My Sister the Moon

by Sue Harrison

  My Sister the Moon

  The Ivory Carver Trilogy

  Sue Harrison

  FOR MY PARENTS

  PATRICIA ANN SAWYER MCHANEY

  AND

  CHARLES ROBERT MCHANEY, JR.

  FOR MY GRANDFATHER

  CHARLES ROBERT MCHANEY, SR.

  AND FOR NEIL’S PARENTS

  SHIRLEY LOUISE BATHO HARRISON

  AND

  CLIFFORD JOSEPH HARRISON

  WITH LOVE, GRATITUDE AND RESPECT

  Contents

  SUMMER 7055 B.C.

  PROLOGUE

  SPRING, 7939 B.C.

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  LATE WINTER, 7038 B.C.

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  Author’s Notes

  Glossary of Native Words

  Image Gallery

  Acknowledgments

  Preview: Brother Wind

  A Biography of Sue Harrison

  PROLOGUE

  SUMMER 7055 B.C.

  Chuginadak Island, Aleutian Chain

  Prologue

  CHAGAK SAT AT THE roof hole entrance of the ulaq, on the thick sod that was the ulaq roof. She was scraping the last bits of flesh from the inside of a fur seal skin. Samiq and Amgigh nursed beneath her birdskin suk, each baby cradled in a sling that hung from Chagak’s shoulders.

  Kayugh’s daughter Red Berry played with colored stones at the grassy edge of the beach. Now and again, the girl called to Chagak, but the waves hissing into the dark gravel of the shore drowned out her tiny voice.

  Chagak wished the noise of the sea would also cover Blue Shell’s sobbing, but she could still hear the woman weep.

  She thought of Blue Shell’s new baby daughter, and for a moment she stopped her work to fold her arms over Samiq and Amgigh. Two fine, strong boys, she thought. And though Amgigh was Kayugh’s son, not hers, it seemed that Amgigh belonged to her as much as Samiq did. It was her milk that gave him life. But why did the spirits bless her and not Blue Shell? Why was one woman chosen to receive sons, another given only daughters?

  “A son!” Gray Bird had shouted at Blue Shell when the first pains of Blue Shell’s labor had begun, and Chagak had resented his words. Did any man know the pain a woman endured to give birth? If Gray Bird had suffered in the birthing as Blue Shell had, would he now be so anxious to kill the child?

  “I have had enough sorrow,” Chagak said, boldly directing her words toward the sacred mountain Aka. But then she heard voices raised in anger, and Kayugh and Gray Bird came from Big Teeth’s ulaq.

  Kayugh scanned the beach, and in long, quick strides he overtook his daughter. He pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest. Red Berry clung to him, her small face white against his parka. Then Kayugh turned to face Gray Bird.

  For a moment the two men stood without speaking. Kayugh was two hand-lengths taller than Gray Bird, and the wind ruffling the feathers of his parka made Kayugh look even larger than he was.

  His jaw tightened and he said, “Have you forgotten that we are the First Men? Have you forgotten that we have begun a new village? Do you think you can have a village without women?” His voice started out low and soft, but as he spoke, anger began to edge his words.

  Chagak did not look at Gray Bird. Instead, she kept her eyes on Kayugh’s face, ready to grab Red Berry from his arms if Gray Bird attacked.

  “Who will bear your grandchildren?” Kayugh shouted. “That?” He pointed to a rock. “That?” He pointed to a tangle of crowberry heather growing near the ulas.

  Kayugh clasped Red Berry at her waist and held her out toward Gray Bird.

  Do not cry, Chagak pleaded silently with the child. Please, do not cry. But Red Berry held herself stiff and still, her eyes shifting between Gray Bird and her father.

  “She brings me joy,” Kayugh said. Then in a voice so low that Chagak strained to catch the words, he added, “Her mother was a good wife to me. Her spirit is with this child. I would kill any man who tried to harm my daughter.”

  Slowly he set Red Berry down. The child stood for a moment looking at her father. Chagak held out her arms. Red Berry ran to her and climbed into her lap.

  Then Gray Bird spoke. “If Blue Shell’s daughter lives, I will have to wait three, perhaps four more years for a son. The seas are rough; the hunts are hard. Perhaps I will die before then.”

  Chagak looked at Kayugh. Would Gray Bird’s words soften Kayugh’s resolve? But Kayugh did not speak and Gray Bird continued, his voice like ice in the thin, cold air. “Each man rules his own family.”

  Kayugh took one step forward, and Chagak began to slide slowly back, holding Red Berry against her with one arm.

  “Chagak!”

  Chagak jumped then rose slowly, searching Kayugh’s face.

  “Give me my son.”

  She did not want to obey. Amgigh was too small to be caught in a fight between two men. She hesitated and Kayugh called again. Chagak pulled the baby from beneath her suk and quickly wrapped him in the furred skin she had been scraping.

  She took the child to Kayugh. Red Berry followed her, one hand clinging to the back of Chagak’s suk.

  Chagak handed the baby to Kayugh and he held the child toward Gray Bird, opened the fur wrapping so Gray Bird could see the baby’s well-formed legs and arms.

  “I claim Blue Shell’s girl child as wife for my son,” Kayugh said, then he turned and held the baby toward the island’s mountain Tugix. “I claim Blue Shell’s daughter for my son.”

  Gray Bird spun and strode to his wife’s birth shelter.

  Chagak thought that Kayugh would go after him, but he stood where he was, Amgigh now wailing in the chill of the wind. But soon, Gray Bird returned. He held Blue Shell’s baby wrapped in a coarse grass mat. He opened the mat and turned the child so Kayugh could see her tiny body. In the coldness of the wind, the baby’s skin quickly mottled and turned blue.

  “Wrap her,” Kayugh said. “She will be wife for Amgigh.”

  Gray Bird wrapped the child, moving her too quickly to his shoulder. The small head jerked against his chest.

  “If you kill her, you kill my grandsons,” Kayugh said, and he stood with his eyes fixed on Gray Bird until the man returned to the birth shelter. Then Kayugh thrust Amgigh into Chagak’s arms, hoisted Red Berry to his shoulders and walked to the beach.

  The summer was nearly over when Blue Shell came to Kayugh. Chagak, now Kayugh’s wife, watched from the corner of the ulaq as the woman lifted her suk and sh
owed Kayugh the daughter suckling at her breast. But Chagak also saw the bruises on Blue Shell’s face, a long cut that ran across her belly.

  “She is alive,” Blue Shell said, her voice low. “But Gray Bird has told me I must stop nursing her.”

  Kayugh sighed. “Big Teeth says I was wrong. I should not have promised Amgigh, forced Gray Bird.”

  Blue Shell shrugged. “I will do my best to keep her alive.” She pulled down her suk, tucked it around the baby. “Gray Bird will not let me name her.”

  Chagak drew in her breath. The child would have no protection without a name. She would not even have a soul. She would be nothing.

  And Gray Bird’s promise to give the girl as wife for Amgigh, what of that?

  Blue Shell turned to leave, but then looked back at Kayugh. “Gray Bird says that he has given his promise, and so he will not kill the child, but he says that you do not have to keep your promise. He says you should find another wife for Amgigh.”

  When she left, Kayugh paced the ulaq.

  “You cannot change him, husband,” Chagak said. “Gray Bird is Gray Bird.”

  “Big Teeth was right. I should have let the girl die. Now I cannot keep my promise. I cannot give my son a wife who has no soul. Who can say what spirits may come to her, to live in the emptiness she will carry?”

  For a long time, Chagak said nothing. When Kayugh finally sat down, she went to the food cache and brought him a piece of dried fish. “There is a chance that Gray Bird will decide to give the girl a name,” she said to Kayugh. “Perhaps he will see that a child without a name is a curse to his ulaq, or perhaps he will name her if he thinks he can get a good bride price for her.”

  Kayugh smiled, a half-smile that told Chagak of his frustration. “So Gray Bird will let her live. And he knows that each time I see the girl, I will remember that he is keeping his promise and I cannot keep mine.”

  SPRING, 7039 B.C.

  Chuginadak Inland, Aleutian Chain

  1

  LIGHT FROM THE SEAL oil lamps caught the shine of the trader’s eyes. Blue Shell’s daughter shuddered.

  “A good way to use the night,” her father said, and he reached over to cup his daughter’s left breast. “One seal belly of oil.”

  Blue Shell’s daughter held her breath, but she made herself look at the man, made herself meet his eyes. Sometimes that worked. Sometimes they saw the emptiness in her eyes, saw what her father would not tell them: that she had no soul. And a woman without a soul—who could say what she might do? Perhaps pull away bits of a man’s spirit when he was lost in the joy of her thighs.

  But this trader’s eyes were dull, greedy for the touch of her. And the girl was afraid he would see only the shine of oil on her arms and legs, the length of her black hair. Nothing more.

  “She is beautiful,” Gray Bird said. “See, good dark eyes, good round face. Her cheekbones are tall under her skin. Her hands are small; her feet are small.” He said nothing about her mouth, how words came from it broken and stuttering.

  The trader licked his lips. “One seal belly?”

  He is young, Blue Shell’s daughter thought. Her father liked to trade with younger men. They thought more of their loins than their bellies.

  “What is her name?” the trader asked.

  Blue Shell’s daughter caught and held her breath, but her father ignored the question.

  “One seal belly,” he said. “Usually I ask two.”

  The trader’s eyes narrowed. “She has no name?” he asked and laughed. “One handful of oil for the girl.”

  Gray Bird’s smile faded.

  The trader laughed again. “Someone told me about your daughter,” he said. “She is worth nothing. She has no soul. How do I know she will not steal mine?”

  Gray Bird turned toward the girl. She ducked but was not quick enough to avoid the hard slap of his hand against the side of her face.

  “You are worthless,” he said.

  Gray Bird smiled at the trader and gestured toward a pile of sealskins. “Sit,” he said, his voice soft, but Blue Shell’s daughter saw the tightness of his lips and knew that he would soon be biting the insides of his cheeks, shredding the soft skin of his mouth. She had seen him spit out clots of blood after a bad trading session.

  The girl stepped back against the thick earthen wall of the ulaq and worked her way toward her sleeping place. She waited until the two men were engrossed in their bartering, then she slipped through the woven grass dividing curtains that separated the space where she slept from the ulaq’s large main room. She could still hear her father’s voice, now low and whining, as he offered her mother’s baskets and the skins from the lemmings her brother Qakan had trapped.

  She knew Qakan would still be sitting in the corner, that he would still be eating, grease dribbling from his chin to the bulge of his fat belly, his small dark eyes blinking too often, his fingers stuffing his mouth with food. But he would be watching. The one time Qakan seemed to take interest in anything besides food was when their father bargained with traders.

  She heard her father’s giggle, almost a woman’s laugh, and knew that he would now work on the trader’s sympathy: Here he was, a man trying to provide for his family. See what had happened to him because of his generosity, because of the softness of his heart.

  “It is my daughter; she is the one,” Gray Bird began as he always began, the same story the girl had heard many times.

  “What could I do? I have a good wife. She did not want to give up this daughter. She begged me. I knew I might be killed in a hunt. I knew I might not survive to have a son, but I let this daughter live.”

  And so he continued. Yes, he had refused to name this daughter, had denied her a name and thus a soul. But who could blame him? Had she not pushed ahead of brothers that might have been born, this greedy daughter, born feet first, thrusting her way into the world?

  And each time Gray Bird told the story, Blue Shell’s daughter felt the hollowness within her grow. It would have been better if her mother had given her to the wind. Then perhaps her father would have named her, and she would have found her way to the Dancing Lights, been there now, with other spirits.

  Yes, that would be better than growing old in her father’s ulaq. No hunter would trade for her; no man would pay a bride price for a woman without a soul. Men wanted sons. Without a soul to mingle with a man’s seed how could she bring forth a child?

  Besides, she thought, I have fifteen, perhaps sixteen summers, but still have had no time of bleeding. I am woman, but not woman, without soul, without woman’s blood.

  And she remembered one rare time when her mother had stood up to Gray Bird. Blue Shell, angry, had screamed: “How should I know why the girl has no blood flow! You would not give her a name. How can a father expect a girl without a name to bleed? What will bleed? The girl has no soul.”

  “It is Kayugh’s fault,” Gray Bird had said, and Blue Shell’s daughter heard a whining in his words that reminded her of Qakan.

  “He promised his son. He will give you a bride price…” The sharp sound of a slap had cut off Blue Shell’s words.

  “He has no honor,” Gray Bird said. “He does not keep his promises.”

  Then Gray Bird had begun to yell, calling Blue Shell the foul names he usually reserved for his daughter.

  Blue Shell’s daughter had huddled, ashamed, in her sleeping place, and even the grass mat she pulled over her head did not block out her parents’ angry words.

  But later that night when the argument had ended, she remembered what her mother had said. Kayugh would offer a bride price. Kayugh had promised a son….

  A son! Which son? Amgigh or Samiq? And though she realized she had no right to ask, she had sent a plea to their mountain, to Tugix: Please let it be Samiq. And deep within, in that empty place saved for her soul, she felt a small flickering, and by morning the flickering had grown into a flame so strong she could not bear to look into its brightness: wife to Samiq. Wife to Samiq. Wife to Samiq.
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  Suddenly, the curtain to her sleeping place was thrust aside. Blue Shell’s daughter backed against the wall. In the past three years her father had succeeded in trading her five, perhaps six times. Each time she had fought, and the next morning her father had added his beatings to the bruises the traders had given her. But now the girl saw that it was Qakan who peered at her.

  Qakan belched and rubbed his belly. “You are lucky this time,” he said, but there was no sympathy in his eyes. “Tonight you sleep alone. Our father is a poor trader….” The curtain dropped back into place and Blue Shell’s daughter sighed her relief. A night alone, a night to sleep. And she would not let herself think of the summer stretching ahead of her, the traders who would visit. Tonight she was alone.

  Amgigh fingered the nodule of andesite. He planned to shear it in two with a blow from his largest hammerstone. He would get seven, eight good flakes from each half, and maybe five of those would make harpoon points.

  He held the andesite in his hand, felt the weight of it pushing against his fingers. How many sea lions in that rock? he wondered. It was a question he asked himself each time he found a nodule of stone, each time he made a blade. Five sea lions for each blade? No, at best two. Two sea lions for each of five blades. Perhaps ten sea lions in the rock. If the winds and spirits were favorable. If the hunters were skilled.

  Perhaps one of those sea lions would be Amgigh’s first. He should have taken a sea lion before now. Samiq had taken his first three years before.

  Each time Amgigh returned from a hunt without a sea lion he saw the disappointment in his father’s eyes. But did his father realize that when Big Teeth or Samiq, First Snow or even Gray Bird took a sea lion, it was Amgigh’s point that killed the animal? His careful work. The precision of his otter bone punch, the strength of his hammerstone.

  So who in this whole village had taken the most sea lions?

  Blue Shell’s daughter stood on the beach and watched the sea. The wind pulled dark strands of her long hair from the collar of her suk and snarled them across her face.

  She watched the sea for no reason. The trader had left; there were no hunters out in their ikyan, no women fishing.

  But it was good to see the waves push up as though to reach the sky. What had Samiq told her? That the sea spirits were always trying to capture a sky spirit.