MY MOTHER NAMED ME YAKONE, after the red aurora.
Some said the red aurora was bad luck, the image of blood painting the sky. But my mother believed it meant good fortune, that the spirits dancing in the sky were pleased. She told me she had only seen the red aurora twice in her life. The first was on the night after my father, still barely a man, killed his first whale. The second was fifteen years ago, on the longest night of the year, when the sun did not rise at all. I was born that night.
So I suppose my mother was both wrong and right: wrong, because she could never bear children again after me, and right, because our seer said the fire in me burned strongly enough for all the sons in the world.
My mother carried me on her back and went around our hut for many circles, following the path the sun would travel. She kissed me often and said I would bring my father successful hunts. And I did.
I have many memories of those winter hunts. My father would come back with the other hunters, hauling the bleeding bodies of whales and seals to shore. I would join my mother and the other women to carve maktak: rich, glistening chunks of blubber with the thick skin still attached. We would dry them on pokes, split the shares between each family in our village, then load the rest of the maktak onto sleds and take the dogs out to deliver the food to relatives in another village. I would watch as we piled the animals’ bones high and waited for the lights to glow from the south. Then we would burn the bones, sending their souls back to the ocean.
“There are no boundaries between the great whale’s spirit and ours,” my father would tell me as we stood together by the fire, watching the aurora wash across the sky. “We all belong to the same life force.”
I would listen, kiss my hand, and touch it to the ground near the fire.
The delivery of maktak was something I yearned to do with my father. I wanted to see the tundra beyond the light of our fires, cling to the back of a wind-whipped dogsled, witness the seals at sea and the foxes prowling through the snow. I wanted to be the proud bearer of life, giving food to others at the end of a long, dangerous journey.
The next time we gathered before the bones, I asked my father, “Please, take me with you on the next run.”
My father gave me a raised brow and a stern look. “Your place is here,” he replied, “with your mother. Who will help her when I’m not around?”
“The other women in the village,” I argued. “Do you remember the seer’s words? I have no brothers — you can teach me about the dogs and the sled. Right?” I looked up at him so earnestly that he threw his head back and laughed.
A winter later, my father started to teach me. How to snare, to make a harpoon, to harness our dogs, to read the stars. He walked with me down the line of our dogs as they whined and quivered in excitement, teaching me to know each — Ataneq, Chinook, Kaya — so well that I could read their moods as well as my own. My mother taught me how to find fireweed and cloudberries, how to store them in the snow to keep them fresh, how to gather bird eggs, how to feed the fire with caribou droppings and dried moss. Father told me stories about the Seal King and Nanuk, the Lonely Roamer, the Great White Bear. “The spirits will guide you,” he said, “if you take only what you need and respect them in their domain. Even in the darkest night. Remember that, Yakone, and you will never be lost.”
“I’ll remember,” I replied.
Finally, one early-winter evening, my father smiled as we fed our dogs. “I’ll take you with me after our hunt,” he said. “To deliver maktak.” He glanced up at the sky, where sheets of stars had blinked into bright existence after months of light. He raised one hand and traced a rough line between constellations, connecting the diamond of the First Ones to the Caribou. “That is the path we will follow.”
The red aurora danced that night, obscuring the stars, and my heart danced with it in anticipation. It was the first time I’d ever seen it for myself. I stayed outside, my eyes fixed on the scarlet sheets, until I couldn’t stand the numbness in my fingers anymore. The next morning, my father set out with the hunters.
When they returned, I knew immediately that something was wrong. The hunters shouted among themselves as they dragged their kayaks to shore. Loud and angry. In the dim light, I wrapped my arms around my body and trembled as I waited with my mother. My eyes darted among the men and the bodies of whales, searching, as always, for my father. Not here. I scanned the horizon, looking for another kayak behind the others. The water stayed still, vanishing into the dim haze of morning snow.
“He is not dead,” my mother said quietly beside me. I looked up at her, but her eyes stayed fixed on the horizon, hard and unblinking. Other villagers ran to the hunters, and their voices all mixed into one loud storm.