by Sue Harrison
Finally the wave was beyond them, and Kiin watched as it foamed against the beach, its power draining into the dark gravel, the wave hissing as it pulled itself back into the sea.
“Keep the paddle,” Qakan said. “We will go faster if you help.”
Kiin tightened her hands on the paddle’s smooth shaft. Her eyes followed the shaft to the blade. “Take him now,” Kiin’s spirit whispered. “Take him now. He is tired and you have your strength back.”
“I-I-I will paddle only if you t-t-turn the ik bac-back toward our island,” Kiin said.
Qakan pulled his paddle from the water and raised the blade toward her.
He lifted his chin, gesturing toward the partially healed gash that marked the side of Kiin’s forehead.
“You have forgotten what I can do with this paddle?” he asked.
Kiin, the wood of her own paddle cool against her hands, looked at her brother’s smooth, plump fingers and felt no fear, but she drew back and pulled her paddle from the water to hold like a protection between herself and Qakan.
Qakan threw back his head and laughed.
For a moment Kiin waited, waited until Qakan’s laughter spread itself up into his cheeks, until his cheeks curved up
to force Qakan’s eyes closed. Then Kiin clasped her paddle like a hunter clasps a lance, and she plunged the blade into the soft bulk of Qakan’s belly. Kiin’s thrust knocked Qakan backward in the ik, and as he fell he dropped his paddle. Kiin lunged forward, grabbed her own paddle and thrust it again toward Qakan, but this time, Qakan caught the blade before it hit him, caught and held, his hands so firm that Kiin was amazed by his strength.
He must have the help of some spirit, Kiin thought, but what spirit would help Qakan?
She tried to twist the paddle from his grip, but the twisting made the ik turn so the bow no longer faced out into the sea. Waves slapped against the ik, and water spilled in over one side.
“Kiin, stop!” Qakan yelled. “We will drown. The ik … look… .”
“What does it matter?” Kiin’s spirit whispered. “Even a child could make it back to shore from here.” Kiin jerked the paddle toward her, then released it so quickly that the blade smashed into Qakan’s mouth. She jumped forward, landed with one knee in Qakan’s stomach, the other in his groin. Qakan moaned. He lost his grip on the paddle, but then he reached out for Kiin, caught her hair with one hand, and before Kiin could wrench away, his arms were around her, forcing her face into his chest, squeezing her ribcage until she could not breathe, until her heart felt as though it did not have room to beat. He moved his hands to her throat, pressing his fingers into her windpipe. Kiin’s lungs ached with the need to breathe, and as she struggled, her eyes dimmed, seeing all things gray, all things shimmering with spirit images.
Then Qakan was pushing her away, one of his hands still tight on her neck, the other drawn back in a fist.
Kiin pulled in a long breath.
“H-h-hit me,” she said, the words rasping from her throat. “The-the Walrus People w-w-will give you a good price for a w-w-woman with s-s-scars on her face.”
Qakan’s lips drew back into a grimace. Blood bubbled from between his teeth.
“You are stupid, Kim,” he hissed, and the words forced a spray of blood and spittle from his mouth.
Kiin tried to turn away, but Qakan twisted his hands into her hair and raised her head, slammed it against one of the ik’s wooden ribs. Pain burst from the back of Kiin’s skull into her eyes, and once again all things doubled, once again all things blurred.
“Why fight me?” Qakan asked, the question broken with long shuddering breaths. “Amgigh will not want you now. Even Samiq will not want you. Besides, would you curse Amgigh by being his wife after you have lain with your own brother?”
His words pushed into Kiin’s head, and she felt the weight of them slip down her throat into her chest, settle heavily beside her heart.
Qakan was right. She carried a curse. Could she live with Amgigh or Samiq and take the chance that the curse might spread to them?
The weight of the curse spread in her chest, spread and pushed her soul into a thin layer at the inside of her skin, until finally she was hollow, her soul brittle, like the shell of an egg, and holding nothing but her breath and broken words.
TWENTY-THREE
THEY WERE WATCHING HIM AGAIN. THEIR GIGgling took his thoughts from his work, and his knife slipped, gouging another piece of wood. Samiq closed his eyes and arched his back to ease the strain in his shoulders. His grandfather had given him an old ikyak frame from which to make
an ikyak of his own, one, his grandfather said, made the right way, in the manner of the Whale Hunters, an ikyak the sea animals would respect.
Samiq tried to keep his thoughts from the man who had first owned the ikyak frame, the hunter who had shaped the jointed keel, the gunwales and deck beams. He had been skilled, that ikyak maker. The frame was solid, the joints well-fitted. But Samiq could not help wonder whether the man had been a good hunter, one who had brought meat for the village, or if he had cursed this ikyak frame with his laziness, with disrespect.
Most of the framework was still good, even the joints where the deck beams met the gunwales. The Whale Hunters used baleen lashings to hold joint to joint, and where wood rubbed against wood, they inset small plates of whale tooth ivory into the framework.
“See,” his grandfather had told him, pushing at a piece of wood with a fingernail, “water softens the wood, peels it away until the waves can pound it into nothing. Ivory keeps the wood from wearing.”
Yesterday Samiq had painted the frame pieces with ochre, blood red, mixed into a paste and spread on with a piece of hard-bristled hair seal skin. The ochre protected the wood from the rot of wetness, from the scalding salt of the sea.
The wood frame of a Whale Hunter’s ikyak was, Many Whales told Samiq, like the bones of a whale, jointed so it could move in the sea, so it would shape itself to the waves, bend with the swells. The First Men’s ikyan were poorly made, he told Samiq; the First Men’s ikyan were stiff and awkward.
Many Whales’ words settled into Samiq’s chest like splinters and seemed to rub against Samiq’s heart each time he breathed. So Samiq told himself that if a Whale Hunter boy went to the First Men to learn to hunt sea lions, perhaps he would have to learn to use the First Men’s ikyan. He would without doubt have to give up his large awkward lance, and instead learn to use the finely balanced barbed seal harpoons of the First Men.
Samiq slipped one end of the curved deck beam into its socket in the gunwale. A good fit, Samiq thought. Snug, but not so tight that the joint would snap if a wave bent the ikyak.
Fat Wife had agreed to sew the sea lion skins Samiq had cut for the covering. At least when the ikyak was done, Samiq would be able to get away from the young girls for a time, even if Many Whales would not allow him to go beyond sight of the beach.
He looked with longing at the ikyak he had brought from his own village. It lay above the high tide line, the craft made in the manner of the First Men, without the top ridge or the pieced keelson of the Whale Hunters’ ikyan. He could take it, now, go back to his own village, to his own people. To Kiin and to his mother, to his baby sister Wren. But then he would disappoint Kayugh and Amgigh. To help his people, he must become one of the Whale Hunters. And for this year at least he must please Many Whales and even Fat Wife.
It would be easier if Fat Wife were more like his own mother. Then he would be able to talk to her about the First Men, about his family and his village. Then he would not feel so alone. But Fat Wife seemed to want Samiq to forget the First Men. She did not want him to sit as First Men sat; she did not want him to talk as First Men talked. She had even insisted on making Samiq a new parka, though when she finished he could see little difference between it and the one his mother had made him.
Many Whales had laughed at Samiq’s seal harpoons, at their fine slender points, their light bone foreshafts. But when he inspected Samiq’s throw
ing board, the old man had merely grunted, and Samiq held a smile within his cheek, knowing that the throwing board was as fine as a man could make. It had belonged to his grandfather, Shuganan, and was given to Samiq because it was the exact length of Samiq’s forearm, from the tip of his longest finger to his elbow.
The throwing board was an extension of Samiq’s arm and allowed him to throw a spear or harpoon much farther than he could without it. Nearly the width of Samiq’s hand, it had a hook at one end that socketed into the shaft of Samiq’s spear. The spear lay in a groove the length of the throwing board. Samiq held one end of the board, allowing it to extend, horizontal to the water, back over his shoulder. When he threw, a hard, sidearm throw, the board followed the arc of his arm, but the spear stayed horizontal, finally connected to the throwing board only by the hook at the end of the board.
Samiq’s throwing board always aimed his spear true and the hook in the end never slipped. Many hunters more gifted than Samiq had poorer throwing boards. “Perhaps it is the power of the many kills your grandfather made with it,” Kayugh had explained to Samiq. And that was the explanation Samiq gave to Many Whales.
But each day, Samiq was left standing on the beach, watching as the young men of the village went to hunt sea lions or seals. And during those days, he remembered what Kayugh had told him:
“Do as the old man says. Show interest in his words and stories, and after he has taught you to hunt whates, come back and tell us. We will become as the Whale Hunters, only greater, for we are better sea lion hunters.”
Yes, Samiq told himself whenever his spirit ached to see his own island, to return to his own ulaq, Kayugh has treated you like a true son. Now honor Kayugh as true father. Learn to hunt the whale so you can teach him, so you can teach him and his son Amgigh.
Samiq laid his knife on the ground and inspected the ikyak. He had tied each joint with stiff ribbons of baleen, had set the ivory rub plates into their sockets and glued them with a mixture of powdered kelp and his own blood. Many Whales would have difficulty finding reason to reject this framework. Perhaps today, Fat Wife could start sewing the covering.
The whispers of the girls stopped as Samiq picked up his knife and walked toward Many Whales’ ulaq. But soon he heard someone hurrying behind him. Samiq turned and saw the girl called Three Fish following him. Her two friends hid their smiles behind their hands and huddled together, watching from the beach.
Three Fish was tall and wide like all the Whale Hunters, and her smile showed a mouthful of broken teeth. How could she be a good wife if even in her youth her teeth were chipped and broken? How many seal flipper boots would she make, crimping the soles with her teeth, before she had no teeth at all?
“Where are your friends?” Samiq asked the girl.
Three Fish giggled and flung her arm back toward the two girls. “They think you are a giant and will eat them,” Three Fish said and giggled again.
Samiq did not answer her. He felt a wariness in talking with any girl of the village. Though he had little experience in the things of the sleeping place, he knew the three girls behind him had been taken soon after their first bleeding. Among the Whale Hunters, any man but father, grandfather, or brother had the right to ask favors, although a married woman could be given only by her husband. These three were eager to share his bed, and they spent much time following him, flipping their aprons as they walked. And although Three Fish brought little desire to Samiq’s heart, the other two, Small Flower and Speckled Basket, were not ugly.
But during the first day Samiq spent with the Whale Hunters, Many Whales had said, “No night walking. Night walking will make grass grow between your toes, and you will curse yourself forever with the sea animals.”
Samiq had been puzzled by the strange warning, and asked Crooked Bird, a young man of the village, what Many Whales had meant.
“No visiting,” Crooked Bird had said and then laughed, his laugh opening Samiq’s mind to the possibility that Crooked Bird did not like him. “No sleeping with women. You are not yet a man.”
Then Samiq knew that if in Many Whales’ eyes he was a boy, to all the Whale Hunters, he was a boy. A man hunted whales, and Samiq did not even have a proper ikyak.
So there was one strange comfort in Three Fish’s giggling, and the thought came to Samiq each time he heard her laugh: someone sees me as a man.
Fat Wife was sitting in the large central room of the ulaq, the room lit by whale oil lamps, these lamps burning more cleanly than the seal oil lamps of the First Men.
Samiq waited respectfully for Fat Wife’s acknowledgment, and when she looked at him, he squatted down to speak.
“I am ready for the cover now, Grandmother,” he said.
“You have completed the frame?” Fat Wife asked.
“Yes.”
“Sit then, and I will speak of something Many Whales has told me. Perhaps he will tell you himself, but perhaps not. It is something you should know.”
Samiq settled himself on the floor mats, cross-legged as was the custom of the Whale Hunters. Fat Wife laid down the basket she was finishing, and Samiq noticed how crude her work was compared to his mother’s. The image of his mother sitting with a basket inverted on a basket pole made a heaviness in his chest, and Samiq brought his thoughts back to Fat Wife, her greased hair drawn back tightly from her round face, her small eyes glittering in the light of the oil lamps.
“We are a great people,” she began in the Whale Hunters’ now-familiar litany, the beginning of any plan or story. “You are more than a boy, but not yet a man. In the village of the People, to be a man, you must hunt the whale. But since you already hunt the seal, you will not go with the boys, learning slowly over the years.” She leaned forward, looked into Samiq’s eyes and said, “Many Whales will instruct you.” She settled back and adjusted the mat that was folded up over her knees. “It is a great honor.”
Samiq, unsure of what to say, finally replied, “Yes, Grandmother, it is a great honor.”
Fat Wife smiled and reached out to pat his knee, and Samiq forced himself not to recoil. Among his own people, touching was limited to a man’s wives and children. But then, Samiq told himself, Fat Wife did not see him as a man. He felt his face color, and he hoped Fat Wife did not see.
But she leaned forward again, now patting his cheek, and said, “You look much like your grandfather, but wider, stronger. Perhaps someday I will find out what Seal Hunter mothers feed their sons to make them grow so strong. Do you know?”
Samiq tried to think of some plant or animal eaten by his people that the Whale Hunters did not use, but he could not. In eating, all seemed the same. “I do not,” he finally answered, wishing he could tell her, wanting to please her. “But when I return to my people, I will ask,” he added.
But Fat Wife quickly pulled away from him, frowned and narrowed her eyes. She lifted her head and said, “You are no longer a Seal Hunter. You are one of us. Many Whales has decided to give you a new name—Whale Killer.”
Samiq’s eyes widened and he could not keep the dismay from his voice, but he spoke softly as though he reasoned with a child, “My name is Samiq. It is a name honored among the First Men.”
“Kayugh has given you to us!” Fat Wife said. Her eyes were intense as she studied Samiq’s face, and Samiq was suddenly very tired. He remembered his mother’s words, often spoken when the clamoring of many people filled the ulaq: “I need to speak to the sea.” And now he said the same words to Fat Wife, but did not miss the smile on her face as he left the ulaq.
TWENTY-FOUR
KIIN PULLED ANOTHER STRAND OF RYEGRASS from the pile at her side. Each day, after she and Qakan beached the ik for the night, Kiin worked on baskets. It gave her something to do, some reason to keep her eyes from Qakan’s mocking face, to pretend she did not hear his complaining.
Qakan had brought the grass from their father’s ulaq—stolen, probably, Kiin thought, from the dried grass their mother kept in flat layers in a corner of her sleepi
ng place. Each time Kiin touched the grass, felt it smooth against her fingertips, her spirit seemed to see her mother weaving baskets. But Kiin pushed the ache of memories away. She was here now with Qakan; she was not a child who could climb on her mother’s lap and hide from the fears of each day’s living.
Sometimes she paused in her work and stroked the whale tooth shell, sometimes she touched the necklace that Samiq had given her or the carving from Chagak, but then her fingers went again to the grasses as she twisted and held the strands with one hand and bound them in tight stitches with her weaving needle. She smiled when she remembered Qakan’s fear of the carving she wore, his mumblings about the trades he could make for it. But who was fool enough to touch one of Shuganan’s carvings without permission of the one chosen to be the carving’s owner? Not even Qakan would take that chance.
Kiin had just finished the circular bottom of another basket when Qakan came from the beach. It was a good beach with cliffs that blocked the wind on one side and talus slopes that led to the mountains on the other. Kiin turned away from Qakan, hoping he would ignore her, but he ran to her and grasped her arms. His eyes were bright with a look that Kiin had come to dread, and she tried to pull away from him, tried to turn so that if he hit her he would not strike face or stomach.
“I saw a whale. It is a good sign for us,” Qakan said, and he let go of her arms and bent over, hands on knees to catch his breath.
He is too fat to run so hard, Kiin thought. But then something in Kiin’s spirit whispered that the whale might be some message from Samiq, and she bent down to ask Qakan, “Is it s-s-still there?”
Qakan nodded and Kiin took several running steps toward the beach, but he called after her, “Wait for me, Kiin.” His voice held the whine that was a sign of anger to come, and so Kiin stopped and looked back at him. “You will see it better from the cliffs,” he said.
