by Sue Harrison
“His sister,” she answered.
“He is sick,” the man said.
“No, he is not sick,” answered Chagak. A wave of dread made her shiver, and though the ulaq was warm, she reached for her suk and pulled it on again.
“Yes, he is sick,” the old man said. He hobbled to a niche in one wall and pulled out a bag of something dried. “Caribou leaves,” he said and, taking out several pieces, placed them in the bottom of a wooden cup. He filled a leather pouch with water from a seal stomach hung from the rafters, then held the pouch over the flame of an oil lamp.
Chagak waited, her arms tucked around Pup. Caribou leaves were good medicine but were difficult to find. The old man would not give her something so precious unless Pup were truly sick.
The baby’s weight against her chest seemed to match the heaviness Chagak carried within, and she began to rock back and forth. Perhaps the old man was right. Perhaps her brother was sick. Had he cried harder before? Had he smiled more often and slept less?
During the two days’ traveling Chagak had tried to block out all thoughts of her family. Otherwise she could not paddle, could not even rise from her sleeping mats in the morning, and now, thinking back, she found it difficult to remember how Pup had acted before their village was destroyed.
Chagak began to hum a lullaby, the song as much for her comfort as for Pup’s. What did babies do? They could not talk or walk. And Pup already smiled. But how long since she had seen him smile? How long since he had laughed?
The old man brought the cup of caribou leaf tea to Chagak. She dipped her fingers into the pungent liquid and placed them near the baby’s mouth. He turned his head away, but she pressed his lips open with her thumb and dripped the tea down his throat. He began to suck weakly at her fingertips, and slowly, drop by drop, Chagak emptied the cup.
When the baby finished, his eyelids fluttered, then closed, and Chagak pressed him to her breast. The fear he would die and the hope he would live churned with such force within her that even her breathing hurt.
The old man sat down beside her and, holding his hands out toward the baby, said, “Let me see him.”
For a moment Chagak clung tightly to the infant. She was afraid of what the old man might find, afraid that even the small hope she carried would be pulled from her, but then she handed him the child.
He laid Pup on the floor and unwrapped the sealskin that bound him. The baby winced and moved his legs in quick jerks. The old man’s hands moved over the tiny body, pressing against joints, belly and head. Finally he looked up at Chagak and asked, “Has the child been dropped?”
An image of her mother throwing the baby over the side of the ulaq came to Chagak’s mind, the sight of flames and long-haired men killing her people.
“Yes,” she said, but her throat tightened and the word came out as a sob.
“A child’s bones are very soft,” the old man said. “Something like a fish’s bones. They bend instead of breaking.” He wrapped the baby, tucking the skin carefully around the small body, then picked up the child and cradled him in his arms. “A baby will survive a fall that might kill a man, but sometimes, even if the child lives, there is damage.” His eyes moved to Chagak’s eyes and she saw the sadness there, and something within her seemed to tear open, spilling out the pain she had kept away from herself during the long days of paddling.
“Is there anything I can do for him?” Chagak asked, and her voice seemed small and far away, as though someone else had spoken from another part of the ulaq.
“Rock him. Comfort him.”
The old man handed her the baby, the tiny form so familiar to Chagak’s arms that he seemed a part of her.
“He will die?” she asked, unable to look at the old man when she asked the question.
He did not answer, and Chagak looked up at him, saw the answer in his eyes and began to weep. And in her weeping the story of her people seemed to flow from her mouth as the tears flowed from her eyes, one releasing the other.
“I was in the hills, gathering grass for weaving,” she whispered, not caring whether the man heard her or not. Her words were for the many animals on the shelves around her, for the eyes that stared at her from the shadows of the ulaq, as if these spirits needed to know what had happened. “I do not know who they were. Not Whale Hunters or traders. Twenty, maybe thirty, men with long hair. They were burning our ulakidaq. I do not know why.
“My mother came out of the ulaq. A man caught her. She had my brother in her arms.” Chagak shook her head as tears disjointed her words. “She threw my brother over the edge of the ulaq. But there was a fire … a huge fire in the ulaq’s thatching. The man cut my mother with his spear. To get away from him she and my sister jumped into the fire….” Chagak’s voice broke.
She felt a hand on her head, heard a soft murmuring. First she thought the old man was chanting, but then she realized he was saying, “More deaths. I should not have tried to hide from them. They will destroy forever.”
Chagak looked at him through her tears, saw the sudden veiling of his eyes.
“You and your brother are the only survivors?” he asked quickly.
“Yes,” Chagak said, taking up her story as though she had not heard the old man’s mumbled words. “I would have died, too, if Pup had not been alive. I would have gone with my people to the Dancing Lights.”
Chagak clutched the baby and began to rock. “If he dies,” she said, “I do not want to live. Please kill me if he dies.”
“You will live,” the old man said. “Even if he dies, you will live.”
“No,” Chagak answered, speaking not only to the old man but to the carvings that watched her, to the tiny spirits that huddled on the shelves of the ulaq. “No.” And she closed her eyes and wept.
EIGHT
CHAGAK DID NOT MEAN to sleep that night. She held Pup close to her, singing and praying, afraid that if she closed her eyes Pup’s spirit would leave her.
Sometime near dawn the storm winds quieted, and in her weariness Chagak could no longer tell whether her thoughts were true thoughts or only dreams. The old man’s carvings began to move, dancing together on the shelves, but it seemed a natural thing. Chagak watched them solemnly and did not know she was dreaming. She slept and did not know she was sleeping.
When she awoke, Pup’s open, staring eyes told Chagak he was dead. Her spirit had not been strong enough to keep him and hold her dreams as well.
She lowered her head over the baby’s still form and began her people’s mourning chant.
Chagak washed Pup’s tiny body and wrapped him in furs the old man gave her. She had no tears, but a weight at the center of her chest seemed to block all thoughts of anything but its presence.
The old man brought her a mat, one of her own, woven with the darker band at both ends. The mat was damp and full of sand, so Chagak lit two oil lamps and held the mat above them. When it was dry. Chagak beat it against the floor to dislodge the sand.
“Cry, little one,” the old man said to her as she worked.
But Chagak looked at him, her eyes widening with surprise, as if she had no need to cry, and the old man turned away.
For a long time she held her brother, stroking the soft skin of his face, singing songs, but finally the old man brought in Pup’s cradle. It, too, was damp, and one of the wooden sides was cracked.
Chagak was surprised that the old man had been able to find the cradle. Surely most of her things had been swept into the sea. Now Pup could take the cradle with him to the spirit world, and perhaps, since their father had made it, there would be some bond that would draw Pup to his people.
Chagak held the cradle in her lap as the old man walked the length of the ulaq, studying the many figures on his shelves. The ulaq was small, much smaller than her father’s, and had only three sleeping places, their curtains breaking the line of shelves at one end of the ulaq. Finally the old man chose two carvings. A seal and an otter.
Chagak watched as he sat close to an oil
lamp and tied a sinew string around each tiny animal’s neck. Then, pulling a large basket from under one of the shelves, he took out several pieces of wood. One was only a sliver, as long and thin as Chagak’s smallest finger; the other was larger, as long as her hand, but not as wide.
He worked on the smallest piece first, carving it with a crooked knife, the blade no longer than the last joint of his thumb, the handle the curved rib of an otter. He worked until he had whittled away most of the wood, until only the thinnest piece remained. But when he held it up for Chagak to see, she realized that it was a harpoon, tiny, but perfect, even the barbs of the spearhead in place. From the remaining discarded pieces of wood he carved an atlatl, a flat piece with a notch that fitted the end of the harpoon—a spear thrower to increase the distance and force of the hunters throw. These two tiny pieces he tied to the string that hung from the seal’s neck.
The larger piece of wood became an ikyak, small and perfect, and when the old man had finished it, he smoothed the ikyak with a piece of sandstone until, when he handed the thing to Chagak, the wood felt soft to her, like a newly tanned hide.
He tied the ikyak to the string on the otter’s neck and then tied both strings, one with seal and harpoon, the other with ikyak and otter, to Pup’s cradle.
“One to provide food,” he said. “One to guide him to your people at the Dancing Lights.”
Chagak nodded, but the old man’s words had given form to her fears, and she felt the choking hotness of tears filling the spaces at the corners of her eyes. “He is so small,” she whispered, and then her throat tightened and she could say nothing more.
The old man came and sat down beside her. “Why do you think I gave him an otter?” he asked. He held up the tiny ivory animal and Chagak saw the perfection of the features; the eyes, the curve of the mouth, even the separation of fingers and toes on the otter’s feet.
“Have you ever seen an otter mother forget her young?” He turned the carving over and showed Chagak the line of teats on the otter’s belly. “Otters do not get lost and they do not leave their young. She will be a mother to him until his journey ends, until he finds his true mother.”
He handed the otter to Chagak and she held it in her hands. And somehow, as she held it, the otter seemed to grow warm. Chagak looked at the old man and said, “I am called Chagak, a name my father gave me.”
The old man smiled. The telling of names was not something done lightly, for someone who knew a person’s name could control part of that one’s spirit.
“A sacred name,” he said to Chagak, thinking of the smoky translucence of the stone she had been named for. Obsidian, the spirit rock of the mountains.
“I am Shuganan,” he said.
“Of the ancient ones,” Chagak said. “A shaman’s name.”
“I make no claim to be a shaman,” Shuganan answered, “But I will pray for your brother’s safe journey.”
That night they kept the body in the ulaq with them, but the next morning Shuganan carried the cradle to the place he called his death ulaq. Chagak followed him to the low mound. Aconite, tall and dark, grew at the edges of the ulaq. The roof hole was sealed with a square of driftwood chunks bound together with nettle twine, something, unlike babiche, birds and small animals would not eat.
Shuganan used his walking stick to dig away the dirt around the door, then pried up the square of wood. An odor of mold and dampness, of stale air, came from the opened ulaq. Chagak tried to see into the darkness but could not, so finally she asked, “There are others buried here?”
Shuganan said nothing and so Chagak repeated the question, the old man finally looking at her as if surprised to see she was beside him.
“My wife,” he said, then began a chant, something in words Chagak did not know, did not understand.
Shuganan’s wife, now dead six summers, had been an old woman when she died, but was always young to him—young, so that in their last years together Shuganan had not seen her as she was but as the dark-haired girl he had given three seasons of sealskins to win.
He chanted, calling to her. Did she hear or had she found another man, a hunter who cared for her in the place of the Dancing Lights? Perhaps someone who would give her the son he had never given her. He chanted more loudly, hoping his words would carry the distance to the spirit world. This was a gift he wanted her to have and also something he could give Chagak, the safety of this child.
He set the cradle on the ulaq and carefully felt for the notches of the climbing log. He had brought an oil lamp, and when he was inside, Shuganan lit the lamp. The light threw arcs of yellow over the shelves of carvings that lined the walls. Chagak, looking down, gasped but said nothing.
Shuganan did not try to explain. Why should a man explain the gifts he gives to his wife? Who could explain feelings that did not die? How could he have lived without his wife if he had not spent the first year carving, giving her all the things she loved so she could take them with her to the Dancing Lights? Flowers, otters, bitterroot plants, sea urchins, sea ducks, geese, gulls. And shelf after shelf of babies to make up for the babies he had not been able to give her during her life.
But now I bring you a true child, he thought, then added the words to his chant, something spoken in his own people’s language. For he did not want Chagak to be afraid that his wife would take the baby from Chagak’s family. It would not be a taking but a sharing.
He turned, saw the bundle that was his wife’s body, the knees flexed and bent to the chest, the body wrapped in mats. He reached up for the cradle, then set it beside his wife. Continuing his chant, he climbed from the ulaq.
He and Chagak replaced the driftwood door, tamping dirt around the cracks. For a long time they sat in the wind at the top of the ulaq, neither speaking.
Chagak’s thoughts were on death, and as the evening darkened, she felt a blackness pressing in on her. In her mind she saw a wind like a storm wind blowing out the spirit flames of all those she had known until she was the last flame, bent and flickering against the dark.
But Shuganan said silent prayers of pleading: Please accept this gift, My Wife. All the years you wept because you could not give me a son, I also wept because I could not give you a daughter. It was not your fault but mine. I put all my power for making children into my carving and was not strong enough to create both. If you have found a young hunter, someone to give you children in that place you now live, go with him, but do not forget me. I give you this gift of a child. Take him as our son. Do not forget me. Do not forget me.
They sat until the sun set and the stars pushed through the clouds, until in the darkness Shuganan could not see the tears on Chagak’s face. Did not feel them on his own.
NINE
FOR TWO DAYS CHAGAK not leave Shuganan’s ulaq. She did not eat, and Shuganan was afraid that she had decided to join her brother and her people in death.
He rebuilt her ik, finding driftwood to replace the shattered ribs and keel, but he often returned to the ulaq, and hoped that his presence would bring some comfort. But she gave no sign that she noticed him.
On the evening of the second day she drank some broth, but it was as though she did not know she drank, as if her body moved without the knowledge of her spirit.
But the next morning Shuganan convinced her to come outside with him, to sit on the ulaq roof, to watch the sea for signs of seal.
And so they were both outside when the ducks came. They were large eider ducks: black and white males, reddish-brown females. Twenty of them landed on the beach as if it were their home, something Shuganan had never seen happen on this beach, something he could not explain.
“Look,” Chagak said, speaking for the first time since her brother’s burial.
And Shuganan’s heart expanded in a gratefulness that spilled into a prayer of thanks. For a moment they watched, but when the ducks entered a tidal pool and began to feed, Shuganan hurried into the ulaq and came back with his bola. The weapon was made of stones and sharp-edged shells tied to
the ends of ropes. The ropes were fastened together at a central handle.
It had been more than a year since Shuganan had used the weapon, so he pulled at the ropes to be sure they had not rotted. They were strong. He tried to raise the bola over his head, but his shoulder joints had stiffened and he could not.
He sat down, discouraged, but Chagak said, “I will do it. I have watched the men of my village.”
Shuganan, surprised, handed her the bola and watched as she raised it over her head, first swinging it tentatively, then with more power, the sound of stones and ropes swishing in the air. But when she slowed, Shuganan said, “Do not stop. Throw it. If you try to stop, the ropes will twist around your arm and the stones will hit you.”
Chagak increased her speed. Standing at the top of the ulaq, hair caught back by the wind, she let the bola fly. The weapon traveled sideways from her hand into a tangle of heather.
“I wanted it to go straight,” she said.
“It takes a long time to learn to throw a bola,” Shuganan answered. “Do not be discouraged.”
“But I want to get a duck.”
“They will wait for you. Practice.”
She looked at him, something, nearly a smile, shaping her mouth. “I will learn,” she said.
For the rest of that day the ducks stayed on the beach and Chagak practiced with the bola. She threw until the rope had worn grooves of raw skin in the palms of her hands, but it was good to feel the bola’s power, to watch as ropes and stones churned through the air, singing to her of their flight.
In the evening the ducks did not go back to the sea but crowded into a pond at the top of the beach.
That night, as Chagak lay in her sleeping place, she seemed to hear the whir of the bola like a soothing chant. And though she doubted that the ducks would be on the beach the next day, she had visions of the covering she would make from the eider skins, something for a baby, something that she could wrap her brother’s body in, or perhaps, she thought as sleep pulled her into dreams, something to save … something for another child … someday.
