And She Was by Cindy Dyson Page B

brown eyes. Aya’s eyes locked on the animal’s. She knows, Aya thought. She knows we are women. Then the seal rolled down again. The deep cleave of her tail disappeared into the gray sea.
    Suddenly the women were alone. They had failed, and that failure stretched to the end of the world. The other seals had blown out air and descended to the sea floor to escape. They were well beyond range now. Tugakax paddled furiously to keep the kayak in motion so that the water, churned into a dozen patterns, didn’t roll them.
    When the water calmed, they paddled toward one another and lashed their kayaks together for stability. Aya felt she needed to explain but had no words. For once, Slukax didn’t harangue her for aim or form. Her miss was not hers alone, and the other women knew they could have done no better. Slukax unlashed the kayak cover and reached inside for a small bag of dried berries and clams. The women passed the bits of food among themselves without speaking and watched the shore recede with the tide.
     
    Twice more the women tried to spear a seal in the weeks that followed. The sea mammals, trusting their bulk and eager to feed before winter’s scarcity, didn’t grow more wary. But the women’s aim didn’t grow more sure either.
    Their efforts led to death nonetheless.
    Aya returned to the warmth of her ulax late after their third failure. Although the weather was turning, the ulax, dug five feet belowground, remained warm. Rafters of whalebone and driftwood held up the dense sod roof. The sleeping quarters, separated by woven grass mats, lined the side walls. Piled with mats and hides, only a small oil lamp or two were needed to keep warm. The ulax, twenty feet wide and thirty feet long, was too big for their needs, now that the men were gone.
    She took her baby from the thin arms of the woman who had been watching her and put the infant to her breast. Anshigis sucked eagerly with the strength of her hunger. Aya leaned against the wall. She had been thinking of her husband much of the day. She had known him all her life, but as a husband only a year before he’d gone to fight. He was a good husband, able, gentle. She had never known how much she needed him, his bravery in the kayak, his warm hands at night. When he’d courted her, she’d known only that he made her laugh and that people said he would bring her many fine skins to sew. If he did live, if he was in hiding on another island, somewhere far inland, if he did return, would he want her now? Would he know what she had done?
    Behind her thoughts a panic began to form. Aya looked down at her baby, still sucking eagerly. She had not felt the tingling release of milk. She shifted Anshigis to her other breast and waited, trying to relax her shoulders, think of something else. Anshigis became frustrated and fussed through her increasingly frantic sucking.
    Slukax descended the ladder just as Anshigis gave up and set to wailing, flailing her fists against her mother’s dry breasts. Aya’s eyes met Slukax’s. Slukax turned around on the ladder and departed. Aya slid her finger into her baby’s tiny, wailing mouth, but the baby soon found nothing flowing and returned to her wail.
    When Slukax returned, she had a small bundle of berries in her hand. She didn’t look at Aya or Anshigis but sat against the opposite wall and began to mash the berries in a carved bowl. To the mash she added water and poured the pale pink mixture into a tube of seal intestine, tying off one end and squeezing the other tight with her fingers. She handed it to Aya.
    Anshigis did not like the feel of intestine in her mouth, and she did not like the sharp taste of berry. She cried and fought as Aya pried her gums apart and let drops of the mixture fall into the baby’s mouth. She force-fed half the mixture, then tied the open end and set it next toher. Anshigis slept for a few minutes, fitfully, then came full awake. She arched her back and opened her mouth wide to let a stream