CHAGAK’S EYES BURNED AND her shoulders ached, but her fingers still moved over her weaving. It is better to weave than to be forced to Man-who-kills’ sleeping place, she thought.
The oil lamp nearest her began to smoke. Chagak blew out the flame, pulled her woman’s knife from the scabbard at her waist and trimmed the char from the wicks.
Man-who-kills said something to Shuganan, and Shuganan said to Chagak, “Leave it out. He wants to sleep.”
Chagak looked at the old man, her eyes wide with dread, but Shuganan looked away. He spoke to Man-who-kills and led him to the honored back sleeping room, Shuganan’s own room, closed off from the rest of the ulaq with curtains Chagak had recently made.
Chagak wrapped her arms around herself and began backing toward the climbing log. Perhaps she could be gone before either man noticed. She could take her ik, paddle all night. There were many places to hide along the coast—caves and inlets.
As Shuganan knelt and pulled the curtain aside, he caught sight of Chagak, her back against the climbing log. Pain pressed into his chest, sorrow that she would leave him, but he pushed it aside, embarrassed that he could be so selfish, thinking of himself when Chagak had so much to fear.
“You see,” said Shuganan, pulling Man-who-kills into the sleeping place with him, “there are places here for your weapons.” The mats on the floor were new, woven by Chagak to replace the cut grass Shuganan had used when his wife’s mats were beyond repair. During the month they had been together, Chagak had also made him feather-stuffed pillows with fur seal hide covers. Shuganan pointed to the pillows, but suddenly Man-who-kills shouted and lunged from the sleeping place.
In one skidding movement he grabbed Chagak’s ankles, her feet on the top notch of the climbing log, and threw her to the floor.
Shuganan knelt beside her, but Chagak lay without moving, her long hair hiding her face.
Man-who-kills clasped a handful of her hair and jerked her head back, exposing her long throat. Pulling a knife from his wrist scabbard, he held it close below her left ear.
“Leave her alone,” Shuganan said. “She does not belong to you.”
“Tell her she will be dead if she tries that again.”
“He says he will kill you if you try to escape again,” Shuganan told the girl.
But Chagak began to laugh, the laugh high and yipping like the sound of an otter. “Good,” she said. “Tell him to kill me. Tell him he should have killed me long ago, when he killed my people. It will be an easy way to die, this knife. I do not fear my own blood. It will be better than dying in fire as my mother and sister did, better than having my belly slit like my father.”
She began to laugh again and Man-who-kills closed a hand over her mouth. “What did she say?”
“She says to kill her,” Shuganan answered.
“What is wrong with her? Why does she laugh?”
“She wants to be with her people. She wants to be dead.”
“She is your granddaughter. Our warriors killed your son, her father?”
“Yes.” The lie came easily.
“She is too beautiful to be anything of yours,” Man-who-kills snapped.
Shuganan shrugged.
Keeping his hand over Chagak’s mouth, Man-who-kills pulled his knife away from her throat and in one quick movement slit the front of Chagak’s suk.
Chagak had prepared herself for the pain of the knife, for the slitting of her throat. She held her teeth tightly together, determined she would not scream when he cut her, but when she saw what he had done to her suk—the garment precious because her mother had made it—she began to scream.
Man-who-kills laughed, and his laughter turned Chagak’s horror into anger. She pulled her woman’s knife from its sheath under her suk and slashed Man-who-kills’ cheek.
“Chagak, no!” she heard Shuganan yell, but she did not care; if the man was going to kill her, let him bear the scars of her knife for a remembrance.
Man-who-kills grasped her hand and squeezed. Chagak felt the small bones began to ache, then the man moved his fingers so Chagak’s knuckles ground together until she could no longer hold the knife. Pinning her to the floor, the man spread the cut edges of her suk and dropped to sit on her chest.
“Do not kill her,” Shuganan said.
Man-who-kills pressed a hand to his bleeding cheek. Shuganan leaned down, saw the cut was not deep.
“She needs to be dead,” Man-who-kills said, the words coming from clenched teeth.
Chagak lay still, eyes closed, as if she slept, as if nothing had happened. But Man-who-kills raised from her chest and dropped back again, making Shuganan grimace for Chagak’s pain. Chagak winced but said nothing and did not open her eyes.
“Do not kill her,” Shuganan said again, this time making his voice firm, his words a command; not a request. He picked up a lamp, cradling the stone bowl in both hands, and walked slowly around the ulaq.
The light fell on the carvings that lined the walls. Tiny eyes, tips of ivory spears gleamed.
“These are my people,” Shuganan said. “They have power.” He turned to face Man-who-kills. “Do not kill my granddaughter.”
Slowly Man-who-kills rose to his feet, and behind him Chagak scrambled to her hands and knees. She pulled her torn suk tightly around her and huddled against a wall.
“I do not care if he kills me,” she said softly, her voice carrying across the ulaq.
“I care,” Shuganan answered, then said in Man-who-kills’ language, “If you kill her, I will kill you.”
Man-who-kills snorted. “You are old. How will you kill me?”
In answer, Shuganan lifted his light, let it shine over the many carvings.
Man-who-kills rubbed his hand across his cheek, wiping blood from the cut. “I am not ignorant. I know the stories of your power.”
“I will not hesitate to use that power against you.”
“Then perhaps I will marry the woman. I need another wife. I will provide well for her. Then I will be head man of this ulaq and all these carvings will be mine.”
“You cannot own these. I do not own them. They own themselves just as a man owns himself.”
Man-who-kills said nothing; instead he began to study the carvings, at first only looking at them, then reaching out, picking them up, staining their white surfaces with blood from his fingertips.
Shuganan watched him; a loathing rose in his chest. Man-who-kills is right, Shuganan thought. I am old, my arms are weak and I am slow.
He could tell Man-who-kills of his great power, of the power the carvings held, but Shuganan of all people knew the truth—that there was no great gift in making a likeness of something. What his eyes saw came easily to his fingers. The soul of each piece of ivory, each chunk of driftwood, whispered its existence to him. He himself did not find the lines of ikyak or woman weaving, otter or whale. The ivory, the bone, the wood told him. How else would he know? It was not through any great power of his own.
Once carved, revealed by the knife, the thing held its own beauty, not any beauty given by Shuganan. And if the carvings had great powers, those powers were their own to give and take; Shuganan did not control them. If he did, Man-who-kills would already be dead.
“Someday you will die, old man,” Man-who-kills said, the words quiet as though he spoke his thoughts to the carvings and not to Shuganan. “You are old. But I will marry your granddaughter, and I will have this ulaq. But before you die, I will earn honor among my people by telling them I have found you. Perhaps by this marriage I will become chief of my people.” He laughed. “Is there an easier way to become chief?”
Man-who-kills turned and pointed toward Chagak. “What do you ask for her?”
Shuganan studied the man’s face, wide cheeks, dark, hard eyes, dried blood streaked from jaw to lips. If Shuganan agreed to a bride price, perhaps he and Chagak would have a few more days, time to plan the man’s death or an escape.
“Five seals. Twenty otter skins,” Shuganan said. A reasonable price, but something that would take a number of days’ hunting.
“Too much.”
“That is the price.”
“Two seal. Ten otter.”
“We need oil.”
“We will be leaving this ulaq. You and I and the woman. All your small people.” Man-who-kills’ hand made a wide sweep of the room. “We do not need much oil. My people have enough oil.”
“Four seals. Twenty otters.”
“The days are growing short. Winter will soon be here. How will I take you to my people if I must spend many days hunting?”
“Four seals. Twenty otters.”
“Two seal. Ten otter.”
“Chagak needs a new suk.”
Man-who-kills looked over at Chagak. He laughed, a short, hard laugh that pulled up his mouth at one corner. “Two seal. Sixteen otter,” he said.
Shuganan looked at the man. Three days hunting seals, he thought. Four or five hunting otters. Time enough. Time enough. “Yes,” he said.