by Sue Harrison
She covered him with stones and then went to the edge of the sea and washed her hands, rubbing them with sand and water.
Then she came back to the place, to the mound that was now Qakan. And knowing that his spirit was there with his body, unable to move to the Dancing Lights since the Raven had cut him apart, she said, “All your life, Qakan, always, you blamed me for your choices. So you killed Yellow-hair. For what reason? In anger? To show your power? You have no power, Qakan. You never had power. You used all the strength of your spirit to hate others instead of building yourself into what you should be.”
She turned and walked back to the hills, back to the shelter where her babies were waiting for her. But at the base of the hills she turned and called, “I will go back to our village, Qakan. My sons belong to Amgigh and Samiq. They are not cursed. You were never strong enough to curse anyone.”
And it was not until both babies were in her arms that she realized she had spoken without stuttering, that her words had come as easily as her songs, had flowed as smoothly as water over sand.
62
THE VOICE CAME, SOMETHING that was a part of her dreams, a whining voice. Qakan’s voice. Kiin awoke, sat up, listened. No, there was no voice. Only the waves on the shore, only the sound of wind as it sped over the mats and skins of her shelter, as it pushed through the pile of broken wood and torn skins that had once been Qakan’s ik.
Kiin had brought the pieces of the ik and the few trade goods the Raven had not taken, back to her shelter. Better to have them here, not visible from the beach. There was ivory, a few small pieces—broken whale teeth, a thin piece of whale jawbone. There was a skin of dried fish, though when she opened it, she noticed with disgust that the bag was stuffed with handfuls of grass and only half full of fish. Qakan. Always taking what he should not take.
Kiin had dug another hole beside her shelter, stored the fish and pieces of the ik cover still large enough to be usable, then she covered the hole with grass mats.
She had finished before dark, and so had rested, beginning a song to her babies, and while her mind was caught in the words of the song, her hands became restless, needing some kind of work to do. And so she unsheathed the hunting knife the Raven had given her and picked up a bit of broken wood from one of the ik’s thwarts. At first she only whittled, cutting through the ochre that had been painted over the thwart and down to the pale yellow of the inside wood.
But then she saw that her hands were making an ikyak, pulling a boat out of the wood like a man pulls his feet from a pair of sealskin boots.
“An ikyak,” she said, then let the carving become a part of her song.
“An ikyak you will have,” she sang to Shuku, to Takha.
It will be another brother,
Together you will build it;
Together you will go into the sea;
You will hunt; You will hunt;
The three of you, brothers together.
She had sung and carved until the only light was from the early rising moon. Then she had slept until Qakan’s voice…Qakan’s voice….
“Qakan is dead and his spirit cannot move from the grave,” Kiin’s spirit told her. “It was a dream.”
Kiin laid her hand on Shuku’s back, then on Takha’s. Both babies slept, their breathing soft, slow.
Kiin lay down, pulled her mind from thoughts of Qakan, instead planned what she would do the next day, the bird traps she would set. She had to catch as many birds as she could. Dry their meat. Save their fat for winter oil. If the First Men did not come to this island or if the Walrus People came and she had to hide during the days of trading, she might have to spend the winter here. How would she and the babies live without oil, without meat?
The Raven had splintered Qakan’s ik into pieces so small that Kiin could not repair it, and though she could fish from the beach, she would not catch as many fish as she would if she had an ik.
“There will be crowberries to eat and crowberry heather to burn,” her spirit whispered. “You can gather chitons without an ik. You will find sea urchins and clams. There is ugyuun and there is kelp. You have seen salmonberry blossoms.
“And who can say,” her spirit continued, “a sea lion may come, as sea lions do.” The words, a comfort, flowed like a song and carried Kiin’s thoughts into dreams. Dreams of seals and sea lions, of food, enough food for her and for her sons….
Then again the whining came; again Kiin awoke. Qakan’s voice; Qakan’s voice.
Kiin woke up her sons, silenced their whimperings with a quiet song. She put them into their carrying slings and let them nurse. Then she left her shelter, taking with her a bird egg, something left from her gathering the day before.
She walked to the mound where Qakan was buried, stood a small distance from the pile of rocks there. She listened, but heard nothing. Then the wind cut in sharply from the beach, and she heard Qakan’s complaining again.
“Qakan!” Kiin said. “You have brought yourself to this place. You and your greediness. There is nothing I can do for you.”
She threw the egg into the rocks of Qakan’s burial place, saw in the moonlight that the egg landed and broke, draining itself into Qakan’s grave. “There,” she said. “Eat and be quiet.”
63
SAMIQ LOST COUNT OF the days they had traveled, men in ikyan, women in iks. Enough days to see the moon from full to full again and beyond. Long enough to use much of their food. After four, perhaps five days, they could no longer feel any but the most violent of Aka’s trembling, but even yet, the waves acted according to some force other than the wind or the tides.
The ash had thinned and was now only a slight haze, a dust that colored the sky in pinks and browns, and at night seemed to settle in a shimmering circle around the moon.
The land was now unfamiliar to everyone but Gray Bird. The grass was interspersed with willow, this willow sturdier and taller than the tufts that grew by the streams of Tugix’s island. He still pointed out beaches where he had traded with people of one village or another. Twice they had stopped and stayed at First Men villages, but in both places Samiq had felt the uneasiness of the people. New hunters—would that mean new leaders for the village, women who expected to have a share in the food already cached for winter? So they had stayed long enough to catch fish, to tell the people why the sea acted strangely, to tell of the powerful spirits that ruled the mountain Aka. Then they went on.
One night, with their small skin shelters set behind hills above a rocky beach and the wind blowing first in from the sea and then with a cold fierceness over the center of the island from the mountains, they sat together, their bodies shielding the three small oil lamps burning in their midst. Red Berry with her son and Chagak with Wren sat in the most sheltered place at the center of the circle. Gray Bird, his face pinched and sullen, cheeks rough from many days of wind and sea spray, began to speak of a beach where Walrus People and sometimes even Caribou People came to trade with the First Men.
Samiq leaned forward to hear Gray Bird over the whistling wind. Samiq smiled, laughing at himself for his interest in Gray Bird’s words, and the smile cracked the skin of his lips, bringing the sweet taste of his own blood into his mouth. How often had he ever wanted to hear what Gray Bird would say? How often did the man ever say anything that was more than a boast or a complaint? Yet now he spoke with a certainty in his words that drew Samiq’s attention, and Samiq caught his father’s eyes over the circle of people and gestured toward Gray Bird so that Kayugh, too, would listen.
“It is a good beach,” Gray Bird said. “Open to anyone, a place where women come to gather bird eggs in the spring, but where no one is living.”
“When were you there last?” Big Teeth asked, and Samiq noticed that First Snow and Crooked Nose were also leaning toward Gray Bird, also listening to the man.
A small shivering went through Samiq’s body. Had the traveling worn their spirits down to the place where they would listen to anyone, even Gray Bird? But then Samiq thoug
ht, Who else but Gray Bird has been in this place? Who else can we listen to? Kayugh had lived nearly this far east, but that had been many years ago, and Kayugh’s people had lived on the South Sea and this was the North, the two with different fish, different animals, even different colors, the South Sea blue, the North Sea green.
Samiq looked slowly around the circle of his people. His sister Red Berry, big with a second child in her belly, was holding her son Little Flat Stone on her lap, rocking gently to comfort the child. Wren was asleep on Chagak’s lap and Chagak was watching Gray Bird, her eyes occasionally going to Samiq and then to Amgigh. Amgigh was sitting beside Small Knife, and though he spoke occasionally to the boy, Amgigh would not look at Samiq, had scarcely spoken to Samiq since they began their journey, but his eyes were now on Gray Bird’s face.
He feels the same hope I do, Samiq thought. Perhaps this one time, Gray Bird knows what he is talking about. Maybe there is a beach not far from here where we can stay, a place where we can build a new village. It should be facing the North Sea for it seemed that most waves in the North Sea that rose from Aka’s trembling, from other mountains whose spirits had joined Aka’s spirits in anger against all men, were smaller than waves coming from the South Sea. What had his father told him? That they had found Tugix’s island when Samiq was still a baby because they were forced from their own beaches by the waves of the South Sea.
Samiq turned his thoughts back to Gray Bird’s words. Gray Bird had seemed to notice that everyone was listening to him and he sat straighter, his mouth tight with pride, and the thin string of whiskers on his chin danced with each of his words. “The Walrus People say that near this beach I speak about, the North Sea turns to ice each winter. If we choose to stay on this beach, our women will have to prepare warm clothing for us.”
“If you take enough seals,” Crooked Nose said, “we will make enough clothing.”
But Gray Bird continued as though she had not spoken. “So we must stop soon. There is still a good part of the summer left, time to hunt and fish and build ulas before winter.”
Yes, Samiq thought, we must stop, soon. Even though the women dangled fishing lines as they traveled, catching cod that they split and hung on the edges of their boats, they were able to prepare only what was needed for each day’s food. And fish was not enough. Who could live through winter without oil, without the thick fat of seal or whale?
Their clothing, too, was wearing out. Samiq’s chigadax needed to be replaced, although Three Fish repaired it each night.
“Some of the Caribou People make their chigadax from bear gut,” Gray Bird had told them, but Samiq was not sure that such a garment would be acceptable to the sea animals. Instead he had continued to encourage Three Fish in her repairs, noticing that he was not the only one who suffered. Cold salt water burned faces and hands. Even Wren’s face had blistered although she was often tucked inside Chagak’s suk.
The women, without waterproof chigadax, suffered the most. The constant moisture made their garments rot, and Three Fish had only one suk. The other women had two and wore them both, so one suk covered the holes of the other.
Samiq, caught in his own thoughts, did not realize that Gray Bird had finished speaking, that everyone was looking at him to see his reaction. Finally Amgigh, his mouth fixed in a sly smile, said, “Brother, you have nothing to say about what Waxtal has told us?”
And Samiq, startled back to the circle of his people, smiled at Amgigh, an open smile, without anger, without embarrassment. What man at times did not find his own thoughts louder than another’s words?
“My father,” Samiq said, “you are older and wiser than I am. What do you think?”
Kayugh, his head lowered, his eyes on the driftwood stick he was using to mark the bare gravel of the ground, said, “Gray Bird speaks wisely. We need to stop. We must build ulas, we must hunt before the winter.”
He lifted his head. “Gray Bird, how much farther to this beach?” he asked.
Gray Bird shrugged. “Two days, three at most.”
Kayugh looked at Samiq, but said nothing.
From the corner of his eye, Samiq saw the smirk on Amgigh’s face. “If the beach is as you say, Gray Bird,” Samiq said, “we will build our village there. And since it is a place where traders come each summer, perhaps Qakan will find us there and help us trade for things we need for winter.”
Big Teeth smiled and First Snow laughed. Soon everyone was speaking and even Blue Shell seemed happy, all the women smiling and talking, Gray Bird’s laughter as loud as anyone’s. Only Amgigh sat without speaking, without laughing, and his eyes, meeting Samiq’s across the light of the oil lamps, still held the glow of anger.
The third day, as the sun neared its high point in the sky, Samiq noticed a change in the sea, a subtle difference in color.
He guided his ikyak around the sloping mound of a green hill that ran itself down into the sea without beach or cliff to divide grass from water, and beyond the hill he saw a circling gray sand beach in a wide cove. He looked back. The other men were following him, the women’s ik close behind.
Three Fish was standing up in the woman’s ik, and in his astonishment at her stupidity, Samiq could not speak. Finally he bellowed, “Sit!” The heat of his anger cooled when Three Fish quickly dropped, but the babbling continued and he turned his ikyak back to face his wife, Three Fish coyly covering her face with her hands, only her eyes showing between her thick brown fingers.
“Wife!” he said sternly. “Are you a child that you stand in a boat?”
He waited, not expecting an answer, surprised when he heard Three Fish say, “Gray Bird says it is the beach.”
Gray Bird pulled his ikyak in line with Samiq’s. He pointed, saying, “Yes. There. See where the willows grow taller? We camped only a small way upstream.”
Samiq turned his ikyak and paddled to Kayugh’s side.
“I heard,” Kayugh said, a smile at the corners of his mouth. “So, do we stop here?”
“It is a good beach,” Samiq said.
Amgigh pulled his ikyak between Samiq’s and his father’s. “When has Waxtal ever been right? You trust what he tells you?”
Samiq, suddenly angry at his brother, at the days of silence, the scowls, the angry replies each time Samiq tried to include Amgigh in decisions or conversations, said, “You believed him when he told you about the man who was my father.”
Amgigh, his mouth set in a narrow line, his nostrils wide, hissed, “Do what you wish. If Aka or any mountain wants to kill us, we will be dead no matter what you decide.”
He paddled away from them toward the shore and Samiq watched him go, watched as Amgigh’s long hard strokes soon pushed the ikyak up onto the sand of the beach. Then Samiq and Kayugh followed.
Samiq was pulling his ikyak from the water when he heard Kayugh gasp, Amgigh cry out. Samiq spun, ripping his harpoon from its ties on his ikyak as he turned. But then he, too, cried out.
Standing at the top of the beach was Kiin.
64
A SPIRIT. SHE MUST be a spirit, Samiq thought.
“Do not go too close,” some voice within seemed to whisper, but he could not stop himself. He left his ikyak, forgot about the others with him, walked up the rise of the beach toward Kiin.
Then he saw that she was crying; though she stood straight and held a lance in one hand, she was crying. Did spirits cry? She brushed one hand across her face and he saw that her wrist was ridged with scars. Did spirits have scars?
“Tell me you are real,” Kiin said, and Samiq noticed that her voice was whole, without breaks, without stuttering. Kiin never spoke so clearly. Perhaps then she was a spirit.
“I am real,” Samiq said. “We are real. But your father said he found your ik, that you had drowned.”
“I am alive. I am not a spirit. Qakan took me, traded me to Walrus People. I was trying to get back to you…to Amgigh.”
Samiq was close then, close enough to see that she wore a new suk, something made of o
tter and fur seal skins. He saw that she had a thin, pale scar on her forehead, the scar nearly hidden under the edge of her dark hair.
“We are all here,” Samiq said and held out a hand to her.
“Amgigh, your mother and father, Kayugh and Chagak, Crooked Nose…all of us.”
She reached out her hand, and it was warm and hard in his own. She was real, not a spirit. Then Amgigh was beside them, and Kayugh came and the women. Samiq dropped the hand that he had no right to claim, turned away.
“It is a dream,” some spirit whispered.
Then I will not wake up, Samiq thought.
65
WAXTAL PUSHED HIS IKYAK back away from the beach, away from the pull of the surf. Kiin. How was it possible? Had Qakan no more sense than to sell her to some tribe that visited this beach? But then how could Qakan know that Aka would turn to fire, that the mountain spirits would send ash and tremors to drive the First Men from their village?
Besides, he could pretend that he did not know of Qakan’s plan. It was a foolish plan. He had told Qakan that it was a foolish plan.
He turned his ikyak and let the waves take him into shore, used his hands to walk the ikyak up the sand, then unlaced his hatch skirting and stepped out. The women were on the beach, all of them clustered around Kiin. The men stood back; Amgigh and Samiq stood beside each other, the two speaking together—the first time Waxtal had seen them speak since they had begun this journey.
Blue Shell had sunk to the ground, like a small heap of tattered furs, and Kiin was now bending over her. Blue Shell was a foolish woman. Kiin was only a daughter. Better Blue Shell react like this for Qakan. Who could say where he was, whether he was safe? Why were Blue Shell’s thoughts not for her son?
Waxtal went to his wife, stood behind her. “Wife, get up,” he said, careful not to look at any of the women except Blue Shell, careful that his eyes did not meet Kiin’s. “We must make a camp. There is driftwood on this beach. We can build a fire.” He reached down and pulled Blue Shell roughly to her feet, but then Kiin was beside him, pushing him away.
