Read Ivory Carver 02 - My Sister the Moon for Free Online Page A

pushed up from the hollow in her chest, pushed up and brought with it the remembrance of the many times she had been beaten, times when her mother had been silent or had left the ulaq. 
    Blue Shell pulled at strands of hair the wind had whipped into her eyes and said, "I have something for you." 
    She led the way to a knoll nearer the beach and squatted down out of the wind. She reached into her suk and pulled out a packet wrapped in sealskin and tied with strips of hide. 
    "This is for you," she said untying the bindings. She unfolded the sealskin and the girl saw that the packet contained a small basket. It was woven from the ryegrass that grew near their beach, and the fitted lid was linked to the basket with a plait of sinew. 
    She lifted the lid. Inside were a sealskin thimble, birdbone needles and an ivory awl. 
    "You will need these," her mother said. 
    "Yes." 
    "It is not as great a gift as Chagak gave you," Blue Shell said. She looked out over the beach, away from her daughter's eyes. 
    "Y-y-you m-m-made the ... b-b-basket," her daughter said, the words coming slowly. 
    Blue Shell nodded. 
    "It is ... it is ..." Blue Shell's daughter wanted to say beautiful, wanted to thank her mother, but the words caught and stopped, and there was nothing more she could say. She waited, hoping her mother would see the gratitude in her eyes, but her mother did not look at her, and Blue Shell's daughter tried to remember if her mother ever looked at her, ever allowed the meeting of eyes. No, no, but perhaps that was so she did not have to see the emptiness in her daughter's heart, so she was not reminded that her daughter had no soul. 
    For a time Blue Shell said nothing, but then she stood, her back to the sea, and the wind parted her hair in a pale line down  the back of her head. "You will be given two ceremonies this night," she said. "The ceremony of becoming a woman and the ceremony of naming. Your father has chosen a name for you." 
    The daughter heard the words, made a small choking sound, a laugh with tears caught in it. A name. A name! This time she sought her mother's eyes boldly, waited, unblinking until her mother looked at her. 
    "I am glad you have become a woman," her mother said. The words were quiet, almost lost in the cries of guillemot and gull. 
    The wind suddenly swirled down around them and spun their hair into tangled black clouds around their heads. They both reached up to brush the strands from their faces, and for a moment their hands, in reaching, touched, then quickly pulled away to smooth hair back into place. 
    The girl stood beside her father's ulaq. She could see the beach. Someone had made a heather and seal bone fire, and the wind carried the smell of burning seal fat and crowberry heather. All the people of her village were gathered there: her father, shortest of the men; her mother, tiny and, according to Crooked Nose, once beautiful; her brother, Qakan, taller now than their father; Big Teeth and his two wives, Crooked Nose and Little Duck and Little Duck's son. How many summers did the boy have, seven, eight? And of course, Kayugh, a hunter whose family was never hungry. Chagak, holding their daughter Wren, stood beside him; their oldest daughter, Red Berry, and Red Berry's husband, First Snow, were next in the circle, then Samiq and Amgigh. 
    How Blue Shell's daughter had hated that beach. The flat expanse of dark gray shale and gravel with only a few standing boulders gave no place to hide from her father or Qakan. 
    But tonight, it was a place of joy. 
    Her mother had told her to watch for Kayugh's signal— his hand lifted, pointing to the path of the sun. She waited anxiously. Her nervousness, once only a knot in her belly, now spread to numb her fingertips and toes. 
    She ran her hand back through her hair. She had combed it with a notched stick and rubbed seal oil into the length of it. It fell, long and smooth, to her waist. 
    "You are beautiful," her mother had