Today's Reading


"If you told me about your hunting," she continued undeterred, "maybe I could sew a bag showing off your great fight. Wouldn't that be nice?"

In the semidarkness, the boy nodded in her direction. A long pause stretched out between them. He ran a finger over the crack and decided he wouldn't need to worry about it for a few seasons more, as it was still shallow.

"Well?" she said. "Aren't you going to say something?"

From her insistent tone, he knew he had to respond soon or he would be scolded.

He thought carefully about his mother's question. 'Should I tell her the story of my numb feet? That would make an interesting bag design', he thought. But instead he said, "They died well."

"Is that all you have to say?" She snorted softly, shaking her head. "Just like your father. Well, I can talk enough for the both of us, I guess. Hand me that other poke, would you?"

The boy and his mother maneuvered the already stored meat to make room for the fresh ones. They took care to make sure that the two did not touch—ocean on one side, land on the other, giving respect to both worlds. Soon enough, the underground larder was half-full.

PiKa straightened and stretched the muscles between his shoulders as he finished distributing the allotted meat to his family's pack dogs. They were quiet as they worked on their portions of caribou, with only the occasional low warning growl for others not to get too close.

He took a deep breath, filling his lungs as he walked back to the sod house. The air carried the scent of plants turning in the fall- time weather, heavy with notes of water and fog and vague, fleeting promises of snow. The day was overcast with heavy clouds, typical of the shift from summer to fall. He changed the direction he was walking when he caught the smell of a cooking fire and the enticing smell of a meal. He made his way around to the entrance tunnel to his family's earthen home, to where the wind would be the least. The tunnel itself rose above the ground and was just shorter than he was.

His mother sat next to a small fire, and when she saw him, she waved him toward the shallow stone bowl that was perched on some coals. With the deft twist and turn of her hands, his mother tied her hair up in a quick braid and secured it with a slim ivory pick. She picked up her ulu, a wide, curved blade about the size of her palm, and drew it against a fine-grained rock a few times to sharpen its edge. The boy watched as she crossed her legs and silently began stretching and wetting the caribou skins to ready them for tanning. He smiled, realizing that the only time she was quiet was when she was concentrating on her skins. He crouched next to the fire and reached into the bowl for a piece of caribou meat. It steamed in the air, and hot fat dribbled down his sleeve. He took a bite; it was so soft and tender that it barely needed chewing, and it practically melted on his tongue.

From the direction of the beach, he could hear his father mumbling under his breath. He watched as his father worked in the distance, repairing a small tear on the skin of his kayak. His father hunted all that was of the ocean, and it showed in the darkness of his skin and the strength in his shoulders from days of paddling under the sun. He was the master of that domain—he knew the ocean better than any man before him. But he never chided the boy for loving the land instead of the sea, even though he'd lost two sons to it.

For eight turns of the moon, their hunting grounds were covered in snow and ice, which left only four brief, hectic cycles to gather as much food as they could for the coming winter. They'd always had food to last the long cold season and furs to protect them from the dangers of that season. His mother, a gifted seamstress, would make beautifully designed clothes, sewing hunting scenes into the hems of their parkas—ocean waves for his father and snowcapped mountains for the boy. Their kayaks were flawless, made of the strongest hides. Their sealskin and caribou-skin ropes never broke under pressure. Their knives maintained their finely honed edges, even after days of butchering.

In a land that could be dangerous and demanding, times were good for the boy and his family. They never took more than was needed, and they survived thanks to the animals and their kindness and generosity—and a heavy dose of luck. But the boy had no one else to compare his family to, for they rarely saw others, and when they did, they were cautious and kept their distance. The boy often wondered what those people thought when they saw his family. Did they want to take what his family had worked hard for? Were they planning how to push his family out of this rich territory? He remembered the camaraderie and the closeness he had had with his brothers, and he wondered what it would be like to get to know a stranger.

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