by Sue Harrison
“No,” Qakan answered and held his smile inside his mouth when he saw his father’s eyebrows raise. “I would not make a man take less than what he thinks his furs are worth. That makes enemies. I would make him think he is getting more, but he would not be. I would trade fine seal furs for shells rare on this beach, but common on another or for whale meat which the Whale Hunters have in abundance.”
His father had nodded and nodded again, then he said, “But you must have something to trade. What do you have?”
Qakan lowered his eyes. His father should not see the mocking there. What did Qakan have to trade? Many things, many, many things. Woman’s knives carelessly left on the beach, chunks of ivory from his father’s carving basket— things Kiin or Blue Shell were beaten for losing. And each time traders came, each time they visited Gray Bird’s or Big Teeth’s or Kayugh’s ulaq, later that day or the next, things were missed—women’s sewing needles, awls, crooked knives, small things that could be easily hidden in the sleeve of a parka. Ah yes, everyone said, traders. Some could not be trusted.
So Qakan kept his eyes hidden and said, “Perhaps you and Samiq and Kayugh have extra furs, something I could take with me to trade, and in return, I will bring you walrus tusks or bear hides, something you might like to have.”
Again his father nodded. “What would you get in exchange, for bringing us walrus tusks or bear hides?” he asked.
“Good food, honor among other tribes.” Qakan laughed, “Women for my bed.”
Gray Bird smiled, a crooked smile, and his chin hair quivered.
“Perhaps,” Qakan said, gathering his courage, “perhaps you could let me have one thing.”
“What?”
“My sister.”
His father had turned sharply, his eyes widening. “Who would give anything for her?” he asked. “She has no soul. She has never even had a bleeding time.”
“Who beyond this village knows that?”
“A few traders,” his father said. Then with his eyes on the sea, he said, “She is not ugly. How many furs do you think you could get for her?”
“Ten,” Qakan had said. Ten, though he thought perhaps even twenty.
“Ten,” Gray Bird said. “If you got ten, I would expect you to give me eight.”
“Eight,” Qakan said. Only eight, better than he had hoped.
But then Amgigh had come with his offer of sixteen skins and one of his obsidian knives.
So Qakan had watched as Amgigh and Samiq and Kayugh and Big Teeth left. Yes, he had still prepared for his trading, had managed to get Big Teeth to give him fishhooks and skins, and his mother to make a birdskin suk, even Kiin had given him a number of her finely woven baskets and Chagak allowed him to take five grass mats, the ones she wove with dark checkered borders. Before he left, he would take the bundle of sealskins Kayugh had given as Kiin’s bride price. But how much better to have Kiin, too.
SIXTEEN
THE LAST TIME HE TURNED, SAMIQ SAW HER. SHE stood high on the edge of a cliff, her hair fanning out behind her in the wind, her slight body only a thin line against the gray of the sky.
Keep her safe for Amgigh, he prayed to Tugix. Keep her away from Gray Bird and Qakan. He repeated that prayer during the first long day of paddling and even in the evening after Big Teeth had left them, and Samiq, Amgigh and Kayugh made camp for the night on the sea otter island.
They hauled their ikyan up from the beach to a place where four boulders formed a circle, then set the ikyan as windbreaks between the boulders. Kayugh had filled and lit oil lamps— hunters’ lamps, small and light, chipped from stone and easily carried inside an ikyak.
They ate dried seal meat and goose fat, a good thing to soothe the throat after a day of salt water. Later, Kayugh laid out mats for sleeping, but Samiq could not sleep; his mind was full of thoughts of Kiin, of their night together. She was wife to Amgigh, but had she not called him husband in her dreams?
Before they left, Samiq had confided his fears for Kiin’s safety to Big Teeth, but Big Teeth had merely smiled. “Gray Bird is afraid of your father and of you and even Amgigh. He will not hurt Kiin. And Qakan …” Big Teeth had thrown back his head and laughed. “Qakan has decided to be a trader. I gave him ten fishhooks and some skins to trade for me. I think he plans to leave in the next few days. When he returns, if he returns, Amgigh and your father will be back in the village.”
Samiq had nodded. Big Teeth was always right. Kiin was safe, but still fear hung over him like some spirit; battering against his mind, whispering of the many ways Kiin could be hurt, ways that left no mark on the body, things that could be done to destroy the soul.
Samiq slid over to his ikyak and untied a sealskin packet from its side. The packet was filled with rendered seal fat. He smoothed the fat over his hands and his cheeks, then he reached for his chigadax.
He smoothed seal fat into the garment’s many horizontal seams, then oiled the strips of seal gut to keep them supple and prevent tears. He had needle and sinew thread, and like all hunters, he knew how to repair his clothing, but he could not make it watertight.
He had often watched his mother sew, and once had watched Kiin work on Gray Bird’s chigadax. Each watertight seam was a double seam, sewn one way, then turned and sewn back another.
He had watched as Kiin pushed the needle into the skin she was working and deftly brought it up without letting it pierce through to the opposite side of the seam. It did not look difficult, but when he had to repair his own chigadax, the needle seemed to go its own way, so that Samiq had to be satisfied with smearing fat over his stitches to keep out the water.
When Samiq finished oiling his chigadax he began to work on his father’s. It was something he could do to keep his mind from thoughts of the next day when he and his father would be with the Whale Hunters.
What would it be like to hunt the greatest of all animals? Would his skill in hunting sea lions give him an advantage among the Whale Hunters? Perhaps he would not be skilled enough to take a whale, and his grandfather would make him return to the First Men, a boy again, no better than Qakan.
The next morning, they ate as they repacked their ikyan, but the food upset Samiq’s stomach, and when they were again on the sea, it seemed that Amgigh paddled too quickly. Why rush? They had all day to get to the Whale Hunters’ beach.
The water was choppy, and they saw no sign of seal or whale, but gulls followed above them, circling and calling as though directing their path through the sea.
They sighted the Whale Hunters’ island that afternoon. “There!” Kayugh said suddenly, and Samiq straightened in his ikyak, holding his paddle vertically in the water to steady himself. Yes, Samiq could see the island. It was large, with a long flat beach that rose toward a jumble of hills and the jagged peaks of a mountain. The day was misty. The sun was only a light place in the clouds, and so Samiq could not see the entire island, but it seemed large, and the beach was three, four times as long as Tugix’s beach.
Kayugh pointed toward a ridge of rock that stretched into the water. “Stay away from the south side of the beach,” he called. “Too many rocks.”
As they neared the island, Samiq could see long mounds set near the hills, six perhaps seven, that he thought must be ulas. A stream cut along the north side of the beach and Samiq paddled his ikyak away from the current he knew would come from the flow of water entering the sea.
He slowed his ikyak and followed his father. Kayugh had come to the village before and so would remember where boulders lay hidden under water, but even so, Samiq kept his eyes to the sea, searching for any rocks that could tear holes in the bottom of his ikyak.
“They see us,” Kayugh called back to Samiq.
There were six, eight men on the beach, three with spears in their hands. Kay ugh made a sign, a hand raised, waving, then lowered and raised again. The men on the beach looked at one another, then shouted. As Samiq neared the men, he saw that they were directing them toward a section of smooth rock that
extended into the beach.
Kayugh paddled his ikyak over the rock, and as a wave brought him into the shore, he loosened the shoulder strap and drawstring that bound him into the ikyak and stepped out. Several of the Whale Hunter men picked up the ikyak and carried it to a high place on the beach. One of the men slapped Kayugh on the back in greeting and both laughed.
Samiq watched as Amgigh directed his ikyak over the rock. A wave suddenly pushed Amgigh’s ikyak sideways, and two Whale Hunter men pulled Amgigh up while two others lifted the ikyak, Amgigh dangling in their grip until Kayugh could untie the drawstring that bound Amgigh to the craft.
Samiq clenched his paddle and waited for a wave to send him over the rock. A good wave brought him well up onto the beach. Samiq steadied himself with the paddle and pulled at the bindings that would let him slip easily from the sea lion gut hatch skirt.
Samiq usually tightened his hatch skirt with three knots, each made to loosen easily. The first knot untied with one jerk, but the second did not, and Samiq sat in the ikyak, struggling with one hand and his teeth to untie it.
“The next wave will take you into rocks,” someone said and handed him a knife.
Samiq cut the knot and jumped from the ikyak, lifting it from the water before the wave hit.
“You are quick, Samiq,” the man said and Samiq looked up to see the hunter called Dying Seal, a man who occasionally came to their village on trading trips.
Samiq was surprised that Dying Seal remembered his name but he smiled and answered, “Only with knots.”
Dying Seal laughed. He was wide-shouldered and short-legged like all the Whale Hunters, but unlike the others,
Dying Seal was not given to boasting. When the Whale Hunters came to the First Men’s village to trade, there was always a feast, always a time of telling stories, but Dying Seal’s stories were of other hunters’ kills, not his own. Even so, his abilities in the ikyak and with the harpoon were well-known.
“You come to trade?” Dying Seal asked.
“No,” Samiq said, but then answered, “Yes. A different kind of trading.”
Samiq carried his ikyak up the beach and laid it beside his father’s ikyak. Kayugh and Amgigh were speaking to a hunter who sometimes came to the First Men’s village to trade. His name was Hard Rock. Dying Seal joined them, but Samiq knelt to inspect the bottom and sides of his ikyak for tears. Let the Whale Hunters see that he valued his ikyak above talk of weather and the sea. He had many days to talk to Whale Hunters. Why listen now?
But as Samiq ran his hands over his ikyak, the wind brought Hard Rock’s words to Samiq’s ears: “Many Whales is old. He is probably asleep.”
“He is still your chief?” Kayugh asked.
Hard Rock snorted.
“Yes. He is our chief,” Dying Seal answered.
“I need to speak to him. I have brought his grandson. Many Whales wants him to learn to hunt the whale.”
Again Hard Rock snorted, then using his chin to point at Amgigh and back toward Samiq he asked, “Which boy belongs to Many Whales?”
Samiq stood. “We are hunters. We belong to ourselves,” he said, and looking at his father noticed that the man’s lips had thinned, the muscles of his jaws tightened.
“Samiq has come to learn your ways,” Kayugh said. “We need Amgigh to stay with us. We cannot give up two of our hunters.”
Hard Rock stared at Samiq. The man’s eyes were heavy, dark, like small black stones.
“Come,” Dying Seal said to Kayugh and motioned also to Samiq and Amgigh.
Dying Seal led them to the first long ulaq. He climbed to the opening at the top of the mound and, looking back at Kayugh, said, “Wait.”
Samiq turned to see that Hard Rock had stayed with the ikyan, the man now squatting beside the boats, a scowl on his face. Samiq looked back at his father, but Kayugh’s eyes were on the line of ulas that made up the Whale Hunters’ village. There were eight in all, Kayugh had told Samiq, but Samiq could see only seven, these making a line between the hills and the beach like the footprints of a giant man.
“Where is the eighth ulaq?” Samiq asked, and Kayugh pointed to a place between two hills, some distance from the other ulas. “That is Hard Rock’s ulaq.”
“Why did he build it there?”
“He says that he will someday be chief and the chief should live in a place apart from others.”
Samiq shook his head. “What do the other men say about that?”
“The other men say he is lazy. With his ulaq set between two hills, he did not have to build walls, only a roof.”
Samiq laughed, but an uneasiness crept into his mind. He would be living with these people. He would have to hunt with them, even with Hard Rock. Again his belly began to ache, and he felt a shameful longing to be a child once more, to return to his own village, to sit beside his mother as she sewed or wove mats, to have nothing required of him except that he gather a few eggs, collect berries or sea urchins.
As if his father knew his thoughts, Kayugh laid his hand on Samiq’s shoulder. “You do not have to stay,” he said.
Amgigh suddenly leaned forward. “You have a promise to keep,” he said.
Kayugh raised his eyebrows and looked at Samiq. “I told Amgigh I would teach him to hunt the whale,” Samiq said. “I will stay unless Many Whales says I cannot.”
He saw the pride in his father’s eyes, and Kayugh said quietly, “If you learn to hunt the whale, you can teach all of us.”
“Yes,” Samiq began but stopped speaking when he saw Amgigh’s eyes suddenly narrow.
“Not Qakan,” Amgigh said.
“Qakan must first learn to hunt the seal,” Kayugh answered. He looked up as Dying Seal emerged from Many Whales’ ulaq.
“Many Whales will see you,” Dying Seal called.
Samiq followed his father up the side of the ulaq, but Dying Seal jumped to the ground. “You will not go with us?” Kayugh asked.
“He wants to see you and Samiq alone.” He laid his hand against Amgigh’s arm. “Not Amgigh,” he said.
Samiq saw anger flush red into Amgigh’s face.
Kayugh and Samiq climbed down into the darkness of Many Whales’ ulaq. When Samiq’s eyes had adjusted, he saw that Many Whales’ ulaq was large, higher and longer than the ulas of the First Men. The main room was lined with tall boulders, each nearly as high as Samiq’s waist, each with a hollow at the top that held oil and a mound of moss that acted as a wick.
“It is good you are here,” Many Whales said. “Sit down.”
The old man sat on a mat in the center of the ulaq. He wore an otter skin parka decorated with fur and feathers at each seam. On his head was a cone-shaped wooden hat. Whale Hunters wore such hats when they came to the First Men’s village to trade, and Samiq had wanted one since he was a small child. His mother had told him that the Whale Hunter men made the hats from a slice of wood so thin that it could be steamed and bent into shape, the edges laced together like a seam up the back of the hat. The wood of Many Whales’ hat was smooth and shiny as though it had been rubbed with oil. Long sea lion whiskers were sewn into the hat’s seam, and feathers and shells dangled from one side.
Kayugh sat down on one of the grass mats that was opposite the old man and motioned for Samiq to sit beside him. On Many Whales’ left was his wife, a short fat woman, her black hair pulled tightly back from her round face and bound with a strip of furred otter skin into a tail at the nape of her neck. They both sat cross-legged rather than on their heels as Samiq and Kayugh did.
The woman motioned toward two mats, one layered with thin, dark slices of meat, the other holding four shell bowls filled with melted fat. Many Whales selected a slice of meat and handed it to Kayugh then motioned for Samiq to take a piece as well. Samiq watched Many Whales dip his meat into the melted fat then fold it and put it into his mouth. Samiq did the same.
It was a rich, sweet meat, something Samiq first thought was walrus then knew was whale. And again, the realization of why he was her
e came to him and his heart began to beat too quickly.
“Long ago you promised me you would bring my grandson back to me. I knew you would come,” Many Whales said.
His voice was low and strong, like the voice of a young man. The Whale Hunters were once First Men, the stories said. And it was true that the Whale Hunters spoke the same language as the First Men, though some words were pronounced differently, and every word was quick and clipped as if in hunting the whale, the people had learned to move with more speed, even in their speech.
“Once long ago our people saved your village,” Kayugh said, and Samiq was surprised by his father’s abruptness. Usually conversations began slowly with many comments on hunting and the sea, on wives and children.
“Yes,” Many Whales said. “For that reason, I gave you my granddaughter and my grandson.”
Samiq was suddenly still, sitting very straight. He noticed that Fat Wife was leaning so far forward that her large breasts pressed against her knees.
Samiq drew his thoughts back to his father’s words. What had Many Whales meant when he said he had given Kayugh his granddaughter and grandson?
“And in return, I said I would bring your grandson back when he was a man so he could learn to hunt the whale.”
Many Whales said nothing, but his wife answered, “Only the men of this village can hunt the whale. Besides, this boy does not look like a hunter. He is heavy-boned. His shoulders are too wide.”
Samiq was surprised that she would say anything at a men’s meeting, and he waited for Many Whales to reprimand her, but the old man only nodded.
“I remember that Chagak suckled two boy children,” she continued. “One was her son, our grandson, the other your son. How do I know this one is ours?”
The words were like stones set over Samiq’s heart and he struggled to understand what Fat Wife was saying. He was not Kayugh’s son? Who then was his father? He looked at Kayugh, willed the man to look at him, but Kayugh kept his eyes fixed on Many Whales.