I realize as I slow my steps that I haven’t heard anyone laugh in so long. My mother could be laughing at anything—perhaps the boat rocked as they stepped out and someone was splashed—her laugh comes easily most of the time. Here in your camp, my injuries have been treated with such seriousness, and I’m grateful for it, but there’s a warmth and affection in the music of my mother’s voice that heals me from the inside out.
Yet as I approach and catch my first glimpse of them—not just my mother but my father and brothers, too—I know they are being told about my injuries for the first time. Chev is speaking to them, gesturing as he tells the story. His back is to me, his words carried away by the sea breeze, but I can read the tension in my father’s shoulders, my mother’s sudden silence. She reaches out for Pek and holds on to him as if she might fall if she let go.
Thankfully, Yano and Ela are there, too, and as Chev quiets, Ela steps up. My parents’ eyes turn to her, and from my vantage point—close enough to see but far enough away that I haven’t yet been noticed—I can tell that her words reassure them. My father steps forward. My mother nods.
I take a tentative step in their direction and my mother’s attention shifts.
She spots me on the path, and when she speaks my name—just my name—it’s as if an entire song has been sung.
She lets go of my brother and hurries to me. Her face glows red with windburn and her gait is uneven after a long trip on the sea. She falls against me and her arms encircle my back.
Over her shoulder my eyes are drawn to your face as you react to the pain you imagine I feel—your teeth dig deep into your bottom lip as she embraces me. But although her touch stings, it also brings relief to another kind of pain, and I won’t pull away. Instead, I clench my jaw and lean into my mother’s embrace. The pelt of the new parka presses against the cuts in my back, but the pain recedes to the edges of my mind as contentment crowds it out.
As we head back up the path together, I manage to get close enough to speak to you without others hearing. Standing so close, I notice a scent around you, the same scent I’d noticed in your hut—the warm fragrance of musk.
“Thank you for the parka,” I say.
“Of course,” you answer.
For the briefest of moments the world around me holds its breath—the breeze dies away; birds quiet their songs. The only sound is the crunch of gravel beneath our feet as we walk side by side.
But it doesn’t last. It’s only an illusion; one that fades as soon as you speak again. “I started it the day Pek gave me the pelt. I couldn’t accept it—the cat was killed on your land. It belongs to your clan. I figured the parka was an efficient means of returning it to you.”
Efficient?
“The pelt was meant as a gift—”
I stop myself mid-sentence. Hot, angry words rush to my lips but I bite them back. Why bother? What could I possibly say that might reach you? “Excuse me,” I say instead, and hurry to catch up to my family.
We join the rest of your clan in a large meeting area at the center of the circle of huts, strikingly similar to our meeting space at home, though there is one significant difference. Your clan has erected four large poles carved from the trunks of trees in the corners of the meeting place, and pulled tightly overhead is a roof of hides pieced together with cords of sinew. The sides are open to allow both the breeze and your clanspeople to easily pass in and out, but the covering overhead ensures that you will always be sheltered from sun or rain while gathered. At home, we simply huddle in the kitchen or eat our meals in our huts if the weather is foul. I remember a fleeting look that crossed your face when you first saw my clan gathered in the open air after the hunt. Now I suspect it was disappointment—or worse, disdain—at our lack of sophistication.
Just as there are differences in the space, there are also differences in custom. Unlike home, there is no music, no singing. A solitary drum calls people to the evening meal. Even conversation is muted. At home, some people in my clan—especially my mother’s family, who tend to be big in size and big in voice—greet each other at the evening meal with an enthusiasm that suggests they haven’t seen each other in days, when it’s been only since morning, if that long. In contrast, the few bits of conversation I catch among your people are exchanged in hushed, polite voices—a comment on the hearty fragrance of cooking meat coming from the kitchen, a question about how a sprained ankle is healing.