Eagle Drums, page 4
Piŋa was so focused that at first, he did not notice the other sounds rising around him. Savik had begun to strike the edge of the large disc with the stick, softly, almost imperceptibly at first. Savik’s beating, like the boy’s fist, was perfectly timed with his heartbeat. The two sisters began to speak, but in a way that was unfamiliar to the boy. Their voices rose and fell in time with the pounding. As the combined sounds grew louder, the boy stopped and simply watched and listened, transfixed. Savik struck his instrument harder, filling the space with sounds that he could feel on his skin. The women stretched their necks toward the roof, pouring their golden words into the air. The Eagle Mother sat and stared at the boy, head tilted, golden eyes searching his face.
Soon the boy was able to make out the words:
His arrows
were quick
Aa ya yai ai yaa
They welcomed
death
Aa ya yai ai yaa
They loved
him still
Aa ya yai ai yaa
Their brother
Aa ya yai ai yaa
They will
come back
They promised
And give
themselves again
They will
come back
And go around
the bend
For he is
still loved by them
For his hand
is kind
For he is
still loved by them
Abruptly the sounds stopped. Savik carefully set down the round instrument. They stared at the boy expectantly. Breathing quickly, Piŋa stared into Eagle Mother’s eyes. His arms were covered in goose bumps, and his throat was wrapped around emotions he couldn’t quite name. The muscles in his chest felt tight, and his eyes watered. Eagle Mother smiled. She seemed pleased.
The sister’s performance had brought back the day he had hunted the great bull tuttu in the tundra grass, the careful way he had treated their dead bodies, the words he had whispered in their velvet ears. Somehow through the eagles’ performance, Piŋa had lived it from the other side.
A good hunter did not take a life lightly. He accepted his role as life-taker, not with regret or shame or fear, but with reverence. All hunters dealt with this in different ways, different rituals to ease the spirit of the animal, to connect the hunter with his prey. We are the eaters of souls: plant and animal. Living consuming the living.
For those few moments, Piŋa had been tuttu. Caribou. He had felt the lichen in his mouth. Had felt how the caribou knew that he was there in the tall grass, had felt their submission and their judgment of his worthiness. He had felt their emotions, the fear, the many deaths they gave to him. The promise. The cycle of the relationship between hunter and hunted.
“What is this magic called, Aana?” he asked.
She leaned closer to him, eyes glittering as she nodded. She spoke softly. “It is not magic, boy, it is what every living thing contains. You are here so we can show you how it is done, so you can show others how it is done. Atuqtuni nakuuruq—it is good to sing. This is called song.”
The boy nodded, determined, and he lifted his head to speak. “I am willing to learn, Aana. And I am a good listener.”
At his words, the eagles smiled.
7
BEGINNINGS
The next morning, he awoke again to the Eagle Mother’s prodding stick and to another lesson with the eagle family. They chose a different song for him to start with, a song about a hunter in a kayak getting lost in a fall-time fog on the ocean, paddling for days, wandering aimlessly in the nothingness. When he finally finds land, his immense joy is tempered by the fact that he does not recognize the place. As the fog lifts, he mourns feeling disconnected from his family.
It was a feeling Piŋa could identify with.
Aana’s daughters taught him the words, making him repeat them over and over until he could recite it back word for word. Then they taught him how to sing the words while Savik drummed, how to mold the words around the beat and to pace them with the rhythm. Singing loudly over the beat of the drum, his voice was hoarse at first but eventually became strong and clear.
That evening, Nautchiaq brought his meal to his sleeping area, boiled caribou meat piled on a platter. As she set it down in front of him, Piŋa immediately knew that the meat was off. The musky odor of a caribou in rut stung his nose. When he turned to complain to Nautchiaq, she had already left. Resigned to this meal, he gingerly cut a small portion of meat and placed it on his tongue, closing his eyes as he forced a swallow. The animal musk clung to his throat as it went down. He couldn’t finish more than a few bites.
He thought back to the caribou he harvested for his family, remembering the thickness of the fat as the caribou prepared themselves for winter. This meat they had given him had no fat at all, as the animal had burned through its stores fighting other caribou bulls during mating season.
Has it been that long already? At least two turnings of the moon?
* * *
The next day, he braced himself to speak up as they fed him again. This time it was Savik holding another equally strong-smelling platter of caribou meat. Piŋa blurted out his words before the eagle man could set down the meat on the floor.
“I can’t eat that meat.”
The man turned, his dark brows drawn down into a scowl. “What? Why not? It is fresh meat.”
The boy grimaced as he gestured to the meat again. “The caribou has gone into rut; its meat is too strong-smelling for my stomach. It also doesn’t have fat, which will make me sick eventually.” He paused, trying to find a way to explain what he thought everyone would know.
Well, what humans would know.
He stumbled on when Savik answered with a more intensive scowl. “My stomach is not like … yours … I can’t eat too much of this meat, and I have different needs. I need plants, fruit, roots, and hopefully some fat. Eating nothing but meat will make me sick.” He continued in a rush. Savik looked down at the platter of meat and back up at the boy as he took in what Piŋa said.
“The fat we can find for you, but are all … plants … edible? Will any do?” Savik asked. His lip curled a bit when he said the word plants, as if simply the thought of ingesting them was unpleasant.
“No, some would make me ill, and some have to be picked at a certain time.” Piŋa thought about the permanent frost that didn’t disappear, now coating the low grass and scrawny, windblown brush that was clinging to the ground. A new knot of anxiety tied itself in his chest. He had never found himself without his family’s stores of food for the winter. He searched his memory for stories his parents had told him about when they were young, during the lean years.
“There might be some found under the snow. At least enough to keep me healthy for the winter.”
Savik sighed and scratched at his cheek, eyes looking in the direction of his mother’s quarters.
“Fine. You can spend as much time as you need around our home to look for your … plants. We will figure something out if you need more than that.” The man sniffed at the platter in his hands before leaving with it from the room. That day the boy went hungry.
* * *
The next morning, Savik showed up early to his room, holding two bundles, one larger than the other. The biggest one was half of a caribou, which the man effortlessly swung off his shoulders toward the ground. Piŋa braced himself for the strong smell of a caribou in rut but instead was met with the clean, familiar scent of fresh meat. Savik set it down, making sure that the skin protected the meat from any dust on the floor. The other bundle turned out to be several fish the length of his arm, grayling from the looks of it, frozen completely solid together into a single lump. Savik nodded at the meat.
“Do either of these have the fat you need?”
Piŋa crouched down and examined the caribou first. It was female, which was why there was no strong smell. He took his knife and quickly made a cut, looking for the white fat underneath the skin. There was a little there, enough to make a bit of his anxiety knot loosen. He scraped the ice off of one of the fish and was surprised to see the fish was round and well-fed, insulated in a layer of fat.
“Yes,” Piŋa said, letting the relief show in his voice.
“We know a lake where the water doesn’t freeze all winter. Easy to fish there,” Savik said as he noticed Piŋa turning the fish over in his hands.
“Can I have a small oil lamp? To preserve some of the food? It would help me dry the meat and plants quicker.” Savik nodded and left the boy. Piŋa’s shoulders relaxed as he worked on the meat and fish, briefly enjoying doing something so familiar.
* * *
Most of his days were filled with singing practice, but two or three times a moon he was allowed to wander around the eagles’ aerie. He was happy to find that there was a good amount of plants to pick and use, though he could tell the lemmings had been harvesting from this same area. Several sturdy wooden racks were sprinkled among the houses, and hanging from them he could see items he recognized, like caribou skin and clothing set out to dry. Though there were also some items that he could not recognize at all. He stayed clear of the eagles’ things as he walked along the sod houses. Piŋa looked forward to these days, even though winter had fully taken over and the bitter cold stung any exposed skin.
He pulled on mittens, which he made himself from caribou hides he saved, and used the broken tip of a caribou antler to dig down through the snow, searching for winter-preserved plants underneath. He discovered more frozen kimmigñaq berries, their bright red juice staining the snow pink, making them easy enough to find, and some ippiq roots that he carefully and slowly extracted from the solid ground. He even found some tilaaqiaq plants that he used to make a strongly fragrant drink that warmed him and gave him energy. He carefully dried what he could to make them stretch out for the months ahead.
Better some than none, he heard his father’s rumbling voice in his head.
8
MEMORIES
Another turn of the moon passed. The winter sun hid longer and longer beneath the mountains as Piŋa learned as quickly as he could.
Eagle Mother, Savik, and Nautchiaq were the only ones who spoke directly to him. He never learned the older daughter’s name, but he had taken to calling her Isiġnaq because of her ulu. The ulu had a flawless nephrite jade handle that glowed a bit when the light hit it right. She never corrected him or said much. Nautchiaq was chattier, but she was often quieted by a look from her mother. In fact, no one really spoke to him at length besides the Eagle Mother and Savik. The others in the sod house quickly scurried away if he approached them. At first, Piŋa thought it was because he was a stranger, but as time passed, he realized this was deliberate. He brought it up to the Eagle Mother one day as they took the short walk from the place they slept to the center of the hall. Her eyes squinted sideways at him, and she stabbed at his arm with her twisted stick, making him wince.
“And what would you do if you knew the others? What would you do with this information, boy?” She stopped walking and waited for his answer. Piŋa felt that this was a test and was afraid to give the wrong answer.
“Maybe get to know them?” he said. “I don’t know.”
“We are not humans, boy. We are … more. And personal knowledge of us can give you power over us. So, we are better to be careful, ami? What would happen if you knew our favorite food? Our favorite song? Our names to call us whenever you felt like it? What soothes us or indebts us? What then? What would you do with such knowledge?”
The boy looked down at his boots, thinking about these questions. The Eagle Mother waited for his response.
“Then why do you talk to me, Aana? Aren’t you afraid I will have influence over you?” he asked instead of answering her question. A wide smile crinkled her face, showing what few stained teeth that she had left. She lifted the crooked stick so that he could see the length of it. He had never had the opportunity to examine it closely before. He noticed that the shape of the stick, with its curves and bends, was not natural like he had assumed. It had been carved from a single piece of wood. He could make out what looked to be sinew of different thicknesses and delicate thin strips of leather in a multitude of colors embedded into the wood. The unassuming stick was decorated from tip to tip.
“This is where I keep my memories—or specifically, one type of memory. This reminds me of all of those humans in the past who dared to use something against me. To try and control me. A record of their methods and what tactics they used.” Piŋa’s eyes widened as he realized what that meant, that these were people that the Eagle Mother had defeated. She smiled even wider, exposing her bluish tongue. “I am old, and there were many humans that I had known before you, and I will probably know many after you. Would you like to be a string on my stick? Hmm?”
The boy froze in his tracks. Eagle Mother chuckled low in her throat and turned down the hall to her waiting brood.
9
QIỊAUN
Soon the fresh caribou and sheep meat disappeared from his meals. Piŋa knew that during the coldest part of the year, the herds split up into smaller groups and were almost impossible to find in the vast mountains. What animals were left were lean from running from the wolves. The eagles instead brought him piles of Arctic hares, their meat leaving a bitter taste in his mouth from their diet of willow bark. He took care to keep what he could of their fur pelts and eventually fashioned himself a tunic to wear when he went foraging for plants in the increasing cold. They continued to bring him fat fish, and once even brought a small seal. The fat from the seal would save him that winter, providing both oil for his lamp and fat to keep himself from starving. The sealskin he used to make a pair of waterproof boots that replaced his worn set.
Winter moved in with vigor, sharpening the air so that it hurt his lungs and forced him to breathe shallow through his mouth. His body became as lean as a hare from the sparse diet.
One morning, Savik came in place of Eagle Mother to get Piŋa for his daily lessons. They walked the few minutes to the center of the hall in silence and arrived to find stacks of dried skins, wood, and a haphazard array of tools. Savik found a spot to sit. The boy carefully sat across from him, eyes wide at the change in routine.
Savik cracked his knuckles one by one, glaring at the boy. The silence stretched between them like an uncrossable valley. Though Piŋa had gotten used to the eagle man’s intimidating presence, the boy was always afraid that he would do something to make Savik kill him like he did his brothers. He was continually locked between trusting these creatures—not humans, Aana had said—and feeling like he was not safe with them and may never be safe again.
Savik pointed to the floor next to him, where a caribou skin had been placed. The boy got up hurriedly and sat beside the eagle man, clasping his hands in his lap.
Once he was settled, Savik picked up the round, flat instrument in front of him, gripping the short handle at the end loosely. He gestured at the instrument.
“Qiḷaun, drum.” He handed it to the boy. Piŋa gingerly took the instrument—the drum—by the handle. He was surprised by its weight and uneven balance, and he quickly adjusted his grip. The handle was carved from walrus ivory and was attached to an almost perfect circle of thin wood. A thin skin was lashed tight across it. He ran a hand over the skin, and it hummed as the calluses on his finger caught on the surface and amplified the sound.
“Ka-lawn.” The boy rolled the word around in his mouth.
“No, boy. It’s KEE-laun.” Savik corrected him, pointing to his throat at the guttural first sound of the word.
“Qiḷaun,” Piŋa repeated.
Savik nodded and took the drum from the boy, gently setting it to the side. He reached behind him and pulled out a long, thin strip of light-colored wood and placed the piece into Piŋa’s lap. The boy picked up the wood to examine it as Savik spoke.
“We will start with the wood. Wood doesn’t want to curve. It grows as straight as possible, reaching for the sun. So, to get it to curve, you have to be patient and gentle, take your time, coax it with heat and water. You can measure a man’s patience by the roundness of his drum.” His lips curled a little into a half smile at his own cleverness. The boy was surprised by the … joke? Do eagles have a sense of humor?
Savik continued. “You will watch me a few times, then try yourself.”
The boy was already somewhat familiar with the intricacies of woodworking, and found the process to be similar to making snowshoes, though much more complex, as he spent the next few days making the drum. Savik was a strict teacher, demanding perfection and understanding at every step. He made the boy repeat each step countless times, often grabbing the drum from Piŋa’s hands, undoing all the work, and forcing him start over.
Each time he did this, it grated at the boy’s already raw nerves. Savik seemed to revel in the boy’s frustration. Piŋa was used to this method of learning—he learned everything from his brothers by following their example, taking their knocks and teasing in stride—but at home with his family, there had been warmth and breaks and encouragement from his mother and father. He got none of that here. Even the two eagle sisters, though nothing close to gentle, had at least more patience than Savik did. When the boy hesitated or took too long to do his bidding, Savik would walk off in frustration, sometimes leaving him alone for the whole day.
A qiḷaun was made to be somewhat flexible. Nothing was rigid or solidly fixed, and all of it was held together by braided sinew, which flexed and shrank and stiffened over time as it aged. The hide that stretched across the drum was so thin that he could see the shape of his own hand through the open mouth of the drum. Savik told him it was made from the lining of internal organs from animals—or in some cases the delicate back skin from young caribou or sheep—and the surface was marked with faint veins, making each drum wholly unique. While Piŋa worked, Savik sat to the side and tended to the finished drums, often rubbing oil or water in the skins, keeping them moist and supple so that the sound was true and the skin would not split. Sometimes Savik replaced old sinew with new, or tightened loosening knots. In many ways, the drum was alive, reacting to the world around it like a living creature. Each one hummed with a different note and tone when struck, each with a different voice.
