by Sue Harrison
Kukutux felt Waxtal clasp her shoulders. His hands were trembling.
Spotted Egg, scowling, straightened and let out a mouthful of words, loud, harsh.
“She cannot understand you,” Owl said, speaking slowly in the First Men’s tongue.
“Move, woman!” Spotted Egg bellowed.
“He is an old man,” Kukutux cried. “How can he fight? He does not even have a weapon.”
“Do not interfere in what you do not understand,” Spotted Egg said, his voice slower but still hard. He moved forward, pushed Kukutux, but Kukutux braced herself, bending her knees, pressing her feet hard against the floor, so that under his hand only her shoulders moved. “Leave us!” Spotted Egg said.
Kukutux let herself look into his eyes. I have withstood worse than this, she thought. What is a man’s anger compared to losing son and husband?
“Go, now!” Spotted Egg said.
“Why?” Kukutux asked. “So you can kill him? Then who will clean up the mess? I did not come to this ulaq to wipe a man’s blood from the floors. I did not come to this ulaq to have a dead man’s curse on me. Hard Rock says this man has spirit powers. You think a man killed here would not use whatever spirit powers he has to curse this ulaq and everyone in it?”
“Woman, you do not understand,” Owl said, and his voice was gentle. “For what he has done, this old man should be dead. He does not deserve your pity.”
“Hard Rock told me the old man went to fast, to pray. You would kill him for this?”
“He stole our supplies, everything we had. Did you not see this when you came to our ulaq? He left us only what we had stored in our own sleeping places. Everything else he took.”
“Where did you find him?” Kukutux asked.
“Why should we tell you?” said Spotted Egg. “You are only a woman. What do you understand of men’s ways? By what right do you question us?”
“By the right of one who is about to be cursed by your spear.”
Spotted Egg rolled his eyes, spat out angry words in the Caribou tongue at the ulaq rafters, then said, “We found him on an island near here. One east and north.”
“The Island of Beautiful Mountain,” Waxtal said quietly.
“It is an island where many go to pray,” said Kukutux. “Was he praying when you found him?”
“I was praying,” Waxtal said, and Kukutux turned to look at him. “I was praying,” the old man said again. “I had fasted for almost four days and the spirits gave me a vision.”
“You took our trade goods. You took things that did not belong to you,” Spotted Egg said.
“I did no more than what you planned to do to me,” Waxtal said.
Kukutux looked at Owl, then at Spotted Egg. Both men’s mouths were open to speak, but they pressed their lips together, looked away, eyes studying the grass that padded the ulaq walls.
Kukutux took a long breath and walked to the peg where she had hung the bag of clams she had gathered earlier that morning. She took the bag and said to Owl, “I have food to prepare. If you must kill him, do it outside.”
Speckled Basket and Old Goose Woman had built a fire in the rock-lined steaming pit, and all the women brought their grass bags of clams. When the fire died down, Old Goose Woman brushed the ashes from the rocks and the women set their bags in the pit. Speckled Basket covered the clams with layers of wet seaweed, then the women squatted on their haunches, taking time to talk and laugh as they waited for the clams to cook.
Kukutux had set her clams in with the others, but though she sat with the women, she did not join their conversation. Her thoughts were on Waxtal and the traders. All the anger, all the threats, were about an ikyak of trade goods. What did it matter, all those necklaces, all those bear claws and caribou skin leggings? The oil, yes. Oil was food, heat, but how could a necklace compare to a man’s life? Should a man honor things more than people? What foolishness.
When the clams were ready, Kukutux used a forked stick to pull out her bag and carry it, hot and steaming, back to the ulaq. Owl and Spotted Egg stood beside the climbing log, speaking to one another in low voices, but Kukutux walked past them as though they were not there.
The center of the main room was piled with trader’s packs, bellies of dried meat and oil. Two long walrus tusks lay against one wall. Kukutux sighed and wove her way among the trade goods to the food cache. She pulled out bowls and a skin of oil. She poured a small amount of oil in each bowl, then brought one to Owl, another to Spotted Egg.
She dumped a pile of the steaming clams at their feet. “Where is Waxtal?” she asked.
Spotted Egg shrugged, but Owl pointed at one of the sleeping places. Kukutux felt his eyes follow her as she took clams and a bowl of oil to the sleeping place. “I have food,” she called in. The old man did not answer. A chill tightened her stomach.
“You did not kill him,” she said, looking back over her shoulder at Spotted Egg.
Spotted Egg laughed. “If I had killed him, he would be outside,” he said. “Food for birds.”
“Do not worry, Kukutux,” Owl said, speaking politely. “We did not kill him.”
Kukutux pushed open the curtain with her elbow and saw the old man sitting with eyes closed, hands folded in his lap. “I have food,” Kukutux said softly.
Slowly the old man opened his eyes; slowly he said, “I cannot eat. In return for my life, I promised the spirits I would fast one more day.”
Kukutux let the curtain swing closed. She took the clams and the bowl of oil and sat on the far side of the ulaq, away from Owl, away from Spotted Egg. And as she ate, she thought about the old man.
CHAPTER 45
The River People
The Kuskokwim River, Alaska
THE NEXT MORNING, Dyenen was waiting for Raven. The old man wore a fine caribou skin parka with gray-and-white wolf fur at the edges of sleeves and hood. Red-dyed moose hair was sewn in long raised lines at the parka’s shoulders. Raven, afraid his eyes would show too much admiration for the parka, looked up toward the sky.
“Sun today,” he said and lifted his walking stick to the fog that lay heavy over the river.
Dyenen grunted and said, “I told you to bring the lynx skin, Saghani.”
Raven closed his mouth over the quick words that had risen to his tongue. Dyenen had not told him to bring the lynx skin. But the man was old. Why expect him to remember everything he said or did not say? Raven nodded and walked back to the lodge that he and Ice Hunter’s sons shared. Both men were still in their sleeping robes. Bird Sings was bundled close to his wife.
She is a lazy one, Raven thought. She should have food ready for me. Instead, she stays in her husband’s bed.
White Fox slept on the other side of the lodge, arms and legs flung out over the place where the River girl had slept the night before. The girl was gone, but if White Fox had treated her well she would be back. Raven smiled. Though a man could give his body easily to a woman, enjoying her for a night and forgetting her by the end of the next day, a woman seemed bound by that same giving, and would almost always return.
Raven had hidden the medicine bag under the bundle of his sleeping robes. He reached in and pulled it out, slung it over his shoulder, and went back to Dyenen.
The sun was high enough to catch the frosted edges of the grass and river willows, and bird songs wove themselves between the village lodges.
“A good day for learning,” Raven called out to Dyenen.
Dyenen only turned and began to walk toward the river. Testing his path with the end of his walking stick, he altered his course to follow the river’s bank, his eyes turned down to the earth. Raven adjusted his steps to Dyenen’s slower pace, and he, too, watched the ground, wondering what Dyenen hoped to see. They walked until the sun had melted the frost from the moss that padded the ground between willow thickets and the thin, dark spruce.
Dyenen laid his hands on the trunks of trees he passed, curling his fingers around the yellow-and-gray willows, none thicker than a man’s wri
st. Raven, too, laid his hands against the cold, hard trunks—smooth willow and scaly black spruce, sticky with pitch. The spruce thrust up from the earth, their dark uneven branches like the barbs of a Whale Hunter’s harpoon.
Dyenen cleared his throat, and Raven waited for the man to speak, but Dyenen said nothing.
Raven felt the tightness of impatience stretch into his chest. Finally he asked, “You have no chants, old man? Walrus People shamans use prayers and chants.”
“What shaman can share his chants?” Dyenen answered, still walking.
“Do not forget what I gave you in trade,” Raven said. He strode with his eyes down, watching the ground, hoping to see something worth seeing.
“What man can trade prayers?” asked Dyenen. “They are the gifts of spirits, honoring a man who has prepared himself with long hours of fasting, with pleadings and praises, with a good mind that sees beauty in the earth.”
“So all you give is a lynx skin?” Raven asked, his words louder than he meant them to be.
Dyenen stopped, slowly turned his head to look at Raven.
“I offer what is in your medicine bag,” Dyenen said. “Power is something each man must seek for himself. If he is worthy, he will receive it. In that bag is the power to help your people, to have your village grow, to keep men together in peace. That is what you want, no?”
“That is what I want,” Raven said, “but do I forever walk to find it?”
“What, you are a boy? You tire more quickly than an old man?”
Raven ground his teeth against Dyenen’s insults, but he said nothing. He raised his eyes to the trees, then looked beyond the trees to the river, its shadowed edges skimmed with a thin crust of ice, the water still carrying brown swirls of silt from the breakup. A river otter, the animal a dark patch of fur, surfaced, then was gone. Raven lengthened his stride until he was several steps ahead of Dyenen.
Let the old man see who is man and who is boy, he thought.
Dyenen’s breathing grew heavy. Raven smiled and again quickened his pace. Finally he came to a place where the bank rose into a hill. Spruce and willow gave way to bushes with a fragile bark that danced in tatters with the wind. Raven stopped, turned. Dyenen was no longer behind him. Squatting down on his haunches, Raven waited.
He sang a Walrus hunter’s song, something the soft-muscled River men, those eaters of fish, would not know. Even when he had finished his song, Dyenen had not come. In disgust, Raven went back, wending his way through the trees until he found where Dyenen’s trail turned off, away from the river.
Raven followed the trail until he came to the old man.
Dyenen sat on his heels, his back against three closely grouped willows. He looked up at Raven and said, “In the Long Ago, there was a raven. Very fast. He scorned the porcupine, that slow one, and each day challenged him in laughter to a race. Each day, the porcupine refused. But one day, tired of the raven’s taunts, the porcupine agreed. The race would be the length of a certain river.
“The porcupine knew it would take him a morning of steady walking to go that far, but he told himself that after the race, the raven would leave him alone, and so it would be worth the walk. Besides, there was some good bark at the end of that river, the porcupines favorite kind. When the call was given to begin the race, the porcupine started to walk. But the raven flew up and away, making loops and spirals in the sky, flying first one way and then the other until he was far out of sight. The porcupine did not look up at the raven but just kept walking, and he did not stop for anything.
“Finally just ahead, he saw the end of the river, where it widened out to become a lake. The porcupine put his head down as porcupines do and kept walking until finally he was there. He looked all around, but the raven was nowhere to be seen. The porcupine did not worry about that for long. He climbed up a tree and began to eat bark, but finally up in the sky he saw a tiny black speck. It got larger and larger until the porcupine could tell that it was the raven. The raven landed and called out that he had finished the race. Then overhead the porcupine began to laugh, and the raven knew he had been beaten. The raven flew away and never bothered the porcupine again.”
Dyenen looked up at Raven and smiled. From a packet at his waist he took out two pieces of dried meat and handed one to him. Raven took it, then said, “Am I a child that you must tell me stories?”
Dyenen used his sleeve knife to cut a thin sliver from the stick of meat in his hand. He pressed the slice to the flat of his knife blade with a thumb and raised it to his mouth.
“Evidently,” Dyenen said and began to eat.
CHAPTER 46
The First Men
Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula
SAMIQ LIFTED HIS IKYAK FROM THE RACK.
“You should not go alone.”
Samiq turned. It was his father, Kayugh.
“I do not plan to hunt.”
Kayugh reached out to stroke one of the harpoons Samiq was fastening to his ikyak.
“What man goes without harpoons?” Samiq asked. “I may see seal or sea lion.” He looked into his father’s eyes. “For many years you were the leader of this village. The people came to you with their problems. You understand my need to pray.”
Kayugh turned, lifted his chin toward the hills behind the First Men’s ulas. “Is there no place in the mountains for a man to be alone, to speak with the spirits?”
Samiq stroked his ikyak. “This is best for me,” he said.
Kayugh nodded. “I understand that there are times when a man must be alone, but you should not hunt alone. You must choose a hunting partner.”
“Yes, I will choose,” said Samiq, and carried his ikyak to the edge of the water, stepped into the craft, and used his hands to slide it into the waves. He paddled out toward the mouth of the bay, until he could no longer hear the voices of the people, could no longer see the smoke rising thin and gray from the ulas, or his father standing on the shore.
Yes, now that it was spring, he needed a hunting partner. The past summer, after Amgigh had died, Samiq had done little hunting. Why hunt with a hand that could not throw a harpoon? But he had practiced enough now to hunt again. He would never be what he had been, but he could bring in meat. And he could fish. He could pray. In those ways he would add strength to his village.
As he paddled, he considered hunting partners. His father and Big Teeth were already partners, and First Snow usually went with them. That left Small Knife. Sometimes Kayugh took the boy, sometimes First Snow took him, but it was best for a man to have the same partner, someone who understood your strengths and also the ways you were not so strong.
You should take Small Knife, Samiq told himself, and was suddenly ashamed that he had not shared with the boy before this.
Today, this afternoon, Samiq thought, if the sky stays good, I will take him out. It was usually not wise for father and son to be hunting partners. Their skills were seldom matched, the father at first much ahead of the son, and later behind. But in a small village, what choice did a man have?
Samiq dipped his paddle into the water. It was always good to feel the cold of the sea through the sides of the ikyak. It was good to feel the pull of waves against his paddle. A song came to his mind, something Kayugh had taught him, and he began to sing. Gradually his singing changed to prayers, and his thoughts lifted not to mountains or whales, but to the creating spirit, the one that in his mind he called “Mystery.” Was it not that great spirit who had brought the whales to their bay last fall? Those whales had given the oil and flesh that had kept his people alive and strong through the winter.
So Samiq prayed, grateful for sky and earth, for meat and oil. He asked for babies that would someday become hunters. He prayed for each man and woman and child in their village, and for Kiin and Shuku in the Walrus village. Last of all he prayed for himself—for wisdom, only that. And when his prayers were finished he saw, as he often saw, the greatness of the earth, how strong, how beautiful, all things are. In comparison, Samiq’s
problems seemed so small that a man could face them without fear.
“I need a hunting partner,” Samiq said to Small Knife.
The boy looked up from the bit of wood he was whittling and held himself very still.
“I know it is difficult for a son to be a partner with his father, but we can help one another,” said Samiq. “My hand is weak, but my knowledge is strong, and I can teach you to hunt the whale. You are a Whale Hunter and should know what your people learned in their many years of following the whale.”
“I am Whale Hunter, but also First Men, and proud to be both,” Small Knife said. “I would be honored to be your hunting partner.”
It was the answer of a man. Samiq saw the glow in Small Knife’s eyes, and was proud that the boy kept his excitement from bursting forth in the jumps and shrieks of a child.
Samiq gave him an obsidian blade to mark their partnership, a blade made by Amgigh. Then the two went together, circling the bay, watching for sea lions and harbor seals. They saw nothing, and when the sun was near setting, Samiq motioned toward land, to the beach on the other side of the bay.
They set up a camp, using sealskins and their ikyan as a shelter, and small flames from their hunter’s lamps for warmth. They ate dried meat, and Samiq told stories of First Men hunters: Kayugh and Big Teeth, and Kayugh’s father, a man Samiq had never known except through stories. Samiq told of their hunts—successes and failures—and what they had learned from the animals they hunted.
When Samiq’s string of stories ended, he was quiet, and in the silence, Small Knife said, “I have heard the women talking. They say you are wise. Will you answer a question for me?”
Samiq smiled. “I do not know if I will answer until I hear the question. So ask.”
“What is the best a son can do for his father?”
For a long time Samiq did not have an answer, then finally he remembered his own prayers. “Find wisdom,” he said.
