Brother Wind (22 page)

Owl went to Waxtal’s sleeping place and also ripped that curtain from its pegs. Many Babies screamed and sat up, clutching at mats and sleeping furs.

“Where is Waxtal?” Owl asked her.

The woman’s words came out in a rush, tumbling over one another. Owl finally crawled into the sleeping place, grabbed her arms, and pulled her to her feet.

“Speak slowly, woman. How do you expect me to understand your foolish language if you do not speak slowly?”

Many Babies jerked away from him and scrambled across the sleeping place. She picked up her otter suk, then, gathering in a long breath, rushed past Owl and out into the center of the ulaq. She looked around, then said to Spotted Egg, “Where is Waxtal?”

“That is what my brother asked you,” Spotted Egg said. He kicked at the sealskin of dried fish. “Everything that was in the cache is gone—our trade packs, our food, our oil. There is nothing left but what your husband gave us when we came to this ulaq.”

“Why should I know where Waxtal is?” Many Babies asked. “I was his for the night—as my husband the alananasika asked. That is all.” She pulled on her suk. It bunched in thick folds over her breasts, and she jerked it down.

“You did not see him leave?”

“I was asleep.”

Owl grabbed her shoulders, but Many Babies jammed her knee into his groin. Owl doubled over and sank slowly to the floor. Many Babies ran to the climbing log. “My husband will kill you if you touch me!” she screamed back at him.

Spotted Egg raised a fist. “Tell your husband this is what I think of Whale Hunters.” Then he went to Owl, crouched beside him.

“I am not hurt,” Owl said through gritted teeth.

Spotted Egg shook his head, picked up his parka, put it on, and climbed the log to the top of the ulaq. “I go to the beach to see if Waxtal left us our ik,” he called back to Owl. “Come when you can.”

Waxtal settled himself on the fur seal pelt and held his hands over the small flame of his hunter’s lamp. The walrus tusk incised with his carvings lay on his right side, the plain tusk on his left. He was on a small island east of the Whale Hunters’ island, and had found a ledge on the side of the mountain that rose above the beach where he had left his ikyak. He made a camp there, choosing a site where he could watch the sea as he sat on his fur seal pelt. The wind blew in from the water, cold and wet, biting deep into his bones.

He had worn his First Men feather suk, and so stood up, stepped forward to stand with the lamp between his legs, then hunched down so the bottom edges of the suk touched the ground. Heat from the lamp enveloped his legs. His skin prickled up into bumps, and he closed his eyes as the warmth spread to his belly and chest.

When he moved back to sit on the fur seal pelt, he began a chant, praise words that he hoped would please any nearby spirits. In the cold, his lips were stiff, and his voice sounded thin, almost like a woman’s.

Why did the spirits make things so difficult? Why send rain and cold on the day he began his fast? How could a man live without eating in a wind that pulled all the heat from his body? It was difficult enough to rise above the hunger of an empty belly. How could a man stay in his prayers when his body shook from the cold?

Waxtal cupped his hands around the oil lamp and continued his chant. His song was a song of thankfulness for the sea, for the animals in the sea. The chant rose from his chest, poured from his mouth, and circled back to him in the wind. The words came into his ears, drew pictures in his mind—of otters, sleek and swift; seals, dark and fat; sea lions, large and without fear. He saw walruses and whales, sea birds and fish. Finally he saw the gifts these animals brought: hides and furred pelts, meat and fat, oil, teeth for necklaces, bones for fuel, ivory for carving.

He laid his hands on the tusks at his sides. The tusks were warm, as though they remembered the heat of the Whale Hunter ulaq where they had last lain. Under the fingers of his right hand, Waxtal could feel the lines he had carved. Their power moved up his hand to his wrist, then to his forearm—a trail of warmth that spread to shoulders and heart.

Again he saw the sea animals, this time as traders see them: three sea lion teeth for a bear claw, a seal belly of oil for a caribou bone scraper, a fur seal pelt for thirty puffin skins; a sealskin of dried whale meat for a caribou skin parka and leggings; six sea lion bellies of oil for a cormorant feather cape. He saw himself wearing the caribou parka and leggings, necklaces, and a birdskin cape, saw himself with a new woman each night. He saw himself with a new ik, one large enough to hold everything he would buy in trade, more things than most people knew were in the world. He heard the women’s voices as they praised what he brought; he saw the fear in men’s eyes as they began to understand the power of his trading; he tasted the food the women set before him; he felt their hands at his loins, caressing.

His chants still came to his ears, but they were lost in the visions of what he hoped to have, so Waxtal spoke but did not hear what he said. And his thanksgiving became thanksgiving to a bear-claw necklace; his prayers became prayers to a traders’ ik; his praises became praises to fine parkas.

“Do something a wife is supposed to do. Sew. Weave a basket,” Hard Rock said and shook his head, rubbed both hands over his face. “I will be back.” He left Many Babies, still crying, in the ulaq.

He went first to the traders’ ulaq. When he found no one there, he went to the beach. Owl and Spotted Egg were beside their ik, running their hands over the walrus hide covering.

For a moment Hard Rock stood watching the men, saying nothing, then he called out, “I shared my wives with the traders. I gave food and water and oil. They stayed in a good ulaq. My wife is in my ulaq now and she will not stop crying. What did you do to her?”

“We did nothing,” Spotted Egg said, his voice loud, his words hard.

“Ask Waxtal. He is the one who had her,” said Owl. “We each slept alone.”

“Where is he?”

“He is gone,” said Owl. “He took our meat and our oil and what was in our packs.” Owl kicked at a caribou skin pack lying empty beside the ikyak rack.

“Look what he did to our ik,” Spotted Egg said. Pulling a knife from his sleeve, he used the blade to lift one edge of a slit that ran the length of the ik’s belly.

“You will go after him?” Hard Rock asked.

“With what? Will one of your hunters let us use his ikyak?”

“How can a hunter give his brother to someone else?” Hard Rock asked.

“You have no one who would trade ik for ikyak?” Owl asked.

“You want a hunter to give his ikyak for a woman’s boat? A man cannot hunt whales from an ik.”

“A traders’ ik,” Spotted Egg said.

“What is the difference?” Hard Rock asked. “Woman’s boat, traders’ ik. Both would dishonor the whale. But I will ask. Perhaps one of my hunters has become a fool.”

Spotted Egg’s face darkened, but he said nothing.

Finally Owl asked, “None of your women has an ikyak that belonged to husband or brother now dead?”

“Whale Hunter men take their ikyan with them when they go to the Dancing Lights,” Hard Rock said.

“Would one of your women trade her ik?”

“For what?” Hard Rock asked and, bending over, lifted one of the empty trader packs. “What do you have to trade?”

Owl lifted the many strands of beads that hung around his neck.

“A woman needs her ik to fish,” Hard Rock said. “You think a woman can eat necklaces? Besides, you cannot catch Waxtal’s ikyak in a woman’s boat.”

In two quick steps, Spotted Egg was face to face with Hard Rock. He grabbed Hard Rock’s suk in both hands. “We came to this cursed island, bringing our amulets and charms so you would gain favor with the spirits. Now we have lost everything. It is your fault. Your curse has come to us.”

Hard Rock jerked his sleeve knife from its sheath, held it so the blade lay close along the side of Spotted Egg’s neck. “I am responsible for you?” Hard Rock asked through clenched teeth. “You came to this island without invitation. You ate my food, lived in my village, used my women, and now you blame me for your loss?”

Then Owl was between them, pulling Spotted Egg’s hands from Hard Rock’s suk and circling the wrist of Hard Rock’s right hand, forcing the knife away from Spotted Egg’s neck.

Hard Rock stepped back, twisted his wrist from Owl’s grip. “You brought Waxtal,” he said. “He is one of you.”

“He claims to be your brother.”

“Only in the way that all Seal Hunters are brothers to all Whale Hunters. Only that.”

Spotted Egg snorted and turned back to the ik.

“I will have my women help you repair your ik,” Hard Rock said.

“We have four seal bellies of oil here,” Owl said and pointed at the oil Waxtal had left on the beach. “I will give two for a woman—one who has no babies to care for—to help us with the ik. And to warm our beds at night. Be sure she can cook and sew.” When Hard Rock said nothing, Owl patted the strands of beads at his neck. “She will have some of these necklaces, too,” he said.

Hard Rock looked up toward the sky, then down at his feet. He scraped at the beach gravel with one heel.

“She can be old. We do not care,” Owl said.

“Not too old,” Spotted Egg added.

Hard Rock nodded. “I will try to help you,” he finally said. “One thing we have in this village is women.”

He went back to his ulaq. The length of shell beads that Waxtal had given him in the night was cold and prickly under his suk. He went into his sleeping place, to a back corner where the sod was soft between wall rocks and rafters. He pulled off the necklace, coiled it into a ball, and stuffed it into a crevice. He covered it with sod and a handful of thatching grass. Better to wait until the traders had left the island, then bring out the necklace, give it to one wife or another, perhaps to honor the birth of his next son.

The words of his chants had warmed him, and Waxtal, his mind full of the pictures of what he would be, reached for the carving knife he kept in a packet at his waist. It was a beautiful knife, made for him three years ago by Amgigh.

“A gift from my daughter’s husband,” Waxtal said aloud, bending the words so they became part of his chant. Then he included a song to himself for the bravery he had shown in saving Amgigh when a whale almost took his life. But what good had it done, saving the man? The spirits had marked him for death.

Probably because of Kiin. Kiin was Waxtal’s daughter, yes, but what man would wish such a daughter for himself? She had been cursed from the day of her birth. The first time Waxtal had looked into the girl’s eyes, he had seen that there was nothing there, no spirit, no soul, nothing but the emptiness of greed.

Waxtal ran his fingers carefully over the carving knife’s obsidian blade. The blade was half as long as his smallest finger, and pointed at the end, on one side flaked to sharpness. He had retouched the blade often, and now it was very thin, side to side. Someday he would have to find another blade knapper, someone as gifted as Amgigh, and have another blade made. He would not replace the handle. It was ivory, made from whale jawbone, and during the years Waxtal had used it, the handle had seemed to mold itself into curves and hollows until it fitted his hand as well as his fingers fit together, side by side, long bone to knuckle.

Waxtal held the knife until it warmed to his touch, and then he pulled the carved walrus tusk across his lap. He let his fingers follow the lines of his carving until he came to the place where he had stopped, the place of Kiin’s birth. He had carved the wedge shape of Blue Shell’s woman part, and a circle above it that was the bulge of her belly.

At first, he had intended this portion of the carving to show his son Qakan’s birth. He had meant to forget Kiin, but if he forgot Kiin, he must also forget Amgigh and Raven, two powerful sons that were his because of one cursed daughter. Perhaps the spirits did repay in some ways for the suffering in a man’s life. And who had caused him more suffering than Kiin? Even Samiq’s anger was because of Kiin.

When Waxtal had finished the circle and wedge that were Blue Shell, he had not been able to decide how to carve Kiin, so he put away his carving knife, hoping some idea would come to him from dream or spirit. This day, in his chanting, he suddenly knew what he would do. He bent over the tusk, leaning close into his work. He moved his knife so the point made another wedge, sign of woman, but he drew it with pointed side up. Then he drew a line that came from Blue Shell’s wedge to this new one. He drew lines crossing the new wedge to show the disfavor of the spirits. When he had finished, he rubbed his hand over the ivory and smiled. It was good.

He closed his eyes and lost himself again in the chant. As he sang, he let himself see what joys would be his as chief of the First Men. He would have wives and ikyan, the softest furs for his bed, many parkas and a fine feather suk, warm leggings of caribou skin and a feather cape like Raven’s. He would have a new woman whenever he wanted one, and the food cache would overflow with seal bellies of meat and fish and oil.

He lived in his dreams for much of that day, but then his belly began to ache with hunger, rolling and twisting until it pulled him from his chants. He opened his eyes and looked out toward the sea. It had darkened as it always did when the sun began its fall down the western side of the sky.

Waxtal looked at the tusk still cradled in his lap. In surprise, he opened his eyes wide, then opened his mouth in a wail of harsh words. There beside Kiin’s wedge were other lines, circles and slashes, scored deeply into the ivory, as though someone had done them in anger. His breath caught in his chest, pressed against his heart until it ached more than his belly. The fingernails of his right hand bit into his palm, and he realized that he still held his carving knife tight in his fist. He opened his hand, dropped the knife. He had not made those lines. They were bold and deep, different from what he had done before.

He pushed the tusk from his lap and stood up, looking to see if there were signs of other men—grass crushed by feet, an ikyak on the beach far below. But there was nothing.

He sat down slowly and reached for the tusk, but could not make his hands close over it. Again he stood. His breath came too quickly, as though he had been running. He wrapped his suk closely around himself, then left the tusks and his hunter’s lamp, his thick fur seal pelt. He climbed farther up the side of the mountain. He kept looking back until he could no longer see the tusks, then he settled into the wet grass, crouching so he could tuck his feet into the warmth of his suk. He bent forward and wrapped his arms up over his head.