by Sue Harrison
Kayugh clasped Red Berry at her waist and held her out toward Gray Bird.
Do not cry, Chagak pleaded silently with the child. Please do not cry. But Red Berry held herself stiff and still, her eyes shifting between Gray Bird and her father.
“She brings me joy,” Kayugh said. Then in a voice so low that Chagak strained to catch the words, he added, “I will kill any man who tries to hurt her.”
Slowly he set Red Berry down. The child stood for a moment looking at her father. Chagak held out her arms. Red Berry ran to her and snuggled into her lap.
Then Gray Bird spoke. “If Blue Shell’s daughter lives, I will have to wait three, perhaps four more years for a son. Perhaps I will die before then.”
Chagak looked at Kayugh. Would Gray Bird’s words soften Kayugh’s resolve? But Kayugh did not speak and Gray Bird continued, his anger hard in his voice: “Each man rules his own family.”
Kayugh’s jaw tensed and Chagak began to creep backward, holding Red Berry against her with one arm.
“Chagak!”
Chagak jumped and rose slowly, her eyes searching Kayugh’s face.
“Bring my son.”
She did not want to obey. Amgigh was too small to be caught in a fight between two men. She hesitated and Kayugh called again. Chagak pulled the baby from beneath her suk and hurriedly wrapped him in the furred skin she had been scraping.
She took the child to Kayugh. Red Berry followed her, one hand clinging to the back of Chagak’s suk.
Chagak handed the baby to Kayugh and he held the child toward Gray Bird, opening the fur wrapping so that Gray Bird could see the child’s arms and legs.
“I claim Blue Shell’s girl child for my son,” Kayugh said, then he turned and held the baby toward Tugix. “I claim Blue Shell’s girl child for my son.”
Gray Bird’s jaw clenched and he spun away toward the birth shelter.
Chagak thought that Kayugh would go after him, but he stood where he was, holding his son, the baby now crying in the chill of the wind. But soon Gray Bird returned. He held Blue Shell’s baby, wrapped in a coarse grass mat. He opened the mat and flipped the child from front to back. In the coldness of the wind, the baby’s skin quickly mottled and turned blue.
“Wrap her,” Kayugh said. “She will be wife for Amgigh.”
Gray Bird wrapped the child, moving her too quickly to his shoulder. The small head jerked against his chest.
“If you kill her, you kill my grandsons,” Kayugh said, and he stood with his eyes fixed on Gray Bird until the man returned to the birth shelter. Then Kayugh gave his son back to Chagak, hoisted Red Berry to his shoulders and walked to the beach.
THIRTY-SEVEN
SHUGANAN WAS NOT SURE how he knew. Perhaps it was the wisdom of old age. Perhaps the voices of his carvings spoke to his soul as they often seemed to do when sleep stilled his body and gave his spirit time to live without the interference of doing and making. Perhaps it was Tugix or some greater spirit. But whether by spirit or by wisdom, Shuganan knew.
He had begun carving the seal many days before. He had used a walrus tusk, old and yellowed, fine-grained but brittle with age. He had soaked it for a long time in oil, softening it so his knife could shave away the pieces necessary to reveal the spirit within.
He sharpened the point of the tusk until it was nearly as fine as the barb of a harpoon. That was the seal’s nose. Then the body curved and widened into flippers. Shuganan smoothed the blunt end of the tusk into a ledge that fitted snugly against the heel of his hand.
He finished the seal, then asked Chagak for tanned skins and heather. Chagak had seemed puzzled when he laid Samiq out on a sealskin and, using long sinew strands, measured the boy’s arms and legs, the length from his head to his fat, round toes. But she had not asked questions.
Shuganan used a woman’s knife to cut the shape of a baby from the sealskin. He used the first shape as pattern for a second and sewed the two together, then stuffed them with heather.
From a wide curve of driftwood, bleached to whiteness by the sun and sea, he carved a mask, making nose and mouth and closed eyes. Then, drilling holes through the sides of the mask, he sewed it to the head of his sealskin baby.
And one evening when Chagak was busy setting out food, Shuganan had asked to hold Samiq. He had felt no threat to his manhood in this, seeing that Kayugh sat beside an oil lamp, holding his son. And when no one was watching, Shuganan cut a bit of hair from Samiq’s head. Perhaps there might be some power toward reality in the hair, some strength that would turn a man’s eyes to seeing what he thought he was seeing instead of what was truly there.
That night, in his sleeping place, Shuganan stitched the hair on top of his sealskin baby’s head.
Now in the early morning, before the women had risen to trim wicks and carry out night wastes, Shuganan wrapped his baby in one of the sealskins Man-who-kills had given as Chagak’s bride price.
He waited on the beach, the baby within his parka, the carved tusk inside his sleeve. He waited until he saw one of the women leave Big Teeth’s ulaq, then he returned to his ulaq and pretended he had gone outside only to watch the sea for signs of seal.
The next morning he also went out and the morning after that. On the fourth day he woke in the night and, feeling the urging of some spirit, again went to the beach, taking his baby and the ivory seal.
He waited during the darkest part of the night, watching the sea, listening for noise within the waves that was not animal but man. When the sky had begun to lighten, he was sure he heard the dipping of a paddle, something that kept its own rhythm, not the rhythm of the sea.
Shuganan slipped the ivory seal down into his hand, felt the tip of the tusk, as sharp as a knife, caressed the ledge that he had carved for the heel of his hand, something to lend strength to his thrust. Then he tucked it inside his sleeve and wrapped his arms over the sealskin baby as though he were a mother carrying her husband’s son.
Shuganan saw the ikyak and the hunter within. He smiled. Yes. It was Sees-far.
He watched as the man guided his ikyak through the rocks toward the shore, as he untied his hatch skirting and leaped from the craft, pulling his ikyak to the beach.
Sees-far grinned at Shuganan but made no greeting. And so Shuganan, too, gave no greeting but said only, “Man-who-kills told me you would be coming. I have waited these four mornings for you.”
“I have come to teach Man-who-kills how to fight again,” Sees-far said and laughed. “He has lived too easily over the winter. He must be ready to fight Whale Hunters. We go soon.”
Sees-far scanned the beach. “And so where is he?” he asked. But Shuganan had made sure that the men’s ikyan were not within sight, and so knew that Sees-far saw nothing but beach gravel and drying racks.
“He is in the ulaq. His wife is also in the ulaq,” Shuganan said. “She has been a good wife to him. They have a son.”
“A son!” Sees-far said and began to laugh. “Now that she has given Man-who-kills what he wants, maybe he will not be so reluctant to share her with me.”
“I brought the baby for you to see,” Shuganan said, keeping his eyes on Sees-far’s face, hoping to know when the first doubt came into the man’s mind, hoping to act before Sees-far knew the truth.
“So he makes you do woman’s work,” Sees-far said and laughed.
“I can no longer hunt,” Shuganan said and held out his bent and stiffened left arm.
“And so you will show me this son?” Sees-far asked. And pointed toward the bulge under Shuganan’s parka.
“There is too much wind here. We should stand against the cliff where there is shelter.”
But as soon as he said the words, Shuganan saw the doubt in Sees-far’s eyes, saw the man look quickly to the top of the cliff. So Shuganan said, “But Man-who-kills’ son is strong, perhaps he is old enough for the wind.”
The doubt faded. Shuganan reached inside his parka and pulled the sealskin baby from its place against his chest.
&nbs
p; Sees-far smiled and leaned down to see the child. Shuganan slipped the carved tusk along the inside of his arm and worked the point to the palm of his hand.
Shuganan held the baby out toward Sees-far, then pretended to stumble. He saw the surprise in Sees-far’s eyes, the quick movement of the man’s hands to catch the baby. As Sees-far clasped the sealskin bundle, Shuganan dropped his right arm so the walrus tusk fell into his hand.
Shuganan had killed many seals, many sea lions. He knew the place of the heart, the sheltered place beneath the breastbone, and so he knew the best way of killing a man, the blow to the heart from the unprotected side, up from the stomach. He thrust the sharp point of his carved tusk up and into Sees-far’s heart. The tusk-knife cut even as Sees-far said, “This is not a baby….”
And the words, though they had begun in a strong voice, ended in a whisper.
Sees-far dropped to his knees, the sealskin baby still in his arms. Shuganan placed a hand on the man’s chest. The heart had stopped, but Shuganan could still see the spirit peering from Sees-far’s eyes.
Shuganan drew his flint knife from the scabbard he kept on his left arm and, grabbing Sees-far by the hair, sliced through the front of the man’s neck.
A hiss of air pushed out from the man’s windpipe and vomit came up from his stomach and spilled from the open neck, but Shuganan continued to cut until he had sliced through the tendons and muscles. Then he snapped the head back, cradling the thing against his thighs until he had cut between the small round bones of the neck. Then the head was loose, the spirit no longer in the eyes.
Shuganan left the corpse on the beach. He wished that waves would suddenly come, would pull the body away before the women saw, but the waves were weak, and so Shuganan slipped the sealskin baby from Sees-far’s arms. He placed it in Sees-far’s ikyak, then went back to the ulaq. He would wake Kayugh, ask him to help lift Sees-far into the ikyak. Together, they could cut the body apart at the joints and thus make the spirit helpless, then Kayugh could tow the ikyak out past the cliffs, where the currents would take it into the middle of the sea.
And the spirits would see the sealskin baby, the tuft of Samiq’s hair on its head, and they would know that Samiq’s hair had made Sees-far believe he was seeing a real baby, perhaps only for a moment, but long enough for Shuganan to thrust the knife. Yes, Shuganan thought, the spirits would understand the power of a child not yet a man, and honor Samiq, a boy who had already helped avenge the deaths of his mother’s people.
But then Shuganan looked at the man’s body, and he thought, Sees-far should be hunting seal and sea lion. He should be in his ulaq, waking slowly to the sounds of his wife laying out morning food; he should be repairing weapons in the light of oil lamps, watching his wife as he worked, seeing the glow the light lent to her skin, the shadows it made on her face and beneath her breasts. He should be thrusting his seed deep into the softness of his wife’s body and watching through the months as her belly stretched out with the baby he had put within her. These things were what Sees-far should be doing.
Instead he had chosen to kill men. How could that joy compare to the joy of each day’s living?
And so, Shuganan thought, I who am old am alive, and he who is young is dead.
Kayugh heard Shuganan in the middle room, heard the slow, shuffling steps of the old man, and wondered why Shuganan was awake, the day still too early for even Chagak to be awake. But then he heard Shuganan call to him and also heard the cry of one of the babies, heard Chagak shush the child, the cry muffled in a sudden stillness, breast against mouth.
Kayugh crawled from his sleeping place and saw with surprise that Shuganan’s hands were covered with blood. Kayugh opened his mouth to speak, but Shuganan shook his head, then led the way up the climbing log.
“A seal?” Kayugh asked as soon as they were outside. He looked toward the beach, but in the dim light of early morning, the grayness of the cloudy sky, he could not see if there was an animal on the shore.
“No,” Shuganan said. “Get Big Teeth and Gray Bird. We must talk.”
And seeing the intensity in the man’s eyes, Kayugh asked no more questions but went quickly to Big Teeth’s ulaq. He called down for the men and they came out, pulling on their parkas. Big Teeth was grumbling but also made jokes between his complaints. But when Kayugh pointed toward Shuganan, Big Teeth stopped talking, his joking gone, the man suddenly silent, staring at Shuganan’s bloody hands.
“A seal?” Gray Bird asked. But Shuganan did not answer as he led them down toward the beach.
When Kayugh first saw the heap beside the ikyak, he did not think it was a man, but then he saw parka and sealskin boots, then the severed head lying a short distance from the body.
“You did this?” Kayugh asked Shuganan.
“He is a Short One, “Shuganan said. “One of the men who killed Chagak’s husband.”
And though the old man spoke with hatred in his voice, with anger, there was something in his words that also spoke to Kayugh’s spirit, something that said: The old man speaks truth and untruth. There is reason for killing this Short One, but perhaps not the reason Shuganan gives.
Shuganan squatted down on his heels beside the body and began to speak, but the hissing of waves against the beach gravel blotted out his words and so Kayugh squatted beside the man, and then Big Teeth and Gray Bird also, the body in their midst, as though they were men squatting around a beach fire, staying as near as they dared for warmth.
“I have told you that Chagak and I will take Samiq and go to the Whale Hunters. We know the Short Ones’ plan to attack their village. The Whale Hunters are my wife’s people. I cannot let them die.
“We made this decision long ago, even before Chagak’s baby was born. Now that Blue Shell can nurse Kayugh’s son, we will leave. Today. This man I killed was a scout. The yellow markings on his ikyak say this to those who know. The others, the warriors, will come soon. Not to this beach. This beach is only a stopping place, a place where they thought one of their men had stayed for the winter.
“We do not ask you to come with us. You have no reason to kill Short Ones. This beach is yours now. Perhaps we will come back, perhaps not. If I am killed and Chagak is not, surely one of the Whale Hunters will take her as wife and she will not return. And if we are both killed, we will be with our people in the Dancing Lights.”
Kayugh watched the old man as he spoke. If Chagak had once had a husband, where was the man’s ikyak frame? Where were his weapons? Shuganan had only his own weapons and the weapons of the Short One killed the summer before. No more. But why would Shuganan lie?
He waited, hoping that Gray Bird in his ignorance or Big Teeth in his wisdom would ask a question, something that would make Shuganan speak more of the truth, but they said nothing. So Kayugh turned his thoughts to the decision he must make. Should he go with Shuganan or stay on this beach?
At the mention of a husband for Chagak, he had felt his stomach twist. If he went, he might be able to keep Chagak from becoming wife to a Whale Hunter. But if he told Shuganan he would go, Big Teeth would follow. Then who would care for the women? Had they come this far to leave Gray Bird as hunter for three women, to have Little Duck, Crooked Nose and Blue Shell die of starvation during a long winter?
But if he went with Shuganan to the Whale Hunters, he would be promising to kill men. How did a man hunt other men?
I would be like a boy on his first seal hunt, Kayugh thought. I would know little and endanger others by my ignorance.
And what would the killing do to his spirit? Would he become evil like the Short Ones?
But men who killed people should be killed. How else was the evil stopped? Would men who killed men listen to reason? Could words make them stop? Would trading? Why trade when, by killing, they could take everything and give nothing in exchange?
Kayugh looked at Shuganan. The old man sat with head bowed, hands, dark with dried blood, between his knees. His bones, beneath his lined and ancient skin, were fragile. And Ka
yugh saw that death would come easily to Shuganan, that his spirit was close to those spirits who called from the Dancing Lights. The old man had finished his young years—the years of taking—and was nearly through the old years, when the soul releases what it has clasped, when the threads that hold it to life are broken, one by one. And now there was only Chagak, holding him. Chagak without a husband.
And Kayugh saw her with a Whale Hunter husband, someone who took her only for the work she would do and the sons she could give. Or what if a Short One took her to be his wife? How would she serve someone who would teach Samiq to kill men?
He saw Shuganan’s knife still jutting from the Short One’s body and was not surprised that the handle was the seal Shuganan had spent many evenings carving. Kayugh thrust his own knife into the body and withdrew Shuganan’s tusk-knife, then gave it back to Shuganan.
“I will go with you,” he said. And as quickly as he spoke, Big Teeth also thrust his knife into the man and withdrew Kayugh’s knife.
“I will go also.”
Gray Bird scowled. “We cannot leave the women,” he said.
But Big Teeth said, “My women will come with me.”
Again Gray Bird scowled, but he thrust his knife into the body and withdrew Big Teeth’s, handing it to the man. “I will go,” Gray Bird said. “And my woman.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
WHAT DIFFERENCE WILL IT MAKE? Chagak thought as she thrust her paddle into the water.
Why should she care whether she lived or died? Why should she be afraid of death? If, in fighting the Short Ones, she were killed, then she would be with her own people. With Seal Stalker.
But the thought of death made her uneasy. Who truly knew what happened after death? Perhaps there were evil spirits against which she had no protection. And how would she find her way to the Dancing Lights? Would traveling north be enough?
Chagak and Crooked Nose were paddling the ik. Chagak sat in the front of the ik, Crooked Nose, doing the more difficult paddling, in the back. Little Duck and Blue Shell sat in the center of the boat with Red Berry, First Snow and the babies.
