Ten
Ten In the moon of numbing waters, biting winds could heave the sea and make a choppy mess of the bay, rendering any journey a wet and miserable one. Iqi didn’t relish traveling to Caalus. Perhaps he’d even be forced to take refuge at a settlement along the way. When the occasional traveler washed onto the shore of the Thumb, Iqi always warmed a pot of stew, invited the newcomer to share his lodge . . . and looked at him with a skeptical eye. Didn’t the man know the weather? Were his canoeing skills deficient? Iqi didn’t care to find himself in that position. In truth, Iqi didn’t relish traveling to Caalus at any time. It only dredged up the past. There, surrounded by an ever increasing population , he’d nevertheless felt isolated—not quite a noble, resented by the commoners and reduced to forcing a fake smile, always from a distance, for the woman he loved. She loved him back. He knew that in a way that you can know something without having any understanding of it whatsoever. Here on the Thumb, Aesha’s presence, though not physical, was far stronger than in Caalus, where she was wife of the cacique, more symbol than human. Her inexhaustible curiosity and deep reverence for the island were at his side as he made his frequent all-day journeys down the beach, around 126 joseph the base of the Thumb and back up the bayside mudflats. It was for her as well as for himself that he loved to linger on the final leg, observing the myriad of creatures that hopped, slithered, crawled, or simply lurked in the oozy muck. Lately he’d been watching worms that lived in tubes. There were many: some artfully hidden, decorating themselves with bits of shell and seaweed, others as long as his arm, still others that revealed themselves with an eerie creaking sound. The flats, the walking trees, the channels, the beaches—all were alive with wondrous creatures. Aesha had worried about his solitude, but who could ask for better companions ? Besides, the one-legged heron still trailed him everywhere, as if Iqi’s shadow soul had taken the shape of the great blue bird. More than two suns had passed since he’d come to the Thumb, flashing by in a wink of green, yet stretching, too, in a kind of timeless, unending arc that ringed back on itself to enclose him in a circle of contentment . So why, then, on a bone-chilling morning when he could have been sipping bark tea was he instead packing his canoe and pointing it toward Caalus? The answer was simple: the shark. The bull shark’s meat, though not the finest, would fill many bellies in this season that often brought hunger to the mass of commoners cramped onto Caalus. The fins would be boiled down for glue. The skin made excellent shagreen of a medium coarseness. Both were much sought after by Caalus’s woodcarvers. Even more prized were the shark’s teeth. Iqi had carefully extracted and cleaned the jaw,leaving it whole.He’d present it to Carlos,who knew well how rare and valuable was a set of jaws from a healthy bull shark. The cacique would dispense some of the teeth to the craftsmen for cutting , drilling, and engraving tools. Most likely, too, he’d distribute some of the heavily serrated triangular upper teeth to the trading canoes to barter for spatterdock roots to make winter bread. Undoubtedly, Carlos would turn the canines over to Stepana for weapons, maybe even a new war club for the great captain himself. An song of the tides 127 involuntary shiver ran up Iqi’s back. There was a thought to make a cold day colder. Iqi placed the heavy bundles of shark slabs slightly right of center in the canoe so that he could lean hard into his favored left-side paddling position. Then he set the jaws and skin carefully on top. Iqi knew that his catch would cause quite a stir. He would, of course, refrain from boasting. It wasn’t difficult to get a shark to bite. Simply throw a line into moving current at night, with a fresh fish head attached, the bloodier the better. The challenge was in weaving a line that was strong, yet supple and of small diameter. Iqi preferred a four-ply agave-fiber twine that he attached to a buttonwood hook sharp...
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