by Sue Harrison
Since Sees-far had left, Man-who-kills had become more demanding, not as easily appeased. Shuganan pushed himself to his feet and handed Man-who-kills the knife. He glanced at Chagak. She sat near an oil lamp weaving a basket, her head bent over her work. For a moment Shuganan let himself study the checkered design of her weaving, the stitches so tiny and tight that the basket would be able to hold water without leaking. Then, slowly, Shuganan walked around the ulaq, studying the many carvings on the shelves. He selected one, a man holding a long-bladed hunting knife, and brought it to Man-who-kills. “Take this,” he said. “If you are so frightened of an old man with a tiny knife, perhaps you need some protection.”
Man-who-kills lifted his head and Shuganan saw the glow of anger in his eyes. “Shut your mouth, old man,” Man-who-kills said, but he took the carving from Shuganan’s hand. “I take the carving, but not because I fear you, or anyone.” He dropped the crooked knife at Shuganan’s feet.
Shuganan picked it up, sat down and began carving.
“What are you making that is so important?” Man-who-kills asked.
Shuganan turned the figurine so the man could see it. “Husband and wife,” Shuganan said quietly, then added, “It is for Chagak.”
Man-who-kills bent close to study the carving.
“It is not finished yet,” Shuganan said.
Man-who-kills grunted. “It is good you make it for her,” he said. “It will give her strength. But there is something more that is needed. Put a baby in her suk. A fine fat boy. She will give me many sons.”
Shuganan glanced up at the man, then began working at the woman’s suk. He would enlarge the collar rim and carve a tiny head peering from within.
After a time he handed the carving to Man-who-kills, waited as the man held it next to a lamp and examined the infant’s tiny features. Man-who-kills laughed and nodded, then tossed it back to Shuganan. “It is good,” he said. “Now finish it. Give the man a face. My face.”
Shuganan picked up the carving but said nothing. He would finish the man, but not with Man-who-kills’ face.
“You are clever,” Man-who-kills said. He squatted beside Shuganan and rocked on the balls of his feet. “And perhaps one who is clever enough to find people in bits of bone and teeth can do other things. Perhaps a man who is clever at finding is also clever at hiding.”
At Man-who-kills’ last words, a chill pushed through Shuganan’s body, tightened his chest and moved his heart to beat in quick, hard thumps. But he did not look up from his carving and continued to work on the small nose, the tiny eyes of the infant.
Man-who-kills picked up an oil lamp and entered Shuganan’s sleeping place.
The light from the lamp made Man-who-kills’ body look like a shadow behind the sleeping curtain. Shuganan could see him searching along the wall, running his hands up and down, pausing once in a while to pry at some irregularity in the surface.
The man made slow progress around the room and then dropped to his knees to search the floor. Shuganan looked at Chagak and saw that the girl’s face was pale, her lips pursed.
“I have knives hidden,” Shuganan said to her, his words low and soft.
Chagak nodded but said nothing, her eyes on the curtain of Shuganan’s sleeping place. Suddenly Man-who-kills called to Shuganan, “You are not as smart as I thought, old man.” And drawing the curtain aside, he held up the hunting knife Shuganan had hidden in the floor grass.
Shuganan waited, hoping the man would stop searching, that finding one knife would satisfy him, but Man-who-kills stayed in the sleeping place until Shuganan heard him exclaim again.
“He has found the crooked knife,” he said to Chagak.
“You hid more than one knife?” she asked.
“Three in my sleeping place,” said Shuganan. “One in the floor of …”
Man-who-kills cried out again, and then he lunged through the curtain. Three knives were in his left hand. He held the fistful of blades at Shuganan’s throat and asked, “Are there more?”
“No,” Shuganan said, unafraid. He was an old man. What was death?
But then Chagak was at his side, her small hands between the knives and Shuganan’s neck. “Do not kill him,” she pleaded. “I hid the knives. Kill me.”
“What does she say?” Man-who-kills asked, his voice a whisper, hot against Shuganan’s cheek.
“She asks you not to kill me,” Shuganan said.
Man-who-kills laughed, the points of his corner teeth pressing into his bottom lip. “I am not so stupid,” Man-who-kills said. “Why should I kill you? There is not enough pain in that.”
He jerked Chagak away and ran the points of the knives down Shuganan’s neck, leaving three parallel scratches.
Shuganan gritted his teeth but remained still.
“You think you are a hunter, old man?” Man-who-kills said and, drawing back his right hand, hit Shuganan hard in the belly.
Shuganan curled himself into a ball, arms over his head, face against his knees, and tried to catch his breath. Man-who-kills kicked him. Chagak began to cry, the cries like small screams. Shuganan tensed for another blow, but when nothing came, he looked up, saw Man-who-kills had been waiting for him to raise his head. Man-who-kills hit Shuganan in the mouth.
Shuganan rolled away, stanching the blood from his lip with both hands. Then he saw Chagak throw herself against Man-who-kills, hitting with both fists as she rammed him with her head.
“Chagak, no,” Shuganan said. The words, mixed with pain, were slurred.
Man-who-kills caught one of Chagak’s hands, but she scratched at his face with the other. He dropped the knives and tried to grasp both Chagak’s hands but, lunging forward, she grabbed the hunting knife from the floor.
Thrusting the knife toward Man-who-kills, Chagak sliced through his parka, and Shuganan saw blood welling up from the wound.
Man-who-kills screamed, a war cry that shook the ulaq, then he hit Chagak across the face. She dropped the knife and he was upon her, straddling her belly, slapping her face.
“No,” Shuganan yelled. But Man-who-kills, still slapping and punching, did not seem to hear him.
Shuganan threw himself against the man. Shuganan’s ribs ached when he hit, and for a moment he could not breathe, but he reached for the crooked knife laying beside Man-who-kills’ knee.
Man-who-kills grabbed it before Shuganan could and held it at Chagak’s throat.
Chagak lay still, face bleeding, eyes wide, unblinking, and Shuganan’s heartbeat was caught somewhere in his throat until the girl took a breath.
Shuganan saw the anger in Man-who-kills’ face, but in the sudden quiet Shuganan said, “Kill her. She wishes to be dead. Then she will be with the man she was to marry and with her mother and father. Kill both of us and we will warn those who live at the Dancing Lights of the evil spirits you carry.”
Man-who-kills curled his lips but rolled from Chagak’s chest. He gathered the knives and stuck them in his belt.
“Go into your sleeping place,” he said. “Take her to her place also. Tomorrow we hunt seal.”
Man-who-kills stood and tipped the water skin that hung from a rafter. Water flowed into his mouth and over his face. Shuganan’s body ached, but he bent over Chagak and lifted her to her feet. He put an arm around her shoulders and looked into her face.
She was not crying and in her eyes he saw a great glowing as if some light grew there. She leaned her head back on his shoulder and whispered, “Where in my sleeping place is the knife?”
But Man-who-kills shouted, “Do not talk!” So Shuganan did not answer her.
In the morning Man-who-kills tied Chagak to the bottom of the climbing log. He laid a pile of sealskins at her feet. “Tell her to make babiche,” he said to Shuganan. “Tell her we go to hunt seal for her bride price.”
But before Shuganan could translate the words, Chagak said, “Ask him how I can make babiche without my woman’s knife.”
“You have her knife,” Shuganan said to Man-who
-kills. “How can she make babiche without a knife?”
Man-who-kills shrugged and picked up his harpoon.
Chagak said, “Ask him to give me the pile of skins there and my scraper.” She pointed, and before Shuganan told Man-who-kills what she had said, the man had gathered the folded hides and laid them beside her.
“She needs a scraper and pounding stone,” Shuganan said and hobbled to Chagak’s storage corner. He brought back the stone and the scraper.
Shuganan knew Chagak preferred to work outside when scraping hides so the wind would blow away bits of hair and flesh her scraper shaved from the skin, but though she had to stay in the ulaq, at least she would have something to do.
Shuganan gathered a handful of stakes and spread one skin out on the floor. He used the pounding stone to drive the stakes through the edges of the hide and into the hard dirt.
“She can do that, old man,” Man-who-kills said. “We must go now or we will not return before dark.”
Shuganan looked up at him, surprised. “You go for seals and think we will return in one day?”
“I am a hunter,” Man-who-kills said, lowering his eyelids, looking at Shuganan through the black of his lashes.
Shuganan looked away, took a breath and felt the pain of the night before in his ribs. “She needs water and food. What if we do not come back for three or four days? Why bring a bride price if you let the bride die?”
Man-who-kills strode to the center of the ulaq and untied the water skin. He brought it to the climbing log and tied it four notches up so Chagak could reach it when she stood. “Get her some food,” he said to Shuganan. “Not much. I told you we will be back tonight.”
But Shuganan dragged a seal stomach of dried fish to Chagak and propped it against the climbing log.
Man-who-kills stood with one foot on the log. He cupped his hand around Shuganan’s chin and said, “You are generous, old man.” His breath was strong with the smell of fish. “But let her eat. I like fat women. They make better sons.”
He bent and pulled a handful of fish from the seal stomach and pushed them into the bag he had slung at his neck. “Get me eggs,” he said to Shuganan and handed Shuganan the carrying pouch.
Shuganan filled the bag, then, as he passed Chagak, he pressed something quickly into her hands, for a moment felt the coolness of her fingers on his.
Shuganan thought that Man-who-kills had not seen, but the man took the pouch from Shuganan and said, “What did you give her?”
Shuganan smiled, hoping his face did not betray his nervousness. “The carving,” he said. He wrapped his hand around Chagak’s and turned the carving toward Man-who-kills, hoping the man would not look too closely, would not see what he had done with the face of the husband and with the base of the image.
Man-who-kills laughed. “We will bring many seals, maybe more than two. And while the woman waits, your little people will teach her to be a wife.”
He pushed Shuganan up the climbing log, but Shuganan paused a moment at the top. He looked down at the dark and shining crown of Chagak’s head.
She glanced up at him, and he saw the understanding in her eyes, saw she had pressed her thumb over the face of the husband. She lifted her hand to him and Shuganan turned away, holding the memory of her eyes in his mind—something he would keep with him if he could carry out his plans, something he would keep with him even if he could not.
SIXTEEN
SHUGANAN KEPT HIS IKYAK in a cliff at the edge of the beach. Even at high tide the cave was dry. Man-who-kills’ ikyak was nearby, tied to several rocks to keep the wind from smashing it against the side of the cliff.
Man-who-kills began packing his ikyak, pushing bundles of food and an extra chigadax into the craft. His ikyak was longer and thinner than Shuganan’s and Shuganan thought the hide that covered the wood frame, bottom, sides and top was walrus rather than sea lion.
“When did the People learn to make such ikyan?” Shuganan asked, remembering the wider, smaller craft they had used during his youth. “We have learned much, old man,’ Man-who-kills said. “This one is patterned from the Walrus Hunters’ ikyan. It goes faster in the water and is easier to turn.”
“It must also flip over more easily,” Shuganan said, seeing the narrowness of the frame. The craft was scarcely wider than the hole at the top where the hunter sat.
“For some,” Man-who-kills said. “Get your ikyak.”
Shuganan hesitated, hating to pull aside the grass and rocks that covered the entrance of the ikyak cave. It was a good place to hide, some place he and Chagak could go that Man-who-kills would not find them.
Man-who-kills was attaching a harpoon to a coil of babiche tied at the right-hand side of the ikyak. He reached out and shoved Shuganan. “Go.”
Shuganan pointed toward the cliff wall. “It is there,” he said. “Inside a cave.”
Man-who-kills narrowed his eyes and left his ikyak to watch as Shuganan pulled away brush and loose rock.
“Some caves are deep,” Man-who-kills called when Shuganan had uncovered the entrance. “Maybe you will go inside and not return.”
Shuganan did not answer.
The cave was small, only as wide as a man’s arms outstretched, and as long as a ulaq. The entrance was narrow, even for Shuganan, but he wiggled through. Inside was dark, but he could see the outline of his ikyak. It was where he had left it that spring, suspended from a strong driftwood beam Shuganan had secured at the top of the cave when he was a young man. Then, he had had the strength to lift the ikyak and tie it in place, above the reach of storm waves. But now, though the ikyak was light, it was difficult for Shuganan to lift. So he had tied it to ropes that ran over the beam and were fastened to wooden pegs pounded into the cave walls.
Shuganan untied one rope and let it out slowly until the stern of the ikyak rested on the cave floor.
“Old man, you take too long,” Man-who-kills called.
But Shuganan did not try to hurry. The longer he took, the more time Chagak had. Shuganan lowered the bow of the ikyak and pulled his chigadax from the stern.
The chigadax was made of seal intestines sewn together in horizontal strips, each seam lapped and sewn double to keep out water. The chigadax was one of many that Shuganan had made for himself. It was not man’s work to do such a thing, but if a man did not have a woman, what choice did he have? Who could survive the sea without a hooded chigadax?
The strips of translucent intestines seemed less apt to crack if he kept the chigadax in the cave. But after one summer, even if Shuganan oiled the chigadax every few days, the garment would mold, the skins weaken. Even now, as he unrolled it, he smelled mildew.
Throwing the chigadax through the cave entrance, Shuganan called to Man-who-kills, “I must oil my chigadax.”
He looked outside, saw Man-who-kills pick up the garment, hold it to his nose and grimace. Man-who-kills spread it out on a patch of beach grass and untied a storage skin of oil from the side of his ikyak.
“You are stupid, old man,” Man-who-kills muttered as he knelt and dumped oil over the front of the garment. “What hunter allows his chigadax to sit for days without oil? You think seals will come to us if you have no more respect for the sea than that?”
But Shuganan, pulling his ikyak from the cave, his back to the man, only smiled.
Chagak cradled Shuganan’s carving to her chest and leaned her head against the climbing log. Her jaw ached where Man-who-kills had hit her, and her teeth were loose on that side of her mouth. She shuddered at the thought of being wife to him, and a faint hope came to her in a whisper: Maybe the sea animals will drown him. Maybe there will be a terrible storm.
“No,” Chagak said aloud, and heard the word echo in the empty ulaq. “Shuganan is with him.”
At first, after the men left, Chagak had struggled with the ropes that bound her, but Man-who-kills had tied them so that if she pulled they tightened. Now her hands and feet were swelling, the ropes so tight at wrists and ankles that Chagak could not
move without pain.
The rope that bound her wrists to the climbing log was long enough for Chagak to kneel and reach the floor, but even if there had been no pain, with both hands tied so closely together, it would be difficult to do anything, even scrape the hides Shuganan had laid out for her. And if she forgot her bonds and pushed the scraper too far, the ropes would tighten again.
Chagak held the carving to her cheek and thought about the old man who had given it to her. She often wondered how he had learned Man-who-kills’ language. Had he been a trader?
Yes, Chagak thought, looking at the shelves of his carvings. Men would give many furs for even one or two of these pieces—ivory animals, bone people that looked so real that sometimes Chagak felt their spirits pressing against her, felt the need to leave the ulaq just to be alone.
She studied the carving Shuganan had given her. At first, when he handed it to her, when she saw Man-who-kills’ sly happiness over it, the carving had made her angry. Yes, once, long ago, she had wanted to be wife, to have babies, but now she wanted only to be free from Man-who-kills. But then she had noticed the detail of the husband’s face. His eyes were wide-set and cheekbones high. His smile was gentle. It was not Man-who-kills.
Chagak marveled that Shuganan had the courage to do such a thing. What if Man-who-kills saw it? He, too, would know the man was not him, was not even a hunter from his tribe. He would know Shuganan had used the power of his carving to call another husband to Chagak, someone good and gentle.
I must hide it, Chagak thought. But where?
There was no hiding place close to the climbing log, but if she wore it under her suk until the men returned and released her, perhaps she could hide it before Man-who-kills saw it.
Chagak reached into her sewing basket and found a chunk of sinew. She teased out three strands, twisted them together and tied them around the carving. Then she fastened the carving next to the shaman’s amulet that hung at her neck.
Chagak clasped the carving. It was warm as if alive. She pressed it against her cheek and as she did she saw an outline in the smooth, flat base. She held the carving toward an oil lamp. The light showed a circle in the ivory, indented all around.