Brother Wind (2 page)

“A gift for you,” Kiin said. Three Fish cupped the carving of man, woman, and child in her hand.

“Samiq told me about this,” Three Fish said. “The great shaman Shuganan made it. I cannot take it.”

But Kiin said, “You must. We are sisters. You cannot refuse my gift. The one who wears the carving receives the gift of being a good mother.”

For a moment Three Fish sat very still, then she tied the string of babiche around her neck. She clasped the carving tightly in both hands.

Kiin unwrapped the walrus tusk ikyak that she had carved during the long night when sleep would not come. After she had finished carving it, she had cut the ikyak crosswise into two pieces. Had not Woman of the Sun said that Kiin’s sons, being twins, shared one spirit and so must live as one man? Had not Woman of the Sky told Kiin that Shuku and Takha must share one ikyak, one lodge, one wife? Someday, Kiin would make carvings of a lodge and a woman also, and split each, giving one half to each son. With her carvings, they could live without the curse of being twins, each one building his own life as a man.

She hung the ikyak halves on braided sinew cords, fastened one cord around Takha’s neck, the other around Shuku’s.

“This is my blessing to my sons,” she said to Three Fish.

Takha clasped the ikyak and lifted it to his mouth. Shuku slept.

For a moment Kiin watched her sons, then she turned away to roll up her sleeping skins.

“Why are you going to the beach?” Three Fish asked as Kiin worked. “Amgigh told us to stay here.”

“I must go,” Kiin said. Again she sat down beside Three Fish. She reached out to stroke Takha’s cheek. The baby turned his face toward her hand, opened his mouth. “While I am away, you must be mother to Takha,” Kiin told Three Fish. “He is son to Amgigh, but also to Samiq. See,” she said, gathering Takha’s hand into her own, spreading her son’s fingers, “he has Samiq’s wide hands.” She brushed the top of his head. “He has Samiq’s thick hair.”

Three Fish lifted the baby and laid him against her chest, tucking his head up under her chin. “I will be a good mother to him,” she said.

Kiin looked away, then leaned forward to pick up her carving tools. She slipped them into her sleeping furs, strapped the bundle to her back, then crawled to the door flap.

“Be sure Red Berry feeds him,” Kiin said. Then, though she had not meant to go back, Kiin turned. She held her hands out toward Takha.

Three Fish handed Kiin the baby, and Kiin lifted him from his fur wrappings. She stroked her hands down his fat legs and arms, over his soft belly. She pressed him against her face, smelled the good oil smell of his skin. Then she handed him back to Three Fish and slipped out of the shelter into the rain.

“I will see my son again tonight,” Kiin said to the wind and waited for an answer, but there was nothing. No answer, no whisper to pull away her doubts.

Kiin stroked the carving that hung at her waist, the whale tooth she had made into a shell—her first carving, a sign of the gift the spirits had given her. Then she tucked her arms around Shuku, alone in his carrying strap under her suk, and walked toward the beach.

Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain

F
OUR HUNTERS’ IKYAN HAD LEFT THE BEACH.
Three returned. Kukutux, eyes gifted to see beyond what others saw, blinked once, twice, and looked again. Only three.

She glanced at the other Whale Hunter women around her, saw their grim faces.

“You see them, Kukutux?” Speckled Basket asked. The woman leaned against the stick her husband had carved, which allowed her to walk in spite of a foot crushed last spring when the mountains destroyed the Whale Hunter village.

“I see ikyan,” Kukutux said slowly, her words heavy with the weight of her fear.

“How many?” asked Fish Eater’s third wife, a young woman, too young to belong to the one-eyed Fish Eater, a man nearly too old to hunt.

Kukutux shook her head, lifted her shoulders in a shrug. She had seen hunters return before, knew that the ikyan seemed to lift themselves over the horizon, as though the sea curved down under the weight of the ice that bordered that far edge of the earth. Sometimes when she sighted only one or two ikyan, others would suddenly appear—thin dark lines coming up from the water, as though they had been visiting those undersea villages owned by seal and whale.

She waited, saying nothing, until some of the other women began to point, able themselves to see the first of the three ikyan coming back toward the Whale Hunter beach. “Kukutux,” Flowers-in-her-hair said, “how many? Do they bring a whale?”

“No,” Kukutux answered. “No whale.”

“How many?” asked Speckled Basket, her voice whining with anxiety.

“Three,” Kukutux finally said, and suddenly felt the need for tears, as though the word made true what her eyes had known. “Only three.”

Several women raised their voices in a thin, high mourning chant, but Old Goose Woman hushed them, hissing that their mourning would call spirits. Who could say, she told them, perhaps the last hunter was coming still, towing seal or sea lion, the animal buoyed with breath-filled sealskins. Who could say? Perhaps there would be meat and oil for everyone tonight. Why curse a blessing? Had not those mountains—Aka and Okmok—brought enough curses to the Whale Hunters? Did the women themselves need to add to the curse of fire and ash and darkness?

And though Kukutux clung to Old Goose Woman’s words of hope, fixing her eyes on the woman’s thin and matted hair, the dark and grease-stained fur of her ankle-length suk, she heard the mourning chant in her head as though the women still sang it.

It is for your son, Kukutux told herself. The mourning chant is for your son, that strong, dark-haired baby, gone now three moons, his breath stolen by the mountain’s ash that still covers the beach and the hills behind the village. You mourn him. The chant is for him. The spirits would not take another of the Whale Hunter men. They would not. Too many men have died, in hunt after hunt. How can the village survive if more men die? The mountain has taken enough. And this spring, the whales did not come. Even the beach geese—those winter-breaking birds, their voices loud enough to scare away the snow—have passed the Whale Hunters’ island, the geese flying so high that the women’s bird nets, the men’s bird spears, could not hope to take them.

Kukutux scraped at the beach gravel with her feet and did not let herself look at the sea. Perhaps her own eyes were the curse. Perhaps if she did not look, the fourth ikyak would appear. But then she heard the women’s voices lift in questions, their words edged with the hard sharpness of fear, and she could not keep her eyes from looking.

Finally Old Goose Woman said, “Tell us, Kukutux. It is better to know than to be caught between hope and fear.”

So Kukutux said, “There are three, only three, and the first two ikyan are tied together. Something lies over their decks.”

“A seal?” Speckled Basket asked and reached up to clasp a strand of her hair taken by the wind.

“A man,” Kukutux said. Then the ikyan drew near, and she felt all strength leave her knees so that they folded and let her drop to the ground.

“Who?” came a woman’s voice, then another, all calling her, as though they did not notice she had fallen. The words, like sharp-nailed fingers, picked at her suk, her hair, her skin, until Kukutux closed her eyes, cursed their far-seeing in her heart, and whispered the name: “White Stone.”

She tried to begin a mourning chant, tried but could not remember the words. The women’s voices were only a rush in her ears, like wind roaring; and lifted above all other sounds was her own voice crying out, “White Stone, my husband, my husband White Stone.”

Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula

K
IIN PUSHED HER WAY
through the circle of men gathered on the beach. When she reached open ground, she saw the Raven. His chest was bare, his skin glazed with sweat, flecked with blood. He lifted a long-bladed obsidian knife as though to greet her. It was Amgigh’s knife, one Amgigh had made, and the blade dripped blood.

The Raven sucked in his cheeks, let the lids of his eyes nearly close. “Your carvings, wife,” he said. “They gave me power.”

He pointed, and Kiin looked back at the edge of open ground, where a line of her carvings divided those men who watched from those who fought. The carvings were the ones she had made and traded for meat and oil so the First Men could live through the winter.

“Where …” she began, then shook her head and said to the Raven, “I am not your wife.”

The Raven snorted. “Go then to him.” He raised the knife, used it to point, and Kiin let herself look where she did not want to look, let her eyes see what she did not want to see: Amgigh lying in the sand, Samiq kneeling beside him. Then Kiin, too, was beside Amgigh, her arms over Amgigh’s chest, her hair turning red with Amgigh’s blood. She clasped her amulet, rubbed it over Amgigh’s forehead, over his cheeks.

“Do not die, Amgigh,” she whispered. “Do not die, oh Amgigh. Do not die.”

Amgigh took one long breath, tried to speak, but his words were lost in the blood that bubbled from his mouth. He took another breath, choked. Then his eyes rolled back, widened to release his spirit. Kiin moved to cradle Amgigh’s head in her arms, and began the soft words of a song, something that came to her as she held him, something that asked spirits to act, something that begged her husband’s forgiveness, that cursed the animals she had carved.

When the song was finished, Kiin stood, wiped one hand over her eyes. “I should have come sooner,” she said. “I should have known he would fight the Raven. It is my fault. I …”

But Samiq came to her, pressed his fingers against her lips. “You could not have stopped him,” he said. “You are my wife now. I will not let Raven take you.”

Kiin looked into Samiq’s eyes, saw how much of him was still a boy, and how little he knew about the kind of fighting that had nothing to do with knives. “No, Samiq,” she said. “You do not have the power to kill him.”

Samiq’s jaw tightened, he shook his head. “A knife,” he said and turned to the men gathered around him.

Someone handed him a knife, poorly made, the edge blunt, but Samiq grabbed it.

The Raven clenched his teeth, screamed in the Walrus tongue, “You, a boy, will fight me? You, a child? You learned nothing from that one there, that dead boy in the sand?”

“The Raven does not want to fight you,” Kiin said, her breath coming in sobs. “Samiq, please. You are not strong enough. He will kill you.”

But Samiq pushed Kiin aside, lunged forward, wrist cocked with the longest edge of the blade toward the Raven. The Raven crouched, and Kiin could hear him mumbling—shaman’s words, chants and curses, prayers to the carvings she had made. She ran to her carved animals, knelt among them, heaped sand over them.

She looked up, saw Samiq slash his knife in an arc toward the Raven. The blade caught the back of the Raven’s hand, ripped the skin open, drew blood. But the Raven did not move.

“Kiin,” the Raven called out, “this man, he is your ‘Yellow-hair,’ is he not?”

And Kiin, remembering the Raven’s love for his dead wife Yellow-hair, said, “Do not kill him. I will be your wife, only please do not kill him.”

The Raven moved, his movement like the dark blur of a bird flying. The long blade of his knife bit into Samiq’s flesh, into the place where wrist joins hand. Then Kiin was running across the sand, through blood from the first fight, to stand between Samiq and the Raven. Small Knife, Samiq’s adopted son, was there also, gripping Samiq’s arms.

“You cannot win,” Small Knife said. “Look at your hand.”

Samiq glanced down, but said, “I have to fight. I cannot let him take Kiin.”

“Do not fight,” Kiin said. “You have Small Knife. He is your son now. You have Three Fish. She is a good wife. Someday you will have the power to fight the Raven and win. Until then I will stay with him. I am not strong enough to stand against him, but I am strong enough to wait for you. I have lived in the Walrus village this past year. They are good people. Come for me when you are ready.”

Then Ice Hunter, a man from the Walrus village, was beside Kiin. He reached for Samiq’s arm, wrapped a strip of seal hide around the wound, pulled it tight to stop the blood. “You have no reason to fight,” Ice Hunter said. “The first fight was fair. The spirits decided.”

Kiin looked into Samiq’s eyes, saw the emptiness of his defeat. She pulled off the shell bead necklace he had given her the night of her woman’s ceremony. Slowly she placed it over Samiq’s head. “Someday you will fight him,” she said. “You will fight him, and then you will give this necklace back to me.”

She turned to the Raven. “If I am to go with you, I must go now,” she said, and she spoke in the First Men’s language, then repeated the words in the Walrus tongue.

“Where are our sons?” the Raven asked.

“Shuku is here,” Kiin answered, and raised her suk so he could see the child. “But I gave Takha to the wind spirits as the Grandmother and the Aunt said I must.” Kiin took Shuku from his carrying sling. “This is your son,” she said to the Raven, “but he is no longer Shuku. He is Amgigh.”

Kiin saw the Raven’s anger, the clouding of the Raven’s eyes, but she did not look away, did not flinch, even when he raised his hand as though to strike her.

“Hit me,” Kiin said to the Raven. “Show these people that a shaman has only the power of anger against his wife, the power of his hands, the power of his knife.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “A man does not need a strong spirit when he has a large knife, a knife stolen from someone else.”

The Raven threw the obsidian knife to the ground. Kiin picked it up, walked back to Samiq, placed it in his left hand. Her eyes met Samiq’s eyes. “Always,” she said, “I am your wife.”

The Raven gestured toward Ice Hunter, toward the other Walrus men who had come with him. One picked up Kiin’s carvings, another brought the Raven’s ik to the water.

“We will not return to this beach,” the Raven said.