Ivory Carver 02 - My Sister the Moon (4 page)

BY THE NINTH DAY, BLUE SHELL'S DAUGHTER HAD finished all the belts and had woven a gathering basket as well. That evening she would return to her father's lodge. Chagak had once told her about the woman's ceremony Chagak's parents had held for her after Chagak completed her first bleeding. In those days, a girl had to live alone for forty days after her first bleeding. Then there were feasts and gifts. 

But when Chagak's daughter Red Berry had come to her first bleeding, the men decided that this new village on Tugix's island was too small for one of their women to sit idle, weaving only belts and baskets for forty days. They borrowed a custom of the Walrus People: only nine days alone, only nine days to weave belts and baskets. As Big Teeth said, "Were not Kayugh's own parents once Walrus People?" 

Blue Shell's daughter had heard Chagak's protests: Why take the chance that spirits would be angry? Why take the chance that hunting would be cursed? 

But Kayugh had said, "Who does not know that the number four is sacred to men; that the number five is sacred to women? Nine is a good number, a strong number. Nine days is the 
right choice. Besides, who can doubt that the Walrus People understand the ways of spirits?" 

It seemed that Kayugh was right. Red Berry, now First Snow's wife, already had a healthy son. And the hunting was good, had been good many years. 

Blue Shell's daughter remembered the feast Kayugh had given when Red Berry's nine days were ended. She remembered the many gifts Red Berry received. 

Blue Shell's daughter knew that no celebration would mark the end of her own confinement, but it was enough that she had escaped her father's beatings for nine days, enough to be allowed to work without fear of a stick across her back. She sighed and pushed open the mat that covered her door opening. 

Her mother would soon come to get her and take her back to her father's lodge. She shuddered, wondering whether her long absence had irritated the man or if he would treat her with more respect now she was a woman. 

Perhaps he would be carving his small crooked animals and would pretend she was not there. Idly, she let her fingers caress the whale's tooth that hung at her side. But even if he did beat her, perhaps the tooth would give her added strength, make it easier for her to endure the pain. 

Of course, if her father saw the tooth, he would claim it as his own, would cover it with his carvings of men and seals and little circles that were supposed to be ulas. 

Her hand closed over the tooth and she pulled it from her waistband. She would not be able to carry it with her or he would see it, but how could she keep its power for herself if she did not carry it? 

Blue Shell's daughter stared at the smoke hole in the peak of her roof and wished that the special powers she had during her first bleeding were great enough to make the tooth invisible, like the wind. She crossed her arms over her upraised knees and closed her eyes. No, she thought, it is enough that I am allowed to be a woman. How often had Qakan taunted her saying that she would always be a child, always stay in their father's ulaq to work and to be beaten? 

Yes, she might always be in her father's ulaq, but if she could keep the tooth, perhaps she would have some protection. Blue Shell's daughter laid the tooth against her cheek, and in the moment that it touched her skin, warmth against warmth, she saw it not as tooth, but carved into the whorls of a whelk shell. Her father would not care about a shell. He would think she carried it to hold oil to grease the cooking stone or soften skins. 

She had watched her father carve, knew from his conversations with Qakan how difficult it was to carve ivory. "A whale's tooth has a hollow center," her father had told Qakan, "a narrow passage that tapers up into a point deep within the tooth. A carving has to follow the hollow, make allowances for it. But a whale's tooth is not as difficult to carve as walrus tusk." Her father had reached into the basket where he kept ivory, wood and bone for carving. He handed Qakan a walrus tusk. "See," he had said and pointed to the inside of the tusk. "It is different here. It does not obey the knife." 

Qakan had yawned and looked bored, but Blue Shell's daughter had listened, and she remembered what her father had said. A walrus tusk is centered with a hard and brittle ivory that chips erratically under the pressure of a blade, and when the ivory chipped, her father became angry, sometimes angry enough to lash out at her with his carving knife. 

And, Blue Shell's daughter thought, if it is difficult for my father to carve a whale's tooth, it will be even more difficult for me. 

But then it seemed as though the tooth caught her thoughts, as though its voice called to her, and she saw the tooth marked by her father's knife, made into something it should not be. 

She picked up the short-bladed woman's knife that lay next to the pile of hunters' belts and pressed the knife against the tooth, felt the blade bite into the smooth surface. A narrow strip of ivory curled and fell, and the girl's heart lurched within her chest. She dropped both knife and tooth. 

What had made her do such a thing? What had made her think she could carve something as sacred as a whale's tooth? 

She was a woman. Only a woman, and worse, a woman without a soul. 

Blue Shell's daughter rubbed her hands down over her face. Perhaps even now, with one small chip, she had destroyed the tooth's power. She thought of Shuganan's beautiful carvings. Each glowed with an inner spirit; each was beautiful to see, and when she looked at those carvings, she felt joy. 

Then she thought of her father's carvings, flat and misshapen. Ugly. No, she told herself. It is me. I do not see what is there. But then she remembered Chagak's stories of Shuganan, of his gentle spirit, and she thought, Perhaps the difference between Gray Bird's and Shuganan's carvings is the difference between the two men's souls. But at least her father had a soul. And compared to her father, what was she? Why did she think her knife would be strong enough? Did her hands have the skill to make a tooth into a shell? 

Again she held the tooth against her face. It was still warm, so perhaps she had not destroyed it, had not forced the spirit out of the tooth into the thin, cold air of her shelter. 

But again she saw the tooth as shell, saw it so clearly that it was as though the tooth were already carved. And her hand moved to pick up the knife, as though the tooth itself were directing it. So blocking the fear from her mind, she began to carve. She carved carefully, slowly, pushing the image of the shell from her mind down into her hands, down into her fingers as they gripped the knife. 

Samiq squatted in the lee of the hunter's beached iky an and oiled his chigadax. That morning, Amgigh had brought in his first sea lion. Their mother sat now with the hide staked out on the beach. She scraped away flesh left on the underside of the skin and the wind carried off the smaller bits of debris. But in the midst of the joy over Amgigh's first sea lion, Kayugh had asked both Samiq and Chagak to leave the lodge so he could talk to Amgigh. Samiq knew their father would speak to him of Blue Shell's daughter. Yes, and how would Amgigh feel, a young man filled with the pride of his first sea lion kill, to learn that his brother would be going to hunt 
the whale while he, Amgigh, would stay in the village and take Blue Shell's daughter as wife? 

Sarniq scooped yellow oil from the basket he cradled between his knees and rubbed it into a seam. Amgigh had never been afraid to show his anger. Who could say what he would do this time? Perhaps refuse to take the girl, perhaps go to another village, live there, hunt there. And who could blame him? 

Samiq looked back toward the ulaq and saw Amgigh striding toward him. 

"So," Amgigh called out, his voice high and hard, "you have been chosen to be the hunter and I am to be a husband." 

"It was not my choice," Samiq said, and he looked up at his brother, met his eyes so Amgigh would see he spoke the truth. 

Amgigh laughed, a hard laugh, edged in bitterness. "You would choose Blue Shell's daughter then?" 

Samiq looked down. How could he answer his brother? What man would choose a woman over the chance to learn to hunt the whale? But then why, he asked himself, did the pain in his brother's eyes find an answering ache in his own chest? 

"It is for our father to choose." 

"You are the better hunter." 

"How can anyone know that I am the better hunter?" Samiq asked. "In my last hunt, I took no sea lions. This morning you did. In the hunt three days ago I was the one to kill a seal. And the hunt before that neither of us took a seal and Gray Bird did. Is Gray Bird better than we are?" 

Amgigh smiled, a true smile that crinkled his eyes and broke out over a laugh. He squatted beside Samiq. For a moment he did not speak, then he laid his hand on his brother's arm. 

"I have pieces of obsidian left," Amgigh said. "Large enough for two good knives." 

Samiq nodded. Yes, their father had taken Amgigh with him to the mountain Okmok. They had brought back obsidian to trade with the Walrus Hunters and some for Amgigh to knap. 

"The knives will be brothers as we are," Amgigh said. "You take one with you to the Whale Hunters and I will keep one with me. They will remind us of our bond. Then, when you return, you will share the Whale Hunters' hunting secrets with me." 

There was hurt, but also hope in Amgigh's eyes, and some of the weight that had settled into Samiq's chest lifted. "I will tell you everything I know. We will hunt together. Men from other tribes will tell stories of the hunts we make." 

Amgigh nodded. A smile pulled at one corner of his mouth, but he looked down, traced a pattern in the beach gravel. "Until you get a wife," he said, "I will share Blue Shell's daughter with you." 

And Samiq bent low over his chigadax, afraid of what his brother might see in his eyes. 

"Daughter?" 

The girl jumped and tucked her partially carved tooth under a mat. She leaned forward to pull open the door flap. At first, she thought her mother had come, but then she realized that the voice belonged to Chagak. 

"A gift from Kayugh's ulaq," Chagak said and laid a bundle outside the door. She reached in to touch the girl's hand and then quickly turned and left. 

Blue Shell's daughter pulled the bundle into her hut and tied the door flap open to let in light. The bundle was wrapped in grass mats, and when she saw what was inside, her surprise made the breath catch in her throat. A suk. The finest she had ever seen. The skins were fur seal, tanned to such suppleness that she knew Chagak had worked a long time stretching and scraping them. 

She unrolled the garment and laid it across her lap. The back of the suk had been made with the darkest fur, and was banded at the bottom with a ruff of white cormorant rump feathers hung with shell beads. The sleeves were cuffed with tufts of brown eider feathers and on the outside of the collar rim Chagak had sewn a strip of pale ribbon-seal fur, trimmed into a pattern of ripples, a blessing asked from the sea. 

Blue Shell's daughter hugged the suk close to her, and she felt comfort in the cool softness of the fur. She slipped the old suk off over her head. Her mother had worn it a whole year before Gray Bird had allowed his daughter to have it, and so the cormorant skins were very frail. It seemed that she spent as much time repairing it as wearing it, and during the past winter it had not been warm enough, even with bundles of grass stuffed inside as a lining. 

Blue Shell's daughter moved to the center of her shelter where the middle pole lifted the roof high enough for her to stand. There she pulled on the new suk, feeling the softness of the inside skins against her breasts. It fitted her perfectly. The sleeves ended just above her fingertips and the bottom edge fell below her knees. She looked down at herself and wished that she dared run from her shelter to the edge of the stream to see her reflection in the water. 

She crouched, drawing her knees up into the suk. It was long enough to touch the ground when she squatted and so would keep her bare feet warm. 

It is true then, she thought. I am to be a wife to one of Chagak's sons. Why else would she make me a suk? Amgigh did not want her; sometimes he even joined Qakan's taunting. It would be Samiq. But then she pulled her thoughts from such a hope. Perhaps she would never be a wife. But for now, for the rest of this day, she had this beautiful suk. She would not allow herself to think beyond that. 

BY THE TIME THE SUN WAS SINKING FOR THE night, Blue Shell's daughter had finished the tooth. She had carved carefully, scraping and cutting until the surface of the tooth was whorled like a whelk shell. She held the tooth near her oil lamp and looked at it with critical eyes. It was not perfect—a hard ridge of ivory, something her knife could not shape, ran the length of one side, and there was a chip on one edge—but it looked like a shell. 

Besides, she reminded herself, she would be careful to conceal the tooth under the edge of her apron. And perhaps the tooth carried its own power to deceive, to fool her father's eye and protect itself from his knife. 

She raised her suk and tied the tooth to the belt of her apron. She was smoothing her hands over the fur of the suk when her mother came to the shelter. 

"You must come out," she called, and the girl saw the surprise in her mother's face when she stepped outside wearing her new suk. 

"It is from Cha-Cha-Chagak," Blue Shell's daughter said. 

Her mother made an uncertain smile and nodded. 

The tightness that had seemed to bind Blue Shell's daughter during her time in the tiny shelter suddenly left, and she spread her arms out, catching the wind with her fingertips. She began to laugh, and she turned so she could see Tugix, the great mountain that guarded their village. 

"Be still," her mother said. "You are a woman now, not a child." 

And the daughter answered, "I have n-n-never been a ch-ch-child." 

Her mother looked away and the girl closed her eyes, for a moment regretting the words. But then anger pushed up from the hollow in her chest, pushed up and brought with it the remembrance of the many times she had been beaten, times when her mother had been silent or had left the ulaq. 

Blue Shell pulled at strands of hair the wind had whipped into her eyes and said, "I have something for you." 

She led the way to a knoll nearer the beach and squatted down out of the wind. She reached into her suk and pulled out a packet wrapped in sealskin and tied with strips of hide. 

"This is for you," she said untying the bindings. She unfolded the sealskin and the girl saw that the packet contained a small basket. It was woven from the ryegrass that grew near their beach, and the fitted lid was linked to the basket with a plait of sinew. 

She lifted the lid. Inside were a sealskin thimble, birdbone needles and an ivory awl. 

"You will need these," her mother said. 

"Yes." 

"It is not as great a gift as Chagak gave you," Blue Shell said. She looked out over the beach, away from her daughter's eyes. 

"Y-y-you m-m-made the ... b-b-basket," her daughter said, the words coming slowly. 

Blue Shell nodded. 

"It is ... it is ..." Blue Shell's daughter wanted to say beautiful, wanted to thank her mother, but the words caught and stopped, and there was nothing more she could say. She waited, hoping her mother would see the gratitude in her eyes, but her mother did not look at her, and Blue Shell's daughter tried to remember if her mother ever looked at her, ever allowed the meeting of eyes. No, no, but perhaps that was so she did not have to see the emptiness in her daughter's heart, so she was not reminded that her daughter had no soul. 

For a time Blue Shell said nothing, but then she stood, her back to the sea, and the wind parted her hair in a pale line down 
the back of her head. "You will be given two ceremonies this night," she said. "The ceremony of becoming a woman and the ceremony of naming. Your father has chosen a name for you." 

The daughter heard the words, made a small choking sound, a laugh with tears caught in it. A name. A name! This time she sought her mother's eyes boldly, waited, unblinking until her mother looked at her. 

"I am glad you have become a woman," her mother said. The words were quiet, almost lost in the cries of guillemot and gull. 

The wind suddenly swirled down around them and spun their hair into tangled black clouds around their heads. They both reached up to brush the strands from their faces, and for a moment their hands, in reaching, touched, then quickly pulled away to smooth hair back into place. 

The girl stood beside her father's ulaq. She could see the beach. Someone had made a heather and seal bone fire, and the wind carried the smell of burning seal fat and crowberry heather. All the people of her village were gathered there: her father, shortest of the men; her mother, tiny and, according to Crooked Nose, once beautiful; her brother, Qakan, taller now than their father; Big Teeth and his two wives, Crooked Nose and Little Duck and Little Duck's son. How many summers did the boy have, seven, eight? And of course, Kayugh, a hunter whose family was never hungry. Chagak, holding their daughter Wren, stood beside him; their oldest daughter, Red Berry, and Red Berry's husband, First Snow, were next in the circle, then Samiq and Amgigh. 

How Blue Shell's daughter had hated that beach. The flat expanse of dark gray shale and gravel with only a few standing boulders gave no place to hide from her father or Qakan. 

But tonight, it was a place of joy. 

Her mother had told her to watch for Kayugh's signal— his hand lifted, pointing to the path of the sun. She waited anxiously. Her nervousness, once only a knot in her belly, now spread to numb her fingertips and toes. 

She ran her hand back through her hair. She had combed it with a notched stick and rubbed seal oil into the length of it. It fell, long and smooth, to her waist. 

"You are beautiful," her mother had whispered to her. The words had surprised Blue Shell's daughter so much that she had not answered her mother, only watched as Blue Shell joined the others on the beach. And she wondered if the others, too, would see the difference in her, if they would see that she had changed from an ugly girl into a beautiful woman. 

Kay ugh raised his arm and Blue Shell's daughter lifted her head. She walked slowly to the beach. As she neared the circle of people, she saw there was a space for her between her father and Kayugh. 

She felt the muscles of her shoulders tense as they always did when she was close to her father. But then it was as if someone spoke to her, as if someone said, "You are a woman," and in that moment she looked up to see Samiq watching her. He was not as tall as his father, but his shoulders were wide and strong. His cheekbones were high, his eyes as dark as cormorant feathers. He smiled and Blue Shell's daughter's eyes widened. The ceremony was a solemn thing. No one, her mother had told her, was supposed to smile, but the girl's happiness began to flow up from her chest and she had to look away to keep from smiling back. 

"You have gifts?" she heard Kayugh ask, and she realized that the ceremony had begun. 

Blue Shell came forward and laid the belts that her daughter had made on the sand in the center of the circle. 

As her mother laid each belt out full length, the women made small sounds of appreciation. It was probably something the women did at every new woman ceremony, Blue Shell's daughter reminded herself, but their admiration for her work still gave her joy. 

Her mother stepped back into her place in the circle and Kayugh spoke again. 

"We have come to make the woman's ceremony," he said, "but your father has also asked that you be given a naming ceremony." 

Blue Shell's daughter looked at her father. He stood facing straight ahead, as if she were not at his side. 

Kayugh turned toward her and placed his hands on her head. "Your father says ..." he began, then stopped, cleared his throat. Kayugh closed his eyes, and for a moment Blue Shell's daughter thought she saw him clench his teeth, but then he looked up at the sky and said, "Your father says that your name is Kiin." 

Blue Shell's daughter felt the heat of sudden embarrassment push up into her face. Her father had chosen to name her Kiin. Kiin, a name that was a question—Who? So she was still to be someone unrecognized, a daughter, a woman, but a stranger. 

There was the dampness of another hand on her head, her father's hand. 

"You are Kiin," Kayugh said, bending to whisper the name in her ear. And hearing the name again, Blue Shell's daughter was suddenly angry, and wished that somehow her father was as much a man as Kayugh, that he had been able, in spite of his hatred for her, to choose a name that was a true name. 

But then the joy of the moment came to her. She was soon to take her place as a woman of the First Men, and more importantly, she had been given a name. No matter what that name was, no matter how insulting, it allowed her to claim a soul. 

They had no shaman in their village, so Kayugh as chief hunter made the ceremonies, and now he began a chant, something said in words she did not understand. She stood with her head bowed under the weight of the two men's hands. 

Then she felt Kayugh slip something over her head, and looking down, she saw a sealskin pouch hanging from a thong. It was an amulet. She knew it would contain the First Men's sacred stone, obsidian. 

Again the thought came, I have a spirit now. I have a soul. She felt something moving within her chest, a fluttering like the wind. It pressed out to fill her, pushed against her fingers and her toes. Kayugh ended his chant and Gray Bird lifted his hand from her head. 

Kiin raised her eyes to the people in the circle and saw herself as one of them. Joy seemed to lift her from the ground, and when her mother stepped forward to the center of the circle, Kiin nearly forgot to join her. 

Kayugh lightly touched her arm and Kiin suddenly remembered her place in the ceremony. She walked to her mother's side, waited as her mother picked up one of the belts. It was for Kayugh. Kiin took it to him, laid it over his outstretched arms, and she, in turn, took the gift he offered her, two sealskins. 

The next belt was for Big Teeth, a man of jokes and laughter. On his belt, Kiin had made pictures in the sealskin, men in iky an hunting seals. Kiin knew the pictures would give him extra power in his hunting, and she saw a flash of gladness in his eyes when he took the belt from her and gave her a harbor seal skin. 

Her father was next. He took his belt and gave her two stone lamps in return. First Snow gave firestones and a seal belly of oil. Then it was Samiq's turn. Would he see that of all the belts, his was the most beautiful? 

As Kiin laid the belt over Samiq's outstretched arms, she looked up at him, dared to meet his eyes. 

"It is beautiful, Kiin," Samiq said, and his voice seemed to make her name beautiful. Then from beneath his parka, he pulled a long strand of shell beads. He reached forward and slipped it over Kiin's head. The necklace hung against her suk, white and shining even in the dim firelight, and she looked down at it in wonder. 

Perhaps she could dare to hope, could begin to see Samiq as one who would be husband. But then he said, "This I give as a gift from me and from my brother Amgigh." 

And in surprise she looked at Amgigh who stood with a smile crooked on his face, but his eyes hard. Kiin gave him his belt and waited to see if he would speak to her, but he said nothing. 

The last belt went to Qakan. It had few decorations but was intricately woven, the strips of sealskin moving in and out like sea waves. She had cut seal shapes out of a darker piece of hide and sewn them into the woven waves. Her 
brother snorted when she gave him the belt, and she looked at him in surprise. It was not as bright and flashing as the older men's belts, but it was beautiful and should give him great power over seals. He handed her his gift, two woven grass berry bags, bags Kiin herself had made, and Kiin was suddenly angry. What right did Qakan have to despise her gift when his was so poor? 

She lifted her head and looked into Qakan's face. "I-I-I w-w-wish you power in your.. . hunting," she said, something that was true, for each man's hunting helped the entire village. Then her anger rose, flooded her throat. It brought, as anger almost always did, flowing words, nearly smooth, and Kiin added, "I-I thank you for the berry bags. It must have taken you many hours to weave them." Her words were quiet. She knew no one but Qakan could hear her, but she also knew any accusation of woman's work would humiliate him. 

Qakan's face darkened and Kiin fought the impulse to look away. I have a soul, she told herself. He cannot hurt me. But then she felt a voice within, the moving of her spirit, and in her mind, her spirit said, "His ignorance does not excuse yours." Kiin blushed and stepped back to the center of the circle. 

As she knelt to place the berry bags with her other gifts, she looked up at the faces of the people around her. They can see the value of Qakan's gift, she thought. Let them make the judgment. 

Quietly then, Kiin stood. Her mother had returned to her place beside Crooked Nose, and Kiin was alone. The people were silent, and Kiin felt the weight of their stares. She lifted her head and waited for the words that would come next. 

Finally Kayugh spoke. "You are a woman," he said. "You are a woman," said Big Teeth. "You are a woman," her father repeated. First Snow, Samiq, Amgigh, and finally Qakan each said the words. 

"You are a woman," Kiin's spirit said.