Brother Wind
The Ivory Carver Trilogy
Sue Harrison
ContentsGlossary of Native American Words
Again, for Neil And for our sisters and brothers
Summer, 7038 B.C.
The First Men
Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula
K
IIN PUT AWAY HER CARVING TOOLS
. The gray light of early morning squeezed through the smokehole and met the glow of the seal oil lamp.
Sometime during the night, a mist had begun to fall. It had soaked through the skin walls and mats of their shelter into their sleeping robes and clothing until Kiin thought she would never get its chill out of her bones.
We are safe here, my babies and I, Kiin thought. But the cold that enveloped her body came from more than the rain. I should not have let my husband bring me here. My babies and I were safer in the village with our people than we are in this tiny shelter with Three Fish. Even if traders have come to our people looking for wives, they will not bother me.
“No, stay here,” Kiin’s spirit voice said. “You are wife. You must do what your husband tells you to do. Stay here with Three Fish until Amgigh comes for you.”
Kiin took a long breath, but still could not rid herself of the heaviness that seemed to settle over her. She looked across the sodden sleeping robes at Three Fish. The woman was just waking up. She smiled at Kiin, showing the broken corners of her front teeth.
“I am hungry,” Three Fish said. “We should go out and get food.” Her voice was heavy with the accent of her people, the Whale Hunters. “I know where there are crowberries.”
“It is too soon. The berries will not be ripe yet,” Kiin said.
Three Fish shrugged. “Then we will gather crowberry stems for medicine,” she said.
“Yes, good,” said Kiin. “We can go now.”
But Three Fish made no move toward the door flap. “There was a trader looking for medicine for his eyes,” she said. “If I make crowberry stem medicine, he might trade meat or oil for it.”
“Yes,” said Kiin, “you could do that. We can go now.”
But Three Fish continued talking, telling Kiin about the medicines her mother used to make from fireweed and ugyuun root, and about the bitterroot bulbs that grew so well on the Whale Hunters’ island.
As she listened, a tightness grew in Kiin’s throat. This woman is Samiq’s wife, Kiin thought. This woman has been in Samiq’s arms, has shared Samiq’s sleeping place.
But Kiin’s inside spirit voice whispered: “You had the joy of Samiq for one night. Be glad for that.”
And I have Takha, Kiin thought. Because of that night I have Takha, this son who looks so much like his father. She laid her hands against the bulge under her fur suk where Takha lay, held against her chest by his carrying strap. She moved her hand to her other son—Shuku, twin to Takha—also strapped to her chest.
“But remember,” Kiin’s spirit voice whispered. “Amgigh is your husband.”
Yes, Kiin thought. Amgigh. He is a good husband. What woman could want better? And Amgigh gave me Shuku. Who, seeing Shuku, could doubt he was Amgigh’s son?
“Amgigh also gave you the night you spent with Samiq,” Kiin’s spirit voice reminded her. “It was his choice to share you with his brother.”
“I am glad to be Amgigh’s wife,” Kiin said. “You know that.”
But her spirit answered, “Who can explain the difference between something chosen by the mind and something decided by the heart? Words are not kelp string. They cannot bind pain into neat packs to be stored away like food in a cache.”
Kiin wrapped her arms around her upraised knees, cradling Takha and Shuku between her chest and legs. Three Fish was still talking, her words as steady as the wind. Kiin closed her eyes and tried to think of something other than husbands and babies, something besides the rain and Three Fish’s loud voice. But the thoughts that came to her were again worrying thoughts, and a strange unrest beset her feet and hands.
“It is this shelter,” her spirit voice whispered. “The walls are too close. The oil lamp light is too dim. Turn your mind toward sky and sea, toward high mountains and long grass.”
Then there was a pause in Three Fish’s talking, and Kiin realized that the woman had asked her a question. Did Kiin like to sew birdskins more than sealskins?
What did it matter, birdskins or sealskins? Kiin thought, but she said, “Birdskins.”
“Birdskins?” Three Fish said. “But they tear so easily and it takes so many to make one suk.”
“Yes, you are right,” Kiin answered, but wished Three Fish would stop talking. Kiin pulled Takha from his carrying strap. Maybe if Three Fish were holding him, she would be quiet.
Kiin wrapped the baby in one of the few dry furs from her bed and handed him to Three Fish. He opened his eyes, looked solemnly at Kiin, then turned his head toward Three Fish and smiled. Three Fish laughed and again began to babble, this time to the baby.
Kiin sighed and looked down inside her suk at Shuku. He was asleep. Suddenly she heard what Three Fish was saying to Takha: “Your father will fight and you will be safe. Do not worry. He is strong.”
Kiin pushed herself across the bedding to Three Fish and clasped the woman by both arms. “What did you say?” Kiin asked.
“Only what Amgigh told me, that we must stay here because there are men on the beach who want to trade for women.”
Kiin’s heart moved up to pound at the base of her throat. “And Amgigh will fight them?” she asked Three Fish.
Three Fish pulled away from Kiin’s hands and scooted back against the damp wall of their shelter. “He said he might,” she answered. “All I know is that I saw one of them. A man with a black blanket over his shoulders. Even his face was black. I think Samiq and Amgigh were afraid he would want us.”
“The Raven,” Kiin said. “My brother Qakan sold me to him. I was his wife at the Walrus People’s village. He has come to take me back.” Her voice cracked, and the sound was like a scattering of words broken away from a mourning song.
Three Fish stared at her as though she did not understand what Kiin had said.
“Amgigh cannot win a fight against him,” Kiin whispered. The Raven was too strong, too cunning.
Amgigh would die unless Kiin went with the Raven, and if she went back with the Raven, back to the Walrus People, what would happen to her sons? One would die. Woman of the Sky and Woman of the Sun, those two old ones—the Grandmother and the Aunt—they would tell the whole village about the curse.
“No child can bring death to a village,” Kiin’s spirit voice said, and the voice no longer whispered, but spoke in anger. “Woman of the Sun and Woman of the Sky know nothing but fear.”
My sons are good, Kiin thought. They carry no curse, but because they are twins and because my brother Qakan used me as wife when they were in my womb, the Walrus People think they are cursed. How can I protect two babies against a whole village?
Kiin pressed her lips together and looked at Three Fish, but Three Fish was still talking to Takha, her face close to Takha’s face, both woman and child smiling.
Kiin watched them, and an ache began to build at the center of her chest. She lifted her thoughts to the wind spirits, to the spirits of the mountains that protected the Traders’ Beach. I will be content to be Amgigh’s wife, she told them. Just let him live. She clasped the amulet at her neck. If he is safe and my sons are safe, she thought, I will ask nothing more.
She crawled over to sit beside Three Fish and said, “Our husbands Amgigh and Samiq are brothers, just as my babies Takha and Shuku are brothers.”
Though Kiin wanted to hurry, she forced her words out slowly, gently, so Three Fish would understand. “Our husbands are brothers, so we are sisters.”
“Yes,” said Three Fish.
“I have to go to the beach now, Three Fish,” said Kiin, “but you should stay here with Takha. Keep him from crying as long as you can. If he sleeps, that is good. But finally when he is crying so hard you cannot stop him, then take him to Samiq’s sister Red Berry. She has milk. She will feed him.”
Then Kiin untied the string of babiche that held the carving Samiq’s mother Chagak had given Kiin and handed it to Three Fish.