The Wolf in the Whale Read online

  “I’ll speak with Ataata about this.”

  Saartok dropped my hand and stepped back. “No! Please! My father will be so angry!”

  “Saartok,” I said sternly. “This affects all of us. If Ququk breaks such a sacred agliruti, the entire camp will suffer. As it is, we’ll barely make it through the winter with so few hunters and so many mouths to feed. Do you want all of us to pay for your mistakes?”

  I must’ve spoken more harshly than I intended, for tears brightened her eyes again. “Please,” she whispered. “What should I do?”

  I was too young now to provide for a wife, but one day I’d be both the best hunter in the camp and the world’s most powerful angakkuq. Saartok held no attraction for me with her limp hair, stooped shoulders, and the first faint tracks of age fanning from her eyes, but I had few options.

  I turned to face the older woman, squaring my shoulders. “When I am old enough, I will marry you.” Ataata would no doubt approve of my generous sacrifice.

  To my astonishment, Saartok began to laugh. Not the gentle laughter directed at the foibles of children, but the loud, long gales directed at a fool. This woman, who so rarely even smiled, now doubled over with glee as if she were in pain.

  “Omat,” she finally gasped, “I couldn’t marry a girl!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A girl?” I heard myself croak.

  Saartok clapped a hand over her mouth, her laughter suddenly silenced. “A’aa, Omat. Don’t you know what you are?”

  “I… I am Puja’s brother, her son, and her brother’s son. I am Ataata’s son, his grandson. I am… many things.”

  “You’re also a girl.” She laid a hand on my shoulder.

  I shrugged her off violently. “What are you saying?”

  “You don’t have a penis, like the other boys.” She spoke to me as if I were a baby, when before she’d shown the deference due a man.

  “I know that,” I snapped. I wasn’t stupid. I peed squatting, like a woman, while the other boys stood, gleefully directing their stream in patterns across the snow. Kiasik and Tapsi teased me, certainly, about my girl’s parts, but no one ever questioned my maleness. When I took my father’s name, I inherited his spirit, and was raised as he had been raised. I’d always imagined my adult life would be a continuation of my childhood—I’d become a great hunter, take a wife, father children. Eventually I’d lead our camp as Ataata had done. Now I felt my whole life tumble apart like a calving glacier. My heart raced; sweat pooled in the palms of my mittens.

  Ataata. I must talk to Ataata.

  “Wait!” Saartok called as I began running toward camp. “Can I still have the fox tail?”

  I tossed the whole animal to the ground and raced away, no longer hampered by Saartok’s crawling pace. At the crest of the tallest hill, I paused for a moment with my camp spread before me, my breath coming in heaving gasps, my eyes stinging with childish tears. There, amid the snow-covered qarmait, lay my entire world. And now I no longer knew if I could claim it as my own.

  Ataata emerged from our qarmaq’s tunnel. I watched him stretch upward, yawning hugely. He squinted at the lightening sky, checking the pace of Malina’s rise. I’d seen him do the same thing nearly every day of my life—look at the sky to gauge the weather by the shape of the clouds, the color of the light, just as he had taught me to do. Just as all hunters must do. Why had he bothered to teach me if I’d never hold a harpoon? I stood shaking, my fear now giving way to anger. Ataata turned toward me and raised a hand to his eyes. Something in the way my fists clenched at my sides made him start toward me. As he walked up the hill, his stride still long despite his age, I saw the concern in his furrowed brow. I almost ran from him, suddenly unwilling to face the answers to my questions. But when I turned away, my grandfather clasped my arm.

  “Where are you going? What’s wrong, Little Son?”

  “Little Son,” I spat back at him, unable now to stem the flood of tears coursing down my cheeks. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “That I’m… that I’m a girl.”

  “Aii…,” he sighed in dismay. He dropped my arm. His shoulders slumped. Even his mustache seemed to wilt.

  “‘Aii’? That’s all you can say?” I shouted like a little child, but I didn’t care.

  “Omat,” he said softly. “You have a girl’s body. Didn’t you realize?”

  “You told me I’d be a hunter!”

  “You will be. You have a girl’s body, but a man’s spirit.”

  “I don’t understand.” My voice teetered on the edge of a wail.

  “You’re still a child, Omat,” he continued, his voice as calm and clear as a puddle of snowmelt. “As a child, you’re no different from the other boys, and so I’ve treated you no differently. Only when you begin to bleed will you be a woman.”

  I knew what he spoke of. Every moon, Puja and Saartok spent several days isolated in a small iglu lest they scare off the animals. I’d just never paid much mind before. A woman’s cycles didn’t concern me.

  “A woman!” I choked. “Why did you bother to train me as a man?”

  “To respect the soul of your namesake. But when you bleed, many will say that you may no longer hunt, no longer live as a man. That’s what my own father would have said,” he admitted. “And yet I can’t believe that you must change. Perhaps it’s my own foolishness. My own desire to have you still as my son.” He smiled gently. “I haven’t trusted myself in this. I even asked great Uqsuralik about you.”

  “What—what did he say?” I imagined my grandfather conversing with the Ice Bear Spirit, walking by his side like an old friend.

  “He wouldn’t answer me.” Ataata’s voice darkened. “A cloud lies over your future, Little Son. Even the spirits don’t know what awaits you. So I decided long ago that I’ll leave it up to you when the time comes. Perhaps you’ll choose to live as a woman after all.”

  “Why would I choose that?” I spluttered.

  He laughed. “Then you will continue as a man. You have the makings of a great hunter, even if you’ll never be as tall as the other men. Some may protest. You’ll have to prove yourself more useful as a hunter than as a wife or mother. But you should know that I’ll always stand behind any decision you make.” He lowered his brows, but the laughter didn’t leave his eyes. “Did you really think I’d raise you as a man and then take all that away from you?”

  “I… I didn’t know. When Saartok said…”

  “Saartok? Hnnnn…,” he said, as if that explained everything. “She’s wrapped herself in grief for too long—she hasn’t been listening. But the rest of the camp understands. You are a boy. You will be a man.”

  His words couldn’t dispel my worry. “When will this blood come?”

  “It might come soon, or perhaps not for a few more winters. Or, maybe, never at all.”

  “Never?” I asked, my voice tight with hope.

  Ataata chuckled. “It’s a rare thing, but sometimes the spirits look down on a child like you, one whose body and soul do not match, and they stop the blood from coming. I’ve never heard of a woman growing a penis, but the legends do tell of the uiluaqtaq, who is neither woman nor man but something in between. A uiluaqtaq never takes a husband, but lives instead as a hunter and never bleeds, never bears children.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll be,” I said firmly, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “I’ll pray every day to Taqqiq the Moon to withhold his blood from me. And to the spirits of the ancestors. And to the animals, too, for good measure. They’ll listen to me. The caribou listened, didn’t he?”

  Ataata bent to place his cheek against mine. I did not push him away. “You will always be my son, Omat. I will always be your father. No blood can change that. I have raised you to be a great angakkuq, a leader of your people. If that’s what you want, then I promise you it will happen.”

  I didn’t reply, too uncertain, too afraid, to trust my own voice. I let him lead me back to camp. One by o
ne, my aunts and uncles and cousins crawled from their qarmait to look at the sky. Malina’s rays limned the horizon with a single line of gold, bright as a lamp’s curved wick. We’d seen such a display for two dawns now. I held my breath, suddenly afraid that darkness would quench the light. That Ataata had been wrong. This time, the Sun would never return.

  Instead, the glowing line broadened, brightened. The men and women around me gasped, and the Sun rose farther, as if pulled upward by their indrawn breath. Color striped the sky: the dark red of old blood above the hilltops brightening to the fresh magenta of fireweed before fading into the gold of a blooming cinquefoil, the pale yellow of an ice bear’s fur, and the pastel blue of a snail’s shell. Finally the Sun herself rose above the horizon like the bright hump of a white whale. Ataata led us in song.

  I rise up from rest,

  Moving swiftly as the raven’s wing

  I rise up to meet the day—

  My face turned from the dark of night,

  My gaze toward the dawn,

  Toward the whitening dawn.

  Then, as if satisfied by her single suck of air, the Sun sank once more into the deep.

  Ataata placed his arm around my shoulders, and I felt my fear finally subside. Every winter, he promised that the Sun would return after the heralding stars arrived—and he’d always been right. Now he promised I wouldn’t be a woman if I didn’t want to. And I believed him.

  Kiasik and Millik had hastened to the qarmait to snuff out the lamps—a task for children, but one assigned to the young people of our childless camp. Every winter, I’d followed them, racing to see who might douse the flame first, then watching Puja and the other grown women relight the lamps to honor the Sun’s rebirth. But today I stayed beside Ataata.

  I watched Ququk shepherd his family back inside their own qarmaq. Saartok handed my discarded fox to her mother while trying to avoid her father’s gaze. I’d never noticed before how the old man’s face always turned toward his daughter’s slim form. Now that I saw, shivers coursed over my skin.

  “Do you think Saartok could marry Tapsi?” I asked Ataata.

  He fingered the patch of hair beneath his lower lip, considering me carefully before replying. “Tapsi’s no real hunter. Ququk wouldn’t agree to it. And Saartok still pines for Nasugruk. She may have to wait until another man comes to our camp.”

  My grandfather often spoke of the day when others would come—a day we all hoped for, but one I was far too young and impatient to wait for. If Ataata was right—and Ataata was always right—I would one day lead our people through the worlds of earth and spirit. But I was still a youth, and that time felt impossibly far away. Why wait so long? I would start proving myself a man by helping Saartok.

  And I would start tonight.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When Ataata and I returned to our own qarmaq, Puja had already relit the lamp. She sat beside it, hard at work, softening a seal hide with her teeth. She pretended she hadn’t seen us earlier, but I knew she’d caught our heated discussion on the hill. She shot Ataata a searching glance, and my grandfather widened his eyes in silent acknowledgment of our conversation.

  She spat out the piece of hide. “How was your walk with Saartok? I saw you leave together.”

  “I wanted to be alone.”

  “You’re alone too much. Didn’t you enjoy walking with her?”

  “Saartok is just a girl,” I said carelessly. “No real company for a hunter.”

  Ataata smiled, but Puja looked stern. “Then I won’t speak to you, either, for surely a woman like me is no good company.”

  Usually I would’ve pressed my nose upon her cheek, asking for forgiveness. But I had little patience for querulous old folk when there was work to be done.

  “I have to practice,” I shot over my shoulder. When I lifted the sacred drum from where it hung beside the lamp, Puja opened her mouth to comment. She never liked my taking the instrument away from camp; she didn’t trust me not to bang the delicate skin along the ground—the skin my dead father had so painstakingly stretched and smoothed. But today she held her tongue. I was approaching adulthood and knew more mysteries than she. The drum was my inheritance, and I’d brook no arguments about its treatment. Besides, Ataata merely smiled at my antics, and it was not Puja’s place to question him.

  On the hills above the camp, far from curious eyes and listening ears, I flung my song into the sky. The new words came easily to my lips. I sang all through the long twilight, until the sky grew black as peat and spangled with stars. Clouds swirled in, ghostly white in the Moon’s glow, and I danced with them, knowing that Sila the Air moved to the rhythm of my drumbeats.

  The howls of dogs pierced my song—a storm approached. If I didn’t return soon, Puja would worry. Yet no storm would stop tonight’s celebration. In the distance, I could see the camp springing to life. The glowing qaggiq beckoned to me, the oil lamps inside pouring light through the seams around each snow block. Ipaq had promised to bring the char he’d dragged through an ice hole. Ataata would contribute a bearded seal. My fox meat would be a paltry offering in comparison, but my song would serve as my true gift. They said I was descended from a line of great song-singers whose words could inspire any hunter, chasten any enemy. Tonight I would make my ancestors proud. I would prove myself as much a man as anyone born with a man’s parts.

  Inside the qaggiq, my confidence fled almost immediately. Puja pointedly ignored me, but Kiasik beckoned me to join him with a tilt of his chin.

  “Are you ready?” I’d rarely heard my milk-brother speak so gently. Certainly never to me. He gestured to the drum in my lap, but I knew he meant something more. Puja must have told him about my conversation with Ataata.

  He knows, I realized. Perhaps he’d always known. No wonder he so often cautioned me not to show any weakness. We will be great hunters together, he’d said when we were children. Great hunters couldn’t act like girls.

  I ran my finger around the hoop, checking the skin for tautness. “Ataata taught me to sing. Ipaq to drum. Puja to listen. And you… you taught me not to fear.”

  He held my gaze for a moment, the softness quickly vanishing beneath fierce pride. Then he passed me a portion of seal meat. A lower vertebra. He returned to his own meal, as if the gesture meant nothing. But I understood it perfectly: only men ate from the bottom of a bearded seal’s spine.

  Ququk sat between his wife and daughter on one of the snow benches that ringed the qaggiq. As usual, his thick mustache and tuft of beard only accentuated his perpetual frown. Even on this night of celebration, the old man didn’t smile. I’d never asked Ataata where Ququk’s anger came from. Perhaps he’d known joy before his son died upon the ice. But unlike Ipaq and Ataata, Ququk had no grandchildren to adopt. Saartok was the only child left to him. And he didn’t want to let her go.

  As I stepped into the center of the qaggiq, I could barely bring myself to look Ququk in the eye. Saartok couldn’t, either; she kept her gaze on the small upper vertebra in her hands. But the bright fox fur spiraling around her long braids gave me the courage to raise my drum.

  The women kept passing meat and fish. Ipaq had just finished dancing in his owl mask with its carven face and feathered ruff, and there was much talking as everyone praised his skills.

  I began to beat the drum, spinning it in time to my own swaying body, my stamping feet, striking one edge and then the other. I found the patience Ataata taught. I waited until every face turned toward me. Until the chattering ceased and their exhalations rose in a silent, white fog.

  Finally I took a deep breath and began to sing.

  “This is the story of Taqqiq and Malina.”

  Everyone smiled, eyes wide. Ataata had told this story many times.

  “This is a tale of the time before time, but their camp was not so different from our own, and the laws they broke still hold sway.” I didn’t give more exposition than that, trusting the story to work its magic.

  “Taqqiq and Malina were brother a
nd sister, both very beautiful, with full round faces and great shining eyes.” I circled the qaggiq as I spoke, my words drawing my listeners into the tale.

  “In the winter, the men entered a qaggiq much like ours. For days they ate and sang, while the women stayed in their homes. One night, while Taqqiq feasted, his sister Malina lay naked in her empty iglu. She was so lonely that she let her lamp go out, and she lay in darkness, not bothering to relight the wick.”

  I heard Puja’s disdainful snort—she had no patience for lazy women. I repressed a grin: already my most exacting critic was caught in the net of my tale. “Malina heard a sound above her. She tried to sit up, but a man’s hand fell across her mouth, and a man’s body pressed her against the ground. In the dark, she could not see his face. ‘No,’ said Malina. ‘I do not want you. Beware, for my brother Taqqiq is a strong hunter and he will surely kill you.’ But the stranger would not listen, and he took the girl against her will.

  “The next night, Malina tended her lamp with care, but a strange wind blew through the vent in her roof and again the man came to her in the dark. This time he grabbed at her breasts and bit them with his sharp teeth until they bled.”

  Millik gasped. My cousin’s fear only made me slow my song. I would drag out the horror like a hunter slowly unspooling a fishing line before jerking his catch ashore.

  “But when he came to her on the third night, Malina dipped her fingers into the lamp and smeared her attacker’s forehead with black soot. The next day, she gathered with the other women to welcome the men as they emerged from the qaggiq. Malina peered at every man, looking for the black mark, so she might know her attacker. ‘I will tell my brother, Taqqiq, what has happened. He will avenge me.’”