by Sue Harrison
Chagak’s older brother lunged from the roof hole. Flailing her father’s driftwood seal club, he knocked down one of the men, but the other caught him around the waist and pushed him over the edge of the ulaq.
The first man, regaining his feet, jumped down after, and when he again climbed to the top of the ulaq, he was waving a blood-tipped spear. Chagak felt the burn of vomit rise into her mouth.
Her mother came out next. Pup, the brother born that spring, was in her arms. She tried to run between the men, but they caught her. One man pulled the baby from her and flung him to the ground; the other cut the waist thong that held her knee-length apron.
At that moment Chagak’s younger sister emerged from the ulaq, and her mother dove toward the child, escaping the men as she grasped her daughter. They stood together, two dark figures in front of the flaming roof grass, holding one another as the men advanced with raised spears. One of the men lifted his spear to the girl’s face, and Chagak covered her mouth with both hands, sucking in great gulps of air to hold in her screams.
As the second man moved toward the child, Chagak’s mother pushed the girl behind her. The man drew a knife from a scabbard at his waist, then slashed across the woman’s breasts and reached for Chagak’s sister.
“Aka,” Chagak cried. “Please, Aka. No, Aka. Please … please.”
In one quick movement Chagak’s mother scooped the girl into her arms and threw herself and her daughter into the flames that rose from the ulaq roof.
Chagak dropped to her knees. The screams that she had held within her mouth burst out to join the cries of her mother and sister.
A roar of wind blew in from the sea, carrying the flames like orange waves into the sky, and the village was covered with smoke.
Chagak pressed her face to the earth and lay on the ground crying. She clung to the grass as the sea otter clings to the kelp, to keep the waves from pulling her away, to keep the waves from pulling her away.
TWO
CROUCHED IN THE TALL grass, Chagak waited through the night. She clutched her short-bladed woman’s knife, rubbing the smooth driftwood handle against her cheek. If the men came after her, she would kill herself before they reached her.
But finally, when the screams had stopped and the fires glowed only fitfully between the ulas, the men left. Chagak saw them load their ikyan with furs and oil from the village. She watched until they disappeared beyond the cliffs that bordered her people’s sheltered bay.
Pain filled Chagak’s chest from her belly to the tops of her shoulders, as if one of the attackers had also speared her, as if a knife were lodged within her ribs, cutting deeper each time she moved.
And when she could no longer hold in her sorrow, she wept until her body felt dry and hollow, and her face was raw from the wind on her tears.
In the morning a thick fog swirled in around each ulaq, covering the village like a burial robe. Smoke curled up from the fog and carried the stench of burnt flesh.
Chagak watched the village for a long time but saw no movement, and finally she crept down the back of the hill and out of sight of the ulakidaq, then made her way to the top of the south cliff where she could see the beach.
The beach faced east and stretched in a wide bowed-in curve beyond the cliff. It was a good beach of fine silty gravel and many tidal pools where children and old women could gather sea urchins and small fish. The cliffs were a nesting place for auks and puffins, and in the spring Chagak and her friends scaled the cliffs or lowered themselves from the top in rope harnesses to set string traps at the entrances of bird holes or to fill gathering bags with smooth white puffin eggs and the dark-spotted eggs of the guillemot. A reef extended from the beach and in low tide the women paddled out in their large open-topped skin iks to pry chitons from the rocks.
On the brightest days of summer small boys would lie at the top of the cliffs, their fathers in ikyan below them. When one of the boys saw a slow-moving sea cow darken the water, he would cry out and the men would guide their slim crafts to where the animal lay. Their spears were tied at the butt end to a long line attached to the side of the ikyan, and when each man had thrown his spear, they pulled the sea cow ashore with their many lines, then called the women to come prepare a feast with the sweet meat, a meat that held its good flavor even when old, even if covered with maggots.
Chagak stretched out on her belly, straightening the crushed grass around her so she was better hidden. She felt more vulnerable in the daylight. Perhaps some of the long-haired men had stayed behind.
The beach seemed to be empty. Chagak could see the lines in the gravel left by the keels of the attackers’ ikyan. She waited a long time, afraid to move from the cliff. What if the men had only hidden their boats, what if they waited for those who had escaped them? Surely there were others from her village besides herself who were alive.
Chagak’s mouth was dry and she wished she had brought her bag of berries with her. The tops of the cliffs were too rocky to grow anything but rough clumps of sorrel and grass. She cut a handful of the grass and chewed it, hoping to bring some moisture to her mouth, but the grass was rimed with salt and only increased her thirst.
Chagak stayed on the cliff until finally, when the sun was curling down the northwest side of the sky, she made herself get up, made herself walk back toward her village.
As she walked, she began to hope that all she had seen had been a dream, that when she looked at the village it would be as it had been, each ulaq green with the grass that grew upon its roof; women sitting on the leeward sides sewing; men watching the sea; children running and laughing in their made-up games.
But the smell of smoke still rose with the wind, so when Chagak reached the top of the hill and saw the blackened ruins, she felt no surprise, only the heavy pain of hopelessness.
When she found her berry bag, she scooped a handful of the fruit into her mouth, and when she had sucked out all the juice, she swallowed the pulp. She watched for a long time, alert to any movement, but the only thing that stirred was the spirit of the wind, lifting torn bits of curtains and mats, blackened grass.
Chagak began to wonder if she was alone, if she of all her people was the only one alive. The thought made her shudder and suddenly she was weeping, though she thought she had used all her tears the night before. But though she wept, she began the descent into the village, her woman’s knife in one hand, her amulet clasped in the other.
It is not a good sign, Chagak thought, when the first body she found was that of the shaman. He had been killed with a spear or knife, a deep gash in the center of his chest, but the fire had not touched him. The flames had left a circle of unmarked grass around him.
The attackers had not cut the body apart, and Chagak was surprised but glad. When a body was severed at all main joints, the spirit was robbed of its power and could not take revenge, could not help the living. Why had they left the shaman whole? Did they think their power was so much greater than his? Flies had begun to settle on the body and Chagak swatted them away. The shaman’s face still held the grimace of his death, and his back was arched as if his spirit had escaped through the hole in his chest, drawing the body up with it as it went.
One of his hands was clasped around a carved staff, a sacred thing passed from one shaman of the village to the next. Slowly Chagak reached for it, ready to draw back if the touch of the thing burned her. For what woman was allowed to have a shaman’s staff? But it did not burn her, did not seem to feel any different than other staffs.
Chagak tried to take it from the shaman’s hand, but the hand was clasped so tightly, she could not remove the staff.
Hoping his spirit hovered near and would hear, Chagak whispered, “I do not want it for myself, but only to help my people’s spirits.” But still the shaman held the staff. “How will I bury them?” Chagak asked, the words coming out like a sob. But she turned away, and as she turned, she saw an amulet lying a short distance from the body. Larger than even a hunter’s amulet, it was the shaman�
��s greatest source of power. With fingers that shook, Chagak picked it up.
She lifted the amulet above her head and turned to face the mountain Aka.
“You see this,” Chagak cried, lifting her voice above the noise of wind and sea. “If you do not want me to have it I will give it back to the shaman.”
She watched for some sign, a glint of sun from the mountaintop, a change in the wind, but the mountain gave no sign, and so Chagak slipped the amulet around her neck, feeling some comfort in its weight against her chest, as though another heart beat close to hers.
Chagak wanted to run through the village, to see if by chance Seal Stalker or any members of her family survived. But a spirit could not rest, could not take its place in the joyous dance of the northern lights, until the body was honored, and the shaman should be buried first.
Chagak saw a sleeping mat near the closest ulaq. One end was burned, but the other was whole and strong. She laid it beside the shaman’s body and pulled the body onto the mat. Then she began to drag the shaman to the death ulaq at the edge of the village.
The death ulaq was set aside as a home for the dead or any spirits who came to visit the First Men’s village. The smoke hole was closed with driftwood logs lashed together in a square, and only the shaman and chief hunter were allowed to open the place to receive the body of one who had died.
Chagak had always avoided the death ulaq, never taking a path that led close to it, but with the amulet she knew she had some protection.
The shaman’s body was heavy, and she could move him only a few steps before stopping to rest, but Chagak was strong, used to carrying a full water skin each morning from the fresh-water stream near the village.
She worked until, even in the cold wind, she was hot. Smoke tainted the air, and each breath seemed to add to Chagak’s burden, but finally she had the shaman at the top of the ulaq. She pulled the cover from the opening and clasped the shaman’s amulet, wondering what the spirits might do to her since she, a woman, dared to open the place, but then she thought, Which is worse, leaving my people without burial, or using this place of the dead? And the thought calmed her fears.
Chagak had no death mat in which to wrap the shaman’s body, no sacred herbs to anoint him, so she began the chant she heard at every death, a chant of pleading to Aka, a prayer of strength for the departed spirit. Then she rolled the shaman near the door and let him drop inside.
She fitted the heavy lid in place and looked back toward her village. From this side of the ulakidaq, more bodies were visible, mostly men, some burned beyond recognition. And suddenly Chagak felt a great need to find her father and Seal Stalker. What if they had escaped? What if their bodies were not here among the dead?
She went slowly from body to body. She was growing used to the smell of the dead, used to the stench that seemed to settle at the back of her throat, but often when seeing uncle or aunt, cousin or friend, she had to look away, hurry to the next body.
She found Seal Stalker’s younger brother and, taking time from her search, also dragged him to the top of the death ulaq. He had eight or nine summers and so was not as heavy as the shaman, but Chagak’s grief seemed to add weight to his body.
At the death ulaq, she again repeated the chants and lowered the body into the musty darkness. But after sealing the ulaq, Chagak realized the sun was near setting, and the thought of being in the village during the short, dark night quickened Chagak’s heart.
Who could say what all the spirits might do? By now each should have been given some sacred rite, a good burial, but she had buried only two. How many people had been in her village? Three tens? Four tens?
“I cannot bury them all,” she cried to Aka. “Do not ask me to bury them all. There are too many.”
But then the thought came: Use each ulaq as a death ulaq. There are too many bodies for one ulaq.
And so, under the setting sun, Chagak went first to her father’s ulaq.
The notched log that served as ladder to the interior was badly burned and so Chagak lowered herself with her arms, finally dropping to the floor below. She groped in the darkness until she found an oil lamp, then, using the moss, flint and fire stone she kept in a packet at her waist, she struck the stones together until a spark lighted the fluff of moss and started the circle of wicks. Most of the oil in the shallow stone basin of the lamp was gone, but there was enough to keep the fire going until Chagak could pull a storage skin from the cache in the wall. Nothing in the cache had burned, and as Chagak poured more oil into the lamp, and the wick flames grew stronger, she was surprised to see that, though the ulaq walls were darker than normal and some of the curtains had burned, little in the ulaq was damaged.
She searched the curtained sleeping rooms of the ulaq, wondering if by some chance a member of her family had escaped the fire. In her father’s sleeping place at the back of the ulaq, Chagak saw a shape huddled against the back wall, and recognizing one of her brothers, Chagak cried out in joy, but then she saw that, though his body bore no marks of spear or burning, he, like all the people of the village, was dead, his eyes and mouth open to allow escape of the spirit, his belly already bloating.
What strange power did fire possess? Chagak wondered. How could it draw spirits from people without touching them? Did it take the breath, stop the heart, steal the blood?
Chagak set the lamp on the floor and rolled a sleeping mat around her brother’s body, then laid him on the furs of her father’s bed. This brother had been her favorite, his dark eyes always sparking with the mischief of a joke. Already, though he had only six summers, he had taken his first puffin, speared it with a small harpoon their father had made him.
Chagak’s mother had prepared a feast to honor the kill. They had all been together then, her mother and father, the aunt and uncle who lived with them in the ulaq, even Chagak’s grandfather, who had died at the beginning of summer.
Again Chagak sang the death chant, filling the ulaq with the sound of her people’s sacred song, and still chanting, she stacked bundles of scorched furs to reach the roof hole. Outside, she found the charred bodies of her mother and sister and pulled them into the ulaq, carried them, one at a time, to her father’s sleeping place, not caring that the black of their bodies ruined the feathers of her suk.
The next time Chagak left the ulaq, she took one of her father’s hunting lamps, for the sun had set and darkness filled the spaces between the ulas.
She remembered where her oldest brother had been thrown and found him there, eyes open in death, his chest dark with dried blood. She dragged him into the ulaq and laid him in her father’s sleeping place.
Chagak walked through the village that night, finally finding her uncle and aunt and her father. She dragged each body to the ulaq and wrapped each in furs or mats.
When she no longer had the strength to climb from the ulaq, Chagak lay down next to the opening of her father’s sleeping place and slept.
THREE
WHEN CHAGAK AWOKE, HER first thought was of finishing Seal Stalker’s sleeping mats. But then she remembered, and with the remembering came a darkness that made her want to escape back to sleep. She began to tremble. Her hands felt too light for her body, her arms and legs too heavy, her chest so full of her sorrow that there was no room for anything else.
She rolled from her sleeping furs and relit several of the oil lamps. Then she dug up some of the eggs she and her mother had buried in sand and oil at the bottom of the food cache, and she made herself eat.
The food seemed to carry the taste of ashes, and Chagak gagged, but she knew she would not have strength to finish the burials unless she ate. She closed her eyes and thought of green hills, the wind that blew from the sea, and when she had eaten two eggs, she left the ulaq.
The night before, she had not been able to find her baby brother, though she was sure where her mother had thrown him. Now in the daylight she searched again but still found nothing. Fear began to grow, wedging itself into her pain.
Story
tellers told of people who took children from other tribes to raise as their own. Especially sons. Perhaps her brother was not dead. Perhaps the attackers had taken him and would raise him to be like them.
It would be better if Pup were dead, Chagak thought, and for a time she sat at the top of her father’s ulaq, doing nothing. But then it seemed as though the spirits of the dead called to her, and she left the ulaq to finish what she had begun the day before.
Chagak dragged bodies, chanted death prayers, and tried not to gag in the stench and the flies. The birds were the greatest problem. Gulls swooped and cried, trying to peck at death wounds and open eyes.
When the dim yellow sun lay at the top of the sky, Chagak found Seal Stalker.
At first she did not recognize him. His face was swollen and covered with blood from a neck wound, his belly slit from chest to groin, but then something deep within her brought forth a mourning cry and pushed it from her mouth, even as she looked at the body.
Seal Stalker gripped a spear in one hand. Another body lay nearby, the body of a stranger. There was a bloody wound in the man’s shoulder and another at the center of his chest. His feet were painted black and he wore a parka of fur seal and lemming skins, yet it was not decorated in the manner of any tribe Chagak knew, not the traders who called themselves Walrus Men nor her mother’s people, the Whale Hunters. Perhaps he was of the Caribou People, a distant tribe the Walrus Men sometimes spoke about. But why would caribou hunters leave their home to come to islands in the sea? The Caribou People were not traders. They knew nothing of ikyan or sea animals. And were not the Caribou People tall and light-skinned? This man was short and his skin, though discolored by death, was dark.
She looked at both men. Seal Stalker, the man she was to marry, and this stranger, an evil man. “They killed each other,” Chagak said aloud to the wind, to spirits that might be near.
