by Sue Harrison
Chagak lay still, eyes closed, as if she slept, as if nothing had happened. But Man-who-kills raised from her chest and dropped back again, making Shuganan grimace for Chagak’s pain. Chagak winced but said nothing and did not open her eyes.
“Do not kill her,” Shuganan said again, this time making his voice firm, his words a command; not a request. He picked up a lamp, cradling the stone bowl in both hands, and walked slowly around the ulaq.
The light fell on the carvings that lined the walls. Tiny eyes, tips of ivory spears gleamed.
“These are my people,” Shuganan said. “They have power.” He turned to face Man-who-kills. “Do not kill my granddaughter.”
Slowly Man-who-kills rose to his feet, and behind him Chagak scrambled to her hands and knees. She pulled her torn suk tightly around her and huddled against a wall.
“I do not care if he kills me,” she said softly, her voice carrying across the ulaq.
“I care,” Shuganan answered, then said in Man-who-kills’ language, “If you kill her, I will kill you.”
Man-who-kills snorted. “You are old. How will you kill me?”
In answer, Shuganan lifted his light, let it shine over the many carvings.
Man-who-kills rubbed his hand across his cheek, wiping blood from the cut. “I am not ignorant. I know the stories of your power.”
“I will not hesitate to use that power against you.”
“Then perhaps I will marry the woman. I need another wife. I will provide well for her. Then I will be head man of this ulaq and all these carvings will be mine.”
“You cannot own these. I do not own them. They own themselves just as a man owns himself.”
Man-who-kills said nothing; instead he began to study the carvings, at first only looking at them, then reaching out, picking them up, staining their white surfaces with blood from his fingertips.
Shuganan watched him; a loathing rose in his chest. Man-who-kills is right, Shuganan thought. I am old, my arms are weak and I am slow.
He could tell Man-who-kills of his great power, of the power the carvings held, but Shuganan of all people knew the truth—that there was no great gift in making a likeness of something. What his eyes saw came easily to his fingers. The soul of each piece of ivory, each chunk of driftwood, whispered its existence to him. He himself did not find the lines of ikyak or woman weaving, otter or whale. The ivory, the bone, the wood told him. How else would he know? It was not through any great power of his own.
Once carved, revealed by the knife, the thing held its own beauty, not any beauty given by Shuganan. And if the carvings had great powers, those powers were their own to give and take; Shuganan did not control them. If he did, Man-who-kills would already be dead.
“Someday you will die, old man,” Man-who-kills said, the words quiet as though he spoke his thoughts to the carvings and not to Shuganan. “You are old. But I will marry your granddaughter, and I will have this ulaq. But before you die, I will earn honor among my people by telling them I have found you. Perhaps by this marriage I will become chief of my people.” He laughed. “Is there an easier way to become chief?”
Man-who-kills turned and pointed toward Chagak. “What do you ask for her?”
Shuganan studied the man’s face, wide cheeks, dark, hard eyes, dried blood streaked from jaw to lips. If Shuganan agreed to a bride price, perhaps he and Chagak would have a few more days, time to plan the man’s death or an escape.
“Five seals. Twenty otter skins,” Shuganan said. A reasonable price, but something that would take a number of days’ hunting.
“Too much.”
“That is the price.”
“Two seal. Ten otter.”
“We need oil.”
“We will be leaving this ulaq. You and I and the woman. All your small people.” Man-who-kills’ hand made a wide sweep of the room. “We do not need much oil. My people have enough oil.”
“Four seals. Twenty otters.”
“The days are growing short. Winter will soon be here. How will I take you to my people if I must spend many days hunting?”
“Four seals. Twenty otters.”
“Two seal. Ten otter.”
“Chagak needs a new suk.”
Man-who-kills looked over at Chagak. He laughed, a short, hard laugh that pulled up his mouth at one corner. “Two seal. Sixteen otter,” he said.
Shuganan looked at the man. Three days hunting seals, he thought. Four or five hunting otters. Time enough. Time enough. “Yes,” he said.
THIRTEEN
“HE WILL COME TO MY sleeping place?” Chagak whispered to Shuganan before she left the large room of the ulaq. Man-who-kills had returned to Shuganan’s sleeping place, leaving Chagak and Shuganan alone.
“No,” Shuganan said. “He will not touch you tonight.” But he would not look at her and kept his head lowered as if he were afraid to meet her eyes. His uneasiness made something cold and hard begin to grow in Chagak’s chest.
She stood beside Shuganan, waiting for him to speak, but he did not until Chagak said, “There is something more you are not telling me.”
Shuganan looked at her, saw the strength in her eyes. She is as strong as I am, he thought. More so. What she has lost was taken from her. I chose my loss and had little regret. “Yes, there is something,” he said and then paused, trying to find the words to tell her. “Man-who-kills wants you as wife. He offers a price of two seals, sixteen otter skins.”
Chagak shook her head.
“It is a good price,” Shuganan said and felt foolish as soon as he had said the words. What honor would Chagak feel, whether good price or bad, if she hated the man who was to be her husband?
But Chagak said only, “My father did not take otters, and I must honor his belief. The otters saved his life once in a storm.”
Shuganan was not surprised. He had heard of otters helping hunters before. “Do not worry about the otter skins,” Shuganan said. “It will take him many days to kill sixteen otters. Sometime you will have opportunity to escape. There is an island …”
At that moment Man-who-kills came from Shuganan’s sleeping place. Chagak glanced at him, then left her weaving and hurried into her own sleeping place. But Man-who-kills followed her, taking with him a rope of braided babiche. He tied Chagak’s arms behind her back, then bound her ankles.
As he looped the rope around her ankles, Chagak tried not to shrink from his touch. She knew if she showed Man-who-kills she was afraid it would be worse for her. He was a man who took pleasure in another’s fear. So she held her body tight and still and kept her trembling within the walls of her heart.
Shuganan is wrong, she thought. Man-who-kills will take me now. What will stop him? Does he hold that much respect for Shuganan’s agreement? What are sixteen otter skins and two seals to a man who needs a woman?
But when he finished tying her, Man-who-kills said slowly and loudly, “I go to tie your grandfather,” and though he spoke in his language, he spoke slowly enough that Chagak understood what he meant. He laughed and pinched her legs but did nothing more.
Long after the ulaq was quiet, Chagak lay awake thinking of the words Shuganan had said: “There is an island …”
So there was hope, Chagak thought, but also betrayal in that hope. How could she go, leaving Shuganan to face Man-who-kills’ anger?
Besides, how could she ever find one small island in the great expanse of the sea? It would be better to go to her grandfather, Many Whales. He might not want her, but perhaps he would find her a husband. But what if Man-who-kills followed her? What if she led him to her grandfather’s village? The Whale Hunters were powerful, but were they strong enough to stand against men who destroyed whole villages?
Chagak slept little, and early in the morning Man-who-kills came to her sleeping place. For a moment he only stood and looked at her, but when Chagak rolled to her belly and covered the gaping rip in the front of her suk, he stooped and untied her. He said nothing but laughed deep in his throat, then po
inted toward the storage cache and made motions as if he were eating.
Shuganan was already in the main room, breaking spines and shells from the sea urchins he had gathered the day before. The sharp bits of shell littered the floor.
“He would not let me go outside to do this,” Shuganan said.
“Then perhaps he will be the first to step on a shell,” Chagak answered, picking up the pieces and putting them in a basket.
Man-who-kills said something and Shuganan told Chagak, “He said to light the lamps and that he wants eggs.”
There were six lamps in the main room and Chagak lit all of them, using flame from the lamp left burning during the night. Then she crawled into the storage place where she found a length of babiche and tied it around her waist to hold her suk together.
She dug out three eggs and set them on a mat, then, taking water from the seal belly that hung from a rafter, rinsed the eggs and also a number of the sea urchins Shuganan had prepared. She gave the mat to Man-who-kills, but he puckered his mouth and said something to her, his words loud.
“He wants fish sliced and fried in oil,” Shuganan said.
“Tell him I need my knife and that my cooking fire is outside.”
Shuganan spoke and Man-who-kills grabbed a container of fish and pushed Chagak toward the climbing log.
The wind from the sea felt good against Chagak’s face and seemed to clear some of the fear from her mind. She pointed toward the circle of stones that marked her cooking fire and slid down the side of the ulaq. Man-who-kills followed her.
The cooking place was on the leeward side of the ulaq so strong winds would not blow out new fires or cause old ones to spread to the ulaq grass.
Chagak started the fire with her fire stones, snapping her flint and the gold-flecked bit of iron pyrite together until a spark jumped from the rocks and caught on the dried grass at the center of the fire pit. She fed the fire patiently with grass and heather until the flames were large enough to take driftwood. As the wood began to burn, Chagak rubbed oil on her cooking stone. It was three handbreadths across, flat and thin, but in spite of its thinness it took a long time to heat. She set it on the four blackened stones that held it the right distance above the flames and waited.
Man-who-kills, squatting beside her, motioned for her to cook the fish.
“It is not hot yet,” Chagak answered, reaching out to lay her hand on the stone so he would understand what she meant.
He snorted, but Chagak shrugged. What magic did he think she had that could make a stone heat quickly? If he had left her untied, told her the night before he wanted fish cooked in oil, she could have made a fire, put the stone over it and banked it with dirt. By morning the stone would have been hot, and his food would have cooked quickly.
But what man would think ahead to do that? she asked herself.
Pointing toward the fish and making slicing motions with her hands, Chagak asked Man-who-kills for a knife. For a moment he sat without moving, as though he did not understand her, but then he pulled Chagak’s woman’s knife from a pouch at his waist and handed it to her. At the same time he unsheathed his own knife and crossed his arms, holding the knife point up at the crook of one elbow, the blade toward Chagak.
She pretended not to see his knife as she sliced the meat into thin pieces, then rolled each in oil.
Man-who-kills said something, the words rising like a question. Chagak understood some of what he meant, something about the worth of women and knives, but she pretended she did not hear. She laid the fish slices on the cooking stone and watched the steam rise from the heated surface.
Shuganan hurried into Chagak’s sleeping place. He wondered how long he had before Man-who-kills returned to the ulaq.
Long ago Shuganan had hidden two knives in his sleeping place, one in the wall, another in the dirt of the floor. But now Man-who-kills used that sleeping place.
When Man-who-kills had untied Shuganan that morning, then for a moment went outside, Shuganan had hidden three knives in his new sleeping place, one a tiny crooked knife he had once used for carving until, after frequent retouching to increase sharpness, the blade had begun to gouge unevenly. Shuganan had hidden it in a crack between wall and floor.
He also hid a long-bladed hunting knife in a niche in the wall, a place that Shuganan packed with dirt and smoothed to match the smoothness of the rest of the wall. The third knife Shuganan placed on the floor, somewhere easily found, covered only by grass and sleeping mats, for he hoped if Man-who-kills decided to search the sleeping place he would be satisfied with finding only one knife and not search for the others.
Shuganan had hesitated before taking knives to Chagak’s sleeping place. What if Man-who-kills found knives there? What would he do to the girl? But if Chagak were always tied, how could she escape? It would be better to take the chance, to give her opportunity to get away. And so he had found his wife’s woman’s knife, something he had kept in one of her finely woven grass baskets. The basket was as large as a man squatting and was filled with her belongings, old things that Shuganan had not buried with her when she died but that he could not throw away: skins she had tanned, baskets, needles, a cooking stone, floor mats, dishes made from driftwood and a pillow of goose down. At the bottom, a sheathed woman’s knife.
Shuganan took it to Chagak’s sleeping place. Measuring three hand lengths from the curtained door and using the knife to cut a hole in the floor, he hollowed out a place for the weapon, fitted the hard chunk of dirt carefully back into the hole and covered it with a mat.
Shuganan returned to the central ulaq room. He sat with his back to Chagak’s sleeping place, for if he faced it, he knew his eyes would betray him, resting often at the curtain as if they could see through it to the buried knife.
He began to work at the figurine he had been carving since his first dream some months before had told of Chagak’s coming. At the time it had been only a comfort for him, but now it would be a gift for Chagak, a protection. It was a carving of husband and wife, and since Chagak had come, Shuganan had made the woman’s face like Chagak’s, but the man was someone Shuganan still did not know. Now Shuganan used the point of an awl to trace in the details of the husband’s clothing. He was not Man-who-kills; he belonged to some village of the First Men.
When Shuganan heard Chagak and Man-who-kills at the ulaq door, he tucked away his carving and sent a prayer to the spirit of Tugix.
Chagak was carrying a mat layered with fried fish. The smell lightened the heavy air of the ulaq. She knelt beside Shuganan and filled a wooden bowl with the meat, then handed it to Man-who-kills.
“Tell her to fill a bowl for you,” Man-who-kills said as he began to eat. He looked at Shuganan and smiled, showing a mouthful of meat.
“He says to give me a bowl of food,” Shuganan told Chagak.
“I understood,” Chagak answered.
“Some for her, too,” Man-who-kills added. “I am a generous man.” He laughed, but Shuganan did not smile.
“For yourself, too,” Shuganan told Chagak again. And then in the same tone of voice, without moving his eyes from the fish, he said, “I have hidden knives …” Then, noticing that Man-who-kills had suddenly stopped eating, Shuganan pointed toward the man and said, “Thank him for the meat.”
Chagak nodded at Man-who-kills but did not raise her eyes, afraid he would see the new hope there. She pointed to the bowl she had filled for Shuganan and the one she was taking for herself and said, “Thank you.”
Man-who-kills mumbled a reply.
“He says you will be a good wife,” Shuganan said.
Chagak lifted her head, “Yes,” she answered, then, smiling, added, “but not to him.”
Shuganan had carved the wooden shafts of his seal harpoons with scenes of hunting, and now, as Man-who-kills directed, he carved the shaft of one of Man-who-kills’ weapons.
Chagak sat in a dark corner of the ulaq, one lamp burning beside her. She had removed her suk to repair it, and though Shuganan
and Man-who-kills did not seem to notice her, she felt uncomfortable wearing only her apron, so she held the suk close to her chest as she sewed, and it spread out over her lap.
Earlier that day she had decided how to repair the garment. She was afraid the delicate cormorant skins would not hold a long front seam, for usually her mother had sewn the birdskins in such a way that the seam between two skins met above and below at the center of a skin, the seams following a zigzag pattern. But the tear Man-who-kills had made with his knife went through seams and the centers of whole skins.
As she cooked sea urchins that morning, the thought had come: Why not strengthen the seam with a strip of leather, top to bottom? Why not make it the width of a hand and sew it securely at both sides? Then she had decided to make seams, carefully hidden under the feathers of the cormorant skins, that would divide the strip into seven or eight squares, each with something sewn inside: sinew, babiche, needles and awl, fishhooks, lamp wicks—things needed to stay alive, things that would help her escape.
When Chagak had finished seaming the birdskins, she unrolled a sealskin and laid the suk over it, measuring to cut the leather strip the length of the seam. But then she remembered she had no knife, and for a long time she sat without moving, wondering whether she should draw attention to herself by asking for it. But finally she crawled to Shuganan’s side, holding the suk inside out in front of her.
“You need something?” Shuganan asked.
Chagak laid the suk on the floor between the men and pointed to the seam she had made. “It is not strong enough to hold,” she said. “I need to cut a strip of leather to sew over it.”
Shuganan spoke to Man-who-kills and then said to her, “Get the leather. He will cut it for you.”
She brought the sealskin and traced the outline of the cut with her fingers. Man-who-kills picked up the leather and made a straight cut, using his teeth and one hand to separate the sealskin in two pieces, pulling from opposite directions as he cut so the seam was straight. Then he made a second long cut, measured the strip against Chagak’s suk and cut off the excess at one end.