by C. S. Bills
“We will need the help of all the spirits,” Yural said, as if she had read Attu’s thoughts.
“Attu,” Rika whispered to him as they lay side by side in their shelter late that night. “Are you sleeping?”
“No.” As exhausted as Attu was, he’d been unable to fall asleep. Something was nagging at the corners of his mind, but he couldn’t seem to grasp what it was.
“Farnook is the reason Meavu was taken. I just figured it out.”
“What?” Attu sat up, wide awake now.
“Meavu wasn’t stolen by the Ravens until after Suka took Farnook,” Rika explained. “Kagit thought she was dead. Meavu was Kagit’s second choice.”
Rika’s words hit Attu like he’d just stepped through ice over the deepest part of the Expanse. He realized he was holding his breath, as if he’d actually plunged into the icy water and was sinking to his death. He let his air out slowly, while his mind raced, trying to put the pieces of what Rika was saying together.
“Farnook was taken alive from the slaughter of her people and brought to their new land because Kagit planned on her being their next sacrifice,” Rika continued. “He knew she had Gifts, and he couldn’t count on any of her people to still be living here after all this time, or for any of them to have Gifts if some were found here. He didn’t need us to fulfill their blood ritual initially, while he still had Farnook.
“Kagit was trying to scare us into joining his Clan, with his gifts and his White Ghost Ravens; they could have taken Meavu when she first saw them, remember? But they didn’t. I’m not sure Kagit initially planned on killing us. He had what the Ravens needed, Farnook, and he just had to wait until the carvers were done with their sacred totem. We were extras in his big plan. But when Kagit thought Farnook was dead, he had to replace her with someone else.”
“With Meavu.” Attu reached for Rika in the darkness of their shelter. “And almost you, too. That’s why he let the Seers leave for the grasslands without a fight. He didn’t need them. But once our numbers became even smaller, and he needed to steal one of us for his sacrifice, we became part of his plans; we became the next glittery thing Kagit wanted for himself. A chance to gain even more power.”
“I don’t think Farnook has any idea her leaving with Suka resulted in Meavu’s being taken and possibly even Kagit’s plan to poison the rest of us. But I’m afraid she may figure it out.”
“What should we do? Other people may figure this out, too. What if one of them confronts Farnook?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look,” Suka said as they rounded the outer island the next sun. Attu, Suka, and Tingiyok had paddled out to see if it was possible to make it around the ocean side of the islands now that the narrows were blocked. They’d almost reached the first island when Suka noticed a bright green cast to the water near them. The water was glowing.
“What is it?” Attu asked.
“Let’s get a closer look.” Tingiyok paddled toward the island.
The water near the islands was warm, heated by the slow flow of liquid rock moving into the waters to the south and north of what had once been the narrows.
“It isn’t really a string of islands anymore, is it?” Suka remarked as they got closer.
“No, and that’s not good,” Tingiyok turned his skin boat sideways. “Now it’s a peninsula jutting out into the ocean. Tides and currents won’t be swirling and changing among the islands and between the islands and the mainland like you said they did before the eruption.”
They paddled closer. All around them, fish were jumping and birds flew low, diving into the water and rising again, mouths filled with fish. Otters basked on their backs, not even swimming away at their approach. The hunters paddled through water the color of new leaves on trees.
“It’s algae,” Tingiyok said. He dipped his paddle and raised it. It was covered with the bright green slime of algae. “The warm waters must be causing algae to grow very fast.”
“And the flying and swimming animals are feasting on it.” Attu studied the crowd of life around him.
“And each other.” Suka pointed to an otter as it dove and came up with a fresh fish in its mouth, flipped over on its back and holding the large fish firmly between its paws, crunched on the fish’s meaty sides.
“Too bad we can’t stay here longer and hunt.”
A large black and white shape rose out of the water ahead of them, and a fountain of spray spewed from the top of its head. The wind caught the spray, covering the three men in their boats with salty mist. Attu scrambled to keep his skin boat upright as large waves moved toward them in the wake of the creature.
“A whale fish!” Tingiyok exclaimed. “I’ve never seen one this close.”
“That’s a different kind than the one Rika and I saw,” Attu said. He studied the animal as it swam along the surface of the water before them. “The one we saw was gray and much longer than the Raven Clan’s largest canoes. This one is very different.”
“These are the ones I told you I saw before,” Suka said. “Smaller than the one you and Rika saw when you were trapped on the ice chunk.”
Instinctively, they stopped paddling and balanced themselves by shifting their bodies with the waves the large creature was leaving behind.
“The big gray ones stay farther from the shoreline, usually,” Tingiyok said. “They eat algae and small animals growing in the water.”
“Does this kind?”
“These black and white ones, although much smaller, are much more dangerous. They’re hunters. They eat meat, full grown seals and nuknuks, as well as fish.”
“Look,” Suka said. “There’s more than one.” He pointed toward the islands. There were at least four other shapes visible in the water now, closer to the islands, two large, two small, and the largest whale fish swam above the water, closer to the rest, but not with them.
“I think it’s guarding the group,” Tingiyok said.
“Mothers and young ones are probably eating the fish the algae has attracted,” Suka agreed. “And the male is guarding. We must not disturb them.”
The men sat still in their skin boats. They listened to the sounds the mother whale fish were making, clicks and high pitched noises as the animals communicated.
“They make those sounds in the water too, but you can’t hear them unless you’re in the water,” Tingiyok said. “All whale animals talk to each other that way.”
“They circle around and around the fish, then make the water fill with bubbles, see that?” Suka pointed.
“Look at all the fish! They must dart in and grab them.” Attu was amazed at the coordination of the group. The mothers were teaching the young ones to circle, their large upper fins visible above the water.
All the while the largest whale fish swam back and forth farther out from the shore.
“Never get between them,” Tingiyok warned.
Attu and Suka nodded in agreement. They had no doubt the whale fish would attack to protect its females and young.
At some signal, the mothers and their young dove, and Suka pointed as they surfaced again, far out to the west and south, in the open ocean. Still, the hunters stayed where they were until one of the whale fish breached, a faint plume of water on the blue of the horizon.
“I think it’s safe to try paddling farther out and around the islands now.” Tingiyok turned his boat, and the three hunters paddled around the outer edge of the islands. The farther they paddled, the larger the waves grew. The water swirled and pulled them, first toward the newly formed peninsula, then away. Jagged rocks jutted above the water near the shoreline. Others lay hidden just a hand’s length below the surface. They studied the shoreline, keeping back from the rocks.
“Paddling along the shoreline would be treacherous,” Tingiyok said. “The Raven Clan’s canoes are far less maneuverable than our small craft on the water, and they ride lower. They couldn’t come through here.”
The hunters paddled farther out. Attu was in the lead,
and when he reached about two spear throw’s distance from the island, where they could see no more rocks jutting up, a current caught his skin boat and pulled him west at an alarming rate. “Go back!” he shouted behind him as he struggled to turn his craft.
Suka and Tingiyok managed to pull away from the current, being caught only on its edge, but Attu was held in the grip of a mighty hand, pushing him out faster than he could paddle in.
“Don’t paddle directly against it!” Tingiyok shouted. “Paddle to the side, to the north, a bit at a time.”
Attu changed his angle of paddling. He fought the current and his own panic, gradually escaping the current’s pull. But it had forced his boat far out into the open ocean by the time he broke free of it.
Suka and Tingiyok watched from the safer water near the shore of the mainland as Attu turned his craft around and paddled back toward them. The wind was blowing from the west and large waves raced before it. Attu paddled fiercely toward the beach, working to keep his boat traveling in the direction of their roll. If his skin boat turned sideways to one of those monster waves, it would surely flip his craft. And he knew he had to keep his speed up, or his boat would be swamped from the back when the waves crashed over it.
After what seemed forever, the waves lessened and Attu reached the others. He slumped over his boat, his paddle shaky in his hands. “We can’t paddle through this,” Attu said.
“But I’m afraid the Ravens might be able to,” Tingiyok said, “on a day when the wind is strong from the west, like today. Farnook told me they raise squares of tightly woven grass the wind catches to push them along, and if they do that and paddle, they might be able to overcome the current.”
“Then we must leave as soon as we can get the other boats fixed.” Suka turned and headed back toward the beach.
Chapter 27
“Are you all right, little Kip?” Attu asked Meavu as he came upon her sitting alone on a rock near the beach. She was splitting clams, cutting the soft centers out with her ullik knife and dropping them into a woven grass bowl.
“I’m all right,” Meavu said. “I never thought I would get to do this again, sit by the water doing simple chores. They kept me a prisoner in Limoot’s cedar house after you came and searched. Before that, I was two days’ journey to the south, held in one of their canoes. So many moons I spent in that back room.”
“I’m so sorry,” Attu said. He sat beside her on the rock and put his arm around her.
Two tears slid down her cheeks. She leaned into him.
“You didn’t know. How could you have known?” Meavu straightened and started shelling the clams again. It seemed to calm her. “The day you came to check on Rika? I heard you. They tied me hand and foot, gagged me and carried me down into the same hole the storyteller jumped into the night of the first celebration and tied me to a pole in the center. I heard you, and I tried to hit my feet on the side of the cedar house, but I was too far from it and could only brush it instead. But you didn’t hear me...” her voice trailed off.
“I heard you,” Attu turned to his sister, remembering the sound he’d heard. “I thought it was some children playing with sticks. That was you?”
“Yes.”
“I was right beside you and never knew it. Oh, I’m so sorry we didn’t suspect the Ravens by then, but Kagit’s own son had been taken, and we didn’t figure out until later that he’d set it all up, part of his plan.”
“Yes. His son was drugged by Limoot and carried to the rock. The dead birds strewn about, everything, was all to get the Clans to believe White Ghost Eagles had taken him as well as me, and only Ravens were strong enough to fight them off.”
“When I saw Kagit crying-”
“He took some strong-smelling garlic plant and rubbed it in his eyes. Limoot told him to.”
I remember that smell. I’d thought it must be growing nearby.
“I want to be done with these evil schemers.” Meavu buried her face in Attu’s chest.
Attu held his sister close. “You are a brave woman.”
“You told me I was brave once before, do you remember?” Meavu said, now smiling up at him. “Those words kept me going when I thought I would die as their prisoner. They made it very clear, right from the beginning that I was to be sacrificed... and... I tried to stay brave and to not lose hope. I kept praying to my name spirit and the spirits of the women gone Between, especially Elder Nuanu, to save me.”
“If there were Ravens standing here right now, I’d kill them. Kill them all.” Attu hit his fist into his other palm.
“Just get us to safety, my brother. I want to have a life, with Rovek. I want what you and Rika have, what Farnook and Suka have. Do you think I will? The nightmares... and even during the day, I suddenly become so afraid, as if it’s happening all over again, as if I’m about to be taken...”
“I will help you, Meavu, like Paven once did for me. We won’t let the Raven spirit continue to hurt you with Rememberings and fear. I promise.” Attu held his sister tightly.
“We’ll work in groups,” Attu instructed the other hunters. “Most of us must finish the repairs on the other boats. The rest will hunt seals. Have you seen any seals?” Attu turned to Suka.
“Only farther north, near the camp Farnook and I set up. And as the weather warmed, they moved north.”
“Then you’ll need to hunt sea otters. We took stock of the seal hides we have, and we won’t have enough to repair all the boats. Every boat has holes along the top where bits of fire landed on them. We won’t fix every hole, just what we must to keep the boats from sinking. Otter hide will have to do until we can hunt seals again.”
“What do you want me to do?” Tingiyok asked.
“I’m hoping you’ll want to work with me. We need to take turns on the water near the edge of the islands, watching for the Ravens’ canoes. One can watch while the other sleeps. We can mind speak a warning to Rika or Farnook if the Ravens try to paddle around the islands.”
“Are we in agreement?” Attu looked around at the nodding heads. “Good. We’ll work together and be gone from this place before the Ravens come. Once we get farther north, we’ll hide ourselves inland and set watches until the Ravens give up looking for us.
“I don’t think you realize how determined the Ravens can be,” Rika said. “Farnook said they won’t give up. It means losing leadership in their Clan if whoever has taken Kagit’s place can’t get the right person to sacrifice. And now they must also kill all of us, or be seen as weak for not taking sufficient revenge.”
Attu had explained the plan to her and now he was trying to rest in the shelter before he took the night watch along the edge of the islands. “I hope the sea pulls them all so far out they can’t get back and every last one of them dies of thirst on the open ocean.”
“Or they try to paddle too close to the islands and get dashed on the rocks.”
“But I don’t think either of those things will happen. I can’t imagine how many moons we’ll have to hide out. They’ve got to tire of looking for us, leadership or not, don’t they?” Attu stared into the dark.
“I don’t want to live like prey the rest of our lives, always afraid the Ravens are coming from the south to kill us all in our sleeping furs.” Rika shivered at the thought.
“Then we need to keep praying to our name spirits to help us.”
“And our elder mothers gone Between.”
Yes, Elder Nuanu. Please.
“Other than moving north a few days and then hiding, how can we keep our people safe?” Ubantu addressed the Clans the next evening, as they gathered around the fire.
“What if we don’t hide?” Suka asked.
“You want to get us all killed?” one of the other hunters asked.
“No, but I think we still have a day or two head start. What if we use that to our advantage and push ourselves to continue paddling north after we stop and grab all the supplies Farnook and I have stored and the other skin boat I made?”
; “Why?” Rika asked.
“If Ashukat was right,” Tingiyok said, “we’ll eventually reach a place where the ocean is frozen again.”
“True,” Ubantu added. “He thought there must still be such a place far to the north, because the nuknuks did not die out when your ancestors went through the last Warming.”
“There, the Ravens couldn’t use their canoes to reach us.” Attu smiled as he realized what Suka was thinking. “It just might work.”
“The Ravens don’t know how to survive as the Clans do,” Yural added.
“They walk around naked,” Meavu said. “They’d freeze.”
Everyone laughed.
Attu was glad to see his sister entering into the conversation again. She sat close to Rovek, and although they weren’t bonded yet, Rovek had asked Ubantu the day before for Meavu, and Meavu had assured her father Rovek was the hunter for her. “I would like to see them all fall through the ice,” Meavu added darkly.
The laughter stopped. No one could blame her for wanting the Ravens to drown after what she’d suffered, even though drowning was the worst kind of death to a Nuvik. Mentioning the most dangerous part of the Expanse reminded them all of the danger they were still in.
“If we work hard today, I think the boats will be ready to leave tomorrow at first light,” Ubantu announced the next day.
“Leaving is good. Knowing the Ravens will come after us is not.” Attu grabbed up his paddle and headed toward the beach. He called over his shoulder, “But Tingiyok will be waiting for me. I must go take my watch.”
They’d found an ideal place to observe the outer edge of the islands. It was far enough out in the bay to see almost the whole length of the three islands hugging the shoreline to the south, without getting caught in the current. The northern most island was now a peninsula, but they couldn’t tell if the narrows had been filled in with melted rock between the cliffs and the other two islands further to the south. No matter what had happened since the volcano had erupted, no one could come north without going around the newly formed peninsula. Attu or Tingiyok would see them coming.