Brother Wind Read Free

sounds was her own voice crying out, “White Stone, my husband, my husband White Stone.”

PART ONE
Summer, 7038 B.C.

CHAPTER 1
The First Men
    Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula
    K IIN PUSHED HER WAY through the circle of men gathered on the beach. When she reached open ground, she saw the Raven. His chest was bare, his skin glazed with sweat, flecked with blood. He lifted a long-bladed obsidian knife as though to greet her. It was Amgigh’s knife, one Amgigh had made, and the blade dripped blood.
    The Raven sucked in his cheeks, let the lids of his eyes nearly close. “Your carvings, wife,” he said. “They gave me power.”
    He pointed, and Kiin looked back at the edge of open ground, where a line of her carvings divided those men who watched from those who fought. The carvings were the ones she had made and traded for meat and oil so the First Men could live through the winter.
    “Where …” she began, then shook her head and said to the Raven, “I am not your wife.”
    The Raven snorted. “Go then to him.” He raised the knife, used it to point, and Kiin let herself look where she did not want to look, let her eyes see what she did not want to see: Amgigh lying in the sand, Samiq kneeling beside him. Then Kiin, too, was beside Amgigh, her arms over Amgigh’s chest, her hair turning red with Amgigh’s blood. She clasped her amulet, rubbed it over Amgigh’s forehead, over his cheeks.
    “Do not die, Amgigh,” she whispered. “Do not die, oh Amgigh. Do not die.”
    Amgigh took one long breath, tried to speak, but his words were lost in the blood that bubbled from his mouth. He took another breath, choked. Then his eyes rolled back, widened to release his spirit. Kiin moved to cradle Amgigh’s head in her arms, and began the soft words of a song, something that came to her as she held him, something that asked spirits to act, something that begged her husband’s forgiveness, that cursed the animals she had carved.
    When the song was finished, Kiin stood, wiped one hand over her eyes. “I should have come sooner,” she said. “I should have known he would fight the Raven. It is my fault. I …”
    But Samiq came to her, pressed his fingers against her lips. “You could not have stopped him,” he said. “You are my wife now. I will not let Raven take you.”
    Kiin looked into Samiq’s eyes, saw how much of him was still a boy, and how little he knew about the kind of fighting that had nothing to do with knives. “No, Samiq,” she said. “You do not have the power to kill him.”
    Samiq’s jaw tightened, he shook his head. “A knife,” he said and turned to the men gathered around him.
    Someone handed him a knife, poorly made, the edge blunt, but Samiq grabbed it.
    The Raven clenched his teeth, screamed in the Walrus tongue, “You, a boy, will fight me? You, a child? You learned nothing from that one there, that dead boy in the sand?”
    “The Raven does not want to fight you,” Kiin said, her breath coming in sobs. “Samiq, please. You are not strong enough. He will kill you.”
    But Samiq pushed Kiin aside, lunged forward, wrist cocked with the longest edge of the blade toward the Raven. The Raven crouched, and Kiin could hear him mumbling—shaman’s words, chants and curses, prayers to the carvings she had made. She ran to her carved animals, knelt among them, heaped sand over them.
    She looked up, saw Samiq slash his knife in an arc toward the Raven. The blade caught the back of the Raven’s hand, ripped the skin open, drew blood. But the Raven did not move.
    “Kiin,” the Raven called out, “this man, he is your ‘Yellow-hair,’ is he not?”
    And Kiin, remembering the Raven’s love for his dead wife Yellow-hair, said, “Do not kill him. I will be your wife, only please do not kill him.”
    The Raven moved, his movement like the dark blur of a bird flying. The long blade of his knife bit into Samiq’s flesh, into the place where wrist joins hand. Then Kiin was running across