Brother Wind (34 page)

“If you stay here, you must be able to hunt,” Hard Rock said, his words clipped and strong, as though he spoke to a child. He stood, walked over to Kukutux. “You want this old man as husband?” he asked her.

Waxtal rudely interrupted. “Since when do women pick their husbands?” he asked.

“Whale Hunter women always have that choice,” Hard Rock said. “What man is fool enough to live with a woman who does not want him? But perhaps Seal Hunters were not given the gift of wisdom.

“You want him?” Hard Rock asked again.

Kukutux looked at Waxtal, saw his gnarled hands, the gray in his hair. She looked at the walrus tusks, the beautiful design the man had carved. She turned her head toward the food cache, remembered what it was like to have a hunter in the ulaq. “If he can hunt,” she said.

“Three of us go at high tide to hunt seals,” Hard Rock said to Waxtal. “You will come too.”

Waxtal frowned. “I have not prayed. I have not oiled my chigadax for many days.”

“You have time to pray,” Hard Rock said. “What hunter leaves his chigadax without oil?”

“What shaman caught in a vision fast thinks of his chigadax?”

“So you claim to be shaman?”

“Only since my fast.”

“I have known few shamans. For most, the gift is revealed to them in childhood. Who are you to claim something as an old man?”

“You knew the shaman from Tugix’s island,” Waxtal said. “His powers have passed to me.”

“If you are shaman,” Hard Rock said, “you are welcome on this island. But a man’s words have little worth if he does not have the power to prove their truth. Oil your chigadax, pray, and come with us. We will see if you can hunt.”

The sea rose in a high swell under Waxtal’s ikyak, and he looked out at the horizon. He followed the Whale Hunters, their ikyan outdistancing his soon after they left the beach. But they were young men with hard muscles.

Do not worry, he told himself. What are muscles compared to the powers of a man who speaks to spirits, who hears spirits speak to him?

The water was cold through the thin walls of the ikyak, and that cold seeped through the fur seal pelt Waxtal sat on. The chill reached the bones of his legs, and his knees began to tremble. But what hunter does not know that cold pondered is worse than cold ignored? So Waxtal began a song, a seal hunting chant he had learned while still a boy. The song had been given to him by his grandfather—a man who was not a great hunter, who more than once had used his walking stick to lay welts across Waxtal’s back. But even this song was better than thinking only of his discomfort, so Waxtal blocked the remembrance of his grandfather from his mind and continued to sing. He sang loudly with hopes that Hard Rock might hear that he sang, might think, if seals were found, that Waxtal had called them.

They paddled the rest of that day, seeking sea animals, but they found none, until finally in darkness they returned to their island.

Waxtal was lifting his ikyak to a place on the rack when Hard Rock came to him. “So if you are shaman, why did you not call us a seal? I heard you singing.”

Waxtal made himself laugh. “Today I went as hunter. Was that not what the woman wanted? The song I sang was a seal hunting song given to me by my grandfather when I was yet a boy. It is a good song, but has no shaman’s power. I will go now and oil my chigadax. What hunter leaves his chigadax without oil? When you want to hunt again, tell me. I will go with you.” He walked toward his ulaq, then looked back at Hard Rock. “When you are ready for me to be a shaman and call animals for you, tell me. I will do that also.”

Kukutux gathered fishing supplies and left the ulaq. Waxtal’s chants followed her, and even on the beach, over the noise of waves and gulls calling, she thought she heard his voice, the singing that seemed to lift itself up into his nose and come out blunted and coarse, as though the song had pushed itself through the hard bones of Waxtal’s head.

What do you know of chants and shaman’s powers? Kukutux chided herself. What powers do you own that allow you to criticize what someone else does?

She squatted in the lee of a boulder, used a strand of hair to tie fish guts to her gorge hook. The tide was ebbing, but the water was still deep enough to fish from the top of a rock that reached out into the sea from the south side of the beach. She unrolled a length of line from her holding stick, knotted on a small stone for weight, and threw her hook out into the water. She used her stick to roll the line in, singing as she fished, a song her mother had given her.

“Fish give yourself to my hook.

Feed my children.

I will honor you.”

Those simple words sung over and over.

Finally she felt a tug on the line, coiled it in, and brought up a fine pogy. Again she baited her hook, threw out her line, and sang her song. Before the tide was too low to fish from the rocks, she had caught six pogies, the fish glistening in her carrying bag.

Six pogies! Kukutux thought. She remembered winter days without food, nights gnawing seal hide strips to fool her mouth into believing it was being fed. As she neared her ulaq, again she heard Waxtal’s song. Perhaps he does have powers, she thought. At least to call fish.

The Alaska Peninsula

F
OR A MOON OF WALKING
, Kiin kept to the shore, following the beaches and digging for clams, finding sea urchins at low tide. Sometimes she passed small islands, their stone cliffs filled with the noise of nesting auklets and murres. But she could not reach the islands without an ik, and so she turned her face away from the bird cliffs, and did not let herself remember the taste of new eggs, boiled hard in water or sucked raw from the shell.

This day, she had been walking against rain that blew in from the North Sea. Her carrying basket kept the back of her suk dry, and Shuku was a small warm bundle strapped against her chest, but she knew she would probably spend the night chilled and wet, huddled beneath sealskins that could not keep away the cold.

“Remember why you walk,” she told herself. “What is a little rain if you will soon be with your people?”

She began a song, something that helped keep the rhythm of her feet, and when the sky darkened toward night, she looked for a place, protected by rock or cliff, that would shield her against rain and wind.

The gravel beach was dotted with stones, smooth and waterworn, the size of gull eggs. The stones made walking difficult, but she would rather walk on the beach than through the sodden grass above the high-tide line.

She had stopped to look in all directions, hoping to find some outcropping of rock, when she saw three boulders at the base of a nearby hill. They were far enough from the shore so the water at high tide could not reach them, and they would give some shelter from the rain. Perhaps she could make a tent from her sealskins to keep herself and Shuku dry.

She carried Shuku to the rocks, slipped the tumpline from her forehead, and set down her carrying basket. Shuku whimpered, and Kiin shushed him, then pulled the sealskins from her basket. She used her walking stick as a center pole and draped her sealskins over it to make a shelter within the semicircle of the rocks. The ground was wet, but the sealskins would keep out the rain, and the rocks blocked the wind. There were worse places to spend the night.

Kiin pulled Shuku from her parka; he made smacking sounds with his lips. Kiin laughed. “So you are hungry,” she said. Her dried meat was gone, but she had fish and roseroot. She gave Shuku a piece of fish, then put some of the roseroot in her mouth, chewed. She spat out the chewed root and pressed the paste between Shuku’s lips. He made a face but ate what she gave him.

“We will have to stop soon and catch more fish,” Kiin told Shuku. She thought of the bird islands they had passed and of eggs, and tried not to feel the ache of hunger in her stomach.

Shuku answered her in a burst of baby words, and Kiin gathered him into her lap and raised her suk so he could nurse. She allowed herself one small piece of fish and chewed it slowly, savoring the taste. “Tomorrow we will find more roseroot and perhaps some ugyuun,” she told Shuku. “If we catch fish, we will have a feast. I must keep you fat so your father will be proud of you.” Kiin closed her eyes and thought of Samiq, of Takha. Her need for them was so strong it made an ache against her heart, like something broken beneath her ribs.

She opened her mouth to begin a song, but over the sounds of wind and rain she heard a chattering, like the noise of many voices. She sat very still, listening, so that even Shuku stopped sucking and pulled away from her breast.

She pressed a finger to her son’s lips. “Sh-h-h-h, be still,” she whispered, then pulled her suk over Shuku and crept from her sealskin shelter.

The rain had changed to mist, and though the sun had set, enough light still came from the western sky to reveal the outline of the shore. She walked up through wet grass to the top of the hill behind the boulders. She stopped, listened again, then laughed. “Birds, Shuku!” she said. “Birds. Listen!”

She walked, not caring that her feet were being cut in the wet grass, not caring that the mist was soaking into her hair. At the top of the second hill, she saw it, a sheer gray cliff, rising up from the sea, a cliff thrusting toward the sky and alive with the nest murmurings of murres.

“Eggs, Shuku, eggs!” she said and danced in a quick circle, her son giggling in his hidden place at the front of her suk.

The morning was bright, a rare day of sun and clear blue skies. Mist rose from low places between hills as though drying fires burned in all the valleys. Kiin left her sealskin shelter, Shuku slung at her side. Two mesh carrying baskets hung from each of her arms. She could not bury the eggs for storage in oil and sand, but she could boil them hard and they would last for many days.

It was not a difficult climb. Though the cliff rose sharply from the water, the hills behind the stone beach sloped gently up to the cliff top. When Kiin went with others to gather eggs, they used a harness, one person lowering another. By herself, Kiin had to lean over and reach down to the topmost bird ledge. She crouched at the edge and looked over, following the ledge with her eyes to the place where it came within an arm’s length of the cliff top.

“There,” she said to Shuku. “You see, I can reach the eggs over there.”

She walked back from the edge and trampled down the grasses, then, using a rock she had brought from the beach, she pounded a driftwood stake into the ground and tied a kelp line around it. She set Shuku on the ground, gave him a piece of fish, and tied the kelp line around his chest, looping the line over his left shoulder and between his legs, then tying it again so it would not slip off.

“Now, Shuku,” Kiin said, “you stay here and I will go get eggs.”

She walked back to the cliff, not turning even when Shuku started to whimper. “You will be happy later when we have eggs to eat,” Kiin called back to him. She went to the edge of the cliff and pounded in another driftwood stake, tied on another kelp line, and this time bound it around her own waist. Then she lay on her stomach and reached down to push the murres from the flat mat of feathers and grass fibers that was beneath each bird’s egg.

When they scolded her and pecked her hand, Kiin told them, “Lay another egg. I will gather here only once. You will still have your bird child, but my son and I must eat.”

She set each egg she gathered on the grass beside her, leaving a trail at the cliff edge as she worked. Shuku’s sobs subsided into a whining little song, something sung to the rhythm of hiccoughs and soft shuddering sighs.

“Only three more, Shuku,” Kiin called to him. She looked back over her shoulder as she leaned forward to reach another egg, then again felt the sharp edge of a bird’s beak against the fragile bones of her fingers. She jerked her hand away from the bird’s attack and at the same time slipped on the wet grass. She tried to fling herself back, but could not regain her balance.

It happened quickly, but as she slid over the edge, her eyes saw all things. She saw the bird that had attacked her hand, its wings extended, breast feathers fluffed, the dark centers of its eyes drawn in as small as the point of an awl. She saw its dark-spotted green egg. Then there was only the cliff, gray, dark. Kiin reached toward the stone, clawed with her fingers, scraping away skin, shredding fingernails to slow her fall. And then the kelp rope caught, jerking her in a backward arc until the bones of her spine ground into one another.

“Let the rope hold. Let it hold,” Kiin prayed, and hoped that some spirit heard her.

Her heart was beating so quickly that it seemed as if a bird from the egg ledge had become trapped under her ribs. Slowly she raised her head, then reached up to clasp the rope. She tightened her hands around the kelp line, looked up, and saw that two nails from her right hand and one from her left had been torn off. Her right forearm was scraped raw, and shreds of skin hung from her fingers.

The cliff was sheer and smooth, with few cracks for handholds, and no ledges nearby except for the egg ledge five or six arm’s lengths above her head. The birds began to come back to the ledge, but they were silent, so that the only sounds Kiin heard were the wind and the sea and the creak of the kelp fiber rope against the rock.

“Climb,” Kiin’s spirit voice said. “If you stay here, the edge of the cliff will cut your rope.”

Kiin looked down at the waves of the North Sea crashing white against the cliff, and her breath seemed to stop and swell in her chest. She turned her head up, and with her eyes caught and held the egg ledge, as tightly as if she were holding it with her hands.

“Climb up. Climb up,” her spirit voice said.

Kiin gripped the kelp line and pulled. The rope, narrow, taut, was like a knife blade against her skin. Tears seeped from her eyes, but she moved her left hand a short distance above her right. “I can do this,” she told herself, told the wind spirits as they swung her against the rock. Slowly, right hand, left hand, she moved up the face of the cliff. Finally she drew her feet up, braced them against the rock, walking them up the cliff as she pulled, gripping small crevices and outcroppings with her toes.