by Sue Harrison
Chagak thanked him and stood, but he grabbed one of her ankles and held her, speaking to her.
“He says soon you will not need that suk,” Shuganan said. “He will bring you otter skins so you can make a proper suk.”
The muscles of Chagak’s jaw tightened. “Tell him I will keep this one also, since my mother made it for me.”
“Chagak,” Shuganan said, “you will have to make the suk. He is not a man who will turn away if you insult his gifts.”
“I will be gone before then,” she said, and did not miss the quick shadow of sadness in Shuganan’s eyes.
“Yes,” he answered.
Then, holding up the strip of leather and pointing to Man-who-kills’ knife, Chagak thanked him. Man-who-kills grunted and released Chagak’s ankle, and she returned to her place in the dark corner, laid the suk over her lap and, using an awl, punched holes down both sides of the leather strip.
Shuganan kept chunks of seal sinew in a dry wall niche just as Chagak’s mother had. Since her seam was long, Chagak selected the longest sinew and, using her teeth and awl, pulled away a strip from the chunk. With her needle she teased a finer piece from the strip, tied it tightly to the end of her needle and began to pull it through the fine birdskins of her suk.
She sewed the leather strip up both sides and across the bottom but left the top open, then, being sure that neither man saw her, she curled several long strands of sinew around her fingers and worked them down the length of the strip until they were at the bottom of her suk.
Using her awl, Chagak made a line of holes across the leather just above the coil of sinew, then sewed the coil inside.
Again, watching that Man-who-kills did not see her, she slipped a small ivory needle case down the length of the leather strip. There were several needles inside and the top of the case served as a thimble for forcing an awl through thick leather. She made another seam across the leather and sealed the needle case inside.
Working carefully, she filled the leather strip: lamp wicks; a packet of dried caribou leaf for medicine; a mesh berry bag, folded small; shell fishhooks and a fine line of nettle fiber; flint and a fire stone, each wrapped in a leather pouch. All things she would need when she had left this place; all things she would need when hiding from Man-who-kills.
FOURTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING CHAGAK made herself watch Man-who-kills, the way he ate, the way he stood, the way he walked. Though her spirit shrank from the man and her eyes fought against the watching, Chagak would not allow herself to look away. All men had certain ways of doing things, of speaking, of sitting and standing. She must know when Man-who-kills worked, when he slept, when he merely sat, doing nothing. How else could she plan the best moment for her escape?
That morning Chagak had her cooking stone heated. When Man-who-kills demanded fried meat, she cooked it quickly. She had water ready for him to drink, and when he left the ulaq, Chagak took a partially tanned hair seal hide and followed Man-who-kills to the beach.
Man-who-kills went to his ikyak, but Chagak stopped some distance away and unrolled the hide. She would finish scraping the hide, then cut it into boot tops for Shuganan.
She had done the first scraping, cutting the thick soft layer of fat and tiny blood vessels from the flesh side of the hide, then soaking it until the hair slipped off easily with pressure from a blunt-edged knife. Now Chagak would stake it out, scraping and smoothing the hide until it was clean of all remaining hair and flesh. Then she would let it dry.
Chagak spread the hide out on the beach and, padding her hand with a wad of leather, used a fist-sized rock to pound in the first stake. Staking was a difficult job, something that men of her village helped their women do, but Man-who-kills, though he turned from inspecting his ikyak and watched Chagak struggling with the hide, made no offer to help her stretch the skin or pound in the stakes.
Finally Shuganan came from the ulaq and helped Chagak. Shuganan gripped the hide and leaned against it to stretch the skin while Chagak pounded in the stakes. Once, when Shuganan’s fingers slipped and he fell hard to the ground, Man-who-kills laughed. But Shuganan stood up and again clasped the hide, his crooked fingers white with the strain of pulling. Chagak’s anger grew with each stroke from her pounding stone, beat into her spirit with the rhythm of stone against stake. But then she reminded herself why she was outside, why she had chosen to scrape the hide. She wanted to watch Man-who-kills. There was that chance that she would see something to aid her escape.
Finally Chagak pounded in the last stake. The hide was not as tight as she liked it to be, as it had been when her father or uncle had helped her, but it was not so loose that the scraping bone caught and tore the hide.
The scraping bone had belonged to Chagak’s mother. It was made from a caribou leg bone her father had bought in trade from the Walrus Men. He had soaked it in oil to soften it, then cut off one end at an angle, dug the marrow from the center and serrated the cut end. Chagak had been only a small child then, but she still remembered him making the scraper, and she remembered how her mother had treasured it.
Chagak held the scraper at an angle with the ground, the serrated edge pressed against the hide and pointing toward herself. A leather thong tied at the top of the scraper and looped around her forearm kept the tool steady in her hand.
The hide was from a hair seal that Shuganan had taken just after Chagak came to his beach. It had been a small seal, but even so the hide was twice as wide as Chagak could reach, and she worked it in a circle, starting from the center and scraping back, moving around the entire skin.
Once she had removed the last bits of flesh, she would use a pumice rubbing stone to thin the thicker areas at the center of the back so the hide would not become stiff and useless.
The sun was warm, and in the monotonous rhythm of her work Chagak could almost forget Man-who-kills, almost believe she was on her own beach and would soon be Seal Stalker’s bride.
She closed her eyes and imagined her mother beside her, telling stories of good wives and the joys of being a mother.
The memories brought pain but, for the first time, also joy, and the ache that had not left her chest since her village had been destroyed was eased by the closeness of her mother’s spirit.
The sound of an ikyak did not startle Chagak, though she knew both Shuganan and Man-who-kills were on the beach. When she had lived with her people, there was always the sound of an ikyak, always the call of a man returning from the hunt.
But suddenly Chagak realized that the one who called was speaking the strange harsh words of Man-who-kills’ language, and she opened her eyes, looked out toward the ocean to see a man nearly at the shore. Man-who-kills was laughing as he waded into the water to guide the ikyak.
Then Shuganan was beside her, standing between Chagak and the man in the ikyak. “Go to the ulaq, Chagak,” he said, his voice low. “Stay in a dark corner. Set out food but do not take off your suk.”
She stood up, then hesitated, looking down at the stretched sealskin. If she left it, the hide might harden in the sun.
“Leave it,” Shuganan whispered.
She turned and walked up the beach. Shuganan hurried beside her.
Chagak had laid a long grass mat in the center of the room and arranged fish, eggs and dried whelks in piles on the mat. Now she squatted in the corner, saying nothing, waiting. Shuganan sat beside her.
Once the old man hobbled to an oil lamp, ran his hand along the edge of the oil bowl, pinched several of the cold wicks between his fingers. Then he came back to Chagak, his hands black with soot, and rubbed it over her cheeks and along the ridge of her nose.
Chagak looked at him in surprise, but when she started to speak, he laid his finger against her lips and said, “Say nothing. Do not look at Man-who-kills or his friend. Do not take off your suk. Do nothing to draw attention to yourself.”
Finally the two young men came into the ulaq. Chagak glanced at the new man as he slid down the climbing log, but then she turned, p
ressing herself smaller into the shadows of the ulaq. She picked up a basket she was finishing and bent her head over the work and, using her teeth, trimmed the bits of grasses that stuck out here and there.
Man-who-kills said something to Shuganan and the old man moved to the center of the ulaq, neither offering open palms to the stranger nor squatting beside him.
Chagak kept her head bent. She moved her eyes toward the men and looked at them through the curtain of her hair. The new man was staring at Shuganan’s carvings. He slipped off his parka and Man-who-kills did the same. They were about the same height, but Man-who-kills had wider shoulders, a more powerful build.
The new man had long hair but, unlike Man-who-kills, did not let it hang loose. Instead, it was bound at the nape of his neck with a strip of white fur. His face was flat, the skin drawn tight over his cheeks and nose so that his round nostrils always seemed flared and moved in and out with each breath. He had brown broken teeth.
His voice was harsh, like the grating of an ik against a gravel beach, something that had always made Chagak shiver with clenched teeth.
She bent so low over her work that her hair brushed the ulaq floor, and she barely allowed her hands to move on the basket for fear the movement of one finger might attract the men’s attention. She tried not to look at them. Why chance the catching and clinging of spirits that sometimes comes through the eyes?
Man-who-kills said something and pointed to the shelves of carvings, then he and his friend moved around the ulaq, occasionally picking up a carving, taking it to an oil lamp to study, then returning it to the shelf.
Shuganan tried to move so his body was always between the men and Chagak. Man-who-kills had offered a bride price for the woman, but who could say? Two men together often did things one would not. Perhaps they would both demand the hospitality of having a woman. He had never asked Chagak if she had been with a man. He knew she was to marry, so perhaps she had shared a sleeping place with her young man. His wife’s tribe, the Whale Hunters, took their young women easily. An unmarried woman was allowed any man but her brothers, father or grandfather. Among many seal-hunting tribes, however, women were often saved until marriage.
It would be better for Chagak if she had some experience with men.
Man-who-kills’ friend picked up the carving of a baleen whale, cupped it in his hands. “This is something I need,” he said to Shuganan. “Will you trade for it?”
Shuganan met the man’s narrow eyes. “No,” he said. “I do not trade for any of these things. They have their own spirits. They do not belong to me.”
Man-who-kills lifted the corners of his mouth, showing his teeth, and the muscles of his jaw made knots along the sides of his face. “It will be a gift,” he said slowly, his eyes on Shuganan. “Sees-far needs a spirit protector.” Man-who-kills gripped the carving that hung from a cord around his neck.
Shuganan said nothing, but his thoughts were on his weapons, the knife still hidden in Chagak’s sleeping place, the thin sharp blade of the knife he kept in the grass of his sleeping place. But he was an old man. And each night Man-who-kills tied his hands and ankles, looping the ends of the rope over the rafters above the sleeping place.
How will I kill two when I could not kill one? he asked himself. He wished he were a young man and did not have the swollen joints that slowed his run to a walk and stole strength from his arms.
The two young men continued around the ulaq, studying each carving. Finally Sees-far turned to Shuganan and said, “Your woman can make me a cord for this?” He held out the whale carving.
Before Shuganan could answer, Man-who-kills said, “She is his granddaughter.”
Sees-far smiled and scratched under his apron. “Free to all?”
“No,” Shuganan said, stepping closer to the man, but Man-who-kills moved between them.
“He asks a bride price,” Man-who-kills said. “I have spoken for her.”
Sees-far smirked. “So that is why you have stayed away from the fighting. Your father thinks you are dead.” He laughed. “Now he will wish you were dead. Better dead than living in shame, tied to a woman’s crotch.”
“You are stupid,” Man-who-kills said. The veins of his temples were suddenly round and pulsing under his skin. “The one who named you Sees-far should have called you Sees-nothing. You have studied all these carvings and you do not know who this man is?”
For a moment Man-who-kills turned away, but then he spun back, pushing Sees-far against the curtained opening of a sleeping place. “He is Shuganan. You do not remember the stories? Shuganan. I have found Shuganan.
“He is not dead, but he does not want to return to our people. How could I leave? He would disappear again. How could I take that chance? But now you have come. You must return to my father and tell him I have found Shuganan and that I have married his granddaughter.”
Shuganan heard the words with dread. It was as Man-who-kills said. Before Sees-far came, there had been a chance Shuganan could kill Man-who-kills and thus he and Chagak would remain hidden, but now …
Man-who-kills took the whale from Sees-far and squatted beside Chagak. “Tell her to make a cord for it,” he said to Shuganan.
Shuganan repeated the words in Chagak’s language.
Man-who-kills grasped Chagak’s hair, pulled her head up and looked into her soot-darkened face. “Stupid woman,” he said.
He turned to Shuganan. “Tell her Sees-far will be leaving tomorrow morning and she must prepare a good meal for him. Tell her Sees-far will not need the hospitality of a woman since he is staying only one night. Tell her also to wash her face. I do not want an ugly wife.”
That night Man-who-kills left Shuganan’s ankles untied. “There are two of us, old man,” he said. “You could never kill us both.”
Shuganan, lying still as Man-who-kills tied his wrists together, said nothing. During the nightly ritual of tying, Shuganan made many plans for killing Man-who-kills, but each night he also discarded each plan, having come across nothing that would ensure Man-who-kills’ death and Chagak’s safety. This night, with two Short Ones in his ulaq, Shuganan made no plans at all.
The next morning Man-who-kills left him tied and Shuganan lay in his sleeping place, listening to the men talk, knowing from their comments that Chagak was serving them food.
“She is a good woman, that one,” Sees-far said, his voice bulging over the laugh that he seemed to carry in his throat whenever he spoke of Chagak. “Too bad you are not man enough to share her.”
For a time there was silence, then Man-who-kills said, “How can I share her when I have not had her myself?”
“Take her. Who will stop you?”
“You are a fool. You see the power the old man has. You see the statues around you. How old are the stories of Shuganan? We both heard them as children and our fathers say the same. He is too old to be alive, but he lives. You do not think he has power?”
“So you do not kill him, but you tie him each night. That does not make him angry?”
“His spirit knows I could kill him and do not. What is a little rope? Besides, I plan to take Chagak as wife. Any man has the right to fight for a woman, so I fight with ropes.”
Shuganan closed his eyes. Power without power. It was as though he were a young man again, choosing to follow a way that displeased his father, that was against the teaching and customs of his tribe. The power of the spirit against the power of killing and taking.
In his frustration, Shuganan began to pull at the ropes that tied his wrists. With the rope looped up over the rafters, there was not enough slack for Shuganan to reach his hidden knives. Shuganan worked until his wrists were raw, but then he heard Man-who-kills’ voice rise in sudden excitement, and Shuganan lay still, listening again.
“It is our plan,” Sees-far was saying. “We will return to our beaches for the winter, then next spring …” There was a slapping sound as if Sees-far had pounded his fist into the palm of his hand.
“You have scouted th
eir village? You know their defenses?”
“I was one of the scouts. They sent me this way before returning home to see if I could find you.”
“You have found me. But you also see that I cannot leave here. There are too many statues for one ikyak, even for two, and I cannot leave the old man or he may find a new beach. Then who can say how long it will take to find him?
“Tell my father what you have seen. Tell him to have the men stop here first, before fighting, and I will go with you. By then, I will have Chagak filled with a son and the child will bind her to me.”
“You are so sure you can make a son,” Sees-far said and laughed.
“I have all winter to try,” Man-who-kills said and he also laughed.
Anger pushed from Shuganan’s heart down his arms and the ropes seemed suddenly tighter, harsher on the burned skin of his wrists.
There was movement in the other room; Sees-far spoke to Chagak, but the girl was silent. Shuganan heard the men climbing the log, then Man-who-kills said, “Show my father the whale carving. Show him and tell him I will make Shuganan carve many whales, enough so that each warrior may wear one. With each of us holding such power, how can they stand against us?”
Shuganan lay back on his mats. His wife’s people. They would attack his wife’s people. He must warn the Whale Hunters soon or he would have to wait until spring. An old man could not travel in the sudden storms of winter.
“I will warn them,” Shuganan whispered. “I will kill Man-who-kills and then I will warn them.”
FIFTEEN
“I SAID YOU COULD use a knife?” Man-who-kills asked, pointing to the small knife Shuganan held.
“It is my carving knife,” he told Man-who-kills. “You have seen me use it before.”
“I do not want you to have a knife.”
“I am an old man. I must carve while I am still alive.” He gestured toward his pile of ivory and bone. “You see how much I have to do.”
“I do not want you to have a knife,” Man-who-kills said again, his voice rising.
