Brother Wind (3 page)

But Kiin bent down and picked up a handful of pebbles from the sand. She waited as her mother brought Shuku’s cradle and a bundle of Kiin’s belongings from the ulaq.

Once more Kiin looked at Samiq, tried to press the image of his face into her mind, then she turned and followed the Raven to his ik.

The Bering Sea

S
HE HEARD NOTHING. NOT
the full round voice of the wind nor the high, curling cries of oyster catcher and gull, not the dip and splash of paddles nor the soft throat purr of Shuku nursing. But the silence was as sharp as obsidian, as dark as old blood. Even Kiin’s spirit was still, so quiet that if she had not felt its ache in her chest, she would have believed it was gone—passed on to Three Fish along with the gift of Kiin’s son Takha, along with that carving of man, woman, and child made long ago by the great shaman Shuganan.

She had not offered to paddle, nor had she looked back at the Raven, nor at the ikyan that skirted the Raven’s trading ik.

Kiin pulled herself away from what her eyes were seeing, what her ears were hearing, until there was nothing but the throb of her spirit, pulsing like a wound. At first, its rhythm was the sound of her loss: Amgigh, Takha, Samiq; Amgigh, Takha, Samiq. But now there was silence, and Kiin wondered if she and the Raven and the Walrus People traders were no longer a part of the seen world, but instead had paddled into some world of story or song. Perhaps even now they were carried in the mind of a storyteller, alive only when words fell from the storyteller’s mouth into the ears of those who listened.

When the Raven finally spoke, Kiin did not hear him, but instead, in a rush as harsh as storm wind, heard the noise of the sea. Then she felt the cold of spray against her cheeks, and she knew the choice she had made was not merely a story to be told on winter nights, but something so real that it could separate her mind from her spirit until the emptiness was complete.

So as the Raven called to his men, pointing with his paddle toward an inlet that broke the gray line of the shore, Kiin called to her spirit, until she heard the thin whispers of her spirit voice, its first word, a name—“Takha.”

And Kiin answered, “No, Shuku.”

Then the Raven’s ik touched shore, and Kiin, arms careful of Shuku asleep in his carrying sling under her suk, leaped ashore. She gathered driftwood and watched as the men made a beach fire, and when Ice Hunter handed out pieces of dried fish, Kiin did not ask or wait, but took fish as though she were one of the traders.

Ice Hunter did not speak, but raised eyebrows at her, so that Kiin, biting into the firm, smoky meat, said, “I carve,” and before he passed on to another, she reached out for a second piece.

They used the ik for shelter, tipping it to lie with its broad bottom toward the wind. The Raven hung the rectangle of wood that was Shuku’s cradle from the ik ribs, then motioned for Kiin to pull off her suk. Kiin looked hard into the Raven’s eyes and did as he asked, but she did not put Shuku into his cradle. He would be warmer strapped against her chest.

The Raven pulled off his parka and pushed Kiin into the shelter of the ik’s bow. Kiin turned so her face was toward the ik, her back to the Raven. He lay down beside her, draped his feather cape over them, and pressed his body against hers.

Kiin waited, her flesh prickling with the touch of his skin. She laid one hand over Shuku, the other against her belly, and remembered when she had carried both her sons warm and safe under her heart. Then she felt the push of the Raven’s man part, hard against her back, and she lay very still, scarcely allowing herself to breathe. But he did not try to enter her, to claim her as wife. Finally, he relaxed, his arm heavy against her ribs, and the rhythm of his breathing smoothed into sleep.

The Raven’s warmth softened the darkness, until the night, like fingers weaving, twined dreams into Kiin’s thoughts. But then Kiin’s spirit spoke, jerking her awake with a voice as shrill as an oyster catcher’s cry. “Amgigh, Amgigh, Amgigh.” A mourning song.

Kiin let the sorrow fill her until it pushed tears from her eyes. Once again, she saw Amgigh dead on the beach, but she also pictured Samiq, Takha in his arms, the two safe with Three Fish in the shelter of Samiq’s ulaq.

Kiin took a long breath and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I am strong,” she told her spirit. “They are safe, and I am strong.”

Turning her head in the direction of the Traders’ Beach, where the mound of Samiq’s ulaq rose from the earth, she whispered the same words to the night wind.

Who could say? Perhaps the wind would carry the words to Samiq. Perhaps someday it would bring his words to her.

K
IIN GUIDED HER SON’S HEAD
to her breast. He drew the nipple into his mouth and sucked, bringing a twinge of pain and then the release of milk. Shuku’s body relaxed against her own.

Though she had awakened to the words of a mourning song, Kiin had held those words within until she and the Raven had launched the ik. Now the song filled her mouth and she sang. She rocked, and her rocking joined the rhythm of the Raven’s paddle, the swell of waves.

“I hope you mourn our son,” the Raven called to her.

A sharp thrust of anger pierced Kiin’s pain, and she turned to face him.

“You would tell me to mourn?” she said, spitting the words out toward the man. “You would have allowed two old women to kill our sons. You tell me to mourn?”

The hood of the Raven’s chigadax covered his dark hair, and the wooden visor he wore against the glare and spray of water shaded his eyes, but Kiin saw the tight working of his jaw.

“Our son Takha is dead,” the Raven said. “You were the one who gave him to the wind spirits!”

Kiin clamped her teeth together to hold in her words.

“Why did you go with your brother?” the Raven asked. “He stole you from your father. He tried to sell you as slave. Why trust him after he had done those things to you? I told you I would let you go back to your First Men husband if you left Shuku and Takha with me. Instead you chose to kill Takha. Now you have lost both son and husband. Did you also help your brother kill my Yellow-hair?”

Kiin’s anger filled the emptiness left by her grief. “You were going to kill my sons. You had chosen to believe the Grandmother and the Aunt. You had decided your power could not stand against their curse. You are no shaman!”

“You fool, Kiin!” the Raven hissed. “Why would I kill our sons? I am a shaman. I need their power.”

“See!” Kiin said, her arms tightening around Shuku. “You do not care about them except for yourself, for your own power. When the Grandmother and the Aunt made you believe my children could bring a curse to your lodge …”

“Who told you I would kill our sons?”

“My brother Qakan.”

The Raven’s face twisted. “When did Qakan ever speak the truth?” he snarled. “If a man uses his sister like a wife, can he do anything but lie?”

The Raven’s words moved over Kiin like the dense wetness of fog. So the Raven knew about Qakan, knew that Qakan had forced himself on her. Perhaps that was why he had never taken Kiin into his bed even though he called her wife.

Kiin pressed her hands into tight fists. “He told the truth to save his sons,” she said. Her words were quiet, so that the Raven leaned forward, and for a moment stopped paddling.

“He believed the babies were his?”

“Yes.”

The Raven dug his paddle down into the water and for a long time did not speak.

Finally Kiin said, “I did not know Qakan killed Yellow-hair. I did not know she was dead until I saw you and Qakan fighting on the beach, until I heard you accuse him as he died.”

“You were there on that beach?” the Raven asked.

Grief closed Kiin’s throat. If the Raven had found her, he would have taken her back to the Walrus People. There would have been no fight at the Traders’ Beach, and Amgigh would still be alive.

Then her spirit whispered, “But perhaps one of your sons would be dead.”

“So you believed Qakan,” the Raven said. “But if you left me in order to save our sons, why did you give Takha to the wind?”

“His spirit is with his own people,” Kiin said, “with the First Men. He does not belong to the Walrus People. I have saved one son, and if the Grandmother and the Aunt were right, if their visions and dreams were true, my people do not have to fear a curse, nor do yours.”

The Raven only grunted, then pointed with his chin toward a paddle that lay in the bottom of the ik. Kiin picked up the paddle, turned around, and plunged the blade into the water.

“Be thankful I did not leave you with the First Men hunter Samiq,” the Raven said. “The wound he carries—I have seen such wounds before. The hand is useless. He will never throw a spear again. He will not be able to hunt. His wives and children will starve.”

The Raven’s words made Kiin’s throat ache in sorrow, but she did not answer him. Instead she paddled until she felt Shuku stop nursing. She laid her paddle in the bottom of the ik and looked inside her suk. Shuku was asleep. She watched his gentle breathing, then moved her amulet so it would lie close to his head. She had placed the few bits of gravel and sand she had taken from the Traders’ Beach inside the amulet. A promise to return to Samiq. Even if he could not hunt.

“We will not stay with the Walrus People forever,” she said to her son, but she spoke quietly so the wind that cut in across the bow of the ik would not take her words to the Raven’s ears.

But her spirit said, “Can you risk a return? Can you chance that the Raven will follow you, will see Takha, recognize him as your son? What if he fights Samiq again? If Samiq cannot hunt, how can he fight?”

“In several years, the Raven will not be able to tell Takha from any other small boy,” Kiin answered. “Men do not see babies in the same way women do.”

But her spirit said, “Do not let your anger make you believe the Raven is stupid. There is not so much difference between women and men as you might think.”

Kiin picked up her paddle, and as she thrust its blade against the waves, the Raven said, “I would not have killed our sons, Kiin.”

And when he said the words, Kiin knew he spoke the truth. She set her paddle across the top of the ik and looked back over her shoulder at him. “There are so many ways a child can die,” she replied.

“I am strong enough,” the Raven said. “Takha would have been safe.”

“Better that his death be a gift to the spirits than something done in hate,” Kiin said. Stroking the front of her suk, the bulge that was Shuku, she said, “We have this son.”

The Raven nodded, but said, “You cannot call him Amgigh. His name is Shuku.”

Kiin raised her head and, calling back to the. Raven, she said, “The part of my son that is Walrus People will be Shuku. His spirit name is Amgigh.”

Kiin waited for the Raven’s answer, but he said nothing. She picked up her paddle and looked toward the sun. Its path across the sky grew lower each day.

“Too soon the sun turns toward winter,” her spirit said.

“We have lived through other winters,” Kiin answered, and paddled in silence.

Chagvan Bay, Alaska

T
HE WALRUS PEOPLE’S VILLAGE
had not changed, and though Kiin had been gone nearly four moons, it suddenly seemed as though she had left only the day before. The gray beach shale, the thick smell of oil-lamp smoke coming from the lodges, the dark red strips of walrus meat drying on racks at the edge of the village, women in groups repairing willow-withe fish traps—all were the same.

Men gathered to help the traders pull iks and ikyan ashore. Young boys reached into the boats, prying at bundles of trade goods. Kiin felt a small edge of her sorrow lift as she watched Ice Hunter’s ineffective attempts to stop so many quick brown hands. She did not want to see the questions in the eyes of the Walrus People women, so she pushed her way through the crowd and up the rise of the beach toward the long earth-and-walrus-hide lodges.

She crawled through the entrance tunnel of the Raven’s lodge. Most Walrus lodges had sod walls, stacked and braced with logs. Each roof was a peaked double layer of walrus skins over willow poles, the walrus skins yellow in the glow of day.

But the Raven’s lodge, though long and narrow like other Walrus lodges, had a sod-and-driftwood roof, like the roofs of First Men ulas. Raven’s lodge was warmer than the other Walrus lodges, but always dark, without even a roof hole, such as First Men ulas had, to let in light.

As she came out of the entrance tunnel, Kiin braced herself for the giggling questions of Grass Ears’ two wives, but their portion of the lodge was empty.

“Perhaps Lemming Tail, too, is not here,” said Kiin’s spirit voice. Kiin carried that hope with her as she stepped through the walrus hide dividing curtains into the Raven’s side of the lodge.

“So you have come back,” Lemming Tail said without even the politeness of a greeting. She made a face and turned away from Kiin to paw through the storage cache.

Kiin set down her walking stick and carried the pack she had brought from the ik to her sleeping platform. Shuku’s cradle was strapped to the top of the pack. Kiin untied the cradle and stepped up onto her platform bed to hang the cradle from the lodgepoles.

Lemming Tail turned to point at the Raven’s sleeping platform. “Hang it there,” she said. “I do not share his bed.” She patted her belly, and chortled. “You cannot tell yet, but I carry his son.”

“A son?” Kiin said.

Lemming Tail shrugged. “Or daughter,” she answered.

For a moment Kiin paused, looked into Lemming Tail’s round and beautiful face, then she said, “You and I will share this bed. I will not move to his until he tells me to.”

She hung the cradle, then lifted her suk to pull Shuku from his carrying strap. She laid him on the sleeping platform and loosened the soiled sealskin wrapped between his legs. During the days of travel from the Traders’ Beach, she had not been able to clean him well, and his buttocks were red with rash.