A Tyranny of Petticoats

by Jessica Spotswood

  Then the splash came again, some distance into the tundra. I glanced behind me. Water? But we’d left the coast behind yesterday. Were we headed in the wrong direction?

  I crawled out of my furs. I listened a moment longer, then started to head toward the splashing sound. Behind me, Ataneq woke and watched me go with a curious tilt of his head. He whined, but I held a hand up, reassuring him that I was all right. I cut the strings from last night’s maktak package into short pieces. I tied these to tiny patches of dry grass and lichen as I went, so that I would remember my path back. The splashing grew louder. Finally, something appeared ahead, a black patch that stood out solidly against the snow. I furrowed my brows. It was a hole in the ground, and the darkness was water.

  I swallowed hard, then backtracked a few steps. It was hard to tell, but I had made my way onto the edge of an enormous frozen lake, hidden under the snow. The ice trembled slightly under my weight. A death trap. We would have headed this way come morning. We could have ended up in the water.

  Another splash came from the hole in the ice. When I looked closer, I saw a faint white cloud of mist floating in the air. I squinted at the source of the spray.

  The largest seal I had ever seen poked its head out of the water.

  I gasped. The beast turned its head toward me, its huge eyes gleaming gold in the night. The water around it glowed a faint sapphire, as if lit by something from the depths, and the surface of the water glittered with a thousand tiny lights, as if the stars had shattered into the sea. They lit the seal, outlining its dark silhouette beneath the waves and adding a blue hue to its stormy-gray hide.

  “The Seal King rose from the depths,” I whispered, “to claim the hearts of drowning hunters.” And now it seemed as if it had woken me to tell me about the lake.

  The seal did not swim away. Instead, it stared back at me with unblinking eyes. I felt, for a moment, as if I looked into the face of my father. There was something wise there, something human. My lips trembled.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. “For the warning.”

  The seal only blinked once at me. Then it submerged, and when it did not come up again, I shook my head and followed my trail of strings back to camp.

  I dreamed of fish. I dreamed that the Seal King came to bless us, that he turned into my father, and that when I woke and headed to the lake, the waters were teeming with fish. I grabbed at them as they leaped out of the water, their scales glittering in the sun. They piled along the shore in rows.

  I woke with a start. The sun was very low today. A new chill in the wind reminded me of the approaching blizzard, and I looked to the horizon. The clouds were close enough this morning for me to see their bumps and bruises, their angry curves. Overhead, a lone tern glided, separated from its flock.

  We had to move faster.

  I rode my dogs hard, even as the sky turned darker and the clouds grew thicker behind us. Only when Ataneq slowed in protest, his panting heavy, did I finally snap out of my stupor and let the team rest. I inspected their bright eyes, their frosty noses, and their ice-crusted coats; I watched them chew snow off of their paws. There are no boundaries between the animals’ spirits and ours, my father had told me. I had no right to treat them so.

  Still, we had no choice. I pushed them on.

  The second day ended, and the third day began. I set snares in the snow. They caught a few fat lemmings, and I divided the fresh meat among the dogs, saving only a little for myself. Our maktak had to last, and the dogs were ravenous. The third day bled into the fourth. The days turned darker, and the nearing storm promised snow. The dogs ran more slowly.

  That night, I watched the dogs shift uneasily in their sleep. Ataneq looked exhausted, but we could rest only a few hours before I had to force the team onward again. I stared up at the night sky, followed the line of the constellations, and tried to believe that I could find our way if the stars disappeared behind the storm.

  I didn’t sleep that night.

  An hour before dawn, I looked up into a gray sky. The sun was gone, hidden behind the clouds. A few fat flurries drifted onto my face. The storm had arrived, shrouding the guiding sky, and the snow was already starting to come fast. I jumped up and started folding my furs away.

  My eyes paused on giant paw prints circling our camp.

  They were enormous, a dozen times larger than Ataneq’s prints, larger than any wolf’s, pushed deeply into the snow and frozen in sculpture. I stared, startled, into the darkness of the open tundra.

  The Great White Bear? Nanuk has come to warn us about the storm. I squinted and tried to imagine my mother’s spirit looking back, but all I saw was emptiness. I shook my head. Believing in old folktales. I was deluding myself, trying to take comfort in anything. I walked over to Ataneq, who did not want to rise.

  “Aahali, poor thing,” I whispered, stroking his head. “We have to keep going.” He looked at me but did not uncurl himself. The other dogs did not want to stir either. I went down the line, checking each of them with a sinking heart. They were exhausted. Even though I knew that they would run if I commanded it of them, they would not be able to go much farther. They would run themselves to death out of loyalty.

  Suddenly, Ataneq’s ears pricked up. He lifted his head and pointed it in the direction of the bleak tundra, and the hackles on his neck rose. A low growl rumbled from his throat.

  “Ataneq?” I whispered.

  Then he leaped to his feet. He began to bark. The other dogs lifted their heads too.

  My eyes followed Ataneq’s line of sight. There, from the mist of falling snowflakes, came a flash of light. Then the howling of other dogs.

  A faint shout drifted over to us.

  It was a language I did not know.

  The memory of the gusaks came back to me. They have come to finish me off.

  I rushed to the sled and grabbed the handlebar. The dogs were already restless, anxious to be on the move. I called out a command and the entire line lurched forward, the dogs throwing all their strength into the run. My head jerked back. As icy snow flew in my face, I glanced over the back of the sled to see our pursuers.

  The light gleamed again.

  We charged on. But my dogs were traveling across the frozen tundra at a slower pace than yesterday. The snow turned thicker, so that the light behind us was shrouded now and then from view. But the storm slowed us down too, painting the entire landscape an eerie white. My breaths came in ragged gasps. I hoped Ataneq could sense where he was leading us.

  Behind us, the light suddenly grew brighter. Our pursuers were gaining on us. Now I could hear more faint shouts floating from somewhere behind us. I caught a few clear words.

  The gusak tongue. “We must go faster!” I shouted to Ataneq, but the wind drowned out my words. There was little we could do. Ataneq could not push the other dogs any faster.

  The ground beneath us suddenly changed from soft snow to hard ice. We shouldn’t be on the ice, I thought frantically, remembering the Seal King’s warning. At the same time, Ataneq seemed to realize the sudden shift beneath his paws, and he tried immediately to turn us.

  When I looked back again, I could see our pursuers’ dogs, dark specks against the fury of falling snow, their sledder wearing a thick fur hat. A strange sense of calm washed over me at the sight. Perhaps this would be where they caught me and killed me as they had killed Mother. Or perhaps this would be where I stood my ground. If I died here, I would die fighting.

  The gusak sledder shouted something at me, but I couldn’t understand what he said. Instead, I gritted my teeth and braced myself.

  Abruptly, Ataneq slid to a halt. The other dogs stumbled in their haste to stop, and the team slid across the icy surface. The sled’s runners cracked the ice. I only had time to shout before the ice gave way with a thunderous series of cracks. Then the world swallowed me whole. The icy water knocked all the breath from my lungs. Panic clogged my mind. I floundered blindly. The world flashed in and out — the water stabbed at me. I reached ou
t, hoping for something to hang on to. I called for my dogs.

  Ataneq! Ataneq!

  Through the cold and darkness, I saw a shape curve through the water, its black eyes gleaming bright, tail carving a trail behind it. The Seal King.

  I broke to the surface with a terrible gasp into the middle of a blizzard. Ataneq and the other dogs barked furiously. Someone had cut their sled leads to keep them from going into the water. Where were the gusaks? I tried to grab at the edge of the ice, but my limbs were too numb to pull myself out.

  I will die here, I thought.

  As I clung desperately to the ice, I saw a hulking figure lumbering toward me. It was enormous, oblivious to the wind and snow that blew against its hide, and its white fur blended in with the storm until I could not tell where one ended and the other began. The creature stopped before me. I lifted my frozen lashes higher until I met the beast’s brown eyes.

  They were my mother’s eyes. Human.

  Nanuk. I reached out a hand. The Great White Bear lowered its head so that I could touch its muzzle. I opened my cracked lips, wanting to say something, not knowing what.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally whispered. Tears rolled down my cheeks. The grief that I had kept bottled since the destruction of my village now came spilling out. “I don’t even — even have a token I can keep.”

  The Great White Bear said nothing in return. Instead, she closed her eyes and leaned against my hand. And I, dying, tried to understand what she wanted to tell me.

  I felt something pushing me from underneath. Father, I called, but my word came out silent. The Seal King lifted me out of the icy waters into the cold blast of the storm’s winds. I crawled forward. I heard shouting, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. Ahead, Nanuk turned away from me and walked away across the glittering snow. I called after her, begging her to come back, but she did not listen.

  I cried. The blizzard howled, threatening to devour me. The shouting returned, and as I tried in vain to find its source, I saw a pair of hands dragging at my hood. I tried to reach for them, to push them away, but my limbs were too numb. The world sharpened and blurred and sharpened again. As it faded away, a pair of faces appeared above me. They were pale, with thick beards and blue eyes.

  Then the world turned dark, and I remembered no more.

  A dim light. Footsteps and fire. Bubbling water. Most of all, warmth — a deep, soaking warmth that wrapped its way around my icy insides.

  My eyes opened.

  Wooden beams lined the ceiling. The glow from a fire lit the walls. I blinked, clearing my eyes, and looked around. A harpoon hung on the wall, and a deerskin covered an old wooden bench. Something bubbled in a pot by the fire, filling the air with rich aromas. It did not smell like anything I was familiar with. A stew, perhaps? Caribou? My eyes went to a wooden wall sculpture that looked like a bare tree with three lines through it.

  I tentatively wriggled my toes and fingers. To my surprise, I could feel all of them. The bed beneath me crunched as I struggled to a sitting position and looked around the tiny room. I saw no sign of my dogs. Instead, a woman stirred a pot in one corner while a gusak man in a simple robe sat by a table with his head down.

  The woman saw me stir first. The man at the table was a gusak, but this woman looked like me.

  “I’m glad you’re awake, child,” she said. She spoke flawlessly in the Inupiat tongue. “I am Olga.” She nodded to the gusak man, who looked up long enough to give her a kindly nod. “My husband, Peter. You’re safe here. Your dogs are resting outside.”

  I could only stare. This woman married a gusak?

  When I did not respond, Olga went on. “We are missionaries, from across the sea. We found you on the ice.”

  My pursuers were not the same as the men who came to my village.

  Olga wiped her hands on her apron and came to sit beside me. She put a warm hand against my cheek. I trembled, unsure if I wanted to pull away or linger. “We are a part of a larger community,” she said, nodding at the window, where snow blanketed the world. “We have taken in many orphaned by the traders. My husband and his men heard of what happened to the village farther north. You must be from there.”

  Mother, lying in the snow. Father, lost in the ocean. I closed my eyes and felt the Seal King lift me out of the water, the muzzle of the great Nanuk against my palm. I had followed the falling star, just as the tales said, and the star had led me here.

  “Why did they burn our village?” I whispered.

  Olga was quiet for a moment. “The world grows smaller,” she finally said. “And small worlds cultivate greed. It is a grievous sin.”

  A great weight pressed against my chest, and I wanted to cry again. I didn’t understand.

  Olga gave me a sad look. “We are not all like them. I am sorry, child, for your loss, and I am sorry for them, for seeing such a small world.”

  Such a small world. When I was a child, I would spend hours looking out at the sea, asking Father what lay on the other side. I used to think that the ocean went on forever, until it became the sky and entered another realm. My thoughts wavered, confused and lost.

  How did the world become so small?

  Olga nodded at me. “You can stay for as long as you like,” she said kindly. Then she told me to rest, and went back to her pot.

  I lay back down, thinking.

  Olga offered me a rich stew, swimming with chunks of caribou and fat roots. She watched as I ate. Then she and her husband, Peter, turned their backs on me in the night, extinguishing their candles.

  I lay awake for a long time. I still had my harpoon. These gusaks did not protect themselves. They were just like my village. Helpless.

  But I continued to lie in bed and did not move. In my mind, Nanuk came to me and spoke. She spoke words so ancient that I could not repeat them. But I understood. The grief in my heart lightened, turning fainter like a dying star until it flickered out of existence, leaving only a feeling of peace.

  The promise of the next village, of a place I understood in this small world, lingered in my thoughts. I had to continue on.

  I left early the next morning, before anyone woke. It was so early that I could still see the thick band of stars across the sky. Ataneq waited for me in the snow, tail wagging, and with him were the rest of my dogs, sheltered from the last of the passing snow by the wall of the gusak missionaries’ home. I threw my arms around Ataneq’s neck and buried my face in his fur. “Aahali,” I whispered. “Good dog.” I checked the others, fixed their harnesses, and turned my sled away from the gusak village. I thought I saw the cloth at the window stir, and wondered if Olga was watching me. But I did not look back, and she did not come out to stop me.

  I took a deep breath, glanced up at the sky, and bid farewell to my parents. Then I whistled, and Ataneq guided us forward. The gusak village disappeared behind us. Empty tundra and open sky became my surroundings again.

  As evening arrived, I found myself looking down upon an Inupiat village, its lights glittering against the snow. I wanted to laugh, to cry. Already, a few of the village’s women had looked up from their work in my direction, and their arms waved in the air. A hunter headed toward us.

  As I stood there, I turned my face up to the sky and saw ribbons of a red aurora trailing behind the scattered clouds.

  Jean Craighead George’s Julie of the Wolves was one of my favorite childhood books; the copy I had was completely falling apart from overuse. Miyax’s harsh, bleak, yet awe-inspiring and very much alive Alaskan wilderness haunted me. So, in picking a time and setting for an American historical short story, I knew fairly quickly that I had to set mine in the Great Land.

  Researching Alaska, I loved the blurred line between history and Inuit folklore. This is an old land where the sun permanently sets for months on end, where dogs pull sleds across hundreds of miles of snow and ice, and where colorful sheets of light dance in the sky — the facts already feel magical. I loved reading about the Inuit culture and the connections between man
and beast, as well as the clash of this world with the modern age, and the end of an era. I hope readers enjoy Yakone’s journey.

  I HAVE A SECRET.

  It tastes like the sweet lemonade they served at last night’s ball and smells of pipe tobacco. It sounds like the waltz we danced to and feels like the press of his hand against mine through my white satin glove.

  We can’t — won’t — touch skin to skin. Not unless — until — Papa accepts his offer.

  I dream of Antoine’s bare skin against mine. Of him bending, his honey-colored eyes drifting closed (people close their eyes when they kiss, don’t they? My best friend, Eugenie, says they do), his nose and cheeks sunburned from riding through his family’s sugarcane fields, his brown beard with that hint of red in it scratchy against my cheek. I feel certain his beard would be scratchy, and his lips — thin though they are — soft. Gentle. I’d close my eyes too, and melt against him, and —

  “Maddie!” Eugenie catches my elbow to keep me from running into old Madame Augustin. Madame purses her lips, her rheumy eyes narrowing in disapproval, face scrunching up till she looks like a pecan — but though I’m the one who was woolgathering and almost knocked her into the street, it’s Eugenie she frowns at.

  If Papa accepts, will Madame Augustin look at me like that?

  “Sorry, Madame!” I squeak.

  “Mademoiselle Madeleine.” She gives me a quick nod and then sniffs at Eugenie. “Mademoiselle Dalcour.”

  Eugenie waits until we’ve turned the corner before muttering, “Snooty old bat.”

  I giggle and we stroll down the wooden banquette. Above us, the spring sky is a cloudless blue against the lacy wrought-iron galleries. In another month the heat will be unbearable, but just now the sunshine is warm and reassuring against my face. Eugenie links her arm through mine, and my confidence soars. I will talk to Maman this afternoon and tell her about Antoine. Monsieur Guerin, I correct myself. There’s no need to make things worse with a lack of propriety.

  It can’t get much worse, my conscience needles me. Maman’s going to be so angry.