by Sue Harrison
“And now?” The voice was the sea otter’s voice, pushing into her thoughts.
“I love her,” Chagak said simply. She blinked away tears. What did it matter if a woman’s teeth were broken, if her words were sometimes too loud? What did those things matter when you knew that her soul was large and filled with goodness?
Three Fish moaned. The bleeding had stopped, but the baby was too early. It would be too small to live.
Then the otter voice said: “Sometimes small babies live. Remember Amgigh. His arms and legs were so thin you could see the blood pulse beneath his skin. And he lived.”
Yes, Chagak thought. Amgigh had grown into a strong man. Lived to give Kiin a son. She turned toward the west, toward the sacred mountain of her long-ago village. She meant to pray, to beg for the child’s life, but her prayer was a command, as though she were a shaman or village chief. “This baby will live,” she told Aka. “It will be strong.” She waited for the otter to scold her, to remind her of the proper way to offer prayers. But then she heard the otter’s voice, and the otter repeated her words.
Samiq walked to the pile of driftwood he had set up as a target and picked up his practice spears. An ache in his belly reminded him that he had not eaten, but he walked back to his place in the gray beach sand, turned, and threw again. He had started by counting: five practice spears thrown once, five thrown twice. He had kept count up to ten and two, but now could not remember the times he had thrown. Four tens, perhaps five.
He threw his spears again. After the fifth throw, he pried the throwing board from his hand. His fingers had stiffened, almost without his notice, during the months since his injury, and now it was difficult for him to force the hand flat. Only the one finger, splinted to direct his throwing board, was still flexible.
“At night,” he said aloud to his hand, to the spirits that directed his spears, “at night I will have Three Fish splint each finger.” But when he said his wife’s name, the sound of it came to his ears like a wail of mourning. “Three Fish,” he said again, this time a whisper. He crouched on the gravel, looked out toward the bay. Women died giving birth, and Three Fish had been bleeding.
“Do not die, Three Fish,” Samiq said. He clasped Kiin’s shell-bead necklace as though it were an amulet. “I have lost Kiin. I cannot lose you. I do not care if you give me a son. Just do not die.”
He began chants to the whale spirits, but felt his prayers drawn up toward something stronger, perhaps some mountain, perhaps the sun. Perhaps some spirit not bound to earth or flesh, some spirit that lived as mystery beyond the thoughts of men.
Three Fish’s labor lasted through the night. When the sun rose, Chagak went outside, faced the east, and welcomed the light. The welcoming was something she had learned as a child from her Whale Hunter mother, something she had lost in the years since the massacre of her father’s village.
She closed her eyes and saw the brightness of the sun as a glow of orange through her eyelids.
Chagak heard Three Fish groan, and so went back into the smoky darkness of the ulaq. She knelt beside Three Fish. She was crouched in the center of the ulaq, clasping a kelp rope that hung in a long loop from the rafters.
Chagak pulled aside Three Fish’s woven apron and ran her hands over the woman’s belly. “The baby is almost here, Three Fish. Almost here,” she said. “Push. Push hard.”
Three Fish clamped her mouth shut and strained.
“I see the head, daughter,” Chagak said. “There is hair, much hair. Push.”
Then the baby came, in one rush so fast that Chagak nearly let the child drop to the floor. “A boy,” Chagak said.
“Will he live?” Three Fish asked, her voice as rough as lava rock.
“He is small,” Chagak answered. She laid the baby on the finely woven grass mat she had made and dipped a soft strip of sealskin into a wooden bowl filled with warm water. She wiped away the birth blood from her grandson’s eyes and mouth as she waited for the cord to stop pulsing.
Three Fish suddenly groaned, and Chagak laid a hand against the woman’s knee. “It is only the afterbirth. Only that. It comes quickly and is easy to pass.”
Chagak tied and cut the birth cord, then stuck a finger down inside the baby’s mouth. He was limp in her arms. Fear, hard as ice, lay against Chagak’s heart. She pulled a string of mucus from the baby’s throat, then flipped him over her arm.
“The baby, he does not cry,” Three Fish said. She leaned forward and reached for the child, sending a gush of blood from between her legs.
“Lie back, be still,” Chagak said to Three Fish, then she rubbed the baby’s back. “Breathe, little one,” she whispered.
The baby’s face was gray, his lips blue. Chagak snapped her fingers against the bottoms of his feet. Suddenly he pulled in a long breath of air and let out a jerking wail.
Chagak laughed, and the laughter, coming from her throat, caught itself on her tears, so she could not speak. She held the baby until she was sure his breathing was steady. Then she handed him to Three Fish.
Three Fish turned to her side and cradled the baby in one arm. “Should I feed him?” she asked.
“Sometimes the small ones do not suck,” Chagak said. She waited as Three Fish gently opened the baby’s mouth with her fingers and pressed his head close to her breast. The baby turned his head away. Three Fish tried again, and this time, Chagak clasped the baby’s head, held it still. “Rub your nipple over his lips,” she said to Three Fish.
The baby opened his mouth, uttered a short cry, then clamped his lips over Three Fish’s nipple and began to nurse.
Chagak shook her head and smiled. “He is small, but he is strong,” she said. “Your husband will be glad.”
“Yes,” said Three Fish. “Now he has three sons. What man could want more?”
Chagak nodded, but thought of Kiin and Shuku and said nothing.
CHAPTER 23
The Walrus People
Chagvan Bay, Alaska
“CARVE,” THE RAVEN SAID to Kiin. “Nothing else—do not sew. Do not make baskets. Just carve. The more carvings you finish, the more I will get in trade from the River People, and some of what I get I will give to you.”
He turned to Lemming Tail. “You,” he said and flicked his long fingers toward her, “I need another pair of leggings.”
Lemming Tail crossed her arms and stood up to face the Raven, her jaw tight, teeth clenched. “You think I have nothing to do but sew leggings?” she asked.
“You would rather spend your time in other men’s lodges and shame your husband,” the Raven answered.
“I have a new son,” Lemming Tail said. “You think after staying up all night with him, I can work all day for you?”
The Raven reached out and clasped a fistful of Lemming Tail’s black hair. “You do not want me to go?” the Raven asked. “You do not want me to bring back necklaces and caribou hides?” He pulled his fingers out through her hair, jerked his hand when his fingers caught in tangles near her ears.
Lemming Tail winced and grabbed his wrist, sinking her fingernails into his skin.
The Raven pulled his hand away. “You are my wife; you will do what I say.”
“And if I do not?”
“I will take you with me and trade you to the River People.”
“You will trade your son, then?” Lemming Tail asked, her top lip curled to show her teeth.
“Why would I trade my son?” the Raven asked and shook a knot of Lemming Tail’s hair from his fingers. “Kiin has milk. She can feed him. Kiin is a better mother than you.”
Kiin’s breath hissed in over her teeth. What good would it do to set Lemming Tail against her, especially when the Raven would soon leave on his spring trading trip?
Lemming Tail screamed and, arching her hands into claws, went for the Raven’s eyes. He caught her wrists and twisted her arms, forcing her to her knees. Lemming Tail’s baby, nestled in a cradle hung from the lodge rafters, began to cry.
“I would rath
er belong to the River People than to you!” Lemming Tail screeched, her words carrying over the wails of her son. “At least they treat their wives well.”
“What do you know about River People?” the Raven asked, and Kiin heard the anger under his words.
“More than some,” Lemming Tail answered.
“You sleep in their traders’ beds, so you think you know them. How much does a woman have to know to spread her legs for a man?”
Kiin turned her back on them, went to the corner where she stored her carvings. She had heard Lemming Tail and the Raven argue too many times. Why listen now? She squatted near the oil lamp, opened the drawstring top of her carving basket.
At first when she had returned to the Walrus village, Kiin had carved nothing more than stoppers for seal belly containers or fishhooks from mussel shells.
How could she forget that her carvings had given strength to the Raven when he fought against Amgigh? Perhaps if she had not carved those animals, Amgigh would still be alive, and she would be living with her own people, not as wife to Samiq, but at least close enough to see him each day, to hear his laughter, to pray for his safety during each hunting trip. And she would have her son Takha.
Besides, each time she picked up a piece of wood or a chunk of ivory—even though she saw the small animal within, the ikyak or the flower, the man or woman—she also heard some voice telling her she was not strong enough to release that delicate spirit from the wood or ivory. And sometimes she was not. Sometimes what she carved was a mixture of spirits: animal and man, ikyak and plant, growing out of one another, as though she had not listened hard enough to know what her knife should bring forth. She hid those poor carvings in a basket near her sleeping platform, and sometimes she would bring them out and sing soft songs asking forgiveness from the spirits wounded by her knife.
Then she had come to realize that carving was a part of her, a way to express her joy and her sorrow. So when the emptiness of her loss pulled at her spirit, she would carve, forcing her mind to break away from the pain.
Kiin reached into her basket and took out an otter carving. She turned it in her fingers, but suddenly felt the Raven’s hand on her head.
“No,” he said and reached down into the basket to pull out a walrus carving. “Finish this one first.” He stroked his hand down the length of her hair and left the lodge.
Lemming Tail, her face still flushed with anger, was sitting with a caribou skin spread over her lap. She took a strand of twisted sinew from a bundle she kept in her sewing basket and held it between her teeth, then pulled an awl and a needle from her ivory needle case.
“You will never have my son,” she said to Kiin, her words garbled by the sinew.
“I do not want your son,” Kiin answered.
Lemming Tail looked down at her baby, now quietly sucking at her left breast. “He is better than your son. He will be a better hunter.”
Kiin shrugged. Who was she to say what would be? Why take the chance of angering those spirits that decided such things?
“I hope they are both strong hunters,” Kiin said, knowing her words were the truth. Who did not benefit when a village had many strong hunters?
She held the walrus carving up to the light. Once it had been a whale tooth, like the shell carving she wore at her waist, Kiin’s first carving.
Kiin had found that whale tooth herself, but the Raven had given her this one. It was blunt, waterworn, and when Kiin held it in her hands, she felt the walrus hidden within the ivory. Now the walrus was nearly free. She tucked her hair behind her ears and bent over her work. She moved her knife in small circles to make the eyes, then held the walrus up, turned it slowly in the oil lamp light.
Lemming Tail flipped the caribou skin from her lap, spat out the sinew in her mouth, and stood up. She walked over to Kiin.
“You think you are stronger than me because you carve,” Lemming Tail said. “You think our husband cares more for you because you carve. My birth bleeding has stopped. Soon I will go back to Raven’s bed. Then he will forget you. I am first wife. While Raven is on his trading trip, you must do what I say. Perhaps I will decide I do not want you in this lodge. Perhaps I will decide I want to live alone.”
“There are places I can stay,” Kiin said. “But are you sure you want to cook and clean for yourself?”
Lemming Tail went back to her sewing, but as she passed Shuku’s cradle, she reached up and slapped her hand against the wooden side. Shuku began to cry.
Kiin stood and took the baby from the cradle, held him tightly against her until he stopped crying. “Have you forgotten my walking stick?” Kiin asked Lemming Tail.
Lemming Tail smiled and, looking at Shuku, said, “You think you can watch him always? You think he can protect himself?”
“I protected him against animals and spirits,” Kiin said. “I can protect him against you.” She waited until Lemming Tail was once more working on the leggings, then Kiin sat down beside the oil lamp and began to carve.
When the Raven returned to the lodge, he found his wives each with a baby at her breast, each working.
CHAPTER 24
The Whale Hunters
Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain
THE WIND WAS COLD on Kukutux’s bare skin as she ran down the mud path that led to the river. The snow had melted back from the gray soil of the riverbank. Each day the sun rose higher in the sky.
Kukutux broke the thin ice at the river’s edge with her heels, then slid her feet down into the water. It was so cold that it numbed her ankles until her bones ached, but she reached cupped hands below the surface and, squatting, splashed water between her legs, then up to her shoulders, neck, and face. She waded ashore and wiped her skin dry with the edges of her hands, then pulled on her suk.
She shivered and crossed her arms over her breasts until the suk drew the heat from the center of her body to warm her skin. She flexed her arms, then winced at the throbbing in her left elbow.
There are others with greater pain than mine, Kukutux told herself. What about Speckled Basket, whose foot had been crushed? And the old man, Fish Eater, who had lost an eye? What about Fat Wife, who was dead, and Three Fish and Small Knife, who had never been found? Better to have a stiff elbow than to be buried with ash and angry spirits beneath a heap of crumbled stone and dirt.
But then she wondered: Better to be a woman with no husband, no children?
“Others besides me have lost husbands and babies,” Kukutux said aloud and shook the discontent from her head.
But as she thought of going back to her ulaq, her chest was suddenly empty and aching. She rubbed one hand against the bulge of the whaleskin amulet that hung under her suk, and she took a long breath.
“Baskets today,” she said, loud enough for the sun to hear. The sun should know that she filled her days with work, that there was no laziness in her hands or in her mind.
“Kukutux! Kukutux!”
She recognized Hard Rock’s voice, and her heart suddenly pumped hard, pressing into her ribs. There had been talk among the women that this man, their chief, would soon take his fifth wife.
Kukutux had tried not to let herself hope for such an honor. Fifth wife! she had scolded herself. You were first wife to a good hunter. Now you hope for fifth?
But with so few men left among the Whale Hunters, what woman would not be happy with fifth wife? Even a fifth wife had hope of being a mother to sons. And if food were scarce, the fifth wife’s portion would be no smaller than what Kukutux received now—bits given from women who pitied her.
So she took a long breath and walked to Hard Rock.
“Is there something you need?” she asked, with a politeness that again sent her heart in quick shudders against her ribs. At the same time she said to herself, Remember, he is often angry. What woman wants a husband who is always burning? Still, her heart trembled with hope.
“You have good sight,” he said. “Better than most.”
Kukutux raised her chin. Yes, sin
ce she was a child, that gift had been hers, to see eagles where others saw only sky.
“Look out there. What do you see?”
Kukutux shaded her eyes with her hands, ignoring the twist of pain in her left elbow as she raised her arms. “Two ikyan,” she finally said.
Hard Rock nodded.
“No,” Kukutux said, squinting to see more clearly. “One ik, one ikyak.”
Hard Rock locked his hands around his walking stick. Kukutux looked up into his eyes. They were hard and flat, like black stone, and she could read nothing in them.
“Watch until you see any markings,” he said.
Again Kukutux shaded her eyes. Finally she said, “The ik carries yellow and red markings.”
“A trader,” Hard Rock mumbled under his breath. “You have baskets?” he asked. “Do the women have baskets they can trade or seal bellies of dried fish, any grass curtains?”
“Some,” Kukutux said.
“What do you do with your days? You no longer have husbands to care for.”
“How do you expect us to weave?” Kukutux asked. “The ash ruined most of our basket grass.”
Hard Rock walked away from her, muttering something about the laziness of women.
“And so what are you going to tell those traders, Hard Rock?” Kukutux asked, allowing her anger to speak though she knew the man was too far away to hear her words. “That the Whale Hunters took no whales this year? That the Whale Hunters are a tribe of women?”
Waxtal moved his foot so he could feel the partially carved tusk lying at the bottom of his ikyak. He had wanted to finish it before they reached the Whale Hunter village, but winter had been filled with women’s work: mending parkas, catching and preparing fish, caring for oil lamps. What man could spend an evening carving after a day of doing women’s work? But he had kept his complaints inside his mouth. He had food and a place to live. He could have been alone, starving.
There would be time for carving, and then, when he had finished the tusks, his power would be complete, and Owl and Spotted Egg would do their own women’s work.
