by Sue Harrison
“I can’t,” Kiin said and did not try to stop her tears.
“And if you do not, you will die,” her spirit voice answered. “The wind moves your rope even now. The rocks at the edge of the cliff will cut through, and you will drop into the sea.”
“And so I will be dead,” Kiin said, screaming the words out against the wind, against the sea, against the gray rocks of the cliff. “I do not care.”
“You, you who have lived through curses and slavery, you do not care? What about those you love—your mother, Chagak, Kayugh? What about Samiq and Takha?”
Kiin leaned her head into the crook of her elbow, gasped against the pain of her hands as she clung to the kelp line.
“Listen,” her spirit voice said. “Listen and tell me what you hear.”
At first, Kiin heard only the wind, bird voices and waves against rock, but then, rising like a song over the sounds of the earth, she heard Shuku, his voice lifted, as though he called for her.
“Shuku,” Kiin whispered.
“Yes, Shuku,” her spirit voice said.
Kiin swung out against the rope, braced her feet against the cliff, and once more began to climb.
When Kiin reached the egg ledge, she hooked her heels over the edge and was still, allowing the muscles in her legs to rest. The climb had worn the skin from her toes, and blood trickled down her soles to stain the feathers of the murre nests.
“The rope, the rope,” her spirit voice called to her. “It could break. Pull yourself up. Pull yourself up!”
“Be still,” Kiin said. “Leave me alone; let me rest.” But she began to pull herself up. The sudden fear that her spirit voice was right, that the rope would break and send her into the sea, gave her strength, and she eased herself up until she was standing flatfooted on the ledge and could rest her upper body on top of the cliff.
She still held the rope, but reached to clasp it above the frayed part that rubbed the edge of the cliff. For a long time, she did not move, but finally Shuku’s cries broke through the numbness of her mind and she pulled herself over the cliff edge and onto the grass and rocks. She lay there breathing hard, still clasping the rope, as though her hands could do nothing else but grip and pull.
Shuku’s cries seemed louder now and the sounds of the sea gentler. “Shuku,” Kiin called. “Shuku.”
The baby’s cries stopped and then started again. Kiin pushed herself up to her hands and knees and crawled to him.
His face was red, his hands and cheeks smeared with dirt. When he saw her, he began to cry harder and held his hands out to her. She scooped him into her lap, then lay on her side in the grass and lifted the tatters of her suk so Shuku could nurse. She did not let herself look at her hands. The pain was not as strong as the softness of Shuku’s skin against hers.
As she sighed and looked out over the cliff at the North Sea, she saw the speckled murre eggs, lined up at the edge of the cliff like some game of shells and pebbles played by a giant child. Suddenly in spite of her pain, in spite of her tiredness, she began to laugh.
“Oh, Shuku,” she said. “We have eggs. So many eggs. Enough to last us all the way to the Traders’ Beach.”
CHAPTER 56
The Whale Hunters
Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain
“WHICH ISLAND?” Hard Rock asked as he crawled from his sleeping place.
“The Island of Four Waters,” Red Feet answered. The man stood beside the climbing log, both hands wrapped around a walking stick. He lifted the stick to jab it again and again into the ulaq’s woven grass floor mats.
“That small island,” Hard Rock said slowly. “You are sure?” He frowned and pointed at Red Feet’s walking stick. Red Feet set the stick against the climbing log and squatted on his haunches.
“I myself saw them. I myself heard them.”
“You have seen walrus before?”
“In the ocean.”
“That is not the same. Perhaps they are sea lion.”
“No.”
“How many?”
“Too many to count.”
“Fish Eater was the first to see them?”
“Yes.”
“Go ask him to come to me,” Hard Rock said. But as Red Feet stood to leave, Hard Rock reached out a hand and said, “Wait. I will go to him. There is someone else I must also see.” He pulled his suk from a peg and was up the climbing log before Red Feet could answer.
Kukutux heard the men coming and pulled back from the climbing log, pressed herself against a wall in one of the dark corners of the ulaq. Their voices were loud. Were they angry?
Then she heard laughter, and Hard Rock descended into the ulaq even without calling down. Three hunters followed him: Red Feet, Fish Eater and Dying Seal. The men ignored her except for Dying Seal, who, when he saw her in the corner, raised a hand in greeting. Kukutux raised her hand, then slid down to a squat, leaning against the wall.
“Waxtal is here?” Hard Rock asked after pacing the ulaq, one side to the other. He stopped to peer into Kukutux’s shadowed corner. “Waxtal is here?” he asked again.
“In his sleeping place, but he prays,” Kukutux said, wondering that the man did not hear the high singing chant spinning out of Waxtal’s sleeping place.
Hard Rock stood still, his hands hanging loose at his sides, as though he did not know what to do next.
“When will he be finished?” Dying Seal asked.
Kukutux stood and walked out into the lamplight, lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Who can say?”
“He is a shaman,” the old man Fish Eater said. “I told you he is a shaman. I told everyone when he first came with the traders, but who listens to an old man, one who can barely hunt? Who listens?” He straightened his shoulders under his otter skin suk and clasped one hand with the other, rubbing swollen knuckles. Then he looked at Kukutux, spread his fingers, and said, “See what happens to an old man when he hunts? For each seal he takes, he trades two days of pain. I told them I saw walrus. They did not believe me. They made me go back, show them the island. Filled with walrus it was, so close together a man could not find ground to step on between them. ‘Walrus,’ I told them. Now they believe. At least those two,” he said, pointing with curled fingers toward Dying Seal and Red Feet. “But this one, this chief, he thinks he knows more than an old man. He says I should go with them. All of us together and again see the walrus. He wants to hunt them. With what? What man among us has hunted walrus? Should we use seal harpoons? What walrus would not push them aside, laugh at our small weapons? Should we defile our whale weapons with walrus blood?”
As Kukutux listened to the old man, Hard Rock continued to pace.
He stopped several times before Waxtal’s sleeping place curtain, and Kiin saw him incline his head to listen to Waxtal’s chants.
Finally he turned to her and, interrupting Fish Eater’s complaints, said, “Has he told you not to bother him? Has he told you to be quiet when he prays?”
“He has told me nothing,” Kukutux answered.
“Then I will talk to him now.” Hard Rock said the words loudly, but then he stood and stared at the sleeping place curtain as though it would move aside without his touching it. Finally Kukutux leaned close to Hard Rock, pulled open the curtain. Hard Rock bent to look in, and before he spoke one word, Waxtal’s voice, loud, clear, came from the sleeping place.
“You found the walrus I called for you?” he asked.
Hard Rock jumped back as though the man had hit him.
“You think the spirits do not talk to me?” Waxtal asked. He came out of the sleeping place, straightened, and stretched his arms up toward the ulaq rafters.
“You called the walrus?” Dying Seal asked and Kukutux saw the doubt on his face.
“Have you ever seen walrus near this island before? Your fathers or grandfathers told stories of long-ago times. Did they speak of walrus?”
“No,” said Fish Eater. “But I saw them first. I saw them and brought the others. They did not believe m
e.”
“You believe now?” Waxtal asked.
“I have not seen them,” Hard Rock said, “but Dying Seal is a man known for his honesty.”
“So will you go with him to see for yourself?”
“We go together,” Hard Rock said. “All of us.”
Waxtal turned away from the men. “I call walrus. I do not hunt them,” he said as he returned to his sleeping place.
Hard Rock reached out, clasped the man by both shoulders, and pulled him back into the ulaq’s main room. “If you are shaman, we will honor you as shaman, but not until it is proven. You told me you wanted this woman as wife. Go with us now. It is not even a day’s journey to the Island of Four Waters and back. Get your chigadax and spears. Get your water bladders and oil lamp.”
He released Waxtal and looked at Kukutux. “You told me you would be his wife if he was a hunter. What if he is shaman?”
“If he can bring in enough meat to last through winter, what do I care if it is from a hunter’s share or a shaman’s share?” Kukutux answered. Then she helped Waxtal gather his things. She filled water skins and an oil bladder, found a hunter’s lamp, and quickly mended a tear in his chigadax.
But when the hunters left, Kukutux did not climb to the top of the ulaq to follow them with her eyes. Instead she stood in the center of the main room, now still and empty after the frantic scurryings and loud voices of the hunters. She closed her eyes and sighed. Perhaps her time alone after the deaths of her husband and son had deformed her spirit. Otherwise why would she so enjoy the quiet of an empty ulaq? What woman would trade quiet for the blessing of children? The noise of aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents? Still, she reminded herself, most of life had some side of blessing. Why not enjoy what was hers?
She repacked a sealskin of dried meat and pushed it back into the food cache. As she worked she thought about what the hunters had said. She carefully wiped the stopper of the oil belly the traders had left. The oil was fresh. How tempting to take a small bowlful, eat it with the dried fish she had planned to have for her next meal. But the oil was the best oil. Better to save it for Waxtal. For the one who hunted.
Hard Rock had asked her if she would be wife to Waxtal; twice now he had asked. Both times she had given tests: if he could hunt, if he was a shaman. Why? Was it only a moon ago, those starving days, when she would have taken any man? Why now was it difficult for her to say yes?
Waxtal was not a beautiful man. His face would not give pleasure to a woman as Hard Rock’s face did. His body was not strong like Dying Seal’s body. His eyes were not the soft eyes of the trader Owl. But he did have powers. What was more important to those children she might bear—gentle eyes, a beautiful face, or the power to keep them fed, to protect them from curses?
“What woman does not make sacrifices for her children, even those not yet born?” Kukutux asked aloud. “Yes, I will take Waxtal as husband.” Then she remembered something her mother had told her. Oil, fresh oil, made strong babies. She went back to the food cache, took out the belly of new oil, pulled the stopper.
“For my children,” Kukutux said.
CHAPTER 57
THE HARPOONS ARE NOT LONG ENOUGH; the points are not large enough. What man ever killed a walrus with a seal harpoon? Waxtal shook his head, hoping to drive away the fear that seemed to weigh down his arms as he paddled. Already Hard Rock, Dying Seal, and Red Feet, even Fish Eater, were so far ahead that he could barely see their ikyan against the glare of the sea.
Waxtal centered his thoughts on his amulet. It lay against his chest, heavy and warm, as though its power were so great that it gave off heat. Before he left the ulaq, he had shaved a thin piece of ivory from the blunt end of his carved tusk. As soon as he put the ivory into the amulet’s soft leather pouch, he had felt the difference. He slipped the string of his amulet over his head and knew he was stronger, more sure.
But now, doubt slapped up from the waves, and he heard the taunting voices of those spirits that so easily slid over the sea to find a man in his ikyak. They ridiculed, and their whispers were like needles piercing his body. “Ho! It was your power that brought the walrus. Your power! When have you called animals, any animals, even lemmings? Do you think one time of prayer and fasting can bestow power like that? Then every man should do the same. What hunter would ever come home without meat?”
“I called the walrus,” Waxtal said aloud. “I called them. Perhaps with my knife against the tusk, perhaps within my dreams, perhaps with my chants. I was the one who called them. Would one of the Whale Hunters call walrus? They hunt whale. Would Owl or Spotted Egg call? They are Caribou. I am the one who carves a walrus tusk. I am the one whose daughter is wife to a Walrus People shaman. I called them.”
Then the water spirits seemed to leave him, and suddenly Waxtal’s arms were again strong. He paddled hard until he came close to Red Feet’s ikyak and stayed there until the sounds came over the waves—the great echoing call of the bull walrus, the bleatings and growlings of lesser males. And turning their ikyan into the wind, the Whale Hunters came to the island. Hard Rock and Dying Seal stopped their ikyan, holding their paddles upright in the water until Red Feet and Fish Eater were beside them. They turned and waited for Waxtal to join them.
“The walrus are here,” Hard Rock said, then asked Waxtal, “Is this the island where you came to fast?”
Almost, Waxtal said no, but he closed his mouth before the word could escape. He raised his head and looked into Hard Rock’s eyes. “Yes,” he said, and thought, Who will know the difference? Owl and Spotted Egg are gone. They will never be back. He had been the one to call the walrus; why not take all credit? Why not get what he could for these hard months spent on an island cursed by the man who had cursed him? “Yes, this island,” he told Hard Rock and, lifting the blade of his paddle from the water, pointed toward the hills above the gray rock of the beach. “There in those hills.”
“You called these animals while you were here?” Dying Seal asked.
“I called them,” Waxtal answered, “but they did not come until I had left.”
“What if we had not found them? What if Fish Eater had not come this way in his seal hunting?” Hard Rock said. “You should have told us you called them.”
“Would you have believed me?” Waxtal asked. “Look at me. I am not a young man. I am not a strong man. Even all my trade goods, those many bundles of pelts, the bellies of oil, I gave all for the walrus tusks. So now, because I have so little, men in your village doubt that I am a shaman, that I have the powers of a shaman. Has any man ever seen walrus on this island? No. And someday when I have taken my powers up to the Dancing Lights, the walrus will leave here again.” He turned and looked at Red Feet, then back again at Hard Rock and Dying Seal. “If I had said, ‘Walrus have come to the Four Waters Island—go hunt,’ would you have believed me?”
The men did not answer, and for a time, in that silence, they watched the beach, the skirmishes of the giant bull, his large body like a mound of red-brown rock, his bellows like something heard in the groanings and crackings of ice rivers.
Then Red Feet took his sea lion harpoon from its lashings on the ikyak deck, fitted his throwing board to his right hand, and slid the harpoon into the groove of the board, the butt of the shaft against the ivory hook that held the harpoon in place.
“No,” Waxtal said. “We are not ready to hunt. We insult the walrus with our seal harpoons.” He looked at Hard Rock, realized he had spoken words that should be said only by the alananasika. He braced himself for Hard Rock’s anger, but to Waxtal’s surprise, Hard Rock showed no anger, only fear.
He is afraid of my power, Waxtal thought, and a rill of laughter lifted itself into his mouth. Waxtal began a chant, a prayer for protection, praise for any walrus that would give itself to a hunter’s harpoon. Who could say what good it would do? He had listened enough to the braggings and boastings of Walrus People hunters. Who did not know that the way to hunt walrus was on land, where they were slow and e
asily taken? In water they knew their full power. What chance did a hunter have against them?
Again Waxtal called out, “Wait!”
But Red Feet said, “That one, he is mine,” as though Waxtal had said nothing. He pointed at a smaller walrus some distance from the bull.
Waxtal looked, saw the stain of yellow on the walrus’s tusks. It was a seal killer, that walrus, tusks yellowed by the blubber of seals he had taken. Waxtal had heard stories of such walrus attacking a hunter’s ikyak.
“Wait!” Waxtal said, but his words were too slow, and Red Feet threw the harpoon, cried out when it hit the walrus in the chest, when a gout of bright blood left a trail as the walrus moved awkwardly into the water, then disappeared beneath the waves.
“Look,” Hard Rock said and pointed at the harpoon shaft, bobbing, butt up, in the waves. The shaft was attached by a line of braided sinew to the harpoon head, which was embedded in the walrus. Hard Rock, Fish Eater, Red Feet, and Dying Seal drew their ikyan in a circle around the harpoon shaft, waited for the walrus to surface as a man waits for seal or sea otter. But Waxtal did not move his ikyak into the circle, and when Hard Rock motioned to him, he shook his head.
Waxtal closed his eyes, put all his strength into the words of a chant. Then behind the darkness of his eyelids he saw the sudden brightness of light, and at the same time heard the screams of the hunters. As he opened his eyes, his ikyak was raised up on a swell of water, a giant wave, coming as though the sea itself fought the Whale Hunters. From the crest of that wave, he saw the walrus lift itself out of the water, and Waxtal knew that the walrus was pulling power from the wave, gathering strength to overcome the pain of the harpoon head. The animal flung itself against Red Feet’s ikyak, splintering the bow and knocking Red Feet from the hatch.
Waxtal pushed against his paddle, moved into those small chopping waves that sometimes follow the wake of a large wave. Almost his ikyak flipped, but fear added strength, and he righted himself, turned, and paddled quickly away from the beach, away from the strong towing currents that defy a hunter’s paddle. And when he had pulled himself far enough away, he looked back. Three ikyan still floated, a man in each. Waxtal watched, waited, and when he saw the sea was calm, he paddled back to the others, raising his voice in chants, so they would know he was praying for all of them, his strength not in hard arms or skillful paddling, but in prayers and chants and shaman’s powers.
