Brother Wind (49 page)

The Ugyuun man smiled, and his woman also. “Brothers,” he said, and, raising his bowl to his lips, he drank long.

In all the talking, the laughter, in the crowd of people that filled his ulaq, even through the pain Samiq felt over losing Shuku, Kiin was in his mind, her name like a song in his thoughts: Kiin in his arms, Kiin in his sleeping place.

He could see the signs of her illness. Her arms were thin, her face drawn, her hair dull. The scars from her fall on the egg cliffs were bright pink, her torn fingernails still not grown out, but he wanted to hold her, to allow his own strength to flow into her body. Yet how could he do anything but stay here with all these people, pretending to listen to what they said, trying to answer questions?

“You are happy?” It was his mother Chagak, her hands and arms cradling bowls of dried fish, smoked fish, and fresh sea urchins, shells cracked, spines knocked off.

“I am tired,” Samiq said, and smiled to soften the words.

She started to speak, but one of the men asked for food, and she was gone. Then Kayugh was talking, his voice loud to be heard above the other voices.

“Eagle and Small Plant Woman will stay in my ulaq,” he said. “I ask for the honor because they have returned my daughter. Everyone should come. I have much food.” Kayugh led the two from Samiq’s ulaq, Chagak following, and soon all others, too, had left, even Three Fish.

For a time, Samiq busied himself picking up bowls, straightening floor mats. He looked up and saw Kiin watching him, smiling as a mother might smile at something done by her child, and then she was in his arms. Her warm breasts, still hard with milk for Shuku, were pressed against his chest. He moved his left hand up under the warmth of her long hair, up the curve of her back to her neck.

“My right hand,” he said and held up the bent fingers so she could see.

“I do not care about your hand,” Kiin said and pressed her belly against his man part. She laughed softly, and he scooped her into his arms, carried her into his sleeping place.

Q
UIETLY, THREE FISH WENT
to each man and woman in Kayugh’s ulaq; quietly she asked them to listen to what she had to say.

When Three Fish came to Chagak, Chagak looked hard into the woman’s face, tried to see if her eyes were filled with sorrow or anger, but she saw only worry. So she waited until Three Fish had spoken to everyone of the village, such a small group that Chagak’s heart tightened in fear. How could they continue to live with so few hunters, so few women? But, she told herself, we have lived so far, and it does not hurt that our village is on the Traders’ Beach.

Finally Three Fish began to speak. Her words were slow but loud, and still carried the heavy accent of the Whale Hunters. “I am only a woman,” she said, “not even of your people, but I am the one who must speak because I am wife to Samiq, mother to Takha, and sister-wife to Kiin.”

Chagak heard the words, but also, as though her eyes were opened for the first time, she saw the woman that Three Fish had become, gentled by being mother to three sons, strengthened by being wife to the alananasika.

“Kiin comes to us in joy because she returns to her people. She comes to us in sorrow because she has lost Shuku. I have been wife to Samiq three summers now. I know him. I know what he will do. He will go to the Walrus village. He will fight Raven for his son. Samiq is stronger now, and he has learned to use his knife well. He might kill Raven, but perhaps Raven will kill him. It is enough that we have lost one man to Raven. We cannot let Samiq go. He has three sons here, and we do not have enough hunters. If he is killed, how will we live?”

“How can we stop him?” Kayugh asked. “I am his father, but he is alananasika. Can I say to him, ‘You must stay here. You must let a Walrus man raise your son as his own’? Can I treat Samiq as though he were a boy?”

Chagak heard the pain in her husband’s words. The loss of one son was enough. To lose Samiq … the thought seemed to rip the soul from her chest.

“If all of us go to him, if all of us ask the same thing—that he stay here—would he stay?” asked Big Teeth.

His wife Crooked Nose shook her head. “You know he would not,” she said.

No one spoke, and as the silence grew long, it seemed to Chagak that Three Fish shrank in on herself, grew smaller and smaller as though she were an old woman, losing her body in yearning for the next world. Then from the outside edge of the circle, Blue Shell stood. She waited until all eyes had turned to her.

In the oil lamp light, Blue Shell was almost the young woman Chagak remembered when Kayugh and his people first came to Shuganan’s beach. Then Blue Shell had been the most beautiful woman Chagak had ever seen. Her belly had been full of her daughter Kiin. Her husband Gray Bird—Waxtal—had not yet beaten the joy and beauty from her. And now, after months of being wife to Big Teeth, the woman had lost her look of fear. She had enough to eat and no worry over beatings, no shame of having a husband who ate but did not hunt.

“I have a plan,” Blue Shell said, and looked at her husband, Big Teeth, looked at her sister-wife Crooked Nose. “There has been time to hunt seals and time to gather roots. The traders will soon come to this beach.” Blue Shell held out her hands, wrists together. “When the Walrus People come, sell me to them as slave.”

Big Teeth jumped to his feet. “I will never sell you. Why should I do such a thing?”

Turning to face her husband, Blue Shell said, “I will find Shuku, and bring him back here, to us. I am strong. I can do such a thing. We have heard the story of Kiin’s journey, how she walked from the Walrus People’s bay.”

“She almost died,” Crooked Nose said.

“You are not young. You cannot walk that far,” said First Snow.

“But we did not know Kiin was coming. If you know I come, you will bring your ikyak to get me. I will not have to walk as far as Kiin.”

“I will never sell my wife as slave,” Big Teeth said again.

“Do not tell me no,” Blue Shell said. “Shuku is my grandson. Someday he will be a hunter. I am only an old woman, beyond the years of giving sons and daughters. Let me give this. To pay back for these months I have lived well, without beatings, without a husband who curses me with each breath.”

And to Chagak it seemed as though Blue Shell had suddenly grown larger, as large as a hunter bringing in meat. If she succeeded, if she was able to bring Shuku back to them, then someday, when he was a hunter, would not every animal he brought in also belong to Blue Shell?

Then everyone was speaking, making plans, voices loud and soft in arguing and pleading. But the noise brought hope to Chagak’s spirit, that Shuku would come back to them, that she would finally have her whole family here on the Traders’ Beach.

In Samiq’s sleeping place, Kiin and Samiq saw no one, heard no one but each other. Though Samiq’s right hand was crippled, he used it to caress, stroking Kiin’s breasts and belly while his left hand moved in slow circles in the soft flesh between her legs.

When Samiq finally took her, Kiin could not keep the tears inside her eyes. In the darkness she reached out to touch Samiq’s face and found that he, too, cried, his cheeks and eyelashes wet. They moved together, and Kiin knew again the joy of being wife. And for a little time she did not feel the pain of losing Shuku.

Late that night, Three Fish returned to the ulaq. She took her son Many Whales from his carrying strap under her parka and put him in the cradle Samiq had made for him. She hung it from the rafters of her sleeping place. Takha was curled, rump up, in her sleeping robes. Sometime during the next moon, when he understood that Kiin was also his mother, he would go to Kiin’s sleeping place, and would stay there until he had five, six summers and was old enough to sleep alone.

There was the sound of someone on the ulaq, then Small Knife’s quick feet were on the climbing log.

“We are all here,” Three Fish said, “all but Shuku. And soon he will come also.” She looked for a moment toward Samiq’s sleeping place, her eyes staring as though she could see through walls and curtains.

Small Knife looked also, smiled, and said, “It is good.”

The Kuskokwim River, Alaska

“T
AKE OFF YOUR PARKA.
He wants to see you,” Raven said.

Lemming Tail stood and slowly removed the parka, hands and arms swaying as though she were dancing. Raven turned his head away, but found himself drawn back by her teasing movements. He took a long breath. Lemming Tail was a poor wife in many ways, but he would miss her in his bed.

Raven glanced at Dyenen. The man sat with eyes half closed, hands limp in his lap. Lemming Tail moved her hands down to her legs. She kicked off her boots, slid off her leggings. She turned three times, wearing only her grass aprons front and back.

“Her legs,” Dyenen said He leaned toward Raven and pointed at the tattooed pattern of triangles and dots that covered her legs from knees to ankles. “It is custom among Walrus women to mark the legs?”

Raven held his hands out, palms up, “Among some. It adds beauty, does it not?”

The old man raised his eyebrows. “Does it add strength?” he asked. “Does it help in birth?”

The questions irritated Raven, and he said, “Who can say why women do such things? If a woman pleases a man, who should care?”

“I want a strong woman,” Dyenen said.

Lemming Tail untied her aprons and let them drop to the floor. She stood with legs apart, hips thrust forward, but Dyenen did not seem to notice.

“In this you find no pleasure?” Raven asked.

Dyenen grinned at him, a boy’s smile on an old man’s face, and Raven began to laugh. He must remember Dyenen was trader here. Why expect compliments?

“She is good,” Dyenen finally said.

Raven flipped one hand toward Lemming Tail, said to her, “Put on your clothes. Let him see the babies.”

Before beginning her dance, Lemming Tail had laid the babies back in the darkness of the lodge. She turned toward them now, even as she retied her aprons and slipped on leggings and boots.

Raven had decided that in showing the babies, Lemming Tail should bring one child at a time, so Dyenen would not be as likely to see the differences between them. First she brought Mouse, the boy clinging to her. He wrapped his arms tightly around her neck, his legs around her body, even bent his feet in to hold on to his mother.

“This is …” Raven began, speaking in the River language.

“Takha,” Lemming Tail said, her eyes holding Raven’s eyes.

“Takha,” Raven said.

Lemming Tail gave the baby to Dyenen. The old man took the boy, held him out at arm’s length, then handed him back to her.

“Ask her to take off his parka and leggings,” Dyenen said to Raven.

Raven flicked his fingers toward Lemming Tail. “Take off his clothes,” he said to her.

Lemming Tail sat down and settled the boy on her lap, pulled his parka off and smoothed back his hair, removed his leggings, and set him on his sturdy legs. For a moment the baby stood, then fell back on his rump. He looked up at Dyenen, then broke into a smile and clapped his hands together. Dyenen squatted and held out his arms. The baby crawled to the old man and pulled himself up by clasping Dyenen’s arm.

“So then, let us see the brother,” Dyenen said to Raven.

For a moment Raven’s eyes flicked to Lemming Tail, and she said to him, “I should first dress Mouse.”

“She wants to dress this one first,” Raven said to Dyenen, then began a conversation about salmon fishing and the summer’s fish runs. The village was crowded with fish racks hung with red strips of drying salmon.

Dyenen finally held up one hand to stop the conversation and, rising to his feet, left the lodge, turning at the entrance tunnel to say, “I will be back soon.”

Raven leaned forward to watch the old man crawl through the tunnel, then turned back to Lemming Tail and asked, “The Ugyuun baby, he sleeps?”

“I gave him the medicine you got from Grandmother and Aunt,” she said. “He has been sleeping all day.”

“Good,” Raven said, and they waited in silence until Dyenen returned.

When the old man came into the lodge, he had his hands full of dried salmon. Each fish was split in half, the halves still joined at the tail. The flesh had been sliced crosswise five or six times but was held together by the skin. Dyenen handed a fish to Raven and one to Lemming Tail, then sat down and pulled away a bit of meat from the fish he had kept for himself.

Raven watched the old man and did as he did, ripping out a chunk of meat and putting it into his mouth. The meat was dried at the edges but still moist in the center.

Dyenen nodded at Lemming Tail and said to Raven, “Have her bring out the other baby.”

Raven motioned toward Lemming Tail, who had begun to eat her fish. She sighed, put down the fish, and went to the baby. She picked him up, held him out to Dyenen. “He sleeps,” she said.

Raven said, “I am sorry that he is asleep. The traveling here must have made him tired.”

Dyenen studied the child and moved his eyes to Raven. “He is called?”

“Shuku,” Raven said.

“Shuku,” Lemming Tail repeated.

“Take off his parka, let me see this boy,” Dyenen said.

“Take off his clothes,” Raven told Lemming Tail and frowned as the woman hesitated. Finally she laid the baby on the floor between them, held Mouse back with one hand as he leaned forward to poke at the sleeping baby’s face.

She pulled off Shuku’s leggings and parka.

“His clothes are different,” Dyenen said to Raven.

“A gift from a trader,” Raven told him, then said in the Walrus tongue to Lemming Tail, “It was a fine trade you made for Shuku’s parka.”

Lemming Tail nodded her understanding but kept her head lowered. She finished undressing Shuku and handed him to Dyenen.

“He is bigger,” Dyenen said.

“Kiin says he eats more,” Raven answered. “He is strong also. When he is awake.” Raven laughed and leaned forward to lay a hand against the baby’s head, but when he looked at the child’s face, it was though some spirit squeezed his heart.