“I SAID YOU COULD use a knife?” Man-who-kills asked, pointing to the small knife Shuganan held.
“It is my carving knife,” he told Man-who-kills. “You have seen me use it before.”
“I do not want you to have a knife.”
“I am an old man. I must carve while I am still alive.” He gestured toward his pile of ivory and bone. “You see how much I have to do.”
“I do not want you to have a knife,” Man-who-kills said again, his voice rising.
Since Sees-far had left, Man-who-kills had become more demanding, not as easily appeased. Shuganan pushed himself to his feet and handed Man-who-kills the knife. He glanced at Chagak. She sat near an oil lamp weaving a basket, her head bent over her work. For a moment Shuganan let himself study the checkered design of her weaving, the stitches so tiny and tight that the basket would be able to hold water without leaking. Then, slowly, Shuganan walked around the ulaq, studying the many carvings on the shelves. He selected one, a man holding a long-bladed hunting knife, and brought it to Man-who-kills. “Take this,” he said. “If you are so frightened of an old man with a tiny knife, perhaps you need some protection.”
Man-who-kills lifted his head and Shuganan saw the glow of anger in his eyes. “Shut your mouth, old man,” Man-who-kills said, but he took the carving from Shuganan’s hand. “I take the carving, but not because I fear you, or anyone.” He dropped the crooked knife at Shuganan’s feet.
Shuganan picked it up, sat down and began carving.
“What are you making that is so important?” Man-who-kills asked.
Shuganan turned the figurine so the man could see it. “Husband and wife,” Shuganan said quietly, then added, “It is for Chagak.”
Man-who-kills bent close to study the carving.
“It is not finished yet,” Shuganan said.
Man-who-kills grunted. “It is good you make it for her,” he said. “It will give her strength. But there is something more that is needed. Put a baby in her suk. A fine fat boy. She will give me many sons.”
Shuganan glanced up at the man, then began working at the woman’s suk. He would enlarge the collar rim and carve a tiny head peering from within.
After a time he handed the carving to Man-who-kills, waited as the man held it next to a lamp and examined the infant’s tiny features. Man-who-kills laughed and nodded, then tossed it back to Shuganan. “It is good,” he said. “Now finish it. Give the man a face. My face.”
Shuganan picked up the carving but said nothing. He would finish the man, but not with Man-who-kills’ face.
“You are clever,” Man-who-kills said. He squatted beside Shuganan and rocked on the balls of his feet. “And perhaps one who is clever enough to find people in bits of bone and teeth can do other things. Perhaps a man who is clever at finding is also clever at hiding.”
At Man-who-kills’ last words, a chill pushed through Shuganan’s body, tightened his chest and moved his heart to beat in quick, hard thumps. But he did not look up from his carving and continued to work on the small nose, the tiny eyes of the infant.
Man-who-kills picked up an oil lamp and entered Shuganan’s sleeping place.
The light from the lamp made Man-who-kills’ body look like a shadow behind the sleeping curtain. Shuganan could see him searching along the wall, running his hands up and down, pausing once in a while to pry at some irregularity in the surface.
The man made slow progress around the room and then dropped to his knees to search the floor. Shuganan looked at Chagak and saw that the girl’s face was pale, her lips pursed.
“I have knives hidden,” Shuganan said to her, his words low and soft.
Chagak nodded but said nothing, her eyes on the curtain of Shuganan’s sleeping place. Suddenly Man-who-kills called to Shuganan, “You are not as smart as I thought, old man.” And drawing the curtain aside, he held up the hunting knife Shuganan had hidden in the floor grass.
Shuganan waited, hoping the man would stop searching, that finding one knife would satisfy him, but Man-who-kills stayed in the sleeping place until Shuganan heard him exclaim again.
“He has found the crooked knife,” he said to Chagak.
“You hid more than one knife?” she asked.
“Three in my sleeping place,” said Shuganan. “One in the floor of …”
Man-who-kills cried out again, and then he lunged through the curtain. Three knives were in his left hand. He held the fistful of blades at Shuganan’s throat and asked, “Are there more?”
“No,” Shuganan said, unafraid. He was an old man. What was death?
But then Chagak was at his side, her small hands between the knives and Shuganan’s neck. “Do not kill him,” she pleaded. “I hid the knives. Kill me.”
“What does she say?” Man-who-kills asked, his voice a whisper, hot against Shuganan’s cheek.
“She asks you not to kill me,” Shuganan said.
Man-who-kills laughed, the points of his corner teeth pressing into his bottom lip. “I am not so stupid,” Man-who-kills said. “Why should I kill you? There is not enough pain in that.”
He jerked Chagak away and ran the points of the knives down Shuganan’s neck, leaving three parallel scratches.
Shuganan gritted his teeth but remained still.
“You think you are a hunter, old man?” Man-who-kills said and, drawing back his right hand, hit Shuganan hard in the belly.
Shuganan curled himself into a ball, arms over his head, face against his knees, and tried to catch his breath. Man-who-kills kicked him. Chagak began to cry, the cries like small screams. Shuganan tensed for another blow, but when nothing came, he looked up, saw Man-who-kills had been waiting for him to raise his head. Man-who-kills hit Shuganan in the mouth.
Shuganan rolled away, stanching the blood from his lip with both hands. Then he saw Chagak throw herself against Man-who-kills, hitting with both fists as she rammed him with her head.
“Chagak, no,” Shuganan said. The words, mixed with pain, were slurred.
Man-who-kills caught one of Chagak’s hands, but she scratched at his face with the other. He dropped the knives and tried to grasp both Chagak’s hands but, lunging forward, she grabbed the hunting knife from the floor.
Thrusting the knife toward Man-who-kills, Chagak sliced through his parka, and Shuganan saw blood welling up from the wound.
Man-who-kills screamed, a war cry that shook the ulaq, then he hit Chagak across the face. She dropped the knife and he was upon her, straddling her belly, slapping her face.
“No,” Shuganan yelled. But Man-who-kills, still slapping and punching, did not seem to hear him.
Shuganan threw himself against the man. Shuganan’s ribs ached when he hit, and for a moment he could not breathe, but he reached for the crooked knife laying beside Man-who-kills’ knee.
Man-who-kills grabbed it before Shuganan could and held it at Chagak’s throat.
Chagak lay still, face bleeding, eyes wide, unblinking, and Shuganan’s heartbeat was caught somewhere in his throat until the girl took a breath.
Shuganan saw the anger in Man-who-kills’ face, but in the sudden quiet Shuganan said, “Kill her. She wishes to be dead. Then she will be with the man she was to marry and with her mother and father. Kill both of us and we will warn those who live at the Dancing Lights of the evil spirits you carry.”
Man-who-kills curled his lips but rolled from Chagak’s chest. He gathered the knives and stuck them in his belt.
“Go into your sleeping place,” he said. “Take her to her place also. Tomorrow we hunt seal.”
Man-who-kills stood and tipped the water skin that hung from a rafter. Water flowed into his mouth and over his face. Shuganan’s body ached, but he bent over Chagak and lifted her to her feet. He put an arm around her shoulders and looked into her face.
She was not crying and in her eyes he saw a great glowing as if some light grew there. She leaned her head back on his shoulder and whispered, “Where in my sleeping place is the knife?”
But Man-who-kills shouted, “Do not talk!” So Shuganan did not answer her.
In the morning Man-who-kills tied Chagak to the bottom of the climbing log. He laid a pile of sealskins at her feet. “Tell her to make babiche,” he said to Shuganan. “Tell her we go to hunt seal for her bride price.”
But before Shuganan could translate the words, Chagak said, “Ask him how I can make babiche without my woman’s knife.”
“You have her knife,” Shuganan said to Man-who-kills. “How can she make babiche without a knife?”
Man-who-kills shrugged and picked up his harpoon.
Chagak said, “Ask him to give me the pile of skins there and my scraper.” She pointed, and before Shuganan told Man-who-kills what she had said, the man had gathered the folded hides and laid them beside her.
“She needs a scraper and pounding stone,” Shuganan said and hobbled to Chagak’s storage corner. He brought back the stone and the scraper.
Shuganan knew Chagak preferred to work outside when scraping hides so the wind would blow away bits of hair and flesh her scraper shaved from the skin, but though she had to stay in the ulaq, at least she would have something to do.
Shuganan gathered a handful of stakes and spread one skin out on the floor. He used the pounding stone to drive the stakes through the edges of the hide and into the hard dirt.
“She can do that, old man,” Man-who-kills said. “We must go now or we will not return before dark.”
Shuganan looked up at him, surprised. “You go for seals and think we will return in one day?”
“I am a hunter,” Man-who-kills said, lowering his eyelids, looking at Shuganan through the black of his lashes.
Shuganan looked away, took a breath and felt the pain of the night before in his ribs. “She needs water and food. What if we do not come back for three or four days? Why bring a bride price if you let the bride die?”
Man-who-kills strode to the center of the ulaq and untied the water skin. He brought it to the climbing log and tied it four notches up so Chagak could reach it when she stood. “Get her some food,” he said to Shuganan. “Not much. I told you we will be back tonight.”
But Shuganan dragged a seal stomach of dried fish to Chagak and propped it against the climbing log.
Man-who-kills stood with one foot on the log. He cupped his hand around Shuganan’s chin and said, “You are generous, old man.” His breath was strong with the smell of fish. “But let her eat. I like fat women. They make better sons.”
He bent and pulled a handful of fish from the seal stomach and pushed them into the bag he had slung at his neck. “Get me eggs,” he said to Shuganan and handed Shuganan the carrying pouch.
Shuganan filled the bag, then, as he passed Chagak, he pressed something quickly into her hands, for a moment felt the coolness of her fingers on his.
Shuganan thought that Man-who-kills had not seen, but the man took the pouch from Shuganan and said, “What did you give her?”
Shuganan smiled, hoping his face did not betray his nervousness. “The carving,” he said. He wrapped his hand around Chagak’s and turned the carving toward Man-who-kills, hoping the man would not look too closely, would not see what he had done with the face of the husband and with the base of the image.
Man-who-kills laughed. “We will bring many seals, maybe more than two. And while the woman waits, your little people will teach her to be a wife.”
He pushed Shuganan up the climbing log, but Shuganan paused a moment at the top. He looked down at the dark and shining crown of Chagak’s head.
She glanced up at him, and he saw the understanding in her eyes, saw she had pressed her thumb over the face of the husband. She lifted her hand to him and Shuganan turned away, holding the memory of her eyes in his mind—something he would keep with him if he could carry out his plans, something he would keep with him even if he could not.