Brother Wind (40 page)

“You have another wife?” she asked as she stood, ignoring his outstretched hand.

“She is dead.”

“We both mourn.”

“You will not have a terrible life,” said Waxtal and spread his arms as though he would embrace the stacks of trade goods. It is not mine.

“You are a woman. What woman expects to have all of this?” He laughed. “But I will give you something because you are my wife,” he said. “Choose.”

“Anything?” Kukutux asked.

“Anything.”

Kukutux looked long at all the furs and skins, the meat and oil. Finally she pointed at Waxtal’s chest, at the blue stone necklace that Owl had given her.

“That,” she said.

Waxtal narrowed his eyes, hesitated, but finally took off the necklace and handed it to her. Then she went with him into his sleeping place.

The Alaska Peninsula

K
IIN PEELED THE SHELL
from an egg and held the egg out to Shuku. He curled his lips and turned his head away. “It is better than nothing,” Kiin told him. But she held it up to her nose and knew why he refused it. Too many days had passed since she had gathered and boiled the eggs. Mold discolored the white and had begun to eat into the yolk.

Kiin sighed and looked out over the North Sea. She should fish. The shore here dropped steeply from the beach. She could use a handline to catch pogies and perhaps even cod. She glanced up at the sky, at the position of the sun. Better to wait until low tide, she thought, then gather sea urchins or dig for clams. She lifted the carrying basket from her back and sat down. She did not let herself remember that she had said the same thing the day before, and yet during low tide had done nothing.

She had been walking steadily for two months and knew she must be more than halfway to Traders’ Bay. If she could make herself keep walking, in less than two moons, she would come to the mouth of the Traders’ Bay. Then she would be close enough to sit and wait for one of the First Men hunters to find her.

In the time since she had fallen, Kiin’s hands had healed, leaving only small pink scars against her brown skin. Her fingers where the nails had been torn away were tender, but already she could see the thin ridges of new nails growing in. To protect her fingertips, she had carved wooden nails for herself, thin slices that she tied to her fingers each day to protect the soft skin of the nail beds.

But each day walking became more difficult. Angry red lines had crept up from the cuts on her feet, and now reached nearly to her knees.

Each morning, Kiin wrapped her feet in sealskin strips before she put on her boots. Each night she unwrapped her feet and washed them with seawater. But every day, she had to stop sooner, to allow herself more time to rest. Two days ago, she had walked only to the next hill, and then had stayed, moving once to the beach to gather a few pieces of driftwood that had floated in from the North Sea, and to dig clams. Yesterday, she had done nothing.

She reached into her carrying basket beside her in the beach grass and found the seal belly storage container. The container, once bulging with fish, was now flat, empty. Three pieces of fish hung drying on the outside of the basket.

“Three pieces,” Kiin said, looking at the fish, and the words were like stones in her chest. She handed one piece to Shuku. I should eat, she thought, but she was not hungry. Her face was hot, even in the cold wind, and her eyes seemed to see too much too quickly, making her head throb and her stomach ache.

“I will fish,” she told Shuku. She pulled a kelp fishing line from the basket and tied it to a hook she had carved from a clamshell. She knotted the line, then, feeling her stomach rise into her throat, she closed her eyes.

After a moment of rest, she broke a small section of fish from one of the two remaining pieces on the basket and tied it to the hook with strands of her hair, then picked up Shuku, put him in the sling, and adjusted it so that he was against her back, his head peeking out from the neck of her parka.

Kiin wrapped her left hand with a strip of sealskin, then slowly rose to her feet. Her suk had been ruined in the fall, so she wore the parka and leggings she had brought from the Walrus village. She took off her boots and walked slowly toward the water, across the gravel beach, and down the slope of sand left by the tide. She waded out until the sand dropped off into deep water, then uncoiled her line, twisting it around her padded left hand. The cold water numbed the pain in her feet, but Shuku’s weight against Kiin’s back made it difficult to keep her balance in the waves. She stood, feet apart, knees bent, bracing herself, and she prayed to the grandmother spirits of sun, moon, and earth to send her a fish.

When the bite came, Kiin thought it was only another wave, pulling against her as it drew itself back into the sea. Then she realized that the pull was from the line, and she knew it was a fish. She raised her eyes to thank the spirits, but the gray of the sky made her head ache, and so she looked instead at the line, played it out carefully as Crooked Nose had taught her long ago. If it was a cod, she needed to jerk the line hard to set the hook in the fish’s mouth. If it was a pogy, she must be more careful and wait until she was sure the fish was not just nibbling the edges of the bait.

She felt the line move in a long, strong pull. Cod, she thought, and jerked hard, lifting her left hand up and back. She twisted the line once and then again around her hand, and, moving with the fish, she allowed it to tire in its fight against the line.

Almost, her feet stopped hurting, almost she forgot she was carrying Shuku. There was only Kiin and the fish. If the fish gave itself to her hook, then she would have enough for at least another day’s walking, perhaps two. She looked up at the sun, squinted against the brightness of the gray clouds that covered it.

She coiled the fishline around her hand, once, twice. The cod was finally tiring, swimming in smaller circles. Kiin continued to wind the line until finally in the clear water she could see the fish.

“Not cod, halibut,” she gasped, “halibut,” and laughed as Shuku raised his voice in a crowing yell.

She began to walk backward, bringing the fish into shallow water until at last it flopped on the sand. She had no club, so she picked up a rock and slammed it into the halibut’s head. The fish quivered and was still. Nearly the size of a sea otter, it lay flat and dark on the gravel. Food for six, seven days, Kiin thought. She hooked her hands into the fish’s gills and pulled it higher up on the beach.

The effort seemed to force the pain back into her feet and legs. She unwrapped the fishline from her left hand, then sat down beside the fish and loosened the sealskin strips around her feet. Above the wrappings her legs were swollen and red, and the sudden release brought more pain.

“We have food, Shuku,” Kiin told her son, but even as she spoke, her eyes closed, shutting away the too-bright sky. “We should rest, Shuku. It is nearly low tide. We should rest, and then I will gather sea urchins. We will make our camp up in the grass of the next hill, and for a day, we will stay, drying our fish and eating our sea urchins. And then we will go on to find your father.”

She let herself lie down on the beach. She pulled Shuku from her back to her chest so he could nurse, then curled on her side around the halibut. She would lie here for a little while, she would close her eyes just for a moment.

Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain

K
UKUTUX PUSHED HERSELF UP
from her knees, then reached down once more to lay her hands against the rocks that covered her husband’s grave. “White Stone,” she whispered, “I would be content to sit here forever beside you.”

She wiped tears from her cheeks with the backs of her hands, then went to the small mound that was her son’s grave. “At least your bones will be a part of this island,” she said to him. She turned away, walked back through the hills to the beach where all the people of the village had gathered.

The men’s ikyan and three longer, wider women’s iks, filled with sealskin packs, lined the shore.

The people were gathered in families, and so Kukutux looked for her husband Waxtal. She saw that he was already in his ikyak, paddling away from the beach.

“Let him go; let him be gone,” some perverse spirit whispered within her. “Then you can stay behind. He will not know until everyone stops for the night. Then it will be too late to come back for you.”

The thought was like some sweetness in Kukutux’s mouth, but she reminded herself that she was Waxtal’s wife, and a wife went with her husband.

“If I stay here,” she whispered into the wind, “then perhaps Waxtal will not lead our men to Samiq’s beach, and Samiq will not die. What chance will there be for this village if Samiq lives and the curse remains?

She realized that Hard Rock had moved to his ikyak and was speaking to the two old men and seven old women who were to stay on the Whale Hunters’ island. “Take care of the children we leave with you,” he said. “We will be back next summer. Watch for us.”

You will be back, Kukutux thought. I will not.

Waxtal did not plan to return. He had told her he would stay at the First Men’s village after the battle at the Traders’ Beach. He would stay and take his place as chief.

Kukutux looked up at the Whale Hunters’ mountain Atal, then again toward the hills where her husband and son were buried. Now all she would have for a remembrance was the strip of fur from her son’s wrapping blanket and the strand of hair and the bear claw from her husband’s sleeping place. The ache in her chest was so great that each breath was like a knife, cutting.

She sighed to lift the weight of her sorrow, then asked herself, “Is my pain greater than Speckled Basket’s? She must leave a child two summers old with her grandmother. Is my sorrow more than what Old Goose Woman feels, seeing both son and daughter leave?”

Kukutux waited as Hard Rock continued to speak, listing the number of seal bellies of oil, the skins of meat and fish he was giving to the old ones and the children—enough for them to live through the winter and beyond.

We who are going with Waxtal, Kukutux thought, we are the ones who will be hungry. But as Waxtal had explained during the many evenings spent planning the journey, the women who were not paddling would use handlines to catch fish. The men in their ikyan would be ever watching for seals and sea lions.

Besides, there would be birds to catch, sea urchins, chitons, and clams to gather. Waxtal and the traders had come this way just the year before. He knew the good beaches, the places to find food.

At last Hard Rock finished speaking, and the men got in their ikyan, seven hunters in all. Kukutux was in an ik with Hard Rock’s second wife and her older children, and with Speckled Basket and She Cries and She Cries’ stepdaughter, Snow-in-her-hair. Unlike most of the women, She Cries would not leave her baby on the island, though She Cries’ mother could have cared for the child. Others chided the woman, but Kukutux would not. If Kukutux could hardly bear to leave her son’s grave, why criticize She Cries for not leaving her baby?

Though she did not fault She Cries for her choice, Kukutux noticed that as the people gathered on the beach, She Cries hardly glanced at her mother and gave the woman no words of farewell. Seeing the sadness in the old woman’s eyes, the tears on her cheeks, Kukutux went to her, put her arms around the thin, hard-boned shoulders, and wept her own tears of leaving into the old woman’s tangled white hair. Then Kukutux went back to the ik and helped the women push it into the sea.

Because of her strong eyes and weak arm, Kukutux sat in the bow. One last time, she looked back at the Whale Hunters’ island, then set her eyes ahead to the flat blue expanse of the sea.

She wondered about Owl—whether he and his brother were also on this sea, traveling far to the east in their traders’ ik. Then her thoughts sped to the far shore of the Traders’ Beach, to Samiq and the battle that was coming to the First Men’s village.

The Alaska Peninsula

K
IIN FOUGHT HER WAY UP
through dreams. She was a child in her father’s ulaq. She felt the bedding mats against her cheek, smelled the heavy scent of meat cooking, heard a man’s voice.

She shivered and tried to take herself back into sleep. But no, if her father was awake, she was sure to be beaten. She should have been up long before now. She should have taken out night wastes and brought water from the stream, trimmed the oil lamp wicks and been ready to help her mother with food for the new day. She cringed as she thought of her father’s walking stick cracking hard across her back.

She reached one arm out from her sleeping robes to find her suk, something that would offer protection for her skin, but her hand found nothing, not even the cool hard earth-and-stone walls of the ulaq.

She opened her eyes and tried to sit up, but all the muscles of her arms and legs burned with pain, and she felt the familiar throb of too-full breasts. “Shuku,” she whispered, and fear closed in around her throat.

No, she was not in her father’s ulaq, nor even in any lodge made by the Walrus People, and her arms and legs ached as though her father had used his walking stick against her.

Where am I? Where is Shuku? Then she remembered the halibut, the beach. How could she have been so foolish as to fall asleep with Shuku helpless against the tide?

Was she now in some spirit world? If so, she must find Shuku so they could make their way together to the Dancing Lights. She sat up, clamped her teeth against the pain, and spoke to the fear that hampered her thoughts: If I am dead, then why do I hurt? If I am dead, why am I inside a lodge and not outside with wind and sea?

She thought of death ulas, of dead ones bound legs to chest and wrapped in grass mats. Her fear returned. Perhaps she was now in a death ulaq, some lodge used by another village, a strange people, with traditions unlike the First Men’s.

She forced herself to hands and knees and crawled in darkness, reaching out to touch the walls as she moved, until her hands found a woven grass curtain. Pulling the curtain aside, she peered into a large room, saw thin flickering light in the far corner, and near the light a man and woman talking. The woman nursed a baby.