Brother Wind (30 page)

“I need a hunting partner,” Samiq said to Small Knife.

The boy looked up from the bit of wood he was whittling and held himself very still.

“I know it is difficult for a son to be a partner with his father, but we can help one another,” said Samiq. “My hand is weak, but my knowledge is strong, and I can teach you to hunt the whale. You are a Whale Hunter and should know what your people learned in their many years of following the whale.”

“I am Whale Hunter, but also First Men, and proud to be both,” Small Knife said. “I would be honored to be your hunting partner.”

It was the answer of a man. Samiq saw the glow in Small Knife’s eyes, and was proud that the boy kept his excitement from bursting forth in the jumps and shrieks of a child.

Samiq gave him an obsidian blade to mark their partnership, a blade made by Amgigh. Then the two went together, circling the bay, watching for sea lions and harbor seals. They saw nothing, and when the sun was near setting, Samiq motioned toward land, to the beach on the other side of the bay.

They set up a camp, using sealskins and their ikyan as a shelter, and small flames from their hunter’s lamps for warmth. They ate dried meat, and Samiq told stories of First Men hunters: Kayugh and Big Teeth, and Kayugh’s father, a man Samiq had never known except through stories. Samiq told of their hunts—successes and failures—and what they had learned from the animals they hunted.

When Samiq’s string of stories ended, he was quiet, and in the silence, Small Knife said, “I have heard the women talking. They say you are wise. Will you answer a question for me?”

Samiq smiled. “I do not know if I will answer until I hear the question. So ask.”

“What is the best a son can do for his father?”

For a long time Samiq did not have an answer, then finally he remembered his own prayers. “Find wisdom,” he said.

“Wisdom?”

“Many good things come from wisdom: respect, honor, knowledge, love.”

Small Knife looked down, nodded his head. “So how does a son find wisdom?” he asked.

“Pray, study the earth, learn the ways of the animals.”

“So the best thing a father can do for his children is give them wisdom?”

“A father cannot give wisdom to anyone. Each person must find wisdom for himself.”

“So what is the best thing a father can do for his children?” Small Knife asked. “Feed them?”

Again Samiq thought carefully about his answer, then he said, “Once there was a village whose chief was a great hunter. The people did not have to do anything but cook what he brought for them. They grew fat on the meat and oil he supplied. But finally the hunter grew old and died, and there was no one to hunt for the people. One by one they starved until the village was too small even to be a village.

“The best thing a father can do for his children is teach them what they need to know to take care of themselves. The best thing a father can do for his children is to allow them to grow strong.”

Small Knife said nothing, and in the silence, Samiq rummaged in his hunter’s pack for a water bladder. He took out the ivory stopper, drank, handed the bladder to Small Knife.

Small Knife took it in both hands and tipped it up, sucked out a mouthful of water. He swallowed and said, “Our village is too small. We do not have enough hunters.”

Small Knife’s words surprised Samiq. Why should a boy worry about such a thing? Then Samiq reminded himself that Small Knife was no longer a boy, but a man, a hunter. So Samiq gave Small Knife a true answer and did not try to make things seem better than they were.

“Yes, it is too small,” he said.

“If another tribe comes to us,” Small Knife said, “as when the Short Ones came to the Whale Hunters before I was born, if that happened …”

“We would fight for our women and children,” Samiq said quietly.

“But we would die.”

“We might,” Samiq answered, “but remember, sometimes the strongest fighting is done with words, not weapons.”

“Words cannot kill.”

“Sometimes they kill the spirit.”

“My Whale Hunter grandfather said a spirit cannot be killed.”

“If a man does not care about anything, about himself, or others, about the earth or animals,” Samiq said, “then do you see that his spirit is dead?”

“Yes,” said Small Knife. “So you are learning to fight with words?” the boy asked.

Samiq nodded. “But I must also be able to fight with the knife.”

Small Knife lifted his right hand. “Even with your hand?”

“Yes.”

“It will not be enough to fight with words?”

“Some men are not strong enough to fight with words. In their weakness, they use weapons. So I must also be able to use weapons.”

Small Knife nodded, then asked, “How will you learn?” He slipped his sleeve knife from its sheath and held it up. “With the knife, I mean?”

“I have been thinking about that,” said Samiq. He looked long into Small Knife’s eyes. “Would you help me?”

Small Knife slipped his blade back into its sheath and cupped his hands above the flame of his hunter’s lamp. “Yes,” he said.

Then they sat in silence. When the chill of the air began to stiffen Samiq’s body, he turned and pulled two furred robes from his ikyak. He wrapped himself up in one, threw the other to Small Knife. “Go to sleep,” Samiq said. “There is much to do tomorrow.”

Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain

W
AXTAL OPENED HIS EYES.
The voices, a dull hum that wove in and out of his dreams, had changed. He listened. Hard Rock. Waxtal’s heart quickened. He braced his hands against the floor and tried to stand, but the days of fasting and the journey back to the Whale Hunters’ island had taken his strength.

He sank down on the floor of his sleeping place and heard Hard Rock, questioning. He heard Spotted Egg’s quick answers, Owl’s slow, strong voice, and he knew he must get up, speak to Hard Rock for himself. Besides, it was morning. His days of fasting were over, and he was hungry. He pushed forward to his hands and knees, then slowly to his feet. He lifted his arms to the water skin hung above his head and let himself drink. The water gave him strength. He drained the skin and threw it aside.

Let the woman fill it. He had had enough of filling water skins. Sudden joy flooded his chest. Let the traders say what they would. He had fulfilled his promise to the spirits. Who could say what powers that would give him? Perhaps enough to pull Hard Rock his way. He pushed aside the curtain and walked out into the main room of the ulaq.

He ignored the three men, but let his eyes rest on the woman. Her face was round, her lips full. She had the long narrow eyes so often seen on Whale Hunter women. She was tall and strong, though it seemed to Waxtal that she held her left arm too close to her body, standing with one hip outthrust, elbow leaning against her hipbone.

She would be welcome in his bed, but probably Owl or Spotted Egg had already claimed her. Or perhaps, being brothers, they had shared her. Since she had come, the ulaq was clean—no bones or food scraps on the floor—but his tusks were not in their usual place beside the low boulder lamp. For a moment, his heart squeezed tight and his breath came in short, quick gasps, but then he saw the tusks lying against the far wall, the ivory glowing yellow in the oil lamp light.

“Waxtal,” Spotted Egg said. His voice was a low growl that prickled the hair on the back of Waxtal’s head.

“I have completed my fast,” Waxtal said. The words seemed to use up the strength the water had given him. He glanced around the ulaq, looking for his walking stick, and remembered he had left it in his sleeping place. He slumped down, suddenly afraid he would fall, here in front of Hard Rock and the traders, in front of the woman who now lived with them. The woman came to him, helped him to sit as though he were an old man, and before he could protest, she put a bowl of broth in his hands.

He raised the bowl to his lips, drank the broth. It was good, rich with fat and sharp with the taste of bitterroot bulbs. It was warm, but not hot enough to burn, and the warmth seeped out through the wooden sides of the bowl to pull the morning stiffness from his fingers.

Hard Rock squatted on his haunches beside Waxtal, looked at him, but Waxtal said nothing, only raised the bowl once more to his lips. “You took their trade goods,” Hard Rock said.

“Only because they were going to take what was mine and leave me here.”

“This is true?” Hard Rock asked. He looked up at Owl and Spotted Egg.

Owl shrugged.

“He is too old to keep up with us,” Spotted Egg said.

“He took everything?” Hard Rock asked. “Everything that was in this ulaq?”

“No,” Owl said. “Not the things that were here when we came, not the whale oil or the dried fish.”

Hard Rock lowered his head, but Waxtal, looking over at the man, saw the beginning of a smile on his face. “You think he should be killed for taking what was yours,” Hard Rock said.

Again Owl shrugged. “It does not matter to us. We do not want him with us, that is all.”

“That is not what Spotted Egg told me,” Hard Rock said.

Owl looked at Spotted Egg, narrowed his eyes.

“We did not have to bring him back here with us,” Spotted Egg said. “We could have killed him where he was. We could have taken everything and been gone.”

“But you did not,” Hard Rock said. “Why not?”

“He was fasting, praying,” Spotted Egg said. “Why take the chance that some spirit in that place would be angry?”

“So you thought it was better to bring him here, let the Whale Hunters’ island carry the curse?” asked Hard Rock. “Better to let me decide whether he lives or dies? I have enough problems with curses.”

“It is your choice,” Owl said. “We will kill him or let him live. But if he lives, we will not take him with us.”

Hard Rock stood, walked the length of the ulaq. “Why should I want him dead?” he asked. “He took nothing that belonged to the Whale Hunters.”

“Good,” said Spotted Egg. “You feed him. I am sure the Whale Hunters need another old man to care for. As for us, we will leave. There is nothing for us here. We have tasted your whale oil. It is old. We have tasted your women. They are—”

Owl interrupted, said something in Caribou to Spotted Egg, his words too rapid for Waxtal to follow.

“Tomorrow, then, we go,” Owl said to Hard Rock. “We thank you for your hospitality and leave you the skins of oil you see here in this ulaq as our thanks.” He pulled back the grass curtain that hung over the entrance to the food cache. Waxtal, squinting, counted four seal bellies. “We also leave you the old man. Do what you want with him.”

Waxtal drew in a long breath and looked at Hard Rock, but Hard Rock was already at the climbing log, and, saying nothing, he left the ulaq.

“Tell me what you need done,” the woman said and stood up from her basket pole.

Spotted Egg pulled his parka from a pile of skins heaped near the entrance of his sleeping place. “There is a hole under one sleeve,” he said, then also threw out leggings and boots, tossing them into a pile at the woman’s feet. “Owl, you have clothes for mending?” he asked.

Waxtal turned his back on the traders, raised his bowl, and licked it clean. He went to his tusks, picked up the carved one and took it into his sleeping place, then carried in the plain one.

He laid his hands on the tusks, felt the clamoring of voices at his fingertips. Yes, he thought. He would wait here, out of the way. He would wait here and guard his tusks. But once Owl and Spotted Egg had left, he would go to Hard Rock and make his offer. Owl and Spotted Egg might think they were taking all the trade goods, but they did not know what he had to trade—knowledge that Hard Rock would give all he had to possess.

The Kuskokwim River, Alaska

“E
ACH PACKET HOLDS
a different medicine,” Dyenen said. “Each string that ties the packet is a different color with different knots.” He pulled several packets from his lynx skin medicine bag, then nodded toward the medicine bag that Raven carried. “See, Saghani, you have the same.”

Raven reached into his bag, found packets that were tied in the same manner as Dyenen’s packets.

“That is how you know what is in each,” Dyenen said. “Now listen and remember.” He spread his packets on a flat dry growth of moss and motioned for Raven to do the same.

Raven reached into his own medicine bag, spread the packets out, then squatted on his heels beside the old man.

Dyenen held up a packet and waited until Raven found his tied with the same color string and in the same series of knots.

“Lovage,” Dyenen said. “It is found in sand near the sea. The plants are tall with leafstalks red near the bottom. The leaves are shiny and divided so three are one. Leaves and stems should be picked before the flowers come. Eat them green for sores in the mouth or dry them for tea that will take away that pain which comes low and deep in the back. Red string, three single knots.”

He picked up the second packet, opened it, and spilled out nettle roots. “Dried nettle,” he said. “The roots are good for toothache. Pound them and hold them on the jaw wrapped in grass heated over coals. Pick it in spring. It grows in shaded places where old villages once stood. It grows like a man, tall and with one stalk. The leaves are good for stopping the flow of blood. Red string, two double knots.”

He went on, his eyes on the packets, his fingertips gathering stains from the herbs.

But as Dyenen spoke, a coldness crept into Raven’s chest. There was nothing here, no stones carrying the glitter of spirit powers, no fur from sacred animals, no amulets consecrated by fasts or visions. Just herbs, plants that anyone could gather, that any wife could boil, that any old woman could use for backache or fever or leg cramps.

He had traded away Kiin’s carvings for something a child could do.

Dyenen’s words continued, a long line of foolishness about pain and plants, about teas and powders. The chill in Raven’s chest turned into the heat of anger, anger so large that Raven could not even fit words around it. And so he sat in silence, Dyenen’s voice no more important than the noise of the river that flowed beside them, no better than the whisper of spruce branches in the wind. Then above those noises, he heard the loud, strong call of a raven, and looking up, he saw the bird above them, the tips of its wings bent in the wind, the sun turning the black of its feathers into blue and green and red. The bird rose on the wind currents, and Raven felt his heart lift also. The old man had power. There was some way to get that power.