Brother Wind (56 page)

“So you will trade for water and fresh meat?” Eagle asked.

“Yes,” said Waxtal. “We will trade for what we need and also for other things.” He lifted his hand to point at the carving. “That,” he said. “What will you take for that?”

The woman cupped her hand over the carving, looked with worried eyes at her husband.

“It is not for trade,” Eagle said.

Waxtal cocked his head to one side, took another piece of meat. “Then perhaps you will tell me where you got it. Perhaps I could find the carver and get one like it.”

The Ugyuun man smiled, but said nothing.

“One belly of oil,” Waxtal said.

“Seal belly or sea lion?”

“Sea lion.”

The man raised his eyebrows at his wife, and for a few moments their eyes held, as though they spoke without words. Finally she said, “He is Whale Hunter, not Walrus.”

Her husband nodded. “The carver is a woman,” Eagle said. “She is of the First Men. She lives with her husband and son on the Traders’ Beach, only two days from here.”

“But,” said the woman, “if you go to the Walrus People, do not tell them about her. She has enemies there.”

“Enemies?” Waxtal asked, but the worried look came again into the woman’s eyes, and she pressed her lips together and would say no more.

The knowledge was like sand against Waxtal’s skin. Kiin—what father had a worse daughter? Already, she had left Raven and gone back to Samiq. How could he, Waxtal, now ask for Raven’s help? But then a smile came slowly to Waxtal’s face.

“The Walrus People do not know where she is?” he asked.

The Ugyuun woman shook her head.

“Do not worry,” Waxtal said. “I will never tell them.”

Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula

K
IIN SAW BIG TEETH
when he was still out on the bay. She lifted one hand, and he did also, but when he beached his ikyak, he pulled the craft ashore with his back turned toward her, and then found something in the hatch coaming to keep his hands and eyes busy.

Kiin waited for him to turn, but finally could wait no longer. She came to the man, hesitated, then laid one hand softly against his back.

“My mother?” she asked.

For a time it seemed as though he had not heard her, did not know she was standing beside him, but then he lifted his head and looked at her, and Kiin saw that his cheeks were wet with tears. “She is dead,” he said, and his voice carried the sound of his crying.

Kiin had no words, nothing, and it suddenly seemed as though her chest were cold and hollow. “How can I live without my mother?” a little child-voice asked from within. “Who will take care of me?”

She began a mourning song, then realized she was singing one of her mother’s lullabies instead.

“I am sorry. I am sorry,” Big Teeth said over her singing. “If I had been there sooner, I might have saved her.”

“And my son?” Kiin asked, and the question was so large, so heavy, that she felt she could not even breathe.

“He is with the River People. Raven traded him.”

The world darkened, grew small, but then Kiin’s spirit voice whispered quiet words, comforting her as a mother comforts a child. “He is not dead. You will find him. Samiq will find him. Mourn your mother, but do not mourn your son.” Then the world came back—the rush and roar of the waves, the strength and cold of the wind, the sound of Big Teeth’s voice, broken in sorrow.

“What happened to my mother?” Kiin whispered, and then, though she did not know how, Samiq was with her, and Three Fish, Chagak and Kayugh, and Crooked Nose, her strong arms holding Big Teeth close to her even as he spoke.

“The man Raven killed her,” he said.

Anger filled Kiin’s chest so that she could do nothing but scream, but finally her screams became words and she shouted, “Why, why, why?”

“She had left the village—to meet me,” Big Teeth said. “She was hiding in the grass on a beach where Raven came to pray. He thought she was a wolf.”

“A wolf?” Kiin said, and her voice rose up into something that was almost a laugh. Samiq reached for her, tucked her head against his shoulder.

“I buried her in the manner of Whale Hunters, on that beach, with prayers.”

“I must go to her,” Kiin said, and fought to break from Samiq’s arms. “I must go.” But Samiq would not release her.

“Your mother is here,” Samiq said. “Be still and wait. She is here. Why go back to the Walrus People? She would not stay there. She followed Big Teeth’s ikyak back to us. Be still and you will feel her spirit with us.”

So Kiin no longer fought, but let her husband take her back to the ulaq, to Takha, who hugged her and patted her cheeks with his baby hands until he had coaxed a smile.

“I go now,” Samiq said. “If you want to come, then come. If not, stay.”

“There is ice forming in the bay,” Kayugh said. He raised one hand to the sky. “Snow maybe.”

“I cannot wait until spring,” Samiq said. “I do not know what kind of people have him. If they run out of food, they may let him starve—first before any of their own children.”

“You know that any man who takes a child as his own, though his wife did not bear it, treats that child as he treats his other children,” Kayugh answered.

“That is the way of the First Men. The River People may be different.”

“You do not even know what the baby looks like,” Kayugh said.

He bent to pull a handful of grass from the ground and held up the blades one by one, let the wind carry each from his fingers.

“I will ask for the child traded by Raven of the Walrus People. I will offer everything I have. He is my son. I cannot let him be raised by River People who do not speak the sacred words of the First Men language, who do not know how to hunt seal or the whale, who cannot build ikyan.”

Kayugh looked away, out toward the bay. The sky was gray, and as the sun neared the western horizon, all things seemed dark.

“Tomorrow?” Kayugh asked.

“The tide is best now,” Samiq answered.

Kayugh nodded. “I will get food. You get whatever you need to trade for the child.”

Samiq started up the beach toward his ulaq.

“You should have a carrying strap,” Kayugh called after him. “Something to hold the child under your parka on our journey back.”

His father’s words seemed to put strength into Samiq’s legs, and he went more quickly.

The ulaq was full of the mourning songs of women. Crooked Nose and Kiin were at the center of the group, both women with eyes closed, faces wet with tears. Samiq beckoned to Three Fish, and the woman came to him, listened as he whispered what he would do. Her eyes were round in fear, and she opened her mouth, wide and square so that Samiq knew she would soon begin to wail, but he clamped his hand over her face, spoke to her in the stern way of father to child.

“Do not cry. I will be back, with Shuku. Do not tell Kiin until you have to. Fifteen, twenty days I will return. Now get what I need—oil, a small basket of Kiin’s carvings, a carrying strap for Shuku, dried meat and fish, my hunter’s lamp.”

He did not wait for her, but went into his sleeping place, took his harpoons and several knives, an extra parka, and the pack of supplies he always carried when he went hunting.

He stopped to press his cheek to Three Fish’s face, to speak for a moment to Small Knife, to hold Takha and Many Whales. He lifted the small ivory ikyak Takha wore at his neck, the half ikyak like the one Shuku also wore, and, glancing at Kiin, took the necklace. “I will bring it back,” he whispered to Takha, then looked once more at Kiin. Her eyes were closed, her mouth moving with the words of mourning. Her pain was a knife in his heart.

Samiq left the ulaq and went to the beach, waited for his father. Then the two left together, paddled out into the gray of the coming night.

Chagvan Bay, Alaska

W
AXTAL OPENED HIS MOUTH AND LAUGHED.
The story was an old one, and he had heard it before, but why tell Raven that? Let the man have joy in small things.

Raven narrowed his eyes and stared at him. “I know you,” he said. “You have been here before—to trade.” Raven spoke in the Walrus tongue, and Waxtal was glad Hard Rock, who sat with them in Raven’s lodge, did not understand.

Five men were gathered, Raven and Waxtal sitting on the bed platform, the others—two Walrus hunters and Hard Rock—standing. There seemed to be no woman in the lodge, and Raven had offered no food.

“I have traded here and in other Walrus villages,” Waxtal said.

Raven sat quietly for a moment, nodding his head, watching Waxtal so that Waxtal had to force himself to sit still, to wait. Finally the man smiled and said, “So, you have come to trade, you and these Whale Hunters. What do they have that is worth so much?”

“Harpoon heads and spearpoints,” Waxtal said. “Some that are new, others that have been used to kill whales. They hold much power.” He noticed that Raven and the two men with him, a young man with a scar that ran from the corner of one eye to his chin, and an older man, large and tall, leaned forward. The younger man reached out one hand for the basket that held the points, but Waxtal drew the basket back, settled it between his legs.

“We have women,” Waxtal also said. He looked around the lodge, let his eyes linger on the food rotting on the floor, on the legging skins jumbled in a heap on the bed platform, and on the oil lamp, the wick sending up curls of black smoke.

“I am in mourning,” Raven said, and at his words Waxtal felt the sudden lifting of his heart, the beginning of joy.

“For your wife,” Waxtal said. He thought Raven would show surprise, but the man only pointed at the basket of harpoon heads.

Waxtal handed him the basket and waited as Raven looked at each, laying them on a fur seal skin spread out beside them.

“So is it your wife you mourn?” Waxtal asked.

“Yes,” Raven said but did not look up.

“We have women. Good Whale Hunter women. They make strong sons.”

“It is too soon,” Raven said, “but perhaps you will allow me one for tonight. There is a chance I may decide to take her as wife.”

“There is another woman I know about,” Waxtal said, his words deliberately slow. “You might like her. She is not with us, but I know where she is.”

Raven made no sign that he heard Waxtal’s words, but Waxtal said, “She is beautiful, and there is one strange thing about her. She carves. She has spirit powers, some men say.” He tossed a seal carving into the basket of harpoon heads. The carving was one of Kiin’s—a tiny wooden seal that Waxtal had bought in trade from an Ugyuun man.

Raven clasped the carving in his hand, looked up at Waxtal, his eyes so hard and bright they were like knives piercing Waxtal’s skin.

“Where did you get this?”

“Her name is Kiin,” Waxtal said.

“Where did you get this?”

“You know her?”

Raven jumped from the bed platform, spilling the harpoon heads to the floor. He gripped the front of Waxtal’s suk, pulled Waxtal to his feet, and began to speak in the Walrus tongue, his words too quick for Waxtal to understand.

Waxtal used both hands to shove the man away, then backed from him to stand beside Hard Rock. Hard Rock stood with a knife in his hand, blade out, but Waxtal grasped Hard Rock’s wrist. “He is not angry with me,” Waxtal said. “I have just told him what Samiq did to me. He is angry with Samiq.”

Waxtal released Hard Rock’s hand and said to Raven in the Walrus tongue, “I know where she is. I know and I will tell you how to get her. But I am a trader. I give nothing without receiving something in return.”

“What do you want?” Raven asked.

“You see that I did not come here alone,” said Waxtal. “I have brought many men with me.” He laid his hand on Hard Rock’s shoulder. “They are Whale Hunters. They have come to seek revenge against the man who cursed their island.” He paused so Raven would understand the importance of his next words. “He is the same man who stole Kiin.”

Raven’s eyes narrowed.

“The trade is this,” Waxtal said. “I will help you if you help us.”

Raven shook his head, laughed. “And you are happy with that?” he asked. “You want nothing for yourself?”

“I have all I need.”

“No man is content with what he has,” Raven answered. “There is always something a man wants that is just beyond his grasp.” Raven laughed. “Otherwise there would be no traders.”

“You are too wise,” Waxtal said.

“And so?”

“And so, you are right. There is something I want.”

“And this something, is it here at my village?”

Waxtal squatted on his haunches, giving Raven the advantage of standing, looking down at him. “For years I have fasted and prayed and called on the spirits,” Waxtal said. “For years I have sought to strengthen my people by teaching them to respect the spirit world. I am close to becoming a shaman.”

“You know I am shaman of this village?” Raven asked.

“Who does not know?” Waxtal answered, looking up at the man.

“You ask to know the secrets of my shaman powers?”

“Yes.”

Raven threw back his head and laughed. Waxtal felt the heat of that laughter burn red across his face. Almost, he left Raven’s lodge. But then Raven strode to the far wall of the lodge. He took down the skin of an animal Waxtal did not know. He threw it to Waxtal. The skin was whole and heavy, plump with packs of something stored inside.

“That is a medicine skin. It is the source of my power,” Raven said. “A River People shaman gave it to me. When you pray, hold it up so the spirits will know you honor them.”

“You give it too easily,” Waxtal said. “Why should I believe what you say?”

“Try it. If it gives you power, then you will know I tell the truth. Tonight in this lodge I will let you stay alone. Pray. If nothing happens, then do not tell me about the woman. If it does, it will be a fair trade.”

“And your hunters will help us fight this man who has stolen your woman?”

“Yes, they will do what I ask,” Raven said.

“Then it is a trade,” Waxtal said and smoothed his hands over the thick fur of the medicine skin.