by Sue Harrison
When Big Teeth returned, he squatted beside Kayugh, flexing his long-boned arms, cracking the knuckles of both hands. Samiq asked his question again: “What about Blue Shell?”
“I will take her,” Big Teeth said.
“She is welcome in your lodge?” Samiq asked.
“Yes.”
“Who will go with me then?” asked Samiq.
Kayugh stood, then Big Teeth, and according to age, First Snow and Small Knife. Samiq looked at Small Knife, then glanced at his father Kayugh. Kayugh saw the question in his son’s eyes. Was Small Knife too young to be a part of this? But boy or man, he was a hunter, bringing in seals and sea lions. How many times had Kayugh held praise thoughts for this young man whom Samiq had brought from the Whale Hunters? Kayugh caught Samiq’s eyes and nodded his head.
“Then we will all go,” Samiq said.
They went to Waxtal’s ulaq. At first, Blue Shell tried to bring them food, but when they refused, she huddled into her storage corner, stacks of baskets and mats pulled close around her as though she were a child playing the hiding game. And thus they sat, no one speaking, no one eating, all with eyes on the flames of the oil lamp as they waited for Waxtal.
When he finally came in, his clothes brought with him the outside smell of wind and grass. He looked at them, first in surprise, then with a sudden flicker of fear. But he stood straight, eyes searching the ulaq until he found Blue Shell. “You gave them no food?” he asked in a high voice. He went over to where she crouched, gripped his walking stick with both hands, and lifted it over his head. Blue Shell covered her face with one raised arm, but Big Teeth stood, grabbed the stick as Waxtal swung, and twisted it from the man’s hands.
“No!” Big Teeth said.
Samiq stood and said to Waxtal, “You have spearheads that belonged to one who is dead. I need them for my hunting. Bring them here, now.”
It was a good beginning, Kayugh thought. If Samiq had asked for the oil, Waxtal could laugh, blame Chagak, even his own wife. But no one had the spearheads except Waxtal himself.
Waxtal drew in a long breath, and Kayugh saw that the man’s hands trembled. “Why would I have your brother’s spearheads?” he asked.
“You borrowed them. You wanted to learn to knap stone,” Kayugh said.
Waxtal licked his lips, then sucked in his cheeks. “Oh, yes,” Waxtal said. “Yes, I gave them back.”
“No,” Kayugh said, looking over at Samiq. “He did not.”
“Yes …” Waxtal began, but Big Teeth cut in, his words hard. “You say Kayugh lies?”
“No, no. I gave them to Chagak.”
Kayugh pressed his lips together. He did not want to bring Chagak here. “She would have told me,” he said.
Waxtal shrugged. “She does not like me,” he answered, his voice a whine. “She is still ashamed that she was once wife of a Short One. She is ashamed that she gave herself to the ones who killed her own people.” He laughed, a harsh sound. “And she is ashamed that she bore …”
Then both Kayugh and Samiq were beside the man. Samiq’s clawed hand was twisted into Waxtal’s hair, his fist at Waxtal’s face. “Kayugh calls me son,” Samiq said, and his words squeezed out from clenched teeth into a whisper that made Kayugh’s skin rise in bumps along his arms. “I need nothing more than that. Nor does my mother. Where are the spearpoints?”
“He traded them.”
Then all the men were looking at Blue Shell, the woman standing now in the midst of her baskets and grass mats. “He traded them,” she said again. “The spearpoints and oil and some of his carvings.”
“Woman!” Waxtal bellowed. He jerked from Samiq’s grasp and lunged toward his wife, but Kayugh and First Snow were beside him, and Big Teeth went to stand next to Blue Shell.
“For what?” Samiq asked, his words coming between breaths as though he had been running.
Blue Shell moved from her corner and went into Waxtal’s sleeping place. She came out holding a walrus tusk that was nearly as long as she was tall. “This and another,” she said.
“You have broken my vow,” Waxtal said. “You went into my sleeping place when I was not here and broke promises to the spirits. Now what will I carve? You have cursed the ivory with your hands.”
“You have cursed it with your lies,” Big Teeth said to Waxtal.
Then Samiq said, “You are no longer part of this village. You are not First Men. Take your ikyak and leave us.”
Waxtal looked into Samiq’s face, pursed his lips as if to spit, but Kayugh opened his fingers to show he held a sleeve knife, point out, in his hand. “Take your boots and hunter’s lamp. Take your walking stick. Nothing more.”
“Food?” Waxtal asked.
“You traded your food for the tusks,” Samiq said. “Take the tusks. Eat them. You would let us starve for them. You starve instead.”
Kayugh released Waxtal, and the man scurried into his sleeping place to bring out the other tusk. “Wife,” he said as he bound the tusks together with a length of braided kelp, “get my boots and lamp. Get your suk and sleeping furs.”
“No,” Big Teeth said. “She does not die for what you have done. She is my wife now.”
Blue Shell’s eyes widened, but she stepped closer to Big Teeth.
Waxtal’s lips quivered. “I will die,” he said.
“We might all die,” Samiq answered. “You should have thought of that when you traded our oil.”
For a long time Waxtal said nothing. Then he looked up at Big Teeth and said, “Make her get my boots and lamp. I do not know where she puts them.”
Big Teeth shook his head. “Any man with eyes can see where they are,” he said, and he reached up into the ulaq rafters, pulled down boots and a hunter’s lamp. He handed them to Waxtal.
“You are a woman now, doing a woman’s chores?” Waxtal asked as he took the boots and lamp from Big Teeth’s hands, but Blue Shell pushed between the two men, leaned forward, and slapped Waxtal.
“Be careful how you speak to my husband,” she told him.
Waxtal raised his hand, and for a moment Kayugh thought he would strike Blue Shell, but then Waxtal dropped his arm, and when he turned to leave the ulaq, the mark of Blue Shell’s fingers was still red on his face.
CHAPTER 15
WAXTAL PADDLED HIS IKYAK toward shore. He looked back the length of the bay. The village was too far away to see, but a white smudge of smoke from the roof holes lightened the sky. Waves from the North Sea pushed in from the mouth of the bay and slapped against the sides of the ikyak.
“Tonight I stay here,” he said aloud, so the spirits lurking near would know that he was not afraid to live alone. But his voice sounded small in the noise of waves and wind.
He pulled out his hunter’s lamp. They had given him no oil, but there was a thin ridge of hardened tallow at the center of the lamp. He scraped some loose with his thumbnail. “They think they gave me nothing to eat,” he said, and forced out a laugh. He licked his thumbnail and reached inside the sleeve of his suk, where he had hidden several pieces of dried fish. He ate the smallest piece, then carried his ikyak up into the grass that grew long at the high edge of the beach.
He recognized a stand of tall, healthy ryegrass. Yes, this was where Blue Shell and the other women came to cut basket grass. Curling his lips and biting the insides of his cheeks, he pulled the grass out by the roots, handful after handful, until an area as wide and long as a ulaq was bare. Let them come next summer to look for grass, he thought.
He gathered armfuls and carried it to his ikyak. He laid the grass on the ground, making a thick pad. He used a braided kelp fiber rope from inside his ikyak to tie the boat on its side, then he lay down in its lee. For a long time he looked up, watched as the sky darkened into night. He had put the walrus tusks in the bottom of his ikyak, and now he reached in through the ikyak hole, moved his fingers until they found the smooth cool surface of the ivory.
Tomorrow, he thought, I will carve. He stroked one of the tusks, and it seeme
d as though he felt the voice of that carving, vibrating like a whisper beneath his fingertips.
“Waxtal will not go far,” Samiq said, and he looked at the men sitting in a close circle around the one oil lamp burning in Kayugh’s ulaq. “We must be sure he does not come back to steal food and oil.”
“So, do we go after the traders?” First Snow asked. “Perhaps they would give us back some of the oil Waxtal stole.”
“Why should they?” Kayugh asked. “Besides, it would take us too many days to find them. Perhaps a whole moon, and by that time they may have traded everything away. We are better off to spend our days hunting.”
“So we have lost some oil,” said Big Teeth. “What does it matter? We are hunters. We will bring in enough seals and sea lions to fill our food caches.” He stretched his long arms out in front of him and cracked his knuckles. It was a gesture Samiq had often seen, and it always meant Big Teeth was worried.
“What other tribe hunts better that we do?” asked First Snow. “We bring in more seals. And Samiq hunts whales. Among all men Samiq is the greatest hunter. Who can equal him?”
Samiq opened his mouth to protest First Snow’s praise, but caught his father’s quick headshake, the warning in his father’s eyes. It was not the time to deny ability. The men needed the confidence of praise. So instead Samiq raised his voice above the murmuring agreement that met First Snow’s words and said, “I seem to remember a day when someone brought in three sea lions. I seem to remember the praise songs the women sang that day.”
Now it was First Snow’s turn to drop his eyes, acknowledge Samiq’s praise as Big Teeth and Kayugh reached over to slap First Snow’s shoulders while Small Knife watched smiling.
But the laughter faded. Kayugh and First Snow sat staring at the oil lamp, as though the flame could give them answers to the problems they faced. Big Teeth smoothed a spear shaft with a lava rock, and
Small Knife hummed a song, something Samiq had heard often when he lived with the Whale Hunters.
The five of us, then, Samiq thought. Five men to bring meat for our four women and our babies: Wren, First Snow’s two sons, and my Takha. How much oil do we need? Nine, ten sea lion bellies for each person? And it takes the fat of at least four seals, even five, to fill one belly.
Then some spirit, its voice coming from the darkness behind Samiq’s eyes, whispered: “Where will you find that many seals this time of year? And if you do find them, how will you hunt them?”
Samiq glanced down at his hand and then away. Yes, he was throwing better, but still, he needed more practice.
“You were the one who brought your people here,” the same badgering spirit said. “Your father wanted to stay in the islands. He stepped aside, let you take your place as chief hunter, and now in your first winter as leader, you will see your people starve.”
First Snow’s laughter brought Samiq back from his thoughts, and he realized that Big Teeth was telling jokes again, this one about a hunter and two women, and though Samiq was glad to see the others laughing, he could not even smile.
“Tomorrow, then,” Kayugh said.
Chagak watched the men leave the ulaq. Her eyes lingered on her son Samiq. Kayugh turned to her, and his smile faded. But she said, “You lead them well.”
“Samiq leads them,” Kayugh said.
Chagak shrugged. “And when your own son leads, you think you have nothing to do with that?”
Kayugh squatted beside her, but Chagak was careful not to touch him. Sea animals were sometimes jealous of wives. A woman’s scent on a hunter’s hands might make an animal angry. And who could say how a man’s ikyak might feel, outside in the cold while the hunter enjoyed the warmth of his wife’s bed? The night before a hunting trip, it was better for a man to sleep alone.
“It will not be an easy winter,” Kayugh said.
“We have had hard winters before,” Chagak answered. “Remember when Samiq and his brother had six summers? That was not a good winter.”
Kayugh nodded. “But we did not starve,” he said.
“No,” Chagak answered. “We did not starve.”
Kayugh stood. “I will sleep now. Tell the women to be ready for meat tomorrow night.”
He smiled, but Chagak could tell the smile did not come from his heart. She watched him as he went to his sleeping place. She heard the soft sounds of grass mats and bedding furs as he lay down.
Meat tomorrow, she thought. She remembered times when her arms had been weary from scraping seal hides, when her eyes burned with the smoke of drying fires. She wished she could again be so blessed.
The knife slipped, and Waxtal looked up into the clouded morning sky to snarl his anger. He threw the blade down, then stood and stretched, turning so his eyes fell on the ryegrass he had pulled the night before. He frowned, then nodded his head. He had to leave this place. The grass spirits were angry, and they pushed against his knife as he cut.
He put away his carving tools and ignored the rumbling of his stomach. He tied the tusk at the bottom of his ikyak, securing it to the chines of the hull.
It is a good ikyak, this one, Waxtal thought. He ran his hands over the taut sea lion hides that covered the frame. He had built the ikyak soon after they came to the Traders’ Beach. He had shaped the hull in the manner of the Whale Hunters. He had asked Samiq for advice, but had made the ikyak himself, with help from no one except Blue Shell, who did the woman’s work of sewing the sea lion hide covering.
He laughed now as he remembered the angry comments Kayugh and Big Teeth had made as they were left to build the remaining ulas. What had Waxtal cared? His ulaq, built first, was finished. He and his wife were warm. Besides, he had been in mourning over Qakan, his only son. What sorrow could be greater than that?
Not even this present sorrow—loss of village and wife—could compare. But every carver had to sacrifice a portion of his life for his carving. Every gift had to be earned.
“My choice was the best choice,” Waxtal said out loud. “Now I have no ulaq, but I have the ivory, and I have this fine ikyak. Perhaps even the knowledge of that—building an ikyak in the manner of the Whale Hunters—will be enough to bring food for the winter.” But as soon as he had said the words, a chill tightened the muscles of his back, as though the spirits watching laughed, knowing more than he knew.
He thought he heard a whispering then, perhaps something brought to him on the wind, perhaps something that came from his ikyak or his ivory: “You have no food, no oil. What will you eat? You have no village, no ulaq. Where will you go?”
“To Kiin,” he said, but the words were like something dead in his mouth. Her husband was shaman, powerful enough to make the Walrus People let Waxtal stay in their village. But what if Kiin did not want him? Waxtal closed his eyes against a sudden image of his daughter as she crouched before him while he swung his walking stick against her back. “She was not a good daughter,” Waxtal said to the wind, to the ivory tusks. “She would never have become a shaman’s wife if I had not beaten the stubbornness from her.”
Perhaps it was best not to go to Kiin. Waxtal did not have enough food to travel more than one day in any direction. It was many days to the Walrus People village, especially if a man did not cut across the North Sea. And a hunter alone would be a fool not to stay within sight of the shore.
Waxtal looked west, the way the traders had taken. There were First Men villages only a few days’ west of the Traders’ Bay. If he did not catch up with the traders, perhaps he could find a new home with people who would appreciate his skills.
The hunters left before sunrise, each ikyak weighted with ballast stones, each carrying bladders of oil for hunter’s lamps, and seal fat to patch holes or gaping seams in ikyak covers. Tied to the top of each ikyak were extra paddles, sealskin floats, coils of kelp twine, and harpoon shafts.
Samiq wore two parkas, and over the parkas a watertight, hooded chigadax of sea lion esophagus and a slope-brimmed wooden whaler’s hat. It was not the hat he had received durin
g his whaler’s ceremony—that had been left at the Whale Hunters’ island—but one he had made himself after returning to his own people. It was not as beautiful as his first hat. It carried no markings, red and black, had no thin ivory strip where wood met wood at the back of the head, but it kept wind and water from his eyes.
The journey from the village beach to the end of the bay was a long one, and during that time, the sun rose. It brought little heat, and the clouds were so low that it seemed to Samiq he could reach up with his paddle and pierce their bellies.
As he watched the sky, voices came to Samiq, small spirits bringing doubts.
How could the First Men hunters expect to find sea lions at this time of year, so close to winter?
How would they live without meat and oil?
Would Red Berry have enough milk to nurse both her own baby and Takha?
The hunters began a sealing song, but still Samiq heard the spirit voices. Their questions pounded until Samiq’s head ached with their noise, so that he finally said to them, “We will live if we have to eat grass. Three Fish will not starve, even if I have to give her my own flesh to eat. If Red Berry cannot feed Takha, then I will take him back to the Raven. It is better for him to be raised a Walrus People than to starve.”
“You cannot take Takha back to the Walrus People,” one of the spirits whispered. “They will kill him. Have you forgotten what Kiin told you about the babies’ curse?”
“Kiin took Shuku back with her,” Samiq answered. “If she thought he might be harmed, she would have left him also.”
“But she told Raven Takha was dead. You heard her tell him. Why would she do that except to protect Takha?”
“To give me my son, something to bind us together while we live in separate villages.”
Samiq waited for the spirit voices to reply, to laugh at his words, but they said nothing, and as Samiq paddled into the North Sea, he decided that he had left them behind in the gentler waters of the bay.
Samiq smelled the stink of the rookery long before he saw the beach, and he began to allow himself to hope, to think with a smile tucked in his cheek of the women’s faces as the men brought home sea lions buoyed with floats and trailing the ikyan. He thought of what he would tell those troublesome spirits back at the Traders’ Bay.
