A Tyranny of Petticoats

by Jessica Spotswood

  My mother carried me on her back and went around our hut for many circles, following the path the sun would travel. She kissed me often and said I would bring my father successful hunts. And I did.

  I have many memories of those winter hunts. My father would come back with the other hunters, hauling the bleeding bodies of whales and seals to shore. I would join my mother and the other women to carve maktak: rich, glistening chunks of blubber with the thick skin still attached. We would dry them on pokes, split the shares between each family in our village, then load the rest of the maktak onto sleds and take the dogs out to deliver the food to relatives in another village. I would watch as we piled the animals’ bones high and waited for the lights to glow from the south. Then we would burn the bones, sending their souls back to the ocean.

  “There are no boundaries between the great whale’s spirit and ours,” my father would tell me as we stood together by the fire, watching the aurora wash across the sky. “We all belong to the same life force.”

  I would listen, kiss my hand, and touch it to the ground near the fire.

  The delivery of maktak was something I yearned to do with my father. I wanted to see the tundra beyond the light of our fires, cling to the back of a wind-whipped dogsled, witness the seals at sea and the foxes prowling through the snow. I wanted to be the proud bearer of life, giving food to others at the end of a long, dangerous journey.

  The next time we gathered before the bones, I asked my father, “Please, take me with you on the next run.”

  My father gave me a raised brow and a stern look. “Your place is here,” he replied, “with your mother. Who will help her when I’m not around?”

  “The other women in the village,” I argued. “Do you remember the seer’s words? I have no brothers — you can teach me about the dogs and the sled. Right?” I looked up at him so earnestly that he threw his head back and laughed.

  A winter later, my father started to teach me. How to snare, to make a harpoon, to harness our dogs, to read the stars. He walked with me down the line of our dogs as they whined and quivered in excitement, teaching me to know each — Ataneq, Chinook, Kaya — so well that I could read their moods as well as my own. My mother taught me how to find fireweed and cloudberries, how to store them in the snow to keep them fresh, how to gather bird eggs, how to feed the fire with caribou droppings and dried moss. Father told me stories about the Seal King and Nanuk, the Lonely Roamer, the Great White Bear. “The spirits will guide you,” he said, “if you take only what you need and respect them in their domain. Even in the darkest night. Remember that, Yakone, and you will never be lost.”

  “I’ll remember,” I replied.

  Finally, one early-winter evening, my father smiled as we fed our dogs. “I’ll take you with me after our hunt,” he said. “To deliver maktak.” He glanced up at the sky, where sheets of stars had blinked into bright existence after months of light. He raised one hand and traced a rough line between constellations, connecting the diamond of the First Ones to the Caribou. “That is the path we will follow.”

  The red aurora danced that night, obscuring the stars, and my heart danced with it in anticipation. It was the first time I’d ever seen it for myself. I stayed outside, my eyes fixed on the scarlet sheets, until I couldn’t stand the numbness in my fingers anymore. The next morning, my father set out with the hunters.

  When they returned, I knew immediately that something was wrong. The hunters shouted among themselves as they dragged their kayaks to shore. Loud and angry. In the dim light, I wrapped my arms around my body and trembled as I waited with my mother. My eyes darted among the men and the bodies of whales, searching, as always, for my father. Not here. I scanned the horizon, looking for another kayak behind the others. The water stayed still, vanishing into the dim haze of morning snow.

  “He is not dead,” my mother said quietly beside me. I looked up at her, but her eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, hard and unblinking. Other villagers ran to the hunters, and their voices all mixed into one loud storm.

  It took me a long time to understand what the hunters were shouting.

  A strange, monstrous creature — something with enormous white wings and a body as big as a glacier — had struck my father’s kayak. It had come upon them in the mist so suddenly that my father could not steer out of the way. “We circled and searched for hours,” one of the hunters cried, “but we never found his body.”

  I drifted in the midst of their shouts, numb. The world blurred around me. I realized through the fog of my thoughts that I was helping the women hack away at the whale carcasses, my limbs going through the rote motions of carving the maktak. An ominous hush of whispers hung over our village. The hunters gathered in the qargi to make sense of what they’d seen. I stayed outside with my mother long after the low sun set, searching the waves.

  “He is still here,” my mother murmured again beside me, as we packaged the maktak and loaded it onto our sled. “He has not died. We must keep waiting.” She said it in a feverish, fierce voice that frightened me.

  I couldn’t understand. My father had said that the spirits would guide you, if you took only what you needed and respected them in their domain. Did he somehow anger the Seal King? Had he insulted the great Nanuk?

  Finally, the next morning, we saw the monster for ourselves.

  Several children saw it first. Their shouts woke the rest of us, and we all gathered near the edge of the land. It floated out of the morning haze, a great contraption of wood and cloth. I had never seen so much wood in all my life, and all on one structure. As we looked on, several small boats left the larger and sailed toward us.

  Our elders had always told stories of strangers — gusaks — from across the sea and ice, men with an insatiable hunger for furs. Some of these men traded us kettles and needles and warm blankets in exchange for beaver pelts. Others were not so friendly. I’d never thought much of those tales . . . until now.

  I stared at the men who stepped out of these unfamiliar boats. They were very tall, with eyes and skin pale as water, their faces sharp and angular. Gusaks. Somehow, the word no longer sounded so funny to me. Were these the men who would smile and give us blankets? Several hunters went out to greet them on the ice. I looked on. My eyes darted to the strangers’ belts. Odd devices hung from them, cylindrical pipes and leather pouches heavy with a shining rock.

  The strangers talked to our hunters in a language I did not understand. Their voices grew louder. I looked up to meet my mother’s gaze and stepped forward, but my mother seized my wrist and pulled me back.

  “Don’t,” she whispered, her eyes still focused on the hunters and the pale men.

  One of the hunters held his arms out to both sides. He shouted at the white men’s leader. “It was your ship that killed Nunviaq!”

  The white man pulled the strange cylindrical pipe from his belt. I looked on as he held it up to the hunter’s chest.

  A loud noise. I jumped.

  A cloud of smoke rose from the pipe. The hunter staggered back a step, clutched his chest, and then fell. Shouts of confusion and alarm rose from the others. I stood frozen in place as they bent over the fallen hunter. Siluk. His name came to me. My father laughed often with him. I played with his sons. “Dead!” one of the others shouted. Siluk’s wife let out a wail.

  Then, chaos.

  The leader pointed the pipe at others. They fled. The strangers spread out, and in their hands they all held pipes. I could smell smoke in the air.

  “Mother!” I shouted.

  My mother held my hand tight. “The dogs,” she cried. “Quickly!” Together, we hurried toward our hut.

  Then something struck my mother. She continued to run, but her gait was uneven, her steps staggering forward instead of moving on an even keel.

  “Mother?” I said.

  My mother’s footsteps began to slow. “Keep going,” she said. Her voice came out raspy. I smelled the sharp tang of blood.

  By the time we reached the
dogs, the animals were already restless and howling, wild-eyed with the knowledge that something terrible was happening. I ran to them and started to work on tightening the half-finished harnesses. Lessons from my father rushed through my mind. “Mother,” I called out over my shoulder, “the lead!”

  When she didn’t respond, I paused to look back. She knelt in the snow, her hands clutched over her stomach. Dark red drops of blood were scattered in a trail behind her, tainting the snow.

  I dropped the harnesses and ran back to my mother’s side. I pulled her hand. “We have to go!” I cried. The dogs were ready, the maktak loaded along with our furs and supplies, the neat little packages we had worked so hard to prepare. We were so close.

  My mother just shook her head. Already, her eyes seemed more glazed than before. “We’ll go,” she whispered. And even as she clutched my hand, she collapsed in the snow.

  The buzzing in my ears turned deafening. It was as if a storm had come, and the snow blew my thoughts away. I refused to leave. I clung there, shaking my mother’s shoulders, even as the sounds of screaming and the crackle of fire roared behind me. The crunch of boots in the snow drew near. Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I let out a yelp, shrank away, and looked up into the face of a young bearded man. He was one of them.

  He glanced at the others as they set fire to the village, then looked back at me. I couldn’t understand his words, but his urgent hand gestures were obvious.

  Get out of here, child, he was trying to tell me. Then he left my side and ran back to the others.

  The world rushed forward again, and I scrambled to my feet and ran for the dogs. I leaned down to secure the harness of the lead dog, Ataneq. He was already panting heavily, and I could see the whites of his eyes. He wants to go, my father would say if he were here. I made sure the harness was set, tugged on the shoulder strap, and stood up on shaking legs.

  As the first huts began to go up in flames, I gripped the handlebar and stepped onto the toeboard. I snapped the reins. The dogs lurched forward. Behind us, a couple of men shouted at us in the gusak tongue.

  Don’t look back. Still, as the dogs kicked up snow and we fled, I turned one last time. The body of my mother looked like a small, crumpled heap. Flames engulfed the village. Men held torches, going from home to home.

  I turned back around on the sled, put my head down, and wept.

  We traveled for a long time, until the sounds of destruction faded into the background and the silence of the open ice took over. The sled cut through the snow, and the panting and baying of the dogs echoed ahead of me. I felt numb. Just a few nights ago, I had sat around a fire and laughed with my mother and father. Now they were gone.

  We’ll need to stop soon. My first coherent thought since we had fled. Father would have scolded me to keep my wits about me. I pulled back on the reins and whistled — Ataneq slowed to a trot, and the other dogs followed his lead.

  The sun was dropping fast, and with it, the temperature. I pulled out heavy furs and set about pitching a tent. I searched for dry moss and branches to build a fire. Frozen droppings clustered here and there. I gathered them together with my mittens, then brought them back to my tent and let them thaw. By the time the sun disappeared completely, I had managed to get a small fire going. I settled, surrounded by my dogs.

  Father’s dogs. I glanced up at the sled, where the maktak sat, stacked and neatly bound. We were supposed to make this delivery together. Father would have charted our course, and I would have helped him guide the dogs. We would have hunted and fished together. He would be sitting here with me, telling stories around the fire.

  Mother would still be alive.

  The memory returned: drops of blood, scarlet against the snow.

  I would have washed Mother’s body and braided her hair. I would have wrapped her and Father in sealskins and laid them to rest out in the tundra, buried beneath a mound of stones, so that their spirits could join the lights in the sky.

  But Father’s body sank beneath the waves. Mother perished with the village.

  My eyes blurred until the fire was a glowing, shapeless mass of gold. The fire’s crackle hid the sounds of my sniffling. Tears ran down my face, freezing at the edges of my cheeks and chin, so that when I reached up to brush them away, I instead found myself flaking away salty ice crystals. Ataneq’s eyes glowed in the night. He pressed his muzzle gently against the side of my leg and uttered a low, mournful whine.

  “Why did they come?” I whispered, burying my hand in Ataneq’s thick fur. My words disappeared into the void of the tundra.

  Father had never taught me how to get to the next village. Without his guidance, how could I possibly complete the delivery route? How could I find my way there? What if I was caught in a storm?

  My dogs and I would die alone out here, buried in snow, never to be found again.

  Stop trembling. I pulled my knees up to my chin and wrapped my arms around my legs. Ataneq’s warm muzzle left my leg, letting the cold seep in. I paused in my thoughts to look at him. He tilted his head and let out a series of low barks. The other dogs stirred.

  I turned my head up to see what had caught his attention.

  It was the red aurora — sheets upon glittering sheets of crimson and scarlet that painted the night sky and hid swaths of stars. Blood, some in my village called it. Good fortune, my mother insisted. Perhaps it wasn’t. Perhaps I’m not. All I could think about was the feeling in my stomach as the hunters returned without my father, and the memory of my mother lying in the snow, red spilling across her furs.

  I would not find the village. I would not deliver this maktak, and those villagers would be left wondering what had happened. I would join my parents’ spirits in the sky.

  Perhaps I am cursed.

  A flicker of light in the sky drew my attention. There. In the midst of the red aurora, a bright, searing line sliced its way across the sky. It streaked past us, then disappeared beyond the horizon in a glittering trail.

  My heart caught in my throat. My hand buried deeper in Ataneq’s fur, and a dot of excitement lit up my sorrow. A falling star.

  Never in my life had I seen one as bright as this, like a white-gold fire against the night. I searched the sky, half-expecting another to come. But the rest of the stars stayed where they were, and the tundra fell back into stillness. Wind gusted past me, and I huddled against the thickness of my furs. My eyes lingered on the horizon where the falling star had disappeared.

  Slowly, my thoughts began to flow into a river of calm, and the calm brought me focus. My mother’s voice came to me.

  When hunters are lost at sea, the Seal King turns them into seals. When sledders are lost in the tundra, Nanuk the Great White Bear takes them in and turns them into her cubs. Their spirits stay protected in the animals’ bodies until the night a falling star comes to take them away into the sky.

  Then, my father’s voice.

  The spirits will guide you, if you take only what you need and respect them in their domain. Even in the darkest night. Remember that, Yakone, and you will never be lost.

  I remembered. I raised one hand and traced the line that my father had traced that evening, connecting the stars of the First Ones to the Caribou. It was the same path that the falling star had followed, as surely as if my father had drawn it himself.

  It would not be an easy journey. Following the coastline would take far too long, so we would have to head into the tundra and rely on the constellations. This was a risk in itself. If a blizzard caught us, it would bury us. With nothing but the same white expanse in all directions and a sky shrouded by clouds, even the greatest tracker could lose himself and freeze to death.

  But Father had taught me what he would have taught a son, and Mother had taught me what a daughter should know. The thought kept me warm, even as I looked to the bleak trek ahead.

  I looked down at Ataneq. “We will follow the falling star and find the village,” I murmured. His ears flicked forward at my voice. “And when we complete t
he star’s path, my parents’ spirits will be free to rest.”

  I jerked awake, not because of the weak light but because the dogs were barking.

  I scrambled out from the warmth of my furs to see Ataneq facing the way we’d come, his hackles up and his bark punctuated by growls. The other dogs, restless because of their leader, did the same. I saw what unsettled them. Far along the horizon, a band of dark clouds crouched . . . and as I looked on, they crept forward, bit by bit, headed in our direction.

  Fear jabbed at me. A winter storm, just as I’d feared. If we couldn’t outrace it, it would blot out what little sun we had, it would hide the stars, and it would freeze us where we stood. It would kill us. I whirled to face Ataneq.

  “Let’s go,” I murmured.

  The sun moved, and we moved. Afternoon lengthened into an early evening, and the sun set a little earlier than it had the day before. We ran through the lengthening darkness, following the stars, until I stopped us in exhaustion. Hurriedly, I gathered what little dried moss I could, then started a fire. The warmth reassured me somewhat as I wiggled my frozen fingers and toes before it. Behind us, the band of dark clouds loomed, closer now than it had been this morning. A part of me wanted to jump up and force the dogs onward — force us on through the entire night. But that was impossible. We needed to rest. I untied one of the maktak packages from the sled, thawed it out before the fire, and sliced it up for the dogs. I kept a piece for myself. My eyes closed as I savored the rich fat. I would have to be careful with our portions. I finished mine, then crawled into my furs. The clouds loomed in the back of my thoughts, haunting me. If we couldn’t beat the storm, all the food supplies in the world wouldn’t save us.

  A strange noise woke me this time. It was the sound of a splash.

  I opened my eyes and looked over at the dogs, but they did not stir. The fire had burned low, and the embers glowed red in the night. Ice crystals flaked from my lashes. I shivered. Perhaps I had been dreaming.