by Sue Harrison
Big Teeth and Gray Bird had dug a shallow grave no deeper than the length of a man’s hand, and then had piled a heap of rocks at the foot of the grave. When Kayugh again saw White River, the women had washed her and laid her in the grave. Knees tucked to her chin, face marked with the red of ocher, the woman was a child again, an infant, being birthed into the world of the spirit.
The people were gathered around the grave, even First Snow, the boy standing beside Big Teeth.
Kayugh took his place in the circle. He set Red Berry down beside him, and she looked at the woman lying in the grave but said nothing. The baby was quiet, sucking at a corner of his fur wrapping. As the women began the death chant, Kayugh laid the baby into the grave, tucking the child in the space between his wife’s upraised knees and her chest. The baby nuzzled against his mother, opening his mouth as he rooted against White River’s suk.
Kayugh stepped back to his place in the circle and tried to join in the chant, but he could not remember the words, could not make his voice rise with the song, and finally he only stood, his eyes closed to hold back his tears.
Big Teeth came to him, pressed the first stone into Kayugh’s hands. Kayugh laid it over his wife’s feet, remembering how he had done the same for Red Leg. And he felt that he had buried many wives, had buried wives since he was a child. Had spent more time singing death chants than chants to bring seals, than songs to push away the loneliness of an ikyak in the sea.
He watched as each of the men and finally the women laid a stone, then Big Teeth and Gray Bird continued to lay rocks, piling them up over his wife’s body.
“Mama?” Red Berry said, her voice small and almost lost in the noise of rock pressing against rock. “Mama?” the word louder, higher, almost a scream. She began to cry, and each cry tore something from Kayugh’s chest, until finally he knew he could not stand and watch but must be alone, away from the people, away from his daughter, from the sight of his son, soon to be buried with stones.
He turned, meaning to walk to the beach, but then he heard the high, thin wailing of his son. His children were calling to him. He turned, scooped Red Berry into his arms and, bending toward the grave, pulled the baby from his wife and handed him to Blue Shell.
The woman stopped her chant and looked with round eyes toward her husband, but Gray Bird said nothing.
“How long until your baby comes?” Kayugh asked.
Blue Shell shook her head but finally said, “Soon.”
“She will have enough milk for two?” Kayugh asked Crooked Nose.
“Most women do.”
“Keep my son,” he said to Blue Shell. “If you can feed him, he will belong to you and to your husband.”
Then Kayugh took his daughter to the beach while the others finished burying his wife.
TWENTY-SIX
THE BABY WAS UNDER CHAGAK’S suk, bound to her chest with a leather sling. Chagak’s breasts had grown heavier and fuller each day during her pregnancy but seemed to lose some of their tenderness as the baby suckled.
He was a strong, fat baby, his head covered with dark hair. He does not look like his father, Chagak told herself. Had she not heard the sea otter whisper that he looked like her brother Pup or even her own father? Maybe he carried their spirits or the spirit of one of the men of her village.
But perhaps he carried the spirit of Man-who-kills. Who could say?
Even if he did not, it was the duty of a son to avenge his father. To kill those who had killed the father. How would a man feel if he had to kill his mother to honor his father?
Chagak tried to make her fingers work on the basket she was weaving, a fine, tightly woven basket with split willow for the warp and rye grass for the weft, but she could not keep her thoughts from her son. Shuganan sat near an oil lamp on the other side of the ulaq, smoothing an ivory carving with sandstone.
He had not said much to Chagak in the three days since the birth, though once Chagak had asked him if he thought she should take the child back to Aka, to let his spirit go to her village’s mountain. He had given her no true answer, only saying that she must decide herself. It was her child, not his.
Chagak looked at the old man. He had never truly recovered from Man-who-kills’ beatings. Although Shuganan never complained of the pain, he held himself carefully, favoring his left side, and his limp was more pronounced. But it seemed that, in exchange for one thing, the spirits had given another. Shuganan’s carvings were better, more intricate, so detailed that Chagak could make out the individual feathers of a soapstone suk, the thin ivory hairs on an old man’s head.
“Shuganan,” Chagak said, trying to speak softly, but in the quiet of the ulaq her words sounded loud, and even the baby jumped when she spoke.
Shuganan looked up at her and paused in his work, but Chagak could think of nothing to say. How could she tell the old man that she just wanted him to talk, wanted words in the ulaq to pull her from her thoughts?
Finally she said, “Do you think, if the child lives, he will have to kill us to avenge his father’s death?”
Shuganan’s eyes rounded, and for a long time he studied Chagak’s face. “No one can know what the spirits will tell a man to do,” he said, his words coming slowly, as if as he spoke he were thinking of other things. “But do not forget, a man who avenges father must also avenge grandfather. Who killed your family?”
“If he kills you for his father’s spirit, who will he kill for his grandfather’s spirit? Perhaps the only one he should kill would be me. But I am old. I will probably die before the child is old enough to have his own ikyak.”
“No,” Chagak said. “If you die, then who will teach him to hunt and use the ikyak?”
“You have decided to let him live then?”
“I have made no decision. I do not know what to do. I do not know enough about the ways of the spirits to choose.”
Shuganan held her eyes with his. “Do you hate him?” he asked.
The question surprised Chagak. “What has he done to me that I should hate him?” she asked. “But I hated his father.”
“You loved his grandmother and grandfather. His aunts and uncles.”
“Yes.”
Shuganan bent over his work, did not look up at Chagak. “I think he should live.”
Chagak sucked in her breath. Something inside wanted to scream out that the child should die, that his spirit would surely carry the taint of his father’s cruelty. But instead she put away her weaving and then took the baby from his carrying strap. She removed the tanned hide that was tucked between his legs and dusted his buttocks with fine white ash she had collected from cooking fires and kept in a small basket.
Then she wrapped him again and picked him up.
“I need to know what kind of man he will be,” Chagak said. “His father’s people are so evil. What chance does he have to be good?”
Shuganan studied Chagak’s face. It was time he told her, but still he held the deep dread of losing her. Once she knew, perhaps she would leave.
But he had been alone many years, and he still had to make the journey to warn the Whale Hunters. Who could say whether he would survive that? But the thought that Chagak might leave was something horrible to him, and he realized how much he had missed people, how much he needed to talk and laugh.
But if he told her the truth, then perhaps she would decide to keep the baby, to let the child live, and then the plans he had been making might be possible, and Chagak would have her true revenge.
So he said: “There is much you do not know about me. Now is the time for me to tell you. Listen, and if you decide you cannot stay with me, I will help you and your son find another place to live, and I will stay here and tell Sees-far that you and Man-who-kills both died. He will believe me. He will see the death ulaq.”
Chagak pulled the baby close to her and, when he began to cry, slipped him under her suk and into the carrying strap. She was squatting on her haunches, elbows on her upraised knees, her chin resting on her hands, an
d Shuganan smiled, a sadness pulling at him. She looked like a child prepared for the storyteller.
He cleared his throat and said, “I know Man-who-kills’ language and his ways because those things were no secret to me even as a child.” He paused, trying to see if Chagak understood, if there was any fear or hating in her eyes. But she was sitting very still and gave no sign of her thoughts.
“I was born in their tribe, of their village. My mother was a slave captured from the Walrus People; my father, or the one who claimed to be my father, was the chief of the village.
“He was not a terrible man, not cruel, but since my mother was a slave, we had little, and since I was tall, thinner and weaker than the other boys, I was not allowed to own an ikyak, nor was I instructed in hunting or using weapons. But I made my own weapons, first only pointed sticks with tips hardened in fire, but then, by watching the weapon-makers in the camp, I learned to make harpoon heads of bone and ivory and to knap flint and obsidian.
“Usually I worked in secret, for I did not know if my father would approve. But as the other boys became hunters, I decided I did not want to be called a boy forever, to never have the joys and responsibilities of being a man, so I began to make a harpoon. I worked carefully, calling on spirits of animals to help me. I spent all of a summer working on it, carving the barbed head. I carved seals and sea lions on the wooden shaft, then smoothed it until it was as soft as down.
“One day, when the sea was too rough for hunting and my father was sitting at the top of his ulaq, I gave him the harpoon, and though he said nothing, I saw the wonder in his eyes, and later that day and the next I saw him showing the weapon to other men.
“Three, perhaps four days later he began an ikyak frame and told my mother to sew a cover for it. That summer he taught me to hunt and he gave me a harpoon that had belonged to his father.
“For the first time I felt as though my father’s people were my people, and I worked hard to please them. I learned to hunt and I continued to carve. My father filled our ulaq with pelts and fine weapons—things other hunters gave in exchange for my carvings.
“I had fourteen summers when I went on my first raid.” Shuganan stopped, then said quickly, “I did not kill anyone. We raided, but usually only to get weapons, perhaps capture a woman for a bride, and most women came willingly.
“I brought back nothing, but there was an excitement, something I cannot even yet explain, a power in capturing what belongs to others.
“But sometime during that summer a shaman came to our village. He and my father became friends. The shaman claimed to be the son of a powerful spirit and he did signs with fire, making flames come from sand and from water. He knew chants that made men sick and medicine that made them well again. Soon everyone believed what he told them, and since his beliefs were similar to ours, it was not difficult to follow him.
“‘If a hunter gains the power of the animals he kills,’ the shaman told us, ‘then will he not gain the power of the men he kills?’”
Shuganan heard Chagak suck in her breath, but he continued, “It was something that even I believed for a time.”
He stopped, but Chagak remained still. Her head was lowered so Shuganan could not see her eyes.
“Our raids became killing raids,” Shuganan said, his voice soft. “But I found, though it was easy to knock a man down and take his weapon or his ikyak, it was a terrible thing to kill him. And each raid was worse for me, and not only for me but others as well.
“By then I was old enough to take a wife and have a ulaq of my own, and there were a number of us who decided to find wives and leave our village—to start a new life without the killing.
“We were told we could go, but we would not be given wives. Some then decided to stay, others left, but as I was packing my ikyak, the men of the village came to me. The shaman told me I could not go. That, though I did not have to raid, I must stay with our people, and if I did not, he would make chants that would kill my mother and all the men who had been allowed to leave.
“I stayed alone in a ulaq, someone guarding, someone bringing food. My earlobe was clipped as my mother’s once was. A sign that I was slave, not hunter. Each day I was told what to carve, for the shaman saw great power in my carvings. He said that a man who owned the carving of an animal would draw a small portion of the living animal’s spirit and carry the power of that spirit with him always.
“It was a horrible time for me, Chagak,” Shuganan said, his voice low. “I spent two years doing nothing but carving. I had always loved the feel of ivory or wood, but I grew to hate it. I wanted to escape, but if I left, who could say what the shaman would do? But one day, when my mother brought food, I saw that my pain was also her pain, and it was her grief that gave me power to do what I did.
“The shaman often came into the ulaq and watched me, though neither he nor I spoke, but one day as he was watching I showed him a whale’s tooth my brother had brought me and told the shaman I had dreamed a design for it and that it would be a gift for him.
“I carved many animals over the surface of the tooth. Around the animals I carved tiny people, images of each man we had killed during our raids. And for some reason as the shaman watched me do all this, he began to trust me. He gave me more freedom in the camp, once even let me go with others seal hunting, but what he did not know was, in the night, when I was in my sleeping place, I also carved.
“I made a place in the center of the tooth for an obsidian knife I had been given in exchange for a carving. I made a plug of ivory to cover the hole and I never let the shaman hold the tooth. Finally, when I had finished, I told him I would make a ceremony of giving.
“He did as I asked and came to the edge of the beach in early morning, when no one was yet awake except a few of the women.
“I had told the shaman to bring his weapons and make a hunting chant. He brought many weapons: harpoons, spears, bolas, and spear throwers. When he began the chant, I placed the carved tooth in his hands and told him to close his eyes. Then I pulled out the knife and pushed it into his heart. He did not even call out, just opened his eyes and died.
“I stole his weapons and an ikyak and traveled many days until I found this beach, then made a ulaq and lived alone. I took seal and sea lion and learned to sew my own clothes.” Shuganan rubbed his hands over his forehead and cleared his throat. “I traded with the Whale Hunters, and after three years of living alone I traded for a wife.” He paused, then said, “We were happy.”
Chagak looked up at him. “So you lived here alone, the two of you,” she said. “And you hunted and carved.”
“No, for a long time I did not carve,” Shuganan said. He shook his head. “It seemed to be something evil. But there was a part of me that was crying, as if I mourned a death. And mornings when I woke, my hands were numb and aching.
“Then my wife had a dream. A woman she did not know spoke to her, told her that I should carve, that my carving could be something good. A joy to the eyes and help to the spirit. I think the woman was my mother, and I think her spirit came to us on its journey to the Dancing Lights.
“I mourned her death, but I began to carve again, and the emptiness I had felt for so many years was replaced with peace. Then I knew my carving was something good.”
Shuganan stopped talking and moved closer to Chagak. “Now you know that I was part of Man-who-kills’ tribe,” he said. “Do you hate me?”
For a long time she said nothing, but she did not move her eyes from his face. Shuganan felt that even his heart was still, waiting for her reply. Finally she answered, “No. I do not hate you. You are like a grandfather to me.”
“You can love a grandfather but not a son?” Shuganan asked quietly.
Chagak began to rock. She crossed her arms over the child within her suk, felt the warmth of his skin next to hers. The hopelessness she had carried since she had first known she was pregnant slipped away and in its place joy grew, hard and strong and shining. “He will live,” Chagak whispered.
TWENTY-SEVEN
KAYUGH THRUST HIS PADDLE into the sea and sent his kayak skimming between swells. Unable to bear the sound of his son’s cries, he had paddled ahead and soon outdistanced the women’s ik and even the other men.
It had been six days and still they had not found the promised cove, the good beach. Little Duck, her dream proven wrong, would not raise her eyes in his presence and would not sit with the women to eat.
But the mistake in days meant little. It was not Little Duck’s error that tore at Kayugh’s heart.
Each night the women passed his son from one to another. Each woman had tried to coax milk from her breasts. Women who had borne many children and nursed many years could make milk easily. In Kayugh’s village it had been no surprise to see a grandmother nursing her grandchild. But Little Duck had never had children, and of Crooked Nose’s four children, three had been daughters, given to the wind. The fourth, a son, had been taken by the great wave that destroyed their village only months after his birth. Crooked Nose had not nursed long enough to have milk for Amgigh.
Blue Shell gave Amgigh the small amount of yellow spirit-milk she held in her breasts, and Crooked Nose fed him broth. But the baby grew thinner, his cries weaker, each day.
And so he will die and have no one to guide him to the spirit world, Kayugh thought. I should have left him with his mother. What chance does he have?
But White River had been the one to name the child and thus give him his own spirit, separate from hers. It was a custom in her family, the naming shortly after birth.
What had White River’s father told Kayugh? Early naming was the reason the family always bred strong hunters. And who could argue with the man? What hunter had brought more meat and furs than any of White River’s brothers and uncles?
Suddenly the anger Kayugh had directed against himself changed to anger against his wife. He had always treated her well, brought her gifts, praised her before other men. Why had she chosen to die?