KAYUGH TURNED THE BONE NEEDLE in his hand. He had been working for a long time. He had cut a long splinter from a cormorant’s leg bone, shaped the point, then smoothed the needle with sandstone so it would be easy to use. He had made it with a bulge at one end so his wife, White River, could knot a sinew thread around the needle and the thread would not slide off.
When he had finished, he sat for a moment, waiting to see if Crooked Nose would come to him. Surely it had been long enough for the baby to be born. But then perhaps the child was a girl and the women were afraid to tell him.
Yes, it would be good to have a son, he thought. What man did not want a son? But he had seen his own mother die in childbirth and since that time any safe delivery had been a relief to him, whether the woman gave boy or girl.
Kayugh had welcomed the birth of his daughter, Red Berry, three summers before, and though most men would have asked their wives to kill the child and thus eliminate the years of nursing when few babies were conceived, Kayugh chose to keep his daughter.
He picked up the bone and gouged out another splinter. He would make another needle, bargaining with White River’s spirit. Surely her spirit would not allow White River’s body to leave the earth knowing there were gifts waiting. But the gray of the sky, the heaviness of rain in the air seemed to reflect the foreboding he felt within. It was not a good month. It would have been better if White River’s labor had not started until after the full moon, until after one full month had passed since Red Leg’s death.
Red Leg had been Kayugh’s first wife, a good woman, though old. Before Kayugh took her as wife, she had been a widow and childless, unwanted, a woman who in winter might have given herself to the mountains, to the winter spirits. Why should she take a share of food when she had no husband to sew for, no children to raise? There were others in the village who deserved the food more.
But Kayugh saw Red Leg as a strong woman, one who knew many plants for healing and who could sew fine, straight seams. Who could deny that it was Red Leg’s chigadax that had saved her brother’s life when he tipped his ikyak and could not right himself? What other chigadax could last so long in water, all seams keeping out the sea, keeping a man’s parka dry so when the ikyak was righted the man was not cold or wet?
Kayugh, seeing the value of the woman, had asked her to be his wife and left his parents when he was young to build a ulaq of his own.
She had been a good wife. She came to his bed whenever he wanted, filled the food caches with dried fish and roots, kept his parka and boots in good repair. But when, after two years, she had given him no children Red Leg had come to him and asked that he take a second wife. She needed help with the work of the ulaq, she said. Then Kayugh had found White River.
White River belonged to a family from another village. She was a beautiful woman and, unlike most women, tall. Her skin was light, and her eyes were rounder than the eyes of women in Kayugh’s village.
He had seen her on a trading trip and had traded a pack of furs and his fine ikyak to get her. But Kayugh had wanted her, and so had suffered the taunts of the other men when, without ikyak, he had used a woman’s ik to bring his bride home.
And she, too, had been a good wife, though not so gifted at sewing and cooking as Red Leg.
But Red Leg had been dead now ten days. She had fallen from her ik while cutting limpets from rocks, and though Kayugh had gone after her and had dragged her to shore, water spirits had sucked away her breath before he could get her to the beach.
There was no burial ulaq, so they left her at the edge of a beach, rocks piled over her body. But often in the days that followed, Kayugh had felt her spirit close to him, and though he knew Red Leg’s spirit would not hurt him, he wondered if perhaps she were seeking a companion, or knew that death would soon take one of them so waited for that one instead of making the trip to the Dancing Lights alone.
But then perhaps it was not White River who would die but one of the others. Kayugh thought of the people who made up his small group. He, through no spoken word but only on his abilities as a hunter, was leader. The others waited for his decisions. Eight adults: three men, five women. Two children. No, thought Kayugh, four women now Red Leg is dead. And, of the four remaining, were there any he would not grieve for?
Kayugh rested his arms across his upraised knees and stared out toward the sea. It was early summer. They needed to take seals, to put aside something for the winter. How else would they live?
Then the thought came, sudden and unexpected: Why should we live? Kayugh rubbed his hands across his eyes. He was tired, worried. He had lost one wife and feared the loss of another. That was all. There was no spirit enticing him to join the men and women of his tribe who had climbed the mountain, refusing to eat, and waited for death after the great wave destroyed their village.
The wave had taken Kayugh’s father, three brothers, a sister. Who had lost more than that? But how could a hunter decide it was time to die when he was still young? Others needed his skills to bring food and to help them find a safe beach.
So he had led the people west, but he crossed to the beaches of the north sea rather than the south. The winters were harder, but the hunters who spent time there said there were fewer large waves—waves that came during the night, destroying villages, killing people.
“Less for the women to gather, less eggs, less roots,” Gray Bird had said. But Kayugh seldom listened to Gray Bird. He was a small man, not strong, and his spirit, too, was small and weak.
But though Gray Bird had argued with Kayugh, Big Teeth had agreed. Big Teeth was a good man, full of laughter and the telling of jokes, and content to let others speak of his hunting success. Kayugh valued his judgment.
Kayugh could see Big Teeth from where he sat. The man was repairing his ikyak. The craft was turned on its belly and Big Teeth was rubbing fat into the seams.
Big Teeth was a man with narrow shoulders, wide hips. His arms were long, and he of all the hunters of the village was able to throw his spear the farthest.
First Snow, Big Teeth’s son, worked beside him. The boy had nearly eight winters. Soon he would be a hunter. Big Teeth was not blood father to the boy but had taken him as his own when, years before, another wave destroyed their village. That wave had taken Big Teeth’s own son and drowned First Snow’s parents. Unlike Big Teeth, the boy was short and stocky, powerful even for a boy. But though built differently, First Snow mimicked Big Teeth’s swinging walk, his voice and the way he watched a man through squinted eyes.
Seeing the two together made Kayugh’s hope for a son stronger, but then his small daughter skipped out to the edge of the water. Kayugh stood and called to her, and when she came, he sat cross-legged in the sand and pulled her to his lap.
She leaned back against him, and her tangled hair smelled of the wind. It would not be terrible to have another daughter, Kayugh thought. And then he saw the woman Crooked Nose walking from the sheltered place the women had found between two hills, and seeing a smile on her face, hope for a son again rose within him.
But when Crooked Nose came to him, Kayugh’s first thoughts were of White River. “My wife?” he asked, leaving the words hanging between them.
“She is good,” Crooked Nose said and squatted beside him.
Crooked Nose, one of Big Teeth’s wives, was not a beautiful woman. She had been named for her nose, which was thick and bent like a puffin’s bill. Her small brown eyes were set close together, and her lips were thin. But her hands were long-boned and beautiful, swift with awl or needle. Perhaps she wove spells with those hands, for often when she worked the men would gather around her, speaking to her as if she were another man, gifted with the wisdom of a man.
Crooked Nose reached out to run a finger under Red Berry’s chin. “We had some trouble. White River was bleeding….”
“It stopped?”
“Yes.”
“The child?”
Crooked Nose smiled. “A son,” she said.
“A son,” Kayugh repeated, and for a moment he sat still.
Crooked Nose smiled, but then glanced down at her hands. “She named him.”
Kayugh was not surprised. It was a custom in White River’s family; something that was to give strength in hunting.
“What did she call him?” he asked.
“She whispered the name to the baby but will not tell us until she has told you.”
Kayugh nodded. “A son,” he said. A bubble of laughter seemed to rise up from his spirit, and as it grew, it pulled Kayugh to his feet. He hoisted Red Berry to his shoulders, and after giving Crooked Nose a hug, he called to Big Teeth, “I have a son.”