Ice Drift (9780547540610) (6 page)

Sulu said, "I will run."

Alika said, "You'd better run very fast."

Sulu yawned.

"Go to sleep now, Sulu."

"I will. Thank you for talking." Then he added, "Someday I'll carve a bear of ivory and give it to you." Papa had three walrus tusks waiting for that day. Teacher Etukak would not permit ivory for a while. Sulu could use only soapstone or wood.

Alika said, "I know it will be beautiful. Now go to sleep."

Newborn bergs can be five hundred feet
high and reach twice as deep underwater. A berg fifty to
a hundred feet high may have swordlike spikes on
its face because of the way it has melted.

In the middle of the strait, more than fifty miles below Nunatak, Alika, Sulu, and Jamka stood in front of their new home as they floated slowly along. They were looking up at the mock moons. They had seen these friendly moons many times before, but they still watched them because they'd been told the spirits had planted them up there especially for Inuit eyes.

There were times when the circling moon was visible, but the surrounding small ones were missing. Alika and Sulu wondered where they had gone and why. Inu had once said the small missing moons were asleep below the horizon and would return to be with the moon after they rested.

Soon, Alika and Sulu crawled down the low entrance tunnel, barely two feet high, followed by Jamka. Then Alika placed a block of hard snow in the tunnel to ward off any wind that might come up. Jamka would again nestle between them in the dank chill. The bedding was already on the sleeping platform. Jamka would get the usual prod in the ribs if he snored, which he often did.

Sulu lay silent for a while, then said, "Papa did not rescue us today. Where was he?"

"I'm sure he tried if he thought we were still near home."

Silence again from Sulu, then, "Will we die out here?"

"Not unless I make mistakes."

"What kind of mistakes?"

"Fall off the ice and into the water. Get us mixed up with a bear." It would be easy enough to slip-slide down a hummock and fall in.

"How long will we have to stay out here?" Sulu asked.

Good question!
Alika had a choice of two answers: He didn't know how long, or he could suggest they might drift over to Greenland. He chose the latter. Give Sulu some hope.

"I'd like that," Sulu said.

"So would I," said Alika.

Sulu was thoughtful again for a few minutes, then asked, "Why did we leave Grandmother Maani to die?"

Alika was surprised. Where had this question come from?

The family had been hunting toward the mountains last spring. There was snow nearby. Grandmother Maani was very old, and she told them it was her time to go. Then she sat in the middle of a small
iglu
as the family built it around her, without an entry tunnel. She closed her eyes as the last block was placed, and the family said words to her spirit and then they went on their way. It was Inuit tradition for the elderly to die alone, with no one nearby to interfere with their spirits. The family returned in five full moons to bury her body in rocks. Burial was never in the frozen earth.

Alika said, "That was how she wanted it—one less mouth to feed."

Sulu was silent again, then asked about Nanuki, once more thinking of death.

Nanuki had died of something wrong with his stomach four winters ago. He was wrapped in skins and dragged up a hillside on his sledge. He was then placed in a sitting position in a big rock hole, with his face to the west and all of his personal possessions laid out around him. Sulu had seen the procession, Alika remembered. During the ceremony, the women expressed their sorrow by inserting a small bunch of dried grass into their left nostrils, and the men inserted grass into their right nostrils.

"That's enough thinking about death, Little One."

Jamka had begun to snore again, and Alika poked him.

Sulu asked, "What shall we name our ship of ice?"

"I have no idea," Alika answered. What would his brother think of next? "You decide." Sulu was full of surprises.

"What about
Polar Star?
"

"
Polar Star.
That's a good name," said Alika. The spirits would approve.

There was silence for another few minutes. Then Sulu said, "I need to keep talking."

"About what now?"

"Anything. I can't stand this terrible silence." No wind was blowing.

Alika sighed. He shook his head in frustration and tried to think of something else to talk about. Sulu had been on caribou hunts with their parents and other villagers.

Alika blew out an exasperated breath. "Caribou live on our tundra all year. They have round hooves so they can walk more easily on the snow. Some of our caribou go south, swimming rivers after the thaw. Others go up to the tree line to winter. They dig through the snow for plants to feed on."

"Tell me about wolves," Sulu insisted.

Alika said tiredly, "Wolves move with the caribou herds. The caribou know the wolves are there and can do nothing about it. A wolf picks out a single caribou, and the caribou cannot escape. The wolf rushes, leaping at the caribou's neck and tearing it open. The wolf feasts on the raw meat while the caribou herd moves on. Then the ravens feast."

Sulu said, "I've seen it."

"Then you didn't need me to tell about it."

Sulu said, "I know."

The night would never be solid black. Even in the
middle of winter, there was always faint light below the
southern horizon. And each montk there was always
the reflection of the snow, the northern lights, and the
familiar moon shining down to comfort the Inuit.

For almost an hour, in the scant midday twilight, Jamka had been sniffing for seal holes at the ice edge. Alika and Sulu followed him thirty or forty feet away. Alika knew the rhythms of the winter seal, which began at the end of summer when the ice was new. As the temperature dropped and the ice thickened, the seal repeated its underwater mining to keep the vertical breathing tunnels open. Finally, the dog found a hole he thought was active. He dug down in a flurry of white until he exposed the small opening.

All Inuit children grew up knowing that without seals, their people could not live in the Arctic. Hunters only killed them for skins and food so they could walk in warmth with a full belly. As it said in an old Inuit poem:

 

Nuliajuk, great goddess of mankind,
Send us the seals
So that we may have food,
And fat,
And clothing.

Beasts of the sea,
Come offer yourself
In the cold, clear light
Of the morning.

 

One thing that Alika did not have to worry about was his harpoon. It was believed that seals and other animals resented being killed by shoddy harpoons or spears or knives, and if they were, they told their souls. The souls then warned other animals. But Papa's weapons were works of art that would never cause a seal to resent its death. And Alika always wore a small seal, carved out of wood by Sulu, for a good-luck charm.

He sat on his square of bear hide, wriggling his toes to keep them warm. "I hope the clouds will move east so I can hunt tonight by the moonlight."

Sulu sat on another square nearby. He said, "I dreamt about birds last night."

There was nothing unusual about that, Alika thought.

"First, a raven, over the horizon, caught the smell of that baby walrus the bear killed and went after the remains the bear left, pecking the white fox again and again until it gave up."

Alika laughed. "That's one tough bird." Only the snowy owl was as tough.

"The next dream I had, you were with me. There was a horned lark being chased by a falcon..."

Suddenly the indicator rod jigged, and Jamka stiffened and bent forward. A seal's bullet-shaped head appeared, and Alika drove the harpoon lance into it just below the right eye, grabbing the attached rope with his left hand. The animal struggled in a death dance but could not get away.

Alika yelled in triumph and Jamka howled loudly. Sulu shouted, "You did it, brother!"

Alika sat down in the snow by the fresh kill, exhausted more from the long watch than from the short struggle. He knew he was lucky. Once, when the family was almost starving, Papa had stayed by a hole for nearly forty-eight hours before making a kill.

If this could happen every week, they'd survive. Alika felt good. He said to Sulu, "I'll butcher it now and scrape the skin tomorrow or the next day." He'd watched his mama many times with the
ulu,
the very sharp woman's knife. Other knives were used to prepare the skin for drying.

Jamka, eyes fastened on the seal carcass, sat a few feet away. He would follow every move until he got some meat.

Wanting Sulu to be involved in everything, to keep his mind occupied, Alika said, "Get the knife for me."

Meanwhile, he rolled the seal onto its back. It was fat and healthy, fully grown. "And get me the freshwater bag." The walrus-intestine bag was wrapped in one of the musk ox hides so it wouldn't freeze. In a gesture to the spirit of the dead seal, Alika poured a little water into its mouth, blessing the animal for the gift of its body.

A few minutes later, holding a front flipper, he cut around at the bottom of it, through a layer of fat down to the meat. Then he did the same thing to the other flipper, the tail flipper, and the head. From the head, he slit the belly to the tail, through the layer of greasy blubber to the stomach, and continued to separate the blubber from the meat, lifting the skin. Finally, he made cuts through to the ribs and spine, preserving the all-important skin. It took him longer than it would have taken Mama, but the results were the same.

Jamka was almost drooling, waiting for his share. Of course he'd be rewarded for finding the proper
aglus.

"It won't be long," Sulu said happily.

The beat of wings approaching low overhead in the final moments of the noon twilight made them look up as a pair of ravens crossed the sky. Some said the black birds were good luck; others said they were omens of evil.

Sulu shouted, "We'll be rescued!" He was one who believed ravens were good luck.

"Or the wind will blow us ashore," said Alika with joy as the wing beats faded.

The boys took some of the meat into the snowhouse and stored the rest, along with the skin and bones, in the smaller
iglu.
Then Alika used the bow drill, with a few fingers of dried moss, to start the cooking fire. Jamka preferred his meat raw.

They would boil the meat, along with the heart, stomach, flippers, and head. The intestines would be cleaned of digested food, squeezed out, and washed in freshwater. The liver could be eaten raw or cooked. The blubber would melt into oil. They soon ate.

It had been a successful day, and now it was time to sleep. The odor of the cooked meat lingered in the snowhouse, reminding both Alika and Sulu of their own home and how good life was there with Mama cooking and Papa telling stories, singing the old songs, sometimes beating on the drum.

Jamka was again in the middle on the sleeping platform, a slice of moonlight shining down on them through the window. After a silence, Sulu asked, "What will happen to me if something happens to you?"

Alika said, "Nothing is going to happen to either of us. If the wind blows hard enough, it will push us over to Greenland. We'll go ashore, someone will give us a kayak, and I'll paddle us home."

"Home is a long way," said Sulu.

It seemed to Alika that Sulu thought only of home. "I know, but I can do it."

The northwest wind, the woman's wind, sometimes blew hard in late October and November. Blizzards were sometimes pushed by the woman's wind, but it could also push the floe eastward.

Outside, the night remained clear and calm. The ghostly northern lights, the aurora borealis, flickered here and there in colored patterns, sending a mysterious message to all who lived in the Arctic. Inu had said the lights were controlled by the spirits.

Reds, greens, and purples collapsed in veiled swirls and vanished. Then streamers of pale green turned to ivory. Soon there were folds of violets and blues that quivered and danced. Inu had said the lights were the spirits of people who had died from loss of blood—wounds, childbirth, murder. Inu called them
aqsarniit.
Deeply fearing the aurora, the Inuit went into their huts when the lights were in the sky.