Ivory and Bone(26)

“Maybe with you, but not with me.”

Pek sits cross-legged on a pile of pelts that make up the bed across from me. His head is bowed, but he raises his face slowly and gives me a smile completely devoid of joy.

“Seeri?” I don’t need to ask. Of course it’s Seeri.

“He’s quite serious about her betrothal to his friend. I believe that he sees me as unsuitable and unworthy.”

“And you know this how?”

“His words, carried across the space between huts as he shouted at Seeri.”

My brother—the one who was born with a spear in his hand, the one who could always out-throw me—seems beaten. The lowered head, the drooping shoulders—I’ve seen that only once before in him, on the first day we hunted seals so he could bring the pelts to your clan. Even that day, Pek had started out hopeful. It had taken defeat and a near drowning to weigh him down.

“I’d planned to win him over by killing the rogue cat, but you’ve solved that problem. I think there’s little left that I could do to change his mind.”

I lean forward and feel the scabs across my back tighten as I reach for Pek’s shoulder. “Sorry for killing the cat before you could, but it really left me no choice—”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” I say. “But don’t give up. After all, aren’t you the one who said there’s still hope? She isn’t married yet.”

I turn and lie down again, my body suddenly heavy. I press my chest against the sealskin blanket, my wounds open to the air. My eyes close. I catch myself just as I drift into a dream and I shake myself awake, but Pek is already by the door.

“Sleep,” he says. “Don’t fight it.”

“I’ve slept all day—”

“And you walked all of yesterday. And fought a cat. And dragged its body to camp. And now you’re healing. So sleep.”

I want to argue—my mind begins to form the words—but before my lips can give them shape I fade into a deep, dreamless sleep. I wake only when voices reach my ears, calling from shore.

I open my eyes. Light in the hut is fading, but judging by the sounds I hear, I woke just in time. The boats that were sent for my family must have finally returned.

I find myself alone for the first time, but the solitude of the hut has a texture all its own—rich and comforting. I climb to my feet and find a clean parka at the foot of the bed—one crafted from the pelt of a cat so soft it won’t irritate my wounds.

I pick it up and hold it in the light, confused by the mystery of it. But then I notice the details—the way the light brown fur fades to pale tan at the edges, the swirled pattern in the grain of the hide in one corner, the slight blemish where a drop of blood dried into a permanent stain of red.

This was made from the pelt of the cat you killed, the one I tanned and sent to you.





ELEVEN


I follow the mix of voices to the beach, drawn along by the singsong tones of my mother’s lilting laugh. Though I’ve rarely given any thought to the sound of my mother’s laugh, at this moment, its familiarity quenches a thirst inside me I didn’t even know was there.

I realize as I slow my steps that I haven’t heard anyone laugh in so long. My mother could be laughing at anything—perhaps the boat rocked as they stepped out and someone was splashed—her laugh comes easily most of the time. Here in your camp, my injuries have been treated with such seriousness, and I’m grateful for it, but there’s a warmth and affection in the music of my mother’s voice that heals me from the inside out.

Yet as I approach and catch my first glimpse of them—not just my mother but my father and brothers, too—I know they are being told about my injuries for the first time. Chev is speaking to them, gesturing as he tells the story. His back is to me, his words carried away by the sea breeze, but I can read the tension in my father’s shoulders, my mother’s sudden silence. She reaches out for Pek and holds on to him as if she might fall if she let go.

Thankfully, Yano and Ela are there, too, and as Chev quiets, Ela steps up. My parents’ eyes turn to her, and from my vantage point—close enough to see but far enough away that I haven’t yet been noticed—I can tell that her words reassure them. My father steps forward. My mother nods.

I take a tentative step in their direction and my mother’s attention shifts.

She spots me on the path, and when she speaks my name—just my name—it’s as if an entire song has been sung.

She lets go of my brother and hurries to me. Her face glows red with windburn and her gait is uneven after a long trip on the sea. She falls against me and her arms encircle my back.

Over her shoulder my eyes are drawn to your face as you react to the pain you imagine I feel—your teeth dig deep into your bottom lip as she embraces me. But although her touch stings, it also brings relief to another kind of pain, and I won’t pull away. Instead, I clench my jaw and lean into my mother’s embrace. The pelt of the new parka presses against the cuts in my back, but the pain recedes to the edges of my mind as contentment crowds it out.

As we head back up the path together, I manage to get close enough to speak to you without others hearing. Standing so close, I notice a scent around you, the same scent I’d noticed in your hut—the warm fragrance of musk.