Brother Wind by Sue Harrison Read Free Book Online

Shell took a long breath and continued to sort her grass.
    Samiq laid the feathered practice spears at his feet. He had sharpened the tip of each shaft and hardened the points with fire. He picked up the nearest spear and set it into his throwing stick, but before he threw, he turned to Three Fish. “When will the baby come?” he asked.
    “I have missed two bleedings,” Three Fish said.
    Samiq nodded and threw the spear. It was a good throw, but short. “I am glad Takha will have a brother or sister,” he said. He did not give voice to his fears: the child would be born in early spring, a hard time for all people, especially mothers with new babies.
    Two sons, he thought—Small Knife and Takha. No, three. Shuku was his. If Three Fish had a son, he would have four.
    Samiq reached out, brushed fingers over Three Fish’s cheek. “You are a good mother to Takha and to Small Knife. You will be a good mother to this new baby.”
    Three Fish smiled, her lips pressed together over her teeth.
    “I will hunt,” Samiq said to her. “Even if I have to start again and learn like a boy. Our children will not starve.”
    He did not let himself think about their meager supply of seal oil and dried meat. Instead he reminded himself that their bay was full of fish. The women caught pogy in the kelp beds each day. There were sea animals also, harbor seals and otters. Besides, the women had put in a good supply of roots and berries. Kiin’s carvings had brought them furs for winter clothing. Their ulas were strong. They would not have to burn much oil to stay warm this winter.
    “It will not be an easy winter,” he said to Three Fish, “but we will live.” He set another of his practice spears into his throwing stick. “Watch,” he said. “See the clump of ryegrass there?” He threw. The spear flew without wobbling and struck the grass.
    “Another whale,” Three Fish said.
    But Samiq, afraid some spirit might think he was proud, said, “Perhaps a harbor seal. Whatever animal takes pity on men who need meat.”

CHAPTER 9
    S AMIQ LAY AWAKE long into the night. The joy he had felt earlier that day when Three Fish told him she carried a child seemed somehow bound to the light. When the sun set and night closed over the ulas, the fears he had pushed to the back of his mind claimed his thoughts, and he saw Three Fish, Takha, and the new baby sick and dying for need of food.
    “You are leader, chief hunter of this village,” some spirit whispered in the darkness of his sleeping place. “You are responsible for your people’s needs.”
    Samiq tried to form plans for hunting and fishing, but ideas slipped away from him like half-remembered dreams.
    “In the morning,” he finally told himself, whispering aloud so bothering spirits would hear and let him sleep, “then I will go out in my ikyak and let the wind and sea tell me what I should do.”
    Still, though, he did not sleep, and near morning he finally got up, pulled on leggings, parka, and chigadax, and left the ulaq. The sun was new, gold and orange in a sky nearly free of clouds. He felt his spirit lift as he guided his ikyak through the length of the bay and into an inlet near its mouth. There he could see over the tide flats out to the North Sea, where the water rose in swells, then foamed into whitecaps as each wave crossed the sandbar shallows near the bay.
    The auklets were gathering, flocks riding the wind currents, dark flashing to sudden white as they turned their breasts toward the sun.
    In early winter the whole auklet tribe gathered, then flew away and did not return until the snow was melting in late spring. Samiq wondered where they went. Did they have winter villages on other beaches?
    He closed his eyes and imagined the joy of wings.
    “Like an ikyak when a hunter paddles with the wind,” some spirit whispered, and Samiq opened his eyes to see the auklets rise again, then fly close, turning just before they reached him. Samiq raised his paddle to