a hole in the bottom of his ikyak so the hunter would drown.
On the third day, she made belts for Big Teeth and First Snow, and on the fourth day for her father. On the fifth day, Qakan sent his sealskin. With each man’s sealskin, Blue Shell’s daughter had only had to close her eyes to see a belt, finished and beautifully decorated, but for Qakan she saw nothing.
It is because he hates me, she thought, and could not help remembering the times he had stolen her food or had lied to their father, accusing her of breaking cooking stones or touching a hunter’s weapon.
Qakan had fourteen summers, but had never taken a seal. He did not even paddle his ikyak well, and their father blamed her for Qakan’s poor skills. She was the curse in their family, he often said. She was the reason her mother had been barren since Qakan’s birth. She was the one who kept Qakan from slaying seals.
It was her father’s way to blame others for his own shortcomings. But then, Blue Shell’s daughter thought, I am also like that, blaming Qakan because I do not want to weave his belt. She warmed her hands over the flame of her oil lamp and thought for a moment, then pulled the whale tooth from her suk. She ran her fingers over the smooth curve of its sides, stroked a furrow that had been eroded into the base of the tooth. Yes, she would make Qakan a belt and use all her good thoughts of seals and sea lions to give it power.
On the eighth day of Blue Shell’s daughter’s confinement, Samiq sat at the top of his father’s ulaq and watched the sea. He watched for the ruffling of water that would tell of herring, watched for the shimmering darkness that comes before a storm, but sometimes he also turned and stood, stretching to his full height to see the small peak that was the top of Blue Shell’s daughter’s hut. Tomorrow she would come out, would be given the woman’s ceremony. Perhaps, Samiq’s mother had said, Gray Bird would allow his daughter, now woman, to have a name.
The girl had been strong even as a child, taking beatings and scoldings without tears, without pleading. Chagak said that even though Blue Shell’s daughter was a woman without a soul, the belts she made would have power.
Already this spring three hunts had brought Samiq honor. And with the belt, who could say? He might take two and three seals in one hunt as his father sometimes did.
He turned back toward the sea, watched the high rising of the swells. He flared his nostrils; there was nothing. No smell of seal or whale, not even the lesser scent of cod.
A good day to oil my chigadax, he thought and stepped down through the roof hole to the top notch of the climbing log. His father sat in a corner of the ulaq’s central room. Wren was on his lap; she sucked two of her tiny fingers and her other hand was wrapped in the soft tangle of her hair.
“Anything?” Kayugh asked.
“Nothing,” Samiq answered. His mother was sitting, her back to them, weaving a grass mat that was suspended on pegs pounded into one wall. Above the weaving was a shelf crowded with the small ivory animals carved years before by her grandfather Shuganan.
Chagak looked over her shoulder at Kayugh, and he cleared his throat.
Samiq squatted beside his father. He reached out and smoothed the dark strands of his sister’s hair.
“The last time your grandfather Many Whales came to visit,” Kayugh began, “he asked that you be allowed to live with him in the Whale Hunters’ village this summer.” He paused, glanced first at his wife and then at Samiq.
Samiq’s heart quickened, thumped hard into the veins of his neck. “And you will let me go?” he asked.
“Long ago I promised such a thing to Many Whales, part of a bride price for your mother.”
“You promised that one of your sons would go live with him, learn to hunt the whale?”
Kayugh looked at his wife and again back at Samiq. “Yes.”
“And you choose me over Amgigh?”
Chagak started to speak, but Kayugh interrupted her. “I do not choose either of you above the other, but Amgigh will soon be a husband. He must stay here in this village with his wife.”
The rushing joy that Samiq had felt dropped cold and hard into his belly. “Blue Shell’s daughter?” he asked in a whisper.
“Gray Bird has decided to give her a name, so your father will keep the promise he made when Amgigh was a baby,” Chagak said.
“Amgigh knows?”
“We will tell him when he and Big Teeth return from their hunt.”
“He has not even taken a sea lion yet,” Samiq said and
realized that he spoke in a high and squeaking voice like a boy.
“He will,” said Kayugh. “Perhaps today.”
“Yes,” murmured Samiq, seeing the sternness in his father’s eyes.
“Your father will help Amgigh pay the bride price,” Chagak said, then added, “We have decided they will live here, in this ulaq.”
Samiq nodded and tried to keep the surprise from showing in his eyes. Among the First Men, it was customary for a man to live with his wife’s family, at least until the first child was born. But, Samiq reminded himself, it was not the custom among the Whale Hunters, and his mother was half Whale Hunter.
“She will be our daughter, will have our grandchildren,” said Chagak, lifting her head so Samiq saw the tight set of her jaw. “She needs to be away from Gray Bird. He beats her.”
Samiq rubbed a hand across his forehead. Yes, who did not know that? But a girl belonged to her father, and he could beat her, kill her, if he wanted.
“I think she will be safer now, if Gray Bird knows he can get something for her, sealskins or oil,” said Kayugh. “I will tell Gray Bird that Amgigh will not take a woman with broken bones.”
“Amgigh will be a good husband,” Samiq said, and his voice sounded again like the voice of a man. It would be better for the girl if she were in this lodge, and even though Samiq wanted her for himself, he would rather see her with his brother than given to some hunter who came to their beach with skins and meat to trade.
Samiq stood. “I will go outside and watch for Amgigh.”
His father nodded but Samiq saw him lift his eyebrows in question to Chagak. Samiq climbed from the ulaq. He squatted in the grass that grew in the sod of the roof.
To hunt the whale, the greatest of all sea animals. What hunter would not feel his spirit grow large and boasting at the thought of taking such an animal? Yes, he had the better share. After all, any man could take a wife, become a husband. Very few could learn to hunt the whale.
Samiq fixed his eyes on the sea and watched for Amgigh’s ikyak. He thought of whales, huge and dark, thought of their breath spouts flowing high, and would not let himself think of Blue Shell’s daughter, would not let himself feel the ache in his heart.
FIVE
BY THE NINTH DAY, BLUE SHELL’S DAUGHTER HAD finished all the belts and had woven a gathering basket as well. That evening she would return to her father’s lodge. Chagak had once told her about the woman’s ceremony Chagak’s parents had held for her after Chagak completed her first bleeding. In those days, a girl had to live alone for forty days after her first bleeding. Then there were feasts and gifts.
But when Chagak�
��s daughter Red Berry had come to her first bleeding, the men decided that this new village on Tugix’s island was too small for one of their women to sit idle, weaving only belts and baskets for forty days. They borrowed a custom of the Walrus People: only nine days alone, only nine days to weave belts and baskets. As Big Teeth said, “Were not Kayugh’s own parents once Walrus People?”
Blue Shell’s daughter had heard Chagak’s protests: Why take the chance that spirits would be angry? Why take the chance that hunting would be cursed?
But Kayugh had said, “Who does not know that the number four is sacred to men; that the number five is sacred to women? Nine is a good number, a strong number. Nine days is the right choice. Besides, who can doubt that the Walrus People understand the ways of spirits?”
It seemed that Kayugh was right. Red Berry, now First Snow’s wife, already had a healthy son. And the hunting was good, had been good many years.
Blue Shell’s daughter remembered the feast Kayugh had given when Red Berry’s nine days were ended. She remembered the many gifts Red Berry received.
Blue Shell’s daughter knew that no celebration would mark the end of her own confinement, but it was enough that she had escaped her father’s beatings for nine days, enough to be allowed to work without fear of a stick across her back. She sighed and pushed open the mat that covered her door opening.
Her mother would soon come to get her and take her back to her father’s lodge. She shuddered, wondering whether her long absence had irritated the man or if he would treat her with more respect now she was a woman.
Perhaps he would be carving his small crooked animals and would pretend she was not there. Idly, she let her fingers caress the whale’s tooth that hung at her side. But even if he did beat her, perhaps the tooth would give her added strength, make it easier for her to endure the pain.
Of course, if her father saw the tooth, he would claim it as his own, would cover it with his carvings of men and seals and little circles that were supposed to be ulas.
Her hand closed over the tooth and she pulled it from her waistband. She would not be able to carry it with her or he would see it, but how could she keep its power for herself if she did not carry it?
Blue Shell’s daughter stared at the smoke hole in the peak of her roof and wished that the special powers she had during her first bleeding were great enough to make the tooth invisible, like the wind. She crossed her arms over her upraised knees and closed her eyes. No, she thought, it is enough that I am allowed to be a woman. How often had Qakan taunted her saying that she would always be a child, always stay in their father’s ulaq to work and to be beaten?
Yes, she might always be in her father’s ulaq, but if she could keep the tooth, perhaps she would have some protection. Blue Shell’s daughter laid the tooth against her cheek, and in the moment that it touched her skin, warmth against warmth, she saw it not as tooth, but carved into the whorls of a whelk shell. Her father would not care about a shell. He would think she carried it to hold oil to grease the cooking stone or soften skins.
She had watched her father carve, knew from his conversations with Qakan how difficult it was to carve ivory. “A whale’s tooth has a hollow center,” her father had told Qakan, “a narrow passage that tapers up into a point deep within the tooth. A carving has to follow the hollow, make allowances for it. But a whale’s tooth is not as difficult to carve as walrus tusk.” Her father had reached into the basket where he kept ivory, wood and bone for carving. He handed Qakan a walrus tusk. “See,” he had said and pointed to the inside of the tusk. “It is different here. It does not obey the knife.”
Qakan had yawned and looked bored, but Blue Shell’s daughter had listened, and she remembered what her father had said. A walrus tusk is centered with a hard and brittle ivory that chips erratically under the pressure of a blade, and when the ivory chipped, her father became angry, sometimes angry enough to lash out at her with his carving knife.
And, Blue Shell’s daughter thought, if it is difficult for my father to carve a whale’s tooth, it will be even more difficult for me.
But then it seemed as though the tooth caught her thoughts, as though its voice called to her, and she saw the tooth marked by her father’s knife, made into something it should not be.
She picked up the short-bladed woman’s knife that lay next to the pile of hunters’ belts and pressed the knife against the tooth, felt the blade bite into the smooth surface. A narrow strip of ivory curled and fell, and the girl’s heart lurched within her chest. She dropped both knife and tooth.
What had made her do such a thing? What had made her think she could carve something as sacred as a whale’s tooth?
She was a woman. Only a woman, and worse, a woman without a soul.
Blue Shell’s daughter rubbed her hands down over her face. Perhaps even now, with one small chip, she had destroyed the tooth’s power. She thought of Shuganan’s beautiful carvings. Each glowed with an inner spirit; each was beautiful to see, and when she looked at those carvings, she felt joy.
Then she thought of her father’s carvings, flat and misshapen. Ugly. No, she told herself. It is me. I do not see what is there. But then she remembered Chagak’s stories of Shuganan, of his gentle spirit, and she thought, Perhaps the difference between Gray Bird’s and Shuganan’s carvings is the difference between the two men’s souls. But at least her father had a soul. And compared to her father, what was she? Why did she think her knife would be strong enough? Did her hands have the skill to make a tooth into a shell?
Again she held the tooth against her face. It was still warm, so perhaps she had not destroyed it, had not forced the spirit out of the tooth into the thin, cold air of her shelter.
But again she saw the tooth as shell, saw it so clearly that it was as though the tooth were already carved. And her hand moved to pick up the knife, as though the tooth itself were directing it. So blocking the fear from her mind, she began to carve. She carved carefully, slowly, pushing the image of the shell from her mind down into her hands, down into her fingers as they gripped the knife.
Samiq squatted in the lee of the hunter’s beached iky an and oiled his chigadax. That morning, Amgigh had brought in his first sea lion. Their mother sat now with the hide staked out on the beach. She scraped away flesh left on the underside of the skin and the wind carried off the smaller bits of debris. But in the midst of the joy over Amgigh’s first sea lion, Kayugh had asked both Samiq and Chagak to leave the lodge so he could talk to Amgigh. Samiq knew their father would speak to him of Blue Shell’s daughter. Yes, and how would Amgigh feel, a young man filled with the pride of his first sea lion kill, to learn that his brother would be going to hunt the whale while he, Amgigh, would stay in the village and take Blue Shell’s daughter as wife?
Sarniq scooped yellow oil from the basket he cradled between his knees and rubbed it into a seam. Amgigh had never been afraid to show his anger. Who could say what he would do this time? Perhaps refuse to take the girl, perhaps go to another village, live there, hunt there. And who could blame him?
Samiq looked back toward the ulaq and saw Amgigh striding toward him.
“So,” Amgigh called out, his voice high and hard, “you have been chosen to be the hunter and I am to be a husband.”
“It was not my choice,” Samiq said, and he looked up at his brother, met his eyes so Amgigh would see he spoke the truth.
Amgigh laughed, a hard laugh, edged in bitterness. “You would choose Blue Shell’s daughter then?”
Samiq looked down. How could he answer his brother? What man would choose a woman over the chance to learn to hunt the whale? But then why, he asked himself, did the pain in his brother’s eyes find an answering ache in his own chest?
“It is for our father to choose.”
“You are the better hunter.”
“How can anyone know that I am the better hunter?” Samiq asked. “In my last hunt, I took no sea lions. This morning you did. In the hunt three days ago I was the one to k
ill a seal. And the hunt before that neither of us took a seal and Gray Bird did. Is Gray Bird better than we are?”
Amgigh smiled, a true smile that crinkled his eyes and broke out over a laugh. He squatted beside Samiq. For a moment he did not speak, then he laid his hand on his brother’s arm.
“I have pieces of obsidian left,” Amgigh said. “Large enough for two good knives.”
Samiq nodded. Yes, their father had taken Amgigh with him to the mountain Okmok. They had brought back obsidian to trade with the Walrus Hunters and some for Amgigh to knap.
“The knives will be brothers as we are,” Amgigh said. “You take one with you to the Whale Hunters and I will keep one with me. They will remind us of our bond. Then, when you return, you will share the Whale Hunters’ hunting secrets with me.”
There was hurt, but also hope in Amgigh’s eyes, and some of the weight that had settled into Samiq’s chest lifted. “I will tell you everything I know. We will hunt together. Men from other tribes will tell stories of the hunts we make.”
Amgigh nodded. A smile pulled at one corner of his mouth, but he looked down, traced a pattern in the beach gravel. “Until you get a wife,” he said, “I will share Blue Shell’s daughter with you.”
And Samiq bent low over his chigadax, afraid of what his brother might see in his eyes.
“Daughter?”
The girl jumped and tucked her partially carved tooth under a mat. She leaned forward to pull open the door flap. At first, she thought her mother had come, but then she realized that the voice belonged to Chagak.
“A gift from Kayugh’s ulaq,” Chagak said and laid a bundle outside the door. She reached in to touch the girl’s hand and then quickly turned and left.
Blue Shell’s daughter pulled the bundle into her hut and tied the door flap open to let in light. The bundle was wrapped in grass mats, and when she saw what was inside, her surprise made the breath catch in her throat. A suk. The finest she had ever seen. The skins were fur seal, tanned to such suppleness that she knew Chagak had worked a long time stretching and scraping them.