by Sue Harrison
Kayugh’s anger built until, forgetting all he had learned of hunting and traveling the sea, he thrust his paddle into the air and screamed out his frustration. He gave no thought to the animals he frightened, to the seals that would hear.
He screamed until his throat burned with the screaming, and until he had emptied his anger into the sky.
Then Kayugh closed his eyes and in the darkness behind his eyelids saw the image of his son’s face. And Kayugh thought: Amgigh does not need to go alone. I can go with him.
Who says it must be mother who guides her children to the spirit world? Crooked Nose will care for Red Berry. I have no wife who needs me.
But then he thought, Should a hunter give himself for a child, a baby that might die even if his mother had lived? Was it better to give himself for his son or to keep his life for his people?
Perhaps he chose death to avoid life, to avoid the sorrow of losing two wives, then a son, or perhaps, if he chose life, it was because he feared death. Who could say?
Kayugh turned from his thoughts and scanned the sea, then moved his ikyak south toward the dark line of land. For days they had passed nothing but narrow beaches and high cliffs, places that thrust into the sea with no sheltering coves, no protection from the wind. But now, as Kayugh moved his ikyak closer to the wall of cliffs, he saw the turn in the rock, the sudden spume of spray that often told of a cove beyond. He paddled quickly, moving forward and closer to the land. Suddenly the cliffs split; a cove, wide and with beach, sloped back into grassy hills. The beach was large enough to hold tidal pools, and kelp fanned out in a dark mass around the cliffs.
Kayugh glanced at the sun. It was near setting. By now his people, far behind, would have made camp on some small beach.
Kayugh turned his ikyak and started back. Tomorrow he would return. They would claim this good beach and build a village far into the hills, away from any waves that might come.
And so I will live another day, Kayugh told himself, another day until I bring our people here. Then I will decide for myself and my son. By then, perhaps Blue Shell will have her baby, and my son will live.
TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAGAK WOKE EARLY. She felt her son press his mouth over her nipple, felt the tingle of her breast as it released its milk.
Today they would name the baby. They would have a small feast, she and Shuganan, then the next day prepare for a journey to the Whale Hunters.
Chagak was afraid her grandfather, Many Whales, would not remember her. How many years had it been since her grandfather visited the First Men’s village? Three? Four? And even then her mother had been quick to keep her out of Many Whales’ way, sending Chagak and her sister to fetch water, to look for roots, to gather sea urchins.
And even if he did remember her, he and the men of his tribe might not believe what she and Shuganan told them. Then the Short Ones would come and there would be another slaughter. Chagak shuddered but reminded herself of Shuganan’s wisdom. He would know what to say to convince the Whale Hunters.
Then sea otter’s voice seemed to come to her, to whisper that, even if the Whale Hunters believed Shuganan, even if they fought the Short Ones and defeated them, there was danger to her son.
Yes, Chagak thought, if they find that my son was fathered by an enemy, they will kill the child. The thought made an emptiness come into her chest, a hollow that she knew could draw evil spirits, so she said aloud, “No one will know. I will not tell and Shuganan will not tell. The child will be safe.”
As though he had understood her words, the baby gave a short cry, and Chagak crawled from her sleeping place. She pulled the baby from her suk. In another moon he would be big enough to sleep in the wood-framed cradle Shuganan had made and hung in Chagak’s sleeping place. But now she was glad to have him close to her in the night.
She unwrapped him and placed the soiled sealskins that covered him in the basket of sea water she kept by the climbing log. Later she would wring out the skins and hang them from the rafters. They would dry stiff and hard, but if she stretched them and worked them with her teeth and fingers, they would be soft enough to use again.
When Chagak finished with the baby, she wrapped him in fresh skins and tucked him back into her suk. Because it was the naming day, she was supposed to stay in the ulaq until Shuganan prepared a driftwood fire on the beach. But since Man-who-kills had beaten him, Shuganan was slow to rise in the morning. Chagak, tired of the stale ulaq air and tired of waiting, climbed up the log and opened the door flap. The morning was gray but bright, and the wind carried the rich oily smell of seal.
But what man had been hunting seal? Not Shuganan. Chagak climbed from the ulaq and looked toward the sea. Her eyes widened and, wrapping both arms around the baby, she slid down the ulaq and ran to the beach.
Shuganan awoke and lay still, listening to hear if Chagak was up. Many mornings since Man-who-kills had beaten him, Shuganan’s arm and leg joints ached so badly, he could not rise from his bed of grass and furs. On those days he moved only a little at first, then gradually more and more until he could get up.
But today was the naming ceremony. He could not stay in his bed. Slowly he straightened his legs. Pain brought tears and, unable to move his hands to his face, Shuganan wiped his cheeks against his shoulders.
What good am I? Shuganan thought. I cannot even get up from my own bed. How will I paddle an ikyak? How will I bring meat for Chagak and the baby? She needs a hunter.
He called for Chagak, but she did not answer. He called again, surprised that she did not come. It was the naming day. What was more sacred than the naming day? Chagak was to stay in the ulaq until he had prepared a beach fire for the ceremony.
A sudden pulse of fear numbed Shuganan’s arms. He thought he had convinced Chagak to keep the baby, but perhaps not. What if she had done something to him so he could not be named, so he could not make claim to his spirit and to a place in the spirit world? Shuganan’s fear sharpened to pain, and he pressed his hands against his chest, took a shuddering breath.
Surely Chagak understood the importance of the baby’s life in the plan they had discussed. But perhaps she had no real need for revenge. Perhaps she wanted only to escape. She could do that more easily without an old man who could not hunt or paddle an ikyak, and without a baby.
Ignoring the pain, Shuganan pushed himself to a sitting position and called again. Still no answer.
She is only emptying night baskets, Shuganan thought, but then saw his basket in the corner of his sleeping place. Perhaps she had forgotten the naming ceremony and just went outside. But Shuganan realized the foolishness of the thought, so it brought no comfort.
Shuganan moved his shoulders and, using his good arm for leverage, pushed himself from his bed.
When he stood, the stiffness of his knees seemed to be the only thing that held him, and he moved with slow, shuffling steps.
I should have spoken more about the baby, he thought. I should have let Chagak tell me her true feelings instead of trying to make her see the child as a blessing. What made me pretend …
“Shuganan!”
Chagak clambered down the climbing log and nearly ran into Shuganan, but his relief was so great that he merely laughed. “I called,” he said weakly, then laughed again.
Chagak danced around him, the words coming from her mouth in rhythm like a song: “Come. You must come! Wait until you see!”
She helped him up the climbing log, and when Shuganan was at the top of the ulaq and felt the warmth of the wind, he thought that Chagak merely felt the joy of a warm day, but as she helped him from the roof hole he saw the true reason for her excitement, and the strength of his wonder nearly brought him to his knees.
“Tugix did this,” he whispered to her as they stared at the thing that had been given to them. It lay stretched out on their beach, the tail still in the water.
“We will never starve,” Chagak said. “We will always have oil for our lamps. And we will save the jawbones as beams for our ulaq,
better than the wood beams the sea brings us.”
Shuganan shook his head. A whale. Who could believe that such a gift would be given to them? Its dark skin still gleamed with wetness from the sea, and even from the ulaq Shuganan could see the white of its huge lower jaw. The long baleen fibers in its mouth would make strong, waterproof baskets, and its meat would be rich and sweet. The oil boiled from its bones would burn without smoke, and the blubber would give strength in the coldest days of winter.
“Can we still have the naming ceremony?” Chagak asked in a small voice.
Shuganan laughed. “Have you ever seen a better naming gift? What is usually given, a few sealskins, a seal stomach of oil? Meat for the feast?”
And Chagak, too, laughed.
“We will have a ceremony, but first we must claim the whale. Bring my spear and some rope. Go quickly.”
Shuganan moved slowly to the animal. The smell of sea and fish was strong in the wind, and Shuganan tried to remember when a whale had last been washed to this beach. Perhaps when he was still a young man, when he first brought his wife to this island. And for an instant his wife’s face was clear in Shuganan’s mind. Sorrow gripped him, as though the years had not softened the pain, and Shuganan was filled with the weariness of his great age. But then he saw Chagak bringing the rope and spear from the ulaq, her slim legs skipping over rocks and sand, the bulge of the baby under her suk. His sorrow lifted, leaving the remembrance of what he must do.
When Chagak reached his side and handed him the spear, Shuganan pushed it into the ground. He tied one end of the rope to the spear shaft, the other end around the whale’s tail. Its skin had begun to dry, leaving the white of the sea salt in lines across the body. But the tail was still in the water, and when the waves washed against it, they returned to the sea carrying blue and green circles of oil washed from the whale’s hide, as though the sea, in giving the gift, did not give without asking something in return.
Shuganan raised his hands to the waves. “Listen. Listen,” he said, his voice singing above the wind. “A gift has been given. This Mighty One chooses to give himself to Shuganan and Chagak in honor of son and grandson. Respect the whale’s wishes. Do not take him back to the sea.”
He turned four times, to each direction of the wind, then to Tugix, and lifted his face to the sun, and each time Shuganan repeated his words. Then he told Chagak, “Now it is ours.” If his power was great enough, the sea would not take the whale from Shuganan’s spear.
They made the naming ceremony that morning. Chagak watched as Shuganan lit the driftwood she had heaped near the back edge of the beach. The whale blocked their view of the sea, but the sky seemed to be another, more immense sea, Chagak’s world circled with water, above and below, as though she and Shuganan, her son and the whale were the only things created besides the island and water.
The ceremony would be short, Shuganan had told her, and the feast would be held another day, to celebrate both the naming and the gift of the whale.
When the fire was lit, Shuganan began a chant, something Chagak did not know, the words in the tongue of Shuganan’s people. It was something she had not wanted, but she had no choice. She did not know the chants her people sang for a boy’s naming ceremony. In her village, only the men and the mother of the child were present at a boy’s ceremony, though the whole village came for a girl’s ceremony, and so Shuganan sang what he knew, the chants of his own people. For if chants were not made, harmful spirits might linger, thinking to steal the name and use it for evil before the child could claim the name’s protection as his own.
Chagak remembered the stories her father had told her about the first naming ceremony. There had been only one man and one woman then and no one to name them. And without names, they had no spirits. What spirit could exist without a name?
This man and woman saw they were different from the fish, for they had no scales or fins. They were without fur and so were not seals or otters. They did not have wings or feathers like the birds. “We are something new,” the man said and so began to pray and sing in a sacred way, asking for a name. He did this until names came to him and he told the woman, “I am man and you are woman.” That had been the first naming, and since then names were taken with thankfulness and in a sacred way.
Chagak felt the baby move against the bare skin of her belly. He was still a part of her, his spirit still joined to her just as much as if he were still held tight within her womb. But when he was given a name, he was separate, a new person, with a new spirit.
She had made a hooded garment for him from the skins of the eider ducks she had killed the summer before, and it was her gift to the child on his naming day. Shuganan had carved a seal, something to be hung from the baby’s cradle to draw favor from seal spirits.
Perhaps the whale was a naming gift from her people, Chagak thought, from those she had worked so hard to give proper burial. But why would any of her people give gifts to the son of a Short One?
Shuganan ended his chant. The fire, once leaping with the words he shouted into the wind, was now quiet, as if the flames waited to see the baby. The wood snapped and a shower of sparks puffed up into the sky, fading as they met the greater light. Shuganan held out his arms and Chagak unfastened the child from the carrying sling.
The baby was naked. His round, fat body gleamed with seal oil. Chagak thought he would cry when he felt the chill of the wind, but he kicked his small legs and crowed, his voice like the laughter of gulls.
And as Shuganan turned him to face each of the four directions of the wind, the baby held his body straight, his head without wobbling. Then, as Chagak watched, Shuganan took the child to the whale, pressed the boy’s hand against the black hide.
Chagak waited as the old man walked back over the beach gravel to the fire. An uneasiness stirred her spirit. Why had Shuganan taken her son to the whale? Her people were not Whale Hunters. She had not promised to warn the Whale Hunters so that her son could be raised in their ways. A sudden fear clutched at her. What if they wanted her baby? What if her grandfather wanted to keep him? How could she refuse, she who had no husband?
But when Shuganan brought the child back to her, Chagak pushed the fears from her mind. The whale was a good sign, a sign of Aka’s favor. In choosing to let her son live, she had chosen wisely.
Chagak took the baby. He slipped easily into her arms, as though she had always been his mother, as though he had always been a part of her.
“Now you must tell him his name,” Shuganan said to her and began a low chant.
As mother, Chagak had the honor of naming the boy, and she bent close to the infant, her hair falling around the child like a curtain woven of fine, dark grass. “You are Samiq,” she whispered, so the child was first to know his own name, so he had the name’s protection before any spirit, before wind or sea knew the name. “You are Samiq,” she whispered again, to be sure he had heard.
Then she held the child up to the wind and repeated the name as Shuganan had told her. “The child is Samiq,” she said to the earth and to the sky, to the wind and sea, to Aka and Tugix, to the whale and to Shuganan. “Samiq. Knife. Something that can destroy or create, something that, like a man, can be for good or for evil.”
For a moment Shuganan stared at her, as though he were surprised by her voice, as though he did not understand what she had said, but he placed his hand on the child’s head. “Samiq,” he said, then, raising his voice and turning toward Tugix, called, “Samiq.”
TWENTY-NINE
KAYUGH’S PEOPLE HAD SPENT the previous night on a narrow beach, a dangerous place backed by walls of stone that rose to high, grassless cliffs. Each man kept his ikyak packed and the women did not cover their ik. During the night the men took turns watching the sea, hoping to have time to give warning before the water rose above the line of their camp.
Kayugh was the last man to keep watch. With each wave he lifted his prayers to the spirits that controlled sea and wind.
Finally the su
n had risen, pale and shielded by clouds, and the women awoke to prepare food. But still Kayugh kept his eyes to the sea. He heard a feeble cry, and the pain of his son’s hunger pierced Kayugh’s heart.
For a moment he watched as Crooked Nose and Blue Shell dipped their hands into fish broth and let the baby suck the drops from their fingers, but then he had to look away.
For the first three days after White River’s death, the baby had cried almost continuously, and Kayugh had worried that the men would make him kill the child so his wails would not scare away animals and fish, but now the cry was so soft that it was nearly muffled in the folds of the skins that wrapped him.
Your mother waits for you, Kayugh had silently told the child’s spirit. She will come for you and then you will have no more pain.
After the naming ceremony, Shuganan flung a rope over the whale and anchored it to rocks on both sides. Chagak, using the rope to pull herself up, climbed to the top of the animal and, walking from head to tail, she cut through the thick, tough hide and down through the blubber, a long cut from the spout hole to the slope of the tail.
Twice during her cutting she had slipped and slid to the beach. After the second time she removed the baby from his sling and left him in a shaded spot in the lee of the cliff.
Then she made slashes the length of a man’s arm across her first line, dividing the whaleskin into ten sections. At the top of each section she made two holes, tied a rope through each and she slid down the side of the whale. She and Shuganan grabbed a rope and pulled the section of blubber away from the whale carcass, then dragged the fat and skin to the grass near the ulaq, above the reach of the waves.
In the time the whale had been dead, the heat of decomposition, held within the skin, was enough to begin cooking the meat. As Chagak worked, the smell of it made her stomach roll in hunger. But seeing that Shuganan still pulled, even with his left hand, she continued, the rope making burns on her fingers and palms.
But when they stripped the last piece of blubber away, Shuganan said, “I will take it. You cut some meat. I am hungry.”
