by Sue Harrison
21
AMGIGH EXPECTED KIIN TO be watching from the ulaq, to be waiting as a wife should wait, hoping for the return of her husband. It was evening, and he would not have to sit for long in the ulaq before he could go to his sleeping place, invite Kiin to follow him. Then he would ask her to rub his aching shoulders.
He could almost feel her hands upon him, the tiredness of his muscles passing from his body into her small, strong fingers. Then he would pull her to him, stroke her until he was ready to take her….
It was good to be a man. To have a wife.
He pushed his paddle hard into the water and thought of the Whale Hunters. He and his father had spent two days with them, trading for whale oil and the otter skins for Kiin, but it had been a difficult two days. The younger Whale Hunter women were bold, always beside him, laughing, flashing their eyes, but the grandfather Many Whales and his woman, Fat Wife, had treated him like a boy, not a man. They had not even offered him the comfort of a woman at night; he and Samiq had been given one sleeping place to share, as though they were children.
The cliffs gradually pulled back from the shore, opening into the wide shallow cove that was the First Men’s beach. Amgigh glanced back at his father. He was only the length of an ikyak behind him.
Someone was on the beach, Big Teeth, yes, and two women. Kiin? No, it was Amgigh’s mother. Crooked Nose was beside her. Where was Kiin?
He scanned the beach, then the ulaq roofs. She had known he would be back this day or the next. Would she have gone into the hills to collect roots, to the cliffs to snare birds? Was she no better wife than that?
Angrily, Amgigh pushed his ikyak ashore, loosened the hatch skirting and stepped out onto the beach. He picked up his ikyak, then felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Gray Bird. The man had blackened his face with charcoal, sign of mourning, and Amgigh felt the sudden tremble of his heart as it jumped from its place in his chest to settle high in his throat.
“Kiin?” he asked, his voice choked by the nearness of his heart.
Then Kayugh was beside him, his hand for a moment on Amgigh’s shoulder. “She is dead?” Kayugh asked.
Gray Bird nodded. “We found her ik in the kelp. There was a hole in the bottom.”
“You did not find her body?” Kayugh asked.
“No,” Gray Bird said and lifted his head to look out at the sea. “She is there with the sea spirits.” He looked at Amgigh. “Perhaps she will guide seals to your harpoon.”
Amgigh could not answer, could feel nothing but a sick emptiness in his belly, a full rushing in his head. He looked at his mother, felt a sudden and foolish hope that she would tell him Gray Bird was wrong. Kiin was alive. But then Amgigh noticed that she, too, had darkened her face with ashes and that she had cut a section of her hair short so that it hung in a fringe over her forehead.
He pulled his knife from its wrist sheath, and looking toward the sea, slashed it across his face, laying a cut open from cheek to jawbone. He wiped the knife in the beach gravel and then walked into the sea, scooped up a handful of water and splashed it against his face. The salt of the water burned in the wound. “She was a good wife,” Amgigh said, speaking to no one, speaking to everyone, speaking to the spirits. “She takes a part of my soul with her into the sea.”
Gray Bird waited two days. He watched Amgigh, watched as the young man went from sorrow to anger and to sorrow again.
In early morning the third day, Gray Bird pulled himself from his sleeping place, startled his wife with his early rising. Blue Shell, her matted hair cut short, her arms and legs marked with slashes she had made in mourning her daughter, had not yet set out food.
“Feed me, woman,” Gray Bird growled.
He ate quickly, then said to her, “I have taken a new name. You will call me Waxtal.”
Blue Shell looked up at him, her eyes wide, and waited as though for an explanation, but why tell her his reasons? Did she need to know? Women were whisperers, telling secrets to small, bothersome spirits. Perhaps when traders came to his ulaq, he would tell the story of his daughter, of her greed and how he let her live. Then he would tell how the water spirits took her. And the traders would need no explanation. They would know why he was called Waxtal. Did he not have pity upon his daughter, in spite of her greed?
Gray Bird stood, pulled on his parka and climbed from the ulaq. Amgigh was on the beach, as he had been each morning since his return from the Whale Hunters. He sat beside his ikyak, a sea lion bladder of seal oil in his lap, but his hands were still. Only his eyes moved, scanning the surface of the sea.
Gray Bird sat down on the other side of Amgigh’s ikyak. Finally Amgigh looked up at Gray Bird, shook his head as though to clear it and asked, “Qakan—he went to trade with the Walrus People?”
Gray Bird shrugged. “Perhaps. Perhaps only to other First Men villages.”
“My knife is gone,” Amgigh said. “All my knives.”
Gray Bird waited, said nothing.
“I think Qakan took them.”
Again Gray Bird shrugged. “He had a pack of your knives, three short-bladed, two long,” Gray Bird said.
“Yes, I asked him to trade them for me, but now all my knives are gone and a special knife, obsidian, long-bladed. I made two, one for Samiq, one for myself.”
“If you did not give it to him,” Gray Bird said, “Qakan would not take it. Perhaps your mother put it in a special place; perhaps before she died, Kiin did.” Gray Bird cleared his throat. “You will hunt today?” he asked.
“Perhaps. If my father wants to hunt.”
“I will hunt with you if he does not.”
“Perhaps, Gray Bird, I am not sure….”
Gray Bird coughed, again cleared his throat. “I have taken a new name.”
Amgigh looked at him, for the first time pulling his eyes from their study of the sea.
“To honor my daughter.”
“You did not honor her during her life,” Amgigh said, and Gray Bird heard the bitterness in his words.
“I let her live. I let her take the power she needed for her life from her brother. Now he is a trader, not a hunter as both he and I had wanted.”
Amgigh hunched his shoulders as though pulling himself away from Gray Bird’s words. “What is your new name?” he asked.
“Waxtal.”
Amgigh grunted.
“You are the first to know,” Gray Bird said.
For a time they sat without speaking, then Gray Bird said, “And Samiq, will he change his name?”
“I do not know,” Amgigh said. “Perhaps the Whale Hunters will have a new name for him. If he takes a whale.”
“He is a good hunter, a strong man,” said Gray Bird. “You think he will return to us or stay with the Whale Hunters?”
“I think he will return. He has promised he will teach me to hunt the whale in return for nights with my wife.”
“But you have no wife.”
Amgigh shrugged. “He will not know that until he returns. Besides, he promised to teach our father to hunt the whale. A man always keeps the promises he makes to his father.”
“And you think he does not know?”
“Does not know what?”
“That Kayugh is not his true father.”
Amgigh turned, his eyes suddenly narrowed to dark slits, his mouth tightened into a fine line.
“You did not know?” Gray Bird asked and felt a billowing of gladness begin in his chest.
“No,” Amgigh said slowly.
“And did you know that Chagak is not your mother?”
Amgigh’s eyes widened.
“If you do not believe me, ask her. Ask your father.”
“Kayugh is my father.”
“Yes and Chagak is Samiq’s mother.”
“And Red Berry?”
“She is Kayugh’s daughter and daughter to your true mother, a woman who died shortly after your birth.”
“They should have told us. It would have been easier then to understand why Many
Whales wanted Samiq and not me.”
“They should have told you,” Gray Bird said, “but perhaps they were afraid Samiq’s true father or your true mother would come back from the Dancing Lights, settle into Kayugh’s ulaq, use their spirit powers to harm the children that were not their own.”
“Yes.”
“Now you understand why your father chose a wife for you before choosing one for Samiq.”
“Yes.”
“And Kiin was a good wife to you.”
Amgigh bit at his bottom lip, then he picked up a thin piece of driftwood and began making long deep lines in the beach Gravel. “Who is Samiq’s father?” he finally asked.
Again Gray Bird shrugged. “Shuganan’s son, Chagak says. But I have often wondered. Shuganan was tall and thin, and Chagak, she is not tall, but she is fine-boned, thin. Samiq is heavy-boned, wide with muscle. He does not look like one of the First Men.”
“But Shuganan’s wife was a Whale Hunter and so was my—Chagak’s—mother. Whale Hunters are a big people with wide strong muscles.”
“Yes,” said Gray Bird. “But also tall.”
“Who else could Samiq belong to? Not Big Teeth.”
“No,” Gray Bird said. He stood, adjusted his parka. “Perhaps you should ask Chagak.” He picked up the bladder of oil from Amgigh’s lap, began coating the seams of Amgigh’s ikyak.
22
FOR TWO DAYS KIIN lay in the bottom of her brother’s ik. The rocking of the boat made her head ache, and whenever Qakan forced her to drink a bit of water, to eat a mouthful of food, she vomited.
She did not try to help him make camp, to cook food or arrange sleeping mats. She stayed in the ik, and much of the time she slept, but when she was awake, she planned. Each day, her head hurt less. Soon she would be strong again, stronger than Qakan. And who could say? Perhaps some grandmother spirit had seen what Qakan did to her. Perhaps some grandmother spirit would help Kiin escape.
On the third day, as Qakan awkwardly pushed the boat from the beach where they had spent the night, he said, “So you are going to die.”
Kiin said nothing, and she kept her eyes closed against the light of the new day. But though Kiin said nothing, she heard her spirit speak—the words clear in Kiin’s mind: “No, Kiin will not die. You will die, Qakan.”
Kiin felt the ik lurch as Qakan settled himself on his padded seat of sealskin. “It is sad you will die without a soul,” Qakan said.
Kiin opened her eyes only a little, a slit that she hoped Qakan would not notice. Her brother looked down at her. His face was smudged with dirt, his birdskin parka torn on one shoulder, his hair dull and matted. He looked like a boy, not a trader; he looked like someone who would know little, who would be easily overpowered. She felt her spirit swell within her chest, felt strength once more in her arms and legs, and she realized that her eyes now saw what was true, not spirit images, doubling and tripling each rock, each blade of grass.
“So you will die without a soul and go nowhere,” Qakan continued. “You will not go to the Dancing Lights and you will never see Samiq again.”
Kiin’s heart jumped in her chest. Why mention Samiq when Amgigh was her husband? Did her feelings for Samiq show themselves so clearly that even Qakan knew?
“M-m-my husband is Am-Amgigh,” she said, her voice cracking from days of silence.
Qakan looked at her, and through the fringes of her eyelashes, Kiin saw that he smiled, the smile he used when he was preparing to hit her, when he was ready to tell lies about her to their father.
“So you are alive again,” Qakan said.
Kiin moved her head slowly and opened her eyes wide to stare at the gray sky above them. Yes, she was stronger, and her head hurt only where Qakan had hit her, and that pain was the tenderness of a bruise, not the deep ache that pulled her into terrible dreams and made Qakan’s voice seem like some high whining of the wind.
“I brought you to help me paddle and to catch fish and prepare food,” Qakan said. “I did not think I would have to take care of you like you were a baby.”
“Amgigh w-w-will come for m-me,” Kiin said. She raised herself slowly and gritted her teeth as both sky and ik seemed to spin. “T-t-today or t-tomorrow he will find us and he w-will kill you for t-taking me.”
Qakan laughed. It was a laugh that their father used, a laugh that seemed to start in the throat and arch up into a high, thin note like the call of a guillemot. The fat under Qakan’s chin trembled and his belly quivered beneath his parka.
Qakan, a trader, Kiin thought. Why would anyone deal with him? But then Kiin’s spirit whispered, “Many men will want to trade with him. Qakan is a boy, easy to trick. He will take sealskins and come home with lemming skins.”
“Amgigh will not follow us,” Qakan said. “He thinks you are dead.”
Kiin pulled herself to sit erect in the ik. She faced Qakan, saw the truth of what he said in his eyes.
“I put a hole in the bottom of our mother’s ik and wedged it between some rocks near the south cliffs. The whole village will think the water spirits have taken you.”
Kiin raised her chin, stared at Qakan until he looked away. “I w-w-will send my s-s-spirit to Amgigh during his dreams s-s-so he will know the truth,” she said.
“You have no spirit,” Qakan spat out. “Everyone in the village thinks you are dead. Your spirit was afraid to stay in a dead body. It left you while you were asleep. It went to the Dancing Lights without you.”
Kiin smiled, nearly laughed, but did not reply to Qakan’s foolishness.
Qakan cocked his head, watched her for a moment. “You think I brought you with me only to sew my parka and prepare my food? No. I will sell you when we come to a Walrus People village.”
Kiin kept the smile on her face, but a small portion of the anger that had been growing in her chest suddenly changed to fear. Yes, she would bring a good price, if not as wife, then as slave, and traders said some of the Walrus People kept slaves.
“Th-they will not w-w-want a woman without a s-s-soul,” she said and allowed the mocking of her spirit to show in her eyes.
“I will not tell them.” He looked at her as though she were a child, as though he were scolding her. “You should not tell them either. It will be better for you if you are wife rather than slave.”
“S-s-so I become w-w-wife,” Kiin said. “And s-s-someday I ask to visit my people, t-t-to return to my village. I w-w-will t-tell our father and my husband what you did. Perhaps he or Am-Amgigh will kill you. P-p-perhaps Kayugh will.”
Qakan shrugged. He dipped the paddle into the water and said, “Our father already knows. And Amgigh will get another wife. A better wife than you, and he will not want you back.”
Kiin heard the words, gritted her teeth in anger. Of course, her father knew. How else would Qakan have accumulated the furs and skins, the oil to take on a trading trip? But then she thought, He knows Qakan will trade me to the Walrus People, but does he know that Qakan forced himself on me, used me like a wife?
“And he-he knows you cursed yourself and your t-t-trading trip by using your own s-sister as a w-w-wife?” she asked and snorted when she saw Qakan’s face redden.
“I will get more for you if you carry a child,” Qakan said, his voice low.
Kiin leaned toward him. Anger forced her words out, flowing and clear, as though her spirit spoke and not Kiin herself. “And you think you will give me that child. You think Amgigh has not already put a child in my belly? You will get nothing,” she said. “You have cursed yourself and this ik. You see the blood in the bottom of this ik. It is my blood. Woman’s blood. If you take this ik too far out on the sea, the sea animals themselves will bite a hole in this ik and we will both drown.”
Qakan hunched his shoulders as though to protect himself from her words. “If I am cursed,” he said, “then you are doubly cursed. If you return to our people and tell them what has happened, do you think Amgigh will want you? Do you think a hunter of the Walrus People will want you? Do not
speak to me of curses. I am a trader. I have too much power to be cursed by what happens with a woman. It is the woman who carries the curse. Already it has taken your soul.”
“You are wrong, Qakan,” Kiin said. “I still have my soul. I feel it, strong, here.” She pressed her fist against her chest.
Qakan smiled. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “Perhaps your soul is still there. It takes a long time for a soul to leave someone who still lives, but perhaps it is smaller already. Perhaps each time you speak, a small part of your soul comes out in your words, comes out and is taken by the wind up to the Dancing Lights.”
At his last word, a large wave slammed against the ik, pushing it toward an outcropping of rock. Qakan sucked in his breath and paddled, yelled for Kiin to help. She grabbed a paddle from the bottom of the ik and thrust it against the rock. The rock ground into the wooden blade. Kiin’s arms felt weak, but she held the paddle steady, pushing with all her strength while Qakan pulled the boat with long, deep strokes.
Finally the wave was beyond them, and Kiin watched as it foamed against the beach, its power draining into the dark gravel, the wave hissing as it pulled itself back into the sea.
“Keep the paddle,” Qakan said. “We will go faster if you help.”
Kiin tightened her hands on the paddle’s smooth shaft. Her eyes followed the shaft to the blade. “Take him now,” Kiin’s spirit whispered. “Take him now. He is tired and you have your strength back.”
“I-I-I will paddle only if you t-t-turn the ik bac-back toward our island,” Kiin said.
Qakan pulled his paddle from the water and raised the blade toward her.
He lifted his chin, gesturing toward the partially healed gash that marked the side of Kiin’s forehead.
“You have forgotten what I can do with this paddle?” he asked.
Kiin, the wood of her own paddle cool against her hands, looked at her brother’s smooth, plump fingers and felt no fear, but she drew back and pulled her paddle from the water to hold like a protection between herself and Qakan.
Qakan threw back his head and laughed.