by Sue Harrison
Owl took a long breath and leaned over to untie her aprons. When his fingers touched her, his hands trembled. Then he was stroking her belly, her breasts, the soft skin of her inner thighs. He parted her legs and moved over her, his hands still caressing.
His fingers were tight on her shoulders as he moved in rhythm over her.
Kukutux had not had a man since her husband died, and there was a part of her body that wanted to rise into Owl’s arms, find pleasure in the feel of him moving within her. But there was also that part of her, something within her chest, that seemed to wail out her grief, that let her think only of the hunter who had shared so many of her nights.
Her skin remembered White Stone’s touch—his large, gentle hands. So she held herself still and pushed away any pleasure brought by need. And though she wrapped her arms and legs around Owl’s strong body, she felt stiff and cold, as though she kept herself apart, only watching what some other woman did.
Owl tensed, gathered her tight against the hardness of his chest, and then relaxed, his weight settling on her like a sleeping robe. The sweat between their bodies prickled Kukutux’s skin, but she did not move until his breathing deepened, and she knew he was asleep. Then she gently pushed him to one side. She wiped her breasts and between her legs with one of the sleeping skins and crawled from the sleeping place.
She was naked, without her apron, which she had left near the curtain. She reached back, grabbed the apron, and fastened it at her waist. Who could say what spirits would be waiting at the top of the ulaq, ready to come in with sickness or strife through those three openings between her legs? She moved to the oil lamp she had left burning and warmed her fingers in its flame.
“One more,” she whispered. She gave herself the luxury of looking into the food cache, seeing the oil and meat Owl had put there for her. “One more,” she said again, then squared her shoulders and turned toward Spotted Egg’s sleeping place. She wished he had claimed her first. It would be over now with him, and only Owl would be left.
Owl was the quiet one, the gentle one. He had treated her well. But who could say about Spotted Egg?
She walked to Spotted Egg’s curtain and had reached to pull it aside when a voice, soft, whispering, came to her from the other side of the ulaq. “Why do you go to him?”
Kukutux turned, saw Waxtal sitting outside his sleeping place. “Are you hungry?” she asked, the politeness coming without thought.
“Why do you go to him?” Waxtal asked again, and Kukutux pulled her hand away from the curtain, turned and went to the old man, squatted down beside him.
“He has given me oil and meat, enough for me to live a few more moons.”
“You have no husband?” the old man asked.
“No.”
“I need a wife,” he said.
Kukutux’s breath seemed to catch at the base of her throat. “There are other women here on this island who need husbands,” she said.
“You would not take me as husband?” he asked. “I am a strong hunter.”
At first Kukutux shook her head, but then the old man said, “I have the power to lift the curse on this island. If you do not believe me, remember my carvings. Remember the stories about the old Seal Hunter shaman whose power helped defeat the Short Ones. He is the one who taught me to carve. He is the one who blessed me with his powers. Ask Hard Rock. I was the one who was at the old shaman’s side when he died. I was the one who received his blessings.”
For a long time, Kukutux said nothing. Finally she answered, “Talk to me about this tomorrow. Now I have to go to Spotted Egg.”
She walked to Spotted Egg’s sleeping place, did not let herself look back at the old man, but instead pulled aside the curtain, sighed as Spotted Egg reached for her, as he untied her apron and ran quick, rough fingers up the insides of her thighs. Then she lost herself in thoughts, the good and bad of being wife to a trader, until Spotted Egg was finished, the man lying over her, his mouth open in sleep, wet against her shoulder.
CHAPTER 52
WOULD IT BE SO TERRIBLE to live with the Whale Hunters? Would it be so terrible to have a young, beautiful wife? Waxtal leaned back against the wall of his sleeping place and sighed. Owl and Spotted Egg had left the ulaq early that morning. Their loud voices had awakened him, and he had lain hidden under bedding furs, with knives in both fists, waiting to see if they would come for him or his tusks.
But they had not. He had not heard them even mention his name. Good. Someday he would face them, but it was better if that time came when he was chief of a village, with all the powers of a shaman, and with young men, perhaps his own sons, to defend him.
Now, he had only to wait. Wait until the woman came back to the ulaq, wait for the meal she would prepare for him, wait to speak to Hard Rock and see what the man would give him in return for Samiq’s life.
Kukutux watched as Owl and Spotted Egg held one last trading session on the beach. Spotted Egg held up a pair of caribou skin leggings. They were decorated on the sides with a fringe made of stiff hair dyed dark red. Men were holding up packets of birdbone needles, jointed hooks carved from whale jawbone, obsidian knives, bird nets. Spotted Egg walked among them, finally made his choice, and handed Crooked Bird the leggings. In exchange, Crooked Bird gave Spotted Egg two fishhooks, a whale tongue skin chigadax decorated with white bits of seal esophagus at shoulder seams and chest, and one obsidian bird dart blade.
Kukutux shook her head and looked away. Crooked Bird did not need caribou skin leggings. With the chigadax he could hunt whales; with the bird dart he could kill birds; with the hooks he could fish. What would the leggings bring in? One time wearing them in an ikyak or on the beach and they would be wet, soft, easily torn on rocks. If one of his wives did not get the salt out of them, they would stiffen and crack. And for all the care they would require, what food would they help him bring in? Nothing. A woman might be glad to wear them in the hills when she was berry picking. The long grass was sharp. But what man would allow a woman to wear something that he had bought for a whale tongue skin chigadax?
Kukutux squatted at the edge of the beach, no longer interested in what one person or another might receive in trade. It would be good when the two men left. Then perhaps the Whale Hunter people could go back to living as they had always lived, hunting whales, picking berries, gathering food from the beaches.
She was tired. The night before, after Spotted Egg had finished with her, she had not been able to sleep. Her mind had been full of the old man’s offer. Had it been something true, something from his heart? Did he mean her to be his wife for as long as he stayed with the Whale Hunters or for always? If he left, would she want to go with him? What would it be like to visit many villages, to learn the ways of traders? Would she want to face the seas, she and one old man, alone in ik or ikyak? Then her thoughts had turned to fear, and she had considered the many things Owl and Spotted Egg might do to harm the old man before they left.
Finally, she had slept, but it was a sleep of many dreams, and when she awoke in the morning, she felt as though she still lived in those dreams. She went outside to the cooking hearth, prepared a broth of fish, and thickened it with bitterroot bulbs. She lifted the cooking skin from its place over the fire and carried it inside, hung it from the rafters, and dipped out a bowl for the old man. She slipped it into his sleeping place with only a whisper for fear Spotted Egg or Owl might see her. But as the morning lightened, sending a brightness into the ulaq from the roof hole, Kukutux’s fears also lightened, and she looked back on her night of dreams and worries as a woman looks back to the problems of her childhood, with a smile for silliness.
She had fed Owl and Spotted Egg, packed food and water, and carried it out to their ik. And finally they had left the ulaq, left without a word to the old man, without even a glance at his sleeping place. Kukutux had followed them to the beach, and here she was now, fighting against the sleep that reached out from the night to claim her.
She stood, shook her head, and
stretched her eyes open wide. There will be time to sleep once they leave, she told herself.
Suddenly the women around her parted, made way for Owl, who was coming toward her. “One last trade,” Owl was saying, speaking the words in the strange singing voice of the Caribou People. He stopped beside Kukutux, looked down at her. He held out a necklace, not one of the small ones Kukutux had chosen for herself the night before, necklaces she had traded for oil and meat with little regret, but a necklace of light blue stones, each stone separated from the next by a tiny bead, so bright and yellow it seemed as though each were a bit of the sun, rolled and pierced and strung on sinew.
“I have nothing to trade,” Kukutux said and held out empty hands,” but Owl draped the necklace over her fingers, brushed his hands against hers.
“You will not come with me, will you?” he asked and looked so hard into her eyes that Kukutux had to look away. “I do not always travel,” he said. “I have a good lodge. I need a wife.”
Remembrance of the pleasure Owl’s hands had given her crowded into Kukutux’s mind, but then she looked back at the Whale Hunter island, at the rise of hills beyond the beach; at the mountains, standing in their robes of cloud; at the people she had lived with all her life. A great and choking sorrow rose up in her throat. How could she leave her home? What did she know about this man?
She thought of Waxtal. If she left, perhaps he would not share his powers with the Whale Hunters. Perhaps in anger he would not lift the curse that had come to destroy her people.
“I cannot,” Kukutux finally said. She pulled her hands away from Owl’s hands, but he lifted the necklace, held wide the circle of blue beads, and dropped it slowly over her head, reaching with gentle fingers to stroke the otter fur of her suk. “It is yours,” he said quietly and turned away.
When they pushed their ik out into the sea, Kukutux left the beach, went back to her ulaq, stood at the top, and watched until the dark line of the trader’s ik became a part of the waves.
CHAPTER 53
WAXTAL MOVED CLOSE to the sleeping place curtain and looked out through the narrow space between curtain and wall. The woman had returned to the ulaq. He watched as she dragged the grass mats and crowberry heath from Owl’s and Spotted Egg’s sleeping places.
He crawled from his sleeping place, stood, and stretched, pulling up his shoulders, then curling his arms over his head. The woman looked back at him and smiled, a tight smile that did not show her teeth.
“They are gone?” he asked.
“Yes,” the woman said softly. She laid one hand against her chest, and Waxtal noticed that she wore a new string of beads, a necklace he had long admired, with tiny gold beads barely larger than the corner of an eye, and stones the unusual blue-green color of the sea. Owl had told him that the necklace had belonged to many different traders and had passed from hand to hand on a journey from some land to the south and so carried a blessing from the sun.
“From Owl?” Waxtal asked.
“Yes,” the woman said, and though her eyes were looking at Waxtal, it seemed that she saw beyond the ulaq, to other things, perhaps other times.
Waxtal laughed. “You must have given him a good night!” he said.
Waxtal thought the woman would smile, but she only shrugged her shoulders, so that Waxtal felt a sudden rise of anger, something that pushed his words together into a tight, hard line as he said, “You have considered what I asked?”
“You said you have powers,” the woman answered, and stared at him as though she could see through skin and flesh into his soul.
“You have seen my carving,” Waxtal said.
“Yes.” The woman waited.
Did she think she needed to know more than what his carving revealed? “There is much power in that carving,” Waxtal said. What else could he say? He was trader and carver, perhaps already a shaman. What man, given the vision Waxtal had been given, would not consider himself a shaman?
“The carving is good,” the woman said, “but what does it do for my people? Will it lift our curse? Still we see no whales, and now the otters have come in to take our sea urchins. Already some of the old ones speak of giving themselves to the wind spirits this next winter so the hunters and children might have more food.”
Waxtal shrugged. What did the woman expect him to do about that? Why worry about a few old people?
He stretched out his arm and pointed at the cache, but in pointing, he saw that since his fast, his hands had changed, the veins high and bulging under the skin, the knuckles thick, the fingers bent. “I need food,” he said. He squatted on his haunches and crossed his arms.
From behind the curtains of his sleeping place, he heard a whisper, the tusk speaking: “Your hands are the hands of an old man,” it said.
But Waxtal thought, My hands are the hands of a carver. You would not be able to speak if it were not for these hands. And he turned his head so the thoughts would go out from his eyes into the sleeping place.
“These Whale Hunters, what do they know of carving?” the tusk asked. “They think you are old. They will tell you to give yourself to the wind spirits. You must leave this place.”
The woman handed Waxtal a bowl of broth. He cupped the bowl in his hands, raised it to his lips, and turned his mind away from the tusk.
The woman said, “What will you do to help us? You are not a young man. Can you still hunt?”
The woman’s words came to Waxtal’s ears, but almost he did not believe she had said them. What woman insults a man, any man, let alone a carver, a trader, a shaman?
“Woman!” he roared out, but the word was so large that it blocked his throat and he began to choke.
Though he choked, the woman said, “I am Kukutux. Perhaps among your people it is polite to call someone ‘woman.’ I will be honored to call you ‘old man.’”
Waxtal coughed until he was finally able to draw in a breath, then, wiping tears from his eyes, he said, “Call me Waxtal.” He reminded himself of what he had learned from being husband to Blue Shell—though a woman needed to be afraid of her husband, there were times for gentle words.
He set down his food bowl and said quietly, “How was I to know your name? You did not tell me, and the traders, angry at the success of my vision fast, would not speak to me these past few days. Why do you think they left so quickly? They know they cannot help the Whale Hunters. They know their powers are weak. They know their weakness would leave them open to the curse that I will soon drive from the Whale Hunters’ island.
“Do you think spirits that carry a curse are content to fly away, up into wind or sky or sea? How much better to go to some other man, to enjoy the warmth of that man’s body, the joy of his woman, the taste of his food.
“They told you I took their trade goods? Only what was mine. Do you think those two young men had anything of their own to trade? I have been trading for years. Do you think I have nothing to show for those years? I brought most of my trade goods on this journey. Some I traded for the tusks. But what was left I brought here. Now Owl and Spotted Egg have it; all but the few skins of oil and meat they left. Those things, they are mine. Why do you think they were so generous with you?” Waxtal stopped, took a long breath, and pointed at the blue stone necklace Kukutux wore. “You think one night in a sleeping place is worthy of that?”
Kukutux curled her fingers around the necklace.
“Owl gave it to you, but it was not his to give. It is mine.”
Kukutux’s eyes widened, and then her shoulders slumped. She looked up at the ulaq rafters and shook her head, then took off the necklace and handed it to Waxtal. Waxtal smiled and placed the necklace carefully over his head. He reached inside his suk, pulled out a necklace of shell beads, something good but not as beautiful.
“Here,” Waxtal said, but Kukutux did not take it. “It holds special powers,” Waxtal said. “I wore it during my fast.”
Kukutux reached out, let the shell beads brush against her fingers, then shook her head. “No,” sh
e said. “Keep anything that will add to your power. I ask only that you help my people.”
Waxtal tilted his head, smiled as though he teased some small child, then he put the necklace on again. “I am sorry I cannot let you keep this,” he said and lifted the blue stones. “Each stone carries much power.” He tucked the necklace inside his suk and raised the bowl of broth to his lips. He took a sip. Some of the broth trickled from the corners of his mouth into the thin tangle of whiskers that hung from his chin. “Perhaps someday my wife will wear the necklace, if she gives me many sons,” he said, but his last words seemed again to catch in his throat, and once more he began to choke.
Kukutux pulled down a water bladder, handed it to Waxtal. He took a careful sip, then wiped his chin with his hand.
He gave Kukutux the water bladder; finished the broth, and handed the bowl to Kukutux to fill again. She gave him more broth, then went to her basket corner, sat down, and began weaving. When Waxtal had finished the second bowlful, he turned toward Kukutux. Her fingers were busy, baskets spread in a circle around her.
“They let you keep the grass?” he asked.
Kukutux picked up a sheaf of fine split strands and held it out to Waxtal. “It is also yours?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “It was Spotted Egg’s. He traded for it. Oil for grass. Even Owl was angry with him.”
Kukutux shrugged and bent her head over her work.
“You have not answered me, “Waxtal said.
When Kukutux did not look up at him, his stomach twisted and he bit the insides of his cheeks. The salt taste of his own blood was hot against the back of his throat. What did he need with this woman? he asked himself. Did he want another Blue Shell, someone with a beautiful face, but deceitful spirit?
He opened his mouth to tell Kukutux to leave, but before he spoke, she said, “If you help my people, I will be your wife.” And when she spoke, Waxtal saw her hope—like the flame of some lamp burning.
