Brother Wind (12 page)

Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula

T
HE SOUND BROUGHT SAMIQ
out of his dreams, and for a moment he did not know where he was. Then he felt Three Fish’s gentle breathing, saw the bulk of her body in the shadows of the sleeping place. The sound came again, a calling, a sadness in the voice, and Samiq did not know whether it was animal or spirit. He pulled on his parka and climbed from the ulaq to stand on top of the sod roof.

Again it came—a long cry like a woman’s mourning song. The moon was round in the sky, giving light that let Samiq see as though it were day. The voice called again, and Kayugh, Big Teeth, and First Snow came from their ulas.

A second and a third voice joined the first, blending and turning, twisting the calls into one song.

“It does not come from the sea,” First Snow said.

Kayugh pointed toward the hills behind the ulas. “Wolves,” he said. “I have not heard them since I was a young man.”

Then Samiq saw the wolves lined against the sky, faces pointed up, noses like long seal snouts. “Wolves,” he whispered.

“They are big,” First Snow said.

“Some grow to be nearly as large as a man,” said Kayugh, turning toward Samiq as he spoke, and Samiq remembered the stories his father had told him as a child, Walrus People stories, of wolves who were wiser than the wisest hunter.

“Why have they come?” First Snow asked.

“Perhaps to show us where to hunt,” Kayugh said.

“Perhaps to follow us and take a portion of the caribou we cached,” said Big Teeth.

But Samiq said, “Who can know why they are here? Perhaps for many different reasons, a different reason for each one of us.” Then he sat down on his ulaq roof and watched the wolves, listened to their crying, until the moon moved across the sky and made room for the early sun.

It seemed strange that Three Fish was the one to see them. She was on the beach, the other women in their ik fishing, the men atop ulas watching sky and sea and sometimes turning to study the hills where the wolves had been the night before.

“Whales!” she called, and at first Samiq was angry.

“What foolishness is this, wife?” he called out, standing to give his words strength. “There are no whales in this shallow bay.” But as he stood, he, too, saw what Three Fish had seen. Whales, three of them, bowheads, with their double spouts, one already tipped sideways on a bar of gravel in the shallow center of the bay.

He called to the other men, called as he ran, called as he pulled on his chigadax. He grabbed his ikyak from the storage racks, pushed it out into the sea, and pulled himself in, fastening the chigadax to the ikyak coaming even as he began to paddle.

Fumbling with kelp lines and floats, he started toward the nearest whale. His anger rose against his right hand, useless except to hold his paddle as he tied knots with his left hand and his teeth.

Then Kayugh and Small Knife were beside him in their ikyan, both watching Samiq, doing what Samiq did, tying floats to harpoon lines.

“Be ready to turn your ikyan,” Samiq said. He stopped to pry his paddle from his right hand and replace it with his throwing stick, but he dropped the stick into the sea and nearly upset his ikyak trying to retrieve it. Finally he threw his whale harpoon with his left hand.

The harpoon fell short. He coiled the harpoon line in toward himself, drawing the weapon back to his ikyak. He flipped the harpoon up from the water to the deck of the ikyak, then watched as his father and Small Knife threw their seal harpoons. Both harpoons lodged in the side of the whale, but they were small and carried no poison. The whale turned but could not dive in the shallow bay.

Samiq pulled the obsidian tip from his barbed whalebone harpoon head, took a pouch from around his neck, and smeared aconite poison under the tip. He paddled close to Kayugh and handed his father the harpoon. “You throw it,” he said.

Kayugh fitted the butt of the harpoon shaft into his throwing stick, pulled back his arm, and threw hard. The harpoon hit just under the whale’s flipper.

“He is ours,” Small Knife said.

Samiq drew in his breath against his son’s words, but said nothing. If the whales were offended, they were offended. There was no way to take back the boy’s boast.

They paddled away from the whale, then Samiq heard Big Teeth’s cry, saw the man point his paddle toward the second whale, saw Big Teeth’s harpoon embedded in the whale’s side. Samiq patted the pouch at his neck. “You used poison?” he called to Big Teeth.

The man held up a pouch.

First Snow’s harpoon took the third whale, then the hunters separated, staying at a distance, but watching the whales.

“There is a good chance they will wash up on our beach,” Small Knife said to Samiq, but Samiq did not answer the boy, did not let the boy know he had heard. Why anger the whale spirits by telling them what should happen?

Then Kayugh brought his ikyak near and called to Samiq, a father’s praise.

“My harpoon took no whale,” Samiq called back, but there was only light in his heart. If they had meat and oil enough for the winter, what did it matter whose harpoon made the kill?

“Go now, be alananasika,” Kayugh said. “Become the whale as you told me the alananasika must. Let the whales know we have need of their meat and that we honor their spirits. You called them. Your power brought them to us.”

Samiq nodded and turned his ikyak toward the shore. As he paddled he remembered his grandfather Many Whales telling him the same thing when he had lived with the Whale Hunters. That summer had been a summer of whales, more whales than the hunters had ever seen before. “My people believe your power brought the whales to us,” Many Whales had told him. But they had also believed his power had called Aka’s fire to move the earth and destroy the Whale Hunter village.

“No,” Samiq said, as though his words could go back through months and death to his grandfather, the old man now with the spirits at the Dancing Lights. “I do not have that kind of power,” Samiq whispered, and his voice was as quiet as his breathing. “My only strength is my concern for my people. What power does that hold except the power to bring tears to a man’s eyes, to lay sorrow over his heart? What strength does that carry’ except the strength of hope?”

The Bering Sea

W
AXTAL’S ARMS ACHED
from paddling, and the muscles in his chest were so tight that he could scarcely breathe. It had been seven days since he left the village. He should have caught up with the traders by now. An ikyak was faster than an ik. But there were two of them, and they were young, strong.

“Besides,” he said aloud, “I do not have food.” He rested his paddle across the top of his ikyak and looked out at the North Sea. “Do you hear that?” he called. “You spirits out there, do you hear that? I am a hunter and a carver, yet they sent me away without food. They gave me no oil. It was Samiq, the crippled one. If you have a curse to give, curse him. If you have a blessing, bless me. I am a hunter and a carver. I honor all sea animals. Help me find the traders.”

Waxtal moved his foot to touch the walrus tusks lying at the bottom of his ikyak. He felt power flow up from the tusks to warm him, and the warmth eased his fears.

Even if I do not find the traders, I will soon come to a village, Waxtal told himself. He remembered one village from trading trips—a First Men village usually about five days’ travel from the Traders’ Bay. It was not a place he would choose to stay for the winter—the women were ugly—but better to stay there, with roof, bed, and oil lamps, than alone with only his ikyak.

His throat was dry. He drew his cheeks together to pull spit into his mouth. He was thirsty, but he needed food even more. His belly ground against itself with emptiness.

He dipped his paddle back into the waves and looked up at the sky. It was nearing sunset. He needed to find a beach for the night. If he remembered his journey from Tugix’s island to the Traders’ Bay, there was a good place not far ahead. He squinted toward shore, then frowned. No, not yet, but there was something …

At first he thought it was a rock, long and low just above the waves, but then he knew, and his heart tightened in joy. It was not a rock, but an ik, a trader’s ik dark against the water.

Suddenly his arms were strong, the paddle sure in his hands. He sped toward the ik, calling out even though he knew he was too far away to be heard. Soon he was close enough to see the men in the ik. Yes, they were the two brothers who had come to the Traders’ Beach.

As the ik turned toward shore, the younger brother stopped paddling and pointed toward Waxtal. Waxtal called again and paddled harder, his breath coming in gasps. But when he drew close, he saw that they faced him with spears and spear throwers in their hands.

“I am Waxtal,” he called to them. He dug in his mind for the traders names. Bird names … the older brother was Owl. “Remember me, Owl?” Waxtal called. “I am Waxtal. I am the one who traded for the walrus tusks.”

They lowered their spears, but kept their hands tight on their spear throwers. “Why do you follow- us?” Owl called to him.

“Do not ask us to take the tusks back,” said the younger brother.

“I want to come with you,” Waxtal called. He moved his ikyak closer to the ik, then remembered the younger brother’s name. “Spotted Egg,” he called, “let me come with you.”

The traders spoke to one another in the Caribou tongue, so though their words came clearly to Waxtal over the water, he did not understand what they said.

“Why?” the older brother asked Waxtal.

“I want to see my brothers, the Whale Hunters.”

“You are a Whale Hunter?”

Waxtal felt the beginning of a lie in his mouth. It built until it bulged large against his tongue, but he was not a fool. What Whale Hunter would claim him as brother? “No,” he called out, but then said, “Remember what Kayugh told you? Before the mountain Aka grew angry, we lived on an island close to the Whale Hunters’ island. We often traded with each other.”

“So you have been to their village before?”

“Yes. I know the chief, Hard Rock.”

The brothers bent their heads together and spoke.

Owl looked up at Waxtal and asked, “You will not expect to have a portion of our trades?”

“No.”

“Our food?”

Waxtal swallowed. “Our village is poor,” he began. “How could I take food from my wife for this trip?”

“You traded oil for the tusks,” the younger said.

“And I will carve the tusks, trade at least one of them to the Whale Hunters for whale oil, much whale oil. Then I will pay you for my food. Besides, I am a hunter. I will help by taking seals as you paddle your ik. It is easier to hunt from an ikyak than from that.” He pointed his paddle toward the large, open-topped ik.

“You have the tusks?” Owl asked.

“Yes, here,” Waxtal said, laying his hand against the top of his ikyak.

The brothers looked at each other, and the younger shrugged. The older called to Waxtal, “Come then, go ahead and find a bay for us, a place to make camp. Look,” and he pointed toward the west, toward a shimmering darkness in the clouds, “a storm is coming.”

A shiver of fear ran down Waxtal’s back as he studied the sky. He should have noticed. If he had not found the traders, he would have paddled into the throat of that storm. He had never worried much about reading the sky. Kayugh and Big Teeth were better at such things, just as he was better at carving. They left the carving to him; why not leave the sky watching to them?

“When?” Waxtal asked, nodding toward the clouds.

“It will come tonight,” Spotted Egg answered.

Waxtal plunged his paddle into the water. “I will find a place,” he said.

It did not take long until they came to the beach Waxtal remembered. It was sheltered by rocks, so that the storm in passing only rattled against their upturned boats and dripped through the beach grass they had cut to pack around their legs as they sat huddled in their chigadax.

The next morning the tide flats were strewn with cod that the storm had blown in from the sea. The traders sent Waxtal to gather the fish. “Women’s work,” Waxtal said, so hovering spirits would see how he was being treated. Still, it was food. Better to gather fish than to starve, he thought.

Waxtal laughed. “Samiq believes I am dead,” he said to the spirits. “He thinks I have starved or drowned. He does not understand that you are with me. When I am a shaman and known for my carving, then I will go back. Blue Shell will plead to be my wife, but I will find someone young and beautiful, someone who can make me sons, and I will force Samiq to leave our village as he once forced me.”

He picked up a cod and used his thumbnail to scoop out its eyes. He sucked the eyes into his mouth, felt them pop between his teeth.

It had been a long time since he had eaten fish eyes. They were usually saved as a treat for children. He remembered a riddle grandmothers ask:

What
is
better than fish eyes?

Your eyes, smiling at me.

“What is better than fish eyes?” Waxtal called out to the spirits, then answered, “Samiq’s eyes, open in death!” And he laughed at his own cleverness.

Chagvan Bay, Alaska

L
EMMING TAIL SCREAMED
and grabbed a handful of Kiin’s hair. Kiin pried the woman’s fingers loose and wrapped them around the rope that hung from the birthing lodge rafters. “Pull,” she said. “When the pain comes, pull.”

Lemming Tail, squatting on her heels, closed her eyes and blew out a long breath of air. She pulled hard against the rope, then relaxed and leaned back against Shale Thrower.

“Do you have something you can give her?” Kiin asked Woman of the Sun. The old woman, squatting beside the oil lamp, looked up from her sewing. She rose slowly to her feet, then shuffled to Lemming Tail’s side and leaned over, pressing with the flats of her hands against the woman’s belly.

“She needs nothing,” Woman of the Sun said. “She does not even need this rope.” She flipped the loop of braided walrus hide from Lemming Tail’s hands, and Lemming Tail rose up on her knees to grab it. She hugged it against her chest, her lips thrust out in a pout. “Your pain is nothing,” Woman of the Sun said, and bent down so her face was only a handbreadth from Lemming Tail’s face. “It has barely started yet.