In my village, there is a place on the beach where my ancient ancestors etched carvings into large boulders. Most of the petroglyphs are only visible at low tide when the ocean recedes far enough to reveal the mysterious markings.
My Auntie tells me that our people used to tell stories about these carvings but when Colonizers came to Alaska, they punished us for speaking our native language. When our collective voices were silenced, many of our stories were lost.
Anthropologists from multiple universities in the Lower 48 have come to my village and studied the carvings. They speculate about their meaning but their explanations usually do nothing more than paint our culture as primitive and uneducated.
One of the carvings is only visible twice a year during the lowest tides of the spring and fall equinox. It was carved thousands of years ago, presumably when my people first came to this place we call Te’kwaanshátadí, which loosely translates to “Man of the Rock” or perhaps “Rock Trap.”
The carving is of an otter’s head on a man’s body, a creature my people call the Kushtaka – the Land Otter Man. While the Kushtaka’s legend is well known in many of the villages along the Pacific Northwest Coast, ours possesses the only known carving of the creature.
My Auntie told me the story of the Kushtaka when I was very young.
“The Kushtaka is the Land Otter Man, a mysterious s’igeekáawu (demon) that lives beneath the water. It disguises its voice to make you believe that your Auntie, a dead ancestor, or someone else you desire is calling out to you. When you walk to the water and peer beneath the surface, you see their face but it is the Kushtaka. He pulls you under the water and takes you to his home. Then he turns you into one of the Kushtakésh, a half-man, half-otter slave trapped forever by his magic.
If you ever encounter the Kushtaka and fall under its spell, repeat the name of our home, Te’kwaanshátadí.”
Most people believe this legend is nothing more than a way to convince young children from getting too near the water where they could fall in and drown. But for others, the Kushtaka is far more than a legend.
About six years ago, I had a vivid dream that almost seemed real. At the time, I had just turned twenty-eight years old. Since then, I’ve had the same dream at least once every month, sometimes twice, and it is always just as vivid and real as the first time.
In the dream, I am walking along the beach with a beautiful woman named N’uweÍ, which is a name I’ve not heard other than in my dream. She is of the Killer Whale Clan (I am of the Raven Clan) and we are holding hands as we laugh and talk but I can’t understand what we are saying.
We stop to silently watch a great blue heron stalking small minnows in the surf. It is then I notice that we are walking through the place of our ancestors, although none of the carvings have yet been etched into the boulders.
N’uweÍ pulls me away from the waves to the soft sun-bleached sand dune. Near the top, a collection of driftwood forms a line marking the high tide water level. I sit on the soft sand. The black-haired woman slowly takes off her clothes in front of me, her body a silhouette, blocking the sun as it sets behind her. As the last flicker of sunlight disappears beneath the waves, the sensual shapes of N’uweÍ’s nude body come into view, fulfilling the promise of her silhouette.
The black-haired woman begins to dance as the full moon rises behind her. Bathed in silver light, her hips twist and gyrate in ways that make me feel overcome with sexual arousal. The sight of N’uweÍ’s full swaying breasts and the elegant shape of her glistening labia make me want to utterly possess her in every conceivable way.
I take off my clothes and N’uweÍ lowers herself onto my lap, wrapping her soft arms around my neck and kissing me with lips that are hot to the touch. Her fists clench the hair on the back of my head and she pulls. When my neck is vulnerable, N’uweÍ bites it as though her only intent is possessing me.
Then her hand is around my penis, guiding me inside of her ethereal body that seems almost weightless, yet somehow every supple crease and contour of her vagina grips firmly around my manhood. The feeling is the most incredible I’ve ever experienced yet it is also not enough.
The moon turns dark red and the light reflected on the ocean makes it seem as though it’s bleeding. As N’uweÍ’s hips begin to move, I slowly move deeper inside her body until I entirely fill the space that could only have been crafted for me. The black-haired woman’s big brown eyes lock onto mine and they are filled with both desire and longing.
Our hips begin to move but every thrust brings heightened craving. It’s as though I’m rising toward a climax that will always be just out of reach – an endless and ever-growing craving for this black-haired woman carved from the bedrock of my very soul.
N’uweÍ clasps my hands, our fingers interwoven. There is a moment where her face reveals the cresting wave of orgasm about to crash against her perfect body. Then she screams.
Instead of a scream of joy and release, N’uweÍ’s scream is one of terror.
Two pale hands covered in bleeding sores grab her shoulders and pull her away. N’uweÍ is screaming for me to save her. Even though my mind tells my body to help, all I can do is sit motionless, watching as a terrible creature of hideous proportion carries the black-haired woman toward the crashing waves.
Then I see its eyes but they are not the eyes of a man or any beast that lives on land, river, or sea. It pulls N’uweÍ into the water and its form suddenly changes. A long tail grows from the base of its spine and fur grows over its wretched skin.
Just as the creature pulls N’uweÍ into the sea, there is a moment where all is calm, and, in a whisper, she says, “X’unei, my beloved, find me here when the full moon turns to blood.”
Then I wake up. It takes a few minutes before I remember that my name is Makeah, not X’unei.
The realness of my recurring dream led to something of an obsession. I began researching everything I could about the Kushtaka. I spoke with elders from many tribes, including my own, both along the coast and in the mountains. The more I learned, the less I understood but I began to believe that the black-haired woman was real.
Or maybe, was once real.
While visiting my village’s local library, which is also our museum, I stumbled upon an old story from a Frog Clan shaman that was transcribed into English by a Russian colonizer in 1833. In the story, a young boy disappears and his mother becomes distraught, believing that the boy was taken by the Kushtaka while fishing for halibut. She says the boy comes to her in her dreams, begging for her to rescue him because he’s been turned into one of Kushtaka’s slaves.
The elders take the woman to see the shaman and he enters the spirit world to speak to the killer whale people and find out if there is a way to save the boy. Because the killer whale people are enemies of the otter people, they agree to help by telling the boy their secret method for escaping the magic of the Kushtaka.
The shaman then tells the mother to listen to the boy’s instructions on how to save him because only he will know the secret of the Killer Whale people, which are his ancestors. The mother follows the shaman’s instructions and in her dream, the boy tells her she must be at a place at a certain time and when he appears, she must physically pull him from the surf.
The story ends with the mother saving her son and thanking her ancestors.
Was it possible the black-haired woman, beautiful N’uweÍ, had been taken by the Kushtaka many years in the past and been turned into one of the Kushtakésh? Had she been calling to her long-lost X’unei from the black and timeless abyss of the Kushtaka’s place of darkness?
If so, why was I hearing her call?
Even though I managed to push these superstitious thoughts away, there was still a part of me that wondered whether my experience was something more than just a product of my subconscious.
Then one day last winter I was watching the news when I saw a story about an upcoming total lunar eclipse. What I learned was that the eclipse would make the moon turn red. Because the eclipse was in early spring, there was a decent chance it would be visible from my village.
As the day of the eclipse approached, I began asking myself if I would walk to the petroglyph boulders, during totality when the moon turned to blood. I kept telling myself that I was being superstitious but the night before the eclipse I once again dreamed of N’uweÍ. When I awakened, my resolve toward reason weakened.
Totality wasn’t until two in the morning but by midnight I was already sitting on the soft sand above the rising tide. With only the sound of the waves to keep me company, I watched the moon as the earth consumed its light.
During the final hour, the moon slowly turned from pale gray to orange and in the final moments before totality, it appeared as though it had been drenched in fresh blood. For a moment, I felt silly, cursing myself for allowing base superstition to impair my judgment.
Suddenly, ocean spray from crashing waves seemed to coalesce into the familiar shape of a beautiful woman – round hips, curvaceous thighs, and flowing hair falling over delicate shoulders, all bathed in a fiery red glow. As she neared, N’uweÍ’s unmistakable black hair came into focus.
There was a moment when I felt the urge to run but before my muscles could act, N’uweÍ extended her hand and lifted me to my feet. My hands found her waist and I was surprised to discover her skin felt hot to the touch even though it was still wet from the ocean.
We kissed under the blood moon. N’uweÍ smelled like salty air.
In what seemed like a moment, I was undressed and sitting on the sand with N’uweÍ on my lap, our bodies intertwined, showered by fine mist from crashing waves.
N’uweÍ whispered, “You came, X’unei. I knew you would save me from this place.”
I couldn’t tell if I’d heard the words with my ears or my mind.
It didn’t matter. Just as in my dream, my craving for the black-haired woman overcame me. No man ever lost in the desert without water ever felt such thirst. In my urge to satisfy my unquenchable craving, I firmly gripped N’uweÍ hips and moved her body until my penis slid inside her.
The feeling was like melting, no longer a man but something altogether different. Two had become one in every sense of the expression, although I wasn’t sure whether ours was a union or if I’d been entirely consumed.
N’uweÍ’s pussy clenched and seemed to pull my penis deeper and deeper until the experience became otherworldly. The slightest movement of her hips back and forth heightened my ecstasy exponentially. Waves of intense pleasure bordering on euphoria radiated outward from my cock, oscillating in and out of N’uweÍ’s body and back into mine as though we had become the ocean itself – the full force of the moon’s gravity directing the ebb and flow of our rapture.
My hands cupped her breasts and N’uweÍ growled like some feral animal surrounded by wolves. The pulsating rhythm of our movements was sublime, as though choreographed by some artistic genius.
In the instant between lucidity and the conscious mind giving in to the unstoppable force of orgasm, the black-haired woman’s embrace became suffocating. N’uweÍ’s warm skin crawled beneath my touch, changing into cold scales, slick like a serpent yet slimy like an eel. Her eyes turned entirely black as her head twisted into the unmistakable weasel-like shape of an otter.
My greatest horror was the realization that my cock still penetrated the vile creature’s body and, instead of becoming repulsed, it remained a sexual bliss beyond even my wildest fantasy. Neither did its animal attributes stop me from thrusting even deeper inside its hideous bulk.
When my body suddenly felt cold, I realized that seawater now enveloped us. Above me I gazed upon the bottoms of red waves as they rolled toward shore, the light of the moon spilling like blood upon the ocean. Yet still, I was unable to disengage from the pleasure of my coupling with whatever ancient being possessed the knowledge of summoning man via dream.
When all hope seemed lost and I willingly allowed myself to be overcome with carnal delight, the voice of my Auntie came to me from the great raven’s spirit, “Makeah… repeat the name…”
Summoning great will, I gathered my last breath and used all of it to shout the name of my ancestor’s home from the darkening depths. A large bubble formed and ascended through the water column, wobbling among the currents until it broke the surface and allowed the sound to escape into crisp night air.
”TE’KWAANSHÁTADÍ!”
Kushtaka released its grip. Its spell, broken.
My lungs devoid of air, I struggled to propel myself upward within a swirling vortex and away from that infernal dungeon of the deep, unable to see anything but an endless blood-red sea.
Everything seemed to brighten all at once and my eyes immediately focused on a single point of white light. Then the ocean lit up and I felt my arms break the surface. Gasping for air, I swam as fast as I could toward shore, unsure whether the terrible thing was rising from the depths to overtake me. A wave broke over my back and propelled me onto the shore where I crawled through tangles of bladder kelp that popped under the weight of my body, signaling I’d made it to safety.
I lay in the soft sand where I’d coupled with the ancient shapeshifter of my people’s most sinister legend. After thanking my ancestors for their protection, I stared at the moon and pondered my encounter. While my superstitions turned out to be real, I realized that no one should ever sacrifice reason for belief.
Remember, if you choose to believe in superstition, your superstition just might start believing in you.
