by Sue Harrison
Three Fish stood behind her father. She was wearing an otter fur suk, the bottom edge banded with dangling shells and curls of colored seal esophagus. Her hair was smoothed back into the tight bun married women wore, and her face was painted with red ochre, something Samiq knew women
painted on sealskins to preserve them, and he wondered what custom among the Whale Hunters said that new brides should have red faces.
Three Fish’s father was as large as Three Fish, his shoulders and hips making a wide square within his parka, the man twice as big as Many Whales, his face round and smiling like Three Fish’s. His chin tattoos ran in three vertical lines, and his eyes were full of light.
“You know he is a good man,” Samiq’s inside voice told him. “He will make a place for you in hunting trips and will welcome you into his ulaq.” But still the ache remained in Samiq’s chest, and he could feel no joy.
Finally, when the joking was done, Fat Wife left her corner and fed the men. As new husband, Samiq was not allowed to eat, but made to sit watching as Three Fish’s father and Many Whales ate ugyuun broth and whale meat.
Then the men stood. Three Fish’s father took her hand and placed it in Samiq’s hand, then Fat Wife, now allowed to be part of the ceremony, pushed the couple into Samiq’s sleeping place and pulled the curtain shut behind them.
“Make babies,” she called after them and Samiq heard Many Whales and Three Fish’s father join her laughter.
Samiq squatted down. He had released Three Fish’s hand and, in the darkness of his sleeping place, was not sure where she was. Then she moved, pushing herself against his arm, slipping her hands inside his parka. She giggled and stroked Samiq’s chest, but Samiq thought, Fat Wife listens and laughs, too.
“You do this for your father,” his inner voice said. “For your people.” But then he thought, How much does a man give to his father? How many years for the years given? How much shame in exchange for learning? A life forever with such a wife?
With Three Fish as wife how can I make a life for myself? I will be like a child in my own ulaq, her words louder than mine.
He suddenly pushed Three Fish from him and stood up, his head brushing the ceiling of his sleeping place.
“Lie on your back and be quiet,” Samiq ordered and Three Fish’s giggles turned into a small gasp. “I am your husband and you will do as I say. Do you understand?”
He waited, wondering if Three Fish knew he was afraid she would not obey. But her answer was small and quiet.
“Yes, husband.”
“And tomorrow, begin a new curtain for my sleeping place. This curtain is old. And make the new curtain wider.”
Three Fish did not answer, but she did not laugh, and Samiq closed his eyes and thought of Kiin, Kiin in his bed, Kiin soft under his hands. And when Samiq was sufficiently aroused, he dropped to his knees and spread Three Fish’s legs, holding himself up with his arms so his chest did not touch her when he took her as his wife.
FORTY-ONE
AMGIGH PUSHED HIS PADDLE INTO THE WATER, three strokes left, three strokes right. The North Sea was calm, and its calmness made Amgigh uneasy. It was not a usual thing to have the water this clear green-blue; it seemed clear enough to see far under the surface, to the depths where the spirits lived, to the depths where the whale had pulled him… .
No, he told himself. This is always the color of the North Sea. It is always this clear. The many days I had to spend in the ulaq made me forget what the sea was like. I have forgotten. I have only forgotten.
Gray Bird—Waxtal—had wanted to come with him this first time out since the whale. So had Kayugh. But Amgigh was not sure how he would react. What if he could not make himself paddle out? Would he want other men to see his shame?
When he had finally emerged from the ulaq, out of the safety of close, dark walls, just watching the sea had made his stomach tighten in fear.
It is better that I go alone, he told himself. There was that chance that the sea had stolen his courage. And so he went, ignoring the tears on Chagak’s face, the fear in Kayugh’s.
But now all things seemed different: the cold of the water; the windless silence; the heavy gray of the shore. Even the paddle did not seem to fit his hand. He wished there was someone with him, someone who would sing hunting songs, who would sing songs of men stronger than the sea.
Then he remembered something Chagak had told him when he was only a child—if he was alone or afraid to tell the sea of his strength.
So Amgigh raised his voice, called out toward the open water, “I am strong. I do not boast to you. I tell you only the truth. I am strong. Even the whale could not kill me.
“Yes,” he whispered, and he lowered his head to speak in toward the center of his chest so his spirit would hear his words. “I am strong.”
Even after the days lying in his sleeping place, his legs were powerful, not as thick as Samiq’s legs, but well-muscled. Even now with each stroke of his paddle, his thighs pushed hard against the bottom of the ikyak.
He lifted his voice, began a song. It was an old song, a song that praised sea lions and called the otter brother. Even Kayugh did not know who had first thought of the words. A grandfather, Kayugh said. Someone who hunted well.
As Amgigh sang, he remembered other songs and then remembered the full richness of Kiin’s voice singing, the songs she sang, sometimes with new words, old songs sung in a new way. Then, even as he paddled, in his mind Amgigh saw Kiin’s small hands against his skin, felt the feather-touch of her fingers. He closed his eyes, shook his head. Her spirit should be gone now, should be at the Dancing Lights. But who could say? Perhaps it had been captured by the sea,
perhaps each ripple of water held a small part of her soul, enough so that Amgigh would see her, feel her, each time he was in his ikyak.
Perhaps the water pulled his thoughts to her. Who could doubt that the sea was a living thing? Who could doubt the powers it carried? Surely the spirits of whale and sea lion were part of the foaming, breaking waves. Amgigh remembered his first time in an ikyak. His legs had been small, thin, his arms as weak as birdbones. The sea had clasped his paddle, tried to wrest it from his hands. And what hunter did not say the same? What hunter did not know that the sea tested, proved, until it was sure the boy would be a good hunter, worthy of taking seals, worthy of taking sea lions.
Amgigh could still remember the ache of his muscles after that first day in the ikyak. Arms, shoulders sore from lifting and pushing his paddle, sore from fighting the suck of the water if he plunged his paddle too deeply, the chop of waves when he did not plunge it deeply enough. He remembered the ache of his hips as he sat with legs outstretched and wide apart to help him balance the ikyak. And he remembered that he had been afraid.
Samiq had not been afraid. Even the first day, Samiq had purposely flipped his boat, emerged laughing as their father rolled the ikyak and brought Samiq back from the sea. Though Amgigh returned from that first day with his new chigadax still dry, while Samiq in his exuberance had flipped his ikyak twice—and each time been scolded by their father—Amgigh knew that Samiq was again the one with the gift. Samiq would learn to move like a seal, and Amgigh would be left behind.
And now Waxtal said Samiq would return from the Whale Hunters and expect to be leader of the First Men. Yes, Waxtal said, Samiq would teach them to hunt whales, but he would also proclaim himself chief hunter.
Amgigh and Waxtal had been sitting together at the top of Waxtal’s ulaq. Amgigh was weak from the days he had spent in his sleeping place, and his eyes were still not right, seeing darkness at the edges of all things, sometimes seeing double.
For a long time, they had sat without speaking, but then Waxtal shook his head, made a choking noise in his throat. “Your father has made mistakes,” he said. “I have seen his mistakes, though I kept my words to myself, but he is a good leader, and he is wiser than Samiq will ever be. Samiq will be a man who boasts of his own skills. He will come back from the
Whale Hunters with nothing but boasts. But what else could we expect? Samiq’s true father …” And then his words drifted off, but Amgigh had finished Waxtal’s words in his head. Samiq’s father was a Short One, a man who killed men.
Then Waxtal’s words were low and murmuring, as if he had forgotten Amgigh was beside him: “Samiq will think that he has earned the power to be chief hunter. He will not think of Kayugh. He will think only of himself.”
And Amgigh, pulled into his own thoughts, wondered if Waxtal was right. As a boy Samiq did not boast, did not push himself ahead of others. But Waxtal knew the Whale Hunters better than Amgigh did. Who could say how Samiq would change after living with them for a year?
“Even if Kayugh no longer wanted to lead our people,” Waxtal leaned over and whispered to Amgigh, “you would be the better chief.” And Amgigh had laughed, but Waxtal said the same thing the next day and again the day after that, until finally one night, in Amgigh’s dreams, animals came to him: otters and lemmings and seals and sea lions. Each told him he should be chief, chief above Samiq.
But now, alone on the open sea, away from Waxtal’s whisperings, Amgigh knew his own thoughts, and he realized that he did not want to be chief. He did not even like to hunt, though his aim was true and he was often the first to see the dark head of sea lion or seal above the waves. But he also knew he did not want Samiq to be chief.
Amgigh sighed, studied the shore. Aka’s island seemed to have more birds than Tugix’s island but he had not come here for birds. He had come to climb Okmok, the mountain on the far side of Aka’s island. There, on the north side of Okmok, was the shining bed of obsidian, the sacred stone of their people.
Amgigh pushed his ikyak farther out on the sea. Yes, there, he was sure. He saw the glint of obsidian, the dark gash that seemed to grow down from the white and blue glacial ice above it.
It was a long and difficult climb, but he had done it before. Once with his father, another time with Samiq. There were several good beaches on this island, good places for villages … someday, perhaps, he and Kiin would … No, Amgigh thought, not Kiin. But he would find another wife, perhaps someone from the Whale Hunters, and when he gave Samiq obsidian knives in return for teaching him to hunt the whale, then Amgigh would find a wife, would trade for her with whale meat and his obsidian knives.
Then he would have sons and his sons would leam to make weapons, even finer blades than Amgigh could make, until every hunter wanted a blade made by Amgigh or one of his sons. It would be that way. Yes, and then Samiq would see who had the greater power.
The climb was long, and the wind was cold as it pulled against Amgigh’s parka, against his fingers as he sought handholds in the dead grass. But in his concentration, Amgigh did not feel the cold, did not allow himself to wonder if the wind pulling against him was Kiin’s spirit, calling him to follow her into the spirit world. He had too many knives to carve, too many blades to make. He needed to be a man, strong enough to carve rock, his hands hard with calluses where his fingers gripped the stone. What could a spirit do with stone? Stone and spirit—their worlds were separate.
Three nights he spent on Aka’s island, three nights with Aka’s spirits, with the grumblings from Okmok’s great fires deep beneath the rock. But what did he have to fear? Okmok was a powerful mountain, but Aka was more powerful, and Okmok was known to have good spirits. Why else would the mountain pour forth the shining black obsidian, the spirit stone of the mountains? And who had more right to that stone than a man who made knives, the best knives. No, he was not afraid. No.
Each day of the three days Amgigh climbed. Each day he pried and chipped and picked up spalls of obsidian that had been torn loose by wind and rain and sun, all the powers of the sky, and by ice and rock, grinding slowly, the powers of the earth working patiently. Where else did a man gain the knowledge to knap stone, but from the sky? Where else did a man learn such patience, but from the earth?
Each day Amgigh gathered the stone he had won from the mountain, rolled it up in a thick piece of sea lion skin and bound it to his back. Often as he made his way down the mountain, holding fast and letting go, grass to rock to grass again, he checked the leather to be sure the obsidian did not cut through. And so in three days, he had three sea lion skins full of stone.
Then before beginning his journey back to his people, he threw out the ballast stones in the bottom of his ikyak and replaced them with the spirit stones. And as he began the journey back to his people, back to his own village, he sensed the difference in his ikyak. It was stronger, faster, and even when the calmness of the North Sea surrendered once again to high, white-foamed waves, Amgigh felt as though his paddle cut into the water with a new sureness, and the ikyak itself skimmed easily, wave to wave, like a bird, flying. And as he paddled, he thought of the new obsidian knife he would make for himself, to replace the one he was sure Qakan had taken. And he would make knives for Samiq, each blade itself worth the knowledge of whale hunting.
FORTY-TWO
SAMIQ SMOOTHED HIS HARPOON SHAFT WITH A chip of lava rock and looked across the ulaq at Many Whales. The old man’s head was bent, his eyes closed. Once Hard Rock had become chief of the Whale Hunters, Many Whales had suddenly seemed to grow old, as though he were no longer a man, but again a boy dependent on others for his food, for the necessities of each day’s living.
Samiq thought that Many Whales had learned to trust him again, that Many Whales saw him once more as a man, but perhaps Many Wriales saw him as a man only because Many Whales himself was once again boy. And still the other men of the tribe did not include him in their evening gatherings, did not ask him to tell stories of his hunts.
“They will see you as a man when you put a son in Three Fish’s belly,” Fat Wife told Samiq. “Then they will give you a place as whale hunter.” And leaning forward she would glance over her shoulder and if Many Whales seemed to be sleeping, she would whisper, “Then they will tell you the secrets of their poison.”
But again this morning Samiq had heard Fat Wife’s comforting words to Three Fish, “It is a good time to rest. It is a good time to rest.” And he knew that once again he had been unable to plant a child in his wife’s womb. Three Fish would be spending several nights in the hut set aside for women who were in their time of bleeding.
The Whale Hunters were more strict than the First Men about a woman’s bleedmg. In all other things among the Whale Hunters women were nearly as important as men. Women were allowed to sit in counsel on all things but hunting plans. Men often prepared their own food and sometimes even repaired their own parkas, but during a woman’s bleeding, she had to leave the ulaq for fear her blood would curse her husband or his weapons. It seemed strange, but who was Samiq to question the Whale Hunters’ customs? They were the ones who knew how to take the whale. Who could say what a woman’s blood could do to a whale harpoon? Even the First Men made women in their first bleeding live alone.
Samiq shared his wife’s disappointment. What man did not want a son? But that night as he lay on his sleeping mats, he thought, It is a good time to rest—for both of us.
He was asleep when he felt a gentle prodding, and at first, still caught in dreams, he pulled away. Then, thinking that it was Three Fish, he sat up. Anger pushed back the remnants of his dreams. How dare Three Fish come into his sleeping place during her bleeding? Did she care nothing about his weapons?
But then the woman spoke, and Samiq realized it was Fat Wife, not Three Fish.
“Many Whales needs you,” she said.
There was the choke of tears in her words, and suddenly, Samiq’s heart was beating at his throat. His voice was dry and raspy when he asked, “What has happened?”
“He is very sick. He cannot see. He cannot move.”
Samiq jumped past Fat Wife and ran to his grandfather’s sleeping place. Many Whales lay on his sleeping robes. One side of his mouth was strangely crooked, and Fat Wife crouched beside him to wipe at the spittle that bubbled from his lips.
Samiq knelt beside the old man and touched his forehead. “I am here, Grandfather,” Samiq said softly.
There was a gurgling in the old man’s throat, and Samiq i turned toward his grandmother.
“He cannot speak?”
“At first he could speak, and he told me he could not see. Then he called your name, and now …”
Many Whales groaned and then slowly lifted his left hand. Samiq reached for the trembling fingers, but Many Whales suddenly shuddered. His hand jerked toward Samiq’s face, and the fingernails left scratches on Samiq’s cheek as the hand fell.
Many Whales lay still and Fat Wife leaned over him. She licked her fingers then held them over his mouth; she pressed her head to his chest.
She sat up and straightened the robes that lay over him. “He is dead,” she said softly.
A misty rain surrounded them as they stood beside the mound of rocks that was Many Whales’ grave. When they covered Many Whales’ body with rocks, Samiq was uneasy. He thought of the discomfort that the old man’s spirit must feel, the weight of rocks against it, but no one made an objection and so Samiq did not speak. He remembered from his mother’s stories that different people cared for their dead in different ways.
The women ended their mourning cries, and Hard Rock, his whale spear in one hand, spoke to Many Whales’ spirit, to the spirits that always gather near the dead, then he used the spear to pierce the bottom of Many Whales’ ikyak, and the boat was laid over the pile of rocks. Hard Rock began a death chant, but over the sound of the chant, Samiq heard the calls of geese on the beach. And Samiq wished he could be one of those geese, white and silver-gray, spreading wings in the wind, away from this burial, away from sorrow, from mourning.
