by Sue Harrison
The hunters of her village said that the waters of the cold north sea and those of the south sea used the strait as a place of battle. The south sea fought to flow north and the north sea fought to flow south. The battle had been since the beginning of time, they said, each sea strong enough to hold its place, neither strong enough to defeat the other.
The waters of the strait and even the wet sand under Chagak’s bare feet seemed suddenly cold, and the wind coming from the north sea made her shiver. It was nearly a winter wind, though winter was months away, and reminded her of stories she had heard about a land at the ice edges of the world where snow piled as high as a man standing, and the people made their ulas out of ice. Chagak shuddered and drew her knees closer to her chest.
Perhaps she was too close to that place, she thought. But no, she told herself. I have traveled only one day. It is a year’s travel to the edge of the world. And besides, who could believe snow grew so deep? Winter brought wind and icy rain, but only enough snow to weigh down the grass, to cover the low-growing mossberries. Then the rain came and left the ground bare until the next snow.
She wrapped her arms around Pup, felt him warm against her chest, then glanced up at the sky. The sun under its shield of heavy clouds was only a brightness in the northwest. “We do not have time to go on,” she said aloud to her brother. “It is best if we stay here.”
She turned the ik over to check for damage to the underside. Twice rocks had cut the oiled skin, but neither cut broke through.
She lashed down the ik, tying the rawhide ropes to boulders. She oiled the ik, then, opening a pack of supplies, she fed Pup and sliced up bits of dried meat for herself, eating while she cut handfuls of beach grass to make a bed under the ik for the two of them.
Chagak did not sleep well that night. It seemed as if she were in a new world. Even though she could see Aka, she had never slept beside the north sea, did not know the spirits that dwelt within that sea, did not know the proper chants of protection. So most of the night she was awake, singing to Aka, speaking to the spirits of her people, clinging to the shaman’s amulet she had brought with her.
SIX
SHUGANAN SPEARED ANOTHER BLACKFISH with his three-pronged leister and put the still wriggling fish into the basket at the edge of the stream. The sky was as gray as shale, petrels and black-legged kittiwakes marking the gray with their dark wings. Shuganan straightened and watched the birds, listened to their calls, then began to sing his own chant, something that seemed to keep his mind from the aching of his hands and fingers.
But then he heard the sound of another voice, the rhythm of another chant, cutting through the noise of the surf.
For a moment Shuganan could not move. How long since another person had come to his beach? How many years? He waded from the stream and hid behind a boulder.
He saw an ikyak. No, an ik. Inside, a woman alone. Shuganan’s knees began to tremble. He clasped the amulet hung at his neck. Was this the woman the spirits had brought into his dreams?
Yes, Shuganan thought. But another part of him whispered, This is not real. This, too, is a dream. You think you are on the beach, but you are on your sleeping mats. The spirits merely give you something else to consider. Something else to carve.
He thought of all the carvings, wood and ivory, that lined the walls of his ulaq, and of the unfinished carving he had hung around his neck: a man and his wife.
Shuganan watched as the woman in the ik turned her boat toward his beach. She seemed to travel alone, without other women, without a husband.
When she pulled the ik ashore, Shuganan left his hiding place. If he were in a dream, what harm would it do to help her?
The woman had her back to him, and she was pulling on the stern of the boat, mumbling a song as she pulled.
Shuganan reached out to help, but when he placed his bony hands beside hers on the ik, the woman screamed and jumped away from him. Her fright also startled Shuganan, making his heart squeeze tight into itself, and so at first he could say nothing to her, but finally he held his hands out, palms up, and gave the familiar greeting, “I am a friend. I have no knife.”
She stared at him, a wariness in her eyes, but he also saw a tiredness there, and he said, “The boat is heavy. Let me help you.”
But the woman replied, “I am strong.”
“Yes,” Shuganan said, though to him she did not look strong. She did not even look like a woman, more like a child. But now that he was old, everyone looked young. The hunters who occasionally passed his beach, some distance out on the sea, always looked like boys to him, and so, of course, this woman looked like a girl.
Old eyes see youth everywhere, Shuganan thought. And when he was young, his eyes young, he had seen everything as old.
“I am strong,” the girl said again, this time throwing her weight against the ik and pulling it an armlength up the bench.
“If this is your beach,” she said, “I will stay only one night.” For a moment her voice quavered, and Shuganan felt the echo of that trembling within his spirit. He looked at her more closely. She carried a great weight of sorrow, this woman-child. He could see it in her eyes, in the curve of her mouth. And already he began to see the planes of her face, the arch of her brows, the fine, sharp lines of her cheekbones carved in ivory.
“You may stay here,” he said to her. “This is a good place. Safe.”
The girl nodded and leaned against the side of the ik. She scanned the beach and Shuganan watched her, watched as her eyes stopped at the marks of high tide, at the rocks that bordered a fresh-water spring. And he also noticed the bulge under her suk. The form of a child, still quite small.
“Where is your village?” she asked.
“There is no village,” Shuganan answered. “Only my ulaq.”
“Your wife and children.”
“I have no children.”
“You do not care if I stay one night on your beach?” she asked. “I need to sleep.”
“As long as you want,” Shuganan said. “You and your baby.”
At his words, the girl’s eyes widened and she crossed her hands over the child.
“Where is your husband?”
She moved to face the sea and said, “He is there. Out there. Soon he will come for me.” And looking back at Shuganan, she added. “He is very strong.”
But her words were thin, as fragile as new ice webbed over the edge of a tidal pool, and so Shuganan knew the truth. The woman had no husband, and somehow that was part of her sorrow.
“If it would not make him angry,” Shuganan said carefully, “you and your child may stay in my ulaq tonight.”
But the woman shook her head.
“Then make your camp. I will bring you food.”
“I have food.”
“Then we will have a feast.”
Chagak watched as the old man hobbled slowly up the rise of the beach. For some reason she was no longer afraid of him. He seemed to have the wisdom of a shaman but not a shaman’s fierce, demanding ways.
She unloaded the ik and carried her supplies into the grass above the tide line. She pulled the ik to a flat, sandy place and turned it over, staking ropes into the ground and wrapping the ik so the wind would not blow it away. She stacked furs to make a sheltered corner under the boat.
She would not gather driftwood. She was too tired to tend a fire, to watch that it did not spread to the ik or her supplies.
She had spent the day fighting the sea, trying to force her ik west to her grandfather’s island, but the winds worked against her, and finally she turned the ik north and followed the nearest island’s coast until she found a cove, a place to wait until the wind again died and she could paddle west.
The cove was wide and shallow, dipping in toward cliffs that curled around the back of the beach. It was a shale beach, a good place to land an ik, a good place to make a camp, the shale easier to sleep on, easier to walk on, than round stones. A large tidal pool marked the center of the beach and a stream made a
looping path from the fresh-water spring to the sea.
It would be a good place to live, Chagak thought. She could see why the old man had chosen it. But it worried her that he had no village. Sometimes spirits lived alone and pretended to be men. This old man—who could say what he was, why he lived here?
Using her fire stones, Chagak lit an oil lamp. It would give a little warmth. Perhaps enough for this night.
She unstrapped her brother from her chest, quickly wrapping him in sealskins as she pulled him from the warmth of her suk.
For the past two days he had been quiet, sleeping often, crying less. And now, as she laid him down, he did not even awaken. A tight edge of worry pushed into her mind, but she busied herself making a thin paste with water and meat.
She dipped her fingers into the mixture and put them in the baby’s mouth.
He did not open his eyes, but he began to suck, and Chagak fed him until the paste was gone. She put the baby back under her suk, lay down under the ik and waited for the old man. She left out her grass bag of dried meat, the only thing she could offer him, and hoped he would not eat much.
The long, light evening was nearly past when the old man returned to the beach. A skin bag hung from each of his arms, and he carried a thin slab of shale with a steaming section of halibut laid out on it. Chagak was tired, wanting only to sleep, but she smiled at the man and thanked him. She stood to take the fish and then waited as he settled himself in the sand.
He slipped the bags from his arms and opened them. One was full of berries, the other of cooked bitterroot, the tiny bulblets something better served with rich oily seal meat, but also good with fish.
The old man broke off a section of the fish and handed it to her. The warmth of the food was good after a day in the cold spray of the sea. The man was watching her, and his watching made Chagak uncomfortable, so she said, “You must eat, too,” and pointed toward her bag of dried meat.
He nodded and, fumbling through the bag, took a small piece of meat and began to eat.
“Your wife makes good food,” Chagak finally said.
The man shook his head, swallowed and answered, “I live alone. My wife has been dead for many years.”
Chagak waited, thinking he would say more, but he did not.
He was not a small man, though he was so stooped that he stood no taller than Chagak. His hair was thick and white and hung to his shoulders. His parka was make of puffin skins, and he wore the feathers turned in, but in the seams between the skins she saw that stitches were uneven, feathers sometimes caught in the sewing—something even an old woman would not do.
His hands were the large-boned hands of a hunter, but the joints were swollen, and his fingers, bent at odd angles, made Chagak think of pain.
He ate slowly, smiling and nodding often though he said nothing, but when they had finished eating, the old man said, “You may sleep in my ulaq tonight. It is warm, and if a storm comes, you and your child will be safe.”
At the mention of a storm, Chagak stood and looked at the sky. All things seemed normal, the sky a smooth dome of gray. The sea showed no high caps of white, telling of wind coming from a distance. She was uneasy about going to the man’s ulaq. She knew nothing about him except that he seemed to live alone. And a man alone was someone the spirits might control—for good or for evil.
“The sea is calm,” she said.
“Storms come quickly from my mountain Tugix,” the old man answered.
Chagak turned toward the white-capped peaks, trying to see if the wind pulled snow in long wisps from the mountaintop.
“If the wind gets strong,” she finally said, seeing nothing unusual on the mountain, “I will come to your ulaq.”
“You will not find your way in the dark.”
“Then show me now and I will remember.”
She walked with him up the beach and down a worn path to a small green mound that protruded from the side of a hill.
“There,” he said, pointing.
“I will come if the wind starts,” Chagak said.
Shuganan sat inside his ulaq, waiting. He had lit all the lamps and had laid fur seal skins in one of the curtained sleeping places. He hoped the storm would not come that night. It would be better for the woman if she did not have to find his ulaq in the darkness, but he knew Tugix.
Storms formed at her peaks, mist gathering until rain and wind scoured the beach. Today Shuganan had noticed the shimmering of the air near the mountain, a sign of spirits moving, and so he waited now to see if the storm would come.
Shuganan had dug his ulaq into the side of a hill and often, when he sat inside, he felt Tugix shake the earth. Sometimes she shook gently as a mother rocks her child, but other times she moved in anger, making dirt and moss fall from the driftwood rafters.
But since coming to this beach Shuganan had always considered Tugix a friend, a protector.
Once, while still a young man, he had climbed high up the side of the mountain and had brought back a small rock no larger than his hand. Each night for many nights he had used another stone to chip the rock into the shape of a man.
When it was finished Shuganan had tied a cord around the top of the head and hung it from a rafter in the main room of his ulaq.
As Shuganan had hoped, the little man still carried some portion of Tugix’s spirit. Hanging at the top of the ulaq, the little man moved each time Tugix moved. Sometimes when Shuganan felt no trembling of the earth, heard no rumbling from the mountain, he saw the little man move and knew that Tugix’s spirits were troubled.
So Shuganan sat carving a bit of ivory and watched the little man. The little man would be the first to tell of Tugix’s storm.
Shuganan had not meant to sleep, and he did not know what woke him, but he realized that the wind had grown strong, loud enough for the sound to carry through the thick ulaq walls. And the little man was making a strange and jerking dance.
Shuganan’s first thought was to go to the beach, to bring the woman and her baby back with him to the safety of the ulaq, but then the thought came, This is a dream. The woman is a dream.
But something was pushing from within his spirit, telling Shuganan to go, telling him the woman needed him. He rose slowly to his feet, surprised that for once the action brought little pain. Then he thought, Why not? This is a dream.
Dreams often left out some true part of life. Perhaps this time the thing forgotten was pain.
Shuganan pulled on his sealskin boots. The thick, ridged sea lion hide was hard and stiff on his feet. He climbed the notched log to the roof hole, then went out into the storm.
SEVEN
CHAGAK HELD ONTO THE IK and tried to keep the wind from tearing it loose. Her arms ached and sharp pains cut down from her shoulders into her back. Pup, slung under her suk, had begun to make small, gasping cries.
Sand and pieces of shale blew into the ik and layered up against the piles of furs around her.
“Aka, Aka, please stop,” Chagak begged, but the island belonged to Tugix, not Aka, and the wind took Chagak’s words so she could hear nothing but the crash of the sea.
Then for a moment the wind eased, and Chagak shifted her grip on the edge of the ik. A crack like the sound of stone splitting came from the mountain. Chagak screamed and the wind ripped the ik from her hands, sending it end over end across the beach.
Closing her eyes against the stinging sand, Chagak began to crawl toward the old man’s ulaq.
A sudden clattering of shale made Chagak turn her head into the wind, and one of the sharp-edged stones, skittering across the beach, struck her in the mouth. She tasted blood on her lips and for a moment stopped, crouching on her knees. She covered her head with her arms, but then she felt a gentle touch, something not carried by the wind.
Chagak looked up to see the old man standing over her. His presence seemed to give Chagak strength, and when he reached down to help her, she was able to stand.
“Come with me,” he said, and Chagak wondered how she coul
d hear his quiet words above the noise of the storm.
Together they battled the wind, and when they came to the ulaq, the old man scrambled to the top, then helped Chagak up.
Inside, Chagak leaned against the notched climbing log and wiped the sand from her face. Her eyes felt scratched and swollen, and she blinked several times before she could see in the brightly lit ulaq.
Then she gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. Five shelves circled the ulaq, and every shelf was crowded with images of birds, fish, people and animals. They glowed in the light from the oil lamps, some of the animals smooth, golden like a walrus tusk that has been washed in from the sea. Others were white or gray, with feathers, hair or clothing detailed in fine designs. None of them were larger than a man’s hand, yet to Chagak’s eyes they seemed alive, watching her, watching her from the ulaq walls.
The old man followed her gaze and chuckled.
Chagak backed toward the climbing log, but he laid his hand on her arm and said, “Do not be afraid. They are only wood or bone; some are ivory.”
“They have spirits?” Chagak asked.
“Yes, each holds some bit of spirit. Why else would I carve them?”
“You made them?”
The old man threw back his head and laughed. “This beach is a lonely place. What would I have done without my small animals? They are my friends. They will not hurt you.”
He motioned to a floor mat beside an oil lamp, and when Chagak sat down, he asked, “You have the baby?”
The question made Chagak suddenly realize how long Pup had been quiet, and she slipped off her suk and pulled the child from his carrying sling. He whimpered but did not cry, his eyes focusing for a moment on Chagak’s face, then wandering toward the brightest oil lamp. Chagak smiled, but when she looked up at the old man, he was frowning, his eyes on her chest.
“You are not the mother?” he asked.
Chagak looked down at her small, pink-nippled breasts. They were not full and hanging like the breasts of a new mother.