by Sue Harrison
Tears tightened her throat, and she could say no more, so she ripped the grass away from the grave, making an edge of bare earth, then rearranged the rocks, pressing them against one another into a tight mound that would stand for a while against wind and ice and tremors. The island’s two mountains stood high to the south and west of their village, and Daughter spoke to those mountains, asked protection for the grave. After all, the mountains had so much island they could shake, why disturb this small mound of rock and the man whose bones slept under it?
She turned away, her good-byes said, but then remembered something she had meant to do. She had made a necklace of wooden beads carved from the remains of the log boat she and the grandfather had ridden from their island. She lifted the necklace from under her sax and, moving several of the rocks at the top of the mound, let it fall down into the grave. She was replacing the rocks when she noticed a bit of hide, dark and nearly rotted, sticking out between two stones. It came easily into her hand, and she realized that it was an amulet, one that the grandfather had always carried.
The hide fell apart in her fingers, and she clutched at what was inside—sand, lighter in color than the sand of the First Men’s island. She clenched her fist so the wind could not steal what she held. Without doubt, it was a gift from the grandfather.
As she walked back to the village, she clasped her hands in front of her, holding the treasure. She climbed up Seal’s ulax, and looked toward the beach. To her relief, he was near the iqyax rack, oiling his trader’s boat. When she went inside, prepared for K’os’s questions—a story on her tongue about taking sand from the island for luck—she found the ulax empty, a disarray of food containers and trade goods cluttering the center of the floor.
Daughter slipped into her sleeping place and used her teeth to tug a bedding fur, skin side up, into her lap, then dumped the sand on the skin.
Among the grains were tiny fragments of green stone, nearly translucent. She picked out a thin, curved shard, and finally realized it was a bit of water gourd. How could she forget those gourds that had kept them alive during their journey?
Daughter picked up the shard of gourd and caught her breath when she saw the tiny carved bead under it. It was small, only the size of a crowberry, and nearly as hard as rock, but not rock. When she looked at it closely, she could see that there was a tiny face on one side. The bead was pierced with a hole, and so, although Daughter poured the sand, stones, and the shard of water gourd into her own amulet, she threaded the face bead on a sinew string and tied it around her neck.
They left two days later, K’os at the front with a paddle, and Daughter behind her, tucked among the packs of food and trade goods. Daughter looked long at the island, the grass so green, the flowers bright in the low meadows—yellow cinquefoil, lupine, primola, and bluebells—and the mountains that still kept their caps of snow.
Some of the people had come out to the beach, and she looked for White Salmon, wondered if he would say good-bye. But he was not there. The chief hunter’s wives and their children crowded the shore, the boys calling for her to bring them back gifts. They celebrated her leaving because they thought she would return. K’os’s eyes said otherwise, and Daughter knew that K’os planned to keep her close. What mother wanted to face old age alone?
But surely K’os wanted Daughter to have a husband, and a husband always protected his wife, even against her own mother. Most likely he would be a River man, and Daughter would have to learn new ways, but she already understood the River language, and K’os had told her many River People stories, had insisted that Daughter learn to tell the stories herself. She had sewn parkas and boots like the River People wore, but she made them out of fur seal or otter skins rather than caribou hide. She had learned plant medicines, and K’os had made her an otter fur medicine bag like K’os’s own.
So in some ways she understood the River People, but she had never skinned a caribou, never helped on a hunt. She had never eaten fresh caribou meat, and she often wondered how people lived without the good taste of seal blubber, the warmth it put into a belly during the cold days and nights of winter.
When she wore the beautiful parka K’os had made her, she found the hood restricting. How did a woman turn her head? How did she see anything but what was right before her eyes?
“You think our winters here on this island are cold?” K’os once asked her. “You will find out how cold winter can be when we live with the River People.”
Daughter had not answered. Since she was a little girl, she had understood that K’os liked to frighten her, and she had learned that she had the strength to meet all the problems that K’os predicted. Those few times when Daughter did doubt her abilities, she reminded herself that K’os had once been young, had faced the same worries, the same dangers, and she had survived. If K’os could, then she could.
Though at first all things seemed new, their traveling, like everything in life, settled into sameness. Their days started with the first rays of sun. Seal told them that traders did not eat in the mornings, only at night, but K’os did not listen to him, and always had dried fish and a water bladder ready. She would not repack the boat until she had eaten, and Daughter ate also, fearful at first of taboos broken, but after several days of Seal’s sharp words and K’os’s defiance, Seal, too, ate a share of the fish. It seemed to Daughter that the eating was a wise thing, that Seal was able to paddle harder and longer.
Each morning, she and K’os packed the boat while Seal studied the skies and decided if the tide was high enough or low enough to start out again. Their landings were usually easier in high tide, and Seal tried to avoid beaches where rips spun out from the shore. They left when the sea was right, sometimes well into the morning, at other times as soon as they had packed.
Seal paddled all day at the back of the boat while K’os and Daughter took turns at the front, and the one who did not paddle bailed.
The bailing tube was a hollow piece of bamboo driftwood, cut the length of a forearm with the bow of a joint in the center. A hunter placed one end of the bailing tube into the water at the bottom of the boat and sucked on the other end until the tube was full. Then he emptied the water over the side of the boat. A man with both hands on a paddle could use his mouth to bail, and the tube fit easily into small spaces between packs, even down into a cramped iqyax hatch.
Daughter had seen boys practicing with bailing tubes in shallow water at low tide. Then she had joined the other girls in laughing at them. Why practice something that was so simple? But now she found that she did not have enough breath to suck up much water. Seal mocked her, commented on the weakness of women, but she ignored him and tried until she was so dizzy the sky spun. As the days passed, her lungs grew stronger, and though she could never suck up as much water as Seal, she was soon better at it than K’os.
Gradually, as they traveled, the boat’s sea lion covering allowed water to seep in through the seams, and sometimes waves splashed over the sides. Then Seal would curse his trader’s boat, tell K’os that if it weren’t for her and Daughter, he would travel like a man in an iqyax.
K’os would pack the gaping seams with strips of fish fat, and remind Seal in harsh words that almost all traders used open boats. If he did a better job of securing sea lion skin covers to protect bow and stern, they would not have so many problems. Then Seal would set his mouth in anger and say no more, for when it came to arguing, who was better than K’os?
When they found a good beach, they stopped. Sometimes that happened early in the day, other times not until sunset. Twice they found no beach at all, no inlets, and so paddled on through the night.
Each time they stopped, they carried the boat and their packs high above the tide line. The boat was longer and wider than an iqyax and thus more stable in the water, but it was still light enough for K’os and Daughter to carry.
To make a shelter they tipped it to the side, faced its belly toward the wind, and arranged packs like walls on either end, then stretched seals
kins over them to make a roof. If the beach had driftwood, they built a fire on the open side of their shelter.
Daughter searched for driftwood while Seal oiled the boat cover and K’os repaired its seams. That was Daughter’s favorite time of day. Though her belly twisted in emptiness, she knew she would soon eat, and it was good to again feel the earth firm beneath her feet.
On some beaches the waves were generous, bringing more wood than they could use in many nights, but other beaches were bare, with nothing but a few shells. On those beaches Seal used his hunter’s lamp for warmth. It was made of stone like all First Men lamps, and seal or whale oil fed its moss wick, but it was small, only the size of a man’s hand, fingers spread, and did not give much heat. On especially cold nights, Seal hunkered near the lamp, sometimes even squatted over it, his sax funneling the heat up to his legs and groin, smoke coming from the neck hole. Daughter and K’os would be left to shiver in the cold, no warmth for them except from each other.
“We should have brought our own lamps and oil,” Daughter told K’os the first night they could not make a fire.
K’os had only shrugged and said, “We must be careful, riding this sea as we do. What the sea allows from a man, it counts as disrespect from a woman.”
“Hunters’ lamps are taboo for women?” Daughter asked.
“Perhaps,” K’os had told her. “Why take the chance? We will be colder in the River People’s land than we are here. Do you want the sea to hear your complaints? Wear your parka.”
During that night, the parka warmed her, so Daughter wore it in the boat the next day. But that was a day of wind and waves, and soon in the sea spray she was drenched, the parka sodden. By the time they made a camp for the night, Daughter was so wet and cold that she could not keep her teeth still. She looked with longing at the hooded waterproof parka Seal wore, but was careful not to complain or even express a wish for one. Though K’os did not say so, they must also be taboo for women. Otherwise, K’os would have one. But how strange that only hunters were allowed to wear a chigdax when it was a woman’s hand that fashioned it from dried sea lion gut, and a woman’s needle that sewed the watertight seams.
Seal and K’os wore seal flipper boots, but Daughter went barefoot as she had all her life. She had made herself boots in the manner of the River People, but she did not want to watch them rot a little more each day, her feet in the water that always lay in the bottom of the boat.
The first few days on the sea had frightened her, and at night her mind was tormented by dreams of otters that attacked with sharp and vicious teeth. In one dream, she had looked down at her feet, was amazed to see them whole, even with her smallest toes. Then the grandfather had picked up a knife, a large blade, dark with dried blood, and she had awakened screaming, had reached down to where her small toes had been, felt the ridged scars, and reminded herself that she had received a fair trade for that first toe, life, not only for herself but the grandfather.
During the second moon of traveling, a squall came on them, and though Daughter had little respect for Seal, he handled the waves and the wind with strength, speaking in a soothing voice to his wife and daughter. His calmness seemed to draw away their fear, and bailing became a rhythm bounded by his words.
He managed to get the boat to a beach. It was little more than a shelf of rock, without sand or driftwood, set against cliffs so high that in the rain and fog Daughter could not see their tops.
Though they were cold and wet, and the ground was hard beneath their sleeping mats, Daughter could feel only gratitude that they were no longer on the sea. And after that, through all their journey, Daughter’s fear no longer lived so near her heart.
That night they huddled together with K’os in the middle, and sometime during her sleep, Daughter was awakened by the rhythm of K’os and Seal grinding against one another, K’os making payment for their safety.
The next day they stayed, though the weather was good, because K’os had seen birdholes in the cliffs. She and Daughter walked the narrow beach until they found a talus slope that allowed Daughter to climb to the top of the cliffs. If there had been a group of women, young men, or agile boys, they would have made a sling and lowered someone to reach in and steal the eggs, but with only K’os to stand against Daughter’s weight, they did not. Instead, Daughter lay on her belly at the edge of the cliff, stuck her hands into the holes she could reach, and gathered eggs. By the time she had checked each hole, her hands were cut and bleeding, slashed by the birds’ beaks, but she had managed to gather a basketful and catch several auklets, wringing their necks even as they fought her.
She and K’os took the eggs and birds back to their camp and found Seal waiting impatiently for them.
“High tide!” he exclaimed, and saying no more, he gestured toward the boat.
He sat sulking as Daughter and K’os worked to repack, and Daughter hid her resentment as Seal poked his thumbs into nearly half the eggs and sucked out the contents.
Once she lifted her chin toward him and said to K’os, “See what he does.”
But K’os merely answered, “And who paddles all day? Not you.”
She knew that K’os was right, but the realization only fed her anger. When they had lived in the First Men village, K’os and Seal fought all the time, but here on the sea, K’os had suddenly become a good wife, always worried about her husband, sitting up in the night to repair his sax or chigdax when her own garments needed more attention than his, always being sure that he got the best food and the heaviest sleeping robes.
As though she could hear Daughter’s thoughts, K’os said, “Remember this, Uutuk, until we get to a village, without him, we are dead.”
Then Daughter understood that her mother had not changed. K’os knew what she wanted and merely worked to get it.
After more than two moons of traveling, the earth began to grow trees—black spruce, Seal called them. K’os said they were poor and sickly, bent in their struggle against the wind, and she told Daughter that the trees that grew in the land of the River People were straight and strong. Though Daughter said nothing, she suddenly remembered the trees that had grown near the village where she and the grandfather once lived. Those trees had been so tall that it seemed that their branches should be able to scrape down the stars. Here, the black spruce were no bigger than a man, but at least they were trees, and she celebrated with K’os, singing a River song about trees dancing.
Seal complained about that song, and it was true that the salt of the sea had coated their throats, so even Daughter sang in an old woman’s voice.
The sea had also scoured their faces, and all of them had bleeding sores on their lips and nostrils. Ko’s’s hands were cracked and rough, and some days after taking her turn with the paddle, her fingers curled themselves so tightly that she could not straighten them until the next morning.
The day after they first saw the trees, they also saw a village, and Daughter hoped they might stop. It was a First Men village, small, but even from the sea Daughter could pick out the mounds of the ulas, the iqyax racks, and children and elders walking the beaches, gathering wood and digging for clams. But Seal did not stop, only uttered an insult, vulgar and spiteful, against the women of that village.
K’os turned to look at her husband, and Daughter expected her to scold him, but she merely set her mouth into a grimace, and turned back to her paddling. After a moment of thought, Daughter realized that K’os had been hiding a smile, that she had been mocking her husband, and Daughter guessed that he had made poor trades there or, worse, had angered some husband.
The long day stretched into weariness, but before night, they paddled into an inlet and came to another village. This time Seal turned their boat toward the beach. The children ran out to meet them, shouting that a trader had come to visit. Then the young men and hunters were beside their boat, hauling it to shore. One of them helped Daughter out and offered her water from a seal belly. Daughter reached for the belly, her throat harsh and raw from
the sea, but before she could raise it to her lips, K’os clasped her arm, shook her head.
“Be sure he offers the water in kindness, not in trade,” she told Daughter, and she spoke in the River language so the young man would not understand.
“It is only water, Mother,” Daughter said.
But K’os turned to the man and asked him what he expected in return. He answered with a joke and a request for Daughter to stay with him in his father’s ulax.
Daughter shook her head at the young man, but smiled to soften her refusal. Then she and K’os helped Seal pull the boat beyond the reach of waves. They waited as Seal spoke to the chief hunter, and Daughter smiled shyly at the children who gathered around her, one bold enough to touch her hand.
She was tired and her legs ached from sitting in the boat all day, so when K’os gestured for her to follow, she went without thinking, fixing her eyes on the path that she walked. She found herself wishing they could enjoy the warmth of an ulax. They had spent so many nights on the beaches at the mercy of wind and rain and sea waves.
She was led to an old woman’s ulax. It was small but warm, and the woman made her a bed behind the climbing log. Daughter had hoped to be able to sleep as soon as the bed was made, but the old woman wanted to talk. Daughter struggled to keep her eyes open, bit the insides of her cheeks so the pain would keep her from falling asleep.
Old age had withered the woman’s flesh and darkened her face. A hump on her back nearly bent her double, and the sparse strands of her white hair were drawn up tightly and tied into a knot at the crown of her head.
“Your mother and father are staying with the chief hunter,” she said and began to laugh. “He thinks he has the greatest honor, that hunter, but he is also a fool, for children are the best, and daughters are very good. I am glad to have you here.”
She chattered on, speaking of village people that Daughter did not know. Finally she said, “Do you like being a trader?”