We leave many mussels behind, and yet we easily fill all three baskets. They help me once their own are filled. Then, it’s time to head home. They slide the baskets onto their backs and slip the bands over their heads. I try to do the same, but because my basket is much heavier than I expect, it spills. The mussels clatter onto the stones, the entire morning’s work lost among small rocks. Inessa and the other girl laugh, but they help pick up all the mussels, and then hold the basket on my back while I slip the band over my forehead.
When we reach the houses, I follow the girls down to the sea. We place our three baskets in sheltered waters near the shore, immersing the mussels. The baskets lean together. We bring some of what we collected to the women crouched over the cooking boxes. Perhaps for supper I’ll get a taste. Perhaps by supper, the last of the tree gum will have dissolved from my teeth.
Nikolai Isaakovich returns to the house long after I’ve come back. His hair is straggly, his cheeks ruddy, and he smells of the ocean.
“They took us to hunt seals,” he says. “You can’t imagine how many were in the cove—floating, swimming, sleeping on the rocks—they were everywhere.”
“Did you catch many?”
“My God, you could almost pluck them from the sea like they were pansies. They tied their canoes to the kelp, right in the middle of a herd. All we had to do was lean over the gunwales. They wouldn’t let us use the harpoons, but they sure were happy we were there to help lift the carcasses into the canoes.
“Anya—a child—a little boy—he killed the fattest seal I’ve ever seen in my life. Just like that.” He snaps his fingers and lowers his voice. “If the chief manager could see it. He’d have a schooner here in a fortnight and we’d fill its hold in even less time. The koliuzhi can only take a fraction of what’s available. They don’t realize what they’ve got.”
Don’t they? I think of Nikolai Isaakovich’s seals—and of the number of mussels we left behind. What would happen if the schooners were to come? This is what the Imperial Decree tells us is our purpose. We’d become rich. We’d give the koliuzhi a fair trade—beads and cloth and iron tools and perhaps even a few muskets. What then?
Everyone thought sea otters were as countless as the stars. All along the coast that stretches from Russia to Novo-Arkhangelsk, they certainly seemed to be; then they disappeared from around Petropavlovsk. Next, they vanished from Kad’iak and all the other tiny islands. They’re almost impossible to find along the shores around Novo-Arkhangelsk. Our own mission is to discover the next place where they’re still to be found in abundance—and to take them before that place is as bereft of sea otters as the rest of the coast has become.
Would it be any different with the seals? The mussels? If the schooners were to come as my husband imagines, what would the koliuzhi do? Where would they get the shells and teeth and claws and whiskers and skins and stomachs and intestines—to make their knives and tools and bladders to store the oil and floats for whaling and blankets and clothing? What would they eat instead? And what would happen when the schooners come back for that, too?
When I make our bed at night and lie next to my husband, who falls asleep easily, my thoughts weave back and forth, constructing a useless garment that fits no one.
During the night, the rain starts and when we wake in the morning, it’s thundering on the roof. Whoever ventures out, even for a moment, returns soaked, and when I go out to relieve myself, I also return cold and wet as a farmyard hen. I remove my cedar cape and lay it out to dry.
I join my husband, who sits near the fire and stares deeply into the small flames. Many of the Kwih-dihch-chuh-ahts also huddle around the fires, talking softly, sewing, making baskets, weaving, braiding cordage, waiting for the deluge to pass.
Timofei Osipovich, Kozma Ovchinnikov, my husband, and I sit together near the fire.
“It’s terrible out there,” I say. “I hope the others aren’t wandering around in this.”
“They should have listened to Timofei Osipovich and come with us,” Ovchinnikov says.
Timofei Osipovich laughs, pleased with Ovchinnikov’s continuing fidelity. “They’ll surrender,” he says, “soon enough.” He looks smug and so certain that I almost expect him to crow. He doesn’t add that he wouldn’t be here, warm and sheltered from the rain, if it weren’t for me.
“Maybe they found another cave,” my husband says. “For their sakes, I hope so.”
I imagine the crew, how wet and dejected they must be if all they’ve got to protect them are the tents made of sails. Even if they’ve found a cave, they must be miserable.
Ovchinnikov pushes a piece of wood deeper into the fire with his toe. He still has his boots. “What happened to old Yakov?” he says quietly, without meeting my eye.
I forgot—how could he know? He has no idea what’s happened to us these past weeks. “I think he’s all right. Maria told me he’s back with the koliuzhi on the river—the Chalats—the ones who took us prisoner.”
“Savages,” my husband mutters.
“And Filip Kotelnikov?” Ovchinnikov asks.
“The apprentice is gone. But he’s probably fine. Makee told me they sent him south to live with some other koliuzhi. They’re Cathlamets, I think he said.”
Timofei Osipovich nods. “Good people. He’s lucky.”
“He hates the koliuzhi,” I say. The wind gusts and something outside bangs loudly on the roof. Two young men near the door slide beneath the mat that’s covering the opening and go out to look.
I ask nervously, “What about everyone else? After that battle…”
Ovchinnikov folds his hands and drops his head so low, his hair casts thick shadows over the little of his face that’s normally visible.
“We fared well,” Timofei Osipovich says. “We lost only one.”
I whisper, “One? Who?”
“Main Rigger Khariton Sobachnikov. God rest his soul.” He blesses himself. “An arrow pierced his chest.”
There are footsteps and banging overhead. They’re fixing the roof in the storm.
I hold my silver cross. I think about all the evenings I spent together with Sobachnikov on the deck of the brig. Together and not together. How he always let me do my work in peace. How he brought my telescope to shore and didn’t let a drop of water touch it. “How can that be true?” I say finally.
“We had to leave his body on the riverbank,” Timofei Osipovich says. “It was too dangerous to go back for it.”
The grey-brown mound. The hungry crows crawling over it, pecking at it, sailing overhead with strips of flesh swinging from their beaks. The stench, the repellent, pervasive stink of death left to the scavengers of the natural world to clean up. It was Sobachnikov. Ovchinnikov steals a glance at my husband, then Timofei Osipovich. My husband opens his mouth to speak, then thinks better of it.
“What? What is it?” I ask. “You must tell me!”
“Anya—” my husband says. “He was killed going back to get the bundle that had your telescope in it.”
“What?”
“I told him to leave it. But he wouldn’t listen. He didn’t want to break his promise.”
I crush my face in my hands and press until I think a bone will break, a bone must break. He should have broken that promise. He had nothing to fear. Everybody saw how vicious that battle was; every man did what he could. Who would find fault with him? There must be some restitution for Sobachnikov’s senseless death. Where is justice? My telescope is gone and so is my star log. But they’re not enough.