Eagle Drums, page 7
“We are only passing through and saw some good hunting. We are low on food.”
His father used the tip of his seal spear to gesture to his right, away from the strange family. “Yes, we will part, then.” Mother grabbed Piŋa’s upper arm tightly and led him away. His brothers followed close, glancing behind them often, gripping their spears with white knuckles. Father followed last, his face alert, only relaxing once they were out of the immediate area and he could see they were not followed. Father stopped Malġu and directed him to hide himself along their trail, to make sure the strangers left. Atau jogged ahead of them to make sure they did not get surprised by anyone else.
Piŋa couldn’t understand why his family was so fearful. The strangers looked rough, worn, and a little hungry, but why did Father believe they were dangerous? It was obvious Piŋa’s family was the stronger group.
Later that evening, as they gathered around the fire, Piŋa brought up the subject to his father and asked why they were so afraid of those people. Father sat in silence for a while, gathering his thoughts. Mother for once was quiet and also would not meet his eyes.
“People are different, iġñiin. They are raised different; they experience different things, have different luck. We know ourselves, but we can never know strangers that well. We don’t know what kind of people they are. We don’t know at what point they will not be friends and what would make them turn on us. It is best to avoid the vulnerability in the long run.”
The boy sat in silence. That night he lay for a long time in his bed, staring at the flickering wick of the single large seal-oil lamp, thoughts tangled like his mother’s hair when she woke up. His family slept around him in a protective circle. They had made it back to the sod house on their wintering grounds without incident. Everyone had fallen asleep quickly, exhausted from the tension from seeing the strange family. Everyone but Piŋa.
Quietly he stood up, making sure to cause as little sound as possible as he ducked through the tunnel entrance into the cool weather of late summer. He moved as quickly as he could down the farthest siġỊuaq ladder, emerging with a skin pouch full of dried seal meat preserved in seal oil. The sides of the pouch were slick with melting frost. He struggled to keep a good grip, so at first he didn’t see the fur-clad feet at the top of the ladder. When he stood up, he was confronted by his oldest brother. Atau looked annoyed, hair lopsided in an untidy mess, sleep still at the corners of his eyes.
“Father woke me up and told me to go and fetch you. Thought you would be doing something unwise.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded at the pouch that the boy was still trying to hold. “Are you doing something like that, little brother? Or are you getting a huge meal ready for all of us to eat in the middle of the night? If you grab a small bag of greens from near the ladder, it will be a good meal, or else it will be too rich.” The boy’s face reddened, and he pulled his arms tighter around the pouch. He didn’t answer.
His brother sighed and rubbed his face with his large-knuckled hands, then sat down cross-legged on a patch of tundra a little higher than the rest of the ground. He waved a hand at the boy and gestured for him to sit.
“Piŋa, sit down. There is another reason Father sent me. I once tried doing what you are doing now, when I was about the same age, maybe a little older. Except I got a lot farther than you did. Father didn’t catch me till I got to them—to another band of strangers we had spotted from a distance. I could tell they were hungry, too. It was an older couple with many children. I thought that if we could help them, I would have someone to play with besides my quiet, slow brother, Malġu.” He smiled and waited as the boy placed the pouch down and settled himself on the ground.
“I actually talked to them a little, too, before Father got there. I guess he wanted me to tell you what happened.” Piŋa’s ears perked up, surprised to hear a story he had never heard before. His brother reached over and plucked a few tundra-grass stalks expertly from a nearby tussock so that the tender pink base of the plants was intact. He chewed on them slowly, letting the tart flavor of the plant fill his mouth.
“Yeah, I made it to those people. I thought maybe they would be wary of me at first, but then they would be happy I brought them food, you know? Then we could be friends. But that is not what happened, little baby brother. No. They wanted to know why I had brought them food. I told them because they looked hungry. They asked me what I wanted in return, and said that they had nothing to offer since they were so poor. I said I wanted nothing in return, except maybe some stories or just friendship. But this only made them angry; they thought I was hiding something. Maybe my father and brother were waiting to ambush them once I gained their trust, they said. The more I tried to reassure them, the more they thought I was lying. I don’t know why. Maybe I talked too much, maybe not enough. Maybe I said the wrong things. I was young and foolish.” He smiled at Piŋa and handed him some tundra-grass stalks to chew on. Atau stared off in the direction of the sun slowly trying to rise. The sky was turning a deep purple, and the stars began disappearing one by one. The boy chewed his grass stalk, waiting for his brother to start talking again.
“Anyway, luckily Father came and got me before it got ugly. And Father never really brought it up, but of course I never tried to talk to strangers again.” He snorted, gesturing at the pouch the boy had brought up from the siġḷuaq. Piŋa pulled the chewed-up stalk of grass from his mouth and wrapped it around his fingers as he thought about what his brother had just told him. Soon the stalk was nothing but kinks and bends and torn threads, as he worked through his thoughts that were also a mess of kinks and bends.
Atau stared at his youngest brother in the brightening light of day, his face serious. “But if you want to go and see those people, baby brother, I will come with you. I would have your back.”
The boy glanced back at his family’s sod house. Soon his parents and Malġu would be getting up to start the day. He briefly scrunched his nose. “No. Not today, anyway.” Atau raised his brows and stood up to dust off the tundra leaves clinging to his pants.
As Piŋa entered the sod house, he thought of the strangers and the way they waved their spears. Would there be a day, though?
15
CONNECTIONS
Piŋa danced every day. His body grew limber, and his muscles became strong again over the next two moons. He learned how to avoid the young man with angry eyes and made sure an eagle was nearby at all times, in case the man decided to attack. Soon the mountaintop was carpeted by early summertime plants, the tiny, fuzzy itqiḷiaġruk flowers bloomed their sweet-smelling pink flowers, and the low-growing willows were covered in their equally fuzzy blooms. They seemed to be fighting for the attention of the slow-flying bumblebees that had finally emerged. Piŋa worked hard to gather as much of the new growth as possible, preserving the green willow leaves and the itqiḷiaġruk and masu roots in seal fat brought to him by the eagles.
The air was warm and thick with mosquitoes and biting flies, though he noticed they were less bothersome this high up in the mountains. He was instructed to create his own dances to prove his mastery. He worked through some songs that he had created earlier and molded dance movements to them. He took inspiration from his family. One was a walrus hunting song based on his father’s stories. Another was about his brother Malġu carrying a whole caribou home across his shoulders for two miles. And a couple were about his two brothers teaching him how to trap ptarmigan in the spring.
When he demonstrated all of the dances and songs to a stone-faced Savik, the eagle man gestured at the drummers. Most of them were unimpressed and barely paying attention. Some quietly chatted with one another, waiting for a signal to start drumming again.
“A big part of dancing is being able to teach the dance. You need to see the song from both ends, creator and learner.” Savik’s voice then got louder as he turned and addressed the drummers. “Who among you would want to learn this boy’s song?” All of their eyes turned toward Piŋa, and the quiet conversations stopped immediately. None of the drummers moved or made a sound. Savik’s brow furrowed as the silence stretched on. The boy’s heart was pounding as the familiar feeling of vulnerability swept over him. “Two volunteers, a man and a woman, are needed to help this boy learn to teach. Ai?”
The drummers looked at one another. An older woman stood up from the back of the group. She was about his mother’s age, though smaller. She moved quietly toward the front of the group. Her face was sharp-featured and stern, and a thin, pale scar stretched across her chin in a curving arc. She reached an arm above and behind her in a practiced move and removed her parka, revealing a sleeveless shirt made of sun-bleached leather.
Another figure stood up, and the boy’s heart sank when he saw it was the angry young man. As he removed his parka, the boy could see in the dim light that the man’s dark skin was peppered with small scars. It looked like a hundred tiny wounds, deep enough to make a scar but not enough to be life-threatening. The boy stared at them for a moment, wondering what could cause such cuts. The man chuckled and slapped his chest, a wide grin on his face. “Not a little boy’s skin, ami.”
The boy looked at Savik, hoping that he would see the tension. Hoping he would see it and pick another person. Savik frowned at both of them for a moment, grunted, and nodded at the boy to begin.
Piŋa realized then that he was meant to be challenged. That this angry man was to be part of his lessons.
Savik stepped back and found a caribou skin on the floor to sit on and watch. The hall was silent as all eyes looked to them. The boy swallowed the dryness in his throat.
“What should I call you? Your names?” Piŋa asked them.
“You can call me Pula. They say my scar looks like the sun during an eclipse.” The woman’s voice was just as small and quiet as she was, and he had to strain to hear what she said.
“You can call me … Alik,” the man said, gesturing at the many small scars on the skin of his chest and back. He chuckled a little as the boy found himself looking at them again. “Get it? Little tears all over. Holes all over.” His smile held no humor in it. The boy frowned at the angry man. How was he supposed to work with a man who hated him? What was his problem? Why not just ask?
“Why are you so angry at me, Alik? Why work with me if you don’t like me?”
The man’s lip curled, but instead of answering, he looked at Savik, who crossed his arms, offering no support for either one of them. Alik looked back at the boy, pushing his shoulders up as he balled his fists. He stepped forward, making the boy lean away. “I don’t like how you smell, boy.”
The boy looked away quickly and bent to pick up his drum, trying to hide his nervousness. Well, that didn’t solve anything.
He paused for a moment, glancing at Savik and then back at Alik and Pula, wondering what exactly was going through their minds.
Right then he decided to do a different song and dance. He had planned to teach them a dance he had made about hunting walrus, which he was particularly fond of because of its complexity, and he wanted to impress everyone. But he changed his mind as he felt the open hostility radiate from Alik and the indifference from Pula. He needed something simpler. He adjusted the weight of the drum in his hands as his palms started to sweat. Mentally he went through the list of dances and songs he had created, searching for one that would fit this moment. His hands grazed the drum. The rough sinew binding scratched at the skin between his thumb and pointer finger. Even with all the practice he got making sinew here in the eagles’ nest, he still didn’t have enough patience to make it as smooth and strong as his mother could make it. His mother’s face popped into his mind; her gentle, patient smile warmed his heart, dispelling some of the nervousness. He missed the sound of her voice. Her nonstop talking. At least he never wondered what she was thinking.
Feeling inspired by the memory, he picked his song and started to talk.
“My first memory in my life is of my mother. When I was really young, she would pack me on her back and then set me on the ground to watch her pick plants that were in season. She would talk nonstop about it: their names as they changed, what to do with the plants, and things like that. My earliest childhood memory was her voice and those plants. I could not understand what she was saying—you know, the actual words—but the rhythm of her voice while picking really stuck with me.” The boy paused and looked at their faces. Pula had a small smile on her face, and Alik looked at least a little less hostile. Perhaps they were thinking of their own mothers. “I hope you will let me teach you?”
He looked again at Pula and Alik. Both raised their eyebrows to signal yes. Pula smiled even brighter, and said, “My mother liked to eat sweet roots sometimes. She was really good at finding them in the early spring.”
Alik sighed and looked away from the boy. “Doesn’t everyone’s mother do that, though?” He grunted at Piŋa, but the boy noticed a gentler tone. It was a start.
Piŋa thought his mother would be proud of him for talking.
The boy sang the song a few times with the drummers, until they could repeat it easily. Then he turned his attention to Alik and Pula. He demonstrated each section of the dance with exaggerated movements, repeating them over and over. The dance was simple, with movements of walking while searching the ground, plucking plants and storing them, gentle arcs that represented the turning of the seasons, and finally eating the plants. It turned out that Pula and Alik were quick learners. They even suggested a few changes to the performance that the boy welcomed. When they were done, Savik seemed satisfied. They concluded their session, and everyone split up to find a meal.
“Tell me, what did you learn today, boy?” Savik asked. It was unusual for the man to ask the boy to reflect on his day, so Piŋa thought he must be looking for something specific. The boy paused while putting away his drums and sat thinking. He knew Savik wasn’t asking about teaching the dance; he was asking about how Piŋa had interacted with two strangers.
He scratched his forehead as the sweat from dancing dried into a layer that tightened his skin. He made a mental note to find some moss so that he could bathe.
“I learned not to lead with demands. I learned to lead with connections. And next time I will remember that not everyone will like me, but not everyone has to like me to fulfill a goal.”
“Smart boy.” Savik grunted and slapped Piŋa on the back as he rose and went to do whatever the eagle did at night.
16
LESSONS
Piŋa sat with the Eagle Mother, tending to the skin on a small drum, gently rubbing the surface with a small amount of seal oil.
“You ever wonder where the north wind comes from?” he asked. “Why it’s so cold? I have always wondered why it’s so different from the other winds.” He paused for a response, then sighed when she continued to completely ignore him.
The drummers, along with Pula and Alik, had long since left to go back to wherever they had come from. Summer began to fade, and hints of fall dulled the vibrant color of all of the green plants. The orange aqpik berries carpeted the boggy nooks of the mountains and would be ripe soon. The caribou meat the eagles brought him was thick again with fat. It had been almost a year since arriving here at the mountaintop. Even then, time seemed to go a little slower here in the eagles’ home, like walking through water, the seasons stretching forever. Piŋa and the Eagle Mother were alone this morning, and she had been ignoring him and his feeble attempts at conversation. He was uncomfortable, as usual, with the eagles’ habit of sitting unmoving in complete silence. Was it a type of meditation, maybe? Perhaps they were waiting for some signal he could not sense. Maybe they could hear something he could not. Her clothing rustled as she moved.
“A few short lessons, boy, and then you can go home.”
The boy turned from the drum he had in his hands and met the eyes of the Eagle Mother. He thought for sure he had misheard her. Could his time with the eagles finally be ending soon? He looked down at his slick, calloused hands and was silent for a moment, letting the statement sink into his mind as the oil soaked into his skin. The smallest trickle of hope bloomed in his chest, like a wick being lit on his mother’s seal-oil lamp, hesitant and warm.
“Springtime.” He bargained. “I can learn it all by the time spring starts warming the mountains in eight moons.”
She smiled, and this time the boy was able to see her smile more clearly. Are there fewer wrinkles than before? How strange, he thought.
“It will hopefully be quicker than that. Come outside, boy, and we will begin.” The Eagle Mother slowly stood up from her pile of furs. They walked toward the entrance.
The boy hesitated at the door. He had continued to go out to the hidden valley with Isiġnaq watching from the skies, but it felt different somehow with the Eagle Mother. He took a deep breath and cautiously followed Eagle Mother.
The day was bright and warm. The constant wind carried the scent of summer in quick retreat on its back. He could see a couple of eagles in human form outside their sod houses, tending to skins and meat hanging on drying racks, taking advantage of the breeze. The boy followed the Eagle Mother as she strode along the outside of the great hall, dragging the tip of her stick across the tightly packed sod. The sod was old. He could tell by how the grass had grown thick, weaving an airtight seal. Small white flowers emerged from its bulk; they filled the air with the smell of sugary sap that tickled his nose.
When Piŋa and Eagle Mother reached the back of the hall, they came upon Savik, who was crouched down, arranging some strange objects on the ground. As they got closer, Eagle Mother stopped and gestured for the boy to sit opposite Savik. He did so with haste, knowing better than to test their patience today. He didn’t want to make them angry and have them storm off, in the usual eagle fashion. No, no games today, not when he held the hope of going home soon.
