CHAGAK SAT ON THE bare floor of the new ulaq, sorting through a sack of dried heather. She cut away bruised and frayed stalks, those parts of the plants that would rot quickly. The rest she would scatter over the ulaq floors to be covered by grass mats.
Crooked Nose and Little Duck worked beside her, finishing the last of the mats. The new ulaq was larger than Shuganan’s. Even with the sleeping places curtained off, there was enough space for many people to work comfortably in the main room.
Crooked Nose pointed out the largest sleeping place at the back of the ulaq and said, “Big Teeth will sleep here.”
Chagak frowned. “I thought Kayugh was head man of this ulaq.”
“Shuganan did not tell you?” Crooked Nose replied. “Kayugh and
Red Berry will stay in Shuganan’s ulaq. Kayugh wants to be with his son, and since you nurse him …”
Chagak’s stomach tightened. She and Shuganan would not be left alone as she had hoped. But she tried to hide her disappointment. Of course Kayugh would want to be with his son, she told herself, and so he would choose to stay in Shuganan’s ulaq. But would the ulaq still belong to Shuganan or would Kayugh now be head man? And what about Shuganan? He would be humiliated if he were no longer head man in his own ulaq. Perhaps Chagak should offer to come to this ulaq, drawing Kayugh back to his own people. But then who would care for Shuganan?
“Your husband is dead,” Crooked Nose said.
The words startled Chagak and she sat without answering, her mouth open.
But Crooked Nose did not wait for a reply. “Perhaps Kayugh seeks someone as wife,” she said.
Chagak felt her face redden. She tried to listen as Crooked Nose told her about Kayugh’s skills as a hunter, but fear numbed Chagak’s hands and quickened her breath.
She knew her mother had been happy as a wife, and Crooked Nose, when she spoke of time spent in the sleeping place with her husband, spoke with flashing eyes and giggles, not dread, but Chagak had once known the pain of a man within her and did not want it again. She had seen how often Big Teeth visited his wives’ sleeping places, even in the few days they had lived in Shuganan’s ulaq, and Chagak had shuddered as she lay on her sleeping mats, remembering what Man-who-kills had done to her.
“All men are not cruel,” the sea otter whispered to her, night after night. But Chagak did not want to be wife again.
Kayugh smoothed his harpoon shaft with a piece of lava rock. It was the first evening since Big Teeth and Gray Bird had moved to their own ulaq, and Kayugh was glad for the quietness in Shuganan’s ulaq.
Shuganan sat next to an oil lamp, the old man leaning into the light. He carved a bit of ivory, his eyes and mouth moving as he worked, as though he spoke in silent words to the thing he was creating.
Chagak was finishing a chigadax for Shuganan. Made from the skin of the whale’s tongue instead of strips of seal intestine, it had taken only a few evenings to sew. Red Berry had her head on Chagak’s lap and the babies were nestled, one at each breast. Chagak was so small that Kayugh could hardly see her through the children.
It should stay like this, Kayugh thought. In peace, in quietness. He had spoken several times to Shuganan about the planned journey to the Whale Hunters. Kayugh wanted him to leave Chagak here, but Shuganan had disagreed.
“What do women know of fighting?” Kayugh had asked, but Shuganan countered, “You say you may decide to go with me. If you do, I will be glad. But what do you know of fighting? Have you ever fought against other men?”
“No,” Kayugh had said. “But I can throw a spear. I have fought seals and sea lions. Men cannot be much different.”
“Men think,” Shuganan said, “and they hate. Animals fight only to live, perhaps at times to protect their young. Men fight for hate, for power, for owning things. It is a different kind of fighting, something that draws in evil spirits.”
Kayugh fingered his amulet. The quiet of the ulaq seemed so far from fighting. He watched Chagak as she nursed the babies. His son was still thin compared to Chagak’s son, but the thinness did not make Kayugh fear for the child’s life.
“I do not want Chagak to go to the Whale Hunters,” Kayugh suddenly said, his words loud in the ulaq’s stillness.
“What is better,” Shuganan said quietly, “to take her or to leave her here? The Short Ones know about this beach. They know about my carving.
“There were two scouts here, Kayugh. One was going to stay with us, to take Chagak as wife and live here for the winter. We killed him, but the other returned to his people. He will come back to this beach.
“Do you want Chagak to stay? To be the one who tells the Short Ones that her grandfather killed one of their hunters? Besides, there is Gray Bird. If we leave the women, he will want to stay. I have seen the hunger in his eyes when he looks at Chagak.”
Kayugh sat in silence, then said, “You are right. But if we go, we should go soon. What if the Short Ones come to this beach and we are still here?”
“They are hunters first, warriors second,” Shuganan said, his hands turning the ivory he carved, his knife working until Kayugh could see the eyes and nose of a seal peeking from between Shuganan’s fingers. “They will not come until the best of the seal hunting is finished.”
Kayugh nodded, but still he was uneasy. It was not good to be taking Chagak with them. And what would the Whale Hunters think of her, one of their own—a beautiful woman with son and no husband?
Chagak was making holes with her awl in a sealskin, marking the line her needle would follow on the first stitching of a waterproof seam, but now and again she lifted her head to watch Kayugh and Shuganan.
Shuganan, as always when he carved, paid little attention to the things around him, to what others said, to the noise and activity of the ulaq. Perhaps that was why he and his wife had no children, Chagak thought. Perhaps he gave so much of his spirit to his carvings, there was nothing left for his wife, nothing to begin the soul of a child.
Chagak glanced at Kayugh and quickly looked away. He was watching her. It bothered Chagak that the man was often in her thoughts, and once in the past few nights he had even come into her dreams, lying beside her, stroking the side of her face until Chagak had awakened, shaking.
To comfort herself, she had pulled Kayugh’s son closer to her and wakened Samiq, sleeping in his cradle above her head. Then she had nursed both children, feeling Samiq’s strong, glad nursing, and Amgigh’s gentler tug. She had run her finger along Samiq’s arm, smiling when he clasped the finger in his small hand, then had done the same with Kayugh’s son. She expected no response; the baby seldom moved his hands from her breast. But as she stroked his hand, he, too, clasped her finger, his grip strong.
Chagak had lowered her cheek to the top of Amgigh’s head, a gladness singing inside her. She had wanted him to live for Kayugh’s sake. The man had suffered enough without the loss of his son. But now she knew she also wanted the child to live for herself. Before there had been a distance, something Chagak put between herself and the child. A protection. It was still too soon since she had lost Pup. She could not bear the thought of hoping and praying, of watching and telling herself the child was improving when he was only growing closer to death. Hope brought more pain.
But though she had fought it, the caring had come, had crept into her soul when she was busy with other things, and now she nursed the child not only for Kayugh but for herself.
As Chagak sewed, she thought of Samiq and Amgigh growing up together, learning to use the ikyak, learning to hunt. Then suddenly, as if the idea were not her own, but something someone else thrust into her head, Chagak thought: It would be better for Samiq to have a father.
No, he has Shuganan, Chagak told herself, but Shuganan’s own words came to her: “I am old.”
Chagak shook her head and thrust her needle into the awl holes. I do not need a husband, she thought, and with each thrust of her needle pushed Shuganan’s words further from her mind.
It was early morning, and Chagak had just finished rinsing out the night baskets. She stood at the top of the ulaq and watched the red circle of the sun tuck itself under the clouds that filled the sky.
For the first time since Kayugh had brought her his son, she had left both babies in the ulaq, Kayugh holding Amgigh, Samiq in his cradle.
Suddenly, in the wind and the brightness of a new day, she felt like a young girl again, as though, if she shut her eyes and gave enough strength to her thoughts, she would find that she stood in her own village on her father’s ulaq, watching for Seal Stalker’s ikyak among the waves. But then she heard Shuganan’s slow steps up the climbing log, and she again felt the heaviness of the milk in her breasts and the pressure of the grief she had carried since the death of her people.
“He asks for you as wife,” Shuganan said, but he had spoken even before he pulled himself from the ulaq, and Chagak, not quite sure what he had said, squatted close to the roof hole so she could hear him more clearly.
“Kayugh,” Shuganan said. “He wants you to be his wife. He does not want you to go to the Whale Hunters without a husband.”
For a long time Chagak said nothing, but she kept her eyes to the sea, finding some small escape in watching the waves. But finally she leaned toward the old man. “We should go away now,” Chagak said. “We could find a new island. Start again. We could come back here and trade …”
The anger in Shuganan’s eyes stopped Chagak.
“And what would you do with Amgigh?” he asked. “Would you leave him here without milk just when he is becoming strong? Or would you take him, leaving Kayugh without the joy of a son?”
Shuganan pulled the sleeves of his parka above his wrists and held his hands out to her, stretching the twisted fingers. His hands trembled.
“I am old, Chagak,” he said. “How will I hold the spear? How will I set the snare? I cannot care for you and for Samiq. Can you be both man and woman? Hunter and mother?”
Something hard and tight pressed against the inside of Chagak’s throat. “I do not want to be a wife,” she said to Shuganan.
“Chagak,” he said, his voice stern but quiet. “It is not something you can choose. You must have a husband and Kayugh is a good man. If you do not choose Kayugh, perhaps another man, someone weak like Gray Bird, will take you by force. Then you will have no choice.”
“I am strong enough to kill Gray Bird, and I am strong enough to be alone.”
Shuganan sat down on the ulaq’s sod roof. “Yes,” he finally said. “You are strong enough to be alone.”
For a long time he did not speak, and Chagak began to hope that he agreed with her, but then he said, “For you, perhaps, it will take more strength to belong to someone.”