by Sue Harrison
Huge rocks protected the rookery beach. Squinting, Samiq thought he saw sea lions on the rocks, thought he saw movement, and he slowed his ikyak. Then he realized that he heard no sound of animals calling. Even the gulls and cliff birds were gone, the beach silent in its preparation for the wind and snow of winter.
He watched as the other men’s shoulders slumped, as their paddling became listless, without rhythm or purpose. The sea lions were gone.
“We will find them,” Kayugh cried out, and Samiq opened his mouth to agree, but found he could say nothing. Why lie? It would not bring the sea animals to them. Better to look for seals, even otters. Eating otter meat was worse than eating dirt, some men said, but meat was meat, and what was warmer than an otter pelt? So he continued to paddle, following the shore. And turning, he saw that the others followed him.
They returned with one harbor seal, which First Snow had taken at the mouth of their bay. The women, when they saw, were at first silent, then Chagak began a praise song. The high trilling made Samiq forget that they had brought back so little, and for one brief moment he saw himself as hunter. Then, as though he had suddenly become a child, tears burned his eyes.
Am I a boy, he asked himself, that I must cry at any disappointment? We eat for one day, two days. That is better than not eating. Looking up, he saw that all the men watched him from their ikyan, the women watched from the shore.
Samiq took a long breath, wished again he was not leader. How much easier to have some other hunter tell him what to do, what to hope for. But he smiled at his people. “We need food, fish, sea urchins, whatever you have brought in today,” he told the women. Then he turned to the men. “Tonight we will feast. Tomorrow each hunter should do what he wants: sleep, repair weapons, fish, hunt. It is each man’s decision.”
Samiq paddled ashore, placed his ikyak on the rack, then went to his ulaq to prepare himself for what he would do.
He began when the sky lightened, even before the first edge of the sun showed itself. Samiq made a shelter of old mats and sealskins, layering them over willow poles, tying everything in place with kelp twine. He had brought only a bladder of water and a hunter’s lamp, a little oil from his ulaq. Nothing more. No food. No sleeping furs. When the shelter was finished, he sat outside, facing east, waiting for the sun. After sunrise, he went into the shelter, trimmed the wick of his lamp, and began the days and nights of songs to whale spirits. It was the fourth day when Samiq finally heard the voice. First he thought it was his father coming to bring him back to the village, back to take his place among the First Men, but then he realized that the voice came from within, and it was not a voice of strength but one of whining, a child’s voice crying for food, crying for sleep.
So this is who I am, Samiq thought. Only yet a child, thinking more of myself than of others, demanding to eat, demanding the comfort of a warm sleeping place. What right do I have to lead my people? What have I given them except a strange place to live, with mountains we do not know and animals we do not understand?
He started another song, something to cover that child’s voice, but his throat was raw from days of singing, and each word was like lava rock scraping against his flesh. While his inside voice was the mewling voice of a child, the outside voice—the sounds that came to Samiq’s ears—carried the words of an old man, hoarse and broken.
Finally he decided to allow himself the strong medicine of sleep. He prayed for dreams, but his spirit longed for peace, and a part of him hoped no dreams would come.
What came was the smooth, cool wood of a paddle in his hands, the oil-and-hide smell of an ikyak. Then sight also came, and hearing. And he realized that he did not dream. Somehow he was in his ikyak, in the middle of the bay.
He did not remember taking his ikyak out. One moment he was lost in the strange thoughts that come to a hunter fasting, and then he was paddling, cold in the wind, wearing only his woven grass apron and Kiin’s shell bead necklace, no chigadax, no whaler’s hat, no seal flipper boots. He was again at the mouth of the bay, and in his confusion he could not find the sun beneath the clouds that hung as thick as otter fur over the sky.
The water was gray, and Samiq, looking into its depths, knew that if some sea animal, angry at Samiq for his nakedness, bit a hole in the bottom of the ikyak, the water’s cold would seep quickly through his body to stop his heart.
“I have done nothing except work for my people,” Samiq said, whispering the words to the small waves lapping at his ikyak. “I hunted this summer as much as I could.” He held his crippled hand up, the paddle still clenched tightly in the bent fingers. “Until this. Now I cannot hunt. Waxtal took what was not his to take, but I have done what I could do. I have worked hard.” His voice was small under the wide dome of the sky, and his words were taken by the wind as soon as they left his mouth.
Suddenly, instead of the sea, instead of the translucent sea lion skins of his ikyak, he saw the faces of his people. Then the cold did not matter, and it did not matter that he was tired, that he was hungry. Three Fish and Takha and Small Knife, they were more important than the tight ache of his belly. Kayugh and Chagak, First Snow and Red Berry, Crooked Nose and Big Teeth, Samiq’s sister Wren, his nephews Little Flat Stone and the baby, Otter. Kiin’s mother, Blue Shell. They were more important than the cold that wrapped him as closely as a puffin feather suk.
Samiq stretched his arms up, raised his paddle in the air, and when he called out, his voice was the strong voice of a hunter. “What does it matter if I cannot hunt? What does it matter who I am? I will pick berries with the women if it will help my people. I will walk the beach like an old man and gather sea urchins. It does not matter about me. But do not let my people starve. Do not give them a winter of pain and cold. Protect them from the sickness that comes to body and mind when there is no food.”
For a moment his words seemed strong enough to fill the sky. But then, like rain, they fell, and there was nothing. No sound except the waves, no color but the gray of beach and water and clouds.
The whale spirits do not hear me, Samiq thought. Still, once more, with paddle lowered, head bent in grief, Samiq said, “Please save my people.”
The next night Kayugh and Big Teeth returned from another hunting trip. They brought a caribou, the meat wrapped in two bundles, each man bowed beneath the weight of his load.
“There is another caribou cached,” Kayugh called to the women over the trills of their praise songs.
That night, Samiq returned, his face drawn in like the face of an old man, so that Kayugh knew his son had been fasting.
Kayugh felt a sudden guilt for the fullness of his own belly, for the taste of caribou meat that still clung to his teeth, the smell of the caribou fat he had rubbed into his hands. But as he helped his son beach the ikyak, Kayugh saw that Samiq’s arms were strong, that his hands did not shake. And when the ikyak was ashore, Samiq reached out, wiped two fingers over the back of Kayugh’s hand, raised those fingers to his mouth, then looked up at his father, questions in his eyes, a smile coming slowly to his lips.
“Caribou,” Kayugh said and began to laugh. “Big Teeth took one and I took another.”
Samiq whooped and grabbed his father in a sudden embrace. Kayugh, surprised, started to pull away, but then, still laughing, threw his arms around his son.
“You prayed?” Kayugh asked Samiq. “You fasted?”
Samiq replied, “The skill is with the hunter. Whose spear is stronger than Kayugh’s spear?”
Kayugh opened his mouth to praise Samiq, but his throat was so tight he could not speak. Again, he hugged his son, then he picked up Samiq’s ikyak and carried it to the racks, placing it carefully where it would get a light wind so the ikyak skin would dry. Then they walked to the ulas where their wives waited.
That night in his sleeping place, his belly full, Samiq lay still as Three Fish rubbed the muscles of his back.
Sleep pulled against his eyelids, and he relaxed as his wife’s strong fingers pressed against his s
kin. Samiq’s thoughts returned to the small shelter where he had fasted. He thought of the need that had driven him, while he was still lost in sleep, to take his ikyak into the bay.
Samiq raised his head from his crossed arms and asked Three Fish, “Do you think there is some spirit, something that is greater than whale spirits? Something that joins animal and man in understanding?”
Three Fish reached out to place her fingers over Samiq’s mouth and whispered into the darkness of his sleeping place, “Husband, there is nothing greater than whale spirits. Why ask such a thing? Be quiet. Go to sleep.”
CHAPTER 16
The Whale Hunters
Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain
KUKUTUX SPREAD A PASTE of mashed ugyuun root over the scars on her forearms. She had slashed her arms and cut her hair in mourning. What reason did she have to be beautiful? Why should she care if her hair was short like a boy’s? She had no husband to please. What should it matter if scars were added to her arms? Her left arm was already marked with three long scars from the night her father’s ulaq roof had collapsed on her and her family.
Kukutux’s left arm had been badly cut, and the elbow broken, but that pain had been small compared with the loss of her father, mother, and sisters.
Even with the help of Old Goose Woman and others skilled in chants and medicines, the elbow had healed poorly. Now Kukutux could not straighten her arm, and it ached always in cold, in rain.
Her belly had been big then with her son—White Stone’s baby—and that night as the Whale Hunter people huddled together in fear under the rain of ash, as their prayers helped them endure the shaking of the earth, the collapse of ulas, her son was born. When he burst forth from her body, his cries were as loud as the cries of the Whale Hunters lamenting their dead.
It was as Old Goose Woman said: he understood his mother’s sorrow and sang his own mourning songs.
That same night, before the earthquake, Kukutux’s husband, White Stone, had been with the hunters, celebrating the coming of whales with dances and chants. He came to Kukutux after the baby was born, told her to name the boy He-has-courage in honor of Kukutux’s dead father.
He-has-courage always cried, night and day, no matter what Kukutux did. And Kukutux knew that because of his crying, the baby breathed in the angry spirits that lived in the falling ash. Each day, as Kukutux watched, prayed, wept, he grew thinner. His lips became dark, nearly blue, and finally He-has-courage died.
Soon after, Kukutux’s brother—the only one left of her family—had drowned while hunting. And now White Stone was also dead. Perhaps their chief hunter, Hard Rock, was right. There was a curse. Somehow the Whale Hunters had angered the spirits.
Now Kukutux had only this ulaq—something she and White Stone had built together using rocks and rafters from her father’s ulaq. The food cache was full enough to get her through the winter if she ate carefully, if she did not burn too much oil. And then—who could say? Perhaps some hunter would take her as wife. But many men had been killed during the past few months. In a village without enough hunters, what man needed another wife to feed?
Kukutux went to the corner where she kept her basket supplies, next to the woven grass curtains that separated her sleeping place from the rest of the ulaq. In a small basket with a sealskin drawstring top, she kept a piece of her son’s fur wrapping blanket. She opened the basket and pulled out the strip of fur, held it, soft and cool, against her cheek.
Sometimes, when she was just drifting into sleep, Kukutux could feel her son once again in her arms, the weight of him, his hard, round head against her shoulder, the softness of his hair against her cheek. Tears burned in her eyes, and her throat tightened.
She tucked the strip of fur seal skin back into the basket and clasped the basket to her chest, then she went to her husband’s sleeping place, stood before the curtained door.
“He is not dead,” she told herself, saying the words aloud in the empty ulaq. “He is only away hunting, and I must clean his sleeping place. The heather on the floor is old. It will soon begin to stink.”
And so she gathered courage to do what she had not done since White Stone’s death. She went inside his sleeping place.
White Stone had been a large man, slow and careful in his words, strong and sure in his hunting, gentle in his lovemaking. A feather-stuffed otter skin still showed the imprint of his head; furs were thrown back as though he had just left his bed.
Kukutux set down the basket she carried, knelt in White Stone’s bedding furs, began folding and sorting, piling the furs according to size and type. She took a bit of heather from the floor, tucked it into the drawstring basket. She saw a single strand of White Stone’s dark hair, curled it around her fingers, and put it into the basket.
Then she began to gather the heather that covered the mud-and-stone floor. When she had an armful, she threw it out into the ulaq’s main room.
“There, see,” she said aloud to herself, “this is not so terrible. You are stronger than you thought.”
Again, she gathered an armful of heather, threw it out of White Stone’s sleeping place. Later, she would cut fresh heather, spread it over the floor. What was better than a ulaq filled with the smell of crowberry heath?
Kukutux turned back to gather the last of the old heather, but in stooping she saw a yellow-and-brown bear claw wedged in a crack between floor and wall. Suddenly her sorrow came fresh and new, as sharp as the knife she had used to cut her arms. And the memories came alive in her mind: White Stone—his large calloused hands touching her gently, moving up to tangle in her long black hair. He had laughed and begun to tickle her. Kukutux had laughed, too, but in pushing him away had caught her hand on his bear-claw necklace. The necklace broke, scattering bear claws around them, but White Stone had pulled Kukutux to him, had whispered that there would be time to find the claws and repair the necklace—later.
The next morning, Kukutux had gathered the claws, and White Stone had restrung him. This was the bear claw Kukutux had not been able to find. And now the necklace was buried with White Stone and White Stone’s ikyak under the rocks that were a Whale Hunter’s burial mound.
Kukutux began to cry, hard shaking sobs. And she wondered where those tears had been hiding. Had she not already cried all the tears in the earth?
CHAPTER 17
The Walrus People
Chagvan Bay, Alaska
“NEXT SPRING,” RAVEN SAID. “Plan to be gone two, even three moons.”
Ice Hunter shook his head. “No,” he said. “Someone has to stay here and hunt.”
Raven smiled and moved his eyes toward Ice Hunter’s young wife. “Some men get caught in a woman’s bed.”
“Some men do,” Ice Hunter said. “Others live for years alone, without a woman, until they find the right one for their lodge.”
Raven smiled. “You think your son might go with me?”
“Which one?”
“Either. They both speak the River People language.”
Ice Hunter shrugged. His wife padded softly to his side and handed him a bowl of dried seal meat. Ice Hunter held the bowl toward Raven and waited while the man took three good-sized chunks. Ice Hunter set the bowl on the floor between them and took a piece of meat, cut a slice from it with his sleeve knife, and put the slice into his mouth, moving it to rest between his right cheek and teeth.
“I cannot answer for either of my sons,” said Ice Hunter.
“If they go with me,” Raven said, “they can have a double share of the trade goods. I go more for learning than for trade. I have heard stories of the River People shamans. I want to understand their ways.” He took a large bite from one piece of seal meat and tucked the other two pieces up inside his sleeve.
Ice Hunter stuck a finger in his mouth, fished the softened meat from his cheek, and began to chew.
Raven pointed with his chin toward Ice Hunter’s jaw. “I gave you medicine,” he said.
Ice Hunter shrugged.
Raven m
umbled something, scooped the rest of the seal meat from the bowl on the floor, then stood. At the entrance tunnel of the lodge he turned back and said, “Ask your sons if they will go with me.”
Ice Hunter nodded, but said nothing until Raven had left the lodge. Then, looking at his wife, he said, “If he is such a great shaman, why does he steal our food?”
Ice Hunter’s wife crouched beside him and placed a bowl of broth into his hands. Ice Hunter drank the broth quickly, leaving the last of the warm liquid in his mouth, his left cheek bulging with it.
“If he is such a great shaman,” his wife said, “why do your teeth still ache?”
“I have hunters coming soon,” the Raven said to Kiin. “Where is Lemming Tail?”
“With Shale Thrower,” Kiin said. “Do you want me to get her?”
“No. She is better there,” the Raven said. “Her mouth is forever full of words.”
Kiin kept her smile hidden. The Walrus language, spoken as the people of the Raven’s village spoke it, always put strange pictures in her mind.
The Raven pointed at Kiin with one long finger. “Whatever you hear today—say nothing.”
“If my mouth fills with words,” Kiin answered, “I will swallow them.” She could not keep a smile from her lips.
The Raven frowned and looked at her from narrowed eyes, but Kiin busied herself at the food cache, taking out meat that would please whatever men would come to the lodge.
Finally, the Raven broke the silence, said to her, “I plan a spring trading trip to the River People. They have many villages north of here.”
Kiin nodded, but asked no questions.
“We will leave as soon as the ice is out.”
Again Kiin nodded.
“They have furs from inland animals: caribou, bear, wolf, and others.” He paused as if waiting for Kiin to answer him, and when she said nothing, the Raven asked, “Is there something I can bring you?”
