Ivory Carver 02 - My Sister the Moon Read Online Free PDF

it as his own, would cover it with his carvings of men and seals and little circles that were supposed to be ulas. 
    Her hand closed over the tooth and she pulled it from her waistband. She would not be able to carry it with her or he would see it, but how could she keep its power for herself if she did not carry it? 
    Blue Shell's daughter stared at the smoke hole in the peak of her roof and wished that the special powers she had during her first bleeding were great enough to make the tooth invisible, like the wind. She crossed her arms over her upraised knees and closed her eyes. No, she thought, it is enough that I am allowed to be a woman. How often had Qakan taunted her saying that she would always be a child, always stay in their father's ulaq to work and to be beaten? 

    Yes, she might always be in her father's ulaq, but if she could keep the tooth, perhaps she would have some protection. Blue Shell's daughter laid the tooth against her cheek, and in the moment that it touched her skin, warmth against warmth, she saw it not as tooth, but carved into the whorls of a whelk shell. Her father would not care about a shell. He would think she carried it to hold oil to grease the cooking stone or soften skins. 
    She had watched her father carve, knew from his conversations with Qakan how difficult it was to carve ivory. "A whale's tooth has a hollow center," her father had told Qakan, "a narrow passage that tapers up into a point deep within the tooth. A carving has to follow the hollow, make allowances for it. But a whale's tooth is not as difficult to carve as walrus tusk." Her father had reached into the basket where he kept ivory, wood and bone for carving. He handed Qakan a walrus tusk. "See," he had said and pointed to the inside of the tusk. "It is different here. It does not obey the knife." 
    Qakan had yawned and looked bored, but Blue Shell's daughter had listened, and she remembered what her father had said. A walrus tusk is centered with a hard and brittle ivory that chips erratically under the pressure of a blade, and when the ivory chipped, her father became angry, sometimes angry enough to lash out at her with his carving knife. 
    And, Blue Shell's daughter thought, if it is difficult for my father to carve a whale's tooth, it will be even more difficult for me. 
    But then it seemed as though the tooth caught her thoughts, as though its voice called to her, and she saw the tooth marked by her father's knife, made into something it should not be. 
    She picked up the short-bladed woman's knife that lay next to the pile of hunters' belts and pressed the knife against the tooth, felt the blade bite into the smooth surface. A narrow strip of ivory curled and fell, and the girl's heart lurched within her chest. She dropped both knife and tooth. 
    What had made her do such a thing? What had made her think she could carve something as sacred as a whale's tooth? 

    She was a woman. Only a woman, and worse, a woman without a soul. 
    Blue Shell's daughter rubbed her hands down over her face. Perhaps even now, with one small chip, she had destroyed the tooth's power. She thought of Shuganan's beautiful carvings. Each glowed with an inner spirit; each was beautiful to see, and when she looked at those carvings, she felt joy. 
    Then she thought of her father's carvings, flat and misshapen. Ugly. No, she told herself. It is me. I do not see what is there. But then she remembered Chagak's stories of Shuganan, of his gentle spirit, and she thought, Perhaps the difference between Gray Bird's and Shuganan's carvings is the difference between the two men's souls. But at least her father had a soul. And compared to her father, what was she? Why did she think her knife would be strong enough? Did her hands have the skill to make a tooth into a shell? 
    Again she held the tooth against her face. It was still warm, so perhaps she had not destroyed it, had not forced the spirit out of the tooth into the thin, cold air of