by Sue Harrison
“Yes.”
“To save your lamp oil? To keep Waxtal out of your food cache?” Kayugh asked.
Samiq opened his mouth to explain that his own ulaq was small, that he wanted the women at this meeting as well as the men, but then he understood that his father only teased him, saw that Kayugh’s belly shook with silent laughter. Samiq let himself smile.
Kayugh laughed out loud and slapped a large hand against Samiq’s shoulder, then handed him a bowl. Chagak had made a good stew.
That night after everyone had eaten, the men settled in a circle close to the largest oil lamp, and the women gathered behind them. Samiq planned to ask the women questions—how much food was in each cache, how long that food would last. Perhaps his questions would make them uncomfortable—usually in village meetings only the men spoke. But how could he plan hunting trips if he did not know how much meat was needed?
When he began to speak, Samiq said, “The Whale Hunters have ways that are not our ways. Sometimes, during that year I lived with them, I thought they were foolish. Sometimes I thought they were wise. But I learned much. In Whale Hunter meetings, when plans are being made for hunts and winter storage, their women speak out.” Samiq looked over the men’s heads to the women. “We men know most about hunting. You women know most about food. Why should I make decisions without using what knowledge is available to me? So tell us,” he said to the women, “how much food do we have?”
But Waxtal curled his lip and said, “Women? You ask women? Since when have women had any great wisdom?”
Samiq pretended he did not hear Waxtal, and listened as Crooked Nose—Big Teeth’s wife—and Samiq’s mother Chagak told how much food was in their storage caches. Then Three Fish spoke, telling of the egg cache Kiin had made during the spring, the eggs stored in sand high above tide lines.
“You have seen the eggs?” Waxtal asked.
Samiq held his breath, afraid that Three Fish would tell the man where the eggs were, but she only nodded and lowered her eyes in the manner of First Men women, then looked slyly from under her lashes, showing Samiq she understood his fears.
“Blue Shell, “Samiq said, “your cache?”
But before Blue Shell could answer, Waxtal shouted, “We have nothing. This woman is lazy. She does not fish enough. She does not set enough bird snares.”
Samiq’s face grew hot in anger, but before he could speak, Big Teeth said, “So then, Waxtal, you have no food to share. Yet you expect us to share with you?”
Waxtal stood up, lifted the walking stick he always kept at his side, and turned to point it at Blue Shell. “She should be the one who does not eat,” he said.
“Ah, yes,” said Kayugh. “She is the one who sits and carves all day and does not go out with the hunters after seals. She is the one who eats in other men’s ulas and never invites anyone to eat in her ulaq.”
Waxtal drew back his lips. The hair that hung in a thin string from his chin quivered. He walked through the circle of men, in rudeness walked between them and the oil lamp. He grabbed a handful of Blue Shell’s hair and pulled the woman to her feet. Samiq stood, but his father’s hand held him back.
“Wait,” Kayugh said to Samiq, the word a quietness in the ulaq.
Blue Shell grabbed her husband’s wrist, twisted the hand down to her mouth, and bit. Waxtal jerked his hand away and drew it back to slap her, but Blue Shell blocked the blow with her arm.
“Do not touch me,” she hissed. “You cannot stop me. I will tell Samiq what he needs to know.” She turned to Samiq and said, “Besides the fish I caught today, we have four sealskins of fat and two sea lion bellies of rendered oil. We have three bellies of dried fish and a sealskin of puffins, whole. I have three baskets of bitterroot bulbs and one, not large, of dried seal meat.”
Samiq closed his eyes in despair. Waxtal had only enough oil for one, perhaps two moons. Did the man think he could live forever on other men’s hunting? He glanced at his father, but Kayugh’s eyes were lowered.
“Well then,” Big Teeth said, “we must hunt.”
“I hunt,” Waxtal said. “I would have as much in my food cache as any man if my wife did not waste what I bring in.”
Blue Shell began to laugh. Waxtal lifted his walking stick, but she brushed past him and left the ulaq without looking back.
The next day, Samiq sent First Snow and Small Knife to hunt seals and otters—whatever they could find in the inlets of the bay. He asked Kayugh and Big Teeth if they would be willing to go inland to hunt caribou. “Last summer, traders said there were caribou living on the tundra, one, two days’ walk from this beach,” Samiq said to the men. “We have never hunted caribou before, but …” He paused when he saw light come into his father’s eyes.
“Once when I was a boy, my father took me caribou hunting,” Kayugh said. “I am willing to try again.”
“If you want, take Waxtal,” said Samiq and smiled at his father’s grimace.
But that morning as all the men left the village, Waxtal was with Kayugh and Big Teeth, the three with throwing spears and seal flipper boots, walking inland toward the mountains.
The women went out in Chagak’s ik to fish for cod with handlines. After they left, Samiq went to his ulaq and painted his face red with ocher and seal fat, in the manner of the Whale Hunters. He did not go out to hunt. How could he hunt whales with his hand as it was? Perhaps someday he would hunt seals or sea lions, but even with Three. Fish’s birdbone straightening his finger, he would never have the quickness to hunt whales. He would be a retriever—one who followed the whale once it was harpooned, and helped bring it back to the village after it died. But first he must ask the whale spirits to choose another alananasika, a man to be chief whale hunter of the village, someone for Samiq to teach what he had learned from the Whale Hunters.
He took his ikyak out into the bay and began a Whale Hunters’ song, a song he had learned from his grandfather Many Whales, once alananasika of the Whale Hunter tribe. When the song was finished, Samiq sang his own words, a plea to the whale spirits. “We do not hunt so men will honor us with songs. We do not hunt so women will praise us. We hunt to live. If you choose a hunter from our village, we will treat you with honor. Any whale who gives himself to us, we will honor. We will fill his mouth with fresh water. We will give his heart back to the sea. We will do all those things that honor whales.”
He waited then, hoping to feel the power of the whale spirits, to know in his heart that the whale spirits understood his people’s needs. But he felt only emptiness under the high gray dome of the sky, and in his heart the same emptiness.
He looked down for a moment at his right hand, clamped tightly around the paddle, and as he turned his ikyak back toward the village, he asked himself why he had thought the whale spirits would listen to him. He was no hunter.
“You knew,” some spirit voice told him. “You knew. Why else did you go alone, without the others? The whale spirits, they do not see you as a hunter. The whale spirits, they see that your power is gone.”
First Snow and Small Knife came back to the village looking like old men, faces lined, backs bent. They had seen nothing, heard nothing, had had no chance even to unlash harpoons from ikyan decks.
“Tomorrow,” Samiq told them. “A hunter does not expect to bring back meat each time he hunts.” But even as he said the words, Samiq felt a chill at the center of his chest. What if they did not bring back meat? What if some curse had driven the animals from the Traders’ Beach?
They went out again the next day, and the next, and Samiq, too, went out, paddled his ikyak to the mouth of the bay and spoke to the whale spirits. Both days the men brought back nothing. Both days, in his prayers and in his songs, Samiq felt only the emptiness of sky and sea.
On the fourth day, Kayugh, Big Teeth, and Waxtal returned from their hunting trip. They, too, brought back nothing.
The women made a meal of fish and served it in Kayugh’s ulaq, and Samiq watched as the men sat with heads hung low, eyes da
rk and sunken with the need for sleep. After they had eaten, there was no conversation, only the heaviness of each man’s thoughts filling the inside of the ulaq, until finally Kayugh said, “We need rest, then we will go again.”
“You think I will go, spend four days walking, for nothing?” said Waxtal, his face flushed, his eyes narrowed into dark slits. “I could have been home in my own ulaq, carving something that I could trade for oil and meat. Go again if you want. I will not.”
Samiq met Waxtal’s eyes. “You do not hunt. You do not eat,” he said.
Waxtal pointed his walking stick at Samiq’s right hand. “And you?” Waxtal asked and laughed. “I am not afraid to live off what I can get for my carvings. Will you live off what you bring in with your harpoon?”
CHAPTER 10
LOW TIDE. WAXTAL STOOPED to pick up a piece of driftwood. It was rotten, so soft that he could gouge it with a flick of his thumbnail. But what could he expect? The sea seldom brought gifts for his carving knife into this shallow bay. Even the driftwood was worthless. He tossed the wood aside and continued his walk down the beach.
He pressed his teeth together, ground them in irritation. He should have stayed in the ulaq, but at least he had not taken Blue Shell’s advice. Stupid woman! She had wanted him to travel all the way to the North Sea. He could have done what she suggested—spent a cold day in the ikyak, made the long trip to the mouth of the bay—and found the same there, nothing worth his efforts.
As it was, he had been following the inlet beach for so long that when he looked up at the sky, he could see the pattern of the beach sand on the gray of the clouds. He rubbed his eyes, then scanned the surface of the bay.
At first he thought he was seeing Samiq’s ikyak. For days, Samiq had been throwing practice spears, and this morning, Waxtal had seen him take his ikyak out and fling spear after spear at an inflated seal bladder.
Waxtal had watched, laughing. Did Samiq think the sea animals would give themselves to a hunter marked with deformity? Samiq was better off to go with the women to pick berries.
For a moment Waxtal let himself imagine the pleasure it would have given his son Qakan to see Samiq’s awkwardness with weapons. But Qakan was dead, killed by Kiin’s husband, Raven. Waxtal sighed. Was there no honor in the world that a man would kill his wife’s brother?
Waxtal stopped and turned back toward the water, hoping to see Samiq make a poor throw, or even better, overturn his ikyak. Then Waxtal realized he was not seeing Samiq’s ikyak but an ik paddled by two men. Waxtal waited, his hands gripping his walking stick, until the ik was close enough to see the bow markings: the yellow lines and red circles of a trader’s ik. Excitement filled Waxtal’s chest, puffing up his ribs and belly as though he had swallowed a great mouthful of air.
He ran to Kayugh’s ulaq, scrambled up the sod that layered roof and sides, then called down through the smokehole, “Kayugh, traders have come!”
Kayugh climbed up from the ulaq, shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked out toward the water. “Traders, this time of year?” he asked.
Waxtal shrugged.
“Get Big Teeth;” Kayugh said. “Find Samiq.”
Waxtal curled his lip. Who was Kayugh to tell him what to do? Instead, Waxtal walked back to the beach, waved to the traders until they followed him to the low place where waves gentled to allow easy landing at ebb tide.
“Traders?” he called, and waded out to help them beach their ik. The men were young, scarcely older than boys, and alike enough to make Waxtal believe they were brothers.
“Yes, we are traders,” the one in the bow of the ik answered. His words came from deep in his throat, in the manner of Walrus People, but he spoke in the First Men tongue.
The traders climbed from the ik, and Waxtal helped them pull it ashore. When the ik was beyond reach of the waves, Waxtal held his hands out palm up in traditional greeting. “I am a friend. I have no knife.”
The traders nodded and repeated the greeting. Waxtal looked back toward the ulas and saw that Kayugh was coming with Big Teeth and First Snow. Waxtal pointed toward them with his chin. “You see those men,” he said to the traders. “They are good hunters.” Then, smoothing his hands over the front of his suk, he said, “I am chief hunter and shaman. Welcome to our village.”
Chagak frowned as Waxtal sat in the honored place between the traders, but she hid her irritation in the quickness of her hands as she prepared food.
When the politeness of introduction was complete, the traders removed their parkas, and Chagak, hearing Three Fish gasp, turned to see that both men wore many necklaces. The jumble of bear claws, shells, bone beads, and seal teeth made Chagak wonder how the men could stand straight under the weight of them.
But, Chagak thought, there is wisdom in a man’s wearing what he has to offer in trade. How do people know what they want if they do not see what they might have?
The women made a feast and served the food on mats inside Kayugh’s ulaq. Chagak did not let herself think about the emptiness of the village’s caches. What family would refuse to feed guests? What hunter would not share what was given as gift to his spear?
While the men ate, Chagak fed Wren leftover bits of meat and dried berries, scraps not good enough to give to guests. And as she fed Wren, she watched the traders. They were young, both with narrow faces, small hands and feet. They wore fur leggings and hooded parkas like the Walrus People, and their words, too, came harshly from their throats, like Walrus People.
The one who spoke the most had thick dense brows that met over his nose. The other had markings on his face, thin dark lines across his cheeks, much like the Whale Hunter lines that marked Samiq’s chin.
When the men had finished eating, they gathered near the largest oil lamp to talk. The women ate, helped Chagak clean bowls and put away food, then left.
Chagak took Wren to sit near her sleeping place and put a sheaf of dried ryegrass on the floor beside them. She pulled Wren to her lap and showed the girl how to split each blade of grass with her thumbnail so the grass would coil easily and could be used to weave small baskets.
Wren pinched her face into a frown and slowly split a strand. Chagak bent to whisper praise into her ear, then laid the split pieces on a mat. “Flat and straight so they will not tangle,” she whispered to Wren. She sat Wren on the floor beside her and handed her several blades of grass, then picked up a bundle for herself, laying it across her lap.
As she worked, Chagak let herself listen to the men’s conversation.
At first they spoke of weather, tides, and currents, so that Chagak would rather hear Wren’s prattle than the men’s words, but then one of the traders said, “We plan to go to the Whale Hunters’ village.”
“Now before winter?” Kayugh asked.
Chagak took a long breath. The Whale Hunters’ village. Who would be so foolish as to try to make a trip to the Whale Hunters’ island this close to winter?
“There will be storms,” Big Teeth said.
“Yes,” said one of the traders, the smaller one, the one who appeared to be the older of the two. “But we have survived storms before.”
“If there were more of you, it would be better. You could lash your iks together if a storm came while you were at sea,” Samiq said, and Chagak noticed that her son kept his right hand down by his side, out of sight. She felt a catch of sorrow under her breastbone and forced her thoughts from Samiq back to Wren, who was using her front teeth to split the grass.
“No,” Chagak whispered to her daughter. “Your teeth are too thick. The grass will fray.”
Wren sighed, but pursed her lips and picked up another piece of grass. Chagak reached over to stroke a hand down the length of Wren’s dark hair. It did not seem so long ago that she was teaching Kayugh’s oldest daughter Red Berry to split grass. And now Red Berry had two sons of her own.
And soon I will be grandmother again, Chagak thought. She smiled as she remembered Three Fish’s excitement. Chagak had been afraid that Samiq would
find no joy in Three Fish’s pregnancy. But he had come to her with eyes shining, and with questions, worry edging his words as he asked once again about food supplies in Kayugh’s ulaq.
Three Fish will have a large, strong baby, Chagak had told Samiq. Then you will have three children, she had said, and saw the brief darkening of her son’s eyes, and knew that he was thinking of Kiin and Shuku.
But three children were enough for any hunter to feed. At least Small Knife, the son Samiq had adopted from the Whale Hunters, was old enough to bring meat for himself and others. Chagak thought of Takha, the baby now beginning to smile, to make small sounds that Samiq claimed to be words, and she tried not to think of Shuku, Amgigh’s son.
Amgigh. Chagak had fought so hard to keep him alive, first as a baby when Kayugh had come to them, his wife dead, Kayugh’s newborn baby starving. Then when Amgigh was a young man, he had nearly drowned in a whale hunt. At least he had lived long enough to make a son, even if that son was being raised by Raven.
Chagak looked across the ulaq through the lamp haze at her son Samiq. He was growing strong again. At first, after Kiin left, it had seemed that Samiq had not wanted to live, and Chagak had begun to think that each day some part of his spirit slipped away, perhaps to follow Kiin over the North Sea, to settle inside Kiin’s body and there live side by side with Kiin’s spirit.
But now Samiq was nearly Samiq again, learning, in spite of his injury, to paddle his ikyak, to throw his harpoon. Still, there was the darkness of grief in his eyes.
Then Chagak heard the voice of the sea otter, its whisper close in her mind. “Is that not true for all of you?” the otter asked. “You all mourn Amgigh. You wish Kiin and Shuku were with you. Do you not mourn your own beach and Aka, that sacred mountain, as well? So many things left behind. So many things lost during these few months since the mountains’ anger forced the First Men from their island.”
Chagak took a long breath to lift the heaviness from her chest and said to the otter, “Yes, we all mourn.” She bent her head over her work, tried to turn her thoughts away from her sorrow. From the corners of her eyes she saw Waxtal leave the circle of men. She shook her head at his rudeness. Kayugh was talking, but Waxtal behaved like a child, giving no attention to politeness.
