And She Was by Cindy Dyson Page A

understood the fear she had seen the men cover with elaborate ceremony, costume, and words. She felt awash in ignorance. The sea spread to the end of the world, and its creatures knew it like a lover. It would protect them with everything it had, and Aya had little skill with which to steal a piece for her dying village.
    The three women paddled their kayaks out past the reef rocks to the east. They paddled around the next cove, keeping their boats angled slightly out to sea to oppose the tide that pressed them back to shore. They paddled for two hours until they reached the kelp beds. The seals had been here two days before when Tugakax scouted them. A few would likely remain until the snows.
    Before the men left, seal meat had comprised half of the village’s diet. Their kamleikas were made from the watertight throats; theirkayaks from the hides. With these creatures, Aya and her people felt a dependence as strong as a family bond. Aya’s mouth watered just observing the dark brown heads undulating in the waves.
    Slukax raised her hand, and Tugakax held her paddle in place under water, slowing the kayak behind Slukax’s. The women watched the dark brown bodies, each as fat as two boats and as long as one, seeking fish among the kelp near shore. They remained until their fingers ached and legs cramped, quietly paddling backward to keep their boats stationary. Aya felt her breasts swell with milk, then leak inside her kamleika. She had heard the men’s stories of finding prey then waiting often nearly a tide until the right moment. But neither she nor the other women knew what they were waiting for, how to tell if the time was right. They waited until they felt the tide shifting under them.
    Slukax looked at Aya. She motioned toward a seal feeding closest to shore. Nothing would make them more able or ready. The women dug their paddles into the water like shovels. The kayaks shot forward.
    Aya fastened her eyes on the beast as the boat skimmed across the tops of the kelp. Several animals rolled aside as the boats cut toward the target.
    When they were fifty feet away, Aya slid her paddle across the bow into the paddle holders and reached for her throwing board. She hadn’t realized how cold her fingers had become and fumbled with the skin loops that secured her weapons. Tugakax held her paddle to the side at the top of the water to stabilize the boat for Aya’s throw.
    Aya glanced at the seal, now less than thirty feet away.
    Slukax yelled, “Aya, now!” Slukax had positioned herself on the ocean side and fumbled with her own throwing board.
    Aya slid the board free and ran the dart, tipped with a barbed harpoon point, through its groove. She glanced at the careful loop of sinew coiled on the kayak’s bow that connected the dart to an inflated seal bladder. She hoped they would whip away from the boat as they should. She raised the throwing stick above her shoulder, pinned her eyes on the fatty neck, and threw.
    She felt every rise and fall of the boat and the pull of the tide as she watched her dart speed toward the seal, then wobble as it lost momentum. She could see Slukax’s dart skim across the water and sink, its inflated bladder bobbing uselessly at the surface.
    Aya watched her harpoon point scrape through a layer of gray-white fat on the seal’s shoulder and tilting uselessly into the water. Although the seal had only been grazed, it lifted its head with a great fountain of water. A silver fish flopped in its mouth as the animal turned toward the boats. It rolled underwater, somersaulting its silver-brown body to point toward the ocean, churning a wave that rolled outward toward Aya and Tugakax.
    Slukax let loose another dart, heaving it forward so hard her kayak rocked to the lip of its hole. But the seal was moving now, and the spear sliced into the ocean harmlessly. The animal dove and resurfaced to the offshore side of Slukax’s kayak. The seal peered behind her at the would-be hunters with her soft