by Sue Harrison
His laughter made Kiin shudder and she moved away from the edge of the cliff. “I-I w-w-will bring you much in t-trade,” she said and fixed her eyes on Qakan’s hands, ready to move if he moved.
“So will Kayugh’s furs.”
“I-I-I wi-will bring more,” Kiin said, trying to move without seeming to move.
Qakan shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said. “But remember what I told you about the Walrus People.” His face was still red from running, but he spoke easily now, without pauses for breathing. He broke off a stem of grass and began to chew the end of it. “The Walrus People place a high value on a woman who has had a child. So, you see, you will not be worth much.”
But Kiin ignored Qakan’s words. She knew he spoke only to distract her.
He moves slowly, she thought. I could jump over him….
Kiin looked out toward the sea and said, “W-wait, I think I s-see something.” When Qakan looked, Kiin turned and began to run, but Qakan lunged toward her, and as Kiin jumped, she caught her foot on a fold of his parka.
She stumbled and Qakan grasped one of her ankles, pulling her down beside him. The fall knocked the breath from Kiin’s chest, and she could not speak.
“You are afraid of me, Kiin,” Qakan said and began to laugh. “Do you think I will kill you?” He crawled to her side, then straddled her and sat on her chest, pinning her arms with his knees.
A gust of wind rose from the drop of the cliffs and blew Kiin’s hair across her eyes. Qakan reached into his parka and pulled out a long-bladed obsidian knife. Kiin gasped. Amgigh’s knife, the one he kept carefully wrapped in the weapons corner of his sleeping place. It was one of a pair, Kiin knew, and Amgigh had taken the other with him to the Whale Hunters to give to Samiq.
“Your hair is in your eyes,” Qakan said. “Let me fix it for you.” He grabbed a handful and cut it close to her scalp.
Kiin’s breath had returned to her body and she began to try to wiggle free, lifting her legs to hit Qakan in the back with her knees. “The s-s-spirits s-see you. They know you t-took Amgigh’s knife. They-they s-see what you do-do to me. They will k-kill you.”
Qakan laughed, his smile bringing up one corner of his mouth. “Not for a woman without a soul.” Again, he laughed and his whole body shook with the laughter.
Qakan grabbed another handful of her hair, his knife poised to cut.
“C-cut m-m-my hair,” Kiin said. “It w-will grow back. But n-n-not before we r-reach the Walrus People.”
Qakan frowned and loosened his grip. Kiin took a long breath.
“You are right,” Qakan said. “The Walrus People like long hair on their women.” He moved his knife close to her neck. “Do you remember something else I told you about the Walrus People? Do you remember?” He pressed Amgigh’s knife to her skin, and Kiin felt the sharpness of the blade. She held herself very still, but suddenly Qakan rose up and dropped down hard on her chest. Again, she could not draw a breath, could not speak, even when Qakan leaned back and pushed one hand between her legs, his cold fingers thrusting into the warmth of her woman parts.
She bucked against him, nearly throwing him from her chest, but he caught himself and taking both hands, grabbed Kiin’s hair and jerked her head up, then slammed it against the rocky ground.
The pain made Kiin cry out and Qakan laughed.
“You w-w-will be c-c-cursed, Qakan. I am w-with child,” Kiin said, her teeth clenched.
“You lie,” Qakan said and slid one hand into the neck of her suk.
Kiin writhed against his touch, but Qakan raised the knife and hit her hard across her face with the tang. The blow opened a cut on her cheek and blood began to flow into Kiin’s left eye.
Qakan leaned back, slowly moved one hand up the inside of her thigh, and the shift of his weight released one of Kiin’s arms. She put all her strength into a punch aimed at Qakan’s belly, but Qakan turned as she moved, and Kiin saw that he had a rock in one hand. At the same moment as the punch landed, she felt the impact of the rock above her left temple.
Then darkness.
Qakan laughed. Again he raised himself and dropped hard on Kiin’s belly. But Kiin only groaned; her eyes rolled back in her head, showing the whites beneath the partially closed lids.
He looked at the rock in his hand. There was blood smeared on the edge of the stone. Kiin’s blood. Woman’s blood.
He threw the stone over the cliff, waited to hear if it would hit the water. It will mean good luck if it hits the water, Qakan told himself. But he heard only the clatter of stone against stone.
Kiin’s fault. Kiin could even curse stone.
He lifted the shell necklace she wore. It was a gift from Amgigh and Samiq, something, Qakan knew, that Kiin treasured.
He gripped the necklace until the shell beads pressed dents into his hands, then with a hard twist he broke the strands of sinew and dropped the necklace to the ground.
Again Qakan lifted himself from her body and again slammed himself down on her. A groan, only that. She was weak. She would never defeat him. He stood, looked down at her. What was she compared to him? He squatted beside her and reached out, pushed his hand up under her suk. But then he remembered her words. She was with child. A lie. When did Kiin ever tell the truth? But perhaps…
It would be his child, of course. His child. He stood, kicked at Kiin to see if she would open her eyes, but she only moved her head, side to side, muttered something, her words garbled as they always were.
Yes, Qakan thought, let his father laugh at him. Let Amgigh and Samiq scorn his hunting skills. Still he was a man, more a man than either of them. And in Kiin’s belly perhaps there was proof of that.
He lifted his foot and pressed it down against Kiin’s breasts. He could not remember that she had had a bleeding time during their journey. Perhaps she was telling the truth. Why not tell the truth if it would spare her a beating? What a joke on the Walrus People. Yes, a child, but his child. Child of a brother. Cursed, yes, they would be cursed and would be giving him gifts for that cursing!
Qakan laughed, a laugh that came up hard from his throat, clattering like the rock he had thrown from the cliff. He looked out toward the sea. His stomach growled. He looked at Kiin. Her eyes were still closed, her breathing shallow. He could carry her down, but it would not be easy. Besides he was too hungry to wait for her to wake up. And the wind was rising, bringing spray in from the sea. The cliffs were always too windy.
He shrugged. Tonight he would have to get his own food. But that would be good. He would eat. Eat! Kiin hoarded all the fish she caught, giving him a few this day, a few the next, as though he were a child. Tonight she would not stop him. Tonight he would eat.
He left Kiin on the cliff.
When Kiin awoke it was night. She tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in her back forced her to roll over first, then push herself up.
She pulled her suk close around her. Her face and head hurt, but there was no pain between her legs. Then Qakan had not taken her, had believed her when she said she was with child. Perhaps he even thought the child was his own. Perhaps that was why he did not take her. No man would wish to curse his own son.
She was relieved, but with the relief she felt fear. Qakan had easily overpowered her. Did that mean that her soul was weak? Perhaps Qakan was right in saying that her spirit was slowly slipping from her, perhaps with each word she spoke.
She stood but her head began to throb, and dropping to her hands and knees, she vomited. She vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach, then she lay back on the ground and closed her eyes.
I will stay here until morning, she thought. But then I will go some place to hide so Qakan will not find me.
For a long time, she did not move, but finally she began to notice rocks pressing against her back and legs, and she sat up, slowly, so her head would not spin. She cleared a place on the cliff then pulled up handfuls of grass to make a padding for her bed.
She sat down on the mound of grass and watched the sky
. Clouds shifted and moved like sand ripples over the sliver of moon. She rubbed her eyes, pressed her hand carefully to the cut on her cheek, but then something beside her bed caught the moon’s light. Kiin reached out. It was the shell necklace Samiq had given her. Qakan must have ripped it from her neck, but since it was knotted between every shell bead, only several of the smallest beads were missing.
She grabbed her amulet and felt for the carving Chagak had given her. It was still there.
Then a voice came to her. Perhaps her spirit spoke, or perhaps it was the voice of the cliffs or the sea, “You must fight Qakan. Qakan will harm too many people if you do not. You are the only one who truly knows how evil he is.”
“No,” Kiin answered, speaking the word aloud. “No, no, no.” She would hide, would find places in the cliffs, in the hills. He would never find her.
But again, the voice came, “You must go back. You must go back.”
Again Kiin told the spirit no. Her voice, clear and loud, did not break on the word. “Why should I care about Walrus People?” she asked, flinging the question out to the cliff, to the sea, to the moon. “Why should I care what evil Qakan brings to them?”
For a time there was nothing, but then the answer came, soft like a grandmother’s voice, rising from around her, from the shell necklace warm in her hands, from Chagak’s suk, fur smooth against her skin, from Shuganan’s carving that hung at her neck: “Because they are people.”
“They are not my people,” Kiin said, but then bowed her head, suddenly knowing whatever spirit spoke, whether spirit of moon or wind or sea, that spirit was right.
“Tomorrow,” Kiin whispered, singing the words so they would not catch in her throat, “tomorrow, I will fight Qakan again, and if I win, I will go back to my own people, and if I do not, I will tell the Walrus People the truth, no matter what Qakan does to me.”
She curled her legs up into her suk and lay back on the grass. The wind caught in her hair, buffeting like a ptarmigan trapped in her mother’s bird nets.
25
“PUSH,” QAKAN SAID TO Kiin. Kiin leaned against the stern of the ik and pushed as Qakan plunged his paddle into the water and thrust the boat out through the waves. The water was cold against Kim’s legs; rocks cut into her bare feet. Again she pushed.
Early that morning Qakan had climbed the cliffs and shook Kiin out of her sleep. “I did not touch you last night,” he said when Kiin opened her eyes to look at him. “You carry my son.” He said the words with belligerence, his lower lip thrust out like a child’s. “It is not Amgigh’s son.”
Wearily, Kiin rolled away from him and pushed herself up.
“If you lied to me…” Qakan began.
“I did not lie,” Kiin said, though she was not sure. She had missed her bleeding at the full moon, but her mother had told her that at first, until the moon was used to seeing her as woman, her bleeding times would not follow the regular ways of women.
“Push!”
Kiin pushed again and jumped to catch the thwarts as the ik slid into deep water. Once in the boat, she pulled on her suk, using the bottom edges to dry her feet and ankles.
Yes, I lied, Kiin thought. I lied, Qakan, and today, we will begin our journey back to our people. If Kayugh says I am cursed, then I am cursed. Perhaps he will let me live in the village in my own ulaq. Perhaps I can help each family with sewing and weaving. It would be better there than here or traded as slave to the Walrus People. But if I cannot find a way to go back or if you are stronger than I think you are, then I will go on, to warn the Walrus People.
So she waited as the morning passed, watched as Qakan grew tired from his paddling.
Finally, she began to fish. She had not been surprised to see that all the dried fish were gone. Qakan must have spent the whole night eating. But she would need food during the long return to her people. The dried seal meat and roots Qakan had brought for the journey were not enough, even for a normal man, and Qakan ate as much as two or three.
She uncoiled a kelp fiber fishline, tied a gorge to the end and lowered it into the water. The line jerked and Kiin brought it up, coiling it around her left hand. A small herring flipped and turned, fighting the gorge hook in its mouth. Kiin pulled the fish into the ik, slit and gutted it, then pulled the gorge out of its throat and tied the fish inside the bow of the ik, belly open so the flesh would dry in the wind.
“I am hungry,” Qakan said, his voice a whine.
Kiin cut off the fish’s head and handed it to him without speaking.
Qakan pulled his paddle from the sea, but before laying the paddle in the bottom of the ik, he swung it up over Kiin’s head and laughed as water dripped down her neck. Kiin had learned that Qakan soon tired of the game if she pretended the water did not bother her, so she sat still, trying not to move.
Finally, Qakan laid his paddle down and began to eat the fishhead.
Kiin squeezed some of the water from her hair, then fastened a bit of fish gut to the gorge and again lowered her line.
Qakan would seldom take the ik into deeper water where Kiin could catch halibut. Qakan stayed close to the land, skirting beaches. To avoid hunters of other tribes, he told her, but Kiin knew that the true reason was his fear of the water. It was not difficult to see the terror that whitened the corners of his eyes when the waves were too high, or the wind was too strong.
After the first two, three days they had lost sight of Tugix, then Aka, Chagak’s mountain, but they passed many mountains, and it seemed that most of them had angry spirits, for clouds of smoke and sometimes the haze of ash swathed the peaks.
As they went on toward the Walrus People’s villages, the valleys between mountains were often filled with ice, the ice like blue rivers which flowed from the mountains into the sea. Sometimes the ice extended so far that Qakan had to guide their boat around it, and as they passed, Kiin could feel the rush of cold wind pulling itself from the surface of the ice to settle in the bottom of the ik.
“Spirits,” Qakan would whisper, his face pale and sweating, but Kiin felt no fear. If they were helping spirits, they might carry away her curse, if harmful spirits, perhaps they would sink the ik. She would drown but so would Qakan.
Kiin remembered her father’s stories of the blue men who live in the ice rivers. Sometimes they would pull a man from his ikyak and take him with them into the ice. Gray Bird said he had once seen the dark form of a man frozen within a river of ice.
Sometimes the ice was like a cliff, white under the water, then blue as it rose into the sky, as though the light gave it color. At first Kiin had been afraid to look into the blue depths. How would she feel if she, like her father, saw a man frozen there? And what if the spirits decided to lock her within the ice? But then she thought, Would that be worse than to be sold as wife, carrying a curse to any man who chose her? Would it be so terrible to live within the still blue, seeing only sky and sea, gulls and otter, to hear only the sounds of the water, the groaning and cracking of the ice?
And if she did carry Qakan’s child, it would be frozen within her, unable to do harm.
Kiin caught another fish, hung it beside the first. “I brought enough food for our journey,” Qakan said. “But you have slowed us down. I thought you would help me paddle. If you would paddle, we would get there quicker.”
“I will p-paddle,” Kiin replied, meeting Qakan’s eyes. He spat a mouthful of fish at her.
“Back to Tugix’s island,” Qakan said.
Kiin lowered her head and sighed. “N-n-no,” she said, making her voice weak and trembling. “We have c-c-come too far. I d-do not know the way b-back.” She raised her eyes, saw the doubt in Qakan’s face. “I w-would rather help you p-paddle to the Walrus People than s-s-starve here.”
Qakan scowled at her, but handed her the paddle from the bottom of the ik and crawled to the bow of the boat, then he lay back, his own paddle balanced on his belly.
Kiin paddled swiftly and willingly the rest of that morning and through the afternoon.
But while she paddled, Kiin made plans, prepared herself to fight by remembering Qakan’s lies and the times he had beaten her; she remembered the curse he had given her, a curse that threatened both the First Men and the Walrus People. And so she allowed her anger to grow until it filled her chest so full she could barely breathe.
Then, finally, late in that afternoon, Qakan’s eyes began to close. His breathing deepened until Kiin knew he slept. Kiin pulled her paddle from the water and raised it over Qakan’s head, holding her breath and waiting until the anger that filled her chest could flow into her arms and give her strength. Too late, she saw the rivulet of water drip from the paddle blade onto Qakan’s head. He awoke with a jerk as Kiin swung, and his movement made her paddle glance off his head.
The ik shuddered, and Kiin braced herself against the gunwale. Qakan turned, swung his own paddle and hit Kiin in the ribs. The pain made Kiin bend double, and before she could straighten, Qakan was on her, his hands closing over her neck, stopping her breath until Kiin knew she was dying. But then he let her go. He reached into one of his packs of trade goods and pulled out a coil of babiche. He tied her ankles together and then tied her wrists behind her back, Qakan pulling the rawhide cords so tight that Kiin’s fingers soon grew numb.
Again she had failed. Perhaps she was not supposed to return to the First Men; perhaps the spirits of those First Men already at the Dancing Lights saw her curse as too great. Perhaps they protected her people’s village.
Yes, she could fight against Qakan, but why fight against the spirits? They would want what was best for the people. Did Kiin think her wisdom was greater than theirs?
She leaned against the side of the ik and looked toward the shore. No, she decided. She would not fight. She would go with Qakan.
They stopped early for the night, but with Qakan, Kiin had grown used to late starts and early ends to each day. Kiin pointed with her chin toward the abundance of sea animal bones at the high tide line and said, “They will make a g-good fire and s-save our oil.” Qakan hesitated, but then untied her ankles and wrists.
