CHAGAK HELD ONTO THE IK and tried to keep the wind from tearing it loose. Her arms ached and sharp pains cut down from her shoulders into her back. Pup, slung under her suk, had begun to make small, gasping cries.
Sand and pieces of shale blew into the ik and layered up against the piles of furs around her.
“Aka, Aka, please stop,” Chagak begged, but the island belonged to Tugix, not Aka, and the wind took Chagak’s words so she could hear nothing but the crash of the sea.
Then for a moment the wind eased, and Chagak shifted her grip on the edge of the ik. A crack like the sound of stone splitting came from the mountain. Chagak screamed and the wind ripped the ik from her hands, sending it end over end across the beach.
Closing her eyes against the stinging sand, Chagak began to crawl toward the old man’s ulaq.
A sudden clattering of shale made Chagak turn her head into the wind, and one of the sharp-edged stones, skittering across the beach, struck her in the mouth. She tasted blood on her lips and for a moment stopped, crouching on her knees. She covered her head with her arms, but then she felt a gentle touch, something not carried by the wind.
Chagak looked up to see the old man standing over her. His presence seemed to give Chagak strength, and when he reached down to help her, she was able to stand.
“Come with me,” he said, and Chagak wondered how she could hear his quiet words above the noise of the storm.
Together they battled the wind, and when they came to the ulaq, the old man scrambled to the top, then helped Chagak up.
Inside, Chagak leaned against the notched climbing log and wiped the sand from her face. Her eyes felt scratched and swollen, and she blinked several times before she could see in the brightly lit ulaq.
Then she gasped and covered her mouth with both hands. Five shelves circled the ulaq, and every shelf was crowded with images of birds, fish, people and animals. They glowed in the light from the oil lamps, some of the animals smooth, golden like a walrus tusk that has been washed in from the sea. Others were white or gray, with feathers, hair or clothing detailed in fine designs. None of them were larger than a man’s hand, yet to Chagak’s eyes they seemed alive, watching her, watching her from the ulaq walls.
The old man followed her gaze and chuckled.
Chagak backed toward the climbing log, but he laid his hand on her arm and said, “Do not be afraid. They are only wood or bone; some are ivory.”
“They have spirits?” Chagak asked.
“Yes, each holds some bit of spirit. Why else would I carve them?”
“You made them?”
The old man threw back his head and laughed. “This beach is a lonely place. What would I have done without my small animals? They are my friends. They will not hurt you.”
He motioned to a floor mat beside an oil lamp, and when Chagak sat down, he asked, “You have the baby?”
The question made Chagak suddenly realize how long Pup had been quiet, and she slipped off her suk and pulled the child from his carrying sling. He whimpered but did not cry, his eyes focusing for a moment on Chagak’s face, then wandering toward the brightest oil lamp. Chagak smiled, but when she looked up at the old man, he was frowning, his eyes on her chest.
“You are not the mother?” he asked.
Chagak looked down at her small, pink-nippled breasts. They were not full and hanging like the breasts of a new mother.
“His sister,” she answered.
“He is sick,” the man said.
“No, he is not sick,” answered Chagak. A wave of dread made her shiver, and though the ulaq was warm, she reached for her suk and pulled it on again.
“Yes, he is sick,” the old man said. He hobbled to a niche in one wall and pulled out a bag of something dried. “Caribou leaves,” he said and, taking out several pieces, placed them in the bottom of a wooden cup. He filled a leather pouch with water from a seal stomach hung from the rafters, then held the pouch over the flame of an oil lamp.
Chagak waited, her arms tucked around Pup. Caribou leaves were good medicine but were difficult to find. The old man would not give her something so precious unless Pup were truly sick.
The baby’s weight against her chest seemed to match the heaviness Chagak carried within, and she began to rock back and forth. Perhaps the old man was right. Perhaps her brother was sick. Had he cried harder before? Had he smiled more often and slept less?
During the two days’ traveling Chagak had tried to block out all thoughts of her family. Otherwise she could not paddle, could not even rise from her sleeping mats in the morning, and now, thinking back, she found it difficult to remember how Pup had acted before their village was destroyed.
Chagak began to hum a lullaby, the song as much for her comfort as for Pup’s. What did babies do? They could not talk or walk. And Pup already smiled. But how long since she had seen him smile? How long since he had laughed?
The old man brought the cup of caribou leaf tea to Chagak. She dipped her fingers into the pungent liquid and placed them near the baby’s mouth. He turned his head away, but she pressed his lips open with her thumb and dripped the tea down his throat. He began to suck weakly at her fingertips, and slowly, drop by drop, Chagak emptied the cup.
When the baby finished, his eyelids fluttered, then closed, and Chagak pressed him to her breast. The fear he would die and the hope he would live churned with such force within her that even her breathing hurt.
The old man sat down beside her and, holding his hands out toward the baby, said, “Let me see him.”
For a moment Chagak clung tightly to the infant. She was afraid of what the old man might find, afraid that even the small hope she carried would be pulled from her, but then she handed him the child.
He laid Pup on the floor and unwrapped the sealskin that bound him. The baby winced and moved his legs in quick jerks. The old man’s hands moved over the tiny body, pressing against joints, belly and head. Finally he looked up at Chagak and asked, “Has the child been dropped?”
An image of her mother throwing the baby over the side of the ulaq came to Chagak’s mind, the sight of flames and long-haired men killing her people.
“Yes,” she said, but her throat tightened and the word came out as a sob.
“A child’s bones are very soft,” the old man said. “Something like a fish’s bones. They bend instead of breaking.” He wrapped the baby, tucking the skin carefully around the small body, then picked up the child and cradled him in his arms. “A baby will survive a fall that might kill a man, but sometimes, even if the child lives, there is damage.” His eyes moved to Chagak’s eyes and she saw the sadness there, and something within her seemed to tear open, spilling out the pain she had kept away from herself during the long days of paddling.
“Is there anything I can do for him?” Chagak asked, and her voice seemed small and far away, as though someone else had spoken from another part of the ulaq.
“Rock him. Comfort him.”
The old man handed her the baby, the tiny form so familiar to Chagak’s arms that he seemed a part of her.
“He will die?” she asked, unable to look at the old man when she asked the question.
He did not answer, and Chagak looked up at him, saw the answer in his eyes and began to weep. And in her weeping the story of her people seemed to flow from her mouth as the tears flowed from her eyes, one releasing the other.
“I was in the hills, gathering grass for weaving,” she whispered, not caring whether the man heard her or not. Her words were for the many animals on the shelves around her, for the eyes that stared at her from the shadows of the ulaq, as if these spirits needed to know what had happened. “I do not know who they were. Not Whale Hunters or traders. Twenty, maybe thirty, men with long hair. They were burning our ulakidaq. I do not know why.
“My mother came out of the ulaq. A man caught her. She had my brother in her arms.” Chagak shook her head as tears disjointed her words. “She threw my brother over the edge of the ulaq. But there was a fire … a huge fire in the ulaq’s thatching. The man cut my mother with his spear. To get away from him she and my sister jumped into the fire….” Chagak’s voice broke.
She felt a hand on her head, heard a soft murmuring. First she thought the old man was chanting, but then she realized he was saying, “More deaths. I should not have tried to hide from them. They will destroy forever.”
Chagak looked at him through her tears, saw the sudden veiling of his eyes.
“You and your brother are the only survivors?” he asked quickly.
“Yes,” Chagak said, taking up her story as though she had not heard the old man’s mumbled words. “I would have died, too, if Pup had not been alive. I would have gone with my people to the Dancing Lights.”
Chagak clutched the baby and began to rock. “If he dies,” she said, “I do not want to live. Please kill me if he dies.”
“You will live,” the old man said. “Even if he dies, you will live.”
“No,” Chagak answered, speaking not only to the old man but to the carvings that watched her, to the tiny spirits that huddled on the shelves of the ulaq. “No.” And she closed her eyes and wept.