Broken Rock Bay (Clan of the Ice Mountains Book 3) Page 12

  Farnook spoke as Attu mimed a fish, leaping toward his hand, but missing it. He reached out to grasp the fish, but it slipped through his fingers. He let his face grow very sad.

  Cray laughed. “Ai,” he said. “Ai.” He looked out over the ocean again and his smile faded.

  Attu knew he was thinking about the night before and his men, now gone forever. “Can you ask him what the colored ropes were for? And about Shyrise? Or do you think that would be disrespectful so soon after their burning?”

  “I will try,” Farnook said. “I think it will show our interest, and maybe then Cray will be willing to talk about how they came to be here in the first place. I know... you need to know.” She smirked at him, then turned to Cray and asked him something.

  Cray answered, and Farnook asked something else. Cray touched his ear, making a motion of hands bound together as he continued to explain.

  Farnook nodded, listening intently.

  Attu watched the two of them, trying not to show his eagerness to know about the Nukeena’s ordeal. He also wanted desperately to know about the iron stone tools, but sensed that right now, so soon after their burial ceremony, was not the time to either question the Nukeena about their weapons or to try to trade with them for some.

  Farnook finally turned back to Attu. “The ropes are a part of a life-long ritual among his people, much like the rope we use in the bonding and baby ceremonies.”

  Attu remembered the rope Elder Nuanu had wrapped around his hands as he’d covered Rika’s small ones during their bonding ritual. Rika kept that rope safe in a special pouch, so that when a child was born to them, they could use it to ceremonially bind the three of them together during the naming ritual. He would be sworn to hunt for the child, she to nurture the child.

  “The Nukeena use the rope to tie the hands of the young men while their ears are being cut. The cutting is painful, but the rope is ceremonial. No young hunter would move during the ritual unless he passed into the Between of unconsciousness during the cutting. There are more Clans in the Nukeenas’ world, far across this ocean. Each has its own pattern of color on the ropes. The ropes are worn around tools, clothing, sometimes as belts, to also show, like the ear cuts, which Clan each Nukeena hunter is from.”

  “More Clans? There are more of them? Are they coming, too? Or have they already come?” Did they bring more women for these hunters? Did they trade with their other Clans, start new families, then go out on another hunt and something happened to them? What if they are many and strong? What if the others come for them, and they all decide to kill us men and take our women and children for their own? We wouldn’t stand a chance against their iron stone weapons...

  Attu pulled himself back. I’m overreacting. We saved these men. They are grateful to us and are becoming friends. My experience with the Ravens has made me suspicious beyond reason.

  Farnook nodded. Attu realized she’d heard his thoughts and agreed with him.

  "Still," she said, "we do need to know." Farnook asked Cray Attu’s questions. Cray took a long time answering her.

  Attu tried to wait patiently, refusing to let his mind begin filling again with huge canoes and vicious Nukeena hunters bent on killing. Finally, Farnook turned back to him.

  “He says that in the time of his father’s father, his people traveled across the ocean, farther south, where it did not freeze. They didn’t mean to come so far, but the wind and then a storm drove them to the shores of this land. Once here, they stayed. He says that on the other side of the ocean, there is much fighting. The people with iron stone weapons attacked his people often, and once his grandfather realized Nukeena could live in peace here because there were no iron stone warriors, they had no desire to return.

  “His Nukeena had some of the iron stone themselves, taken from attackers they’d killed and boats they had captured. They were able to make a good life for themselves here, living as they had always lived, but without fear, until the Ravens came. He says you are not to fear. No one will come and attack your people because of his hunters. They are far away and probably all dead by now, killed by the vicious iron stone warriors.”

  Farnook looked away from Attu at the word ‘fear.’ But Attu didn’t care if they both knew he’d been afraid for his people. Last time I was gullible. This time I’m suspicious. If that means I appear afraid of the Nukeena, then let them see me as a hunter who can’t take a single step on rock solid ice without testing it first. It’s worth it to keep my people safe. I’m not going to be tricked again.

  Attu studied Cray’s face. He believed Cray was telling the truth. Attuanin, I’m trusting in you and in how I feel about Cray. These men have proven themselves brave, willing to sacrifice their own lives to save their fellow hunters. They’ve been respectful of us and of their dead companions. If they are lying, show me. But until then, I’m going to believe Cray’s story and continue to help them.

  Cray smiled at Attu then said something else to Farnook. “He wants you to know that because all the Nukeena hunters were together when some died, they had to surrender their ropes and their clothing – the ropes because they somehow make the Nukeena hunters’ spirits stay united with their right Clan in the next life, the clothing because all clothing worn near a dead person has...” she paused. “I think it’s like it then has bad spirits in it. It has to be burned, too. This is all necessary to guarantee the hunters will obtain Shyrise.”

  “Shyrise?” Attu asked.

  Farnook and Cray both nodded. “Shyrise is where the Nukeena believe they go after they die.”

  “What is it?”

  Farnook turned back to Cray and repeated Attu’s question. Cray pointed to the west toward the horizon as he explained. “Shyrise, ai...” he said at the end of his answer. He looked wistful.

  “Shyrise is where every Nukeena longs to go after death,” Farnook said. “It is the place where fire meets water.”

  “What?” Attu didn’t understand. Cray had been pointing to the horizon, out to the edges of the water, where the sun set... Oh.

  Farnook saw his understanding. “Yes, where the setting sun meets the water. That brief moment when the two meet, but the water has not yet overcome the sun, is Shyrise. The Nukeena believe it is the one place where both water and fire dwell together. They believe that is where they will live after they go Between. In the sun and on the water, happy forever.”

  “And ohwoot?”

  “I know what that is,” Farnook said. “Ohwoot is what I thought it was, wandering on the edge of the Here and Now among dead spirits who did not get the proper burial, never reaching Shyrise, never being able to reunite with the rest of your people forever in the place of happiness.”

  “Ohwoot,” Cray nodded, his face grave. “Ohwoot nadowna, Soantek.”

  “Soantek?” Farnook asked.

  Cray saw the puzzled look on her face and explained.

  “Without the proper fire burial,” Farnook said. “Soantek means ‘rituals by fire and water, or the one who performs them.”

  “So Soantek is called that because he performs those rituals?”

  “Yes.”

  Attu thought about what Cray had told them. “These things about his people are all good for us to know, especially that there are no others coming to ‘save’ them...but what horrible thing happened to them that they were in such bad condition when they paddled into our bay?”

  Farnook shrugged. “Attu, you know I’ve asked so many times and gotten no answer, but, for you, I’ll try again.”

  Cray leaned toward Farnook as if he sensed she was about to ask yet another question. He began speaking rapidly. She held up her hand after a moment, and he stopped talking long enough for her to tell Attu, “But first, Cray says it’s his turn. He wants to talk with you about what his men will do once they are strong again.”

  Cray, Soantek, Shool, and the other Nukeena gathered with Attu’s Clan that evening by the fire. Dran had been the last Nukeena to awaken, and he was still too weak to walk. The oth
ers carried him to the fireside in a hide sling, fussing over him like he was a poolik.

  “Dran insisted on coming tonight,” Rika told Attu. “I think he realized how much it meant to the others.”

  “I told Cray earlier that our people are waiting for some from our Clan and another Clan who are coming downriver to meet us. I told him we were heading further north once they arrived. Cray seemed concerned about that, but he didn’t say why.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Cray asked many questions about the Ravens, about the women and children left behind and how many might be Nukeena. He said nothing about their ordeal on the water or about the Raven’s attack on their settlement. He said Soantek wanted to share that with everyone tonight.”

  As Attu was speaking, more Nukeena men appeared out of the shadows and quietly sat among them.

  Wariness rose in Attu as the Nukeena men sat. He looked around and saw he was not alone in this. Many others were looking around, and a few of the men reached for the weapons at their sides. Experience had taught them to keep their guard up.

  Soantek moved into the center of the firelight, but did not sit. He wrapped himself in a large hide, decorated with strange symbols, and turned to face Attu, who was sitting with Rika and the rest of his family, including Farnook.

  Soantek motioned for Farnook to help him. She stood, but he waved her back to her place with a smile. “Help,” he said. “Ai?”

  “Ai,” Farnook said.

  And before their eyes, Soantek, sometimes speaking and always acting it out, told the story of a whale hunt and the Raven’s attack.

  Farnook interpreted. “They’d been paddling out,” she said, “far from the shore, far from their home. Most of the hunters went, leaving just a few behind.” Farnook’s words faded into the background as Attu’s people watched Soantek. First, Soantek said his goodbyes to his woman, lifting what must have been a small child to his chest, holding him or her tightly to himself before putting the child down, picking up a heavy pack, and making the motions of getting into the large canoe. He paddled, and paddled, and paddled some more. He moved his arm at the elbow, making his hand arc through the sky.

  “Each one is a day,” Farnook said, saying what most had already discerned. “Five days they paddled, out into the open ocean.”

  Soantek stopped his paddling. He stood leaning forward. Attu saw him, at the bow of the canoe. He dipped his hand into an invisible pouch at his side. He used his finger to paint his face, all the while reciting something in his own tongue. The other Nukeena picked up what he was saying, whispering it with Soantek, their eyes glistening with excitement.

  Suddenly, Soantek was wielding a large iron stone spear. Lips popped at the sight of it. Soantek must have hidden the spear in the hide.

  Ubantu grabbed his own weapon. Several other Nuvik hunters did the same.

  “It’s all right,” Yural said, her eyes never moving from Soantek. “He needs it to tell the story. There is no threat.”

  All around him, Attu felt his people relax. A simple word from Yural was all it took to calm his people. But what if she’s wrong? Attu slid closer to Soantek in case he needed to grab the weapon from him. He knew he was probably overreacting again, but seeing Soantek with that spear had brought back a sudden rush of memories: being surrounded by the Ravens, intimidated during their first gathering, then later threatened, and finally attacked.

  Soantek pulled out another pouch, this time a real one, from under the hide. It was small and dark. In the firelight, Attu could see the hide was covered with intricate designs, some cut into the hide, some sewn on.

  Soantek didn’t open this pouch, but he motioned as if he were, pretending to reach into it. He drew out a finger-full of something and wiped it on the iron stone. He layered the entire spearhead with the substance, then held it away from him as if it had not been a deadly weapon before, but was now dangerous and needed to be feared. He made a motion of rinsing his other hand off in the water flowing past the canoe. He rinsed, then rinsed again, shaking the water off his hand each time, turning his face away from any spray.

  Attu looked at the other Nukeena hunters. They were watching Soantek as if he were holding an evil spirit mussel and was about to eat it. Some of them pulled out their sacred object and held it in front of them as if warding themselves from whatever the pouch and now the spearhead contained.

  “I’ve got to find out what’s in that pouch,” Rika said. “The way he’s handling it, it must be deadly poison.”

  Attu nodded, but didn’t take his eyes from Soantek. He tried not to think about the white berries of the Ravens, but couldn’t help it. Maybe these men do know the Ravens after all...have we saved murderers? Reflexively, he reached for his own weapon and placed it across his lap.

  Soantek lifted the “poison-covered” spear over his head, then lowered it to the ready position, standing motionless, his arm raised but the weight of the spear resting on his shoulder as he gazed off toward something in the distance only he could see. Strangely, as Soantek stood there in the patient hunter’s stance, Attu grew less wary. He realized he was clenching and unclenching his hands around his spear as the hunter’s rush of excitement coursed through him.

  A flash of movement as Soantek mimicked throwing the spear. The other Nukeena called out, as he apparently had struck true. Soantek used the hide, casting a large shadow out over the water at the shore, an animal surfacing. Attu saw the huge whale fish, saw it rise up out of the water, blow, then dive.

  Soantek threw more spears. He fell backward as if the canoe had surged forward. He cried out.

  “They’re being dragged,” Farnook said. “But the hit was good.”

  Soantek moved back and forth, back and forth, sometimes holding on to the sides of the imaginary canoe he was riding in, sometimes hauling in or letting out rope. The Nukeena hunters called out, apparently telling Soantek what he needed to do. Attu felt as if he were in the boat with them. Soon everyone was calling out, Nukeena and Nuvik alike, encouraging Soantek not to give up on this huge prey.

  Soantek stopped. He moved to the side and pulled his spear up and out as if removing it from the whale fish. He tied more ropes over the side and began paddling again, slowly, as if he were very tired and the whale fish was so heavy it made forward progress hard.

  Several of Attu’s hunters popped their lips in delight at this acting out of the hunt, and one called out to Farnook to find out what kind of whale fish the Nukeena men hunted. But Farnook was watching Soantek and the other Nukeena, her face solemn.

  Attu realized the Nukeena men were now remembering their return.

  Soantek leaped out of his imaginary canoe. He moved to the fire at the center of their group and grabbed a limb by the end that had not caught fire yet, lifting it as a torch. He turned in circles, his face in agony. He moved this way and that, bending over, and each time he did, he raised the torch, his voice now a keening wail.

  Several of the children awoke to his voice, and their cries joined Soantek’s and his hunters’ as he searched the remains of their ravaged settlement. Attu felt tears in his own eyes as he watched Soantek mimic creating a log boat, then another, and still another, and piling bodies upon them. He paddled them out into the water, where he used the torch he still held to light them.

  Soantek stopped, slipping to the ground, his hands covering his face.

  The Nuvik women hushed their children, and the fire crackled in the near silence, punctuated only with a few last cries and the hushed voices of the women calming the children.

  “They didn’t know why this had happened,” Farnook said as Soantek spoke, his eyes vacant in the firelight. “They had no enemies in this land. They were a peaceful people. Yet here they were, returned from a successful hunt to find their people all dead or missing. Not a single one remained alive to tell them what had happened, who had done this horrible thing. They are now without families, their women gone, their children gone.”

  Soantek reached out a ha
nd, gently resting it on a nearby Nuvik child’s knee as the child sat on her mother’s lap. The little one watched him from under dark lashes, but did not pull away. Attu was proud of the child and prouder still of the mother when she reached out, resting her hand upon Soantek’s.

  “Nadowna fuva owani nosha,” Soantek said, his voice thick with emotion. He looked at Attu, and Attu felt his own spirit breaking as if he, too, had lost everyone in his family and now sat as broken as Soantek and his men. “Nadowna fuva.”

  A most horrible day indeed, Attu thought. They leave for the hunt, come back with a great whale fish, and discover everyone who matters to them has been stolen or murdered.

  Cray stood.

  Farnook did her best to translate. “They vowed revenge. They searched far to the south first because they’d come from the north back to their settlement many times and had never seen any other people. They assumed the raiders had come from the south and returned there.”

  But they hadn’t, Attu thought. The Ravens continued heading north, instead. He looked to his father and saw him shaking his head. What would have happened if they’d headed north and found the Ravens? Would the Ravens have pretended not to know about the raid? Hidden the women? Drawn the Nukeena hunters into a trap and slaughtered them? Or pulled them in and made them part of their Clan? They might have considered killing the three Nukeena women they’d taken, just to keep their secret. Kagit was that kind of man. He’d have considered these strong hunters a great trade for the lives of three women.

  Attu pulled his roaming thoughts back as Farnook continued. “They found no survivors nor the ones who did this vile thing. They traveled far to the south, where they heard stories of the Ravens, saw other Clans who had been attacked, but they were not welcome to the south. Their canoes were like these Ravens, people said. They would not trust them, even to stay for one night, talk, and eat with them. So they went back on the water, hunting to eat, and searching. Moons passed.” Farnook watched as Cray made motions with his hands. “Many, many moons. The men grew lonely. They returned to one of the larger Clans whose men paddled up and down the nearby river and ocean shoreline trading goods from other Clans. They thought this Clan might be willing, now some time had passed, to trade for women, or know a Clan that would. The Nukeena men were desperate to start new families. But the Clan would not trade with them and said no others they knew would ever trade women to strangers.”