Between Two Worlds (25 page)

“I will remember, Aana,”
I said. I didn’t completely understand, though pieces were starting to grow clear. I should not weaken my own strength. If I didn’t consider myself an equal to the
qallunaat
, and my husband, too, I’d still find myself under others’ feet in all my dealings. I should master myself. Then maybe I’d find that strength and calm she’d told me about long ago.

I looked out at the village and bay from the hill, then turned back to her.

“Tell me of the vision you saw earlier. You pictured me with a group of women on Peary’s ship. You said I’d find contentment among them.”

“You must discover the future on your own, Panik. What will come, will come, based on all the steps you take on your journey today and tomorrow.”

I sighed, though I knew spirits left you to solve your own problems.

I bid Navarana’s spirit farewell and told her I’d visit her again before it was time for her to enter into the world through a birth. Then I began to gather stones.

It was understood among my people that whenever someone created piles or chambers out of stones, for whatever purpose, storing meat, marking places on a landscape, or covering the remains of a dead person, no one else would disturb the stones. Even Peary’s meaningless piles were safe.

I covered my box of treasures, stone by stone, lovingly protecting it. There! Giving the box a place of honor here felt satisfying and good. Then I turned my back on my cairn and the graves surrounding it and headed back toward the village.

The spring rains came in torrents, and the Fat One and I stayed inside our igloo, listening to the howling wind, pounding rain, and the thundering roar of sea ice breaking into floes. As I waited for the storm to end, I prepared myself to leave him, though I couldn’t yet imagine where I would live, if not in our igloo or on the ship. Eventually, I’d return to Itta and my sister, but how? When?

On the third day of the storm, all our other food gone, Angulluk went from one meat rack to another and returned with a hunk of dried seal. I watched him lean against the wall as we ate, his face wet, his dark eyes desperate. Instead of talking, we listened to the rain as it steadily fell on the roof.
How much longer can I stand this?
I thought. There had been times when we’d welcomed the isolation that a storm would bring. Now we were both weary of each other, but at least I wasn’t so angry.

Did all fiery angers eventually turn to sadness? Would sadness eventually turn to understanding and relief?

I thought of Duncan.

I needed to see him again, if only for a few encouraging
words to take me to the next step of my new life, without him.

A new thought came to me. Maybe it was fortunate that I did not have a child, or else it would be even harder to leave Angulluk.

I jumped as a series of earsplitting cracks rang out louder than gunshots. The ice of the sound was breaking apart.

Angulluk smiled. “The rain has stopped.”

“At last.”

We dressed and ventured outdoors, joining the other villagers, and took in the new landscape with murmurs of surprise. The winter snow melted and water flowed from the hills and cliffs, past the village’s rock dams, and flooded the beach. A newly created river cut into the sea ice.

Angulluk and I headed to the beach to scan the harbor. A cloud of sea mist lifted, revealing a horrifying scene. Out in the harbor, as blocks of ice revolved alongside it in the currents, the
Windward
listed to one side, ready to capsize.

Ancestors, don’t let the ship sink
, I prayed.

I held my breath and let Angulluk speak. “Look at that!” He turned back to the village to spread the news. Other people were crowding a hill.

Ropes pulling the masts dropped, the ship rose suddenly, then rolled on the opposite side. I cried out as it rocked again, then settled upright.

Duncan, be safe. Marie, be safe
.

Bag of Bones and Angulluk carried a kayak to the water. I wanted to go with them, but kayaks were only for hunters.

“We’ll see what they are doing,” Angulluk said. Then he added, as if to show he didn’t care about the
qallunaat
, “With the ice breaking up, it’s a good time for hunting.”

Angulluk, Bag of Bones, and two other hunters readied their harpoons, paddled across the flooded beach, and entered the river that rushed into the harbor.

Gulls circled overhead, and their shrill cries encouraged me. Musk Ox Land did not have large bird colonies like Itta, though this shore, too, was coming alive. I searched for bird eggs on the cliffs, looking out to the blue water and ice of the harbor all morning to see the kayaks approach the
Windward
. Soon there would be news.

Meanwhile, high above the harbor, I came upon an empty gull’s nest, paw prints, and droppings: a fox had gotten the eggs. So foxes climbed these cliffs. Yet no villager had thought to put a fox trap here. Mine would be the first! I collected stones, climbing with them to the spot, one by one, but was too tired to finish the walls.

In the afternoon, I stopped at the rise above the beach to see the hunters drag in a great narwhal the length of a kayak. What a prize! With lines over their shoulders, they heaved the whale to higher ground.

I ran down toward Angulluk, and as in old times, we rubbed noses and faces. He grinned and laughed.
Ai
, his
eyes squinted happily! I could tell he had spotted and was first to spear the whale.

Ordinarily, I’d have been eager to hear about the sea hunt before anything else. But I asked, “Did you get to the ship?”

Angulluk’s smile vanished. “Shut up, woman! Let me speak.”

I lowered my head but gave him a fierce look.

When villagers gathered, Angulluk, whipping his arm, recounted how, after his clean strike in the head, each hunter’s harpoon pierced the narwhal. It was a mother whale with a calf. Mauripaulak took a boat, harnessed the calf, and brought it to the ship to entertain Marie. On a long line, it swam back and forth alongside the
Windward
.

When my husband finished, I asked, “Marie?”

“She’s fine,” Bag of Bones said. “No one was hurt.”

“The captain called down. He said he can free the ship soon,” Angulluk added, sounding satisfied. “Any day, the
qallunaat
will sail away.”

“Even Peary?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Will the captain take us to Itta?”

“We’ll find out. No more talk of the
qallunaat
,” my husband said. Looking at the bloody whale at his feet, he grinned. “Eqariusaq, get ready for a feast!”

In the following days, I could see sailors standing on sections of ice around the
Windward
, cutting the ship free by sawing ice into blocks. One morning, hunters returned with a baby narwhal—Marie’s narwhal, probably. Its meat was the most tender and delicious I’d ever tasted. We’d crossed the invisible line between spring and early summer, dark and light, hunger and plentitude.

Soon, too, we had stewed rabbit after I snared several in the valley. I finished the fox trap I’d started on the cliffs, and in its rocky shelter hung a chunk of rotting rabbit meat for bait. If I could build more fox and rabbit traps, I’d have enough furs to sew new and beautiful clothes for myself.

A few days after the young narwhal was caught, Bag of Bones stood proudly outside my igloo, wearing
qallunaaq
trousers and a frayed sailor shirt.

I scolded him. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“Mauripaulak gave me these clothes.” He lifted his chin.

Somehow, seeing Bag of Bones looking like a
qallunaaq
bothered me, but his hair, now washed and trimmed to shoulder length, was a big improvement. The white man’s practice of washing wasn’t all bad.

“I’m going to make your clothes from now on.”

“Would you, Eqariusaq?” His dark eyes shone.

“Yes,” I replied, surprised at my offer. It was the equivalent of saying I’d adopted him. We rubbed noses. Though
we’d probably continue to live apart, there was a stated bond between us. In effect, I had a son.

I grew quiet while he talked, full of gossip.

The crewmen now spent their days sawing the ice around the ship to help it break up faster, he said. Cin was cooped up on deck and barked a great deal. Marie cried when she saw that her narwhal calf had escaped. “She doesn’t know we ate it,” he said with a grin.

“The
qallunaat
have no sense,” I said. “No one can keep a whale on a rope.”

“I said as much,” he agreed. “Mauripaulak did it only to please Marie.”

“Did you see Duncan?”

“He’s all right.” Bag of Bones dug into his pocket and gave me a small mirror. “It’s from him.”

I took it and looked at myself. The last time I’d used a mirror was on the
Windward
, after Mitti Peary bathed me. Just before I’d been traded to Duncan. Now I could see myself the way he did: a woman with a pretty face. Was the mirror a good-bye gift?

That night, a storm blew upon us from the north, and high winds drove rain against the igloos. The next day, excited cries passed through the village. I met Tooth Girl and her mother, Mikihoq, and Ally and Sammy on the path to the shore. I hoped what we found wouldn’t be bad.

The sunlight was too strong to see over the water. I cupped my hands and squinted. Winds and currents had
cleared most of the ice from the harbor. But where was the
Windward
?

I put my hand over my mouth. Duncan was gone. Marie, her mother, Peary. All of them, gone!

Ally came to me, shock in her face. “Could they have left us for America so suddenly? I thought they’d take us to Itta! I was sure Pearyaksoah would make another trek toward that place he calls the North Pole.”

“So was I.”

We stood together feeling our losses, our broken hearts. Sammy dug in the sand.

Mikihoq joined us and folded her arms across her pregnant belly, satisfied. “
Aait!
The
qallunaat
have gone back to their land!”

“There are other possibilities.” I dared not say that the ship sank in the storm. A shiver ran up my spine.

Ally read my thoughts. Forgetting herself, she said, “Could a ship sink to the bottom, without any of it showing?”

“Eventually, parts of it would surface,” I said.

I remembered my father once going on a hunting trip and returning with a plank large enough to make runners for a sled. In the area of the beach where he’d found the wood, he said, hunters had for many years been collecting odd pieces: a propeller, a rudder, a broken chain, the weathered and ghostly woman’s face that had been a figurehead.

“Our hunters could make good use of all that wood,” said Mikihoq.

Ally’s lips curled. Otherwise she gave no expression to the pain she must have been feeling. I realized something: Ally’s unfailing high spirits required great effort. All along, I’d thought of her as a little stupid. But she was smarter than I’d realized—and brave.

I nearly shouted at Mikihoq. “Don’t say another word.”

I wanted to stagger away from them, find a hiding place, and creep into it, alone. Instead, I stood on the beach and reached out to take Ally’s hand.