by Sue Harrison
Samiq was only a young hunter, sixteen summers, perhaps seventeen, but he was wise. He asked questions and pondered many things, and Blue Shell’s daughter was always glad when he came to her father’s ulaq. She found herself watching for him when she went out to gather sea urchins or when she walked the hills picking crowberries.
A song started, began its humming in the girl’s throat, and brought words—whole and unbroken—into her mouth. It was a song about the sea, about animals that live in the sea, and its words rose and fell like the waves.
Still singing, Blue Shell’s daughter squatted at the edge of the sea and pushed a basket out to scoop up water and gravel. The basket, lined with seal gut, was one her mother had made of ryegrass; the grass was coiled and sewn so tightly that water took many days to work its way from inside to outside. The girl stood, swirled the mixture in the basket, then dumped it out. She had taken the baskets to the refuse heap and emptied them of night wastes then came to rinse them in the sea. She had meant to hurry. Her father would be angry if she stayed on the beach too long. But again, the sea had caught her eyes, had caught and held her like the eagle catches the ptarmigan.
Two days before, her father had beaten her for her slowness. Even yet the welts stiffened her back, and she walked like an old woman, slowly, carefully. Her heart, too, had felt bruised, sore with the silence of the rest of that day, her mother avoiding her eyes, her brother Qakan jeering with each smile of his too-fat lips.
At least she had been wearing her suk. Usually when she was in the ulaq, she wore only her grass apron and was bare from the waist up. The suk had blunted the blows, kept the stick from slicing her skin.
But who was she to expect better? She was less than the rocks, less even than the shells that littered the beach.
She stopped singing and held up two baskets, open sides to the wind, so they would dry. But then her eyes fell on a whiteness buried in the beach grasses. A bone, she thought. But it was too large to belong to a bird, even an eagle. She pulled it from the sand.
It was a whale’s tooth.
A whale’s tooth, Blue Shell’s daughter thought. Here? This close to the ulas?
It was as big around as four of her fingers, as long as her hand. It had to be a gift from some spirit. But, of course, not for her. Perhaps she was supposed to take it to her father so he could carve it into something and trade it for meat or skins.
She had seen other carvings—the people and animals that the old grandfather, Shuganan, had made. And though Shuganan was now in the spirit world, his carvings still held great power.
And to Blue Shell’s daughter, it seemed that it did not matter how many days Gray Bird spent carving, nor how many times he forced his family into silence as he worked, his carvings could not match Shuganan’s.
Often, when Blue Shell’s daughter was not guarding her thoughts, a part of her, something inside her head, laughed at the small animals and misshapen people her father made. Once when she was not even tall enough to touch the low sloped roof of her father’s ulaq, she had told her mother that Gray Bird’s carvings were ugly. And Blue Shell, horror in her dark eyes, had clamped a hand over her daughter’s mouth, dragged her up the climbing log and out of the ulaq to the river. There she scooped water into the girl’s mouth until the words were washed away, swallowed whole in large painful gulps down the girl’s throat.
And afterwards in the ulaq, the ache in the girl’s throat moved down into the empty center of her chest, and Blue Shell’s daughter realized the extent of the difference between herself and all other people in the world, even her mother. The pain of that knowledge was worse than the ache in her throat, worse than any beating her father had ever given her, and since then words had not come easily, but seemed to wrap themselves around her tongue, shred themselves through her teeth and come out broken. So each time Blue Shell’s daughter looked at Gray Bird’s work, she reminded herself that the carvings looked ugly only to her, that things of the spirit were as nothing to her.
She was seeing through empty eyes. Even later when she was older, and questions rolled hard and bursting in her head, she would not let herself wonder why she had always been able to see the beauty in Shuganan’s work.
Blue Shell’s daughter clasped the whale tooth and climbed to the top of her father’s ulaq. Tossing the baskets through the roof hole, she made her way down the notches of the climbing log, but before she could turn, before she could hold the tooth out to show her father what the spirits had sent him, she felt the burn of his walking stick as it sliced across the top of her shoulders.
Instinctively, she crouched. She dropped the whale tooth to the grass-covered floor and shielded her head with both arms. Fear pushed at her, wanted her to pick up the whale’s tooth and give it to her father. It would earn her three, even four days without punishment. But before she could speak, before she could cry out, her father swung his stick, first against her ribs, then across the fragile bones of her hands.
The girl held her pain in the hollow at the base of her ribs, in that space where most people hold their spirits. The pain lodged there, round and glowing like the heat of the sun. She closed her eyes, shut out her father’s anger, but even in the darkness of closed eyes she saw the white of the whale’s tooth, and it gave her courage not to cry out.
The blows stopped.
“You are too slow!” Gray Bird shouted. “I have been waiting for you.”
Blue Shell’s daughter lifted her hands from her head and stood. Glancing back over her shoulder, she saw the sweat on her father’s narrow face, saw his knucklebones strain against the skin as he gripped his walking stick. She imagined his hands on the whale tooth, his lips pursed as he planned what small sad animal that tooth would become. Then Blue Shell’s daughter no longer felt pain, only anger, anger that gathered until it was as heavy as a stone inside her chest.
She had never owned anything. Her suk was one her mother had worn until the birdskins were as brittle as dead leaves. Even Samiq’s small gifts of shells or colored stones were taken from her, her father or brother prying them from her hands.
She had found the whale tooth. It was hers.
She turned slowly to face her father, and as she turned she carefully placed one foot over the tooth. She listened as her father screamed at her, and she made herself stay still when he raised his stick. She kept her eyes wide and open, and would not let herself wince.
No, she would not give him the tooth. What more could the spirits do to her than had already been done? She was nothing. How could the spirits hurt nothing?
She stood there until her father was through yelling, until with one final swing at her head, he set his walking stick in its niche dug into the earth of the ulaq walls. He brushed past her and went into his sleeping place. Then she picked up the tooth and slipped it under her suk, into the waistband of her woven grass apron, and left it there, smooth and warm against her side.
2
IT WAS NIGHT AND Blue Shell’s daughter was tired. Her mother, brother and father were in their sleeping places, but she enjoyed having the main room of the ulaq to herself, and so had decided to work a little longer on the basket she was weaving.
Her ribs hurt each time she took a deep breath, and all day she had felt as though she could not get enough air. She dipped her hand into the water basket and closed her eyes as she moistened a strand of grass with her fingertips.
Each time she wove baskets, smoke from the oil lamps seemed to settle close over her, prickling against her eyes until they were dry and itching.
She felt her father’s presence before she saw him, a sudden heaviness in the air, the oil and fish smell of him. She opened her eyes and saw that he was standing before her, his walking stick held across his body as if he were preparing for an attack. He looked down at the basket she was weaving.
“I need that basket,” he said. “Do not sleep until you finish it.”
Blue Shell’s daughter looked up at him but tried to keep the fear from her eyes. I
t was a storage basket. Good for dried fish, for berries and roots. Her father did not need it.
She wanted to tell him that it was only a woman’s basket, that her mother’s baskets were much better than hers. And though she opened her mouth to speak, the words caught at the back of her throat and would not come out. She pushed with all the air in her lungs. Nothing came except the sound of her own breath and a bleating, “A-a-a-a-a….” It was the sound of the emptiness she held within herself. Others had spirits; others had words.
“If you have to,” Gray Bird said, “you will work all night.”
Blue Shell’s daughter took another long breath, would not let herself think of the emptiness she held within her body. She opened her mouth, began slowly, “N-n-no,” she said and saw the surprise in her father’s eyes. When had she ever told him no? Her father stared at her for a moment but said nothing. He snorted and kicked at the grass on the floor then turned and went into his sleeping place.
Blue Shell’s daughter waited until she heard him settle into his sleeping robes, then again she formed the word in her mouth, felt it round and strong against her tongue. “No,” she whispered. “No.” She felt the power of the word as it traveled back into her throat and down to the center of her body.
She stood, and when she bent to pick up her partially woven basket, she felt something trickle down the inside of her thigh.
Even in the dim light of the ulaq, she knew. Blood.
She was having her first bleeding. She was a woman. A woman! Even without a spirit, without a soul, she had received the gift of bleeding. How was it possible?
Perhaps it was that one word, spoken to her father. But what had given her the courage to stand up to him? She smoothed her hands over her suk, over the small mounds that were her breasts. She felt the bulge of the whale’s tooth against her side. Yes, of course, it was the tooth.
Samiq bent over the bone hook he was shaping. His mother was nursing his baby sister, Wren, and at the same time smoothing seal oil into her husband’s hair.
Samiq glanced at his brother Amgigh and Amgigh scowled at him. Samiq turned his head and pretended he did not see. I am a hunter, he reminded himself as he felt the familiar anger rise. This spring he had already taken three seals. He did not have to make any reply to his brother’s foolishness.
Samiq had always been able to best Amgigh at any game, whether it required quickness of the mind or strength of the body. Though Amgigh was taller than Samiq, he was very thin and tired quickly. But there was a fierceness in him, a determination that Samiq admired. Even when Samiq beat Amgigh in a race, finishing far ahead, Amgigh did not stop running until he, too, had reached the final line. It was a good thing, that determination, their father said. Important for a boy, even more important for a man. And though Samiq was more skilled with the spear, Amgigh’s clever hands knapped the spearhead, and so their father always said that Amgigh’s family would never be hungry.
But there was a part of Amgigh that Samiq did not like, the contrary spirit that made Amgigh take a favorite toy from their sister and hold it high above her head until she cried; the part of him that laughed when Gray Bird derided his lovely daughter in front of other men.
And looking into his brother’s eyes, Samiq knew that it was this contrary spirit that now spoke, as Amgigh, still holding his scowl, said, “Blue Shell’s daughter—they say she has finally become woman. Her mother makes a hut for her now back in the hills.”
Their mother looked over at them. “How do you know this?” she asked.
“I saw it. Do you think because I have no sea lion teeth on a string at my neck that I cannot see?”
Samiq flushed, looked down at the necklace his mother had strung for him. She had promised one for Amgigh when he brought in his first sea lion. What more could she do than promise? Amgigh had to take the sea lion.
“Amgigh,” their father said, “if you have something good to say to your mother, say it. Otherwise, say nothing.”
Amgigh smiled, holding his lips out wide and clenching his teeth. Wren reached out and yanked her mother’s hair and Chagak slapped absently at her hand. The child began to cry.
“I will oil my ikyak,” Samiq said, suddenly ready to be away from his parents and brother, away from the crying of his sister. “Perhaps First Snow needs someone to talk to. He is alone in that new ulaq with our ugly sister.”
His father grinned at him. “And if Red Berry hears you, do you think she will be sharing any food or saving you meat from First Snow’s seals?”
Samiq pulled his parka on over his head and climbed out of the ulaq. A sharp wind cut in from the north to sweep across their wide beach. It was night, but not quite dark, the moon full.
So Blue Shell was making a bleeding hut for her daughter, Samiq thought. Did that mean Gray Bird had finally named the girl, had allowed her a soul?
Samiq walked down the beach. He stopped now and again to pick up small stones and throw them into the water. He would give the girl a present, something to let her know he was happy for her. She deserved some happiness.
“You are a hunter,” his inside voice said. “Perhaps you could give more than a gift. Perhaps by the end of the summer, you could pay a bride price.” His mother wanted him to take a wife from the Whale Hunters, but he did not think she would object to Blue Shell’s daughter. Who worked harder, who smiled more, even though her back carried the scars of her father’s beatings? He would start saving sealskins. He was ready to be a husband. Did his dreams not tell him he was a man?
3
BLUE SHELL’S DAUGHTER LAY back on the grass that softened the floor of her shelter. The hut had no walls, only a peaked roof of driftwood and grass mats that slanted down to the ground and was staked to the earth with bone pegs and kelp twine. Her mother had taken all night and part of the morning to build the shelter. She had woven the roof tightly to keep out the wind, and had given her daughter an oil lamp for heat and light.
The girl had not been allowed to help, only to watch, to wait in the darkness while her mother gathered grasses and driftwood and brought mats from their ulaq. Her mother had said little as she worked, but twice she turned to smile at her daughter and the girl had been surprised. She had seldom seen her mother smile, could never remember hearing her laugh. So, her mother was pleased then, glad that her unnamed daughter had become a woman.
The girl wondered about her father. She had heard Gray Bird’s bellowing when Blue Shell, wakened from her sleep, had shooed her daughter from the ulaq. Gray Bird, Qakan, too, had been wailing about curses. Was there woman’s blood on their weapons? Had she been in their sleeping places that day?
But now perhaps her father would get a bride price for her. Perhaps she would take her place as wife to one of Kayugh’s sons. Perhaps Samiq.
When Blue Shell finished the hut, she told her daughter that she would return with food and water. She would also bring strips of sealskin so the girl could weave hunting belts for the men.
The first days of being a woman were a time of power. Blue Shell’s daughter had heard stories of girls in first bleeding who had cast whales up on the First Men’s beaches, but she carried no hope that she could do such a thing. How could a woman without a name have that much power? But if the men sent sealskin to weave into hunting belts, she would make belts, strong and beautiful, to bring them luck in their hunting.
She took the whale tooth from under her suk and stroked it, studying the dents and scars in its surface. The top of the tooth where it had been broken from its roots was worn almost smooth. The tooth must have lain in the rain and sun for a time, and before that been in the sea. Perhaps it carried the same power as an amulet.
She had never been allowed an amulet. Once as a child, she had fashioned a small pouch from a scrap of sea lion hide and filled it with pebbles and shells she found on the beach. She hung the pouch from a rawhide thong around her neck, but when her father saw what she had done, he jerked the pouch from her throat, pulling so hard that the thong left
a gash at the back of her neck. “No amulet,” he had said. “A girl without a soul is nothing to the spirits. They will not protect her. They do not even see her.”
But now she had the tooth. And perhaps the tooth itself had chosen her. Why else would she have found it, she, not her father, not Kayugh or Crooked Nose, not even Samiq? Perhaps it wanted to give her power, as much power as any amulet could give.
She had worn it only a day and already it had made her a woman. Blue Shell’s daughter moved her head so she could see out through the door opening of her hut.
She listened to the wind, watched as it pushed clouds into the gray curve of the sky. For these days, nine days alone in her bleeding hut, she could forget about her father. She could forget that she had no spirit. She could forget about words, words that flowed smoothly from the mouths of those around her, but that came to her only with effort: each word a new and difficult task, pried from her mouth one at a time like a woman pries chitons from a rock.
Yes, she could forget. But one thing, one thing she would remember—the reason she was here. She was a woman. Even without a name, without a soul, without the gift of words. Even so, she was a woman. She hummed under her breath, a small tune, a song without words to the whale’s tooth.
4
ON THE SECOND DAY of her bleeding, Blue Shell’s daughter wove hunting belts for Samiq and Amgigh.
She cut sealskin into narrow strips and wove it slowly and carefully. She strung in shells she had drilled for beads, and always kept her mind on seals and sea lions as she worked. She laid a sealskin over her grass sleeping mats, so the belts would not touch the grass, and her mother bound the girl’s hair into a tight braid at the back of her head. If even a tiny piece of grass or a strand of her hair were woven into the belt, the sea animals would know and would not come near the hunter, or worse, would bite a hole in the bottom of his ikyak so the hunter would drown.
