Brother Wind (53 page)

“You have come with your questions,” one of the women said, and Blue Shell suddenly realized that they spoke in her own language. The First Men words came to her ears as something beautiful.

“Do not be surprised,” the other woman said. “We are First Men, married into this tribe of Walrus People.”

“It is good to hear words spoken in the true way,” Blue Shell said.

One of the sisters laughed. “No one language is the true way,” she said. “The true way is something not heard with the ears, but here. …” She pressed a closed fist against her heart.

“You have come to ask about Lemming Tail,” the other sister said. “She is gone. She will not be back. Raven has traded her.”

The words were cold in Blue Shell’s heart. “You know all things?” Blue Shell asked.

“We know very little, but more than other people know.”

Again, one of the sisters laughed, but it was a gentle laugh so that Blue Shell knew that they did not intend to make fun of her. “Raven is your chief?” Blue Shell asked.

“You know Raven?” the sisters asked, their two voices blending as one.

Blue Shell lowered her eyes. “No,” she said. “But I have heard the women speak of him.”

One of the old women shrugged. “Some say he is chief of this village, but Ice Hunter is her son.” She tilted her head toward her sister. “He is our chief.”

Blue Shell nodded, then slowly, choosing her words carefully, she said, “The women told me that Raven has three sons, but that one is dead.”

“He has no sons,” one of the old women said. “Not now.”

“What happened to Lemming Tail’s son?”

“You know of Lemming Tail’s son?”

“I have heard …”

“He is traded, he and Lemming Tail.” The old woman paused, bent in the dim light toward the mat she was weaving. She cleared her throat and said, “Lemming Tail and her son Mouse and the son by Raven’s wife Kiin, the child he named Shuku, are all traded.”

At the woman’s words, Blue Shell could not keep her hands still. They twisted themselves into her suk. “Why?” she asked softly, hardly aware that she had spoken the word.

The sisters acted as though she had said nothing, resumed their weaving as though she were not there. But I am not here, Blue Shell reminded herself. I am a slave.

She stood and thanked the sisters, though they made no response, and then she left the lodge. But as she wove her way into the shadows of the village, back toward the lodge of Chin Hairs and Day Girl, she heard someone call her. She turned back and saw one of the sisters. The old woman came close, clasped Blue Shell’s arm, and pulled so that Blue Shell had to lean down toward the old woman’s mouth.

“Kiin,” the old woman said, “she is well?”

“She is dead,” Blue Shell said, as Kiin had told her to say.

“Takha?”

“He is dead.”

The words burned on Blue Shell’s tongue.

T
HE NIGHT OF THE FULL MOON,
Blue Shell again crept from Chin Hairs’ lodge. This time she carried her small bag of belongings, the few things that were hers. She stopped first at the drying racks, where she took several handfuls of meat. She looked out toward the water, at the left side of the bay. She would walk that beach, keeping low and close to the beach grass.

During full moon many of the Walrus People were out, fishing and repairing ikyan as though it were day, so she would have to be careful. Once out of the bay, there would be no one—except Big Teeth coming for her, to take her back to her own people. The ache that had seemed to become a part of her body lifted, and she felt only the excitement of hope, the joy of being again with her daughter, and with Takha, with all the people of her village.

She crept from the shadows of the lodges, out past the ikyak racks. She moved as though she, too, were a shadow, walking carefully, slowly.

She heard voices on the beach, men talking, laughing. They were a strange people, these Walrus, living by moonlight as if they were the animals they told stories of—wolves, bears, caribou. Using night and day as one. Sleeping, eating only by need.

She was well past the village then, walking the curve of the bay, nearing the mouth where bay joined sea, where beach sand gave way to gravel and rock. Then she heard a man singing, and as though Kiin’s spirit whispered the name into her ears, Blue Shell knew it was Raven.

She crouched in the tall grass, and, peering out, saw that he paddled a trading ik and that he was alone. He moved his paddle to the bay side of the ik and turned toward the beach. Raven was coming ashore.

Blue Shell’s breath came hard into her throat. She was suddenly unable to move, as though her feet had grown into the ground. When Raven stepped from the ik, she was able to rise to her hands and feet. She scurried more deeply into the grass and lay still.

She heard Raven’s voice again, raised as though the man spoke to someone, and she peeked out through the grass, moved her head until she could see him sitting on his heels beside his ik. Then she lay where she was and watched.

Raven’s throat was raw from practicing, but still he spoke. The voice came from the ik’s bow. He spoke again and the voice came from a rock on the beach, then from a clump of grass at the edge of the tide mark. He began a chant, but the words came out in his own voice, so he started again.

This time he tightened his throat until it seemed as though his words were coming from a narrow tunnel behind his tongue. He nodded his head in satisfaction as the voice came to him from the high ryegrass at the back of the beach.

The grass moved. Wolf? he thought, trying to see in the darkness. No, not wolf, but something. Bear? No, too small for a bear. Perhaps a half-grown cub, he thought. He leaned back slowly, reached into the ik, and brought out spear and throwing board. He fitted his hand into the throwing board, looked down as he set the butt of the spear against the board’s hook. But when he looked again, whatever had been there was gone, lost in the shadows.

Raven moved his head back and forth, using the clearer night vision that comes from the corners of the eyes, but still there was nothing. Spirit? he asked himself. It was true he did not yet know what powers he could draw with his voices. He spoke again, narrowing his throat so the words came from the grass. Again, he was sure he saw movement.

“If you are spirit, show yourself,” he finally called out, using his own voice. “If you are spirit, tell me what you have come to tell me.” He waited, but there was nothing.

He had thought to spend time here in the moonlight, to practice his voices before returning to the village, but how could he if some animal was hiding in the grass?

He looked across the water at the village, saw beach fires, and knew that men were awake. He did not want to go to them yet. Let them awake in the morning and see him in the village. Let them wonder when he had come. Let them find some mystery in what he did.

But now that there was a spirit on this beach he could not stay. In anger he flexed his throwing arm, in anger he drew back his spear. He let it fly from the thrower toward the darkness in the grass. He heard it hit, and with the hit came a sound like a sudden hiss of wind, then nothing, no cry, no scream.

“It was a spirit,” Raven said, his voice a whisper. He watched the grass, saw no movement, heard nothing. Still, no one knew what might anger a spirit. Almost he went to retrieve his spear; almost he stayed to practice his voices. But then in his mind he saw himself coming toward the men on the beach in his ik, coming out of the darkness. Who could not see the mystery in that? Why should he wait until morning?

And so he pushed his ik back into the water, leaving his spear. If he had hit some spirit, why further risk that spirit’s anger? He would send some boy tomorrow to retrieve the spear.

Raven paddled in long easy strokes. The bay was calm. He could smell the beach fire’s thick acrid smoke—seal bones burning—and see the reflections of the flames on the water. He called to the men, lifted his paddle, and carefully, in his trader’s ik, stood. He opened his mouth to call out his name, and across the water heard the men call out, heard them as they lifted his name, almost in a chant.

He sat down, and with three strong strokes moved his ik ashore.

“Where are your trade goods?” one of the men asked.

“Here,” Raven said, pressing a hand to his chest. “Dyenen, mighty shaman of the River People, has shared the knowledge of his power with me. I spent many days in fasting and prayer to earn the power for myself.”

“It is seldom anyone sees you fast,” said Shale Thrower’s husband.

Several men laughed, but Raven held back an angry retort. Instead, he tightened his throat, brought a voice from the beach fire. “Who are you to question a shaman’s spirit powers?”

The men drew back, looked in wonder first at the fire, then at Raven. For a time they were silent, then they all began to speak at once. Words of praise, fear, and honor. Raven thought of Lemming Tail, Shuku, and Mouse. He smiled and whispered, “Good trade.”

The Bering Sea

T
HEY PASSED THE TRADERS’ BEACH
at night, in the darkness after the full moon had set. Kukutux could see her husband’s ikyak moving behind the women’s ik, could hear his voice as he whispered angry words against the chief of that small village at the back of the long, two-armed bay. They could not see the village from the sea, but Kukutux felt a difference in the air as they passed, as though the voices of the people’s prayers brought some softness to the wind. Soon she was too busy with her paddle, fighting the chop of the water where the bay emptied into the sea, to notice any difference made by prayers.

Then they were back again into the regular swells of the North Sea. Kukutux pushed the salt-stiffened hair from her eyes and wished she had been allowed to stay in the Whale Hunter village with the old ones. Theirs would be a good life this year. With few mouths to feed and the oil and meat Hard Rock had left them, they would not starve.

“Do you see the men?” Speckled Basket asked.

“Only Waxtal,” Kukutux said. “He is behind us.” And she wondered how Speckled Basket expected her to see anything in the dark. “I think they are far ahead,” said Kukutux.

“They made us come and now will not wait for us,” said She Cries, her voice a whine that made Kukutux’s ears ache.

“They complain about our slowness,” said Speckled Basket, “yet they knew we could not keep up with them in our iks. Even a hunter cannot paddle an ik as quickly as an ikyak.”

“We should turn and go back,” said She Cries.

Kukutux ground her teeth to keep from answering the woman. Who was stupid enough to think they could go back? Two moons they had been traveling.

Each day was full of complaints, full of anger. But the complaints were against the husbands, not Waxtal. He was the one who would take the curse from the Whale Hunters. Why blame him?

But the longer Kukutux was wife to the man, the more she wondered about his powers. He had carved the tusk, but carving seemed to be the only thing he knew. He did not hunt; he did not make weapons; he did not fish.

He prayed and sometimes even fasted. But usually he ate enough for two hunters, and often during the times he claimed to pray, Kukutux knew he slept. Still, why question a man who spoke to spirits? What if his claims were true? What if he did have great power? Then her doubts would not only anger her husband but the spirits as well.

The battle against Samiq and the Seal Hunters will prove Waxtal’s powers, Kukutux thought. But she could not keep fears and worries from entering her mind.

How could an old man like Waxtal kill a young man, a hunter, like Samiq?

Answering her own question, Kukutux reminded herself that not all power was that of muscle and bone. Waxtal’s strength was an inside strength that came from his carvings.

She took a long breath. Her shoulders ached, and her hands were so tight on the paddle she did not know if her fingers would ever straighten again. But the months in the ik had seemed to strengthen her left arm, had even loosened her elbow so she could with effort hold the arm straight.

What if Waxtal was killed? Kukutux shuddered—she was away from her own village, far from the island she knew. If she was left without a husband, would the other Whale Hunters provide for her?

Yes, said Kukutux, and tried not to remember the stories she had heard about times long ago, when widows had been allowed to starve during hard winters so hunters and mothers could live.

Besides, Kukutux thought, why would Hard Rock make Waxtal fight? Better that one of the young Whale Hunters should fight Samiq, better that a Whale Hunter should break the curse. Perhaps Hard Rock himself would fight. The man who broke the curse would be able to claim leadership of the Whale Hunter village. Who could deny such a man the honor of being alananasika? Would Hard Rock take the chance of losing that honor to someone else?

Kukutux pulled her paddle from the water, laid it across the ik, and flexed her shoulders. Waxtal had promised that once they passed the Traders’ Bay—soon, in a day or so—they would come to a village of First Men called Ugyuun. There they would stay, Waxtal had promised, for one day and a night, a long rest before going on the eight, ten days it would take to reach the Walrus village. Waxtal had said that he and the Whale Hunters would be welcome at the Walrus village, that Waxtal’s daughter—wife to the Walrus shaman—would share her lodge and food.

Kukutux took her mind from the ache of her arms and instead thought of the smell of meat cooking, the flavor of bitterroot and seal oil, the taste of sea urchins, their rich orange eggs raw from the shell. She dreamed of days spent weaving and sewing, of digging clams. She remembered the warmth and quiet of a ulaq, oil lamps burning, and was glad Waxtal did not want to be a trader forever. How terrible to always paddle an ik, days and days. How much better to be safe in her husband’s ulaq, to fill her eyes with things known and understood.

Chagvan Bay, Alaska