Ice Whale (16 page)
Authors: Jean Craighead George
Playtime overâ he checked his favorite zooplankton fields. There were pink masses of krill tumbling through the water column. Around the krill were animals that made sounds so vivid he could see them. He heard grunting fishâ clicking shrimpâ and whispering anemones.
After eating several tons of krillâ he found his offspring again using sounds and listening. When they saw him they boomed whale words of happy recognition.
Whoosh
. CRASH! They slapped their flukes and touched their great bodies and ran their flukes across each other.
Then
sought his larger family of cousins and second cousins and great-great-great-great-grandsons and daughters. They spy hopped joyfullyâ some of them rising forty feet above the surface of the water in bowhead exaltation.
The whales were coming back.
B
enny took Emily Toozak's mother Flossie's hand and
held it firmly when he returned without her daughter.
“She is aliveâ” he said. “And we will find her.”
Robert and Oliver smiled hopelesslyâ their arms around Flossie's shoulders. Slowly they walked her home.
The shaman's curse? Could it be true?
Robert thought. Glancing quickly from his son to his wifeâ he hoped they had not read his mind. He bent his head so they could not read his face.
Benny watched them walk toward their home. He stood on the black gravel beach stones alone. The iceâ snowâ windâ and clouds raced from horizon to horizon.
L
ooking determinedly across the broad tundraâ
Emily Toozak searched for signs of a villageâ a snow machineâ or a hunter. There were none. All was brown and green with splashes of blue or pink wildflowers. Ancient landscape left by the Ice Age on the tundra rippled toward the horizon. They were carpeted with moss and grass.
“No help thereâ” she said aloud. “So I walk on. That's what I have legs forâ Siku. You use your fins and flukes to get to the Beaufort Sea and back. I'll use my legs to get to Barrow.”
Her grandmother had told her that her early ancestors would walk three hundred miles to visit their friends in the winter. When they reached their destinationâ they feastedâ played gamesâ and danced. Marriage matches were arranged between families. Then they all walked home.
“I can do that tooâ Siku. Go legsâ go.”
She returned to the beach for easier walking. Almost immediately she found patches of oyster leaf growing on the beach gravel where the waves had only lappedâ not pounded. She snacked on their rubbery leaves. Large pinkish jellyfish stranded by the low tide and storms covered the beach. Their tentacles were a hundred feet long and looked like tangled hair.
The bells could be poisonous to eatâ her grandfather had told her. She climbed the bluff back to the tundra. Now that Emily had to survive by herselfâ she found she remembered some of his lessons. Her grandfather had always talked about the old ways. She and Oliver had accompanied him on walks when they were small. Every day he had showed them a new plant to eat or creature to watch. As kidsâ they were usually more interested in playing tag rather than learning. Now Emily tried to recall the teachings of the Toozaks before her. She wished she had paid more attention thenâshe hoped her grandfather's lessons would come back to her now.
Walking onâ she went around two-inch-high willow forests and vast gardens of dwarf buttercups. The Arctic crowberries were only in bud and not much good to her. By noonâ and very hungryâ she decided that buds must be good for one and ate handfuls of them. They were tastelessâ but she ate them anyway. Hunger satisfiedâ she chanted as she walked.
“Sikuâ Sikuâ you are my spirit person.
You have made the plants part of you and me.
You have made the animals part of you and me.
We flow through each other.
We are one.
Ayeâ yaâ ya. Ayeâ yaâ ya.”
Emily came upon a field of the first flowers to bloomâ dwarf lupine. They were azure blue in colorâ like the shadows of sea ice. She knelt down to smell them.
Swish!
âa white-fronted goose flew up beside her.
And nearby in her nest lay eight unhatched eggs.
“Magicâ Sikuâ” she saidâ her dark eyes nearly closing with happiness. “Bird eggs are gold.” She cracked two and eagerly drank their rich filling.
“For some bird speciesâ if you take all of the eggsâ Sikuâ” she saidâ “they will lay again. But not geese, they will not lay more that season. So I better take just one or two from each nest.” She paused. “Nowâ where did I learn that?” Was she remembering her grandfather's words on her own? Was Siku helping her?
Placing the blanket and egg box carefully on the groundâ she stretched out to rest. As she started to close her eyesâ she blinked them wide open. A bank of fog was moving toward her. She would need shelterâ for Arctic fog was cold and blinding. She remembered the fog two years ago that swept down on the town so suddenly that she couldn't find her house and ended up huddling with some sled dogs.
Hurrying behind a frost heaveâ she opened her blanket and put the egg box and the little objects from the wreck on a patch of rubbery lichen. Quickly making a shelter out of the blanket by putting heavy stones on its edgesâ she crawled under it and waited for the fog to arrive.
It was then she heard the airplane. She burst out of the shelter.
“Ohâ no!” she cried as the pilot saw the fogbank and turned away. The Wayne plane headed back to Barrow. Its motor sounded fainter and fainter.
“No! Don't go!” she called into the whiteâ thick air.
The world went white as the fog enveloped her. She crawled back under her blanket and pulled her parka tighter to her body and blew into her hood to keep warm. Tears fellâ but she quickly wiped them away.
“I've got eggs to eat and drinking ice in my pot. I'll be all rightâ Siku.”
She stopped talking to listen to sheets of mist sweeping the tundra. A strong wind tore at her blanket. She held on to it.
The tundra was bursting with life after the fog lifted. There were lines of birds in the sky and small mammals scurrying on the tundraâall her friends. She had big goose eggs and little berry buds. Although she still had her fresh drinking iceâ now that there were many freshwater ponds to drink from. She felt connected to the earth.
After the sun had circled the sky several more timesâ she came upon a pond that flowed into a river. She did not know the river's nameâ but since Siku had passed many river mouths without knowing their nameâ so would she.
The problem now was how to cross it. As Emily grew more comfortable with her surroundingsâ she began to think more clearly. Barrow lay somewhere on the other side of this river. The currents ran east north of Point Barrowâ she figured. “I'm sure Siku pushed me until there was a safe place to beach. I must go west.” So she walked up the riverbank looking for a shallow place to wade. She came upon a kayak partially buried in mud near a group of tall tussocks. The kayak was old but still usable. She pulled it out and rinsed it off.
“Sikuâ” she called. “You sent this kayak here. I know you did.” Smiling and laughing in play talkâ she put it on the water. A paddle was left in the bow. She hopped inâ loaded her gearâ and paddled into the small river.
As she continued up the riverâ the wind stopped. Suddenly she was in a storm of mosquitoes. She had met them before and knew what to doâpull her parka hood tighterâ then grin and bear it. Hundreds crept up her nose and swarmed on her lips. She ate them. They were good! Licking mosquitoes off her lipsâ savoring their sweet lemony tasteâ she headed west up the river.
Flies joined the mosquitoes until the air became gray. Both insects were biters. As Emily was wondering what she could do about thatâ a wind picked up that blew the insects away.
“Sikuâ” she saidâ and patted her cheek.
She looked over and saw several big fat woolly-bear caterpillars on the riverbank.
“Ohâ Sikuâ” she said. “I know what to do. Arctic woolly bears freeze for the winter and can't move. Ernest said it takes them fourteen years of freezing and thawing before they can become a moth. They have thawed now. I'll try eating them.”
The flies began biting again as she ate a woolly bear. She scooped up a handful of snow from a last patch on the north side of the riverbank. She held it near her face. Cold emanated from it. The flies flew away.
As she was paddling she felt something with her feet in the bow of the kayak. She pulled it out; it was a small gillnet.
“Aarigaa
(great)! Now I can get all the food I need!”
She set the net in an eddy in the riverâ and within minutesâ it was filled with whitefish. She pulled out the net with its savory catch and cleaned the silvery fish with the same knife she had used to cut Siku's ropes. She patted her cheek. She was hungryâ and after slicing the fish into small piecesâ she ate the sweet meat. A feeling of well-being came over her. She packed the other fish away for later.
Emily Toozak kept paddling. After four more miles she came to a lake that connected to another creekâ and another lakeâ and on and on. She kept heading west. She thought of the long journey her whale made each year. The thought of Siku surviving all those years of Yankee whaling made her believe she could survive too.
She saw a patch of yellow flowers on the bank. They were like nothing else she had ever seen. They were little cups instead of petalsâ the northern water carpet. She peered into the cups. Shiny seeds lay heaped in the center of each. A drop of water fell from her fingertips into a cup. The seeds splashed out in all directions.
“A splash cupâ” she saidâ and laughed. “What a smart way to sow your seeds. Plants have wondrous ways. If plants can be that cleverâ so can I.”
Tired of paddlingâ she pulled up to the bank. She tore from her blanket three quarter-inch-wide strips and braided them into a rope. Then she tied a couple of shorter braided ropes to it. At the ends of eachâ she tied stones.
“I've made a bolaâ Sikuâ” she said proudlyâ and whirled it around her head. “The snare of my ancestors.” She let it go and watched it careen through the air.
“Pretty good.” She ran to it and picked it up. Walking as quietly as a ptarmiganâ she looked for game. Not far away was an Arctic fox that had almost finished changing into his brown summer coat. He was catching lemmings. She circled the bola over her head and hurled it. The fox darted away. She felt discouraged. The fox was too fast and wary.
Then she remembered that bolas are meant for hunting birds. She was suddenly remembering things other elders in the village beside her grandfather had said all the while she was growing up. She thought she had not paid attention.
She walked onâ throwing the bola at ptarmigan and owls. She got better. She whirled it into a flock of geese andâ surprisinglyâ struck one. She grabbed it and hurriedly plucked and cleaned it. She had real food.
“But I have no fireâ” she moanedâ and then happened to glance at her wristwatch; its glass covering magnified the numerals. Magnifying glasses could make fire. That she had learned in school. She worked the glass off the watchâ crumpled the cotton bandâ gathered dry grassâ and broke up the wooden box wrapping her one remaining goose egg in her blanket.
Then she dug a pit in the thawed surface ground and lined it with stones. Getting down on her kneesâ she concentrated the rays of the sun on the grass bundle. The dry blades grew red and burst into flame. She fed the flame with pieces of the wooden box and slivers of driftwood. When the fire was burning hotâ she added stones and let them heat. When they were fiery redâ she wrapped the goose in grass and then got the fish from her kayak. She cleaned and wrapped themâ too. She placed it all in the pit on top of the hot stonesâ and covered it with damp grass.
“I am a part of everythingâthe grassâ the tundraâ birds in the skyâ especially my ice whale in the sea.”
Emily Toozak sang a song and gathered green edible plants while the goose cooked. When she thought the stones were coolâ she uncovered the food. She tore off a goose leg and bit into it. It was delicious. She feasted on goose and fish until she was full. With it she ate some scurvy grass leaves and drank from the fresh cool water from the creek.
“I'm doing goodâ Sikuâ” she said as a misty wind caressed her face. She touched her cheek again.
The sun was in the sky day and nightâ so Emily Toozak slept when the animals sleptânoon and midnight. As she lay down to sleep one noonâ she thought about the workday the white men had brought to the Arctic. It was a strict hourly schedule from 9:00
A.M.
to 5:00
P.M.
in spite of the Arctic's two-month-long day and two-month-long night each year.
Out hereâ she was following the rhythm of her world.
Emily Toozak was refreshed when she awoke. She got quickly to her feetâ packed her gooseâ fishâ and treasuresâ and got back in the kayak. She paddled around pondsâ creeksâ past fox densâ scared the ground squirrels along the banksâ and listened to Arctic loons call. She felt a part of them all.
She needed to make sure that she was heading westâ so she watched the sun and remembered the wind almost always blew from the east. The sun and wind were her compass.
Finally the creek opened up into another bay. Walking up the beachâ she came upon the gigantic bones of a bowhead whale that had washed up long ago. She ran to them. Whale bones were everywhereâ old ones like the ones from which her people sculpted art and made tools. She wandered among themâ stepping over huge jawbones and plunking herself down on vertebrae as big as tussocks. The whale ribsâ she realizedâ could make frames for shelters.