Part III
KAPUGEN, THE HUNTER
THE MEMORIES VANISHED. THE WIND screamed oooooooooeeeeeeeeeee. Miyax touched the lichens on the top of her frost heave.
“Amaroq,” she called again, then ran down the slope and climbed to the wolf den. The site was silent and eerie and the puppies’ playground was speckled with bleached bones like tombstones in a graveyard.
She picked one up and saw that it was jagged with the marks of little teeth. With some carving, it could be made into the comb she had been wanting. Glancing around, she saw the club-like base of an antler. “A weapon,” she said. “I may need it.”
A snowy owl floated past, turning his head as he peered down at her curiously.
“I’ll see you in San Francisco,” she called. He set his eyes on some distant goal, bowed his wings, and flew southward as silently as the shadow he cast.
The wind twisted a strand of her hair, and as she stood on the wolf hill she felt the presence of the great animals she had lived with: Amaroq, Nails, Silver, Kapu. She wondered if she would ever see them again. The wind gusted; she turned and walked slowly back home, trailing her fingers on the tips of the sedges and thinking about her departure. At the top of her frost heave, she froze in her tracks. Her house was crushed in and her sleeping skins were torn and strewn over the grass. The meat she had laid out on the grass was gone. Her icebox was opened and empty.
“Ayi!” she cried. “My food! My life! I’m dead!”
Running from broken house to dumped cooking pot to icebox, she felt needles of fear move up her spine, spread into her arms, and pierce her whole body. Who had done this? What bestial creature had taken her food? She looked desperately around and saw, crouched in the reeds almost beside her, the angry Jello. His tail was swishing slowly, his ears were forward. She understood his message and stepped back. Then she knew that was wrong; she must not give in. Hand tightening on the antler club, brandishing it, growling, she flung herself upon him and bit the top of his nose. His eyes widened, his ears and body drooped, and his tail went between his legs. He groveled on his belly and came up to her smiling, head lowered humbly.
Desperate, furious, she lunged at him. Jello rolled to his back and flashed the white hair of surrender. She did not strike; she could not strike a coward.
“Jello!” she cried. “Why? Why did you do it?”
Holding him in abeyance with the antler, she glanced around the ruins of her home and took stock of the damage. All the food in the cellar and on the ground was gone, and her pack was not in sight. Brandishing her weapon, growling at Jello, she backed toward the sod house, kicked back the ruins, and saw the pack under the crushed roof. It was intact. Jello had not found the meat in it. Her mind raced. She had a little food and Kapu had told her that the lemmings were coming back. She could yet make it.
“Gnarlllllllllll,” she snapped at Jello and lowered her club. He rolled over, stood up and, tail between his legs, fled into the twilight.
When he was gone she stood for a long time. Finally she picked up her sleeping skin and tore a fiber from the new hide. She got out her needle and, sitting with her legs out straight in the manner of Eskimo women, began to sew.
A lemming ran across a lichen patch. She stopped working and watched the little animal add a mouthful of grass to its round nest. A movement caught her eye and she glanced up to see a least weasel washing his belly on the other side of the knoll. New white fur was splotched across his gold back. He finished his toilet, and when he sat down he disappeared under the reindeer moss. “You are tiny,” she said and smiled. Another cycle was beginning. The animals who preyed on the lemmings were also coming back.
Miyax put her needle away, rolled her ground skin into a tight bundle, and tied it to the bottom of the pack. Then she got her pot and sleeping skin, her ulo and man’s knife, the bones and her flowers. She packed them, tied a thong to the new caribou skin so she could drag it behind her, and lined up her pointer stones with a distant frost heave.
“It’s time to go,” she said and walked away, not looking back.
Many hours later she opened her pack, spread her skins, and took out a strand of smoked meat. A snowshoe hare screamed and, recognizing the cry of death, Miyax picked up her club and ran off to take the rabbit from its killer. Rounding a clump of grass she came upon an enormous wolverine, the king of the Arctic weasel family. Slowly he lifted his head.
The wolverine was built low to the ground, and his powerful front feet were almost as big as a man’s hand. Utterly fearless, he looked her in the face.
“Shoooo,” she said and jumped at him. He left the rabbit and came toward her. She jumped back and raised her club. He leaped lightly to the side, snarled, and sauntered away. Gingerly she snatched the hare, turned, and fled back to camp. The wolverine’s fearlessness sent goose bumps up her spine. Hastily throwing the hare on the caribou skin she was dragging for just such a purpose, she walked on.
A tern floated past. She took out her sinew, held her arm under the bird, and singing aloud strode toward Point Hope.
At sunset the clouds were dark and soft-edged, like bears. They could dump a foot of snow or a sprinkle of snow. She dug a niche in the side of a heave with her man’s knife, folded her ground skin into an envelope, and pushed it into the cave. With deft hands she pressed her sleeping skin into the envelope, then undressed. The fur nestled her, and when each toe and finger was warm she peered solemnly out of her den. The sky darkened, the clouds lowered, and the wind blew like a charging buck. In less than a minute she could see no more than the fur around her face. The snow had come.
Buried in her skins like an animal in its lair, Miyax wondered about Amaroq and Kapu. Would they be curled in furry balls, or would they be running joyously through the first storm of the winter, following their noses to game?
When she awoke the sun was out, the sky was clear, and only a feathering of snow covered the tundra—just enough to make it winter. Before she had dressed, however, the crystals had melted—all but a few on the north sides of the slopes, that spoke of things to come.
Miyax pulled a snarl out of her hair with her fingers, then looked around. Someone was watching her. Running to the top of a low hill, she scanned the flatness. A dozen stout caribou, their white necks gleaming in the sunlight, browsed in the distance; but there was nothing else. She laughed at herself, went back to her camp, and ate a piece of smoked meat. Rolling her skins and shouldering her pack, she walked to her caribou skin to pick up the leads. It was empty. Someone had taken her rabbit in the night. A wolverine, she thought; but there was not a footstep to tell which way the thief had gone.
She spun around. Again she felt as if someone were watching her. Again there was no one; there was only a large flock of terns in the sky. Taking a bearing on them with her sinew and adjusting her pack, she gave the skin-drag a yank and walked on.
All day the birds moved overhead. She walked a straight line to the ocean, for the pools had frozen and she could follow her compass without deviating.
When the eerie feeling of being watched persisted, Miyax began to wonder if the vast nothingness was driving her mad, as it did many gussaks. To occupy her mind she sang as she gathered caribou droppings and put them on her drag:
Amaroq, wolf, my friend,
You are my adopted father.
My feet shall run because of you.
My heart shall beat because of you.
And I shall love because of you.
That evening she stopped early, built a bright fire and cooked a stew, adding to it a sweet-leather lichen from the tundra. While the pot simmered and the steam hung above it like a gray spirit, she took out a needle and thread and mended a hole in her old mitten.
The earth trembled. She glanced up to see two of the largest caribou she had ever beheld. She could tell by the massiveness of their antlers that they were males, for those of the females are more slender and shorter. As the two ran side by side, the gleam of their headpieces told her it was th
e breeding season of the caribou. When the last fuzzy antler-coating of summer is rubbed off and the horns glow and shimmer, the mating season begins—a season of bellowing and short tempers.
Suddenly the lead bull circled and came toward the other. Both lowered their heads and clashed antlers with a clanging crack that sounded like a shot. Neither was hurt. They shook their heads and stepped back, tossed their antlers, and bellowed. Colliding again, they pawed the ground and then peacefully trotted away. Miyax wondered who they were fighting over, for not a female was to be seen. All the bravado and glamour seemed lost on the grass and the sky.
Nevertheless, when she had eaten she picked up her pack, tugged on her cumbersome drag, and moved on; for the thundering animals told her she was along the migration path and she did not want to camp in the middle of a caribou love nest.
Far from the herd, she stopped by a pond and made her bed. She was not sleepy, so she took out the wolf-puppy bone and, holding the ulo between her knees, carved a tooth in the comb.
Orange and purple shadows crept over the land as the sun went down that night, and Miyax crawled into her sleeping skin noting that the days were growing shorter. She felt restless like the birds and mammals, and in the middle of the night she awakened and peered out at the sky. A star twinkled in the half-lit dome—the first of the year! She smiled, sat up, and hugged her knees.
The guidepost of her ancestors, the North Star, would soon be visible and would point her way when the birds had all gone South.
Softly across the distance a wolf barked, then another. The first bark was one of inquiry, a sort of “Where are you and what are you doing?” The answer was a casual “I am here.” The next call, however, was disquieting. The wolf seemed to be saying there was danger in the air. Miyax looked around to see what it might be. Then the wolf changed the subject and shifted to a joyous howl. As the others joined in she recognized the hunt song of her pack. Amaroq’s rich tones rose and fell like a violin; then came the flute-like voice of Silver. Nails’s voice arose, less strong than Amaroq’s, bringing variation to the theme. Cupping her hands behind her ears, she listened intently. Yes, the pups were singing, too, sounding very mature and grown-up—until Kapu added his laugh-bark.
She listened for Jello to sound forth. He did not. The concert ended abruptly and she heard other sounds in the dimness. A lemming screamed in death, and a flock of migrating eider ducks called out their positions to each other.
Suddenly something moved. She bolted out of bed and grabbed her club. The grass crackled behind her and she spun around. Sedges bobbed to say it was only the wind.
“Ayi!” She was disgusted by her fears. She kicked a stone to change something, since she could not change what she was doing, as Kapugen advised. Feeling better, she slid back in her sleeping skin. “I guess,” she said to herself, “that the sun’s been up so long I’ve forgotten the sounds of the night.” As she waited for sleep she listened to the polar wind whistle, and the dry grasses whined like the voice of the old bent lady.
“Jello!” she screamed, sitting bolt upright. He was almost beside her, his teeth bared as he growled. Then he picked up her pack and ran. She jumped out of bed and started after him, for her very life was in that pack—food, needles, knives, even her boots. The wind chilled her naked body and she stopped to collect her wits. She must act with wisdom. She must think! Her clothes, where were her clothes? They, too, were gone. No, she remembered they were safe in the bladder bag under the caribou skin.
Quickly she pulled them out and clutched them to her chest, but they were of little comfort. She could go nowhere without boots; nor could she make new ones. Her needles and ulo, the tools of survival, were all in the pack. Shivering, she slid into bed and cried. A tear fell on the grass and froze solid.
“My tombstone.”
She lay very still wondering how long it would take for life to leave her.
When she opened her eyes it was daylight and the warm yellow of the land gave her hope. She could eat her caribou skin if she had to. Rolling to her stomach, she smelled something sweet and recognized the scent of wolf urine. It had been dropped at the edge of her bag and was frozen but fresh. Someone had greeted her during the night. It could not have been Jello for the scent did not have the bitter odor of an angry and desolate wolf. Furthermore, it was sparsely given, not the dousing given to hostile objects. It must have been Amaroq. She sniffed again but her nose was not sensitive enough to read the other messages in the urine that meant “all is well.” Yet its light and loving scent gave her a sense of security and she smiled at the sun, dressed, and put her mind to inventing boots.
Wrapping the drag around one foot and her sleeping skin around the other, she clomped awkwardly through the grass in a wider and wider circle hoping that Jello, having eaten her meat, would have abandoned the pack. She did not care about the food anymore. Her ulo and needles and matches were more important to find. With them she could make shoes, hunt, and cook. She marveled at how valuable these simple things were, how beautiful and precious. With them she could make a home, a larder, a sled, and clothes. And the cold air was equally precious. With it she could, like her father, freeze leather and sinew into sleds, spears, and harpoons. She would not die here if she could find her ulo and needles.
As she carefully searched the ground she began to think about seal camp. The old Eskimos were scientists, too. By using the plants, animals, and temperature, they had changed the harsh Arctic into a home, a feat as incredible as sending rockets to the moon. She smiled. The people at seal camp had not been as outdated and old-fashioned as she had been led to believe. No, on the contrary, they had been wise. They had adjusted to nature instead of to man-made gadgets.
“Ayi!” she gasped. On the side of a ground swell lay Jello, his body torn in bloody shreds, his face contorted. Beside him lay her backpack!
Instantly she knew what had happened; Amaroq had turned on him. Once Kapugen had told her that some wolves had tolerated a lone wolf until the day he stole meat from the pups. With that, the leader gave a signal and his pack turned, struck, and tore the lone wolf to pieces. “There is no room in the wolf society for an animal who cannot contribute,” he had said.
Jello had been so cowed he was useless. And now he was dead.
Slowly she opened her pack. The food was gone but her needles, ulo, and boots were tucked in the pockets where she had put them. They were now more wonderful to Miyax than airplanes, ocean liners, and great wide bridges. As she put on her shoes she checked for her man’s knife and matches. They were there, too. Life was hers again! Slinging her pack to her shoulders, she placed a stone at Jello’s head and turned away.
“You’ve got to be a super-wolf to live,” she said. “Poor Jello was not.” She left him to the jaegers and foxes.
“Amaroq, wolf, my friend,” she sang as she walked along. “Amaroq, my adopted father.”
Reaching Point Hope seemed less important, now that she had come to truly understand the value of her ulo and needles. If she missed the boat she could live well until another year. Her voice rang out happily as she sang and followed the birds and her compass.
One evening as she looked for a campsite, she felt lonely. To amuse herself she thought of the hill where the white house stood in San Francisco. When it seemed almost real enough to touch, and very beautiful, it vanished abruptly; for the tundra was even more beautiful—a glistening gold, and its shadows were purple and blue. Lemon-yellow clouds sailed a green sky and every wind-tossed sedge was a silver thread.
“Oh,” she whispered in awe, and stopped where she was to view the painted earth. As she dropped her pack it clanged out a frozen note, reminding her again that autumn was over. The season had been brief; the flash of bird wings, the thunder of migrating herds. That was all. Now it was winter, and the top of the soil was solid. No blue sea would be lapping the shores of Barrow; instead the Arctic Ocean would be a roaring white cauldron forming ice that would join the land with the polar cap.
She was not afraid. Singing her Amaroq song, she gathered grass and rolled it into cylinders. With deft strokes she chopped a hole in the icebound lake, soaked the grass sticks, and laid them out in the air to freeze. Hours later they had snapped and crackled into ice poles. She cut the drag in two pieces and, pushing the poles under one piece, she erected a tent.
Inside her shelter she cut a long thread of hide and twisted it into a snare. A snowshoe rabbit trail ran along the lake and she set off to find the resting place of the one who had made it. The air was cold and she blew her breath into the wolverine trim of her parka hood. There it hung and warmed her face.
Amaroq called and she called back, not to tell him she needed food as she had once done, but to tell him where she was.
A lemming burst out of the grass near her foot and she spun around to look for its nest and young. Not finding them, she turned back in time to see a fox ripple like a ribbon as he pounced and sped off with the lemming. She grinned, made a mental note to be quicker, and walked carefully along the rabbit trail. Finally she came upon a concave dish in the ground—the roost. In it the rabbit would hide from enemies or rest when not eating. She spread her snare, elevated it with an ice stick, and paid out enough hideline to be out of the sight of the hare.
Flat on her stomach she watched the roost. Minutes turned into hours and the pinks and greens of sunset colored the frozen prairie. Suddenly down the trail, ears back, feet flying, came the rabbit. It made a sharp turn and plopped to a halt in its roost. Miyax yanked and caught its left hind foot. She killed it quickly, and ran back to camp.
The grass rustled and she turned around. “Kapu!”
He was trotting down the rabbit trail with a leg of caribou in his mouth. His head bucked as he fought the awkward weight of the meat.
“Kapu!” she repeated. He wagged his tail, took a better grip on his burden, and trotted up to her. He dropped it at her feet. With a skip and a leap she told him in wolf language how glad she was to see him. He replied by dashing around in a small circle, then in three big circles. Finally he stopped and wagged his tail.
Julie of the Wolves Page 8