Mother Earth Father Sky

by Sue Harrison

  Had her people done anything to these men? Why had they come killing and stealing? Chagak took her woman’s knife from the sheath she wore under her suk and began to slice through the dead man’s joints. But each cut also seemed to add to Chagak’s pain, as though her knife carried two blades, one for the enemy, one for her spirit.

  Chagak dragged Seal Stalker’s body to her father’s ulaq. She put him in her father’s sleeping place, wrapped him in one of the grass mats she had made for him and washed the blood from his face and neck.

  And when she had finished, it seemed as though she had no more energy to work, no desire to leave the ulaq. It was a large ulaq, large enough for the spirits of all her family and her own spirit.

  Chagak was old enough to remember when her father had built the ulaq. He and several of the village men had spent three or four days digging an oval pit in the side of the hill. She and her mother and aunts and grandmother had hauled clay from the edge of a stream, worked it with just enough water to make it pliable, then plastered the clay over the dirt and stone floor. They had smoothed and leveled and packed the earth with their feet, all the time laughing and singing, listening to tales her grandmother told.

  A whale had washed ashore earlier that summer and the chief hunter gave Chagak’s father permission to use the jawbones as the center rafters for the roof. The men lined the walls of the pit with huge rocks and packed dirt around them. With the stones and driftwood logs as support, they set the whalebone rafters, then smaller driftwood rafters, in place. The women wove willow through the rafters and helped the men finish the ulaq roof with sod and thatching.

  Chagak looked up at the light coming in the roof hole. There was still time enough to bury others, but Chagak thought, I am too tired. Surely the spirits will understand.

  For a long time she sat in the main room of the ulaq, blocking thoughts from her mind, not even lighting oil lamps when light no longer came through the open roof hole. It had been a difficult day. Most of the bodies were cared for, only a few left to take inside, only a few more chants and mourning songs to sing.

  Tomorrow I will finish, she promised herself. Then a thought came to her, something that had first come when she saw Seal Stalker’s body: I, too, should be dead. What joy was there in living alone? She would never be a wife, never bear children. She would live in fear of spirits, in fear of strangers. And how could one person stand alone against the powers of earth and sky? It would be better to be dead.

  And so that night, as Chagak lay in her sleeping place, she thought of death and the many ways she might die.

  The next morning Chagak buried the last three bodies, and only the man Seal Stalker had killed was left to be eaten by birds, left to rot.

  Chagak spent another portion of the day gathering any weapons she could find. There were few, not enough for all the hunters of her tribe. The attackers must have taken weapons with them when they left, Chagak thought, but it would not be good for the men of her tribe to be without weapons in the next world. How would they hunt?

  Chagak spent much time in the storage places of the ulas, taking any weapons she could find, finally giving small-bladed crooked knives and burins, obsidian and hammerstones to the men for whom she had no spears. Perhaps they could make their own weapons.

  It was time then for Chagak’s death. She prepared herself carefully, first eating a good meal, then washing her face and hands in the still water of a tidal pool. The spirit image that looked back at her from the pool looked old and tired, not like Chagak, a girl newly a woman having lived thirteen summers.

  She combed out the tangles in her hair and, taking off her suk, washed her arms and breasts. The suk was nearly ruined. The lifting and dragging of bodies had broken many of the feathers and blood dulled the sheen of those left, but she washed off the blood and straightened the feathers. Last, she washed her woman’s knife and rubbed the blade with the shaman’s amulet she still wore around her neck.

  There were some things she needed for this death, and so she began a search of ulas, taking the necessary supplies: a lamp to guide her to her family, clean sleeping furs, a seal stomach of oil, and another of food. She did not know how many days it would take her, traveling alone, to find the Dancing Lights.

  She crowded all her supplies into her sleeping place. Then she sat down, her woman’s knife in her right hand, ready to cut the pulsing arteries of her neck. In her left hand she held a basket to catch the blood.

  But then she felt a stirring within, a need as great as any need she had known, to once again feel the wind, to hear the sea, to have the sun on her face. And so she left the bowl and knife and climbed from the ulaq.

  Chagak walked the beach, and in the midst of her sorrow she felt a gladness that she had given herself one last time to see the world, to hear the long sad cry of loons, the high-pitched kik-kik-kik of terns.

  She began to sing, first songs of comfort, lullabies sung to her when she was a child, then, after the lullabies, songs of mourning, death chants for herself. Finally, as the sun was dimmed by clouds and a cold wind moved in from the sea, Chagak left the beach and returned to her father’s ulaq.

  She had climbed to the ulaq roof when she heard a faint sound coming from the hill above the village, a sound as if someone besides her were mourning, as if another cry were being raised by one still living.

  A child? How could a child survive the two, nearly three days since the attack? But a hope grew so large within her that it pushed up into her throat so she could not even call out. She moved toward the cry, listening carefully, always moving toward the sound, and finally made her way to the top of the hill.

  First she saw only the woman’s body—Black Wing—an old woman, someone who lived with a grown grandson, someone who would perhaps had given herself to the mountain in the next winter, thus leaving more food for her family. The woman was not long dead. She lay on her side, the body not swollen, the flies just beginning to settle in the eyes and mouth.

  She wore a fur seal suk, something she had no doubt prepared as a death garment, the suk too finely decorated to be practical for everyday wear. Feathers and shells hung in wide zigzag patterns down the sides and around the sleeves; patches of different furs—browns, golds, blacks and whites—made a checkered design at collar rim, cuffs and hem.

  Had Black Wing made the cries? Or perhaps it had been the call of gulls. Had Chagak, not wanting to be alone, imagined that bird cries were human?

  Chagak sighed and thought of the long, difficult trip back to the village. Another body to put in a ulaq. She turned to go back down the hill to get the sea lion skin she had used to put under the bodies that had been some distance from a ulaq.

  But when she was halfway down the hill she heard the cry again and she was sure it was not a bird.

  She ran to the top of the hill and this time she turned Black Wing’s body over. There was a bulge under the old woman’s suk and again the weak cry.

  “A baby,” Chagak whispered and her heart quickened, beating so hard she could feel the pulse of it at her temples.

  She reached inside the suk and pulled out the baby. It was Pup.

  “I thought they had taken you,” Chagak said. Then her legs were suddenly weak, and she dropped to her knees. And as though she had found her brother dead, not alive, sobs began to rip through Chagak’s body, so deep and hard, it seemed they would pull Chagak’s spirit from her chest. She clutched the baby to her breast and through her tears said to Black Wing, “You are a brave mother. Grandmother to all our people.”

  Chagak put Pup under her suk, cradling him in her arms as she walked back to her father’s ulaq.

  She laid him on a fur seal skin and cleaned his body with seal oil. There were berry stains on his lips, and whenever Chagak’s fingers came close to his mouth, he tried to suck. In the four months since his birth, he had grown fat and round, but now he seemed smaller, his legs and arms as thin as they had been at his birth.

  Chagak wrapped the lower half of the baby
’s body in moss and wads of seal fur, then bundled him in a sealskin, fur side in.

  She chewed a piece of dried seal meat until it was soft, then, mixing it with water, made a paste and let the baby suck it from her fingertips. He ate slowly, and Chagak gave him frequent sips of water, though at first he choked since she gave him the water from the edge of a shell bowl. But finally he seemed content and so Chagak laid him in his cradle, the wooden-framed hammock that hung from the rafters over their mother’s sleeping place.

  When her brother slept, Chagak returned for Black Wing’s body. She could find no wound, and so decided that the woman had died from sorrow and her great age. Chagak dragged the body to her father’s ulaq, for though the distance to her father’s ulaq was greater than to Black Wing’s, Chagak saw the woman as part of her family now. Somehow Black Wing had found Pup and hidden him from the killers. It was right that she had a place with Chagak’s family. They would care for her as she had cared for their youngest child.

  FOUR

  AND NOW WHAT IS the best thing? Chagak wondered as she lay in her sleeping place that night. I cannot die and leave Pup alone, but should I try to live without our people?

  What can I offer my brother? Who will teach him to hunt? Men who were neither hunters nor shamans earned no honor in the next world.

  She had no right to end her brother’s life, no right to send him to the spirit world, but perhaps the decision was not hers. Perhaps it was one that could be made by her parents.

  The next morning, after feeding Pup, Chagak laid him back in his cradle and hung it in her father’s sleeping place. Then Chagak left the ulaq.

  During that long day she sat outside on the ulaq roof, giving the spirits of her family time to come and take her brother.

  She did nothing but watch the sea and listen to her own thoughts. Why sew if she and Pup would soon die? Why gather sea urchins? Why weave?

  But in the middle of that day Chagak realized that a part of her hoped the spirits would not take Pup, and she asked herself, Why do I want to live?

  Guilt pulled at Chagak’s soul, and she said aloud to the wind and any spirits that might hear, “I do not choose my life or death; my parents choose. If Pup dies, I, too, will die. If he lives …” She looked at the burned ruin of her village, smelled the stench of death that was beginning to leak from each ulaq.

  She could not raise Pup here. This was a village of the dead. Besides, the attackers knew this beach and might return to kill survivors. She could find another beach, but she could not raise Pup without a man to teach him to hunt.

  It will be best to go to my grandfather, Chagak thought. He was an important man, chief hunter of the First Men tribe known as Whale Hunters. Chagak had never been to the Whale Hunters’ village, but several times her grandfather had visited their village and stayed in her father’s ulaq.

  Chagak had always been excited by his visits, had strutted proudly in front of the other girls her age. Their grandfathers lived with them in their own ulas; their grandfathers were only seal hunters, not chiefs of the fierce and proud Whale Hunter tribe. But she did not tell them that, though her grandfather always brought gifts for her brothers and told them hunting stories, he never even looked at Chagak or Chagak’s sister, never brought them gifts, never told them stories.

  So, Chagak thought, if I go to my grandfather, he may not want me. But perhaps he would want Pup, and it would be better for Pup there, with the Whale Hunters, better than on this beach with the spirits of the dead and a sister who could not teach him to hunt.

  If Pup lived, perhaps their father’s spirit would see the importance of Pup staying with the Whale Hunters and so would guide Chagak to her grandfather’s village.

  Pup’s cry interrupted Chagak’s thoughts, but she clasped her hands together and made herself sit still. She knew he might be hungry, but there was a chance that the spirits had come for him and that Pup was afraid of them. When his cries stopped, Chagak wanted to go into the ulaq, wanted to see if he was dead. But she made herself stay outside.

  The grief that lay heavy within her chest seemed to wedge itself deeper into her spirit, and a sudden urge to cry made Chagak angry with herself.

  Why do I cry? she asked. It is better if he is with our mother. And soon I will not be alone, but with all the people of my village. And so she stopped her tears, but they seemed to gather at the back of her throat, quivering there like drops of water at the edge of a leaf.

  Finally, after the sun had peaked, she went inside. She looked into all the dark corners of the ulaq but saw no spirits. She had left the roof hole open to let in light and so did not light any lamps. When she walked across the ulaq to her father’s room, she walked softly, as though her family were asleep.

  She opened the door flap, and the fetid air made her hold her breath as she untied Pup’s cradle from the rafters, but when she lowered the cradle, she tipped it toward herself and suddenly Pup began to cry.

  The cry surprised her and she nearly dropped the cradle, and in that moment of dropping and catching, the tears that had hidden themselves in her throat moved up into her eyes and Chagak began to sob. For the first time since the death of her village, she felt some reason to live through the coming day.

  It took Chagak three days to repair an ik the attackers had broken. The frame was undamaged, but the sea lion skin covering had been cut in many places.

  Chagak took skins from another ik, even from the men’s ikyan, to repair the boat. She sealed all her carefully sewn double seams with fat, then oiled the sea lion skins to keep water out.

  She had found one of her mother’s baby slings and wore it under her suk so she could carry Pup with her as she worked. The wide band of leather went over one shoulder and across her back. The baby lay against Chagak’s chest, his head and back supported by the strap.

  Chagak cut the neck opening in her suk a little larger, for since she was not a mother her suk had not been made with extra room for a baby.

  When the ik was repaired, Chagak filled it with supplies: seal stomach containers of oil and water, baskets filled with dried meat and roots, two small hunter’s lamps and moss wicks, mats, awls and needles.

  She packed two extra paddles, knives and her mother’s flat cooking stone, cutters, scrapers and packs of furs and grass mats. She also put in Pup’s cradle, though while traveling in the ik she would keep him under her suk.

  She would wear her father’s chigadax, a waterproof hooded parka made of seal intestines, the garment a good protection against the sea.

  But, as Chagak worked, doubts pulled at her mind. Perhaps it was wrong to take Pup from the island. She knew little of the sea. She had been given little training in paddling an ik, and even the small ik she had chosen to repair would be difficult for one person to control. What if she could not find her grandfather’s village? What if she and Pup drowned? Would they find their way to the Dancing Lights?

  “Perhaps our mother misses you,” Chagak said to Pup. “Perhaps I should give the spirits another chance to claim you.”

  Chagak carried her brother back to the ulaq. Inside, it was dark but Chagak did not light an oil lamp. She walked slowly across the ulaq’s big room and laid the baby at the door of her father’s sleeping place. She placed her hands on Pup’s belly and began to speak, her words echoing strangely in the empty room. “Father, here is your son. I want to take him with me to the Whale Hunters’ village. I will raise him to be a good man. I will help him make an ikyak and tell him about our village. But if you think it is best for him to go to the spirit world with you, I ask you to take him now.”

  Her brother had lain still as she spoke, but when Chagak rose, leaving him on the bare floor, he began to wail. Chagak did not pick him up, did not look back as she climbed outside.

  She stayed at the top of the ulaq, squatting on her heels, waiting, keeping all hope from her heart. Why try to influence spirits with hope? She cleared all thoughts from her mind, except for simple things like the color of the sea and the
number of bird holes in the cliff. She tried not to hear her brother’s cries.

  Chagak did not know when she fell asleep, but when she awoke it was midafternoon. Pup was still crying.

  Chagak climbed down into the ulaq. This time she did not try to see spirits in the darkness but hurried to where Pup lay, picked him up and held him close to her. She rocked him until he stopped crying, then slipped him under her suk and fitted the carrying sling around his small body.

  Chagak began to sing a quiet song of thanksgiving and was surprised to find that her voice was weak with tears. Before she left the ulaq, she whispered, “We go now. Protect us. Please protect us.”

  FIVE

  THE PADDLE HAD BECOME a part of her as had the rhythm of the waves. Chagak had been fortunate; the sea remained calm, the waves either giant swells or a quick, shallow chop.

  When she looked back at her village, she saw that new green plants were already covering the scars left by the fire. So Chagak knew that, in spite of the killing, plant spirits still hovered thick and strong around every ulaq. And if Chagak could look back from the sea and mark the place of each ulaq by the green of plants, perhaps her people, looking back from the Dancing Lights, would also recognize their village by the green mounds of its ulas.

  Once she saw the spouting of a whale. A whale was a sign of favor, but something within her could not rejoice. What favor could a whale give—new parents, a husband, her village whole and unburned? Even if the animal chose to cast itself on the beach, Chagak could not flense it without help.

  In the moments after sighting the animal, Chagak nearly turned her ik back to her village. Why did she think that she, a woman alone, could ever find a place for herself and her brother? Why would her grandfather want them? An infant and a woman, two more for his hunters to feed.

  But she continued to paddle west and, at the end of the first day, reached the point of Aka’s island and the strait where north sea joined south. She paddled her ik to shore and pulled it high above the tide line.