Your brother sits forward. “This cat, it was a rebel,” he says. I study his face. Chev is older than you and Seeri by maybe as many as six or seven years. Like the other Olen men, his hair is always pulled back tight in a braid. This differs from the style of the men in my clan—we generally cut our hair with sharp blades to keep it short and out of the way. Something about this style gives Chev a stern look, his features exposed and his eyes intense, as if he is constantly forming a plan. There is a sadness, too, that shows in the set of his mouth and the lines at the edges of his lips.
“This cat no longer had a taste for bison or elk.” He raises his face and stares at the hides on the wall, but I know he is looking at something else—a memory. “It was not long after we returned from your camp. This cat killed a hunter who was stalking game. After that, this cat stalked all of us. No one could go outside of camp. I had to forbid it.
“But one did—a child. She tried to sneak off to the river in the valley beyond the hills. We found her that night. Her own mother could not recognize her face.”
Chev goes silent as his eyes darken.
“That’s the reason I stayed,” says Pek. “I’ve been helping patrol the camp and hunt for the cat. I promised to stay until he was no longer a threat.”
“The Spirit of this cat was a demon,” Chev says. “We offered prayers and chants to the Divine, and now the demon has been slain.” He gets to his feet and strides for the door. “My clanspeople are busy in the kitchen, preparing the evening meal for you and your family. This meal will allow us to express our thanks.”
With that, Chev ducks quickly through the door and is gone.
“So he’s happy?” I ask Pek, half joking. Chev is not a man who is open with his emotions.
“Maybe with you, but not with me.”
Pek sits cross-legged on a pile of pelts that make up the bed across from me. His head is bowed, but he raises his face slowly and gives me a smile completely devoid of joy.
“Seeri?” I don’t need to ask. Of course it’s Seeri.
“He’s quite serious about her betrothal to his friend. I believe that he sees me as unsuitable and unworthy.”
“And you know this how?”
“His words, carried across the space between huts as he shouted at Seeri.”
My brother—the one who was born with a spear in his hand, the one who could always out-throw me—seems beaten. The lowered head, the drooping shoulders—I’ve seen that only once before in him, on the first day we hunted seals so he could bring the pelts to your clan. Even that day, Pek had started out hopeful. It had taken defeat and a near drowning to weigh him down.
“I’d planned to win him over by killing the rogue cat, but you’ve solved that problem. I think there’s little left that I could do to change his mind.”
I lean forward and feel the scabs across my back tighten as I reach for Pek’s shoulder. “Sorry for killing the cat before you could, but it really left me no choice—”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” I say. “But don’t give up. After all, aren’t you the one who said there’s still hope? She isn’t married yet.”
I turn and lie down again, my body suddenly heavy. I press my chest against the sealskin blanket, my wounds open to the air. My eyes close. I catch myself just as I drift into a dream and I shake myself awake, but Pek is already by the door.
“Sleep,” he says. “Don’t fight it.”
“I’ve slept all day—”
“And you walked all of yesterday. And fought a cat. And dragged its body to camp. And now you’re healing. So sleep.”
I want to argue—my mind begins to form the words—but before my lips can give them shape I fade into a deep, dreamless sleep. I wake only when voices reach my ears, calling from shore.
I open my eyes. Light in the hut is fading, but judging by the sounds I hear, I woke just in time. The boats that were sent for my family must have finally returned.
I find myself alone for the first time, but the solitude of the hut has a texture all its own—rich and comforting. I climb to my feet and find a clean parka at the foot of the bed—one crafted from the pelt of a cat so soft it won’t irritate my wounds.
I pick it up and hold it in the light, confused by the mystery of it. But then I notice the details—the way the light brown fur fades to pale tan at the edges, the swirled pattern in the grain of the hide in one corner, the slight blemish where a drop of blood dried into a permanent stain of red.
This was made from the pelt of the cat you killed, the one I tanned and sent to you.
ELEVEN
I follow the mix of voices to the beach, drawn along by the singsong tones of my mother’s lilting laugh. Though I’ve rarely given any thought to the sound of my mother’s laugh, at this moment, its familiarity quenches a thirst inside me I didn’t even know was there.