She paused. "Then what happened?" She balanced the storyknife on her palms and held it out. "What happened after the thunderbird and the kayak came home?"
Slowly, reluctantly, Sasha took the knife and began to draw. It was the man figure again, but twice the size of the others and with eight arms and what looked like horns and fangs and maybe even a tail. "A monster?"
Kate guessed.
Sasha looked grave. "Bad. Kill mans."
"The monster killed the men," Kate said, her voice calm although her heart rate had picked up. "All of them? Did the monster kill all the men?"
The storyknife wiped out two of the male figures.
"Bad kill mans."
"The monster killed two of the men," Kate agreed.
"Did the rest run away?"
Sasha, obviously pleased at this display of intelligence by her backward pupil, gave a firm nod. "Rest run away.
"Sasha," Kate said. "Did the monster kill the men, or did the men kill each other?"
"Bad kill mans," Sasha repeated. "Rest run away."
Kate sat back on her heels and regarded Sasha thoughtfully.
"Is home an island, Sasha?" she asked gently. "Is home Anua?"
"Bad kill mans," Sasha said stubbornly. "Rest run away. That's all."
Kate reached for the storyknife again and held it poised, hesitating. There wasn't much point in further questioning. Sasha was no kind of credible witness, and besides, if she had gone home the previous year, she had not gone home alone.
She made as if to sweep the sand smooth once again.
"No," Sasha said, gripping her hand and removing the storyknife from it. "Let water take."
Kate relinquished the storyknife with a reluctance she only dimly recognized. The smooth, worn ivory was so warm to the touch, the weight perfectly balanced. It fit so well into her hand. Olga was right. The storyknife was a living thing, with its own spirit. Kate felt privileged to have been permitted to speak through it and she was glad that, as before, she had been judged and not found wanting.
Kate let herself into Olga's house and walked down the hallway to the kitchen.
The old woman looked up from her weaving and smiled. "Hello, Kate."
"Hello, Auntie."
Olga indicated the table. "Did you come for another lesson?"
Kate sat down. "Why not?"
"I kept your basket for you."
Olga handed it over and Kate eyed it. "This looks like the cat's been chewing on it."
"It's exactly as you left it," Olga said mildly.
"I'm sure it is," Kate said with a sigh.
Olga made tea and put a plate filled with round, golden sugar cookies on the table. The tea was strong and hot and sweet, the cookies crunchy and flavored with lemon.
Kate, chilled from the half hour of squatting half in and half out of Iliuliuk Bay and probably still from her swim in the survival suit as well, ate and drank everything she was offered.
Putting her cup down, she said, "I saw Sasha on the beach."
"Oh?"
"Yes. She was drawing with the storyknife. The story about the thunderbird and the kayak and the men."
Olga squinted down at her basket, working out an intricate stitch with intent care.
"This time, she told me about a monster with eight arms. It was bad, she said."
"The kelet," Olga said, nodding. "An evil spirit."
"The kelet," Kate said, testing the word on her tongue.
"Sasha says this kelet, this evil spirit, killed two of the men."
"Two of the men?" Olga displayed only polite interest.
"This kelet must have been very evil indeed. But then they usually are."
"I see." Kate wound a weaver around a spoke. The grass was dry and difficult to work. "She says the other men who came with the thunderbird and the kayak got away."
"In that story, usually the men trick the kelet and they all get away. And usually the story says the men are women."
"Sasha and the storyknife say men this time," Kate said cheerfully. She dabbled her fingers in the bowl of water and dampened the weaver. "The last time I was here, didn't you tell me that if you keep picking the rye grass in the same place that the grass gets better?"
"Yes."
Kate paused, wrestling with her weaver. "Did you pick grass in the same spot when you lived on Anua?"
"Yes."
The stitch snugged up against the spoke as if Kate had been weaving all her life, and she viewed it with satisfaction. "And were you picking grass in that same spot in March this year?"
"Whatever would we be doing on Anua in March?"
Olga wondered, her expression one of gentle surprise.
"The time to pick the grass is in June and July."
"I don't know," Kate admitted. "I haven't figured that out yet."
"Mmm." Olga rose and took the basket from Kate's hands. "You're improving. You should take this with you this time. You can practice on the boat. More tea?"
"Why, yes. Thank you."
They worked together on their baskets. Sasha came in and without speaking settled into a seat next to her mother, plucking a half-made basket from the debris on the table that had a sort of Greek key pattern worked around its base. Her dark hair, carefully trimmed by an inexpert, loving hand, flopped in her face. The tip of her tongue stuck out of one corner of her mouth. She was intent, absorbed, her misshapen fingers as deft at weaving baskets as they were in telling stories in the sand.
Olga broke the silence first. "Have you heard the story of how the first basket was made?"
"I don't think I have," Kate said, bending over her basket again. "I'd like to."
Olga selected another weaver, and when she spoke again her voice had fallen into that singsong kind of near chant that Kate had found so mesmerizing before. It was obvious where Sasha got her talent for telling tales.
"The Sun married the Woman Who Kept the Tides,"
Olga began.
"The Sun's new wife cut the rye grass.
"She cured the grass.
"She split it on her thumbnail.
"She split it into spokes and weavers.
"She made a basket.
"She made it around her husband's thumb.
"When it was finished she took it off his thumb.
"She blew in it.
"It got big.
"She made a rope out of roots.
"She tied the rope to the basket.
"She tied their children to the rope.
"The Sun let the basket go.
"Their children floated down to the world.
"The world was an island.
"It was our island.
"That is how the people came home.
"That's all."
Kate, bent over her basket, inhaled the top of a slender frond of split grass and sneezed violently. "Sorry. So which island did the people come to, Auntie?"
"Anua, of course." Olga laughed, a rich, merry laugh.
Sasha laughed, too, less richly, less merrily. "On every island, in every village, it is the same. The legend may be different, but the old ones tell the children it was their island the children of the Sun and the Woman Who Kept the Tides came to. Their island is always the first island, and it is from their island that all Aleuts come."
Kate grinned. "I have heard that story before, Auntie.
Only it was the children of the Daughter of Calm Waters and Agudar, the Moon, Master Spirit and Keeper of the Game, and the way my grandmother told it, the people floated down to Atka."
Olga laughed again, and again Sasha echoed the sound. "You see? Every island tries to be the best."
She held up her basket. "In weaving. In story-telling. In everything."
Maybe even in guile, Kate thought.
She took her leave soon afterward, carrying with her the few rounds she had woven into a gnawed-looking little base, a small sheaf of spokes and weavers, and the certainty that if the need arose, she wouldn't have a witness to the events that took place on Anua Island the previous March.
She had all of the story now, though, or all of the most important parts. She could have pushed for a more definite description, but she didn't have to, and she wouldn't, and Olga knew she wouldn't. There was a bond between them, a link in a chain that went back a thousand generations. At one level of that chain there was race, white against brown. On another level was the ingrained, innate, inherent respect every Aleut has for their elders. The elders were the wise ones, the teachers, for many generations all the law and history there was among the people. With all Olga's authority of eighty winters, Kate couldn't, she simply could not interrogate her. She was too young, Olga was too old, she knew too little, Olga too much.