My Sister the Moon

by Sue Harrison

  KAYUGH: (Aleut—also, kayux) Strength of muscle; power.

  KIIN: (Aleut—pronounced “keen”) Who?

  QAKAN: (Aleut) The one out there.

  SAMIQ: (Ancient Aleut) Stone dagger or knife.

  SHUGANAN: (Origin and exact meaning obscure) Relating to an ancient people.

  SHUKU: (Ancient Tlingit—pronounced “shoe-KOO”) First.

  SUK: (Aleut—also, sugh; ending unvoiced) A calf-length, hoodless parka with a standing collar. These garments were often made of birdskins and could be worn inside out (with the feathers on the inside) for warmth.

  TAKHA: (Ancient Tlingit—pronounced “tawk-HAW”) Second.

  TUGIDAQ: (Aleut) Moon.

  TUGIX: (Aleut) Aorta, large blood vessel.

  UGYUUN: (Aleut) Cow parsnip or wild celery (Poochki, Russian). A plant useful for food, dyes or medicine. The peeled stalks when cooked taste somewhat like rutabaga. The stalk’s outer layer contains a chemical that can cause skin irritation.

  ULAKIDAQ: (Aleut) A multitude of ulas; a group of houses.

  ULAQ, pi. ULAS: (Aleut—also, ULAX) A dwelling dug into the side of a hill, raftered with driftwood and/or whale jawbones and thatched with sod and grass.

  WAXTAL: (Aleut) Desire; pity.

  The native words listed here are defined according to their use in My Sister the Moon. As with many native languages that were recorded by Europeans, there are multiple spellings of almost every word as well as dialectal differences.

  Acknowledgments

  MY SISTER THE MOON is founded on extensive research, but as a work of fiction is based on my interpretation of the facts and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of those experts who have so generously given their time and knowledge to this project.

  My special gratitude to those who read My Sister the Moon in its various manuscript forms: my husband Neil; my parents Pat and Bob McHaney; my grandfather Bob McHaney, Sr.; and my friend Linda Hudson. Also my thanks to Neil for his computer work on the novel’s maps and genealogy.

  A sincere thank you to my agent Rhoda Weyr, who is not only an astute businesswoman, but also a careful and wise reader; and to my editors Shaye Areheart and Maggie Lichota for their meticulous work on this novel.

  I will never be able to adequately express my gratitude to Dr. William Laughlin, who continues to support my work with resource materials and his encouragement.

  A special thanks to Mike Livingston who lent me his extensive library about his people, the Aleuts. Many of these books, long out of print, would have been impossible for me to obtain otherwise. I also appreciate his willingness to share his knowledge about his people, his islands and kayaking.

  My appreciation to those who provided resource materials, both oral and written: Mark McDonald, The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, Gary Kiracofe, Dr. Greg Van Dussen, Ann Fox Chandonnet, Rayna Livingston, Linda Little, Dr. Ragan Callaway, Dorthea Callaway and Laura Rowland. Thank you, also, to Sherry Ledy for her patience and good humor in teaching me basket weaving, and to Russell Bawks for his long hours of typing my research notes.

  Neil and I both extend our thanks to Dorthea, Ragan and Karen Callaway, and Rayna and Mike Livingston for opening their home to us in our recent research trip to Alaska and the Aleutian Islands.

  Thank you also to Dr. Richard Ganzhorn and his staff members Sharon Bennett and David Strickland, C.S.T., for answering my medical questions concerning knife wounds; and to Cathie Greenough for her willingness to share the expertise she has gained in her years counseling battered women and children.

  My deepest admiration and respect to those four special women, abused as children, who opened their hearts and told me their stories of pain and fear, endurance and victory.

  July, 1991

  Pickford, Michigan

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Ivory Carver Trilogy

  PROLOGUE

  Summer, 7038 B.C.

  The First Men

  Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula

  KIIN PUT AWAY HER CARVING TOOLS. The gray light of early morning squeezed through the smokehole and met the glow of the seal oil lamp.

  Sometime during the night, a mist had begun to fall. It had soaked through the skin walls and mats of their shelter into their sleeping robes and clothing until Kiin thought she would never get its chill out of her bones.

  We are safe here, my babies and I, Kiin thought. But the cold that enveloped her body came from more than the rain. I should not have let my husband bring me here. My babies and I were safer in the village with our people than we are in this tiny shelter with Three Fish. Even if traders have come to our people looking for wives, they will not bother me.

  “No, stay here,” Kiin’s spirit voice said. “You are wife. You must do what your husband tells you to do. Stay here with Three Fish until Amgigh comes for you.”

  Kiin took a long breath, but still could not rid herself of the heaviness that seemed to settle over her. She looked across the sodden sleeping robes at Three Fish. The woman was just waking up. She smiled at Kiin, showing the broken corners of her front teeth.

  “I am hungry,” Three Fish said. “We should go out and get food.” Her voice was heavy with the accent of her people, the Whale Hunters. “I know where there are crowberries.”

  “It is too soon. The berries will not be ripe yet,” Kiin said.

  Three Fish shrugged. “Then we will gather crowberry stems for medicine,” she said.

  “Yes, good,” said Kiin. “We can go now.”

  But Three Fish made no move toward the door flap. “There was a trader looking for medicine for his eyes,” she said. “If I make crowberry stem medicine, he might trade meat or oil for it.”

  “Yes,” said Kiin, “you could do that. We can go now.”

  But Three Fish continued talking, telling Kiin about the medicines her mother used to make from fireweed and ugyuun root, and about the bitterroot bulbs that grew so well on the Whale Hunters’ island.

  As she listened, a tightness grew in Kiin’s throat. This woman is Samiq’s wife, Kiin thought. This woman has been in Samiq’s arms, has shared Samiq’s sleeping place.

  But Kiin’s inside spirit voice whispered: “You had the joy of Samiq for one night. Be glad for that.”

  And I have Takha, Kiin thought. Because of that night I have Takha, this son who looks so much like his father. She laid her hands against the bulge under her fur suk where Takha lay, held against her chest by his carrying strap. She moved her hand to her other son—Shuku, twin to Takha—also strapped to her chest.

  “But remember,” Kiin’s spirit voice whispered. “Amgigh is your husband.”

  Yes, Kiin thought. Amgigh. He is a good husband. What woman could want better? And Amgigh gave me Shuku. Who, seeing Shuku, could doubt he was Amgigh’s son?

  “Amgigh also gave you the night you spent with Samiq,” Kiin’s spirit voice reminded her. “It was his choice to share you with his brother.”

  “I am glad to be Amgigh’s wife,” Kiin said. “You know that.”

  But her spirit answered, “Who can explain the difference between something chosen by the mind and something decided by the heart? Words are not kelp string. They cannot bind pain into neat packs to be stored away like food in a cache.”

  Kiin wrapped her arms around her upraised knees, cradling Takha and Shuku between her chest and legs. Three Fish was still talking, her words as steady as the wind. Kiin closed her eyes and tried to think of something other than husbands and babies, something besides the rain and Three Fish’s loud voice. But the thoughts that came to her were again worrying thoughts, and a strange unrest beset her feet and hands.

  “It is this shelter,” her spirit voice whispered. “The walls are too close. The oil lamp light is too dim. Turn your mind toward sky and sea, toward high mountains and long grass.”

  Then there was a pause in Three Fish’s talking, and Kiin realized that the woman had asked her a question. Did Kiin like to sew birdskins more tha
n sealskins?

  What did it matter, birdskins or sealskins? Kiin thought, but she said, “Birdskins.”

  “Birdskins?” Three Fish said. “But they tear so easily and it takes so many to make one suk.”

  “Yes, you are right,” Kiin answered, but wished Three Fish would stop talking. Kiin pulled Takha from his carrying strap. Maybe if Three Fish were holding him, she would be quiet.

  Kiin wrapped the baby in one of the few dry furs from her bed and handed him to Three Fish. He opened his eyes, looked solemnly at Kiin, then turned his head toward Three Fish and smiled. Three Fish laughed and again began to babble, this time to the baby.

  Kiin sighed and looked down inside her suk at Shuku. He was asleep. Suddenly she heard what Three Fish was saying to Takha: “Your father will fight and you will be safe. Do not worry. He is strong.”

  Kiin pushed herself across the bedding to Three Fish and clasped the woman by both arms. “What did you say?” Kiin asked.

  “Only what Amgigh told me, that we must stay here because there are men on the beach who want to trade for women.”

  Kiin’s heart moved up to pound at the base of her throat. “And Amgigh will fight them?” she asked Three Fish.

  Three Fish pulled away from Kiin’s hands and scooted back against the damp wall of their shelter. “He said he might,” she answered. “All I know is that I saw one of them. A man with a black blanket over his shoulders. Even his face was black. I think Samiq and Amgigh were afraid he would want us.”

  “The Raven,” Kiin said. “My brother Qakan sold me to him. I was his wife at the Walrus People’s village. He has come to take me back.” Her voice cracked, and the sound was like a scattering of words broken away from a mourning song.

  Three Fish stared at her as though she did not understand what Kiin had said.

  “Amgigh cannot win a fight against him,” Kiin whispered. The Raven was too strong, too cunning.

  Amgigh would die unless Kiin went with the Raven, and if she went back with the Raven, back to the Walrus People, what would happen to her sons? One would die. Woman of the Sky and Woman of the Sun, those two old ones—the Grandmother and the Aunt—they would tell the whole village about the curse.

  “No child can bring death to a village,” Kiin’s spirit voice said, and the voice no longer whispered, but spoke in anger. “Woman of the Sun and Woman of the Sky know nothing but fear.”

  My sons are good, Kiin thought. They carry no curse, but because they are twins and because my brother Qakan used me as wife when they were in my womb, the Walrus People think they are cursed. How can I protect two babies against a whole village?

  Kiin pressed her lips together and looked at Three Fish, but Three Fish was still talking to Takha, her face close to Takha’s face, both woman and child smiling.

  Kiin watched them, and an ache began to build at the center of her chest. She lifted her thoughts to the wind spirits, to the spirits of the mountains that protected the Traders’ Beach. I will be content to be Amgigh’s wife, she told them. Just let him live. She clasped the amulet at her neck. If he is safe and my sons are safe, she thought, I will ask nothing more.

  She crawled over to sit beside Three Fish and said, “Our husbands Amgigh and Samiq are brothers, just as my babies Takha and Shuku are brothers.”

  Though Kiin wanted to hurry, she forced her words out slowly, gently, so Three Fish would understand. “Our husbands are brothers, so we are sisters.”

  “Yes,” said Three Fish.

  “I have to go to the beach now, Three Fish,” said Kiin, “but you should stay here with Takha. Keep him from crying as long as you can. If he sleeps, that is good. But finally when he is crying so hard you cannot stop him, then take him to Samiq’s sister Red Berry. She has milk. She will feed him.”

  Then Kiin untied the string of babiche that held the carving Samiq’s mother Chagak had given Kiin and handed it to Three Fish.

  “A gift for you,” Kiin said. Three Fish cupped the carving of man, woman, and child in her hand.

  “Samiq told me about this,” Three Fish said. “The great shaman Shuganan made it. I cannot take it.”

  But Kiin said, “You must. We are sisters. You cannot refuse my gift. The one who wears the carving receives the gift of being a good mother.”

  For a moment Three Fish sat very still, then she tied the string of babiche around her neck. She clasped the carving tightly in both hands.

  Kiin unwrapped the walrus tusk ikyak that she had carved during the long night when sleep would not come. After she had finished carving it, she had cut the ikyak crosswise into two pieces. Had not Woman of the Sun said that Kiin’s sons, being twins, shared one spirit and so must live as one man? Had not Woman of the Sky told Kiin that Shuku and Takha must share one ikyak, one lodge, one wife? Someday, Kiin would make carvings of a lodge and a woman also, and split each, giving one half to each son. With her carvings, they could live without the curse of being twins, each one building his own life as a man.

  She hung the ikyak halves on braided sinew cords, fastened one cord around Takha’s neck, the other around Shuku’s.

  “This is my blessing to my sons,” she said to Three Fish.

  Takha clasped the ikyak and lifted it to his mouth. Shuku slept.

  For a moment Kiin watched her sons, then she turned away to roll up her sleeping skins.

  “Why are you going to the beach?” Three Fish asked as Kiin worked. “Amgigh told us to stay here.”

  “I must go,” Kiin said. Again she sat down beside Three Fish. She reached out to stroke Takha’s cheek. The baby turned his face toward her hand, opened his mouth. “While I am away, you must be mother to Takha,” Kiin told Three Fish. “He is son to Amgigh, but also to Samiq. See,” she said, gathering Takha’s hand into her own, spreading her son’s fingers, “he has Samiq’s wide hands.” She brushed the top of his head. “He has Samiq’s thick hair.”

  Three Fish lifted the baby and laid him against her chest, tucking his head up under her chin. “I will be a good mother to him,” she said.

  Kiin looked away, then leaned forward to pick up her carving tools. She slipped them into her sleeping furs, strapped the bundle to her back, then crawled to the door flap.

  “Be sure Red Berry feeds him,” Kiin said. Then, though she had not meant to go back, Kiin turned. She held her hands out toward Takha.

  Three Fish handed Kiin the baby, and Kiin lifted him from his fur wrappings. She stroked her hands down his fat legs and arms, over his soft belly. She pressed him against her face, smelled the good oil smell of his skin. Then she handed him back to Three Fish and slipped out of the shelter into the rain.

  “I will see my son again tonight,” Kiin said to the wind and waited for an answer, but there was nothing. No answer, no whisper to pull away her doubts.

  Kiin stroked the carving that hung at her waist, the whale tooth she had made into a shell—her first carving, a sign of the gift the spirits had given her. Then she tucked her arms around Shuku, alone in his carrying strap under her suk, and walked toward the beach.

  About the Author

  Sue Harrison grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and graduated summa cum laude from Lake Superior State University with a bachelor of arts degree in English languages and literature. At age twenty-seven, inspired by the cold Upper Michigan forest that surrounded her home, and the outdoor survival skills she had learned from her father and her husband, Harrison began researching the people who understood best how to live in a harsh environment: the North American native peoples. She studied six Native American languages and completed extensive research on culture, geography, archaeology, and anthropology during the nine years she spent writing her first novel, Mother Earth Father Sky, the extraordinary story of a woman’s struggle for survival in the last Ice Age. A national and international bestseller, and selected by the American Library Association as one of the Best Books for Young Adults in 1991, Mother Earth Father Sky is the first novel in Harrison’s critically acclaime
d Ivory Carver trilogy, which includes My Sister the Moon and Brother Wind. She is also the author of Song of the River, Cry of the Wind, and Call Down the Stars, which comprise the Storyteller trilogy, also set in prehistoric North America. Her novels have been translated into thirteen languages and published in more than twenty countries. Harrison lives with her family in Michigan’s Eastern Upper Peninsula.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1992 by Sue Harrison

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  978-1-4804-1192-0

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  THE IVORY CARVER TRILOGY

  FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA

  Available wherever ebooks are sold

  Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.