by Sue Harrison
What spirits will I anger? he wondered. What curse will come upon my hunting? But if it were Kiin …
He unsheathed his knife and cut the matting from the dead person’s head. The mats peeled away in layers and Samiq saw the darkness of the hair. Some of the flesh pulled away from the bones of the face and at the stink of rotting flesh, Samiq’s stomach heaved. Then a small piece of wood fell from the folds of the weaving, the wood carved in the shape of a seal. Samiq’s head was suddenly light with relief, but then he thought, a boy of this age and size would be Little Duck’s son. How would the woman survive the loss of her only child?
Samiq carefully rewrapped the boy and left the ulaq. He climbed through the roof hole, set the door back into the opening, trying not to dislodge more dirt on the dead.
He stood for a time looking at the other death ulaq. His father, Shuganan’s son, was buried there. Samiq began digging through the broken sod roof.
When Samiq reached the floor of the ulaq, he found nothing resembling a dead one and no one recently dead from Aka’s rage. Was it possible that all his people had escaped? But if no one were buried here, why was the place honored as a death ulaq? Where was his father?
Samiq turned and began to climb from the hole, but he slipped in the rain-soaked dirt, landing back on the floor, his hand jamming against something sharp. It was a bone, and Samiq jerked it from the sod, then studied the palm of his hand to see if the bone had left splinters to fester in his flesh. But then he realized that the bone he held was not from whale or sea lion, not something broken from a rafter, but the bone of a man, and he held it against his forearm, seeing the thickness of it, the indentations where muscles were once attached. The bone of a man, powerfully built.
He laid the bone in the dirt at his feet and began to dig in the sod where he had found it. He uncovered the long bones of the legs, and small bones, once parts of hands and feet. Finally the skull. None of the bones were wrapped. Why? What had happened to cause such a thing? Had his mother’s silence about her first husband not been a silence of respect, but of hate?
Samiq looked at his own arms, his legs and hands. Truly, they were not the long thin limbs of the First Men. Not even the thicker bones of the Whale Hunters. Who was his father? Who were his people?
Samiq looked at the bones lying at his feet. What spirits would he offend if he reburied the bones? What spirits would he offend if he did not?
Samiq closed his eyes, wiped the rain from his face with the sleeve of his parka. He was too tired to worry about spirits. Laying out the mat that he had carried from Kayugh’s ulaq, he wrapped the bones carefully, then pulled stones from what had once been the ulaq walls. He clustered the stones over the bundle, making a burial in the manner of the Whale Hunters.
FORTY-NINE
SAMIG NODDED HIS APPROVAL. THE CAVE SMALL Knife had chosen was high above the tide line and had a dry sand and gravel floor.
Three Fish crouched at the entrance, her arms held just above a cooking fire. Water dripped from her suk to sizzle on the burning crowberry heather. “Did you find anything?” she asked.
“One dead. A boy, son of the man called Big Teeth and of his second wife, Little Duck. But the boy died some time ago. Not from Aka.”
The mountain shook then, and Three Fish jumped up, her hands over her mouth.
“It is nothing,” Samiq said. “Tugix often shakes the earth.”
Three Fish sat again but Samiq saw the doubt in her eyes. “You are safe,” he said with some irritation, then thought, I should be alone. Or perhaps only with Small Knife. I would not wish Three Fish’s complaining on Dying Seal, but I should have left her with her own people.
They stayed the night, Samiq careful to make his bed beside Small Knife, making sure they were together on one side of the fire, Three Fish on the other. Several times in the night, he heard Three Fish moving in the cave, but he did not look toward her. He did not want her close to him. Tonight, no imagination would make her Kiin.
They awoke in darkness, the fire gone out, Samiq angry that Three Fish had not kept it fed. She who would sit in the ik without paddling should not expect the men to keep the fire. But he said nothing to her; he was too tired for arguing. He groped in the darkness for his belongings and wished they had brought more food. The amount they had taken from the watching place would last only a few days.
The gray circle of light from the cave entrance told of a heavy fog, and as he stood looking out, Samiq felt disoriented, unable to see the sun or even a brightness where it stood in the sky.
“It is morning,” Small Knife said.
“There is no way to be certain,” Samiq replied.
“The tides.”
“Aka makes new tides. Who can tell if it is the morning or Aka that pulls the water?”
Small Knife lifted his shoulders, and by his smile, Samiq realized the boy had not meant to argue.
“My people have a cave for ikyan,” Samiq said, trying to fill the silence that had come between them. “Perhaps they left some supplies there.”
“And if we find some, we will leave?”
“I do not know. Perhaps we will go, perhaps not.”
They made a torch with sodden matting from the ulas, winding the mats around a narrow length of driftwood. Three Fish, wading in the muck of Big Teeth’s ruined ulaq, found a sealskin of oil, and Samiq used the oil to douse the wet mats. Three Fish trailed after them as they walked to the cave, the torch blazing in Samiq’s hand, but Samiq turned at the cave entrance and told the woman to remain outside.
“It is forbidden for women to enter,” he said, and went inside before Three Fish could argue with him.
The torch cast circles of light in the cave, showing the narrow bottom where sand and gravel had made a smooth floor and the widening sides that narrowed again at the top. Kayugh once said that long ago Samiq’s grandfather Shuganan had wedged posts into the floor and into cracks in the cave walls. When Big Teeth, Gray Bird and Kayugh had come to Tugix’s island, they built platforms on the posts and stored their ikyan in the cave each winter.
Samiq held the torch close to the racks. They were empty. He had hoped to find some ikyan and perhaps some sign showing where his people had gone. There was nothing.
“Look!” Small Knife exclaimed, pointing up.
Samiq lifted the torch, illuminating the top of the cave. A post had been driven into a high crack in the cave wall and hanging from the post was an ikyak, cords tied around each end, the ikyak suspended from the post like a child’s cradle.
“They hung it so the sea would not reach it,” Small Knife said.
Samiq handed the torch to Small Knife and pulled himself to the empty ikyak platforms. Reaching up, he wedged his toes and fingers into the small cracks that scored the cave walls. He stretched up toward the ikyak, meaning to tip it toward the floor, but the ikyak lurched away from him. Bracing his feet against the cave wall, he grabbed the post and swung himself up to straddle it.
“Push the torch into the wall,” he called down to Small Knife. “Come and help me.”
Small Knife was soon beside him, and Samiq explained, “There is something in the ikyak. We will have to empty it before we can pull it down.”
Samiq clung to the post and reached into the ikyak. He pulled out a chigadax, new. The feathering at the sides showed the work was Chagak’s. Samiq smiled and dropped the garment to the floor, then reached back into the ikyak. He brought out a basket with a drawstring sealskin top. He opened it. Sewing supplies: needles, awl, sinew. Handing it to Small Knife, Samiq said, “Carry it down.”
Samiq waited until Small Knife was again beside him, then he reached once more into the ikyak.
“Boots, sealskins.”
He dropped them to the floor. Two spear shafts and two paddles were lashed to the ikyak, and Samiq pulled these out and dropped them also.
“I cannot reach the rest,” he said. “I will have to unlace the cover bindings.”
“I can reach it,” Small Knife sa
id.
Samiq watched as the boy gripped the post with his legs and arms and allowed himself to swing upside down over the ikyak. Releasing the post with his hands, he hung by his knees, lowering himself through the hatch head first, his legs still tightly wrapped around the post. He pulled out a filled seal belly and handed it to Samiq.
“Fish,” Samiq said.
“They knew you would be hungry,” said Small Knife, grinning, then he lowered himself again into the ikyak.
Samiq balanced the seal belly behind him on the post and reached with one hand as Small Knife brought out a bladder of oil. “One more thing,” the boy said, his voice muffled in the ikyak.
He brought out a bundle of mats, finely woven, bordered with a pattern of dark squares. Small Knife dropped the mats to the floor and pulled himself back to the top of the post. He took the bladder of oil from Samiq’s hands and climbed down to the cave floor, cradling the bladder in one arm. Samiq dropped the seal belly down to the boy, then pushed the ropes to the end of the post, until one jerk would free the ikyak. He tilted the ikyak so Small Knife could grab the narrow bow, then climbed to the floor. He placed his hands above Small Knife’s, bracing to receive the weight of the ikyak, and they pulled it from the post, swinging it gently down to their feet.
They set the ikyak at the cave entrance and loaded the fish and oil back into it. Samiq stuffed the chigadax, sealskin and boots into the ikyak hatch. Then sitting on his heels, he unwrapped the bundle that was bound in his mother’s mats.
He set the things before Small Knife: a rope woven of kelp fibers, a small stone lamp, braided wicks. A scraping stone—a woman’s tool—but something he might need. “For Three Fish,” he said, holding the stone. She was not what most men wanted in a wife, but she was a woman, able to sew, able to prepare skins.
He unwrapped patching fat and a long bailing tube, tapered at both ends. Then thinking the mats to be empty, Samiq began to rewrap the supplies, but Small Knife reached between the folds of two mats and pulled out a small white object. It was strung on a cord like the amulet Samiq already wore, and when he took it from Small Knife’s hands, Samiq saw that it was ivory, carved in the shape of a whale.
Samiq turned the carving in his fingers. Where had this carving come from? It was too beautiful to be one of Gray Bird’s.
Perhaps it was something his grandfather had made. His mother kept many of Shuganan’s carvings wrapped in oiled sealskin in baskets in Kayugh’s ulaq. Samiq slipped the cord over his head, pulling the carving to lie beside his amulet.
“You will wear it?” Small Knife asked.
“You have not heard of my grandfather Shuganan?” Samiq replied and smiled at Small Knife’s wide eyes.
They carried the ikyak from the cave. Three Fish crowded close, peering inside, running her fingers over the ikyak seams. Samiq handed her the scraping stone.
“For you,” Samiq said, then was embarrassed by the gratitude that shone in the woman’s eyes. It was only a small blade. Why had he given her nothing before? But what had been his to give when he lived among the Whale Hunters?
FIFTY
KIIN RETURNED TO THE RAVEN’S ULAQ FIFTEEN days after the babies were born. She returned to find that Lemming Tail had kept the main room of the ulaq clean, had kept the lamp wick trimmed. There was no food rotting on the floor. Two seal stomach containers were full of newly dried fish and the Raven’s chigadax was freshly mended and oiled and hanging from a peg in the wall.
Lemming Tail was not in the ulaq, but Kiin, seeing that all things were in order, closed her eyes and took a long breath. She had been afraid she would come back to days of work to make up for Lemming Tail’s laziness.
A small raised platform was set on the other side of the room from the Raven’s sleeping platform and Kiin noticed that four loops of willow had been tied securely to the rafters. Cradle hooks? she wondered. So perhaps the Raven had acted on his promise to her that both babies were to live, both babies would be safe in his ulaq.
Kiin set the babies’ cradles on the platform. The platform was a pile of furs and grass mats over a willow and driftwood frame that had been lashed tightly with babiche. The furs were not the fine thick pelts that padded the Raven’s bed, but what could Kiin, a second wife, expect? It was good enough that she had been given a bed.
The babies were strapped against her chest, and she wore her suk with the fur in, soft against her babies’ skin. Her sons were sleeping now, though she felt Samiq’s son occasionally suck lazily on her left breast.
She set the grass bag that held her sewing supplies on the floor and crouched on her heels beside the platform. She leaned her head back on the furs of her new bed. She had done little that day, but she was tired, and she already wished for the night so she could sleep.
It was good to come back to find the ulaq empty and clean, to find that the only work she had to do was to prepare food, care for the babies. She should take off her suk, hang the cradles and let the babies sleep.
For a moment Kiin let herself think what it would have been like if she had stayed in Kayugh’s ulaq. Chagak would now be helping her. There would be food cooking, and she would have her own sleeping place where she could close the curtain, be alone if she wished. Yes, Kiin thought, Chagak was grandmother again and Kayugh grandfather, though they thought she was dead. And Amgigh and Samiq were fathers, though since she was Amgigh’s wife, both babies would be raised as his sons. Still Samiq would know, know by looking; everyone would know.
Kiin could see little of herself in either of the babies. Perhaps, she thought, in the curve of the eyebrows, perhaps in the shape of ears. But what could she expect? She did not have a strong spirit. Her spirit could never stand against Samiq’s or Amgigh’s. But what did that matter? Once she had thought she would always be in her father’s ulaq, never be wife, never be mother. Now she had two sons.
Kiin yawned and closed her eyes. The babies had been restless the night before, perhaps feeling her dread at returning to the Raven’s ulaq. They were not yet named, so had no spirits of their own, nothing to separate them from her spirit, so of course they would feel her fear, her anxiety. As wife, she must ask her husband to name them, soon, though she did not like to think of the babies having Walrus People names.
But, she told herself, better to have a Walrus name than no name at all.
She did not mean to fall asleep, but the babies were warm against her chest and belly, the furs of the sleeping platform soft against her back. She did not dream and, later, did not know what woke her. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Her neck was stiff and she hunched her shoulders, then she caught her breath with a quick start of fear. Woman of the Sky and Woman of the Sun were in the ulaq, both sitting on the Raven’s sleeping platform, sitting as Walrus People sat, legs stretched out straight before them, backs against the ulaq wall.
Kiin wrapped her arms around the babies, felt both squirm under her tightening grasp. She was suddenly glad she had fallen asleep with them still tucked inside her suk. Perhaps if they had been in their cradles, Woman of the Sky and Woman of the Sun might have been able to take them, even while Kiin slept.
“We brought food,” Woman of the Sun said and reached up to hang a sealskin from the rafters over the oil lamp.
“We did not know if Lemming Tail would have any thing prepared for you or for Raven,” said Woman of the Sky.
Kiin stared at the women. When she had first come to the Walrus People these women were her friends, the ones she trusted, but now that she knew her sons did not belong to Qakan, she did not want Woman of the Sun or Woman of the Sky near her.
“Thank you,” Kiin said. “My sons and I thank you,” she added.
“The babies are growing?” Woman of the Sky asked.
“Yes,” Kiin answered. “Yes.”
“We have talked to Raven,” said Woman of the Sun. “He says his power is greater than your sons’ curse.”
Kiin lifted her chin. “He has spoken to me also,” she said. “He wants b
oth sons. I will kill neither.”
“You have no sign—nothing from some spirit that tells you which son is evil?”
Kiin pushed herself from the floor and stood. She was afraid, but her spirit whispered: “What power do these old women have over you? The Raven is your husband. He will protect your children.” She wanted to pull the babies from their carrying strap, to hold them out to the old women so they could see the babies’ faces, their strong fat arms and legs, their smooth round bellies. But what did she know of power? What did she know of curses? Perhaps the women had come hoping she would show them the babies, hoping they could see them away from the protection of suk or cradle. Perhaps they controlled some spirit of death. Who could say?
“My sons are n-not evil,” Kiin said. “They are as all m-men are, able to do evil, able to do good, the choice their own, something they will decide when they are older. It is n-not for m-me to decide for either of them, though I wish I could.”
Kiin stood with legs splayed, feet flat and firm on the ulaq floor. It was the way Kayugh stood when he told stories of fighting the Short Ones, the evil ones who had destroyed so many of the First Men’s villages many years before. That was the way a man stood to fight, Kayugh said. Legs apart for balance, feet pulling up strength from the earth.
She would not kill one of her sons, would not let Woman of the Sun or Woman of the Sky kill them.
“The Raven will n-not let you kill them,” Kiin said, and for the first time since Qakan had sold her, she was glad that Ice Hunter had not won the bidding. Who could say what would have happened? Surely Ice Hunter would have listened to his own mother, would have chosen to give one of the babies to the wind spirits.
“Raven is wrong,” Woman of the Sun said.
But then a voice came from beyond the dividing curtain, a man’s voice. “Speak in the language of the Walrus People, old woman.” It was the Raven. He came into the room, glanced at Kiin, then turned and faced the two sisters.
