Brother Wind (35 page)

Sweat prickled her groin and armpits, and her heart was like a drum beating hard in the hollow of her chest. Her hands burned, and she had to press her lips together to keep the pain from finding a voice. Again she raised her right hand, but this time her fingers would not grip. For a moment she was still, hanging there on the side of the cliff. She looked up at the ledge, hoping it would be close, but though a loop of line hanging below showed how far she had moved, the egg ledge seemed as distant as it had been when Kiin began her climb.

“It is nearer,” Kiin’s spirit whispered. “It is only your pain that makes it seem so far away. Do not look up. Do not look down, only climb. Only climb.”

Hand above hand. Hand above hand. The pain in Kiin’s shoulders seemed to match the burning in her arms. Hand above hand. Hand above hand. The wind was blowing harder, coming in from the sea, pressing Kiin against the cliff. The muscles of her right leg cramped, and she had to stop.

“I can’t,” she said.

But her spirit said, “Who are you to quit when you are so close to the egg ledge? Look up, see?”

Kiin looked up. The ledge was close. If she stretched, she could catch it with her fingertips.

“A few more steps. Only a few,” her spirit said. “When you get to the ledge, you can rest, and then it will be nothing to reach the top of the cliff.”

Kiin pulled her right leg up another step, moved the left hand, then the right. Her right leg cramped again, this time so tight that Kiin cried out with the pain. She doubled the leg up to her chest, then tried to straighten it, pulling against the tightening muscles. The cramp eased, and Kiin drew in a long breath. She slowly leaned her weight on the leg and moved her left leg ahead, moved her right hand on the rope, then gasped as another cramp hit.

Her right leg slipped against the rock, and her left leg, not yet secure in its next step, also slipped. She fell, the full force of her weight against her hands.

For a moment, she was able to hold herself up, but then the rope began to slip under her fingers. Blood from her climb had made the kelp line slick, as though it were oiled, but finally Kiin was able to tighten her hold and stop her slide. She looked up at the rope, saw how far she had dropped by the bloodstains left behind.

“I was at the top,” she cried out, and the wind took her words, threw them into the cliff.

“Climb, climb again,” Kiin’s spirit told her.

“I can’t,” Kiin said and did not try to stop her tears.

“And if you do not, you will die,” her spirit voice answered. “The wind moves your rope even now. The rocks at the edge of the cliff will cut through, and you will drop into the sea.”

“And so I will be dead,” Kiin said, screaming the words out against the wind, against the sea, against the gray rocks of the cliff. “I do not care.”

“You, you who have lived through curses and slavery, you do not care? What about those you love—your mother, Chagak, Kayugh? What about Samiq and Takha?”

Kiin leaned her head into the crook of her elbow, gasped against the pain of her hands as she clung to the kelp line.

“Listen,” her spirit voice said. “Listen and tell me what you hear.”

At first, Kiin heard only the wind, bird voices and waves against rock, but then, rising like a song over the sounds of the earth, she heard Shuku, his voice lifted, as though he called for her.

“Shuku,” Kiin whispered.

“Yes, Shuku,” her spirit voice said.

Kiin swung out against the rope, braced her feet against the cliff, and once more began to climb.

When Kiin reached the egg ledge, she hooked her heels over the edge and was still, allowing the muscles in her legs to rest. The climb had worn the skin from her toes, and blood trickled down her soles to stain the feathers of the murre nests.

“The rope, the rope,” her spirit voice called to her. “It could break. Pull yourself up. Pull yourself up!”

“Be still,” Kiin said. “Leave me alone; let me rest.” But she began to pull herself up. The sudden fear that her spirit voice was right, that the rope would break and send her into the sea, gave her strength, and she eased herself up until she was standing flatfooted on the ledge and could rest her upper body on top of the cliff.

She still held the rope, but reached to clasp it above the frayed part that rubbed the edge of the cliff. For a long time, she did not move, but finally Shuku’s cries broke through the numbness of her mind and she pulled herself over the cliff edge and onto the grass and rocks. She lay there breathing hard, still clasping the rope, as though her hands could do nothing else but grip and pull.

Shuku’s cries seemed louder now and the sounds of the sea gentler. “Shuku,” Kiin called. “Shuku.”

The baby’s cries stopped and then started again. Kiin pushed herself up to her hands and knees and crawled to him.

His face was red, his hands and cheeks smeared with dirt. When he saw her, he began to cry harder and held his hands out to her. She scooped him into her lap, then lay on her side in the grass and lifted the tatters of her suk so Shuku could nurse. She did not let herself look at her hands. The pain was not as strong as the softness of Shuku’s skin against hers.

As she sighed and looked out over the cliff at the North Sea, she saw the speckled murre eggs, lined up at the edge of the cliff like some game of shells and pebbles played by a giant child. Suddenly in spite of her pain, in spite of her tiredness, she began to laugh.

“Oh, Shuku,” she said. “We have eggs. So many eggs. Enough to last us all the way to the Traders’ Beach.”

Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain

“W
HICH ISLAND?”
Hard Rock asked as he crawled from his sleeping place.

“The Island of Four Waters,” Red Feet answered. The man stood beside the climbing log, both hands wrapped around a walking stick. He lifted the stick to jab it again and again into the ulaq’s woven grass floor mats.

“That small island,” Hard Rock said slowly. “You are sure?” He frowned and pointed at Red Feet’s walking stick. Red Feet set the stick against the climbing log and squatted on his haunches.

“I myself saw them. I myself heard them.”

“You have seen walrus before?”

“In the ocean.”

“That is not the same. Perhaps they are sea lion.”

“No.”

“How many?”

“Too many to count.”

“Fish Eater was the first to see them?”

“Yes.”

“Go ask him to come to me,” Hard Rock said. But as Red Feet stood to leave, Hard Rock reached out a hand and said, “Wait. I will go to him. There is someone else I must also see.” He pulled his suk from a peg and was up the climbing log before Red Feet could answer.

Kukutux heard the men coming and pulled back from the climbing log, pressed herself against a wall in one of the dark corners of the ulaq. Their voices were loud. Were they angry?

Then she heard laughter, and Hard Rock descended into the ulaq even without calling down. Three hunters followed him: Red Feet, Fish Eater and Dying Seal. The men ignored her except for Dying Seal, who, when he saw her in the corner, raised a hand in greeting. Kukutux raised her hand, then slid down to a squat, leaning against the wall.

“Waxtal is here?” Hard Rock asked after pacing the ulaq, one side to the other. He stopped to peer into Kukutux’s shadowed corner. “Waxtal is here?” he asked again.

“In his sleeping place, but he prays,” Kukutux said, wondering that the man did not hear the high singing chant spinning out of Waxtal’s sleeping place.

Hard Rock stood still, his hands hanging loose at his sides, as though he did not know what to do next.

“When will he be finished?” Dying Seal asked.

Kukutux stood and walked out into the lamplight, lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Who can say?”

“He is a shaman,” the old man Fish Eater said. “I told you he is a shaman. I told everyone when he first came with the traders, but who listens to an old man, one who can barely hunt? Who listens?” He straightened his shoulders under his otter skin suk and clasped one hand with the other, rubbing swollen knuckles. Then he looked at Kukutux, spread his fingers, and said, “See what happens to an old man when he hunts? For each seal he takes, he trades two days of pain. I told them I saw walrus. They did not believe me. They made me go back, show them the island. Filled with walrus it was, so close together a man could not find ground to step on between them. ‘Walrus,’ I told them. Now they believe. At least those two,” he said, pointing with curled fingers toward Dying Seal and Red Feet. “But this one, this chief, he thinks he knows more than an old man. He says I should go with them. All of us together and again see the walrus. He wants to hunt them. With what? What man among us has hunted walrus? Should we use seal harpoons? What walrus would not push them aside, laugh at our small weapons? Should we defile our whale weapons with walrus blood?”

As Kukutux listened to the old man, Hard Rock continued to pace.

He stopped several times before Waxtal’s sleeping place curtain, and Kiin saw him incline his head to listen to Waxtal’s chants.

Finally he turned to her and, interrupting Fish Eater’s complaints, said, “Has he told you not to bother him? Has he told you to be quiet when he prays?”

“He has told me nothing,” Kukutux answered.

“Then I will talk to him now.” Hard Rock said the words loudly, but then he stood and stared at the sleeping place curtain as though it would move aside without his touching it. Finally Kukutux leaned close to Hard Rock, pulled open the curtain. Hard Rock bent to look in, and before he spoke one word, Waxtal’s voice, loud, clear, came from the sleeping place.

“You found the walrus I called for you?” he asked.

Hard Rock jumped back as though the man had hit him.

“You think the spirits do not talk to me?” Waxtal asked. He came out of the sleeping place, straightened, and stretched his arms up toward the ulaq rafters.

“You called the walrus?” Dying Seal asked and Kukutux saw the doubt on his face.

“Have you ever seen walrus near this island before? Your fathers or grandfathers told stories of long-ago times. Did they speak of walrus?”

“No,” said Fish Eater. “But I saw them first. I saw them and brought the others. They did not believe me.”

“You believe now?” Waxtal asked.

“I have not seen them,” Hard Rock said, “but Dying Seal is a man known for his honesty.”

“So will you go with him to see for yourself?”

“We go together,” Hard Rock said. “All of us.”

Waxtal turned away from the men. “I call walrus. I do not hunt them,” he said as he returned to his sleeping place.

Hard Rock reached out, clasped the man by both shoulders, and pulled him back into the ulaq’s main room. “If you are shaman, we will honor you as shaman, but not until it is proven. You told me you wanted this woman as wife. Go with us now. It is not even a day’s journey to the Island of Four Waters and back. Get your chigadax and spears. Get your water bladders and oil lamp.”

He released Waxtal and looked at Kukutux. “You told me you would be his wife if he was a hunter. What if he is shaman?”

“If he can bring in enough meat to last through winter, what do I care if it is from a hunter’s share or a shaman’s share?” Kukutux answered. Then she helped Waxtal gather his things. She filled water skins and an oil bladder, found a hunter’s lamp, and quickly mended a tear in his chigadax.

But when the hunters left, Kukutux did not climb to the top of the ulaq to follow them with her eyes. Instead she stood in the center of the main room, now still and empty after the frantic scurryings and loud voices of the hunters. She closed her eyes and sighed. Perhaps her time alone after the deaths of her husband and son had deformed her spirit. Otherwise why would she so enjoy the quiet of an empty ulaq? What woman would trade quiet for the blessing of children? The noise of aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents? Still, she reminded herself, most of life had some side of blessing. Why not enjoy what was hers?

She repacked a sealskin of dried meat and pushed it back into the food cache. As she worked she thought about what the hunters had said. She carefully wiped the stopper of the oil belly the traders had left. The oil was fresh. How tempting to take a small bowlful, eat it with the dried fish she had planned to have for her next meal. But the oil was the best oil. Better to save it for Waxtal. For the one who hunted.

Hard Rock had asked her if she would be wife to Waxtal; twice now he had asked. Both times she had given tests: if he could hunt, if he was a shaman. Why? Was it only a moon ago, those starving days, when she would have taken any man? Why now was it difficult for her to say yes?

Waxtal was not a beautiful man. His face would not give pleasure to a woman as Hard Rock’s face did. His body was not strong like Dying Seal’s body. His eyes were not the soft eyes of the trader Owl. But he did have powers. What was more important to those children she might bear—gentle eyes, a beautiful face, or the power to keep them fed, to protect them from curses?

“What woman does not make sacrifices for her children, even those not yet born?” Kukutux asked aloud. “Yes, I will take Waxtal as husband.” Then she remembered something her mother had told her. Oil, fresh oil, made strong babies. She went back to the food cache, took out the belly of new oil, pulled the stopper.

“For my children,” Kukutux said.

T
HE HARPOONS ARE NOT LONG ENOUGH
; the points are not large enough. What man ever killed a walrus with a seal harpoon? Waxtal shook his head, hoping to drive away the fear that seemed to weigh down his arms as he paddled. Already Hard Rock, Dying Seal, and Red Feet, even Fish Eater, were so far ahead that he could barely see their ikyan against the glare of the sea.

Waxtal centered his thoughts on his amulet. It lay against his chest, heavy and warm, as though its power were so great that it gave off heat. Before he left the ulaq, he had shaved a thin piece of ivory from the blunt end of his carved tusk. As soon as he put the ivory into the amulet’s soft leather pouch, he had felt the difference. He slipped the string of his amulet over his head and knew he was stronger, more sure.