Chapter One

NILLIQ

When she heard a distant scraping sound from the bay-ice to the south, Nilliq thought it might be Pingousi returning from his hunt. She expected to see the approaching dogsled veer in to shore through an opening in the ice wall. But instead the driver headed straight toward her on the big rock.

She brushed her tears away and looked more closely. That gray-and-white lead dog was not one of Pingousi's. And the man now walking with the whip beside his sled had a long, drooping mustache.

The dogs halted at a soft command from their master and sat on their haunches, their tongues dancing, their pale blue eyes looking up at her. Nilliq kept her eyes away from those of the stranger. How well-mannered were these dogs of his! The man stood with sturdy legs planted in a wide stance, the whip hanging loosely in his hand.

Then his eyes caught hers. Nilliq tried to look away but it was too late. The man's eyes pierced her own--and then seemed friendly, almost familiar, with a slight downward curve that reminded her of her uncle Quingak. Eyes of a hunter . . . yet with something other, a remote sheen, as of distant sea-ice.

His lips held the hint of a smile. When her own lips began to tingle and turn open, Nilliq quickly covered her mouth and coughed. She looked away, out to the open blue water of the bay where she'd watched two gulls dive in the pink morning light. Now in the faded dawn, she could see only flecks on the choppy water.

The stranger spoke to her: "Anything out there?" He tucked his whip under a thong on his sled and took a few steps closer toward the rock, peering out over the bay as if to see what she could see.

Nilliq could find no words. The feathers on her bird-skin tunic ruffled in the breeze, and she shuddered recalling her father's admonition against wearing it feather-side-out. She felt a shyness so painful it was like fear, and this made her turn her thoughts back to Aiti, and her mother. Both dead--

The stranger's voice came close and deep: "They're gone now."

She shrank away from him, her blood beating like furious wings. Her damp cheeks burned, hot and cold in the fresh breeze.

He backed off to a more respectful distance and said, "You looked like a pretty loon, sitting on that rock. But it's a little early, isn't it, to come out here for sun-basking?" He spoke her tongue, Inuktitut, with a slightly odd accent; and the rich, confident tones of his voice excited Nilliq, despite her apprehension.

Her cheeks flushed hotter. A pretty loon, indeed. With her long thin nose, her sticklike legs? At least, it was better than what the children called her, "caribou girl."

Aiti was the only person who had made her feel pretty; it was his voice Nilliq heard when the stranger spoke again: "Is anyone else awake in your camp?"

Blocks of fractured ice heaved behind them on the tide, groaning as if they were alive and dying. With a prickling on the back of her neck Nilliq pictured her father waking in his snowhouse to find her gone, out here talking with this strange man. Somewhere she found the courage to say, "The children should be up by now."

A camp dog barked. The ears of the stranger's dogs perked up. With cold eyes the stranger looked past her; even, it seemed, past the camp and the hill beyond.

He spoke almost as if to himself: "Maybe I should go on my way."

Now she had to say more. Boldly she asked, "Will you stop for a visit here?"

He faced her again, a little smile flashing. "That's why I'm here," he said. "Yes. For a short visit."

"You've been traveling all night?"

"The snow's better, frozen harder. So then I sleep in the daytime, like a lazy hunter. Ha! I catch no meat that way, it's true; but now I'm here."

The first rays of sun streamed out from behind the hill, highlighting the stranger's face: a strong and open brow, weathered cheeks, a wisp of beard. His clothing was of the old style, furs tightly stitched by a capable woman. His woman?, Nilliq wondered.

The stranger was looking toward the camp, squinting. "Today, though, I don't know if I will sleep."

Nilliq thought of the empty snowhouse--Aiti's snowhouse, with its winter roof now slowly collapsing.

He turned his eyes back to her and said, "You must be Nilliq."

"How did you know that?" She felt as if she'd been rudely touched by the stranger's rough hand.

He said simply, "I know people who travel this way."

Whom had he talked to? Why had he come here?

The stranger continued, "My name is Wallin. I come from down the coast, Poste-de-la-Baleine."

Nilliq's mood eased now with respect and larger curiosity. "Oh, the big settlement."

"The big one. Too big." He waved his arm toward the south. "For me, a change was needed. I'm not going back there. Too many khalunat."

A change was needed; he was traveling without a woman. For a brief, thrilling moment Nilliq saw the wide land, bright with the warming sun, open its immense arms to welcome the two of them: her and Wallin, together. But then she lowered her eyes and saw herself for what she was--a gangly, foolish girl, unworthy of this fine-looking hunter with his well-laden sled, his team of patient huskies.

A burst of ducks took off from the open water far out on the bay. Wallin stood shuffling his feet in the snow like a seal-hunter who has lost patience at one breathing-hole and is ready to move on to another.

Nilliq let words out flying: "I've heard of this Poce, Poce-Balen. Kujuarapik, we still call it. My people lived around there before I was born. They say it has lots of big wooden houses, that are warm all the time. And the houses have lamps that burn without oil, all night and day . . . is it true?"

Wallin's eyes wrinkled at the corners. He stopped twisting his mitts in his hands, and his arms relaxed at his sides. "Yes, those things are true. And instead of hunting for food, the people spend their days and nights playing khalunat games, and get their food from cans."

He leaned casually against the rock; Nilliq didn't move.

"I've tried the food from cans," she said. "Some of it tasted good--sweet."

"Aghh. Do you know what happens to your teeth when you eat too much khalunat food?"

"No." Now she had offended him. She averted her eyes.

"Well . . . you're lucky. Have you never been in a settlement?"

"I've been to Townsend Bay."

"Oh, that pile of tin boxes."

Nilliq noticed that Wallin was not too proud to carry a rifle, or to make his sled runners hard with steel instead of glazing them with mud and ice. In a meek voice she said to him, "The way you speak, you must have been very unhappy there, in the big settlement--"

"Ah," he said, looking at her so directly that she could no longer look away. "This is a question. You have heard the answer. I have made a decision: that kind of life is not for me. Not any longer. So maybe, you think, I'm looking for a camp such as yours?"

Nilliq said nothing.

Wallin leaned away from the rock. His gray-and-white dog stood up and wagged its tail. "Things are not as simple as they appear," he said then in the dry voice of an old man. "Even this camp of yours is a settlement--only a different kind. It's not just how big, or how many khalunat, but also: how you fill your days and nights; what pictures your thoughts make; what the animals say to you. Are you happy here?"

In his eyes Nilliq saw the brightness of truth-knowledge. Suddenly she was trapped inside herself again, perched on the cold, hard rock like some idiot sea-bird. She shifted her folded legs under her. Once more she felt her face grow red.

After too many moments she found a tiny voice that said, "We live in the old way here. My father, Sandlak, provides enough to eat. . . ." She turned back, with eyes growing wet, to look upon the four little snowhouses. She couldn't speak about what her father was really like, or about those who had died, or about her loneliness. "There are no other young people, now, except Tiniq, who's not yet a man. And the smaller children. The only woman who's not old and wrinkled is Palli, a wife to Quingak and mother of Avinga, Lialuq, and the baby Samik." Nilliq's voice began to choke shut. "My mother--"

Wallin interrupted her to say, "Maybe you're hungry. Come--" he nodded his head sideways in the direction of the snowhouses--"I have some fish; we'll bring some to Sandlak, your father. Would you like it cooked the way they do in Poste?"

This was an odd thing for him to say--a guest offering to serve food to the host. And the host, Sandlak!

Sandlak's daughter didn't know how to respond. If there was any notion in the stranger's mind to court someone named Nilliq, this was the worst way to go about it.

Suddenly a pair of ravens came swooping over the hill behind the camp, diving and circling: playing like children of the air. Then they disappeared behind the hill as quickly as they had come.

"Ravensway," Wallin murmured.

Nilliq hardly heard him, troubled as she was by the thought of his meeting her father. Her frantic thoughts ran aimlessly, like lemmings chased by a dog. Maybe they should not even go into camp, but should simply leave at once, this instant!

But the truth remained, the stranger had suggested no such thing. He had asked to come to camp with her and cook a fish for her father.

"Yes, that would be fine," a silly girl said at last. "Why not? Come with me and we'll have a meal together." Nilliq said this foolish thing, knowing that it was all wrong.

Wallin smiled in a satisfied way. "Good," he said. "I would like to meet your father."

Download full novel (free): The Hunter's Daughter
in ebook (PDF) format

Get free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view PDF files, if you don't already have it.

View catalog of ebooks for free download.