Joseph took us to see the great umiaks men rode between worlds, but he would not take us to the Earth, not even for a day. “It would take three days to get there,” he said, though it looked so close. He also took us to the mirrors that powered our satellite and sent light into my level. Even with dark goggles, we could not look at the mirrors themselves. “The light shines through holes timed to open and close in copy of days on Earth,” Joseph told us. “Without warmth from this light, everything here would freeze. The air itself would snow down on top of the ice.”
“You make winter come?” I asked.
“People like me make your days shorter and shorter so there is less and less light to make heat,” Joseph said. “Winter comes for you on the same day every year.”
So men like Joseph timed our winters, let us have summer. Knowing that took away my hope for one more warm day before the snow.
“After men not Inuit learned to talk to whales, all whaling on Earth stopped,” Joseph said. “You will not be allowed to keep hunting whales, if the whales stay here instead of letting us take them to Earth.” But when I finished school that year, Father planned to take me on my first whale hunt. I had to know, as a man, how to hunt — not just rabbits, ptarmigan, and salmon — but whales.
“Joseph has talked with whales on this satellite,” Kwiguk said.
Joseph made the wall in front of us slide back, and we could look through windows into the sea. Dark, huge shapes were swimming there — whales. Joseph had us put on earphones, and we could hear the whales sing. Joseph turned on great lights on the seabed. The whales began to swim away, but Joseph put on earphones and talked to them through a mouthpiece. One bull whale turned and swam slowly toward us. When he bumped the window we all stood up, even Kwiguk, but the glass held. The whale filled the window. He pressed the right side of his face against it and stared at us with one eye.
Joseph smiled. “Come ask the whale your questions,” he said, holding out his earphones and mouthpiece. No one moved. Finally Kwiguk walked up to the window, pulled Joseph’s earphones and mouthpiece over her head, and spoke to the whale. “Are you happy here?” she asked. The whale sang. A man’s voice in our earphones translated: “Yes,” the whale had said.
“Do you want to leave here?” Kwiguk asked.
“Only if men keep hunting us.”
Kwiguk gave the earphones back to Joseph. The whale went on to talk about the beauty he saw in the sea and of his anger: “Avoid men in boats,” he said. “Men kill whales. Men not spare young or old who break water first for air.”
Joseph put on the earphones. “What will you do if men keep hunting you?” he asked.
“Kill,” the whale said.
I took off my earphones and thought of my father’s whale hunt and how the whales would be taken off our world unless we stopped hunting them. But what would we eat? What oil would we burn in our lamps? What would I do at my first whale hunt now that I had heard a whale talk?
That night, Joseph gave us our parkas and led us to the elevator. No one threw up on the trip back. When Joseph opened the doors we could smell the cold air of home. Kendi and I did not run between the buildings to the school like the rest; we hung back and looked up at the lights in our sky. There were lights there, scattered across the other side of the world. But they were not stars. They were the lights of campfires, and of boats on the sea.
“Come to me when you are sixteen, legal age,” Joseph said. “I will take you out, educate you, help you do whatever you want. This world must change, or men on Earth will stop trading with us again.”
But I did not care about Joseph’s trade. I had only wanted, all my life, to hunt for my family, and now I could not. The very animal we depended on talked, and loved, and plotted revenge.
Kwiguk was angry. “Remember the good things you have with your families. Your ancestors knew what Earth offered, and they rejected it: it was not the Inuit way, not a happy way. Do not let the old ways die.”
“But how do old ways die?” Joseph asked. “A culture does not die if it chooses to adapt and change — it becomes something better.”
Joseph and Kwiguk told us these things on our last day of school. We were happy for that, at least. All I could think of was going home. But Joseph sat on the desk in front of our class and would not let us go. He looked at us for a long time. “You never know what education will do to you,” he said, finally. “You never know what it will make you see. Yours has made you see worlds. Don’t give them up.”
My parka and trousers stank. I was ashamed to wear them. But when I saw Thule running toward me, her black hair flying back over her open parka hood, I picked her up, swung her around, and hugged her. Her clothes smelled as bad as mine. She did not seem to mind. “What is that, sparkling in the light?” Thule asked, pointing back at the buildings.
“Glass,” I said. “Windows.”
She looked disappointed. “You already know,” she said. I thought of my first year when I’d begun learning new words, and I let Thule tell me the names for the antennae on top of the buildings, the pencils, the toilets.
Thule and I held hands and ran down the valley with the other students. When we got to the seashore, we split into two groups and ran up the beach in opposite directions to where our families camped waiting for us. The sand was wet from a recent rain, and since we were so far north the sand was springy and easy to run in. We hurried around a hill that jutted out into the sea and narrowed the beach. A man stood on the beach, smiling. The others ran past him and called his name: Anvik. Anvik had come to meet Thule and me. He took Thule in his arms and hugged her, dropped her on her feet and hugged me, not caring that Kendi and Nenana were watching. But they ran off. Anvik held me away from him. “You’ve grown,” he said, looking down at my trousers’ legs. “And you’re through with school. No more of that nonsense.”
But I wanted to tell him what I had seen and heard. “We listened to a whale talk, Anvik,” I said. He laughed, grabbed my left hand and Thule’s right hand and ran, fast, to our camp, pulling us along.
Mother was helping other women cook a feast because, I thought, we had all come home. Kendi’s family was there, and Nenana’s and Talkeetna’s. Fifteen skin tents stretched up our little valley away from the sea. But then I saw Father with the other men sharpening harpoons, knives, and lances.
The feast was not for our return.
“We will leave on a whale hunt tomorrow,” Anvik said, his hand on my shoulder.
Mother gave Thule and me a handful of fried minnows. “Anvik is the leader of the hunt,” she said, quietly. I could tell from the way she said it that she was so proud of Anvik, so happy. She was the wife of one man and the mother of another. “Anvik brought all these people,” she said to me. “It was his doing. His hunt will be your first.”
But I did not want a hunt.
“I’ll command my own umiak,” Anvik said. “Five of my friends will go with me.”
I made myself look up and smile. How could Anvik know, after all? Three months before I would have been as happy for him as Mother was — I would have helped him.
And I still would. From what Joseph said, the hunts would end soon enough. With Anvik in his own umiak, my father would need me in his: hunts in the north and south were harder because everything weighed less. Whales moved in ways they could not normally move.
The whales could get away.
If Anvik did not get a whale, he could lead us to Atka to hunt caribou.
Thule hugged Anvik and ran off to find Father. I looked at Anvik.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “I don’t have a wife to give my men.” Every leader of a hunt exchanges his wife with his men to cement their friendship.
Mother turned the spit of fish she tended and winked at me. “But if his hunt is successful, the elders will recognize a marriage for him,” she said. She nodded at a beautiful girl basting seal roasts over another fire: Taimyr, Kendi’s older sister. Taimyr would not look at us.
&
nbsp; “Come see our tent,” Anvik said.
And I understood. Taimyr and Anvik were friends, and they had agreed to live together. I had known couples to live together till a baby came before the elders recognized them. Mother and Father had done that, and Anvik had gotten them recognized. But if what Mother said were true, the elders would recognize Anvik and Taimyr soon. It would be unusual and wonderful.
Anvik took me into his tent, and it was a fine tent. His whale ribs supported the center, and his scrimshaw hung in rows up the ribs. The seal, rabbit, and caribou pelts on the floor were soft and new. I sat on the pelts and looked at Anvik. All I could think was that he had left home.
The feasting went late into the night: we ate seal, salmon, caribou, ripe berries. Thule scratched the letters of the alphabet in the sand next to a fire and made everyone laugh, she was so serious. But everyone laughed harder when Kendi, Nenana, Talkeetna, and I tried to tell about all we had seen, heard, and learned.
“You went down through the rock?” Anvik asked.
“The Raven must have spit you back inside,” someone laughed.
They thought we’d planned to say the things we said as a joke.
“I’m tired,” was all I would say when Mother asked what was wrong.
Suddenly Anvik ran up behind me, grabbed my shoulders, threw me on a blanket. The men picked up the blanket and tossed me in the air. The other children shrieked with delight and begged to be tossed next. I kept trying to stand on my feet: the men would toss me in the air, and I would try to come down on my feet. Anvik threw Thule on the blanket and pulled me off after they had tossed me seven times. Thule laughed and clapped her hands: having one’s brother lead the whale hunt meant less time waiting for a blanket toss.
The umiaks were all drawn far up on the beach. While the men tossed the children, the women danced around the boats singing their magic songs. I left the toss and went to listen to the women sing. Mother held the prow of Father’s umiak and sang of life and a safe return. She held the prow of Anvik’s and sang the same song twice:
Over seas and through all storms,
Alive, and well, and free.
Over seas and through all storms,
And safely back to me.
The men had piled their harpoons, lances, and knives next to the central fire, and Unalakleet began dancing around the weapons, beating his drum and chanting. One by one, we all went and sat around the fire, ate more meat, and sang with Unalakleet. We sang strong spells, spells that would put the whales in our control or at least make them feel pity for weak men so they would give themselves to us.
But the caribou had had no pity for Nulato; Nulato had had no magic.
Unalakleet stopped, took off his mask, and touched it to Anvik’s forehead to bless him. The singing stopped. Unalakleet held the mask to Anvik’s forehead for a long time, then swirled his black seal pelt robe around his chest and went to his tent.
Anvik would not look at Taimyr, but she stared at him. After a time she went to the shaman’s tent: her last duty before Anvik’s hunt. My father began telling hunting stories. The rest took up their weapons and whispered their own charms over them. Mother came for Thule and me. Our tent seemed empty without Anvik, but I was so tired I was soon asleep.
Father woke me when it was still dark. I dressed quickly. Thule and Mother sat up and watched us leave.
The men had pushed all seven umiaks down onto the water, and Father helped me up into his. Kendi and Kendi’s father and three other men were in with us. Anvik pushed his umiak away from the shore and jumped in over the side. Father and five other men pushed out the rest of the umiaks and jumped in. Father sat down next to me, and his boots and the cuffs of his pants were dripping and wet.
I rowed with the other men and watched the fires in our camp merge into one orange light that rose up above our heads. Light came, but the sea was misty and foggy, cold. I did not think we could find whales in such weather. Men in the different umiaks kept calling to each other so we would not get separated.
But after our midday meal the fog cleared, and we could see far out over the ocean. Our seven umiaks were scattered in a long line. We had come to a part of the sea filled with life: seals; plovers, seagulls, and terns overhead, far out from land, hunting fish; even a great bull walrus swimming alone in the water, angry enough to charge our umiak, but lances drove him away. I put my hand in the water, and the water was warm. “We are above one of Sedna’s homes,” Kendi’s father said. Sedna controlled seals, lured men out of their umiaks to drown at her side, and had homes on the seafloor. She kept great fires burning around each house to scare back sharks, and the fires boiled the water, which cooled as it rose to the surface so we could touch it and row across it. Unalakleet often told the story of the day he had hooked a great fish in the warm water above one of Sedna’s homes. The fish swam straight down, pulling out all of Unalakleet’s line. Unalakleet had been afraid the line would break, but suddenly the fish quit struggling and Unalakleet pulled it in: fried, cooked just right. In its panic, the fish had swum into Sedna’s fires.
Kendi smiled at me. I thought of the plankton induction tanks: Kendi and I knew why the water was warm, why this part of the sea never froze and was full of life. The whales would be feeding here.
My father tapped my shoulder and had me pull in my oar. Two men kept rowing, gently. I stood and looked ahead: twenty or thirty sperm whales were spouting, not far away. Our umiak was the closest — we would reach the whales first. Father stood in the prow, harpoon in hand. We came up on the whales slowly, quietly. I imagined them talking to each other. Even so, I put on my gloves, ready to help pull in the rope after the harpoon was thrown, and set my father’s lance at his feet.
But the whales saw us or heard us and dropped down into the ocean. Good, I thought. The waves of their sounding rocked our umiak. We all watched the sea. Then I realized the whales had not had time to spout and take in the air they needed. They would surface again, soon. We would be waiting.
They surfaced behind us. There was no use trying to hide or be quiet. The whales knew we were hunting them. So we rowed hard and fast, and my father watched in the prow. I was soon tired. I hoped the other men were getting tired so we’d stop and let the whales go, but we gained on them — because of our spells or their pity — and suddenly Father stood up and threw his harpoon. Our umiak hit a whale hard, was knocked up into the air and slammed down onto the water but did not capsize. The whale had sounded. Kendi’s father laughed as the rope played out over the prow. We held on to the rope to slow down the whale, and the rope burned through my gloves. Our umiak seemed to fly over the ocean, skimming the top of the water. The other men rowed toward us to help kill our whale, shouting happily, each man hoping to be the one to stab its heart with a lance.
Our whale surfaced, finally, far ahead of our umiak but swimming slower. We worked to pull in the rope and got close enough to see barnacles on the whale’s mouth and a great scar down its back, relic of some fight. We pulled the rope tight, but suddenly the whale lunged ahead against it, jerked our umiak, knocked Kendi and me to the floor.
“Let the rope hang slack,” Father said. He looked unhappy. After a time we pulled in the rope; when it was tight the whale lunged ahead again and again and the harpoon broke free. The whale plunged down into the water.
“He’s a smart one,” Kendi’s father said.
“He’s been hunted before,” my father said.
All afternoon and evening we sighted the whales spouting and swimming ahead of us. In the night we let our umiaks drift apart, and one man watched while the rest slept. We kept the whales running, and they were tired.
I tried not to think of the whale we had heard talk, and Kendi said nothing to me about him. He and I lay together and watched the lights of the Inuit on the other side of the world.
Father woke me in the night when it was my turn to watch. I sat in the prow and looked out over the sea. A strange blue light shone at night on the ocean. I could see far
up the sides of the world. Once I thought I saw the jets of whales spouting in the distance, heading back toward land. None of the men watching in the other umiaks called out. Neither did I.
In the morning, Anvik harpooned the whale my father had harpooned. We watched the whale sound, swim ahead, pull Anvik’s boat over the water. The men in all the umiaks were shouting, rowing hard to catch up. Anvik and his friends dragged in the rope, frantically, and finally the whale could not stand the pain of the harpoon pulling against it, and it surfaced.
It was exhausted. It lay wallowing in the water, spouting. I kept hoping it would get enough air and dive underwater, but Anvik dropped the rope and grabbed his lance. His friends pulled the umiak up to the whale. Anvik stabbed it deep and hard. He pulled out the lance and stabbed it again. Blood spurted across the prow of Anvik’s umiak staining it red, staining the water around the umiak red. The whale jerked back and forth. We came up on its other side, and Father stabbed it with his lance.
And the whale sounded. The rope burned out over the prow of Anvik’s umiak and knocked one of Anvik’s friends into the water. They pulled him back in, red from the whale blood. Anvik smiled and waved at us. His friends were holding the rope, but the umiak was not being pulled ahead. The rope spun out and went straight down. Suddenly Kendi’s father and my father grabbed their oars and started rowing away.“Cut the rope and row!” Father shouted to Anvik. Anvik did not understand. The rope quit playing out of Anvik’s umiak, and his friends started pulling it in, all slack. When Anvik saw that, he cut the rope and shouted for his men to row, anywhere, in any direction —
The whale burst from the water ahead of Anvik’s umiak. It leapt completely from the sea, blood streaming down its sides — something it could not have done, hurt as it was, except in the far north where it weighed less. It twisted in the air and seemed to fall back slowly, seemed to try to keep jumping as if it hoped to reach the oceans it could see on the other side of the world, its flukes jerking up against its sides, twisting, finally, so it would fall back on Anvik’s umiak.
How We Play the Game in Salt Lake and Other Stories Page 7