Ivory and Bone(18)

I paddle closer, moving in toward Pek, who waits beneath a low, overhanging ledge. He loads his harpoon into an atlatl and readies his throw.

The first seals reach the rocks across from him and surface, heads and necks rising above water as they look back to see if they are safe. As more heads appear, Pek takes aim. He lets the harpoon fly.

His aim is perfect, but his target dives just before the spike reaches him. The harpoon slashes into the sea but the rope stays slack—there is no strike. Hurrying, hoping to get another opportunity before the last seal dives, Pek pulls back on the rope to reel it in, but it catches and pulls fast. The harpoon must be caught in a cleft beneath the surface.

Watching him, I think through the process he will follow next—paddle closer, flick a wave along the rope to loosen the spike.

But Pek is impatient. He knows this is his last chance for a kill today. He doesn’t paddle closer. Instead, he tries to loosen his harpoon by pulling sharply on the rope.

In an instant, his kayak flips.

One moment he is there, the next he is gone.

Pek has grown up paddling on the sea. This is what I tell myself as I watch and wait. This is Pek, who learned to paddle when he was still a child. Pek, who taught Roon how to right an inverted kayak.

“Roll,” I whisper to myself. “Come on, Pek, roll.”

A moment later I strip off my parka and untie the belt that holds me in place. With my knife in my hand I dive into the sea.

Under the surface, Pek’s hair fans out around his head, floating up and over his face so I cannot see his features. It doesn’t matter. I only have to see the way his hands claw at the belt holding him in, trying to loosen it so he can escape. Immediately I know why he hasn’t rolled—while on the hunt, he knotted the kayak belt to his rope and wound it around his waist, a risky trick to prevent a stuck seal from getting away, taking his harpoon and rope with him. But Pek’s harpoon isn’t stuck in a seal—it’s stuck in a crevice, the taut rope anchoring his flipped kayak to the rocks. Rings of rope swirl in tangled spirals around him.

His hands grasp at the water between us. He’s running out of time.

Above water the knife in my hand could cut three of these cords in one stroke. Underwater, each cord bloated and slick, it takes two strokes to break just one.

Time changes, each passing moment slowing and widening, like a ripple of the one before. I cut through one . . . then two . . . then three strands. Curls of rope float open and outward. A fourth strand . . . a fifth. Finally, Pek slides from the kayak, swimming through the loops as they unravel around him.

We break the surface at the same time, and I notice how gray his skin is—almost white. His eyes stand out against this icy background like two round stones, the whites having turned a dull, bluish gray. Before I can ask if he’s all right, he turns and grabs the hull of his boat, flipping it upright. Within moments, both of us are out of the water and back on our kayaks.

Still, we’re in danger—the water is frigid. Wet clothes leech heat from my skin. My ears and nose burn with cold. My heart pounds.

“We need to go back,” I call to him.

“Not a chance,” he answers.

“That wasn’t a question.” Resilience is one thing; recklessness is another. “What would you hunt with? You have no harpoon. You have no rope. And you will have no brother alongside you.”

“I’ll dive back in and get the rope—”

“Not right now you won’t. You’ve lost too much body heat. You need to get warm. We both do.”

Pek’s soaked hair drips into his lap as he sits, slumped forward, on top of his kayak. He doesn’t bother to slide back under the deck. It would be pointless. The boat is drenched inside and would not warm him.

“Pek,” I say, but he doesn’t lift his head. I have never seen my brother more defeated. I pull his paddle from the spot where it bobs on the surface between us. When he won’t take it from me, I slide it across his lap. “You’ll lose your strength if you sit out here. Come in and get warm. Then we’ll try again.”

I turn and start to paddle in without him. “You need to stay strong if you’re going to win her,” I call over my shoulder.

I don’t need to glance back. I don’t need to tune my ears to the sound of his paddle breaking the surface behind me. I know he will follow me in. Whether by faith or foolishness, Pek will follow Seeri wherever she leads.

Once we’re on shore, Pek insists on helping bring in the fresh kill, though shuddering waves of cold rack his body.

I watch him, stubbornly struggling to grip the carcass with hands streaked red with blood and cold, and I remember his words—These girls are going to change our lives.

Those words have proven true a thousand times over in just two days.

I can’t help but worry what changes are still to come.





EIGHT


On the third morning after your departure, Pek and I are up while it’s still dark, standing on the beach as the sun gradually fills in shadows and reveals the edges of things. Together, we’re loading one of the long, two-man fishing kayaks for Pek’s trip to visit your clan. In three days we’ve collected seven seal pelts, and some of the meat of those kills has been butchered and wrapped as a gift to your clan, as well. Pek and I pack everything into the hull, filling the space where a second paddler would sit.