by Ken Altabef
“Alaana!” called out Maguan, smiling and raising his harpoon in salute. “Come to bring us luck? We don’t need it. There’s a bowhead just below us and this time we’re going to get.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” said the grandfather in a gravelly voice. He grabbed Alaana’s spirit-parka at the shoulder. “The shaman is too valuable to risk at sea.”
“I’m not afraid,” countered Alaana. She gently removed her grandfather’s hand.
“My sister won’t leave me,” said Maguan. “Of that I’m certain.”
The skinboat surged forward, powered neither by crew nor paddle.
“He’s bound to come up,” said Maguan delightedly. This was his lifelong dream, a good boat beneath his feet, a perfect day. His eyes swept the ocean, keen to spot the blow of a spout against the sea swell. It was a bright day, the sun smashing blindingly against the waves. Alaana could make out several other boats in the near distance, probably belonging to Tugtutsiak and the other whaling captains.
The spout came up. Warm steam drifted across the bow of Maguan’s umiak, splashing their faces.
“He’s breathing! There he is! Look at him — three times as long as the boat. Enough to feed the whole village for two moons!”
The knotty black hide of the bowhead scraped the skinboat’s left side. Maguan raised his harpoon. He gestured to his nonexistent crew and the boat maneuvered around, bringing the whale to the fore.
Seawater splashed over the bow as the whale’s head broke the surface. The bowhead rolled to the side until one of its round, black eyes peered at them above the water line.
Maguan looked his prey in the eye like so many hunters before. His throwing arm hesitated.
The eye blinked.
The boat hissed, straining at the seams. The whalebone struts bent and heaved with the swells. Alaana, unused to the uneven footing of the sea, staggered backward. She could see Maguan in the darkness, still standing at the headboard, as he lowered the harpoon.
Alaana saw her grandfather transformed. Years ago, one of his arms was missing at the shoulder, lost to the attack of a brown bear. His face was deeply rutted by claw mark scars and his glossy black hair had been torn away in patches. But the bear had not killed him. The seawater had done that grim work. The shade’s skin took on a greenish cast in the frail moonlight until it looked slick and doughy. His dark eyes, glaring from bloated sockets, regarded Alaana with a pathetic helplessness.
“Go away, Alaana,” said Maguan as she ran toward him. One side of the skinboat rose higher in the water than the other. The sudden movement forced Alaana against the lower bulwark. Leaning over the side, she saw the boat was circling a spinning vortex in the water. The whirlpool roared horrifically like a tortured bull walrus starving out on the floes.
“We’re going down!” said Maguan. He pulled Alaana back from the brink. “But you can still get away, sister. You aren’t dead!”
“Neither are you. Do you hear me? You aren’t dead!”
Again she reached for her brother’s face, projecting a fiercely hopeful gaze. “You aren’t dead.”
But this time she could not get the eye to blink. Maguan’s gaze had glossed over. Dead eyes stared back at her, the unseeing, unblinking eyes of a corpse.
“Too late,” said Maguan in a voice devoid of all hope. “Going down.”
Alaana couldn’t look to her grandfather for help. His spirit wasn’t real, just an echo of Maguan’s imagination. “The sea claims the souls of the unwary, and the weak,” said the old whaler. “No man can deny the ocean its due.” Water bubbled from his mouth with the words. He was luring them down into the same watery grave that had claimed him years ago.
Alaana called out, “Maguan! Maguan!”
But it was no use. Maguan stood at the rail, staring down at the whirlpool.
Alaana saw only one chance. Perhaps her grandfather was right. The spinning sea offered a vortex, a tunnel. Always these things meant travel.
She shoved Maguan forward with both hands, sending him down into the swirling torrent.
“The five beats, Father!” Alaana screamed.
Kigiuna had not faltered at the drum. Seated at the foot of the platform, he heard Alaana’s command clearly. He beat out the pattern on the small hand drum, calling her spirit-woman back from her journey.
Alaana’s eyes flew open.
“Hurry!” she said, jumping to her feet. “Put aside the drum.” Alaana pulled her father close to Maguan’s ear.
“Call to him. Use the name Samik, call him Samik!”
Kigiuna hesitated.
“He’s drowning, father!” explained Alaana. “Now! Call him Samik, just as you did before!”
A long time ago, when Maguan had been a small child, he had drowned. One moment he had been playing on the lake ice, happy and carefree, enjoying the joyous warmth of the spring day, and then with a resounding crack the river ice had broken. Maguan fell in. The shock of the cold stole the breath from his lungs; the current grabbed him with icy hands and took him away. He struggled, but what little air remained was forced from his lungs. He saw the ice close above his head as he was pulled downstream.
He had the feeling then that he was dead, dead and buried in the ice. His chest filled with cold water, freezing him to the core. He stopped struggling. He began to feel warm. He sank down into the icy river’s sympathetic embrace. It was not so bad, he thought, to be dead.
The ice cracked, desperate hands reached down and Kigiuna pulled him up. The slap of cold air shocked him awake. His father was calling his name.
“Samik! Samik!”
His father was calling him back to rejoin the living, and Maguan realized that he wanted more than anything to be with them again. The chill embrace of the river could wait. He wanted to live.
“Samik!’ screamed Kigiuna, his voice harsh and desperate.
In those days Maguan had been named Samik. After his close call with death his name had been changed to Maguan to avoid the bad luck clinging to his former name.
Maguan opened his eyes. He drew a few ragged breaths as if he had just been hauled from the icy river. He saw the concerned face of his father hovering over him, and his sister.
“Welcome back,” said Alaana.
Maguan tried to sit up. He winced at a sudden pain in his head and settled back down.
“You were hit on the head,” explained Kigiuna.
“I remember,” groaned Maguan. He put a hand to his brow. “It hurts.”
The little drum, sitting where Kigiuna had discarded it, suddenly burst apart. Alaana watched Tulukkam-ittuq take flight, carrying the ceiling tarp into the air. One of the slick ice walls of the iglu crumbled with the strain, collapsing noisily down on a collection of masks and drums.
Through this new gap in the wall Alaana’s mother Amauraq peered into the karigi. Usually women were forbidden from the ceremonial house but in its current state of ruin Alaana thought this place could hardly be considered a karigi any longer. She waved for the women to enter.
“Should I change my name again?” asked Maguan. “Have I almost died again?”
“No,” returned Alaana. “Keep the name. It’s done well by you. You just woke up from a bad dream, that’s all.”
“My head hurts.”
“I’ll help you with the pain. I’ll make a ball of polished wood and you’ll hold it against your brow. Wood can’t feel pain and it will draw the pain from your head. You’ll see. But now, you should take some rest. You’ve had a long journey home.
CHAPTER 10
WOMAN TROUBLE
As the shaman, it fell to Alaana to set the bodies of dead men in stones. For this purpose the Anatatook often used a certain quiet place set a little distance from the bay. The gray slate of the cliffside rose in a semicircular face here, which sheltered the funerary cairns from the harsh winds coming off the sea. And yet it was close enough to their customary winter camp for the dead to hear the old songs being sung on long cold nights, or the calls of the w
haling captains on the lookout for a spout at sea. Alaana thought Kanak would have liked it.
Of course, she could have simply asked Kanak his opinion. The hunter’s ghost hovered in the air above the cairn. As was customary the inua of the deceased remained with the body for five days and nights while the family mourned and faithfully kept the death taboos.
Kanak’s two wives helped pile up the stones.
Anarvik, who was the mother to Kanak’s three natural sons, laid a long flat stone in place of pride near the head. A few tears worked their way down her face, finding a path along the wrinkles under her eyes to rest in the hollow above her proud chin. She was well-dressed in a light spring parka with blue fox trim. Kanak always kept both his women in good clothes, although Tassiussak’s coat appeared a bit lopsided. The lines had been cut crookedly and the seams, when judged against those of Anarvik, were held together with thick ungainly stitch work.
Tassiussak was considered very attractive, even if she was no great seamstress. She had a perfectly round face with deep set eyes and a small flat nose. Kanak had discovered her and her son Iggy trapped in an inland cave one winter years ago. They had been on the brink of starvation. Kanak had rescued them, adopted the boy and taken the wife.
The women wore their hair in tight buns at the back of their necks. Having been prohibited from changing their clothes for the five full days, the lice had put them both in a bad mood.
Tassiussak placed a stone at the head of the cairn, dislodging the one Anarvik had just put down.
Anarvik clicked her tongue and set her stone to rights.
“I’m sorry that you got killed, Kanak,” Alaana said at last.
The ghost, who appeared to the young shaman as an ethereal figure of light fully clad in a spirit-parka and still fondling a spirit-harpoon, shook his head. “You were always a good girl, Alaana.”
“But I should have known, I should have warned—”
“Nonsense,” said Kanak. “I never expected you to protect me. I always stood on my own two feet, and I died that way, with a spear in my hand. That’s all.”
There seemed nothing else Alaana could say to that.
“Is this it?” asked Kanak. “Two women and a half-grown shaman? Where are my sons?”
“They went with the other men. It’s a big musk ox hunt.”
Kanak’s eyes lit up. “Musk ox? How many?”
“Six hands,” replied Alaana. With five on each hand, that was quite a lot.
“Where is this happening?” Kanak’s ghost glanced quickly up and down the coast.
Alaana chuckled softly. “Inland,” she said, “near the Forked River—” She nearly fell down as Tassiussak, who was no small woman, bumped her aside. It appeared as if Anarvik, who was half her size, had given her a shove.
“I was always his favorite,” said Anarvik.
“Ridiculous!” returned the other. “Who warmed his bed most often?”
“Be still!” said Kanak. “This is no way to talk at a man’s grave.”
“They can’t hear you,” Alaana explained.
“Then you speak for me.”
Alaana did not get the chance.
“After a hunt he always saved the caribou tongue for me,” Anarvik said proudly.
“I can’t eat tongue,” replied Tassiussak with a defensive scowl. “You know it sours my stomach.”
“Uh huh. So you say.”
“Oohh!” Tassiussak kicked a small stone with her boot, dislodging it from the pile, which shifted downward in its wake.
“Heya!” said Kanak. “That’s my grave!”
“Your sewing is laughable,” said Anarvik.
“Tssst. When we made the boots in summer,” Tassiussak pointed out, “he always wore mine first. Obviously he preferred my sewing.”
“That’s not true. He was saving mine for the winter. Everybody knows your boots leak at the seams.”
“And who left her discarded fishheads near the entrance tunnel?”
“That wasn’t me.”
“It was!”
“So it was, it was. So what?”
“And Kanak came in and tripped and fell on his face!”
“I didn’t care,” said Kanak. “That was six winters ago. Tell them I don’t care about any of this.”
But before Alaana could say anything, Tassiussak fired back at Anarvik with, “Only because your lamp was tended so carelessly it smoked up the entire iglu. He couldn’t see where he was going!”
“It was the fishheads—”
“The smoke—”
“Ahh!” moaned Kanak’s ghost. “Is this what it’s like being dead? I can’t stand it. This is my punishment? To have to listen to these two go on and on? They always got along so well before. Didn’t they?”
Alaana could offer no advice. She had never had a single wife, let alone two of them.
“Maybe not,” reflected Kanak.
“There is peace on the other side, I know that,” Alaana reassured him. “Good food. Plenty of hunts.”
“Hunts you say?” asked Kanak.
“Seal and walrus. Caribou and bear. Any time you want them.”
“No chattering women?”
“Probably not.”
Kanak’s eyes, which already seemed made of white light, lit up a little more. “And the hunting? Not too easy?”
“All you could want,” confirmed Alaana.
Anarvik stood her ground against a resentful Tassiussak. “And who was it picked the lice out of his undershirt and hair, day after day after day?”
“You know my eyes aren’t that good,” said the other.
“I see.”
“Who was it warmed his bed night after night?”
“So what?” Anarvik shoved at Tassiussak again. The big woman blundered backwards a step, stomping on Alaana’s foot.
“Oh and you think that’s all that matters?” raged Anarvik. “Who did he talk with when everyone else had gone off to sleep? Who did he share his thoughts with?”
“Me,” said Tassiussak.
“Me!” said Anarvik. “A woman comes from a good family,” she said, meaning herself. “Another is found in a cave.”
“Oohh! And I suppose you’d say the same of my boy Iggy too?”
“And why not? Another poor wastrel found out on the wastes. You’re lucky Kanak took him in.”
“Lucky?” replied Tassiussak. “You think it’s lucky being treated like a lesser son?”
“That’s not true,” said Kanak. “I always treated Iggianguaq just as well as the others. He’s a good boy. Tell them, Alaana.”
Alaana would have told them if she could only have gotten a word in edgewise.
“You think it’s lucky,” continued Tassiussak, “for him to watch all of Kanak’s sons marry and poor Iggy doesn’t even have a bride promised to him? You think that’s fair?”
“A wastrel,” said Anarvik. “A big fat wastrel. Yes, it’s lucky Kanak fed him all these years. And of course, he ate much more than his fair share.”
“Oooohh!” said Tassiussak.
“Oh yourself!” said Anarvik. “And I’m not having it any more. When we get back to camp I want you to take your things and your fat wastrel of a son and get out of our tent. You’re not part of Kanak’s family any longer. Go back and live in your cave if you must. You’re on your own!”
Alaana glanced up at Kanak for his reaction, fearing he would be enraged by this latest development. But Kanak was already gone.
Alaana handed a particularly heavy flank of musk ox up to Iggianguaq. He plucked the heavy slab of meat from her with no visible effort at all and tossed it on the rack. Iggy, who at sixteen winters was the same age as Alaana, was already the largest man among the Anatatook. As a child, Iggy had been found starving in a cave by his adopted father Kanak. But like a deprived dog that is poorly fed when young and is forever making up for lost time, he always ate until there was nothing left in front him, or until someone dragged him forcibly from the table. His youthful fat had ma
tured into a healthy dose of powerful muscle, tucked away beneath a layer of youthful fat.
“And why not?” asked Itoriksak. “Spring is a good time to think on romance. The hares do it huddled in their burrows, the seal do it under water.” He made a terrible imitation of a caribou mating call, which might as well have been the sound of a speared bull walrus wailing in pain.
“That’s easy for you to say,” replied Iggy.
“And painful for our ears to hear,” added Alaana. “Itoriksak, please don’t make that awful noise again.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Itoriksak, “All the girl walruses love it when I make that noise.” He laughed in such a buoyant and carefree way that Alaana and had no choice but to join in. Iggy frowned.
Alaana passed the last piece, half a rear haunch, up to Iggy, leaving the sled empty. At last. Her shoulders and arms ached with the exertion. Iggy arranged the slabs of meat atop the rack. As usual, Aquppak’s pile was the tallest. Kigiuna’s pile was the smallest — with Maguan flat on his back and Kigiuna missing the hunt for worry over him, only Itoriksak had represented their family. Iggy’s stack also was not impressive — Alaana noticed it had been moved on the outskirts of Kanak’s clan, now separate from the rest.
Alaana sat down beside her brother Itoriksak, who was busy cutting up the poorer scraps of meat to make feed for his dogs.
“I just don’t think it’s right for you married men to make fun, that’s all,” said Iggy to Itoriksak.
“There’s more to it than just that,” said Itoriksak. “It’s plain to see that you, my boy, have an eye for Tikiquatta.”
Iggy paused, turning his face back toward the meat rack. “I can’t deny it,” he said, a mixture of excitement and sadness in his voice. “She fills my thoughts.”
