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moved to stand in front of Kiin. He untied the band that held his apron, letting it fall to the floor.
    Kiin looked back over her shoulder toward Shuku’s cradle. But her spirit whispered: “Do not look to your son to help you. You must be his strength. When you left the Traders’ Beach, you knew you would have to be wife to the Raven. If you resist him now, what chance will Shuku have? The Raven might decide to treat him as slave instead of son.”
    The Raven reached over, untied Kiin’s apron, let it fall. For a moment Kiin lowered her head, bit the insides of her cheeks, then she made herself look up into the Raven’s face. The centers of his eyes opened, and in the blackness, Kiin saw a reflection of herself, the sharp, clear image of her face, the wide forehead, the small full mouth, but in the hollows above her cheekbones where her eyes should be, she saw only darkness, darker even than the black of the Raven’s eyes. “See,” her spirit told her, “you are the strong one.”
    She followed the Raven to his sleeping platform, to the jumbled mound of furs and woven bedding mats. And as though no time had passed, she saw the Raven and Yellow-hair, remembered the afternoons she had found them together in this bed, even after the Raven had given the woman to Qakan as wife. With the vision of Yellow-hair came the echo of laughter, but death had taken Yellow-hair’s voice, and so it was Lemming Tail’s laugh that Kiin remembered, and then the image of the Raven and Lemming Tail during the nights they rolled themselves together in the furs and bed mats.
    Kiin sat down on the platform, moved back to make room for the Raven. He reached out, lightly traced the rise of her nipples. He cupped a breast in his hand. Kiin looked down at his fingers, and suddenly did not see the Raven’s hand, but that of her father. She remembered the times her father had sold her to a trader for the night, how she would fight with nails and teeth against the traders touch. Even as the Raven moved over her, Kiin’s muscles seemed suddenly sore with remembered injuries. But she lay down, opened her arms and legs for the Raven’s embrace. He was heavy against her chest, and she shifted slightly under him so his weight did not rest on the tender fullness of her breasts.
    The Raven raised up, pushed himself inside her, began the rhythm of man with woman. Kiin closed her eyes, pulled her thoughts away from him and back to the one night she had spent with Samiq.
    Almost, she could believe she was with Samiq, and for a brief moment her mind filled with the contentment of Samiq holding her, the joy of their union. The Raven thrust himself against her and moaned, and Kiin’s need for Samiq was suddenly like some sickness inside her, spreading pain from stomach to heart to throat.
    “Each time it will be easier,” Kiin’s spirit said, singing the words like a mother comforting her child. “Each time you will feel less pain.”

CHAPTER 6
The First Men
    Herendeen Bay, the Alaska Peninsula
    S AMIQ SAT ALONE beside his ikyak. The long arms of land around the bay sheltered the Traders’ Beach from the north wind, but the sky was heavy with dark clouds. Samiq wore two parkas, one over the other for warmth.
    He unwrapped the sealskin strips from his right hand. During the moon since Amgigh’s death, the wound had healed well. His mother Chagak’s tiny stitches had pulled the skin tightly together so the scar was only a thin pink line on his dark wrist. But the wound had been more than the slicing of skin and muscle. Somehow the knife had cut through into the hand’s spirit, and destroyed its strength. Samiq could tighten his hand into a fist, but could not stretch it out, straight and flat.
    He pried back his fingers and fitted them over his long flat throwing stick. His smallest finger curled up over the edge of the stick as it should, but his first finger, the one that must lie flat against the bottom of the stick and point back over Samiq’s