Ivory Carver 02 - My Sister the Moon

by Sue Harrison

  “My sister said that you are wrong,” Woman of the Sky said. “One of the babies is cursed and will bring terrible evil to his people.”

  “You think I fear evil?” the Raven asked, then laughed. “Kiin,” he called without looking back at her, his eyes still on the old women. “Bring the babies here.”

  Kiin’s heart jumped, throbbed until her blood pulsed hard against her temples. “N-no,” she said softly.

  The Raven spun as though he had been hit. “Who are you to tell me ‘no’!” he bellowed.

  Kiin took a step forward. “I am … I am Kiin, m-mother to these sons,” she said. “These women want to kill them.”

  “Only the evil one,” Woman of the Sky said, but her words were blotted out by the Raven’s anger.

  “You are wife before you are mother!” he shouted at Kiin. “I bought you and your sons. They are my sons now!”

  “No,” Kiin said again. Anger pushed away her fear, pulled the words smoothly from her mouth. “They are not your sons if you would let them be killed.”

  The Raven’s face was red, his jaw so tense that Kiin saw the ridges of muscle moving against the skin of his cheeks. “No one will kill my sons,” he said, the words hissing out between his teeth.

  Slowly Kiin walked toward him. Slowly, she raised her suk. She brought out Amgigh’s son first, then Samiq’s, cradling both boys in her arms.

  “Which was first born?” the Raven asked.

  “This one,” Kiin said, pointing to Amgigh’s son with her chin.

  The Raven took the baby from her arms and held him toward the old women. “This is Shuku,” he said. “Shuku, a man who understands the power of stone, who holds that power in his heart. A strong hunter, good with weapons, a man who will take many walrus and have many sons.”

  He handed Shuku back to Kiin and took Samiq’s son.

  “This is Takha,” he said. “Takha, a man who moves over water without fear, who holds the power of water spirits in his heart. A wise man, good with speaking, with trading, a man who will also take walrus and have many sons.”

  The Raven handed Takha back to Kiin and said to Woman of the Sun and Woman of the Sky, “Leave my ulaq. Do not curse them or my woman. Any of my women.”

  “The curse has already been made,” Woman of the Sun said. “It is not our curse, nor would we curse an infant who has no protection from us. But this I will tell you as a protection for yourself when you are old. These babies share one spirit. They must live as one man. When one hunts, the I other must stay in his ulaq. They must share one wife and one ikyak. Do not give them too much power.” As Kiin heard the words, her anger grew. She waited for

  the Raven to reply, but then saw that both women held their eyes on the man, both stared without blinking, and the Raven, his eyes on them, did not move.

  “He will beat them,” Kiin’s spirit whispered. “You beat them, and you are weaker than the Raven.”

  But then the Raven shook his head, looked away and closed his eyes, and with beating heart Kiin saw the look of triumph on Woman of the Sky’s face, the slow smile that came to Woman of the Sun’s lips.

  “Perhaps my sons share one spirit,” the Raven said. Then without looking at Kiin he said, “I am hungry, wife.”

  Kiin turned her back on all three and placed the babies on her sleeping platform. She pulled Qakan’s fox pelts from the cradles and tucked the soft furs around her sons. When she turned back to the Raven, Woman of the Sky and Woman of the Sun were gone. The smell of meat simmering came from the sealskin hung over the oil lamp. For a moment Kiin hesitated, then she went to the skin, scooped out a serving into a wooden bowl with a ladle made from a caribou scapula. She handed the food to the Raven. He grunted his thanks and Kiin went back to the babies.

  Shuku and Takha, she thought. Good names even if they were Walrus People names. So now they had their own spirits, were separate from her, stronger, yet not as easily protected. But who was she to protect them, her own spirit scarcely older than their spirits?

  She smoothed her hand down Shuku’s cheek, brushed a wisp of hair from Takha’s forehead. We will grow up together, she thought.

  FIFTY-ONE

  KIIN STOOD ON HER SLEEPING PLATFORM AND hung each cradle from the rafters. The Raven finished his meat and held his bowl out toward her. She stepped down from the platform and took the bowl and filled it again.

  “It would be good,” her spirit whispered, “if men could sometimes fill their own bowls.” Such a little thing when a woman was busy and a man only sitting, doing nothing. But Kiin chided herself for the thought. Had she not come back to a clean ulaq, lamp wick trimmed, night baskets washed, even new grass on the floor?

  The Raven took the bowl and grunted at Kiin. Kiin waited, watching him eat. When he was finished, he tossed the bowl in a corner and crawled up on his sleeping platform, sitting there, his back against the wall. He watched as Kiin filled her own bowl and ate.

  Kiin cupped the bowl in her hands and waited until the meat cooled. She sat with crossed legs, her head down. She was not hungry. To have Woman of the Sky and Woman of the Sun in her ulaq, telling her she must kill one of her sons, had twisted her stomach until it felt too small to hold any food. But she must eat or she would have no milk for her babies. She dipped her hands into the bowl and scooped a portion of meat into her mouth. It was good. The muscles in her arms and legs and at the back of her neck slowly relaxed.

  The Raven pushed himself to the edge of the sleeping platform. Kiin expected him to interrupt her eating with requests for more food or for water. But he only looked at her and said, “I am not a good man.”

  Kiin swallowed. Did he expect her to answer him? To agree or disagree?

  But then he continued, glancing away from Kiin and speaking as though he spoke, not to her, but perhaps to her sons, maybe to some spirit only he could see. “But I am not evil.” He cleared his throat.

  “There is one thing I want,” he said. “I want to be shaman of this village. I want men to come to me to get power for their hunting. I want women to bring their children to me so I can give them powerful names.”

  Kiin lowered the bowl to her lap and nodded. This man was her husband, the one who protected her sons. If he honored her by speaking to her about his dreams, then she would listen. She would try to understand him.

  The Raven stood and walked to her sleeping platform. For a long time he watched the babies as they slept. Then he turned to Kiin. “They do not look like you,” he said.

  “N-no,” Kiin answered. “M-m-my spirit is weak, n-not even s-strong enough to touch a baby that I carry in my belly.”

  “But your carvings have power,” the Raven said.

  Kiin thought of the poor faint lines of her carvings, features only hinted, obscure, like something pictured in the clouds, and she remembered the carvings Shuganan had made, the carvings full of detail, each mark of the knife sure and true. Kiin’s carvings were nothing more than a small way to please the Raven, a way to make him see her with favor, perhaps to make him want to protect her sons. But then her spirit pushed into her mouth, controlled her tongue, said what Kiin would not have said, “Yes, they are powerful. They have great power. All my power goes into my carvings, all except what I save for my songs.”

  The Raven nodded, turned away from the babies and walked over to where she sat. Kiin took another scoop of food from her bowl. “Your sons do not look like their father.”

  “Qakan?” Kiin asked, puzzled. “They are n-not his sons. They belong to my husband, Amgigh, a m-man of the First M-Men tribe.”

  “Amgigh,” Raven said and again went over to look at the babies. “Which one is most like Amgigh?” he asked.

  But there was some strangeness in the question, something that made Kiin wary. “They both look like … like Amgigh,” she said, and seeing the Raven frown, said, “One looks like Amgigh’s father and one like his mother.”

  The Raven slowly smiled. “So,” he said, “will you miss Qakan when he leaves this villag
e? He plans to go soon. He told me that he will return to his own people.”

  “I will n-not m-miss Qakan,” Kiin said. “I will be happy when he g-goes.”

  As though he had not heard her, the Raven said, “If you want to go, to return with him to his people, I will let you go. You must leave your carvings and you must leave your sons. Someday, your sons will bring me power. By then, those old women, the Grandmother and the Aunt will be dead and this village will need a shaman.”

  Kiin took a long breath. Why did the Raven think he was strong enough to be shaman? Why did he think he was strong enough to stand against her sons’ curse if he could not even hold his eyes open against two old women?

  “Qakan does n-not want me to go with him and I do n-not want to go,” Kiin answered. “Qakan has Yellow-hair. She can paddle and she will be a wife for his bed.”

  The Raven smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. It opened his mouth too wide, showed too many of his teeth, and Kiin had to hold her shoulders stiff to keep from shuddering.

  “Yellow-hair will not go with him,” the Raven said. He paced the length of the ulaq, turned and spoke to Kiin as if he were explaining something to a child. “You are my wife. You are a good wife because you keep this ulaq clean and you have given me two sons. Lemming Tail is my wife. She is a good woman in a man’s bed. Good to make the nights pleasant. Perhaps I will keep both of you; perhaps someday I will trade you to another man, but for now you are my wives. But Yellow-hair, whether she is wife to another or not and whether I have many other wives, Yellow-hair is my woman. She belongs to me and I belong to her.

  “Yellow-hair is not a good wife. She is lazy and sometimes she is good in my bed, very good, better even than Lemming Tail. But only sometimes. She cannot sew and she cannot prepare meat. But I, too, am lazy. I do not hunt too often and I do not help when someone in the village puts up a lodge. I do not make my own weapons and I do not build my own ikyak. But there is some spirit that binds Yellow-hair to me. That is why she will not go with Qakan. And that is why I say to you, if you are willing to leave your sons, you, too, are free to go with Qakan, to see if he will take you back to Amgigh. Perhaps you and Amgigh are like Yellow-hair and me.”

  For a long time Kiin did not answer. Her thoughts were not on Amgigh, but on Samiq. Yes, perhaps it was as the Raven said. No matter who Kiin had as husband, no matter how many wives Samiq took, Kiin belonged to Samiq and Samiq belonged to her. But how could she return with Qakan? He could not risk taking her back, letting Kayugh and Amgigh know that he had taken Kiin against her will, had cursed Amgigh’s sons by using her as wife.

  So she turned her thoughts to the Raven. He was not a good husband, though he had never beaten her, and Lemming Tail said he had beaten her only once. But Kiin had seen Kayugh with Chagak, Big Teeth with Crooked Nose and Little Duck, so she knew what a good husband was. She knew the difference between a man who kept a woman only for his bed and his ulaq and a man who cared about his woman as he cared for himself. No, the Raven was not a good husband, but he was not a terrible husband.

  If she left on her own and took her sons, he would come after them. As long as he would protect Shuku and Takha she would stay. Perhaps she would have to go to his bed, but she had had worse. She would wait for her chance, leave the Walrus People when the Raven was away on a trading trip, when her sons were stronger.

  “N-no,” she answered the Raven. “It is not like that with Amgigh and me. I will stay with you.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  “PERHAPS WE SHOULD LEAVE,” SMALL KNIFE SAID. “Seven days is long enough to wait.”

  “Who is boy and who is man?” Samiq snapped, pacing the short length of the cave.

  Three Fish sat huddled in the corner, but Samiq, afraid she would back Small Knife in the argument, did not look at her.

  “They may return,” Samiq said, speaking with his back toward Small Knife. He did not think the boy would answer.

  “They will not return,” Small Knife said, his voice sounding tired, flat, like a father speaking to a sullen child. And Samiq suddenly felt foolish. The boy was right. Why else would they take everything except his belongings? Had he not said so himself? What spirit bound him to this beach?

  His thoughts were interrupted by a grinding roar, and the ground moved; dirt and dust sifted down from the top of the cave.

  Three Fish screamed.

  “Three Fish,” Samiq said loudly, straining to be heard above the roar of the earth. The woman grabbed her suk and ran to the cave entrance.

  “Three Fish!”

  She stopped and looked back at him.

  “Stay here. It is safer here.”

  “I cannot,” she said. “I cannot.” Her words were sobs. “You were not there. You do not know. The walls fell on Fat Wife. I could not get her out.”

  “This is not a ulaq,” Samiq said, looking also at Small Knife, seeing that the boy had not panicked, but was waiting for Samiq to speak.

  “Perhaps it would be best to leave,” the boy said quietly, his voice clear, calm. “Your wife is too frightened to stay.”

  Three Fish’s eyes were round, her lips open in a dark square like the mouth of a wailing child. Samiq’s people would not return as long as Aka burned, so what would be the purpose in staying? To torment Three Fish?

  “We will go,” Samiq said, taking his spears from where they leaned against the cave wall. “Leave nothing.”

  They lashed the ikyak to the ik to form a more stable craft, weighting both boats with their supplies and stones from the beach. Samiq sat alone in the ikyak, while Three Fish and Small Knife sat in the ik. They paddled out until the land was only a thin line obscured by the haze and ash that grayed the sky.

  Samiq’s chigadax kept him dry, but he knew that Small Knife and Three Fish would soon be wet from the sea spray. “We will find land and stop,” Samiq called to them. Small Knife did not answer, but seeing the boy’s soaked hair, Samiq shivered. For the first time since they had left the Whale Hunters’ village Samiq thought of his fine whaler’s hat. Where was it now? Crushed beneath the walls of Many Whales’ ulaq?

  Lashed to the ik, Samiq’s ikyak was clumsy and difficult to paddle. When he and Amgigh had hunted seal, they had often lashed their ikyan together to ride out a sudden storm. Then they had paddled only to stay afloat, but now Samiq must also keep the boats moving, even in the midst of waves that obeyed Aka and not the wind, waves that a hunter could not judge and know.

  And this ikyak was not his own, not made to the measure of his arms, legs, hands. His other ikyan were with the Whale Hunters: the ikyak Samiq had made as a boy, the one from which he had taken his first seal, and then the ikyak he and Many Whales had made—light, narrow, a craft that went through the waves like an otter. What had Kayugh taught him? That his ikyak was a brother.

  Yes, Samiq told himself, this ikyak was made for someone else, but it is a good ikyak. He stroked the craft’s sides, rubbed his fingers over the tight sea Hon skin. Yes, it is a good ikyak. Strong, well-made.

  “Brother,” he said, hoping the ikyak would hear, would feel the bond. Who could say what the ikyak would do if it knew Samiq longed for his other ikyan? “Brother.”

  The water was coming over the sides of the ik, and Samiq handed his bailing tube to Small Knife, the boy paddling with one hand while he sucked water into the tube and dumped it over the side.

  Samiq knew of small islands not far to the east, a place where he had hunted seals, a good place for bird eggs. “There is an island,” he called to Small Knife. “We will go to it.” But the sounds of the sea drowned out his words, and finally he only gestured, pointing toward the east, wishing he would have given Small Knife the ikyak, Samiq stronger, more able to paddle and bail the ik.

  The day was forever. The waves pushed them back toward land and they strained to make headway against the wind. Samiq’s shoulders ached and his throat burned. The salt spray stung his lips and tongue. But I am a hunter, he thought. What about Small Knife, only a boy, an
d Three Fish, a woman? He closed his eyes and again pulled his paddle through the water. We should have stayed, he thought. I told them we should have stayed. Aka would have calmed. We could have made an easy trip on smooth seas.

  “I cannot!” Three Fish’s voice broke over the noise of the waves and Samiq opened his eyes. The woman had slumped down in the ik, allowing her paddle to drag in the water at the side of the boat.

  “Do not lose your paddle,” he called to her, surprised that he felt no anger only despair, but Small Knife looked back at her and shouted, “Rest. I will paddle.” And Samiq was ashamed of his own weariness.

  “An island, soon!” he called to Small Knife, and he hoped that the boy heard.

  Samiq had lost the faint light where the sun shone behind the gray of the fog, and he did not know how much time had passed. A dangerous thing. A foolish thing, he told himself. What hunter allows such a thing to happen? But the tides and the sun together had seemed to desert him, each behaving as though it, too, had forgotten its place.

  Samiq continued to paddle, the movement so often repeated that his arms seemed to move by themselves. He noticed that since Three Fish no longer paddled, his stronger paddling was turning the boats, so he lifted his arms, dipping more shallowly into the water, matching his strokes with Small Knife’s.

  He watched the surface of the water for the change in color that would show they were near the island, but the floating ash altered all colors, and the first difference he noticed was the turning of the waves, the swells capping as they sped over shallow seas.

  “The water changes,” Small Knife called to him, and Samiq marveled that the boy had noticed.

  “We near the island,” Samiq called back. “Three Fish must paddle.”

  The woman put her paddle into the water, and Samiq was again able to work more quickly, pulling the ikyak with greater speed.