The Wolf in the Whale Read online

  On sunrise of the third day, I no longer felt my hunger. I watched the purple-gold clouds move slowly across the bloody sky, my skin prickling. Something approached.

  Still, I didn’t notice the Wolf until he was right before me. A huge animal who’d walked straight out of the burning Sun.

  Like most wolves in my land, he was pure white, but no one could mistake him for a regular animal. Normal wolves didn’t meet a man’s eye. Normal wolves didn’t stand as tall as an Inuk. From where I sat, he towered above me, looking down with bright yellow eyes, head cocked.

  “Singarti…,” I breathed, my voice faint and ragged from disuse. The being lowered its snout in acknowledgment. I’d found my spirit guide. What next? Ataata’s instructions had ended here.

  Suddenly it didn’t matter what I wanted to do—all I could do was scream.

  Unimaginable pain stabbed through my chest, my gut, my groin. Toppling over, I curled into a tight ball. The Wolf sat back on his haunches and watched me impassively, following my movements with his glowing eyes. Tears coursed down my cheeks, and I reached up to brush them away, embarrassed by my weakness. My hand came away covered in blood.

  “What’s happening to me?” I gasped. Blood seeped from my eyes, my nose, my ears. When I tried to wipe it away, my skin sloughed off in great sheets, like flesh deadened from frostbite or sunburn. Another sharp stab of pain in my gut, a wetness on my lap. I lifted up my parka in alarm; the red and white coils of my intestines squeezed forth from my navel. Other organs slipped from between my legs, thick lumps of hot kidney and liver and spleen stretching me wide. Only my heart stayed put, each beat pumping another gush of blood down my cheeks and throat, blinding, choking, deafening. I could no longer scream, or see, or breathe…

  I awoke to a large tongue laving my face. Through my closed eyelids, I saw a vision from my own past.

  I am cradled in the snow, wrapped in white fur. A huge wolf is the whole world. It licks my face, my neck, my stomach, scraping away my mother’s blood. Then Puja comes, eyes red with tears, to raise me to her breast and take me home.

  A part of me had always wondered if my aunt had exaggerated the story of my birth—now I knew she had not.

  I opened my eyes. The blood had vanished not only from my body but from my clothes and the ground as well. I raised a hand to my stomach; everything was in place, as if the events of the morning had never happened.

  Singarti lay with his head on his forepaws, his nose close to my own, his yellow eyes searching mine.

  Omat.

  His mouth didn’t move, yet I heard his voice in my head, a noise meant only for a fellow wolf, too high-pitched for humans.

  You have died. You have been reborn. As your father was before you. And your grandfather before him. Look around.

  I did as I was told, getting unsteadily to my feet. The great Wolf rose beside me, lending me his broad back for support. When we both stood, his head was level with my own.

  Breathe out. Breathe in. Release your human soul. Take in the spirit of the wolf.

  I obeyed, pushing out my own spirit on a shaky breath. I inhaled: it felt like breathing fire. My neck lengthened, my ears moved, but this time I felt no pain. When I looked down, my feet had become wide-splayed paws. Next to Singarti, I looked a pup, but I was a wolf full grown.

  Twilight spread across the valley like the shadow of a raven’s wing. The Sun set behind the mountain, turning the snow the purple of new-blossomed saxifrage. Although I’d seen the sight many times before, something had changed. Things didn’t look different, exactly; they smelled different, the scents sharp and clear enough to taste. The air seeping from the cave behind me was mold and blood, excrement and musk. The air around the Wolf was lightning.

  I lifted my nose to the valley. Willow leaves and lichen. A stream carving a tunnel beneath the snow. A whiff of lemming, fox, ptarmigan. What to my human eyes had looked like a barren valley now revealed itself to my wolf senses as a land full of prey.

  Though I burned with curiosity, I knew not to ask my guide foolish questions. Only in the direst of circumstances, when survival lay in the balance, might we ask the great spirits for advice, lest they get impatient and refuse to come to our summons. For now, I’d simply follow his lead.

  With a single thrust of his powerful hind legs, Singarti left the cave entrance and bounded out across the valley—I followed in his wake. I’d never run so easily on snow. My broad feet did not sink in the drifts nor slide on the ice, but silently skimmed the surface as we dashed along, tails outstretched.

  We headed toward the smell of the ptarmigan; as we approached, the odor of its blood lay thick on my tongue. Singarti slowed to a careful stalk. I followed him behind a snowdrift, hiding from our prey. With my wolf’s ears, I heard the bird scratching through the thinning snow for food.

  We will capture it between us.

  His words didn’t resound in my mind as they had before. Instead he spoke in the wolves’ true tongue: a mixture of gesture, posture, sounds, and odors as intelligible to me as human speech.

  Yes. I surprised myself by responding in kind, bowing my head and averting my glance in a gesture of submission.

  As one, we leapt from behind the drift and pounced on the skinny bird from either side. A sorry specimen, ragged in the patchy beginnings of its brown summer plumage, but my first kill as a wolf. To kill a bird with my teeth, to feel the hot blood spurting into my throat, was a pleasure beyond anything I’d known. For once, I didn’t need to preserve the feathered skin for mitten linings or the fragile bones for sewing needles. An Inuk planned for the future; a wolf lived in the now. Saliva dripped from my jaws as I prepared to tip the bird down my throat, but one direct stare from Singarti froze me in place. The big Wolf seized my muzzle with his teeth, hard enough to hurt but not to draw blood.

  I flopped to the ground and dropped the bird at his feet.

  Singarti released me. I whined softly, sidling up to him and licking his jaws, tail tucked. I am sorry for not offering you the kill first, Great Wolf.

  He ate a few bites of the bird—more for show than anything else, I suspected, for how could a spirit wolf feel hunger?—and left me the rest of the carcass. I coughed a bit on the feathers sticking to my tongue, and Singarti’s jaws hung open in unmistakable wolf laughter.

  Above me, a raven cawed once, looking for a taste. A cunning bird. A pest and a thief. I placed a paw over my kill, but Singarti looked at me sharply, his pupils narrowed in displeasure.

  The raven is our ally in this world. We watch where it flies to know where the prey is, and in return, it eats from our kills.

  A few scraps of meat still clung to the narrow bones; I grudgingly moved aside. The raven alighted on the carcass, cawed its gratitude loudly in my direction, and began to tear the meat off with its sharp, black beak. White wolf, black raven, an eternal partnership.

  When the bird finished its meal, it launched into the sky, rising in lazy circles toward the clouds. I marveled at the ease with which it conquered the bounds of earth.

  Go ahead. You are an angakkuq now. You are free.

  I breathed out. I breathed in. I became a raven. Legs turned to wings. Snout to beak. My hearing was no longer so acute, but I could see each strand of fur on Singarti’s back. Without pausing to think, I swept my wings downward and pushed off with my scaly legs, pressing each talon against the snow. I was aloft.

  For a moment, I wobbled in the air, afraid I’d plummet back to the ground—then instinct took over. A warm updraft lifted me higher, and I angled my tail to steady myself, each feather bending and twisting of its own accord. The wind rushed in my narrow nostrils, blowing my feathers tight against my face. Another pump of my powerful wings, another, and I flew as high as the clouds.

  Singarti no longer looked so big. Only his black nose distinguished his white form from the white field beneath him. I turned my eyes to the sky. The other raven cawed out. I couldn’t understand its tongue, but I knew it wanted me to follow.


  We flew over the valley, leaving the Wolf behind. We passed over the entrance to my cave. My time of starvation seemed many winters behind me. The wind off the whale mountain blew cold, pushing us forward. I did as the raven did, allowing the eddies and currents to lift me up and over the highest peak, so we might swoop down the other side. I’d never been up the mountain’s flanks. My people always skirted the bottom, for little life existed on the rocky slopes. Even with my raven’s vision, I saw no animals. Still, the mountain had a magnificence all its own that I’d never bothered to notice before. From above, its towering flukes were flexed fingers reaching toward the sky. The first meltwater of spring cascaded from the cliffs like poured sunlight.

  Beyond the mountain lay the long glacier-carved valley that led to my own home, pressed up against the icy shore. I could see the low mounds of our few qarmait, even see Puja staking a sealskin out to dry and Ataata shaving a caribou antler into a new runner for his sled. And around them—endless expanses barren of humanity. Our home had never seemed so small, so lonely to me. And I had never felt more powerful. Powerful enough, even, to help my people finally escape their solitude.

  The Moon had risen, and his wide crescent beckoned me like an outstretched arm. I will go farther than Ataata ever has, I decided. I would visit Taqqiq himself, as the greatest angakkuit of my people once had. I would demand that he send other Inuit to our camp.

  I pumped my wings and headed for the Moon.

  My raven companion slammed against me.

  We tumbled downward for a heart-stopping moment before the wind once more caught our wings.

  The other bird cawed angrily, nipping at my wing tips. I cawed back and turned sharply to dodge its next blow. It chased me back over the mountain, down its slopes, into the snowy valley. Before me, I could see the cave where my journey had begun. I felt a moment of apprehension: I hadn’t bound my limbs as Ataata did during his trances. Would I even have a body to return to?

  Swooping into the cave entrance, I landed heavily on unsteady bird legs, relieved to find my slumped form just where I’d left it.

  The other raven landed gracefully nearby. I stepped away from it hurriedly, anxious to avoid another attack, but it simply preened its feathers, suddenly content to ignore me.

  Taking advantage of the sudden respite, I looked at my human body. Unlike Ataata, who thrashed and trembled in his trance state, I lay motionless. My skin was pale, my breathing invisible, like that of one stripped of his soul. But my fascination subsumed my concern: I’d never seen myself clearly before.

  Sometimes, on a summer day, a glimpse of my reflection might waver in a pool of meltwater. A young man had always looked back; despite my lack of a mustache, no woman’s tattoos decorated my face or hands, and my parka’s small hood and short hem made my sex clear. Now I hopped closer to my body, peering up at this stranger. My jaw was strong for a woman’s but still far smaller than a man’s. My feathery brows, too large for beauty, looked just like Puja’s, and something of Ataata showed in the way my nose met the divot above my lips. The thick lashes that swept my cheeks like a raven’s wings must’ve been a gift from my mother. Tiny moles lay scattered across my high cheekbones—markings no other Inuk in my camp possessed. Puja always claimed her tears had left these shadows on my infant face, but I wondered now if the great spirits themselves had marked me, signaling their favor. I was the chosen of the Wolf, of the Raven, of the Moon himself. How else could I have so easily transcended my human form?

  Maybe I don’t need to return to my body at all. Why continue life as a man trapped in a girl’s body when I could just as easily fly into the heavens or run with the wolves? Then the figure before me twitched, a faint frown passing across its lips, and I recognized Puja’s expression in the gesture. My family needed me. Why learn the angakkuq’s magic if not to use it for their benefit? The raven stopped its grooming and cocked its head at me. It let out a final croak to push me along.

  All right, I thought, I hear you. Reluctantly I breathed out the raven spirit and breathed in my own once more. I opened my eyes and found myself back in my own body, disoriented and weak from hunger. Everything seemed darker than I remembered it. The Sun had set, and without my animal vision, I felt nearly blind. Still, I couldn’t mistake the approaching glow of yellow eyes.

  Singarti growled low and stalked into the cave, his white form aglow in the starlight.

  The bird says you tried to fly to the Moon.

  “With raven’s wings, what’s to stop me?”

  You are a visitor to the spirit world. You are not of it. Do not journey where you are not wanted. This is the only warning I will give you.

  “I can still be a better hunter than any other man. With the power of wolf and raven, I can see farther, run faster—I’ll be unstoppable.”

  Again that rumbling growl, more felt than heard. Does your grandfather hunt as an ice bear?

  I bowed my head, afraid I knew what he was about to say.

  The gift of transformation is a precious one. Do not disrespect it—or it may be taken away. The raven cawed its agreement. I couldn’t help scowling in its direction. When I looked back toward my helping spirit, Singarti had disappeared. No footprints marked the snow.

  The raven cawed again. I could’ve sworn it laughed at me. I swiped at the pest, but it hopped backward, easily avoiding the half-hearted blow, croaking all the while. Then it swept up into the sky, its black form quickly dissolving into the surrounding night. I longed to follow it—to fly on my own wings back to the camp and transform before my family’s eyes. Once and for all, I could prove to Ququk and Kiasik and anyone else who doubted me that I was strong enough to lead them. But Singarti’s words echoed in my mind: I must save my powers for the direst circumstances.

  I collected a tuft of wolf fur left on the ground. White as new snow. Carefully I placed the fur in my amulet pouch, where it curled around the walrus carving.

  Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply. No longer could I smell with a wolf’s nose or hear with his keen ears, but my own senses felt more acute. I remembered Ataata saying that at the height of his powers, he could hear the ice forming from far away and the caribou moving across the tundra.

  I listened with my whole being—I heard only a hare scratching through the snow outside the cave’s mouth. I lunged to catch it, but my human speed couldn’t match a wolf’s. I sighed. Right now, the hunger in my belly and the exhaustion behind my eyes prevented further exertions.

  It was a long way back to camp on tired human feet.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For the next three summers, as the old men of my camp grew weaker, and we all waited in vain for Saartok to give birth, I honed my skills as an angakkuq. I collected the bones of the animals from the hunt—the feet of the hare, the tusk of the walrus, the beak of the raven—and I felt the spirits of the earth within them. A few times, when starvation loomed, I entered a trance state and flew through the air, seeing my camp spread out below—the hide tents in summer, qarmait in deep winter, igluit on the spring sea ice. When I was a wolf or raven, my senses heightened just as Ataata had once described. I could hear the thunder of caribou, smell the return of spring, feel the slow swell of the tides. I could call upon the animals to surrender themselves to us for a good hunt, or upon the wind to calm while we traveled by kayak and umiaq along the shore of the great ocean. The spirits didn’t always obey my commands, but more often than not, they did. Ataata grew older. More and more, the angakkuq’s duties fell upon my shoulders.

  These were joyful seasons for me, although the lingering cloud of Saartok’s barrenness shadowed all we did.

  At least Tapsi and Saartok seemed happy together. I felt my first act as a leader of the camp—bringing them together—had been successful. They remained childless, but not for lack of trying. They slept in their own tent, but we could all hear their exertions long into the night. A new sound in the camp. The older men and women rarely touched each other anymore. Occasionally, as had always been the traditi
on, one of the other hunters’ wives would offer herself to Ataata for a night, but whether out of lack of interest or lack of will, my grandfather rarely accepted.

  Sometimes, in the morning, as we all crawled naked from beneath the hides, I noticed Kiasik’s erect penis. Puja and Ataata would tease him about it until he disappeared somewhere and returned in a much happier mood. Sometimes I’d roll over in the middle of the night to find him beside me, stroking himself. There was no shame in this. Better he satisfy himself than try to take one of the women in the camp, disobeying the agliruti against close relatives lying together.

  As I had never reached womanhood, my breasts remained quite small, but neither was I completely a man. Always I felt myself balancing between worlds like a hunter on an ice floe, worried I might tip off and drown at any moment. I soon started wearing my light atigi and trousers to sleep. With my entire family crowded nearby, I found the sleeping furs unbearably hot, but I couldn’t lie naked beside Kiasik. I was too scared of what he might be thinking—and what I might think in return. Finally I astounded everyone by building my own small qarmaq so I might sleep alone. No one understood.

  “Won’t you be cold?” asked Puja.

  “And lonely?” asked Ataata.

  “It’s better this way,” I assured them.

  As we traveled on foot across the tundra on the summer caribou hunt, I tried to avoid walking too near my cousin. A full-grown man, Kiasik towered over me. His broad shoulders strained the confines of his atigi. Puja would soon have to make him a new one from the caribou we killed. He had a thick mustache for so young a hunter, and he pulled at it when angry or impatient.

  He was still the first to leap at any prey, the first to jump upon a floating ice pan. Sometimes his impulsiveness secured him the day’s best catch—sometimes only an empty game sack and a wet parka. While Ataata watched with a mixture of pride and dismay, the women of our camp, old and young alike, watched his loose, confident gait with the keen interest of falcons tracking their prey. To my shame, more often than not, I found myself doing the same.