Brother Wind (21 page)

Hard Rock stood beside his wife. The man kept his eyes on Waxtal, his head turned as though he did not even see the woman at his side. “This is your carving,” he said. He walked over to Waxtal, squatted on his haunches.

“Yes.”

Hard Rock reached to touch the tusk, but drew his hand back when Waxtal hissed. The man looked at Waxtal, brows drawn together, lips pressed into a firm line.

“It has a spirit,” Waxtal said. “It is … it is alive.”

“How do you know what to carve?” Hard Rock asked and crossed his arms over his chest.

Waxtal narrowed his eyes, thought for a moment. There was always danger in telling too much.

“It is a story,” Waxtal finally said. “It tells what has happened to my people.” With the tip of his carving knife, he pointed at a series of crosshatchings on the base of the tusk. “This is a far beach, east and south of here, close to the ice walls that mark the edge of the earth. Next you see the waves that destroyed our village.” He pointed to a series of wide slashing lines rising up over circles that were a group of ulas. “Here is where we take our ikyan and travel to the beach of the old man, the shaman carver.”

Hard Rock nodded.

“Here we trade with our brothers the Whale Hunters, and this is the battle with the Short Ones. This man is you.” Waxtal laid the blade of his knife against one of the man figures, larger than the others, a man gripping a lance in each hand.

Hard Rock leaned close to study the carving, and Waxtal raised his hand to cover his smile. Why tell Hard Rock the truth, that the man carved was Waxtal, that the story told was Waxtal’s story?

Many Babies leaned over her husband to look at the tusk. She smacked her lips together and asked, “Do you pleasure women as well as you carve?”

She reached out to stroke Waxtal’s hair, laughed, and curled her fingers around his ear. Hard Rock rose to his feet and pulled her arm away from Waxtal.

“I am sorry to make such a poor trade for your oil,” he said to Waxtal. “Perhaps you will find pleasure in the fact that she is my first wife. If not, choose any woman you want in the village. I will bring her to you.” Without looking back at either Waxtal or Many Babies, Hard Rock climbed from the ulaq.

Waxtal leaned over the walrus tusk, used his knife to shave out a line on the yellow ivory. Many Babies knelt beside him. She moved her hands slowly up under his suk, stroking the insides of his legs. Waxtal’s man part hardened, but still he kept his eyes and hands on the ivory. Let the woman wait.

A woman must understand that there are things more important to a man than she is. Tonight he must carve.

Soon Many Babies’ hands were squeezing, rubbing. Waxtal’s fingers grew cold, and he knew his spirit had left his hands to find joy between his legs. He sighed and set down his knife. Sometimes he had to think of others before he thought of himself. What woman, seeing this tusk, would not want him, even for one short night? What woman would not want the chance to carry his child?

He turned and pulled off Many Babies’ suk, then laid her back on the floor mats. She opened her legs, and again he sighed. Why refuse the woman? There would be time again to carve. Besides, he did not want to insult Hard Rock.

T
HE WOMAN’S SNORES WOKE WAXTAL.
He groaned and shifted on the sleeping robes. If she had been his wife, he would have kicked her awake and made her move to her own sleeping place, but a trader cannot kick the alananasika’s wife. He nudged her and pushed her slowly to her side. She snorted and for a moment was silent, then started snoring again.

Waxtal moved as far from her as he could, close to the curtained door that led into the ulaq’s main room. Through the grass curtain’s rough weave he could see the glow of an oil lamp. He squeezed his eyes closed, then heard the voices—Owl and Spotted Egg, their words nearly whispered.

Waxtal shook his head. Let them spend half the night talking. They passed their days in bed with one woman or another. He had better things to do. How could a man greet the sun with the Whale Hunters if he was awake all night talking? Besides, tomorrow he must seek a place in the hills to meditate and fast and speak to the spirits. What did Owl and Spotted Egg know about things of the spirit? They thought only of their bellies and their loins.

He yawned, then heard Spotted Egg say, “Leave him!”

Owl answered, but Waxtal could not make out his words. Waxtal sat up, leaned closer to the sleeping curtain. The men were still talking, speaking in the low quick speech of the Caribou People, but Waxtal had learned the language well during the winter he had spent with Owl and Spotted Egg.

Owl was usually easier to understand, because he talked more slowly than his brother. But though Owl spoke now, Many Babies’ snores were too loud for Waxtal to hear what the man said. Waxtal scooted across the sleeping place to Many Babies’ side and covered her mouth and nose with his hand. She jerked her head and pushed his hand away.

“Many Babies,” Waxtal whispered. “Many Babies, sh-h-h-h. Be quiet.”

The woman rose up on both elbows. “What?” she asked.

Waxtal pressed his fingertips against her lips. “Sh-h-h-h,” he said. “You were crying in your sleep. It was a dream. Be quiet. Be still. You are safe.”

She snuggled against Waxtal and reached between his legs, but Waxtal pushed her hands away. “Go back to sleep,” he said, but hoped she would not sleep—at least until he heard what Owl and Spotted Egg were saying about him. Many Babies lay down, and Waxtal went back to his place beside the curtain.

He held his breath and waited. There was nothing, silence. He sighed. The men had probably gone into their sleeping places. Waxtal settled against the earthen ulaq wall. There was a chance Owl and Spotted Egg were eating and would talk more later. Best to wait. He had all night to sleep.

After a time Owl cleared his throat, and Waxtal smiled. He had been right.

“So we leave him,” Owl said. “What then? The Whale Hunters will not want him. He is lazy and cannot hunt. Hard Rock will be angry with us, and we will not be able to come back here to trade again.”

“You want to trade with these Whale Hunters?” Spotted Egg asked. “Already the curse of this place has sunk into my bones. We have stayed too long. I do not want to come back. What do we have to show for our time here? A few seal bellies of old whale oil. We have given more than that for their women.”

“Waxtal has harpoon heads.”

“Four, for three bellies of oil.”

Again there was silence.

“So when?” Owl finally asked.

“Tomorrow. Waxtal has said he will go into the hills to fast. What better time to leave?”

“And if the Whale Hunters try to stop us?”

“Why should they? They do not need our mouths to feed.”

“What about Waxtal’s ikyak? Should we take it?”

“We would need more than the two of us to handle both ik and ikyak over a long journey. It is many days’ travel to the next village.”

“What about the tusks?”

Again silence, then Waxtal heard laughter, low, quiet. “He has eaten several tusks’ worth of food since he came to us.”

“I will take those harpoon heads, too. In many ways the old man is a fool, but he knows something about trading.”

“He says the River People will give two women for one harpoon head.”

“I would be content with one woman.”

Waxtal lay back against the soft furs that covered the floor of the sleeping place. So Owl and Spotted Egg thought they would take his things and leave him. Laughter moved silently under his ribs.

Waxtal waited until he heard Owl and Spotted Egg go into their sleeping places. He waited until he heard their breathing turn into the long softness of sleep. Then he crept to the packs the men kept hidden in the back of the food cache. Most of their trade goods were there. Only their weapons, their necklaces, several bellies of whale oil, and a few baskets of dried berries were in their sleeping places. The rest—oil, hides, furs, dried meat—was bundled in their caribou skin trader’s packs in the cache.

Waxtal pulled out Spotted Egg’s packs, then Owl’s. He took almost everything from the cache and four of the water bladders that hung from the rafters. He brought his own weapons and his pack of carving tools from his sleeping place, then picked up a sealskin mat from the floor and laid it over the oil lamp until the flame drowned itself in the oil. In the darkness he hauled everything to the top of the ulaq. As he worked, he whispered prayers and promises to spirits, begging them to keep Owl and Spotted Egg asleep, to block their ears.

Finally he had only his tusks, one carved, one plain. He carried them up, then took everything to his ikyak. He packed bow and stern with the supplies and trade goods, pausing once to pull a string of shell beads from one of Owl’s packs and drape the beads around his neck. He tied everything in so it would not shift, and balanced the load, side to side, fore and aft. He finally had to leave six seal bellies of oil on the beach—those and the traders’ now empty packs.

It was dark, the black center of night. The tide was high, so it would be easier, Waxtal hoped, to launch his ikyak and avoid the rocks that reached up from the seafloor. He carried two of the bellies of oil to Hard Rock’s ulaq, called down softly from the roof hole. One of Hard Rock’s wives came into the central ulaq room. An oil lamp burned, throwing the woman’s shadow, long and dark, against the ulaq walls.

Waxtal could not remember her name. She had spent several nights with Spotted Egg; he remembered that, but nothing else. “I must speak with Hard Rock,” Waxtal said.

“Who are you?” the woman asked. She moved to stand near the waist-high boulder, flattened and hollowed out on top, that was the ulaq’s main oil lamp.

“Waxtal, the trader.”

She hesitated. “Hard Rock is asleep,” she finally said.

“I have oil for him, to pay for a trade we made. I have given promises to spirits and must go now, and fast. I want Hard Rock to have the oil before I leave.”

The lamp lit the woman’s head from the chin up and threw shadows across her eyes so that her face looked like a mask made to call spirits.

“Wait,” she said. “I will get him.”

Waxtal waited until the woman went to Hard Rock’s sleeping place, then sat on the edge of the roof hole so that his feet hung down into the ulaq. He wrapped his arms around one of the seal bellies and began to descend the climbing log.

He set the belly of oil on the floor and went up for the other. He was still at the top of the climbing log when he felt a hand clasp his ankle.

“Waxtal?” Hard Rock’s voice.

“Yes.”

“Good. You have brought my oil?”

“Yes. I want you to have it before I go speak to the spirits.”

“Good,” Hard Rock said again. He reached up and took the belly of oil from Waxtal’s arms.

“Can you eat before you go?”

Waxtal looked up toward the sky. It was still dark. “Yes,” he said.

Hard Rock went to the food cache and pulled out dried meat and oil. He handed a fistful of the meat to Waxtal. “Where do you plan to go?”

Waxtal bit into the meat, chewed. “That is something the spirits will decide.”

“You will come back?”

Waxtal shrugged. “I have had enough of Owl and Spotted Egg. Tell them to go on without me.”

“They do not know you are going?”

“They know, but they had planned to wait for me. Tell them not to wait.”

“I will tell them.”

Waxtal folded a strip of dried meat and stuck it between jaw and gum where it would soften in the damp of his mouth. He spoke over the bulge of his cheek. “I have been glad to trade with you. I hope to come back, but perhaps it will be another year. Watch for me in the summers.”

Hard Rock reached out, slapped a hand to Waxtal’s shoulder. “I will watch for you.”

Waxtal walked to the climbing log, then turned. He reached down into his suk and pulled out Owl’s shell bead necklace. “You trained your woman well,” Waxtal said. “Give this to her for me.”

Hard Rock took the necklace. “She trained me,” he said, and began to laugh. His laughter followed Waxtal up out of the ulaq, into the dark of the short night.

O
WL STRETCHED
and scratched his belly. “For a man who has not had a woman all winter, he did not make much noise last night,” he said to Spotted Egg and nodded toward Waxtal’s sleeping place.

“They are both old,” Spotted Egg said. He laughed, a thin wheeze that came from the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps all he wanted was to sleep. Either way, he does not deserve a woman after the trade he made with Hard Rock. Three seal bellies of oil for four broken harpoon heads.”

“Two seal bellies.”

“So he says. He lied about the woman, why not the oil?”

“We should never have brought him with us. Then we would not have come to this cursed island. We would be at a Seal Hunter village, enjoying fat women and fresh meat.”

Spotted Egg dipped his finger into the oil lamp, licked the seal oil from his hand. Owl made a face. “It is rancid,” he said. “I can smell it from here.”

Spotted Egg shrugged. He went to the food cache and pulled aside its curtain, rubbing the coarsely woven grass as he did so. “These Whale Hunter women cannot weave,” he said.

“What is that to us?” asked Owl. He had taken his parka from a peg on the wall and was running his thumb along the stitches, smashing the gray-bodied fleas that had pushed their way into the valley of each seam. “We get mats from the Seal Hunter women. We get fleas from the Whale Hunters.”

Spotted Egg, squatting on his haunches, reached into the cache, made a mumbled exclamation, and sat down hard on the floor.

“What?” Owl asked, looking up from the parka.

“It is almost empty,” Spotted Egg said in a small voice.

“What?”

“Look.” Spotted Egg held aside the curtain.

Owl strode across the ulaq floor, bunched the curtain into one hand, and ripped it from its pegs. He reached into the cache and pulled out a partially full sea lion belly of oil, a flattened water bladder, and one sealskin of dried fish.

“Everything is gone except what was here when we came,” Spotted Egg said.