Between Two Worlds (24 page)

“I’m staying here.”

“You can’t. Peary goes out onto the ice for many days at a time. Who would take care of you?”

“You, Billy Bah! I can live with you and Angulluk.” Smiling a little, she looked to me for an answer.

“No.” Then, more gently, “I wish you could stay. I’ll miss you when you go.”

The truth is, I would have enjoyed raising Marie as my own child, dressing her and feeding her, teaching her to sew. But, of course, I couldn’t.

“It’s better you remain with your own people, Marie.”

“No one can force me.”

Her parents certainly would. What should I do with her right now? The best thing would be to bring her back to the ship. But then I’d need to face Duncan.

As if I were a hunter, surrounded by dangers on all sides, I needed to consider my next move.

Marie threw the shoe to Cin a few more times, until it disappeared into a hole in the ice, another casualty of the frozen sound. When I whistled, Cin bounded forward on wet legs and paws, arriving at my feet, her thick, wet tail wagging.

“I’m taking you back to the
Windward
, Marie.” I’d walk her to the ship, then turn around without boarding.

“I won’t go!”

I took her arm, and her body went rigid. She even made fists. She was serious about running away. Something had happened between her and her parents.

“Where are your mother and father today?”

“Off by themselves for a long walk,” Marie said bitterly. “Arguing about Ally.”

“I see.” I rubbed Cin under her throat and on her neck.

Marie turned to me and said, “I hate my father. Ally, too.”

“Marie,” I said softly. “This is just the way things are in our land. Women have babies all the time with men who are not their husbands. All the hunters share their wives.”

She went back to kicking wet sand on the beach. Then
she ran toward the village, Cin taking the lead. I felt a sharp pain in my feet as I rushed after her. “Where are you going?”

“To find Akitsinnguaq. Her family will take me in.”

Marie to live with Tooth Girl? The idea was absurd.

Tooth Girl’s igloo was empty, so I suggested that Marie come with me to the valley to build a new fox trap. When I reminded her that this was the place where she’d followed rabbit tracks with Tooth Girl, she wanted to come. It was also the place where I’d most likely find Marie’s parents.

We stopped at my igloo, picked up strips of seal meat and a bag of water, and set off, with Cin sniffing the ground. In the hill’s shadows, we came to the valley. The sun had melted the snow in the middle, and gray boulders dotted the ground.

Those boulders are moving
. “Look, Marie!” I said. “Musk oxen.” The hunters were missing a great opportunity. “Ha!” I laughed. “Not a single man in sight!” Here was the largest herd I’d ever seen, pawing the ground for willows, just a short walk from the village.

In the distance, white wolves moved against a nearly white background. Cin growled, and her pointy ears pricked up. “It’s all right, Cin,” I said, gripping her leash. One wolf stopped and turned to look at us, then trotted off toward the musk oxen.

I took Marie’s hand. “There are wolves nearby, but
they won’t bother us. We’ll let them make their kill and keep our distance.”

Giant white rabbits skittered away, disappearing behind lichen-covered boulders and into the warm brown and red patches of awakening vegetation. I’d discovered a colony of rabbits, fifty animals or more. If only I had materials for traps; I noted my surroundings for the future.

“Musk oxen, wolves, rabbits! I’ve never in my life seen so many animals all together at one time,” I marveled.

Prey and predators seemed remarkably out in the open in this valley, not hidden from each other in shadowy pockets. The hunting in Musk Ox Land was excellent beyond belief.

There might be a future here, I thought. Perhaps it would be a good thing to stay on this shore a while longer before returning to Itta. If I could tuck away caches of food before winter, I could prosper without Angulluk. I’d just need to find another hunter or family to give me shelter.

Marie picked some yellow wildflowers. When all the snows melted, there would be many more flowers, perhaps spreading across the whole valley. There were also beautiful stretches like that near Itta.

Beneath the shadow of the cliffs, the snow took on a greenish tinge. As we began to go uphill, I realized how hard it would be to climb with my injured feet. Better to return to the valley.

Beyond a small hill, among the mosses and rocks, Marie noticed scattered clumps of white fur, and a bushy white tail partly hidden under snow. “Fox droppings. Wolf droppings, too,” I said. “And here, wolf prints. A wolf got this fox.”

The perfect place to build my fox trap.

I explained to Marie that a fox trap was like a tiny rock igloo, and we gathered stones, picking ones of equal size and stacking them in rows. We collected more stones, and before long we’d built the first wall. Cin rolled up in a ball, sleeping.

The sun felt good on my face as I chewed a salty strip of seal meat. We took turns drinking from the water skin.

“I know how to build a rock igloo like the ones in the village,” she said. “With some help, I could make my own. Right next to yours and Angulluk’s.”

I sighed. It was touching how Marie kept to her dream.

I hugged my knees, closed my eyes, and took in the sunlight while Marie worked on building a second wall of the fox trap.

Cin jumped to her feet and bolted away as urgent shouts came from above. Peary, in his blue jacket on top of the nearest hill, waved his arms frantically.
A warning!

A gray-and-white dog zigzagged toward us, its muzzle covered in blood. Its mouth foamed.

The dog doubled up and gnawed its side. It was
pillarotoq
. Rabid. A shiver went up my spine.

Cin circled it, barking louder. The dog, snarling frantically, came still closer.

We shouldn’t run
, I thought. Not that there was a place we could run to. “Marie! Stay very still.” She crouched in back of me.

The dog moved in so close that I could hear its uneven breath. I picked up a rock and threw it, but missed. The next rock hit the side of its foaming mouth. The dog eyed me. Before I could grab another rock, it lunged. Cin leapt. The crazed dog jerked and twisted to throw Cin off.

I found another rock, aimed at the dog’s yellow eyes, and threw with all my might. The dog fell, blood ran from its mouth, and it thrashed about.

Peary bounded down the hill. He stopped and aimed his rifle. A loud shot echoed. He’d put a bullet right through its head.

Marie ran to Peary. “Daddy!” He moved us away from the dog.

Marie buried her head in his chest.

“Billy Bah! Thank you,” Peary said. “You saved Marie.”

“You and I.”

Soon Mitti Peary caught up and Marie ran into her arms. She cried harder than I’d ever seen. Then she turned to her father and hit and kicked him.

When Peary told me of my parents’ deaths, all that night I kicked and screamed—at Angulluk. I understood what it was like to have your whole life change between one moment and the next.

I pulled her away. “Marie! Stop.”

We were both shaking. I squeezed her tightly and finally she stood quietly, still crying but not as hard, her head down. Then she went to her mother, who embraced her.

Peary offered me a look of gratitude and seemed about to burst into tears. He could face any kind of danger, but he couldn’t handle Marie.

As a child I’d been in awe of him, as if he were more than human. Now I saw him for what he was: a man who’d been kicked by his child and had nearly lost her. Even if he was a great leader, I felt I was his equal.

The next day, I woke with my feet sore from the hike, my whole body feeling heavy, and I was angry. Why wasn’t I happy to be back?

Alone in the igloo, I took out my box of treasures. As I held a comb, I remembered how I yelled as a child when Mitti Peary pulled it through my hair. I never used it but liked the comb’s brown and reddish colors, the way light shone through it. Sparkly or shiny things, like glass beads and bottles, attracted me and everyone in our village. I used to think such things were magical.

An empty box of animal crackers I had prized now only reminded me of the animals I saw in cages in a zoo with Mitti Peary and Marie. We’d come to a pen where a fox paced back and forth, stopping to chew on its leg, which was raw. At home, if an animal was very sick and in pain or acted crazed, we killed it. Foxes should be turned into food and their furs made into clothes, or else left to live in burrows and raise their young. That day I had thought:
The fox and I are captives in the white man’s land!
I’d held back tears. To comfort me, Mitti Peary reached into
her bag and said, “I have treats. Animal crackers.” I took the brightly colored box and studied the pictures on it. The biscuits inside it were shaped like animals, too. How delightful! But this special gift didn’t make up for the terrors of that day.

The acorn that I lifted out next brought back a happier memory. I had been curious about the trees that grew to be so big. I started looking at them closely, and seeing how they were different. I came to love them. The tree this acorn came from was an oak. As the weather turned cold, its leaves changed to bright yellow. One day, I climbed out onto a high branch. Right over my head, I heard scrambling. A gray animal with a furry tail scurried down the trunk headfirst. How funny it was! I’d heard them called squirrels. It stopped and held an acorn to its mouth, its tail twitching. Feeling as free as the squirrel, I climbed down, branch to branch, and dropped to the grass, where I picked up acorns and put them in the pocket of my pinafore.

Next I held up the red feather. Mitti Peary sometimes took me to a park that was full of chirping birds. One day, I climbed a path with the sun warm on my back and a cool wind against my face. Water from rain still dripped from the trees. I saw the feather on the ground ahead and ran to it, so happy to be outside and moving—as in summer at home when I’d scale bird cliffs in search of eggs.

The park’s path wound upward, and I climbed to the top. The view opened. I’d come to a cliff where the land
ended and the sky began. Blackbirds swirled in a great cloud above. Looking at the feather now, I still remembered how my heart leaped.

I took out a pink ribbon that summoned a picture of Marie; a scrap of black satin was a reminder of her grandmother, swishing about in her shining dresses; a cup with a rim of blue flowers: Mitti Peary, her white-and-blue china dishes holding pears, peaches, and red candy. Yet the cup itself, cracked and chipped, didn’t look beautiful anymore. It didn’t hold such magic. Why had I hidden these keepsakes from my family and friends? Did I really think villagers seeing them would beg to go to America—to die there?

Holding them, I knew that pieces of cloth and ribbon and a broken teacup, or things like them, would not lure my parents to another land. More likely, it was Peary’s huge ship and its speed that impressed them. If my keepsakes had power, it was over me, and only because they helped sights and sounds spring back clearly. Perhaps I’d kept these objects all these years because
I’d
yearned for America.
I’d
been the one most in danger of wanting to sail back there.

I’d allowed the land of the
qallunaat
to absorb some of my spirit.

Now I knew that I’d always stay in my own part of the world. Nothing, no one, even Duncan, could tempt me to leave the people and land closest to me.

What should I do now with my precious keepsakes?
Were they all
useless
? I separated out the photograph of my mother, Duncan’s gifts, and the
nanoq
and seal figures that my father had carved, put them in a bag with my needles for sewing, and tucked the other objects back in the box. For an instant I imagined a hole in the ice and me dropping the whole box into the sea below.

I drew on furs and went outside. With the box tucked under my arm, I looked toward the beach from the village rise and a new picture formed. Taking slow steps on my healing feet, I walked to the place set apart on the far side of the village where Navarana was buried in her grave house.

“Aana,”
I greeted her.

“Hainang,”
Navarana said in return. Her gruff voice sounded cheerful.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the spirit of the old woman stirring a pot of soup. We talked for a while and I told her of my trek, my fall in the stinging water and frostbite, coming upon Peary at last … and the long tedious days inside the fort.
“I no longer want to be like the
qallunaat,
”
I said.

“Good! You’ve been cured of that sickness, at last! Ha!”

“I hate the
qallunaat.
”

“No good. You cannot harbor strong feelings about the
qallunaat
if you want to take command of your life. Just as a hunter cannot manage a sled team if his dogs are fighting. Do not let your dogs be out of control for long or you will lose your sled, never moving forward. And don’t allow any person
, qallunaaq
or other, to
cut across your path and cast you off. You have a right to your path as they have a right to theirs.”