by Sue Harrison
Though he longed for his village, for old friends and even the sweet-water spring, he could no longer imagine himself without Daughter: her face tipped up to his, her lisping words and bubbling laughter filling his days.
Sometimes in dreams he saw himself cut and mutilated beyond recognition as he pared himself away into bait. Toes, fingers, nose, and tongue, long slices of flesh all gone, eaten by fish too greedy and selfish to be caught.
Then he would wake, in gratitude stretch his fingers before him, bent and gnarled, but whole, his feet missing just the smallest toes, his nose and tongue still a part of him, and his body scarred only from the mishaps of a long life. And Daughter, too, was whole, save for that one small toe.
The morning they woke to see their boat flanked on all sides by sea otters, Water Gourd began to hope that they were near land. They had only three gourds of water left. How many days could they survive once that was gone?
The otters spread away from their boat in the fog like a brown sea, some jumping and playing, others lying on their backs, babies nursing. One otter, gray of face, swam very near their boat, a rock balanced on its chest, a mussel clamped tightly in its webbed fingers. The otter smacked the mussel against the rock until the shell cracked, then picked out the flesh, ate it in noisy slurps.
Daughter held one hand out to the otter, said, “My.”
The animal flipped and slid quickly under the surface, and several otters nearest him did the same. Daughter looked up at Water Gourd, and he laid a finger against his lips to shush her.
Carefully, slowly, he began moving toward the remaining Bear-god spear that lay in the bottom of the boat. If he could affix his hand line to the spear, perhaps he could use it as a harpoon and kill an otter. He and Daughter were no longer starving, but an otter would have a lot of meat, not to speak of blood they could drink. And then there was the fur. Surely he could scrape a pelt clean enough to use for a blanket at night. There would be sinew also, to make fish line, and bones and teeth to carve into hooks.
Finally he managed to draw both hand line and spear to his lap, and again, motioning for Daughter to be quiet, knotted the line around the butt end of the spear shaft. It was a thrusting spear and not balanced to throw, but Water Gourd had cast enough spears during his life to compensate for the clumsiness, and if he missed, he would draw the spear back to himself with the line.
The gray-faced otter again surfaced beside their boat, another mussel clutched in his paws. Daughter was on her knees at the side of the boat, looking over the edge.
“My,” she whispered and reached toward the mussel.
Like a child, the otter turned away, hugging the mussel to his side. Moving slowly, Water Gourd set a hand on Daughter’s shoulder, tried to pull her back to sit in the center of the boat, but she jerked away and would not look at him. He saw that she had a section of fish in her hand, and she held it out, offering the fish to the otter. The otter lifted his head, and suddenly Water Gourd was afraid the animal would bite her. Water Gourd lunged forward, but before he could reach her, the otter had taken the piece of fish, and somehow Daughter had the mussel, dark and wet, clutched in her hand.
“My!” she cried, as the otter dove beneath the surface and swam away. She held the mussel up so Water Gourd could see it.
He closed his eyes in relief. “Yours,” he conceded.
As the day waned, Water Gourd watched the otters, waited in hopes that one would again come close enough for him to spear. As he watched, he found himself wondering whether he could use an otter’s shoulder blade as a paddle. The remaining Bear-god spear could be the shaft. Though it was too short and thin for heavy seas, perhaps it would allow him to follow the otters back to land.
Several times since he and Daughter had begun their strange journey, he had tried to carve a slice of wood from the inside of the boat and make a paddle blade, but the cedar had grown soft and punky in the salt water, and no piece came away large enough.
Then he had another thought. Perhaps if he harpooned an otter, a strong animal that wouldn’t die from one wound, it would flee toward the safety of land. And as it swam, still tied to them with Water Gourd’s line, its fear would give it the strength to tow their boat.
Water Gourd watched and waited until the sun, a circle of yellow above the haze, had begun to set. No otters came near, and he had decided to put away his harpoon, pray that the animals would still be with them in the morning. But then a large otter swam close. It was strong and healthy-looking, nearly as long as a man is tall. The animal slipped down into the sea, and Water Gourd watched, leaning over the edge of the boat, finally losing the otter in the depths. But then, suddenly, it emerged, fur streaming, on the other side of the outrigger. It flipped to its back and swam slowly toward the bow.
Water Gourd bound the harpoon line to his wrist and hefted the spear, ground his teeth at the poor balance of the thing. He needed a stone counterweight for the spearhead. But why wish for what he did not have? He rubbed the hunting amulet he had worn at his neck since he was a boy.
As he was ready to throw, Daughter lay a hand on his leg, looked up at him. He thought he saw fear in her eyes, but what did a little girl know about hunting? He shook his head at her, upset that she had broken his concentration. No animal would give itself to a man who did not have respect enough to keep his thoughts on the hunt.
In his mind, he began a chant, a slow rhythm to help still his heart as he waited for the moment of throwing. He shut out Daughter and the boat, all things but harpoon and otter.
He threw.
The spear hit and the otter dove.
The line grew taut, and Water Gourd gripped his right wrist with his left hand, braced his feet, and felt the boat begin to move. The other otters began to dive until the sea was empty.
Daughter stabbed a finger into the air. “My! My! My!” she shouted and pursed her lips into a pout.
Water Gourd found the hand grip from his fishing line and managed to twist the line around it once, relieving some of the pressure from his wrist.
“A foolish thing to do, tying the line to your wrist,” the pestering voice in his head told him. “You should have tied it to the outrigger poles. Now you will lose both spear and fishing line, and maybe your hand. Then what will you do?”
The line suddenly grew slack and Water Gourd again twisted it around the hand grip. Then the line was taut again, this time pulled straight down from the side of the boat. Water Gourd leaned over the edge. He could see the otter, large and dark, distorted in the depths. Suddenly it sped up through the water, moved so quickly that Water Gourd’s only reaction was to raise his hands and cover his face. The otter reached the surface, flat nose bubbling out spent air, dark lips drawn back from yellow teeth. The animal leaped at him, and Water Gourd, without thought or reason, clenched his hands into the otter’s thick pelt. The otter, twisting and snarling, drew in great breaths of air and curled to snap at the bloody spear protruding from its side.
Daughter began to scream, and Water Gourd felt the pain of the otter’s teeth as it bit his arm, once and again, then too many times to count. Water Gourd tried to drop the animal into the sea, but it embedded its teeth into his forearm, locked them there, and would not release its grip. Dark clots of blood gouted from the otter’s wound, and finally Water Gourd was able to reach his knife.
He plunged it into the otter’s throat, but it took the animal a long time to die. Finally, as the otter’s blood ebbed, so did its strength, and Water Gourd was able to use the blade to pry the jaws from his arm. He dropped the otter into the bottom of the boat where it lay with jaws clenched, feet scrabbling, gouging out wet splinters of cedar with its claws.
“Stay away,” Water Gourd shouted to Daughter, and she kept her distance, staring with rounded eyes, one finger plugging the circle of her mouth. When the animal’s death throes ended and it was still, she pointed at Water Gourd’s arm, at the shredded skin that hung like a fringe from a wound that gaped from elbow to wrist.
&n
bsp; “He eat you,” she said.
Water Gourd’s legs gave way, and he slumped to the bottom of the boat. A wound that horrible would attract spirits of illness. Fever would take him, and he would die. But he looked at Daughter and said in a loud voice, “No, he did not eat me. We will eat him.”
Chapter Seven
WATER GOURD’S RUSH FIBER coat was beyond repair. Seams, stressed by days in salt spray and nights without a woman’s needle, had frayed and split. The otter’s teeth had shredded the sleeve into tatters so fine that they were good for nothing but hook streamers—false promises of minnows swimming. Water Gourd bound the coat around him as best as he could using strips of fish skin.
Worse, far worse, his arm was nearly as shredded as his jacket, the muscle bared and bloody.
He washed his wounds in sea water, grinding his teeth closed over the scream that rose into his throat at the bite of the salt. What skin he could salvage he stretched over the wound; the rest—chewed into frothy strands—he pared away with his knife and added to his bait pile.
The deeper toothmarks and gouges still bled, and when Water Gourd had done all he could to clean them, he sat for a moment to calm his breathing, mindlessly watching the swirl of patterns made by blood in the water at the bottom of the boat.
Most of it was otter blood, he assured himself. He stretched his good hand toward the mess and spoke those words to Daughter.
She nodded her head, said, “Otter, him blood,” in a soothing voice, as though she understood Water Gourd’s need to believe what he told her.
He sat until his heart had slowed, until he felt a sleepiness begin to steal over him. His thoughts descended into a comfortable haze, then, for a moment, cleared, and he realized the trap of that sleepiness, brought on by shock and loss of blood. He forced himself to once again use his knife, this time on the dead otter.
He stretched the animal out in the bottom of the boat. He was too tired, too hurt to care about what the bloody water would do to the pelt.
Suddenly, foolishly, he couldn’t remember how to butcher an otter. Should he cut off the head, like hunters did with seals, towing them behind their boats until the longworms that lived in the animal’s intestines had fled the cooling body? Or should he cut from chin to anus, peel away the pelt, then empty the body cavity and squeeze out the contents of the gut into the sea? He finally decided on the latter. If there were longworms, he would deal with them when he found them.
He used his feet and his good arm to rip the hide away, did not bother to skin paws, head, or tail. He chopped each of these off whole, put them over the side of the boat with broken prayers, muddled and confused. He hoped that the otter’s spirit would recognize his gratitude, in spite of his arm, and that the pieces would come together again as a whole animal, to swim in the sea. He stripped away thin slices of the muscle, gave some to Daughter, and ate one himself.
The flesh was thick and muddy-tasting, as salty as the sea, but when it had rested in his belly for a while, he felt some of his strength return. He lay the pelt, skin side up, over his lap, scraped away flesh and blood vessels and bits of fat, working slowly, stopping often to rest. Daughter sat watching him, her fingers in her mouth.
“Him blood,” she said once, removing her fingers to point at the bottom of the boat. Beyond that, she was silent, brow furrowed, eyes on Water Gourd’s seeping wounds.
By the time night fell, Water Gourd had the hide scraped well enough to use as a blanket. He sluiced the water and gore from the fur, wrapped himself and Daughter, fur side in. For the first time since they had left the Boat People’s land, Water Gourd was warm enough to sleep well, and in the morning, though his arm was stiff, he felt stronger.
He butchered the otter, sliced the meat thin, and plastered it up the sides of the boat to catch salt from the sea spray. He cleaned out the guts, sliced some into bait, left other pieces long to dry and braid. He saved tendons and sinew to make fish line, and the shoulder blades in hopes they could be fashioned into a paddle. He had forgotten to save the teeth before he gave the otter’s head to the sea. How foolish! They would have made good fish hooks. At least he had the bones.
He and Daughter ate again. The meat wasn’t good, but it was filling, and it gave strength, and being otter, it might even help guide them toward land. Perhaps by always eating fish they had prolonged their journey, content as fish were to stay in the depths.
Water Gourd’s wound still bled, but a hard crust had begun to form over the muscle, making the arm less painful. He used a bit of otter gut to bait a hook, and fished most of the day. He caught nothing. Once, gazing out at the horizon, he thought he saw land, but with the haze of fog that rose from the water, he could not be sure.
The wind was calm, and he tried to be thankful for that, though he thought that a storm, if it did not swamp their boat, might drive them to some shore.
By night, his thoughts were tangling themselves into strangeness, as though he dreamed with eyes open. He wondered if he had given Daughter anything to eat. Yes, otter meat, he remembered.
And water? They had so little. He untied the gourd that hung from his waist and allowed her a sip, then took a drink for himself. When the sun set for its short night, he saw that Daughter was shivering. Strange, Water Gourd thought. He himself was too warm. He wrapped Daughter into the otter pelt, felt her relax in his lap as sleep claimed her.
Surely his mind would clear if he could sleep, he reasoned, but his arm throbbed, and though he had loosened the ties that bound his tattered jacket to his body, he was still too hot. Finally he moved to one side of the boat, leaned over so he could settle his wounded arm into the seawater. The salt no longer burned, and the water pulled the heat from his body. He shivered, was suddenly too cold, and with the shivering finally understood that the wound had begun to draw spirits of sickness. He thought of laying Daughter in the bow of the boat where whatever evil he had drawn to himself would not touch her, but he was shaking too hard to let her go.
Finally his trembling woke the child, and she pulled herself away from him, stood up on spindly legs, her feet splayed. She stepped out of the otter skin and tried to cover him with it. He pulled her to his lap, wrapped them both in the pelt, and was finally able to sleep.
In his dreams, Water Gourd again battled the otter, but when he raised his knife to kill the animal, it changed suddenly from otter into Bear-god warrior. The warrior lunged at Water Gourd’s throat, drawing back his lips so Water Gourd could see that the man’s mouth was filled with otter teeth. He screamed himself awake and realized that Daughter, too, was screaming, shaking as hard as Water Gourd had been before he fell asleep. At first, he was afraid his sickness had claimed her as well, but when he soothed her with gentle words, told her he had only been dreaming, she stopped shaking. He cradled her on his lap until she again fell asleep.
The sky was still dark with no hint of dawn, and so Water Gourd knew he had slept only a little while. The longer they traveled, the shorter the nights had become. If he was home, in his own village, Long-day Celebration would be near. For a moment his thoughts strayed to the feasts that would be held in the Boat People’s villages, but then he remembered the Bear-gods. There would be no celebration at his village, and who could guess what the Bear-god men had done to other Boat villages?
What if there were no celebrations at all? What would happen? Perhaps the sun, insulted by their negligence, would not linger the next year. Then winter would return too quickly, and the people would go hungry.
The Bear-gods were heathens and fools. Who could expect them to understand that all the ways of the earth must be kept in balance, one season with another, one village with another?
Water Gourd’s anger rose, and he moaned in his helplessness. Perhaps he was the only Boat man alive on the earth, the only one who knew the ceremonies and the proper ways of life, and he was here in this outrigger, destined to go where the current took him, and now at the mercy of fever and illness.
He lowered his arm again
into the sea. The elbow was swollen and impossible to straighten. Angry red lines streaked up toward his shoulder. The cold water helped deaden the pain. He wrapped his uninjured arm around Daughter and lifted prayers for a heavy rime ice on their boat by morning, enough to help refill the water gourds. He was so thirsty.
His prayers were answered. He and Daughter were awakened by the clattering sound of frozen rain, the stinging pelt of tiny ice balls.
Water Gourd, the ache of his arm so huge that it seemed to swallow his entire body, roused himself from dream-tortured sleep and began scraping up handfuls of ice, filling his mouth over and over until he realized that he must give Daughter ice as well, and collect enough to melt and fill his gourds. He lifted his head and opened his mouth, then pointed and nodded until Daughter did the same. She closed her eyes against the sleet, but kept her mouth open.
Like a little bird, Water Gourd thought, and tried to remember some prayer he could say in gratitude for what she meant to him. But all he could think of was a song men sing when the juice of fermented fruits and grains makes them foolish. That song was more about women than gratitude.
The ice melted to slush in the bottom of the boat. Water Gourd scooped it up until the fingers of his good right hand were numbed into a claw. He found his bailing gourd and used that, then with a ballast rock beat the ice from the edges of the boat. When he had filled all his gourds, he began to throw chunks into the bow, but finally, afraid the weight would sink them, he started to heave the ice into the sea.
The work drained his strength until he could do nothing but huddle with Daughter under the otter pelt, holding a deer hide blanket over their heads.
