Raven Woman

By Pinkie Paranya

In ancient Alaska, before it was known by anyone but the Inuit people, a child Umiak is the only survivor of a starving clan who ventured too far onto dangerous, unknown waters to find food. Washed ashore with nothing but her raven-feather talisman, she is discovered by strangers, taken to their village and forced to serve the elderly shaman. During her lonely, perilous ordeal with the hostile tribe, Umiak is visited by the Raven Mother, who bestows upon her the spirit of the Raven Woman, a power that is to be passed down through the generations to come. Now Umiak must find the strength to survive and pass on her influence and power to her own daughter when the time comes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Black Opal Books
• Release date: Apr 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781626941229

Book preview

In ancient Alaska, before it was known to anyone but the Inuit people, the child Umiak is the only survivor of a starving clan who ventured too far onto dangerous, unknown waters to find food. Washed ashore with nothing but her raven-feather talisman, she is discovered by strangers, taken to their village, and forced to serve the elderly shaman. During her lonely, perilous ordeal with the hostile tribe, Umiak is visited by the Raven Mother, who bestows upon her the spirit of the Raven Woman, a power that is to be passed down through the generations to come. Now Umiak must find the strength to survive and pass on her influence and power to her own daughter when the time comes.

Pinkie Paranya gives the reader a magical, mystical journey, blended with humor, adventure, and heartbreak, but always with a faith in the future, in this first award-winning book of the trilogy, WOMEN OF THE NORTHLAND.

KUDOS FOR RAVEN WOMAN

Jean M. Auel fans will fall under the spell of Pinkie Paranya and her magically powerful storytelling about a time before Alaska had been imagined and the Inuit people were just emerging from the glacial wasteland. When a young Inuit child watches her family drowned before she is shipwrecked among strangers, Umiak’s life changes forever. Alone, and perceived by her rescuers as a dangerous ilitkosiq, a troublemaker, Umiak bravely prepares to face a new world that must include defeating the angakuk, the shaman whose slave she becomes. Through her ordeals, Umiak clings to the only family possession that survived with her, the ikiiak, a feather from the powerful tulugaak, the Raven who had watched over their people since the beginning of time. The spirit of Raven Woman comes to Umiak and gives to her the Umiak Raven power that is passed from mother to daughter through generations. With this gift Umiak finds the strength to survive, find love, experience loss and pass on her powers to her own daughter. Exciting, compelling, and masterfully written. A real treat for Jean Auel fans. -- Rita Winner Lynn Kerstan, The Golden Leopard

A magical, mystical tour of the Women of the Northland. Raven Woman is the first book in what promises to be a very exciting and enlightening series. -- Sharon Ihle, Untamed, Kensington Publications

Paranya richly illumines a little-known culture and vibrantly brings an ancient people to life. -- Western Literature Lifetime Achievement award winner,Jeanne Williams, The Cave Dreamers

It is an epic story or struggle, survival, and the determination of one strong woman to fulfill her destiny against all odds. -- Taylor Jones, Reviewer

Raven Woman was the Silver winner of the Historical Fiction category in the Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Award in 2002, competing against over 900 entries.

The book is very well written, honest, and heart-warming. If you like historical fiction, you’ll love Raven Woman. -- Regan Murphy, Reveiwer

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe a great deal to my friends who have supported my writing and given me such great suggestions and feedback with all my books.

Delphine Nelson, Jannifer Hoffman, Joanne Taylor Moore, Ramona Forrest, Eve Magnus and Mabel Slack. I may forget to add some special names, and I apologize for that, but I’d never leave off my sister, Donna Garrett who is so important to me.

RAVEN WOMAN

Pinkie Paranya

A Black Opal Books Publication

Copyright 2002 by Pinkie Paranya

Cover Art by Jackson Cover Designs

Copyright 2014 All Rights Reserved

EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-626941-22-9

EXCERPT

She’d been left out on the ice with only a small weapon her friend had given her. She’d have to remember to thank him--if she lived through this...

Kuturuq had hidden a weapon in her pack just before she left the village. During one of her first hunting lessons he explained how to use it. Now in her panic she could not remember all of his instructions. Was it only for wolves? Slowly she backed toward her pack, not daring to tear her gaze from the black eyes of the bear.

Fingers locking on the weapon, she pulled it out. She unwound the long, sharp strips of baleen, grabbed up several pieces of her precious dried meat, and stuck it in the center, then wrapped the baleen around it. The method of preparing the bait came slowly back to her now. She bent down and buried it in the snow. If it did not freeze together, the bait would be useless. When the bear gulped it down, the pieces of whalebone would spring outward, cutting the animal’s insides and causing it to bleed to death. She had no idea how long this would take or even it if it would work for her.

The bear roared so loud that chunks of snow fell from the ceiling of the den. Umiak put her hands over her ears to block out the terrifying sound. The firebowl! Maybe the creature feared fire. It might give the bait time to freeze. The bear lunged again. Its head and shoulders now protruded through the cave opening, half in, half out.

"Naanuk, you are a mighty hunter and a friend to the Inuit. An ignorant girl who is now a woman begs you--leave this cave. You are more powerful than a puny human and can make a better home for you and your new family."

The animal answered with a savage snarl. The small, black eyes mirrored the creature’s hunger as it continued to wriggle and push forward. Soon it would break through the extra frozen snow packed around the edge of the entrance. Nothing could stop it then.

Umiak closed her eyes for a moment and imagined the long, black claws ripping, tearing--the sharp, yellow teeth pulling great chunks of bleeding flesh from her body. She felt the pain and shock as if it were happening already.

The snapping jaws jerked her attention back to the present. She reached for the bait. It felt hard and cold between her palms. In a ragged gesture of desperation, she threw it at the bear’s open mouth. In one gulp, it disappeared and the animal paused in its effort to squeeze through the opening--paused as if astounded that the food had vanished so quickly.

Umiak moved far back to the rear in a desperate attempt to make herself insignificant. In one hand she clutched Kuturuq’s knife, in the other the sturdy caribou leg bone. If she must be torn apart and eaten, she refused to surrender her life like a squealing, frightened rabbit.

GLOSSARY OF INUIT WORDS OR PHRASES

AAKLUQ: Brown bear, possibly the grizzly

AAKPUK: Berries, salmon berries for example

AAKNAQ: Owl

AALIQ, AALUQ: Seal’s blow-hole in the ice

AANIGUTYAK: Birthing place, set aside from the village

AAXLU: Killer whale

AMAWK: The wolf

AMISAQ: Monster walrus spirit

APUUTGAK: Place women go when having menses, also birthing place

AARORAQ: Threshold stone. Usually a flat rock.

AYVUQ: Walrus

BALEEN: Springy material from the whale’s mouth

IGLU, IGLOO: Snow house

IKAALUQ: Salmon

IKALLUWAQ: Tom cod, a common fish

IKIIAK: Magical Raven feather

IKIRRAK: Drying racks for game

ILALUUKPIQ: Salmon

ILAMARIK: Family

ILITKOSIQ: The ordinary dead, those who haven’t come back to haunt the living

INUA: Inner being or soul. Even rocks, trees, animals, people have this.

INUIT: The Men, or people as they called themselves, Eskimo

ISUMATAK: A thinker

ITIKIK: Hunter who hides in the moon

ITIQIKTOQ: Inuits applied this term to Indians because of their aggressive nature ~ The men who mate with wolves

ITISEQAKWAQ: A foolishly brave person

KAAVIK: Wolverine

KARIGI: Place of gathering for winter games, feasts or men’s doings

KAVATUQ: Red fox

KAYAK: One person skin-covered boat

KILIVACIAQ: The wooly mammoth

KUPILLEROK: Earth worms ~ dreaded and feared above all else by the ancient Inuits

MAQURAUQ: Fighting -- dissention -- trouble making

MITKOSARRET: Five skins ~ enough for a jacket

MUUKTAUQ: Whale skin, very much desired by Inuits

NAANUK: Polar bear

NAPAKTUK: Trees

NAWLIGAK: Whale harpooner ~ village usually only had one

NINGIUK: Old woman ~ beyond fertility

NUUNAMIUT: People who live on land ~ woodland tribes

SASTRUGI: Tall ice formed from the wind

SEDNAH: Goddess of the sea, provider of food from the water

SERMERSIRAQ: Name Inuits gave to glaciers -- a place to avoid because of evil spirits

SHAMAN: Male or female wizard ~ served as buffer between the people and the Supernatural

SIRQINIRK: Sister Sun

SIRQINIRK UPINGAKSAK: The sun of coming summer

SIKSIK: Ground squirrel

SISUAQ: Whale

TAREUMIUT: People who live by the sea\

TARNEQ: Soul’s shadow

TINGMIAT: The flying ones (birds)

TORNIT: Legendary peoples of great strength and physical powers

TULUGAAK: The raven ~ believed by aboriginal people to have reated the earth

TULUNIXIRAQ: Someone who can change forms from a person to a raven and back again -- in this book the name refers to the Raven Mother, living around 2,000 BC

TUNARAK: Shaman’s helping power -- usually an animal, but sometimes ancestral spirits

TUNUNIRN: The country beyond the back of something ~ probably where the WIIVASKAAT stay

TUTTU: Caribou

UGRUK: Bearded seal, also water monster for land people

UKPIC: Willow trees

ULU: Woman’s curved, circular shaped knife, usually of bone or slate

UMEALIQ: Head man in a village, one who owns the boat

UMIAK: Large skin-covered boat used in hunting or journeys

UMINGMAK: The bearded one ~ meaning musk ox

UKIUK: Winter

UPINGAK: Summer

UPINGAKSAK: Almost summer (spring)

WIIVAKSAAT: Those who come around again, or strangers in the sky ~ dead people

CHAPTER 1

Umiak

Alaska, A.D. 300:

The girl saw no familiar trees, no tall peaks of snow-covered mountains, only flat whiteness surrounding them. Someone shrieked and the sound carried back to her. She turned to watch in stunned fascination as the first boat gave a mighty lurch against a pounding wave and rolled in a slow, graceful turn so that only the bottom bobbed on the surface.

The second boat did the same, causing a neck-snapping jolt, transmitting to the two remaining vessels. They tipped sideways for a long, terrifying moment before they bounced back into place.

Fear had not touched her yet. Her father, the leader of the group, would make it all right. He always had.

Ragged chunks of ice struck the sides of the wide skin boats and the wind howled and danced over the water.

Women and children huddled together, their mouths open in unspoken cries of fright. The men braced themselves against the movement of the heaving sea, tawny skin stretched over their facial bones in expressions of grim resignation.

The men knew Ugruk’s power.

The four boats, lashed by ropes of rolled hides, leaped into the mist. The leader was a landsman, nuunamiut. He had no way of knowing that tying them together only increased the danger, making the boats harder to maneuver.

Children, their round black eyes filled with terror, clung close to their mother’s fur-clad leggings. They made no sound. A child of the Arctic learned early in life to be still in the presence of danger. The babies, tucked away snugly inside the hoods of their mother’s jackets, stayed dry and warm.

Winter wind suddenly whipped in from another direction, skimming over the ice-choked water in short, vigorous gusts. The pale sun had long since disappeared, causing the sky and the water at the horizon to blend into a murky gray color. The water that sprayed over the boats turned to ice, plastering onto exposed eyebrows and eyelashes and ringing the long hairs of their wolf skin hoods. The leader muttered words to placate Ugruk, the one who lay at the bottom of the sea. It was possible the creature would feast well upon their flesh today. The thought made the leader’s body twist with a shudder of revulsion. For a nuunamiut to perish at sea was the ultimate tragedy. His bones would haunt his kinsmen forever in their desire to be covered with earth in the shadows of the huge forest trees.

The girl sucked in her breath, not minding the frigid air that rattled inside her chest. Her uncles, cousins, aunts--a third of their village--had ridden in the four boats.

The remaining nuunamiuts gazed at the black water in disbelief. Only lances and pieces of hunting equipment danced on the water as if taking on a life of their own. As the villagers watched, black heads popped to the surface, staying only briefly before sinking from sight.

Huddled in the boat, the girl sat too far away to see the faces of her drowning kinsmen, but she sensed their agony. Her father signaled to someone in the second boat and a man bent to cut the connecting rope. The two overturned boats had been discarded like so much driftwood in an attempt to save the remaining ones. Her mother bumped against her shoulder to get her attention. The round shape of her baby brother showed plain beneath the soft pliancy of her mother’s fur hood. The girl closed her eyes, wishing she too could be safe next to the remembered moist warmth of her mother’s skin.

The mother yanked off the girl’s mitten and pressed an object into her palm, closing her fingers over it tightly until she winced with the pain. It was the family’s treasured ikiiak, a feather from the Raven who had watched over their people since the beginning of time. Her mother never removed the charm from the little leather pouch which hung around her neck. The girl opened her mouth to question just as a swell of water mixed with chunks of ice leaped up at them like some terrible living thing.

Was it Ugruk? In her terror she imagined him coming for them. The girl felt strong hands pushing her to the bottom of the boat. Her mouth and nose filled with dirty slush water. She struggled against panic. She could not find any place to put her breath. It would surely leave and she would die in the bottom of the boat.

Then there was nothing but merciful darkness.

Strange voices penetrated her stupor when the girl slowly became conscious of her surroundings. She lay spread on her back in the bottom of the boat. Where were her mother and father, her brother and sisters? She leaped to her feet, expecting to see the fearsome waves and feel the sharp cut of the wind.

The boat beneath her remained steady, the air still and cold. Her sudden movement brought babbles and moans from many voices. She turned in the direction of the sound to see a tightly packed group of fur-clad people step back in alarm.

Strangers from the other side! She was a wiivaksaat, a dead person! Terror gripped her insides and twisted cruelly.

The crowd gradually edged toward her again. Were her mother and father among them? Were they teasing her, hiding as in a game children played? It might not be so terrible to be dead if they were all together. She rubbed her mittens into her eyes to see across the blinding sharp whiteness of the snow. The sun sprayed a pale warmth over the scene as she struggled to stand on wobbly legs.

A man ventured close enough to reach a finger out and touch her. The girl trembled but did not retreat. When the people saw the man still standing and unharmed, they rushed forward, each touching her with probing, questioning fingers. With sudden insight, she knew they too had thought her a spirit. She was alive!

She crawled out of the boat, tottering on the snowy ground as if taking her first baby steps. She felt weak. Her stomach growled in hunger. A ring of faces surrounded her. Their dark-eyed expressions and tawny skin were much like that of her own people, but she was taller than even the tallest man standing before her.

Where are my kinsmen? the girl asked, trying not to cry. It would have shamed her father to see his daughter show the weakness of tears in front of strangers.

The crowd began to talk, the sound came to her as a low, muttering hum. Her distress subsided momentarily as curiosity took hold of her emotions. These might be the tareumiut, people who lived by the sea. Hunters from her village brought back stories about these strange people who were able to slay giant fish. Sometimes the hunters traded caribou meat for skins filled with fat from the water creatures.

A few of the men wore round white objects in the bottom of their lips, much like the men in her clan put sharp little bones from the white goose through the tip of an ear.

"Umiak?" One of the men pointed to the boat.

She did not recognize the word, yet she slowly began to realize that much of their conversation sounded familiar. In spite of her resolve, tears overflowed her eyes and ran down her cheeks when she tried to speak. She used hand gestures to tell them of her people coming in boats from a long distance, searching for caribou that were scarce this season. She made motions to indicate the tossing sea, the bobbing boats and rolled her hands around each other to show how they all turned over. It was then she remembered the charm her mother pressed into her hand and pulled off her mitten.

There in her palm, almost as if it had become a part of her skin, lay the black, crumpled feather from the powerful Tulugaak, the Raven. The crowd gave a concerted gasp and stepped back. She did not care about the strange reaction of the people. Instead, her thoughts turned to the mother who had placed this charm in her palm. Her head lowered until her chin touched her chest and a muffled sob escaped her tightly clenched teeth.

Where were her people? Why did they not come to be with her? She turned to face the water, hoping to see them magically walk up from the shore.

She had no time to worry for suddenly an excited murmuring started from the back of the group. The crowd separated in the wake of an apparition striding toward her. She leaned against the boat for support. Her throat dried so that she gulped at the air, striving for calm.

It was the angakuk. The shaman.

In her village everyone feared the shaman and yet trusted their lives to his magic powers. He reached out to touch the feather in her hand. He knew she held Raven power. With one hand he swung the dried leg of a loon to ward off any dangerous spirits she might have brought with her.

He was taller than the others, and when he stood before her, their eyes were nearly at the same level. He raised his voice in a high pitched chant, causing fear to sour on her tongue. She swallowed convulsively.

Circling her again and again with a maniacal frenzy, he bit the insides of his mouth, producing foamy spittle mixed with blood at the comers of his lips. The center of his lower lip held the largest ornament of any of the men, carved in the shape of a seal.

This one may not be a human being as we are. His high, sharp voice carried above the constant murmuring of the crowd. Many of his words sounded strange, some she recognized. It was plain he told them she was not of their world.

"She is in the guise of a helpless girl. It is a deception practiced on the gullible. She must be a dangerous ilitkosiq, a trouble maker from the other side!" He looked out over the sea and waved the loon leg. A movement rippled across the calm surface of the water. Wavelets began at the shoreline, gathering force as they leaped and lunged over one another as if in haste to get to shore. A huge wave crashed down on the beach, coming from nowhere. The gathering of people leapt back, huddling closer to one another for comfort. Some moaned in fear.

The girl felt her knees weaken and tried to hold herself straight. She could not be a visitor from the dead. Her talisman, the Raven feather, would not have followed to the other side. Totems were only for human protection. She momentarily tucked her fear behind her curiosity to watch the shaman.

Even though he wore baggy sealskin trousers, making him look to be as round as the others, the girl could tell he was thin as the birds that ran along the shore finding insects. His bony chin was picked clean of hairs, as was every man’s, but his eyebrows were allowed to sprout in every direction. Some of the longer hairs drooped down into his eyes, mixing with his lashes. He wore only a bird-skin vest on his chest to signify his power over the cold. Countless greasy meals and the dried blood of animals stained the vest.

She had heard tales of other villages in which shaman seldom permitted water to touch their bodies or their clothing--thinking that water diminished their powers.

His eyes stunned the girl, piercing through her like a lance, pinning her to one place. She felt certain those black eyes knew her every thought. Bloodshot veins almost filled the white area and reminded the girl of caribou brains spilled onto the snow. His long, thin nose hooked down toward his coarse, full lips which were spread in a horrible grimace. Snags of chipped, rotted teeth showed just above the gumline.

Her voice shattered the silence. "I am not of the wiivaksaat!"

Who are you? What are you called? A woman stood a little closer than the others. The girl turned away from the shaman to look at her. She was by far the fattest person in the village. Her eyes were swallowed by her round cheeks, but the malicious glare from the slits of her eyes was more frightening than the look of the shaman. Her low forehead creased with a sullen scowl which sat comfortably upon her face as if it belonged there.

Sarquaaq! The shaman pointed at the woman. This is not your place to question first. It is too dangerous.

The girl felt surprise at the placating whine in the shaman’s voice. She wished to tell them her name as a sign of friendliness and that her clan was called the Tornit. She dared not. Once a name was spoken she would be in their power. Among her people, a person’s soul was wrapped inside his name. One did not surrender it to strangers.

She remembered how often the sick changed their names so the bad spirits would not know them and might leave them alone. The girl shook her head, her heart sad, but her mouth settled into a stubborn line.

Leave her here! The shaman’s voice screeched out over the murmur of the crowd. "This is a dangerous place! I feel many ilitkosiq, dead souls, all around us, in the water, creeping toward shore! Soon they will crawl out upon the land, searching for this one."

The girl understood that he spoke of her people by the way he shook his rattle toward the dark water and then at the skin boat lying on the beach. The thought came that it might be better if they left her here alone to wait for her father. He was out there. He would surely come for her. She knew some of her people had perished, she had seen their heads bobbing in the icy water. She shivered in fright to think of climbing back into the boat and entering the water with souls of her departed family swimming beneath her.

An ancient crone moved up to stand by the one called Sarquaaq. She was small enough to be a spirit. An old person feels shame that her daughter stupidly asks a stranger to surrender her name. Her shadow was no larger than one of her daughter’s mammoth legs yet she seemed not the least bit intimidated.

"You call yourselves Inuit--the men. Yet you are afraid of a child? This one is not from the land beyond. We have seen people of her clan in our journeys. She is of the Tornit, those with the strength of a bear and tall as the napaktuk."

The group stirred restlessly, not knowing whom to believe. When the old one’s husband was alive, she went with him on many journeys, for he had been a wanderer. Few of them had ever seen a tree, but all had heard of these wonders.

She leaned fearlessly toward the girl, touched her cheek, and then touched the boat. "She has a name now. The girl comes from the sea in an umiak. Her name will be Umiak. She turned to speak to her as if they were the only two in the village. Ooo-mee-ack. It is a pleasant word, you will like it for a name. She moved to stand in front of the people, ignoring the shaman. She is young, her soul not yet formed. She offers no harm."

The shaman glared, his eyes suspicious. A child? She is big for a child. I say she is a mother who has lost children to ‘Sednah in the water.’ Her kinsmen will rise from the water and find her. I may not have enough magic to protect you against the danger!

The people muttered with fear at the mention of Sednah. Some moved away with their families, but most stayed, eyes bright with curiosity.

The old woman wiped her furred sleeve under her runny nose which was turning red from the cold. The sky had changed to an ugly brown. A storm was coming.

An old woman is not afraid, even if some men are. A shocked expression came over the watchers faces with this outright disregard of the shaman’s commands. For a long moment the girl’s life hung by the silence between the old woman and the shaman.

What of the lances, harpoons, and other treasures that our people have gathered from the water? These belong to the girl, someone in the crowd said.

The shaman knew curiosity had overpowered their fear and he had lost. For now. He glared at Umiak and the old woman, his bony chin lifted with arrogant pride.

She had made a powerful enemy.

I must examine the weapons, the shaman warned, his voice calm now, which was more frightening that his screams and shouts. They may contain spirits to bring mischief makers and thus poor hunting. The girl will come with me. If she has born children, we must return her to this place and leave her to join her dead family.

Hands began to strip off Umiak’s soggy jacket. Someone handed her a dry fur. She slipped her arms into the icy cold sleeves, shivering until her body heat warmed the inside. It felt so good not to be wet, although her boots were still damp.

The old woman spoke to her, her ancient voice cracked in places as would a piece of folded hide in the cold. Umiak. The grandmother pointed a finger into her chest and said it again.

Ooo-mee-ack, the girl repeated politely. So, it appeared she would not be left for Ugruk. They called the water creature Sednah. Could Ugruk and Sednah be the same creature? Now they had given her a name. She knew it had to do with the skin boat. She let the word linger on her tongue, pursing her lips to whisper it.

Ooo-mee-ack. It sounded soothing, yet strong and pleasing. She looked back at the water, expecting to see her father and mother coming for her. The shaman had spoken of them as being spirits. Could it be true? Could all have perished? She followed behind the old woman as the procession returned to their village.

CHAPTER 2

As they approached, children ran toward them, standing silently in the presence of a stranger. Everyone poured out of the huts to see.

How short they all were! Umiak’s amazement overcame the shyness of staring into so many new faces. Their skin was the same as her own people’s, a tawny color, eyes black as well as their hair. Their expressions showed more curiosity than hostility. She could tell they saw few strangers.

The homes they lived in differed so much from the dwellings in her village. These huddled almost below the ground with only a small mound at the entrance. Some had windows in the roof covered with material which she recognized as the stretched and dried intestines of a large animal. Behind each hut she saw the ikirrak, only instead of building with limbs from Brother Tree, these people built the drying racks with collected driftwood of every shape and form. It gave them a whimsical look, as if the children had made them. The season of darkness had begun, yet plenty of meat lay drying.

Thoughts came of the hungry, desperate people in her own village. They had counted on the hunters to return with caribou. Now they would be forced to leave many babies and old ones behind to begin their winter journey. They would blame the ones who went away in the boats to find meat.

The people must know the truth. Suppose their kinsmen and friends thought the little band of hunters did not return because they found a better place to live?

What a shameful disgrace to those whose souls had departed. None of those dear ones who drowned could ever rest easy until the villagers knew the truth.

Perhaps that was the reason she was spared, to take this message back to them. Resolve changed her fear and concern for herself to determination. For an instant her youth disappeared into the woman she would become. She looked at the Raven feather clutched in her palm. She must wait for her mother and father to find her so they could return to her village. Then the dead could rest peacefully in their long forever-sleep.

The shaman gripped Umiak’s arm tightly as if he knew her thoughts and feared she would run away. They stood in the middle of the village. The huts formed a loose circle about a larger one directly in the middle. This one sat above the ground. The people kept the area around it swept free from the discarded bones and excrement lying near the smaller dwellings. Umiak knew the building was the meeting house. Her village had one too. Several men emerged from the large shelter but one man, older than the others, stood in front, arms folded across his wide chest, legs spread as if he was rooted to the ground.

The shaman held her arm as he broke into a long speech punctuated by many strange gyrations. He plainly directed his attention toward the eldest of the men.

The girl wondered who could be so important to claim even the shaman’s respect.

The strange man looked at her in silence, his eyes expressionless obsidian slits in a round face. He held himself with the calm dignity of a natural leader. When the shaman finished speaking, the man walked forward with slow, methodical steps. It seemed to take forever, yet even the smallest child remained quiet. The wind slept, as it often did just before a storm, but the people appeared to pay the weather no mind as they watched the drama before them.

Walking around Umiak, the man circled her as a hunter might circle a bear, cautious yet confident in his own strength. Umiak fought to control her inner turmoil so that all the people would see was a girl who stood straight and tall, folding her dignity around her. Her attention leaped to the two who had been standing alongside the older man. Instinctively she knew they were his sons. She felt eyes boring into her face, touching the essence of her soul. Frightened, she looked into the face of one of the young men.

He never took his gaze from her and, in spite of her unease, she felt comforted. Was he searching out her soul, offering his in exchange? Umiak had never had such a strange feeling before. She turned away quickly, not wanting any distraction between her and the words of the shaman and the older man. Many of the words began to sound familiar, only the accent and the different combinations were strange so that she had to strain to understand.

In a group that crowded around them, the old woman broke into