Brother Wind

by Sue Harrison

  Waxtal moved his foot to touch the walrus tusks lying at the bottom of his ikyak. He felt power flow up from the tusks to warm him, and the warmth eased his fears.

  Even if I do not find the traders, I will soon come to a village, Waxtal told himself. He remembered one village from trading trips—a First Men village usually about five days’ travel from the Traders’ Bay. It was not a place he would choose to stay for the winter—the women were ugly—but better to stay there, with roof, bed, and oil lamps, than alone with only his ikyak.

  His throat was dry. He drew his cheeks together to pull spit into his mouth. He was thirsty, but he needed food even more. His belly ground against itself with emptiness.

  He dipped his paddle back into the waves and looked up at the sky. It was nearing sunset. He needed to find a beach for the night. If he remembered his journey from Tugix’s island to the Traders’ Bay, there was a good place not far ahead. He squinted toward shore, then frowned. No, not yet, but there was something …

  At first he thought it was a rock, long and low just above the waves, but then he knew, and his heart tightened in joy. It was not a rock, but an ik, a trader’s ik dark against the water.

  Suddenly his arms were strong, the paddle sure in his hands. He sped toward the ik, calling out even though he knew he was too far away to be heard. Soon he was close enough to see the men in the ik. Yes, they were the two brothers who had come to the Traders’ Beach.

  As the ik turned toward shore, the younger brother stopped paddling and pointed toward Waxtal. Waxtal called again and paddled harder, his breath coming in gasps. But when he drew close, he saw that they faced him with spears and spear throwers in their hands.

  “I am Waxtal,” he called to them. He dug in his mind for the traders names. Bird names … the older brother was Owl. “Remember me, Owl?” Waxtal called. “I am Waxtal. I am the one who traded for the walrus tusks.”

  They lowered their spears, but kept their hands tight on their spear throwers. “Why do you follow-us?” Owl called to him.

  “Do not ask us to take the tusks back,” said the younger brother.

  “I want to come with you,” Waxtal called. He moved his ikyak closer to the ik, then remembered the younger brother’s name. “Spotted Egg,” he called, “let me come with you.”

  The traders spoke to one another in the Caribou tongue, so though their words came clearly to Waxtal over the water, he did not understand what they said.

  “Why?” the older brother asked Waxtal.

  “I want to see my brothers, the Whale Hunters.”

  “You are a Whale Hunter?”

  Waxtal felt the beginning of a lie in his mouth. It built until it bulged large against his tongue, but he was not a fool. What Whale Hunter would claim him as brother? “No,” he called out, but then said, “Remember what Kayugh told you? Before the mountain Aka grew angry, we lived on an island close to the Whale Hunters’ island. We often traded with each other.”

  “So you have been to their village before?”

  “Yes. I know the chief, Hard Rock.”

  The brothers bent their heads together and spoke.

  Owl looked up at Waxtal and asked, “You will not expect to have a portion of our trades?”

  “No.”

  “Our food?”

  Waxtal swallowed. “Our village is poor,” he began. “How could I take food from my wife for this trip?”

  “You traded oil for the tusks,” the younger said.

  “And I will carve the tusks, trade at least one of them to the Whale Hunters for whale oil, much whale oil. Then I will pay you for my food. Besides, I am a hunter. I will help by taking seals as you paddle your ik. It is easier to hunt from an ikyak than from that.” He pointed his paddle toward the large, open-topped ik.

  “You have the tusks?” Owl asked.

  “Yes, here,” Waxtal said, laying his hand against the top of his ikyak.

  The brothers looked at each other, and the younger shrugged. The older called to Waxtal, “Come then, go ahead and find a bay for us, a place to make camp. Look,” and he pointed toward the west, toward a shimmering darkness in the clouds, “a storm is coming.”

  A shiver of fear ran down Waxtal’s back as he studied the sky. He should have noticed. If he had not found the traders, he would have paddled into the throat of that storm. He had never worried much about reading the sky. Kayugh and Big Teeth were better at such things, just as he was better at carving. They left the carving to him; why not leave the sky watching to them?

  “When?” Waxtal asked, nodding toward the clouds.

  “It will come tonight,” Spotted Egg answered.

  Waxtal plunged his paddle into the water. “I will find a place,” he said.

  It did not take long until they came to the beach Waxtal remembered. It was sheltered by rocks, so that the storm in passing only rattled against their upturned boats and dripped through the beach grass they had cut to pack around their legs as they sat huddled in their chigadax.

  The next morning the tide flats were strewn with cod that the storm had blown in from the sea. The traders sent Waxtal to gather the fish. “Women’s work,” Waxtal said, so hovering spirits would see how he was being treated. Still, it was food. Better to gather fish than to starve, he thought.

  Waxtal laughed. “Samiq believes I am dead,” he said to the spirits. “He thinks I have starved or drowned. He does not understand that you are with me. When I am a shaman and known for my carving, then I will go back. Blue Shell will plead to be my wife, but I will find someone young and beautiful, someone who can make me sons, and I will force Samiq to leave our village as he once forced me.”

  He picked up a cod and used his thumbnail to scoop out its eyes. He sucked the eyes into his mouth, felt them pop between his teeth.

  It had been a long time since he had eaten fish eyes. They were usually saved as a treat for children. He remembered a riddle grandmothers ask:

  What is better than fish eyes?

  Your eyes, smiling at me.

  “What is better than fish eyes?” Waxtal called out to the spirits, then answered, “Samiq’s eyes, open in death!” And he laughed at his own cleverness.

  PART TWO

  Early Spring, 7037 B.C.

  CHAPTER 21

  The Walrus People

  Chagvan Bay, Alaska

  LEMMING TAIL SCREAMED and grabbed a handful of Kiin’s hair. Kiin pried the woman’s fingers loose and wrapped them around the rope that hung from the birthing lodge rafters. “Pull,” she said. “When the pain comes, pull.”

  Lemming Tail, squatting on her heels, closed her eyes and blew out a long breath of air. She pulled hard against the rope, then relaxed and leaned back against Shale Thrower.

  “Do you have something you can give her?” Kiin asked Woman of the Sun. The old woman, squatting beside the oil lamp, looked up from her sewing. She rose slowly to her feet, then shuffled to Lemming Tail’s side and leaned over, pressing with the flats of her hands against the woman’s belly.

  “She needs nothing,” Woman of the Sun said. “She does not even need this rope.” She flipped the loop of braided walrus hide from Lemming Tail’s hands, and Lemming Tail rose up on her knees to grab it. She hugged it against her chest, her lips thrust out in a pout. “Your pain is nothing,” Woman of the Sun said, and bent down so her face was only a handbreadth from Lemming Tail’s face. “It has barely started yet.

  Lemming Tail’s eyes snapped, and she hissed at Woman of the Sun. “What do you know of pain, old woman? You have no children.”

  “Pah!” said Woman of the Sun. “I know pain. I birthed four and lost four. I know pain.” She turned her back on Lemming Tail and walked in slow, careful steps to the oil lamp. She settled herself on a grass mat, picked up her sewing, then lifted her head to say, “Because something happened before you were born does not mean it did not happen. Do you think the spirits made this world just for you?”

  But Lemming Tail, her forehead furrowed against a
nother pain, did not answer, only leaned against the rope and pulled, this time screaming out with words against her husband Raven.

  Kiin clamped her hand over Lemming Tail’s mouth. “Are you a fool to curse your husband when you are giving birth? Shut your mouth. Spirits will hear you and take your child, perhaps take you.”

  Lemming Tail pursed her lips, pulling in, so that Kiin knew she was gathering spit from the insides of her cheeks.

  “You spit at me and we will leave you,” Kiin said. “Then you can have this child alone—you and whatever spirits you have called here with your curses.”

  Lemming Tail’s eyes widened, and she clamped her teeth together, swallowed. “It is the pain,” she said weakly. “It is the pain speaking.”

  “Then see you do not let it use your mouth again, Lemming Tail,” Kiin answered.

  For a time then Lemming Tail was silent, but there was anger in the woman’s eyes, and she kept her lids half closed like a child sulking. By the middle of the day, she began to whimper, and soon, with each pain, she screamed, the screams filling the lodge so full that Kiin knew the sound would seep through the walls and into the Walrus People’s village. She was ashamed of her sister wife. What woman let her pain come out in cursing and shouts? Perhaps the last push, that tearing thrust, would make a woman scream, but why during the small pains, those no worse than what a girl-woman suffers in the first day of her first bleeding, why during those pains would Lemming Tail give voice to her discomfort?

  “Get her something for her mouth,” Woman of the Sun said to Kiin.

  Kiin nodded and sorted through her supplies until she found a stout piece of driftwood about the length of her hand. She brought it to Woman of the Sun, and with the next pain, when Lemming Tail opened her mouth to scream, Woman of the Sun thrust the stick between Lemming Tail’s teeth.

  “Bite, bite hard,” she said to Lemming Tail. “The biting takes away pain.”

  Lemming Tail clamped her teeth down on the wood, and finally the screams ended. In the sudden silence the lodge seemed larger, as if a crowd of people had left after a long time of arguing.

  The day turned to night, and the night passed slowly. Woman of the Sun left the lodge, and after a time came back, a cup in her hand.

  “What is it?” Kiin asked, leaning over the cup to sniff at what was inside.

  “Only water, boiled with a few dried berries and a bit of willow bark.”

  “It will help her pain?” Kiin asked.

  Woman of the Sun shrugged. “If she thinks it will.” She went to Lemming Tail, who had wrapped the walrus hide rope around her forearms. The biting stick lay on the floor at her feet.

  “It is morning,” Woman of the Sun said. She bent over Lemming Tail, laying a hand on her belly. “A good time for babies to be born.”

  Lemming Tail did not answer, but Woman of the Sun held the cup to her lips. “Drink,” she said. “It will help the pain.”

  Lemming Tail sucked in a mouthful of liquid and swallowed it, then took another. Woman of the Sun stroked Lemming Tail’s head, and squatting beside her, slipped one hand under Lemming Tail’s grass apron. Lemming Tail groaned.

  Woman of the Sun wiped her fingers on the grass mat at Lemming Tail’s feet and stood. She clicked her tongue at Shale Thrower, who had spent the night sitting behind Lemming Tail, bracing the woman’s back with each pain. Woman of the Sun turned to Kiin with a smile on her face. “He is ready to be born,” she said.

  Lemming Tail suddenly screeched, and Kiin hurried to her side. “One more push, one more,” Kiin said, and she clasped Lemming Tail’s wrists, steadying her grip on the rope.

  Shale Thrower braced her feet against the floor and leaned against Lemming Tail, the two women back to back. Lemming Tail screamed again, then rose up, crouching on the balls of her feet.

  “The baby comes!” Kiin said.

  Woman of the Sun pressed her hand gently against Kiin’s shoulder. “Be quiet or you will frighten the child back up into its mother,” the old woman said.

  Kiin nodded, then reached forward to turn the baby as the dark head emerged from the birth canal. Another pain and the shoulders came out, then the child slid into Kiin’s hands.

  “A boy!” Kiin said and laughed. “A boy, Lemming Tail. You have given us a hunter!”

  Lemming Tail moaned as the afterbirth slid from the birth canal, then she loosened her grip on the rope and eased herself back to lie on the floor.

  “Three necklaces,” she said, panting to catch her breath. “Tell Raven I want three necklaces. And puffin feathers for my parka. A son is worth at least that much.”

  Kiin tied off the baby’s cord and wiped him clean, then held him out to Lemming Tail, but Lemming Tail waved him away. “I will feed him later,” she said, and let her hands flutter at her neck. “Three necklaces,” Kiin heard her whisper. Lemming Tail smiled and closed her eyes.

  Kiin glanced at Shale Thrower. Shale Thrower shrugged her shoulders and said, “You nurse him. I will burn the afterbirth.”

  Woman of the Sun snorted and left the lodge. Kiin squatted on the floor, the baby in her arms. She held Lemming Tail’s baby to her breast. He opened his mouth and after several tries closed his lips and sucked.

  He was a well-formed baby with fat arms and legs and a thick thatch of black hair. His sucking was strong, and when Kiin stroked his cheek with her finger, he did not pause at her touch, but only sucked harder. Something about his face, the tilt of his brows, reminded Kiin of Takha, and for a moment she had to close her eyes against tears.

  “You have the wrong son,” some troublesome spirit seemed to whisper.

  “Shuku is in his cradle,” Kiin answered.

  But the spirit said, “Takha, Takha. Where is Takha?”

  And afraid the spirit might tell her secret to one of the Walrus People, Kiin said, “He is dead. Let the dead nurse him.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The First Men

  Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula

  “YOUR MOTHER,” THREE FISH SAID. “Please, please get your mother.”

  Samiq opened his eyes to see Three Fish squatting beside him in his sleeping place. She moaned and pressed her hands against her belly. Her breath came in short puffs from circled lips.

  Samiq shook his head to pull himself from his dreams.

  “Your mother, go get your mother,” Three Fish said again.

  Samiq slipped from the warmth of his sleeping robes and pulled on his parka. His hand caught in the parka sleeve, and he held his arm out toward Three Fish. “Pull my hand through,” he said, but Three Fish, her face drawn into a grimace, only shook her head at him.

  He caught the end of his sleeve with his teeth and pulled it taut until he had worked his hand out. “I will be back,” he said, then stopped. “Should I help you to the birthing lodge?” he asked.

  “I cannot. I cannot,” Three Fish gasped. “The pain is too great. But take your weapons so there will be no curse.”

  Samiq realized that his wife’s hands were red with blood. He pulled spears and harpoons from the weapons corner, forcing open the fingers of his right hand to clasp them as he climbed to the roof hole. He ran to his father’s ulaq, called down for his mother.

  Chagak came, her face so pale that it looked like a moon rising from the darkness of the lodge.

  “Three Fish is bleeding. The baby is coming,” Samiq said.

  “It is too soon,” Chagak mumbled—as though she spoke to someone, not Samiq, but Samiq heard the words and felt the beginning of fear like a sharp pain at the center of his heart.

  He followed his mother to his ulaq, but waited outside. It was not good for a man to be present during a birth. Woman’s blood was a strong curse against hunting. He climbed to the top of the ulaq, squatted down beside the roof hole. He could hear the murmur of his mother’s voice, a soothing sound, but could not make out her words. He looked out toward the bay, and while he waited, he made himself think of the whales that had come to them last fall.


  Those whales had given enough meat and oil to get the First Men through the winter, with some left for the starving moons that come before the birds and seals return in spring.

  Would whales have shown themselves first to a woman who would soon die? No.

  Samiq lifted prayers to the whale spirits, asked them to remember the Whale Hunter woman who was his wife. He remembered the questions that had come to him in his last fasting. Here near the North Sea whales were more powerful than any other animal, but to the Caribou People, in the land where they lived, caribou must be more powerful. Did they, then, pray to some other spirit, not the spirits of whales? His father had told him that the Walrus People said there were places without mountains, where a man could see only land or sea, stretching to the edge of the sky. How could the people there pray to mountain spirits? Was there some spirit greater than all? Greater than whale or mountain?

  Almost, he lifted prayers to that spirit; almost he asked the help of that one. But suddenly he was afraid. Was he shaman to call a spirit unknown to his people? So instead he turned his thoughts back to the whale spirits, to their powers, and he asked them to give strength to his wife, a Whale Hunter woman, and to the Whale Hunter child she carried.

  Three Fish’s face reddened and she screwed her eyes shut, pressed her lips into a thin line over the jagged edges of her teeth.

  Those teeth, Chagak thought. Those sad teeth. They had been the first thing she had noticed about Three Fish when Samiq had brought the woman back with him from the Whale Hunters. Three Fish had been boisterous, loud. Even that first day, Chagak had realized that Samiq was embarrassed by his wife, that he held no feelings of pride or joy toward her.

  I would have gladly sent her back to the Whale Hunters then, Chagak thought.