Brother Wind (45 page)

For a time the Ugyuun man said nothing, then he asked, “You would give a good trade, much oil, much meat?”

“All the oil I have with me, all the meat, except enough for the journey my wife and I must make to take us back to our own village.”

Again the chief nodded. “I will talk to my hunters,” he said. “I will see if one will give his son to be raised by a chief.”

Small Plant Woman came out calling Kiin’s name. Kiin hurried to meet the woman, shushing her, then pulled her into the willow trees.

“Kiin …” Small Plant Woman said. “Why do you hide?”

“Where is Shuku?”

“In the ulaq, asleep in your sleeping place. Where is the wood?”

“Beside the path that leads up from the beach,” Kiin said.

“Good,” said Small Plant Woman, then asked again, “Why are you here?”

“I saw a trader’s ik on the beach.”

“Yes, A trader and his wife came this morning after you left to gather wood.”

“Why do they come?” Kiin asked.

“To trade, why else?”

“I know him,” Kiin said. “He killed my husband’s brother.”

“So you are afraid of this trader? He seems like a good man. He laughs often, and his wife is a hard worker, though she does not speak our language.”

“Is his wife called Lemming Tail?” Kiin asked.

Small Plant Woman laughed. “Do you think my husband would bother to find out such a thing?”

Kiin tried to smile, but her face was stiff, as though her tears had dried into a mask. “This trader—he has threatened to kill my husband and take me as his wife.”

“Then you are right to hide,” Small Plant Woman said. “I will find out how long he plans to stay. Will you wait here?”

“I must go get berries for … for …” She held up the old woman’s berry baskets.

“Blackfish.”

“Blackfish,” Kiin said. “Bring Shuku. I will take him with me.”

“You do not need him. I will keep him safe.”

“The trader,” Kiin said, “he will know him.”

“What man recognizes a baby, especially one who is not his own?”

“If he brought Lemming Tail with him, she will know whose baby it is.”

Small Plant Woman shrugged. “Then stay here and wait. I will bring Shuku.”

L
EMMING TAIL WAITED
until the chief had left the ulaq, then she came to Raven’s side, leaned up against him, and whined, “When can we leave? Already I am itching with their lice. Already I am sick from their food.”

Raven blew a sigh of disgust from his mouth and pushed the woman away. “When they bring us the baby. Then we will leave.”

“When will that be?”

“I do not know.” He made a slashing motion with his hand and said, “Leave! Go do things a woman should do!”

The chief’s wife turned and looked at them, a smirk on her face, and Raven’s cheeks grew hot in embarrassment—laughed at by an Ugyuun woman. But why be angry with an Ugyuun woman when the one at fault was Lemming Tail? What would be better than to give Lemming Tail to Dyenen and be rid of her?

There was the sifting of dirt from the ulaq rafters, and the sound of voices at the roof hole.

“I have a baby for you,” the chief called. He came carrying a bundle in one arm, stepped down three notches of the climbing log, and jumped to the floor. “His mother is dead, and the father says it will be too much trouble to raise him to the age of hunting. But the man wants much oil.”

“I have much oil,” Raven said. He stood and waited as the chief brought the baby to him.

He unwrapped the child.

“How many moons?”

“Ten,” the chief said. The baby lay quietly in the chief’s arms, his eyes fixed on something in the rafters. He was about the same size as Mouse and had the round face, the long eyes of the First Men.

Raven nodded. “Good,” he said, then called to Lemming Tail. “Take him. I will go get the oil.”

Lemming Tail sat in the chief’s ulaq as Raven and several of the Ugyuun men carried in ten seal stomachs of oil and three of dried fish, another two of seal meat.

Mouse jabbered, poking at the Ugyuun child with his pudgy fingers, but the Ugyuun baby gave no response. Lemming Tail laughed at her son. “You will both be good hunters,” she said, and looked up to see the chief’s wife watching, the woman with a smile on her face.

Lemming Tail offered the Ugyuun baby her breast. For a time the baby did nothing, only let his lips rest against her nipple, but then he began to suck, not with hard, strong sucking like Mouse, but gently, as though he were a new baby.

Lemming Tail stroked back his hair. He was not an ugly baby, this child of the Ugyuun village. She clasped his hand and waited for him to wrap his fingers around hers, to hold tightly as Mouse did, but the child’s fingers did not move. Lemming Tail frowned and glanced up at the chief’s wife. The woman looked quickly away.

Lemming Tail used a finger to break the baby’s suction on her nipple, then sat him up on her leg. His head bobbled, and he tipped to the side. Again she sat him up, then tried to stand him on his legs. He sank down as though he had no strength.

“This baby is … is sick,” she said to the chief’s wife, but the woman remained with her back to Lemming Tail. “She is too stupid to know the Walrus language,” Lemming Tail said to Mouse, and still the Ugyuun woman acted as though Lemming Tail had not spoken.

When all the oil was in the ulaq, Lemming Tail stood, went to her husband’s side, and pushed the Ugyuun baby into his arms. Raven jumped up, thrust the baby back at her, and shouted out a string of angry words.

“Be quiet and listen to me,” Lemming Tail said. “Look at the child. He is not strong. He is older than Mouse, but cannot even hold up his head. No wonder the father was willing to trade. The child will never be a hunter.”

“Be quiet,” Raven told her. “He is a boy. I do not care if he hunts.”

“Of course you do not care,” Lemming Tail said, so angry that spit flew from her mouth as she spoke. “You do not have to live with the River shaman. You do not have to please him, day by day. He believes he will have two strong sons. What do I say when he discovers that one—”

“Tell him that the child was strong when he lived in the Walrus village. Tell him the child caught the weakness of the River People.”

“You told me that the River People were strong. You said—”

Raven clamped a hand over Lemming Tail’s mouth, but Lemming Tail caught the edge of Raven’s hand with her teeth and bit down hard.

Raven jerked his hand away and slapped her across the face. The Ugyuun men looked aside as though they saw nothing, and Lemming Tail covered her face with her hands.

“This is your choice,” Raven said. “You can be Lemming Tail and stay here with the Ugyuun, or you can be Kiin and go with me and Mouse and the Ugyuun child to the River People. So I ask: are you Kiin or Lemming Tail?”

“I am Lemming Tail!”

Raven turned to the Ugyuun chief. “What will you give for this woman?” he asked, speaking in the First Men tongue.

The man raised his eyebrows in surprise and looked over at his wife.

“What did you say to him?” Lemming Tail asked.

“She sews well and makes healthy sons,” Raven said.

The man pointed to three seal bellies of oil.

“He says he will give me three seal bellies of oil for you,” Raven told Lemming Tail.

“You gave ten for this sick baby.”

“Five,” Raven said to the Ugyuun man and held up five fingers.

“You trade for your own oil!” Lemming Tail said. “What about Mouse and the Ugyuun child? Who will feed them?”

“They will not starve before I get to the next village. I will get a woman there.”

“You think you can get a woman so easily? You think any woman will come with you?”

“You are Kiin?”

“I am Lemming Tail!”

The Ugyuun man pointed at the oil and held up four fingers.

“You should be happy I keep the babies,” Raven said. “With the oil I leave here, you will not starve for the first months of winter. If you fish, you will have enough food to stay alive until next summer. But it is sad to see a beautiful woman hungry. The River People women are fat even at the end of winter.” Raven sighed. “Your shaman husband would have been glad to see your beautiful legs in caribou skin leggings. Have you seen the embroidery the River women do? Their clothing brings much in trade. Each woman has more necklaces than she can wear.”

Raven looked up at the Ugyuun chief, then said to Lemming Tail, “You could have a dog,” Raven said to Lemming Tail. “Most River People wives have their own dog to carry packs and guard their children.”

“I do not want a dog.”

“Four,” Raven said to the Ugyuun man and held up four fingers over the oil-filled seal bellies.

Lemming Tail screeched, “Wait!”

“You will accept the Ugyuun child?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You are Kiin?”

For a long time Lemming Tail stood with head lowered, eyes down. Finally she whispered, “I am Kiin.”

K
IIN WAITED, HER FINGERS
moving in small, quick patterns over her hands. How long should it take a woman to get a baby? The tiny stinging insects the Walrus People called long noses hummed in her ears, and she slapped at her neck, wondering why these small ones plagued the land of the Walrus and Ugyuun yet did not live on the islands of the First Men.

“Come, Small Plant Woman, come,” Kiin whispered, then, angry with herself for her own impatience, she took her woman’s knife from the packet at her waist and cut several branches from a willow tree. She murmured her gratitude to the tree, then sat on her haunches and used her knife to peel off the bark. The soft spongy inner bark—soaked in water and taken as a bitter tea—made good medicine, something to ease small pains. Besides, who did not know that waiting went more quickly when hands and eyes were busy?

“We are ready, then,” Raven said and motioned for Lemming Tail to follow him up the climbing log.

“Good,” she muttered under her breath. “I am ready to leave the dark houses of the Ugyuun.”

She waited beside Raven at the top of the ulaq as he used eyes and ears to test wind and sea.

“We will return first to our own village?” Lemming Tail asked.

Raven frowned at her and kept his eyes toward the sea. “If the sea is calm, we will stop only for water. We will not stay even a night.”

“I must say goodbye to Shale Thrower,” Lemming Tail said.

Raven looked down at Mouse. With one long fingered hand he tugged at the baby’s hair. “To Shale Thrower or her husband?” he asked. He slid down from the top of the ulaq before Lemming Tail could reply.

Lemming Tail had bound Mouse in a sling at her left hip and carried the Ugyuun baby strapped under her parka as though he were a new infant. She bit at her lip and, tucking an arm around each baby, slid down after Raven. She did not intend to hurry to the beach. Let Raven do the work of launching the ik. So when she heard a man call, she stopped. She looked back over her shoulder, saw that he was speaking to an Ugyuun woman standing atop the next ulaq. A baby was slung against her hip. The man spoke in the First Men tongue, gesturing for the woman to come to him. She set the baby down on the ulaq roof and left him there as she followed the man into another ulaq. The child was only a little larger than Mouse, plump and wearing a parka of soft sea otter skin, only its eyes peering out from the drawstring hood.

Lemming Tail whispered to Mouse, “He wears a Walrus parka. I did not know Raven had brought one to trade.” She went closer, standing on her toes to see the child.

Lemming Tail laid one hand against the baby under her parka, raised her shoulders in a long breath, then quickly scrambled up the side of the ulaq. She grabbed the baby sitting there.

“A boy,” she whispered to the spirits. “Let it be a boy.”

She tipped him over. His buttocks above his leggings were bare. She saw the small pink penis, let out a quick breath of joy, pulled up her parka, and took the Ugyuun baby from the carrying strap. She laid him on the ulaq and slipped the other baby under her parka.

Then she ran to the beach, hugging both children to her, two healthy boys. She waited while Raven made adjustments to the loaded ik, tested knots.

“We should go, “Lemming Tail said. “Now.”

Raven raised his eyebrows at her. “You are so ready to leave?” he asked.

Lemming Tail set her mouth into a frown. “I itch with their lice,” she said. “My nose is full of the stink of their lodges.”

He laughed. “So you would rather live with the River People.”

“Yes.”

Raven motioned for her to get into the ik, then pushed it from the beach, stepped in, and began the long, strong paddling that would take the ik beyond the pull of shore waves.

Lemming Tail, too, paddled—deep, powerful pulls. Raven laughed and called to her, “So on this trip you have learned something. I can tell the River shaman you are a good paddler.”

But Lemming Tail, looking back over her shoulder, did not answer. She plunged her paddle in hard strokes until the village was only a smudge of smoke in the gray and green of the Ugyuun’s hills.

Finally, Kiin heard someone coming. She stood, her legs stiff from squatting for so long. Her heart beat hard under her ribs. It had been too long. Something was wrong. The Raven knew she was here. Why else would Small Plant Woman take most of the morning to bring her Shuku?

“I am here,” Small Plant Woman called, but her voice was small and thin.

“You have Shuku?” Kiin asked. She stepped out of the willows, around the refuse heap, and onto the path where Small Plant Woman stood.

“The trader is gone, he and his wife,” Small Plant Woman answered.

A quiver in her voice made Kiin’s heart flutter. “You have Shuku?” she asked again.

“Kiin …” Small Plant Woman said, and her voice broke on the name.

The woman’s arms were empty, and Kiin rushed forward, clasped her shoulders. “Where is Shuku?”

“Kiin …” The woman’s eyes were suddenly wet, her shoulders shaking. “The trader, he … he took him.”

The screams began, and first Kiin thought they were Small Plant Woman’s screams, but finally she knew they came from her own throat.

Then there were others—Small Plant Woman’s husband, the chief, and old Blackfish. Their hands were on her, pushing her toward the ulas, and Small Plant Woman was talking, her words coming through her tears. “I left him only a moment on the ulaq, only a moment while I went to help my husband find something. I came out and Shuku was gone.”