by Sue Harrison
But then Shuganan realized the young man was not listening to him but was muttering to himself. He hobbled to Man-who-kills’ side, heard the young man say, “I will be a chief if I bring this old man back with me.”
Man-who-kills reached out for an ivory figurine, a man in an ikyak, two seals tied to the stern. For a time the young man’s fingers only hovered over the carving, but then he grasped it. Eyes wide, he looked at Shuganan.
When nothing happened, Man-who-kills smiled, then, drawing a short knife from a scabbard on his left wrist, he held it, blade toward Shuganan, and said, “I will keep this one as a gift. It is mine.”
“You may keep it,” Shuganan replied, “but it cannot belong to you. Each carving has its own spirit and belongs to itself.”
Man-who-kills moved his knife closer to Shuganan’s neck and said, “You are a fool.” But he put the seal carving back on the shelf and sheathed his knife.
Tossing his long hair back from his face, Man-who-kills said, “I am hungry. Get me food.”
Shuganan went to the food cache and squatted down, using his hands to steady himself, then dug into the sand floor of the cache. He had buried many eggs, packing them in sand and seal oil to keep over the long winter. He dug out several, watching as Man-who-kills pushed into the ulaq’s sleeping places.
Shuganan had knives hidden and did not want them found, so he held out the eggs and said, “Food.”
Man-who-kills let a curtain drop and joined Shuganan. He took an egg, pushed his finger through the shell and scooped out the contents. Shuganan handed him another, but the young man squatted down, peered into the food cache, and pulled out a seal belly container. The belly, one of many Shuganan had filled that summer, was packed with dried halibut. The man took several chunks of fish from the skin and began to eat, asking between bites, “More eggs?”
Shuganan handed him several, hoping to keep him in the ulaq as long as possible, hoping to give Chagak time to see the signal. But soon Man-who-kills threw the seal belly back into the cache and motioned Shuganan toward the climbing log.
Man-who-kills patted his stomach and grinned, showing his many teeth. “Now we will find your woman,” he said.
Shuganan hurried up the climbing log, but the man grabbed Shuganan’s parka and climbed up until his head was level with Shuganan’s. Man-who-kills stretched to reach the climbing log around Shuganan’s body and said, “I would not want your digging stick through my throat, old man.”
They reached the top at the same time, and Shuganan lifted his eyes toward the berry hills, wondering if Chagak had seen his sign, hoping she had already taken refuge. But as he looked, he saw her, and he felt Man-who-kills stiffen against his back and so knew that he had seen her also.
She had crested a hill, two berry bags hanging from each arm. The wind was blowing her long black hair, and the dark feathers of her suk ruffled as she walked.
Shuganan’s heart pulsed in sorrow. “Look up, my Chagak,” he whispered. “Look up and run, my precious one.”
And as if hearing his words, she looked toward the ulaq and stopped, then suddenly she dropped her berry bags, turned and ran. Man-who-kills jumped from the roof hole and ran after her.
Shuganan hobbled after him, calling to Tugix as he followed, “Protect your child! Send your wind!” But the mountain did not seem to hear.
When Shuganan reached the hill where Chagak had dropped her berry bags, he could see both the young man and the girl. They were still running. Man-who-kills drew closer to Chagak with each step, and finally he reached out and grabbed her hair. He jerked her to the ground and Shuganan waited, thinking, If he takes her, I will kill him, even as he is upon her. But Man-who-kills twisted her hair around his fist and pulled her with him back up the hill.
Shuganan watched as they drew close, then he stooped and picked up the berries that had spilled from Chagak’s woven bags and followed Man-who-kills back to the ulaq.
ELEVEN
THEY WERE TOGETHER IN the large room of the ulaq. Shuganan sat beside an oil lamp, a piece of ivory in one hand, a pumice abrader in the other.
Chagak was weaving a grass floor mat. The weaving was strung over a bare piece of wall near the climbing log. Shuganan had pounded hanging pegs shoulder height, about an arm’s length apart, into the wall. Chagak had tied a piece of braided sinew between the pegs and to the sinew she tied the warp strands of grass, letting them dangle at the other end. She finger-wove the weft grass over and under the warp, using only a long needle to aid her weaving and a forked halibut bone to push the grass of the new row tightly against the rest.
Man-who-kills watched them, a knife turning slowly in his thick fingers. Chagak could feel the heat of his eyes against her back as she worked.
She had no doubt that he was one of the tribe that had destroyed her village, and fear and anger quickened her heart and made her hands cold and clumsy as she worked.
Shuganan called him Man-who-kills and spoke to him in a language Chagak had difficulty understanding. The words were clipped and rough; even Shuganan’s voice sounded harsh speaking it. But as she listened, Chagak realized it was a language that had some similarity to her own, and she could occasionally pick out words and phrases.
Man-who-kills was not a tall man, but his arms and legs were heavily muscled and his neck was wide and heavy, making a straight line from his chin to his chest. His eyes were small, set deeply into the creases of his face, but when he looked toward an oil lamp, the light picked up the dark brown irises, the gray of the whites, pupils small and pinched like the pupils of a man trying to see the sun.
His parka, though old, was well made, sewn in small squares of many different skins, stiff panels of fur seal skins at front and back, soft lemming skins sewn together for sides and sleeves.
Chagak could not help but wonder about the woman who had made Man-who-kills’ clothing. Was she wife or mother? Did she know the terrible things he would do while wearing the beautiful clothes she made him?
When he first caught Chagak, Man-who-kills had jerked her hair so hard, she had fallen and knocked the breath from her chest.
Then she had seen the square fierceness of his face, the scar that ran crookedly from the bridge of his nose across his left cheek, the thin growth of oiled hair that hung from his upper lip in two strands over his mouth.
Once in the ulaq, she saw the shabby condition of his well-made clothing and knew that he had not returned to his village for many days, perhaps months, so even if he had a wife he would need a woman, would expect Shuganan to give him the hospitality of nights with Chagak.
It was the custom of all people, Chagak knew, but in a village as large as Chagak’s there were enough women so one such as Chagak’s mother, who did not want to sleep with a strange man, did not have to. There were too many women ready to honor a visitor from another village.
Chagak herself had never slept with a man. Her father had saved her to get the larger bride price given for a virgin. This had never bothered Chagak, though sometimes she felt left out when other girls giggled and talked of nights spent with visiting hunters.
But after Seal Stalker asked for her, Chagak wanted only him and was glad her father had not given her as an entertainment for others. And now as she knew Man-who-kills’ eyes were on her, she felt only revulsion and a growing anguish, as though Man-who-kills’ touch would add to Seal Stalker’s death wounds.
When they had returned to the ulaq, Chagak did not take off her suk. Although the garment was made of fragile birdskins, it seemed to be a protection against the man’s probing eyes.
Man-who-kills took off his parka, but Shuganan, glancing at Chagak, did not.
Soon after entering the ulaq, Man-who-kills chose a carving from the shelves and strung it on the amulet cord that hung from his neck.
The carving was of a man in an ikyak dragging two seals, and in taking it Man-who-kills ruined Shuganan’s village scene. For one shelf had been set with tiny figurines in place as though they were the parts of
a village: men and women fishing, children playing, old men gathering sea urchins, boys climbing for eggs, women weaving, sewing and cooking.
One figure in particular that Chagak longed to touch, to hold, was of a mother nursing a baby. There was something about the way the mother held her head, the way she was watching her baby, that reminded Chagak of her own mother. And though the wanting was deep enough within her to be an ache, she had never asked Shuganan to let her touch it. How could she ask to touch something so sacred?
It made her angry that Man-who-kills had taken the hunter, but he seemed to be a man who respected nothing. Even when Shuganan and Man-who-kills were talking, Man-who-kills spoke with an insolence that made Chagak shudder.
Chagak reached into her storage basket for more grass and Man-who-kills said something to her. She glanced at him and said, “I do not understand. I do not know your language.”
Shuganan came and sat beside her. His back was to the weaving, his face toward Man-who-kills.
“What did he say?” Chagak whispered without turning her head, her fingers still weaving.
“He thought you were my woman.”
“Let me be your woman, then,” Chagak answered. “I will sleep with you.”
“No,” Shuganan said, and Chagak turned and tried to see in his face the reason for his answer.
“If I told him you were my woman, he would take you to his bed as hospitality. It is that way among his people. He would not even have to ask.”
“Who did you say I was?” Chagak asked, turning again to her weaving.
“Granddaughter.”
There was a firmness in the word that lifted some of Chagak’s anxiety. It was good to belong to someone again.
“And he cannot take me if I am your granddaughter?” she asked.
“Not without gifts,” Shuganan answered, then added, “It gives us time.”
Chagak nodded, then asked, “How did you learn his language?”
Shuganan’s head jerked toward her, and even in the dim light of the ulaq Chagak saw the pain in his eyes.
But before he could answer, Man-who-kills said something, his voice low and angry. Chagak hunched her shoulders and pushed herself down into her suk, as though the folds of the garment could hide her.
“What does he say?” Chagak whispered, her voice so small she wondered if Shuganan could hear her.
“He does not want us to talk,” Shuganan said, and he moved to a place near an oil lamp where his body blocked Man-who-kills’ view of Chagak.
Shuganan wished he could sleep. The night spread its darkness in through the open roof hole, and the weariness that had begun at Shuganan’s shoulders spread its weight to his fingertips.
How could he use the strength of his spirit to stand against Man-who-kills when the night took away every desire but to sleep?
Shuganan forced himself to watch Chagak, and he marveled that she still could weave, fingers guiding the weaving needle so quickly.
She is a beautiful woman, Shuganan thought, and remembered his joy when he had first seen her. The long eyes, heavily lashed, her small perfect mouth. She had been like a gift to Shuganan, as if Tugix, seeing his need for beauty, had given him the girl as inspiration for his carvings, but now her beauty was a curse, and he wished she was too tall, with broken teeth and misshapen mouth.
“So you do not have a woman?” Man-who-kills had said after dragging Chagak back to the ulaq. “And you sleep alone at night?”
“She is not my woman,” Shuganan had answered. “She is my granddaughter.”
“Why does she not speak our language then?”
“Her mother was from another tribe. From the village you destroyed.”
Man-who-kills had laughed, the laughter coming from his mouth in short bursts, erratic and sudden like birds flying from cliff holes.
Now, as Shuganan sat watching Chagak, he thought of her question. There could be many reasons why he spoke Man-who-kills’ language. But there was something in Chagak that would sense the truth. How would she feel when she knew?
It would have been better if she had found another beach, someone else to live with. He could never be husband to her. He was too old to hunt well, too old to give her sons. Besides, he had never been able to give his wife sons or daughters, not in all the years they had been together. He knew this, yet he had not hurried to take Chagak to the Whale Hunters. Had there been something in him that had hoped Chagak could be his wife?
When she described those who destroyed her village, Shuganan had known they were the Short Ones. He had known they might come to his beach. He should have taken Chagak to the Whale Hunters. There were days wasted after Pup’s death. Why had he waited?
Shuganan picked up his carving knife and a piece of bone. He looked at Man-who-kills, but the man evidently saw no threat in the short, small-bladed knife.
Shuganan had used the knife so often that the bone handle seemed to shape itself to his fingers, to the bumps and hollows left by the stiffening disease that caused so much pain.
Shuganan had ceased praying for release from the disease, realizing at last that the carvings he made while in pain had a depth to them unmatched by those he made without pain, as if the pain were also a knife, carving away what was not needed, revealing more clearly the truth of the people and animals hidden in ivory and bone.
Now the pain was as intense as anything he had known. The ache of his fingers traveled up his arms and joined the ache that pushed at the walls of his heart.
Chagak would suffer for his selfishness, she who had already suffered so much.
TWELVE
CHAGAK’S EYES BURNED AND her shoulders ached, but her fingers still moved over her weaving. It is better to weave than to be forced to Man-who-kills’ sleeping place, she thought.
The oil lamp nearest her began to smoke. Chagak blew out the flame, pulled her woman’s knife from the scabbard at her waist and trimmed the char from the wicks.
Man-who-kills said something to Shuganan, and Shuganan said to Chagak, “Leave it out. He wants to sleep.”
Chagak looked at the old man, her eyes wide with dread, but Shuganan looked away. He spoke to Man-who-kills and led him to the honored back sleeping room, Shuganan’s own room, closed off from the rest of the ulaq with curtains Chagak had recently made.
Chagak wrapped her arms around herself and began backing toward the climbing log. Perhaps she could be gone before either man noticed. She could take her ik, paddle all night. There were many places to hide along the coast—caves and inlets.
As Shuganan knelt and pulled the curtain aside, he caught sight of Chagak, her back against the climbing log. Pain pressed into his chest, sorrow that she would leave him, but he pushed it aside, embarrassed that he could be so selfish, thinking of himself when Chagak had so much to fear.
“You see,” said Shuganan, pulling Man-who-kills into the sleeping place with him, “there are places here for your weapons.” The mats on the floor were new, woven by Chagak to replace the cut grass Shuganan had used when his wife’s mats were beyond repair. During the month they had been together, Chagak had also made him feather-stuffed pillows with fur seal hide covers. Shuganan pointed to the pillows, but suddenly Man-who-kills shouted and lunged from the sleeping place.
In one skidding movement he grabbed Chagak’s ankles, her feet on the top notch of the climbing log, and threw her to the floor.
Shuganan knelt beside her, but Chagak lay without moving, her long hair hiding her face.
Man-who-kills clasped a handful of her hair and jerked her head back, exposing her long throat. Pulling a knife from his wrist scabbard, he held it close below her left ear.
“Leave her alone,” Shuganan said. “She does not belong to you.”
“Tell her she will be dead if she tries that again.”
“He says he will kill you if you try to escape again,” Shuganan told the girl.
But Chagak began to laugh, the laugh high and yipping like the sound of an otter. “Good,” she
said. “Tell him to kill me. Tell him he should have killed me long ago, when he killed my people. It will be an easy way to die, this knife. I do not fear my own blood. It will be better than dying in fire as my mother and sister did, better than having my belly slit like my father.”
She began to laugh again and Man-who-kills closed a hand over her mouth. “What did she say?”
“She says to kill her,” Shuganan answered.
“What is wrong with her? Why does she laugh?”
“She wants to be with her people. She wants to be dead.”
“She is your granddaughter. Our warriors killed your son, her father?”
“Yes.” The lie came easily.
“She is too beautiful to be anything of yours,” Man-who-kills snapped.
Shuganan shrugged.
Keeping his hand over Chagak’s mouth, Man-who-kills pulled his knife away from her throat and in one quick movement slit the front of Chagak’s suk.
Chagak had prepared herself for the pain of the knife, for the slitting of her throat. She held her teeth tightly together, determined she would not scream when he cut her, but when she saw what he had done to her suk—the garment precious because her mother had made it—she began to scream.
Man-who-kills laughed, and his laughter turned Chagak’s horror into anger. She pulled her woman’s knife from its sheath under her suk and slashed Man-who-kills’ cheek.
“Chagak, no!” she heard Shuganan yell, but she did not care; if the man was going to kill her, let him bear the scars of her knife for a remembrance.
Man-who-kills grasped her hand and squeezed. Chagak felt the small bones began to ache, then the man moved his fingers so Chagak’s knuckles ground together until she could no longer hold the knife. Pinning her to the floor, the man spread the cut edges of her suk and dropped to sit on her chest.
“Do not kill her,” Shuganan said.
Man-who-kills pressed a hand to his bleeding cheek. Shuganan leaned down, saw the cut was not deep.
“She needs to be dead,” Man-who-kills said, the words coming from clenched teeth.
