And She Was by Cindy Dyson

eyes still. “I have seen men lined up back to back to test how far a Russian bullet would travel into flesh. I have seen babies bashed against rocks until dead. And I have seen women bat their eyes to save their own lives. I have seen so much my eyes have closed. Now I will help.”
    Slukax hadn’t argued. Neither she nor Aya had heard Tugakax speakbefore about her time with the Russians. They had seen an old man and a woman, carrying a small child, coming down from the hills just before sunset. The old man had approached the women, who went to meet them, Slukax in the lead. He explained that they had traveled for three weeks across the mountains seeking a new village to join. He had gestured toward the woman.
    “Tugakax, my granddaughter,” he said, “makes fine kamleikas and mats. She will work hard.”
    Slukax looked at the woman, who had not once glanced up from the ground. She could see the lighter and rounder eyes of the child in the woman’s arms. They must have suffered much and been in great danger to risk traveling inland. “We do not have much,” Slukax said. She led the newcomers to an ulax and gave them enough food for two days.
    The old man had remained only long enough to see Tugakax and her child settled into village life. Then he had disappeared into the ocean with the other old man. Aya had tried to make Tugakax welcome. She invited the new woman to come with her to collect shellfish at low tide and was careful never to mention her child’s mixed face. Gradually Tugakax had begun to smile, to let other women watch her child. But she had never spoken of her life before.
    As Aya looked at Tugakax now, she understood that for this woman suffering soaked through to her soul, and that angering the spirits could add nothing to her pain.
    Slukax nodded. “Three hunters are better than two.”
     
    After several days of kayak practice, Slukax decided they were ready to throw.
    Aya had watched her brother and other hunters use the throwing board before and thought it easy enough. But as she practiced, she discovered how ignorant she had been. The throwing boards had been made to fit each hunter’s arm, the length of the throwing handle equaling the length between the hunter’s middle fingertip and elbow. These weapons did not fit her body. And the women had no one to explain or demonstrate. Only the chance strike taught them the series of movements, the correct angles, the perfect moment of release.
    Slukax pretended to know more.
    “No! No! Aya, you are twisting your wrist too much. Straighten the angle.”
    “No! No! You both are turning the shoulders too much.”
    But they knew Slukax’s lectures were without meaning. She knew no more than Aya or Tugakax. Her throws hit with no more regularity.
    In the weeks that followed, the sun grew more cautious, traveling ever closer to the horizon. As the women snuck from the village on foraging trips from which little food resulted, three more died. The old woman and two more children. Nine were left, and the snows would come any day. Practice had become a luxury.
    Late fall, the women knew, was not good hunting. They gathered before dawn in the cove to the east of the village where they had hidden the kayaks and weapons. They mixed charcoal with water and painted dark lines under their eyes to cut the ocean’s glare. Aya and Tugakax lifted the one-hole kayak and carried it to the water for Slukax, then the two-hole kayak for themselves.
    Childlike waves tickled Aya’s ankles as she strapped her weapons to the bow of her boat. She watched Tugakax and Slukax do the same. Aya’s fingers trembled as she tested the weapon straps. The air clung to her like damp hands. They had dressed in warm parkas, then waterproof seal-gut kamleikas. Aya’s eyes traveled across the endless gray hunting fields. The ocean had always meant life, comfort, and safety. As the sun rose that day, she knew it as an enemy, intent on taking her body below for its own purposes. She