by Sue Harrison
The day after they had left the first village, Qakan had found her vomiting. She had been digging clams in the tide flats of the beach where they would spend the night. Suddenly the nausea had come to her, twisting her stomach until she could do nothing but retch.
Qakan had laughed, had laughed and done a strange jumping dance, his feet clumsy against the ground, his belly jiggling with each of his steps. Then he had bent over Kiin, had shouted into her ear as she crouched holding her stomach, “My son! My son! My son!”
Kiin had closed her eyes, pretended Qakan was not beside her. Then the nausea was gone as quickly as it had come. She had walked away from Qakan, up the slope of the beach to the fringe of ryegrass that grew at the edge of a long, sloping hill. She broke off some of the grass and chewed a few stems to soothe her stomach. Then she turned and called back to Qakan.
“Your s-son?” she said, her voice raised to sound strong against the wind. “You d-d-did not g-g-give me a ch-child. It is Amgigh’s son. The child was in my b-b-belly before you t-took me and he is strong enough to st-stand against the seeds of your s-spirit. He has Amgigh’s b-b-blood and Kayugh’s b-blood, Ch-Chagak’s and Shuganan’s. How c-could you even hope it is your son?” And the wind passing through Kiin’s hair blew away Qakan’s taunts.
For days after that, Qakan had acted more the part of a man, complaining less, once even helping her set up their crude skin and grass mat shelter. But this morning, Qakan was once more a child, peevish and pouting, slapping Kiin when she was loading the ik, screaming at her that she was too slow. And shortly after they had begun paddling, he began to shout his anger at the fog, directing Kiin to keep the ik so close to shore that twice they ran aground on gravel spits, and Kiin had to climb from the ik and push them free.
At least the sea is calm, Kiin told herself, but then she noticed the blackness of huge boulders just under the surface of the water.
“Rocks, r-r-rocks,” she called to Qakan. When he did not answer, Kiin looked back at him and saw that he was not watching the water. Instead he kept his head turned toward the shore.
“Rocks!” she said again, and sinking her paddle into the water, pushed the ik away from one of the boulders.
“Qakan!” she called out. “Listen to me….”
“Kiin, shut your mouth,” Qakan said, then, “There! Turn.” And he began paddling on the left side of the ik, forcing the ik to the right until Kiin thought they would run up on the beach. But then she saw an opening in the hills, a rocky place that forced the sea into something more like a river. The water was choppy and pushed through the narrows quickly as if anxious to get through, then the sea widened again, into a bay, and Qakan pointed toward a hill where Kiin could see ten, twelve ulas.
“Walrus People?” she asked.
“No,” Qakan said. “First Men. Twice I came here with my father. They are First Men, but they are not like us. They speak differently, too quickly. And their women are ugly. I could get much for you here, but they do not treat their women well. It is better for you to go to the Walrus People.”
Kiin scowled. More likely he was afraid Amgigh or Samiq would someday come here, would find her and know what Qakan had done.
It was low tide and the water was shallow. Qakan pulled out a length of twine, hobbled Kiin’s ankles and bound her wrists a hand-length apart in front of her. Then he motioned for Kiin to jump out, to push the ik ashore. With wrists and ankles bound she was awkward, but she managed to jump without falling, and then she pushed the ik up on the gray sand beach.
Children came first, then the women. The women were dirty, unkempt, each woman’s hair a mass of tangles. Their children were filthy, their faces splotchy with the rash that comes from eating raw unpeeled ugyuun stems.
Even though they were traveling, Kiin tried to keep herself clean, kept her suk in good repair, even pulled her fingers through her hair each evening to untangle it.
One woman stepped out from the group and greeted Qakan. The woman was tall, and her long, sharp-nosed face reminded Kiin of the curved cutting edge of a woman’s knife.
“You have come to trade,” she said, and gripping her digging stick, stood on tiptoe, trying to see over Qakan’s shoulder into the ik.
“I will speak to your men,” Qakan said.
The woman shook her head. “They hunt today. Later, they will return.” She turned to look at Kiin, and Kiin lowered her head. The woman glanced at Kiin’s bound wrists and said, “She is not your wife.”
“A slave,” Qakan said.
Perhaps Kiin would have said nothing. Perhaps she would have acted as she did at the other villages, doing the chores the woman gave her to do. But then the woman said, “The men will be happy tonight. You will be able to sell her many times.”
And Kiin was suddenly angry. Would she lower her eyes to these women who were too lazy to keep their children clean?
“N-no,” she said. “I am n-not a s-slave. I am his s-sister. He stole me from my husband’s ulaq, though I carry my husband’s ch-child.”
Qakan turned, his mouth open wide, as though he would swallow the words Kiin had said. He raised his hand, and Kiin ducked so his blow hit her head, not her face. Qakan clasped his hand and screeched. “She lies,” he said, then knotted his fist and drew it back to hit Kiin. But the tall woman blocked Qakan’s hand with her digging stick.
“We do not want you here if you beat women,” she said. “I have no great powers to tell whether or not you lie, but if she tells the truth, we do not want you here. Besides, we have little to trade. The hunting has been poor. Our mountain has been angry and its ashes drive the seals away.”
She turned, walked back up the beach, but Qakan followed her. “I have fur seal skins,” he said.
She ignored him, as though he had said nothing.
“A most beautiful suk,” he said and ran back toward the ik, rummaged through the packs until he pulled out the suk his mother had made. He unrolled it, held it up. “Look!” he said, running his hands down the sleeves.
Some of the younger women’s eyes grew round, and Kiin saw the wanting in their faces. But the tall woman stopped and, without turning, raised her digging stick until its pointed end was high over her head. “I told you to leave!” she said and continued walking toward the ulas.
The other women turned and followed, and only the children stayed to stare at Qakan as he called, “I could curse your village, but I will not. Tell your hunters that you chased away a trader. Tell them I have obsidian knives. The finest they have ever seen. I do not have to curse you. Your hunters themselves will curse you when they hear what you have done.”
35
THERE ON THE SHORE, with the children watching, he beat her. First with his fists. And Kiin, used to being beaten, tucked herself into a ball, protecting her head and stomach. Her helplessness brought anger, and her anger, tears. What could she do against him, her wrists and ankles tied? But then he stopped, and Kiin, afraid to look up, heard the scrape of a paddle as Qakan pulled it from the ik. Fear pushed her to her feet, and she suddenly realized that she was not as much afraid for herself as for her baby. Amgigh’s son. Perhaps Samiq’s.
“You will kill your son,” she said softly.
Qakan stared at her. Finally he dropped the paddle into the boat. “Push us out,” he said. “Three, four days will bring us to the Walrus People’s village.”
Kiin held out her bound wrists, but Qakan pushed her hands away.
“Perhaps you need to know what it is like to truly be slave,” he said.
They traveled for the rest of that morning. Kiin tied a long twisted line of kelp fiber to a thwart of their ik. She weighted the line with several stones, so it would sink to the bottom of the sea, and baited the hook. They were far enough out so that she might catch a halibut. Not a large one—she and Qakan were not strong enough to bring a large one into the boat, but perhaps one the size of Samiq’s sister Wren. Kiin rested her paddle across the ik and jerked the line. Nothing.
Kiin s
melled the smoke before she saw it. The thin wisps were lost in the fog that hugged the shores and hid the mountains that rose from the sea like a huge spine of rock and ice. She turned back toward Qakan. “Smoke,” she said and pointed with a turn of her head.
Qakan, his paddle lying across his knees, was suddenly alert, eyes squinted to see the shore. “Look, there,” he said and gestured with his paddle. “We can beach the ik there.”
Kiin raised her paddle from the water and let Qakan make the long strokes that would turn the ik toward land, then she, too, paddled, skimming the ik toward the beach.
Gravel grated against the bottom of the ik. “Stay here,” Qakan said to Kiin and he jumped out, pulling the boat ashore.
The wind came in sudden gusts, and several large waves crashed into the beach, pushing the ik sideways. The boat tipped, but not far enough to let water seep in over the edge. Qakan jerked the ik one more time, then watched the waves for a moment. When the sea calmed, he shrugged and said, “If waves come, move it farther up on the beach.”
Kiin held out her wrists. “With my hands bound?” she asked, but Qakan was already walking away from her. Kiin stood, ready to call after him, but when she stood, she saw a small fire that had been hidden by the fog. Standing near the fire she thought she saw two, perhaps three, men. Kiin groped for the sharp-edged stone that Qakan allowed her to keep to clean fish, but she knew it would be little protection against three men.
As Qakan approached the fire, the fog lifted, as though Qakan’s feet, in walking, pushed back the mist, and Kiin could see the men, their faces painted red and black. They stared at Qakan without moving or extending hands in greeting. Qakan had his hands out, palms up, and she heard him say, “I am a friend. I have no knife.” He said something else, words that Kiin could not understand, the Walrus People’s language.
Qakan had taken two, three trips with their father to the Walrus summer camp and had told her he could speak the Walrus tongue, though Kiin, thinking the boast was another of Qakan’s lies, had not believed him. But for the past month, he had spent time each day practicing the Walrus words he knew, mumbling them aloud as he paddled the ik, but he had refused to teach any to Kiin.
When they had left the second First Men village, Qakan had hung a red-dyed otter skin over the bow of the ik, sign of a trader, but when they had seen the smoke of the three men’s fire, Kiin could tell that in spite of his boasting, Qakan was afraid.
This was not a village, only a stopping place for hunters. Who could say what village the three men were from, and whether or not they were friendly? Kiin flattened herself in the bottom of the boat and reached slowly toward a paddle. What if the men killed Qakan? Could she push the ik out to sea before they got to her? She did not think so. But she could defend herself better with a paddle than with a small cutting stone.
She was pulling the paddle toward herself when one of the three men began to speak. His words startled Kiin, and she stopped, as though she were a child caught doing some forbidden thing, and peeked over the edge of the ik.
The tallest man of the three had extended his hands to Qakan, and Qakan began to laugh, a high, girl-like giggle that let Kiin know how frightened he had been. The man motioned toward the fire and Qakan squatted on his heels beside it and accepted the dried meat they gave him.
One of the men pointed toward the ik and said something. Kiin’s heart quickened. Qakan spoke. Some of his words were in the First Men tongue, most in the Walrus language.
Then he stood and, motioning at Kiin, called out, “Come here.”
When she did not move, he strode toward her, a look of irritation on his face. He grabbed her arm and jerked her to her feet. “They want to see you,” he said. He pulled her from the ik, but Kiin tripped over the edge and fell, the beach gravel skinning her knees and the palms of her hands.
“Stupid!” Qakan hissed.
Kiin stood up slowly. She brushed off her hands and legs and straightened her suk.
“How much do you think they will give me for a woman who cannot walk?” Qakan said, but Kiin, used to his complaints, did not answer.
He was the one who had put hobbles on her ankles and wrists, tied her feet so she could take only small steps. What did he expect? She walked to the fire, then squatted down and pulled her suk over her knees.
The men stared at her, and Kiin fought the impulse to look away. Instead, she stared back at them, something a woman of the First Men did not do, something she knew would anger Qakan.
The three men looked much alike. They are brothers, Kiin thought as she studied the three faces. The tallest seemed to be the oldest. Lines ran from the corners of his eyes to his jawbone. His cheeks were painted red, his nose black. He had a fine growth of chin hair that wisped down to his chest, and his eyes were thin half-moons. He, of the three, talked the most and the loudest.
The man who looked the youngest had painted the backs of his hands in a design that looked like sea waves. His face was round, his hair greased and cut evenly to shoulder length. The other man, long-faced and thin, had a scar curving from the corner of one eye to the center of his chin. When he spoke the skin over the scar pulled taut.
Each man wore a hooded fur parka and each hood was trimmed with thick silver fur, a kind of fur Kiin had not seen before. The parkas were short, not even reaching the knees, but the men wore fur leggings and sealskin boots.
They continued to speak to Qakan. Qakan said little but laughed often and sometimes pointed to Kiin and laughed again.
After a while, Qakan came over to her and untied the ropes that bound Kiin’s ankles and wrists; he cupped her chin in his hand and laughed into her face. But Kiin looked away, rubbing her wrists where the skin was raw from the burn of the ropes.
Then the tallest man pointed to Kiin and the tone of his voice changed. He circled the fire and stood behind her. Kiin sat very still, clenched her fists to keep her arms from trembling.
The man squatted beside her and took one of her hands in his. His face was very close, and Kiin could see that he was older than she had first thought, the paint that covered his cheeks and forehead hiding age lines. She saw, too, that his dark hair was marked with gray, and suddenly she realized that he was father of the other two.
The man pulled up the sleeve of Kiin’s suk and pointed to her scarred wrist. He asked Qakan something, and Qakan cleared his throat, finally answering in jerky, broken phrases. The man turned and spat on the ground, then asked another question. Qakan shrugged his shoulders.
The man left the fire and went to a crude lean-to that was propped beside an inverted ik, the boat longer and wider than Qakan’s ik and covered with a thick hide that had few seams. The man returned with a small packet and handed it to Kiin.
He said something to Kiin and Qakan translated: “Goose fat for your wrists.” Qakan’s face was pinched and red. She looked up at the Walrus hunter and thanked him, then spread the grease over her wrists.
The fat smelled strong, nearly rancid, but it was soothing, and when Kiin had finished her wrists, she leaned over and greased her ankles. This brought another murmur from the three men, and the tallest one said something to Qakan, something that made Qakan grin foolishly and jump to his feet, hauling Kiin up beside him.
“Go to the ik,” he said to her. “They have agreed to take us to their village.”
Kiin bound up the packet of grease and handed it back to the man, but he smiled at her and shook his head. He said something to Qakan and Qakan said to Kiin, “Keep it,” and when Kiin still held the packet out toward the man, Qakan pushed it back, making a sound of disgust in his throat. “He said it is yours. You are to keep it.”
Kiin smiled at the man, at all three men, and nodded, then walked to the ik, standing beside it as Qakan helped the three men bury their fire and dismantle their lean-to.
They are a good people, Kiin thought as she watched. Too good for the curse Qakan was bringing them. She wondered what Qakan had told them about her wrists, how he had explained.
Whatever he had said seemed to satisfy them. They were no longer angry with him. The youngest man often clapped a hand on Qakan’s back, and the one with the scar spoke often, making the others laugh as they worked.
The three men loaded their supplies in their boat and carried it to the water. Qakan helped them push it out, and then he and Kiin dragged their ik into the waves.
“They think you are a slave, captured from the Whale Hunters,” Qakan said.
Kiin picked up her paddle. “That is what you told them?” she asked.
“How else could I explain your wrists?”
“But they gave me medicine,” Kiin said.
“I told you they were a good people.” Qakan leaned forward. His fat cheeks made his eyes look like dark slits. “Do you think I would trade you to an evil people?”
Kiin turned around and sat down in the bow of the ik. Why answer?
36
IN THE MIDDLE OF the afternoon the Walrus hunters paddled their boat back to offer Qakan and Kiin food.
“Take it and like it,” Qakan said to Kiin, his voice jolly, but his eyes hard. “If you were with First Men hunters, we would eat only at night.”
Kiin in turn offered the men some of the fish that were drying on the edge of the ik.
“You insult them with your poor food,” Qakan hissed at her, smiling as he spoke. But the men, nodding and laughing, took the fish and ate it, and Kiin defied Qakan by giving them more.
After eating, the men pulled ahead again, and after a time of paddling in silence Qakan said, “They are a father and two sons. They made a trading trip before winter.”
Kiin did not turn, did not indicate that she heard him.
