Ivory Carver 02 - My Sister the Moon (27 page)

SAMIQ PADDLED THE IK AROUND THE EDGE OF THE 
cliff; a feeling of dread lay heavy in his stomach. 

"Here?" Small Knife asked. 

"Yes, this beach," Samiq answered, his voice sounding high and thin even in his own ears. 

They had traveled two days and in the traveling, the fog had not lifted; the ash, fine as silt, continued to fall. The bottom of the ik was layered with it, and Three Fish sneezed often and loudly, moving in the boat, stirring the ash until Samiq's mouth and nose burned, his lungs ached. 

"Your people will not be here," Three Fish said. "They will have left. Or perhaps they are already dead." 

Samiq pulled his paddle from the water and looked at Three Fish sitting in the center of the boat. 

"Do not say what you do not know," he said quietly, holding down the anger that rose against her. 

Then Samiq guided the ik to the center of the beach where the finer gravel would cause less damage to the sea lion hide bottom. 

As soon as they stepped from the ik, the ground moved beneath them. 

Three Fish dropped to her hands and knees. When the shaking stopped, she looked up at Samiq. "We should go," she said. "There are bad spirits here." 

Samio did not stop to answer her but strode up the rise of the beach, not caring whether she or Small Knife came with him. 

The grass was clotted with ash and caught at his legs as he walked. He blocked all thoughts from his mind, hoping to calm 
the rapid beating of his heart, but his stomach twisted when he saw his father's ulaq. Driftwood rafters stuck through the sod of the roof like the bones of a rotting carcass. Large wall stones leaned at odd angles, skewing the ulaq to one side. 

Had some of his people escaped or had all been killed? He stood on one of the displaced boulders and looked over at Big Teeth's ulaq. Its roof was caved in, the ulaq merely a gaping hole in the side of the hill. 

The island was quiet; Samiq heard no voices, no bird callings, nothing but the slap of waves, one rushing after another, their rhythm too quick, as though even the sea were afraid of the mountains. 

The ground shook again, and Samiq heard Three Fish's voice carried by the wind from the beach, fear in the whine of her words. 

It is sad that women are so necessary to a man, Samiq thought. But what man can hunt and sew also? And he realized with a sudden numbness that he had brought Three Fish with him to assure his survival, some part of him thinking that his people had been killed. 

But then he felt a hand on his shoulder, heard the quiet words: "Perhaps they left before." 

Samiq spun and saw that Small Knife had followed him. 

"Perhaps," Samiq said. 

"I will look," the boy offered. 

Samiq saw the compassion in his eyes. "We will look together," Samiq said, then hesitating, he finally pointed to Kayugh's ulaq. "We will start here," he said. The most difficult first. 

The fall of ash grew heavier, and the day darkened early, as though it were winter, but Samiq could see black clouds moving toward Tugix's peak, and he worked feverishly to move the sod and rock that lay in the ulaq. 

"There is nothing," Small Knife finally said. "No one dead. No one living." 

Samiq did not reply. Pulling a piece of curtain from the wreckage, he recognized the pattern that his mother made on all her weaving, dark squares on light background, and 
he felt a small flicker of hope. Perhaps as Small Knife had said, they had escaped. 

They went then to Big Teeth's ulaq, again moving sod and stones to seek what Samiq hoped was not there. 

"Nothing," Small Knife said after they had cleared away most of the fallen sod. 

Samiq looked at the boy. A cold, hard rain had begun to fall, and Small Knife's hair was molded by the wetness into a tight black hood over his head. His parka shed the water in rivulets to his bare feet, and he looked like a small boy, too young to take the responsibilities and sorrows of a man. 

I cannot ask him to help me now, Samiq thought, and said, "Go back to Three Fish. Pull the ik to the cliffs on the south side of the beach. You will find caves there and the water will not reach you. Go and wait. I will come soon." 

Samiq watched the boy leave. What sorrow will I find that the boy does not already know? Samiq asked himself. Perhaps my people still live. My mother and father. Amgigh and Kiin. But Small Knife's parents . . . 

Samiq went to the burial ulas, first to the one where his grandmother, Shuganan's wife was buried. The roof was not as badly damaged as the other ulas' roofs; only a portion of it had caved in. Samiq walked carefully over the top to the roof entrance, the hole sealed by a wooden door. When he removed the wood, some of the roof sod crumbled into the interior, but most remained, and he lowered himself into the ulaq. Gray light filtered in through the broken roof, and he saw the bundle that was his grandmother, still intact in the center of the ulaq. There were two bundles beside her, one old, the size of a baby. But the other, the size and shape of a child or small woman, made Samiq's heart thud heavily in his chest. The death mats were new, still the color of dried grass, not darkened by time. He knelt beside the bundle, wanting to tear the mats from the body. 

What spirits will I anger? he wondered. What curse will come upon my hunting? But if it were Kiin . . . 

He unsheathed his knife and cut the matting from the dead person's head. The mats peeled away in layers and Samiq saw 
the darkness of the hair. Some of the flesh pulled away from the bones of the face and at the stink of rotting flesh, Samiq's stomach heaved. Then a small piece of wood fell from the folds of the weaving, the wood carved in the shape of a seal. Samiq's head was suddenly light with relief, but then he thought, a boy of this age and size would be Little Duck's son. How would the woman survive the loss of her only child? 

Samiq carefully rewrapped the boy and left the ulaq. He climbed through the roof hole, set the door back into the opening, trying not to dislodge more dirt on the dead. 

He stood for a time looking at the other death ulaq. His father, Shuganan's son, was buried there. Samiq began digging through the broken sod roof. 

When Samiq reached the floor of the ulaq, he found nothing resembling a dead one and no one recently dead from Aka's rage. Was it possible that all his people had escaped? But if no one were buried here, why was the place honored as a death ulaq? Where was his father? 

Samiq turned and began to climb from the hole, but he slipped in the rain-soaked dirt, landing back on the floor, his hand jamming against something sharp. It was a bone, and Samiq jerked it from the sod, then studied the palm of his hand to see if the bone had left splinters to fester in his flesh. But then he realized that the bone he held was not from whale or sea lion, not something broken from a rafter, but the bone of a man, and he held it against his forearm, seeing the thickness of it, the indentations where muscles were once attached. The bone of a man, powerfully built. 

He laid the bone in the dirt at his feet and began to dig in the sod where he had found it. He uncovered the long bones of the legs, and small bones, once parts of hands and feet. Finally the skull. None of the bones were wrapped. Why? What had happened to cause such a thing? Had his mother's silence about her first husband not been a silence of respect, but of hate? 

Samiq looked at his own arms, his legs and hands. Truly, they were not the long thin limbs of the First Men. Not even the thicker bones of the Whale Hunters. Who was his father? Who were his people? 

Samiq looked at the bones lying at his feet. What spirits would he offend if he reburied the bones? What spirits would he offend if he did not? 

Samiq closed his eyes, wiped the rain from his face with the sleeve of his parka. He was too tired to worry about spirits. Laying out the mat that he had carried from Kayugh's ulaq, he wrapped the bones carefully, then pulled stones from what had once been the ulaq walls. He clustered the stones over the bundle, making a burial in the manner of the Whale Hunters. 

SAMIG NODDED HIS APPROVAL. THE CAVE SMALL 
Knife had chosen was high above the tide line and had a dry sand and gravel floor. 

Three Fish crouched at the entrance, her arms held just above a cooking fire. Water dripped from her suk to sizzle on the burning crowberry heather. "Did you find anything?" she asked. 

"One dead. A boy, son of the man called Big Teeth and of his second wife, Little Duck. But the boy died some time ago. Not from Aka." 

The mountain shook then, and Three Fish jumped up, her hands over her mouth. 

"It is nothing," Samiq said. "Tugix often shakes the earth." 

Three Fish sat again but Samiq saw the doubt in her eyes. "You are safe," he said with some irritation, then thought, I should be alone. Or perhaps only with Small Knife. I would not wish Three Fish's complaining on Dying Seal, but I should have left her with her own people. 

They stayed the night, Samiq careful to make his bed 
beside Small Knife, making sure they were together on one side of the fire, Three Fish on the other. Several times in the night, he heard Three Fish moving in the cave, but he did not look toward her. He did not want her close to him. Tonight, no imagination would make her Kiin. 

They awoke in darkness, the fire gone out, Samiq angry that Three Fish had not kept it fed. She who would sit in the ik without paddling should not expect the men to keep the fire. But he said nothing to her; he was too tired for arguing. He groped in the darkness for his belongings and wished they had brought more food. The amount they had taken from the watching place would last only a few days. 

The gray circle of light from the cave entrance told of a heavy fog, and as he stood looking out, Samiq felt disoriented, unable to see the sun or even a brightness where it stood in the sky. 

"It is morning," Small Knife said. 

"There is no way to be certain," Samiq replied. 

"The tides." 

"Aka makes new tides. Who can tell if it is the morning or Aka that pulls the water?" 

Small Knife lifted his shoulders, and by his smile, Samiq realized the boy had not meant to argue. 

"My people have a cave for ikyan," Samiq said, trying to fill the silence that had come between them. "Perhaps they left some supplies there." 

"And if we find some, we will leave?" 

"I do not know. Perhaps we will go, perhaps not." 

They made a torch with sodden matting from the ulas, winding the mats around a narrow length of driftwood. Three Fish, wading in the muck of Big Teeth's ruined ulaq, found a sealskin of oil, and Samiq used the oil to douse the wet mats. Three Fish trailed after them as they walked to the cave, the torch blazing in Samiq's hand, but Samiq turned at the cave entrance and told the woman to remain outside. 

"It is forbidden for women to enter," he said, and went inside before Three Fish could argue with him. 

The torch cast circles of light in the cave, showing the nar
row bottom where sand and gravel had made a smooth floor and the widening sides that narrowed again at the top. Kayugh once said that long ago Samiq's grandfather Shuganan had wedged posts into the floor and into cracks in the cave walls. When Big Teeth, Gray Bird and Kayugh had come to Tugix's island, they built platforms on the posts and stored their ikyan in the cave each winter. 

Samiq held the torch close to the racks. They were empty. He had hoped to find some ikyan and perhaps some sign showing where his people had gone. There was nothing. 

"Look!" Small Knife exclaimed, pointing up. 

Samiq lifted the torch, illuminating the top of the cave. A post had been driven into a high crack in the cave wall and hanging from the post was an ikyak, cords tied around each end, the ikyak suspended from the post like a child's cradle. 

"They hung it so the sea would not reach it," Small Knife said. 

Samiq handed the torch to Small Knife and pulled himself to the empty ikyak platforms. Reaching up, he wedged his toes and fingers into the small cracks that scored the cave walls. He stretched up toward the ikyak, meaning to tip it toward the floor, but the ikyak lurched away from him. Bracing his feet against the cave wall, he grabbed the post and swung himself up to straddle it. 

"Push the torch into the wall," he called down to Small Knife. "Come and help me." 

Small Knife was soon beside him, and Samiq explained, "There is something in the ikyak. We will have to empty it before we can pull it down." 

Samiq clung to the post and reached into the ikyak. He pulled out a chigadax, new. The feathering at the sides showed the work was Chagak's. Samiq smiled and dropped the garment to the floor, then reached back into the ikyak. He brought out a basket with a drawstring sealskin top. He opened it. Sewing supplies: needles, awl, sinew. Handing it to Small Knife, Samiq said, "Carry it down." 

Samiq waited until Small Knife was again beside him, then he reached once more into the ikyak. 

"Boots, sealskins." 

He dropped them to the floor. Two spear shafts and two paddles were lashed to the ikyak, and Samiq pulled these out and dropped them also. 

"I cannot reach the rest," he said. "I will have to unlace the cover bindings." 

"I can reach it," Small Knife said. 

Samiq watched as the boy gripped the post with his legs and arms and allowed himself to swing upside down over the ikyak. Releasing the post with his hands, he hung by his knees, lowering himself through the hatch head first, his legs still tightly wrapped around the post. He pulled out a filled seal belly and handed it to Samiq. 

"Fish," Samiq said. 

"They knew you would be hungry," said Small Knife, grinning, then he lowered himself again into the ikyak. 

Samiq balanced the seal belly behind him on the post and reached with one hand as Small Knife brought out a bladder of oil. "One more thing," the boy said, his voice muffled in the ikyak. 

He brought out a bundle of mats, finely woven, bordered with a pattern of dark squares. Small Knife dropped the mats to the floor and pulled himself back to the top of the post. He took the bladder of oil from Samiq's hands and climbed down to the cave floor, cradling the bladder in one arm. Samiq dropped the seal belly down to the boy, then pushed the ropes to the end of the post, until one jerk would free the ikyak. He tilted the ikyak so Small Knife could grab the narrow bow, then climbed to the floor. He placed his hands above Small Knife's, bracing to receive the weight of the ikyak, and they pulled it from the post, swinging it gently down to their feet. 

They set the ikyak at the cave entrance and loaded the fish and oil back into it. Samiq stuffed the chigadax, sealskin and boots into the ikyak hatch. Then sitting on his heels, he unwrapped the bundle that was bound in his mother's mats. 

He set the things before Small Knife: a rope woven of kelp fibers, a small stone lamp, braided wicks. A scraping stone—
a woman's tool—but something he might need. "For Three Fish," he said, holding the stone. She was not what most men wanted in a wife, but she was a woman, able to sew, able to prepare skins. 

He unwrapped patching fat and a long bailing tube, tapered at both ends. Then thinking the mats to be empty, Samiq began to rewrap the supplies, but Small Knife reached between the folds of two mats and pulled out a small white object. It was strung on a cord like the amulet Samiq already wore, and when he took it from Small Knife's hands, Samiq saw that it was ivory, carved in the shape of a whale. 

Samiq turned the carving in his fingers. Where had this carving come from? It was too beautiful to be one of Gray Bird's. 

Perhaps it was something his grandfather had made. His mother kept many of Shuganan's carvings wrapped in oiled sealskin in baskets in Kayugh's ulaq. Samiq slipped the cord over his head, pulling the carving to lie beside his amulet. 

"You will wear it?" Small Knife asked. 

"You have not heard of my grandfather Shuganan?" Samiq replied and smiled at Small Knife's wide eyes. 

They carried the ikyak from the cave. Three Fish crowded close, peering inside, running her fingers over the ikyak seams. Samiq handed her the scraping stone. 

"For you," Samiq said, then was embarrassed by the gratitude that shone in the woman's eyes. It was only a small blade. Why had he given her nothing before? But what had been his to give when he lived among the Whale Hunters?