Written in Stone Read Online Free Page A

shouted from one side. “The whales are ours to take.”
    Grandpa’s deep voice rolled out every curse in every language he knew. “Liars! Treaty breakers! We gave them land for the sea!” he shouted. Grandpa holds the long pages of our treaty in his memory. “We gave them the trees, three hundred thousand acres of trees, theirsforever. All we asked for was the whales, and the right to hunt and fish as we always have. Now they scorn our treaty and steal the life out of the sea.”
    Under the high tide of anger I heard women’s voices, quieter and more urgent, talking about hunger, disease, poverty, and shame.
    Henry stood to speak.
    “I broke our tradition of silence on the hunt. Maybe I was wrong to do it. Maybe my uncle’s death is my fault. But I believe the old whale came to warn us, to show by his scars that the whales are leaving. Soon they will be gone forever, hunted out like the sea otters. What child younger than ten has seen a sea otter? They are all dead, and my children will never know their whiskered faces hiding in the kelp beds.”
    Henry’s words broke over me like waves. I felt like a sinking stone. I wanted to feel heavy. I wanted to walk along the ocean floor. I wanted to look for my father in the houses of whales and seals. My father—the last whaler.
    Grandma got up to speak. She went to the front by the fire. People stopped talking. They shushed the children. Grandma was a famous storyteller.
    “I believe,” she called out, as steady and strong as a revival tent preacher. “I believe the whales have seen the greed of the big whaling ships. They have gone deep, andthey have taken my son, our finest whaler, with them. They will wait in the deep for men to change their ways. And we will wait with them.
    “You, fathers, teach your sons the meditations of a whaler and the arts of ocean navigation. Mothers, teach your daughters the prayers of a whaler’s wife and the ways to prepare whale meat.”
    People sat up taller as Grandma spoke. They lifted their heads, and I felt the power of her voice like that invisible force that made a flock of birds or a school of fish turn together as if they were one animal. I wondered for a moment, if there was no voice like hers, would we be a tribe at all?
    “We will honor our whales,” Grandma went on. “Even when they are gone from us we will honor them with our songs and dances, our carving and our stories. For I believe, I do believe our whales will come back to us one day.”
    After the feast, the men left, using the full moon to navigate. They slipped out in groups of four or six. They moved over the ocean as quiet as shadows in the light of the moon. I had to wait with the women for the fire to burn low and the chatting aunties to put their children to bed.
    When everyone was busy, I sneaked outside and tiptoed down the porch, skipping the loud step. I went to the side of the house and pulled the fish canoe down the sand, the small one that I could paddle alone. I took an old spruce root hat and a wool blanket out of the canoe, where I had hidden them. With them on in the dark, I would look like one of the grandmothers. No one told the grandmothers what to do.
    “Where will you go in the dark?” Grandma’s sharp voice came from the shadows at the far end of the front porch.
    I gasped, dropped the canoe on my foot, and cursed silently.
    “Out,” I said back just as sharp, and tugged the boat farther. I didn’t have to look for her frown. I felt it. I didn’t care; she couldn’t stop me. I was stronger than she was. Anyone strong enough to stop me was already at the giveaway.
    “Will I tell the Pitch Woman story again?” she said.
    The name hit me like a slap, and the most horrifying details of the Pitch Woman story flooded my memory. I couldn’t make myself look over my shoulder at the dark spaces between the trees. I leapt all five of the porch steps in one bound and stood in the stripe of lamplight that leaked out the door. Once I was in