A Tyranny of Petticoats (6 page)

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.

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.

Four weeks in a row, I’ve gone to Eugenie’s house on the pretext of keeping her company while her mother was at a ladies’ aid meeting. Four weeks in a row, I’ve gone with Eugenie and Madame Dalcour to a quadroon ball instead.

That first time, it was just a lark. I knew Maman would never approve; she thinks the dances are little better than slave auctions, a disgrace to the
gens de couleur libres
, and she doesn’t consider Madame Dalcour a proper chaperone because Madame is not truly married to Eugenie’s father. It’s a
mariage de la main gauche;
Madame is mulatto and Monsieur Reynaud is white, and under the laws of Louisiana, they cannot marry. My parents raised me for better — to marry a good colored man from one of the good colored families in the Quarter. I thought I’d have some fun, then go home and never think anything else of it. I certainly didn’t set out to find a protector.

But Antoine asked me to dance — and then asked for a second dance. And when he inquired if he’d see me the following week — me, not Eugenie! — I said yes. One falsehood turned into two, turned into three, turned into four, and now . . .

Now it’s been four weeks. Eight dances, two each night. More would be improper without an understanding between us.

Eugenie elbows me. “At least Monsieur Guerin isn’t an
American
.” She waltzed with an American last night, and Madame Dalcour nearly had an attack of apoplexy over it. Madame is fiercely proud of her French ancestry. She expects Eugenie to find a protector, but he’d better be a Creole like Eugenie’s father — a white man of good French stock.

“There is that,” I agree, though I’m not sure it will make much difference to my mother that Antoine comes from a good Creole family with a sugar plantation up in St. James Parish, a family that’s been in Louisiana since it was a French colony. She won’t care how dashing and romantic he is, or what pretty compliments he pays me, or that my pulse flutters when I spot him across the crowded ballroom.