Ivory Carver 02 - My Sister the Moon by Sue Harrison Page A

ache. It was the same laugh he made when he was beating her. 
    "You can meet her bride price?" he asked. 
    "She is worth nothing, so I give nothing," Qakan answered. 
    "Kayugh will give me fifteen skins." 
    Fifteen skins! Kiin thought. Fifteen skins, enough for two brides, even three. Her heart slowed, and again she felt the soft movement of her spirit. She was safe. Kayugh had offered enough to ensure her safety. She would be wife to Samiq. Wife. Qakan could do nothing. 

EIGHT
    EACH DAY, KIIN TRIED TO STAY NEAR HER FA-ther's ulaq. Perhaps it would take Samiq into the next summer to save enough sealskins for her bride price, she told herself. You are foolish to wait so near the ulaq, risking your father's anger, risking a beating, just because you hope to see Kayugh and Samiq coming to the ulaq, coming to bargain for a wife. 
    But still, each time she went to the cliffs to search for eggs, or into the smaller hills behind the village to dig roseroot, she found herself stopping to look back toward the village. And on the third day, when the men went hunting, she could not keep her eyes from scanning the sea. 
    During those three days, she also noticed that her father did not speak to her, but that Qakan followed her with his eyes, a scowl on his face, his thick lips drawn into a pout. Qakan went with the men on the hunt, but Gray Bird stayed in the ulaq. He must carve, he told Blue Shell. The spirits demanded it. The ground had trembled the night before. Had she not felt the spirits moving deep in the earth? 
    But when Gray Bird sat down to carve, Blue Shell took her basket pole outside and Kiin was left inside to weave mats. 
    "Mat weaving is a quiet thing," Blue Shell whispered to Kiin. "It will not disturb your father. And if he needs something to drink or eat, you will be here to get it for him." 
    Kiin did not answer. Blue Shell usually went outside when Gray Bird began to carve; Kiin was left to face his anger if the carving did not come easily. 
    Kiin sighed and began splitting grass stems with her thumb nail then sorted them according to length. 

    For most of the afternoon, she worked, splitting and sorting grasses then weaving them into coarse mats, using her fingers and a forked fish bone to push each weft strand tightly against the strand of grass above it. 
    Her father sat close to an oil lamp, his head bent over his work. Soot from the lamp gathered in the damp creases of his forehead. Kiin seldom looked at him, though occasionally, he broke the silence with muttering, once making derogatory statements about Kiin's mother, another time hissing words against the wood he was carving. Kiin had turned, thinking he was speaking to her and saw that he was carving something shaped like a man, one leg crooked and shorter than the other, the wood rough where his knife had worked, the rough areas, already marked with soot from his fingertips. 
    Kiin sighed and returned to the straight, clean rows of her mat, and for some reason, her fingers sought the smooth surface of the whale tooth shell that hung at her waist. 
    She had nearly completed the mat when her father spoke to her, and the suddenness of his words made Kiin jump. "Kayugh will pay a good price for you," he said. 
    Kiin looked at him and raised her eyebrows, pretending surprise. 
    "Bride price," her father said and set down his small carving knife. 
    "I-I-I-I," Kiin began, angry with herself as the words caught. Her father uttered a short, harsh laugh. But his laughter seemed to give Kiin her voice, and she said, "I am to be a w-w-wife then?" 
    "Kayugh has promised me fifteen sealskins," Gray Bird said. Slowly, he stood, grimacing as he straightened to his full height. Unlike Kayugh, he did not have to stoop under the lower edges of the sloping ulaq roof. He flexed his hands. They were smooth-skinned, like a child's hands. 
    "You will live in Kay ugh's ulaq and eat Kay ugh's food, but do not forget that you are my daughter. I was the one who