by C. S. Bills
“What?” Attu sat down hard in the sand. His mind reeled. “What happened?”
“According to the hunter in front of them, Vonkik panicked as you started paddling under the bridge of fire. His was the last boat, and he cut the rope holding his skin boat to the one in front of it. He tried to turn around, but as he did, a wave of flame came down across his craft. I’m afraid they both went Between.”
Attu held his head in his hands.
“You couldn’t have stopped them,” Yural said. “They made a choice. I think all of us at one point or another through the narrows wanted to cut our ropes and turn back. Having the boats tied together saved us from drifting apart, but it also made us follow you, which also saved us.”
“Rika was the one who gave me the idea.” Attu looked down the beach to where Rika now sat next to Meavu. Meavu appeared calmer. She was sitting and talking. Rika looked up, and motioned to Rovek to come now. Rovek strode forward, and Meavu rose to meet him. Rovek held out his arms for her, and Meavu slipped into them.
“My daughter is alive,” Yural whispered, as if to herself. “She is alive and will stay with us forever. She will not have to leave with Rovek to live with another Clan. We’ll continue her healing, for there will be much for her to face about her horrible time with the Ravens before she will be fully back with us once again. But this is a good start.”
Yural looked up at her man. Attu saw her eyes were now clear and bright.
“No White Ghost Eagles had been seeking revenge for what had happened in the past with the Ravens,” Ubantu said. “But the Ravens were plotters of a far greater evil, just to fulfill the rituals they believed necessary for their totem.” He gently wiped ash from Yural’s cheek, then opened his arms to her.
Yural stepped into her man’s embrace.
Attu turned and headed back for Rika.
“We need to stay here and make repairs to the skin boats,” Ubantu said.
The Clan had gathered near a small fire. The women were dropping hot rocks into pouches of fish soup, and the smell made Attu’s stomach growl.
“I could eat that soup, pouch, rocks, and all,” Suka said as he gnawed on a piece of dried meat Farnook had given him.
Carved bowls were filled, and everyone devoured the food.
“Delicious,” Ubantu said after he downed half the bowl’s contents in his first gulps. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his garment.
Attu looked around at the others. Most had burns, some open and weeping. Everyone had blisters on their faces to match the ones they’d gotten from paddling. Yural’s ear had been burned. Rika’s hands were wrapped. She had treated everyone else before allowing Farnook to cleanse and wrap her own hands.
Most of the children had burrowed under the furs and had come out of the ordeal with only a few burns. But everyone who had stayed tied together had made it through the narrows alive and would heal in time.
“The boats have many small holes in the top hides,” Suka said. “Mine has a fist-sized hole in the side, burned right through the sealskin. I can’t use it again until it’s fixed.”
“We brought as many cured skins as we could,” Ubantu explained to Suka. “Ready to use, rolled in fat to keep them supple. They will stretch without tearing, and you can use as many as you need.”
“Thank you,” Suka said. “I didn’t think to bring any with us. We were coming to guide you back and didn’t realize the eruption would become so dangerous.”
“No one could have guessed at such destruction.”
“What did you see?” The men asked Rovek a while later, as he lifted his skin boat out of the shallow water and carried it to the beach to avoid damaging it on the rocks near the shore. He had volunteered to paddle back far enough to assess what was happening to the passage between the coastline and the islands as the volcano continued to erupt.
“Where there used to be the narrows of water between the sheer cliffs and the islands, there’s now a steaming mass of black rock, rising up out of the water. I think the arch of rock we paddled under must have collapsed soon after we passed through it and now more is layering on it. It looks like it’s connecting the land to the island nearest us. All the trees on the island have burned; many are pushed over and are being buried by the moving rock.”
“Do you think the Ravens will be able to paddle around the rock and the island and come after us?” Rika asked.
“I don’t know,” Rovek said. “I didn’t try to paddle the other way around, out into the ocean. I came back.”
“It would have been foolish to try that while you are still exhausted from our escape,” Ubantu said. “You did right to come back.”
Rovek beamed at Ubantu’s words and took his place beside the other men.
Meavu rushed to get him something to eat.
Yural smiled at the two of them.
Tingiyok had a bump on his head, but otherwise seemed fine. “They’ll expect the Ravens they sent after us to return. They may wait two or three days more, but they’ll come, even if the Ravens can’t fix their canoes enough to go back and tell the others what we did to them. Once the Ravens know we sabotaged their canoes, they’ll be even angrier.”
“What exactly did you do to the Raven boats?” Attu asked. “You told us you’d rig them to sink, but how did you do it?”
Ubantu shrugged as if it were nothing. “Rovek and I used the larger drilling tool to make a hole in the bottom of each canoe. I filled it back in with a mixture of deer glue and the wood flakes the tool makes while cutting through the wood. I hid them under the woven seat pads the Ravens leave tied into their canoes for sitting on when paddling.” He sighed.
“But you misjudged how long it would take the deer glue to melt and the hole to open up,” Attu said, realization dawning.
“Much longer than I’d expected.”
“So the Ravens are paddling along and begin taking on water,” Tingiyok remarked. “Not much at first.”
“And they can’t see where it’s coming from,” Ubantu said.
“Until the hole opens up completely, in the warm water near the eruption-”
“And then the boats begin sinking and the Ravens can’t stop them.”
Attu slapped his leg as all around him the men and women of the Clans popped their lips and grinned at Ubantu and Rovek.
“So I don’t understand why you’re concerned about the rest of the Raven canoes,” Rika said. “They’ll all sink the next time they’re out on the water for very long. By the time they fix them, we’ll be far away.”
“No, and that’s what I was worried about when the Ravens kept coming,” Ubantu said. “That night of the celebration, Rovek and I started with the canoes farthest north on the beach, assuming those would be the ones the Ravens took if they tried to follow us.” He paused and looked out over the water as he remembered. “I was right about that part. But we only had a chance to damage eight of their canoes before the Raven hunters got suspicious and we had to leave the beach. Only two more will sink. The rest are untouched.”
“Someone ordered those Ravens to come after us. Another hunter must have taken over the Ravens right after Kagit died,” Suka said. “What better way to prove he is a worthy leader than to capture enough of us to fulfill their totem ritual?”
“If they truly believe they must have a blood sacrifice to claim that land and erect their totem, then another wave of canoes will follow the first. The question is when,” Ubantu added.
“They will come after us again,” Yural agreed. “We have Gifts in our blood. It was Limoot’s and Kagit’s goal to destroy anyone besides themselves who has Gifts, and to take our power through sacrificing Meavu, an innocent person with Gifts during the totem pole ritual.” Yural’s face was calm, but Attu heard the bitterness in her voice.
“Meavu?” Rovek asked the question everyone was thinking. “Meavu has Gifts?”
“Meavu,” Yural affirmed. “I’d recognized it for a few moons before Meavu was taken. She was beginning to sense th
ings, know things, like she told you, Attu. And I knew then that Meavu was going to be strong in the Gifts of the women, her senses continuing to develop as she grew older. Meavu was probably perfect for their ritual. When they caught Rika near the poisoned drink, she became a “lucky bonus” in Limoot’s eyes.”
“And now they must come after us, or they’ll not be able to complete the ritual and erect their totem, sealing the oath they must be making between their Clan and their Raven spirit, claiming that land forever as theirs,” Rika whispered.
Attu felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. Elder Nuanu, did you think of that in your plan to save us?
Chapter 26
“It’s getting too dark to see the stitching.” Suka set his heavy sinew thread to the side at the end of their first day on the beach. “And I’m hungry.” He removed the bone needle and slid it in with his other boat building tools.
One by one, the hunters put down their tools and moved to sit at the fire. Shelters had been erected, and some of the smaller children were already sleeping in their comforting furs. The rest sat around the fire, watching the still erupting volcano to the south.
“It’s wearing itself out.” Yural handed Attu a plate of steaming fish the younger boys had caught while the men had worked on the boats. “Like a poolik before falling asleep.”
“This is the way it was before,” Tingiyok said. “Although I have no memory of any of my people ever seeing an eruption as large as this one.”
They sat, watching the eruption on the horizon for a time.
“I must tell you all something.” Farnook spoke after a while, breaking the silence. “And if you wish me to, I will then leave you, for it is a shameful thing.”
She stood, her knees trembling, and like a storyteller, she spread her palms out over the fire as if to warm them, the gesture for permission to speak. She looked to Ubantu.
“Farnook, you don’t have to do this,” Suka reached for her, but Farnook gestured for him to stay seated, a frown creasing her brow in the firelight. Her lips were a straight line, her eyes narrowed. “No, my hunter, I must tell them. They must know.”
Farnook looked to Ubantu again. “Proceed, woman of my brother’s son,” Ubantu said.
Farnook nodded in respect to Ubantu. “With your Elder’s permission, as most of you know, I was taken as a child, ‘rescued’ or so Kagit always told me. He told me his Clan had been moving north, and they’d come upon me, the lone survivor of a vicious attack.”
“That’s what Kagit told us as well,” Attu said. Farnook nodded again, and smiled at Attu briefly before turning back to stare into the fire.
“He lied. As my time away from the Ravens grew to be a few moons, and Suka and I were together, I began to feel safe again, safer than I think I have ever felt in all my life. Then the dreams started.” Farnook’s face paled at the remembrance, but she continued. “I saw the Ravens in my dreams, only these Ravens weren’t the ones who stood between me and starvation among the ruins of my home and the bodies of my people. These were the Ravens who-” and Farnook cleared her throat. Attu saw twin tracks of tears now running down her cheeks. “They were the ones who... killed my whole Clan.”
Heads nodded. It all made sense to them now.
“I remembered,” Farnook continued. “I remembered the slaughter. My people were walking around as if drunk on fermented berry juice, and then the killing began. I remembered hiding in terror under an old fish box. I watched through the slits in the box until I could watch no more. I went elsewhere in the Between. And when I woke again, Kagit was there, lifting me up in his strong arms. He mind spoke to me and told me he would keep me safe. Perhaps I answered him in mind speak. I’m not sure. I remembered nothing else.”
Suka stood and moved beside his woman, his arm around her shoulders, lending her his strength.
“I now realize he knew about the Seers and their home here, in the bay by the Rock of the Ancients. Perhaps when they spoke with my people, traded with them before, he found out; I don’t know, but I think they kept me alive and took me with them because they knew that I had Gifts and when they came to the place they wished to settle, there would be others like me there. I think they must have heard my people crying out to the Seer Clan as they were slaughtered...” Farnook paused, wiping her eyes. “It wouldn’t be like Kagit to save an innocent girl like me in the midst of the killing unless he recognized he could use me somehow against the Seers, or to somehow win their trust, once the Ravens arrived here.”
Farnook began trembling violently, and she sat down. The women covered her legs with a fur and wrapped another one around her, touching her face, her hands. She did not resist, but she looked as if she were far away, remembering terrors Attu couldn’t begin to imagine.
“When we realized Farnook was remembering, we readied ourselves to return and guide you back before the Ravens harmed you,” Suka continued their account. “Farnook was able to communicate some things she’d seen in dreams to you, but anything about the Ravens seemed to be blocked. We knew whatever they’d planned, they were also somehow stopping her Gifts from being used to warn you of them. I dismantled our shelter and hung our provisions from some tall tree limbs wrapped in hides to protect them from the foraging animals. I readied our skin boat. I’ve made another since, and I hung that one up to protect it as well. Then we started out.”
“Is that when I dreamed of you?” Rika asked. “About the empty baskets?”
Farnook stared into the flames. “It was the most I was able to tell you.”
“She realized she had picked the berries Limoot would use, and she cried and cried as she told me,” Suka said. “As frightened as she was, she was determined to warn you all, get you free from the Ravens before it was too late.”
“Is that when you saw the volcano?” Yural asked.
“Yes, and that’s when I realized we might have a chance to get you all away from the Ravens for good.”
“I dreamed again,” Farnook said, her voice surprisingly strong as she sat, still staring at the flames. “I saw two women. Elder Nuanu and another woman, one with flaming red hair, a Seer. She said her name was Vanreda.”
Tingiyok sat bolt upright. “Show me, please.”
Tingiyok’s eyes grew wide. “Yes,” he whispered. “I see her, too. The most powerful Seer among us for many generations.”
“And she saw another. In her first dream of the women, now spirits of the Between, and again, just before we reached you,” Suka added.
“Who did you see?” Tingiyok asked. He was looking at Farnook with deference now. No one had known how great her Gifts of Seeing were until this moment. Attu felt a reverence for the young woman himself. Hadn’t she encouraged him with the message of three such powerful spirits? Hadn’t those words strengthened him as he’d fought to keep up his nerve and continue paddling into the fire?
“I saw my mother,” Farnook said. “And then I knew for sure Kagit’s people had killed them, made sacrifices out of them, to empower them in the Gifts through their Raven spirit. And now I know that once they traveled north to the place where they would settle, they planned to kill all the people still there with Gifts in their blood. I think they believed that once they had done so, they’d become even stronger, and would have laid claim to that rich land forever by the blood of the Nuvik people. The Raven spirit went ahead of them, to prepare the way.”
Attu thought he would be sick. “That’s why it has always felt like an evil place to me, a place I must leave.”
“And to the Seers as well, once the Raven spirit came,” Tingiyok added.
Attu whispered. “The evil would have been sealed with the blood of Meavu’s and Rika’s sacrifices. The totems would have been placed in Blooded Ground. The Ravens would have laid claim to it for themselves and for their Raven spirit, forever.”
“What?” Farnook asked.
Suka looked at them all, his eyes wide with fear. “They were going to do what?”
Attu realized then that
neither Farnook nor Suka knew all that had happened during the Raven celebration. Was it just last night? No, two nights ago? It seems like a long time ago. We’ve had no time to think about the horror since; we’ve just been trying to escape it.
Ubantu told them both.
When he finished, Farnook rose to her feet again. Her voice was shaky, but determined. “I did not warn you when you first came to the Raven camp. I collected the berries Limoot tried to poison you with. Meavu was to be sacrificed and then Rika, too, and you were all to be killed. Paven and Ashukat died. If you don’t want me as part of your Clan-” she stopped, unable to continue.
Yural stood and wrapped a protective arm around the girl. “She is ours,” Yural declared. Her voice and stance dared anyone to disagree. “Farnook is bonded to Suka and is a Nuvik woman of great strength and courage. She did what she could, once she remembered. It is not her fault that the horrors of seeing her Clan killed when she was a helpless child resulted in her forgetting that horrible night, that night when the evil spirits of the Raven ran in the bodies of the Raven hunters themselves and committed their heinous crimes.”
A murmur ran through the group. Heads nodded. Several people reached out to Farnook in acceptance of her.
“And her mother is with Elder Nuanu and Vanreda now,” Meavu said. “She has told us. They made the volcano blow. Together they did this great thing, and it will save us all.”
Meavu looked to the other women of the Clan, who nodded, many clutching their spirit necklaces and whispering a prayer of thanks.
“I pray you are right,” Attu said. The rest of the hunters nodded in agreement as all of them gazed at their women, slight of build and strength in this world, forces to be reckoned with in the next. Attu looked to Rika, who broke the seriousness of their discussion by smiling wickedly at him. That’s right, mighty hunter. Always remember the power of the women.
And we are back on the water now, Attuanin’s kingdom, Attu replied. I will not forget my name spirit is powerful in this place.