by Sue Harrison
Raven sighed as the old man continued. Perhaps he had been foolish to pretend he understood nothing of the River People language. The trading would be long and tedious, hearing everything said twice. The River People always spoke in careful circles. Their long speeches reminded Raven of a wolf following the trail of a caribou, looping back and away, back and away, and finally circling wide before the attack.
“Does he want to trade or not?” Raven asked, breaking into the long tangle of words coming from the old man’s mouth.
“Yes,” said White Fox, his eyes telling Raven to be cautious, to honor politeness.
Yes, Raven admitted to himself, he must be careful. He took a long breath and forced the impatience out of his mouth, away from his tongue.
White Fox and Dyenen finally came to an offer of goods for goods. Then Dyenen said, “I also have a wolfskin.”
White Fox looked quickly away, and Raven knew the man was shielding his eyes. White Fox had hoped to get a wolf pelt. Walrus women would give much to have wolf fur for parka ruffs. White Fox shrugged. “I have fur seal pelts,” he said to the man.
“Three,” Dyenen said and held up three fingers.
White Fox laughed. “One,” he said.
“Three.”
White Fox shook his head and stood up, walked away.
“Two,” Dyenen called after him.
“One and two grass mats, woven by the Seal Hunter women,” White Fox offered, turning back to the shaman.
Dyenen lifted his head to look at the sky and noisily sucked his teeth. “Yes,” he said, “if I can choose the pelt.”
“Bring the wolfskin. We will see,” White Fox answered.
Dyenen stood, extended a hand, palm out, toward Raven. Raven nodded and watched the man walk back to his lodge.
“You did not show him the carvings?” White Fox asked Raven.
“I will,” Raven answered. “He is a good trader, but you are better.”
White Fox did not acknowledge the compliment, but as the man returned to the trade goods, he walked with shoulders back, head high.
You are a good trader, yes, Raven thought. And I am better. Tonight I will have the secrets of this shaman’s power, how he holds his place over these River People, and I will have it for a basketful of wood and ivory.
The chanting came from within the lodge, Dyenen’s voice and yet another voice, high and like a woman’s. For a moment Raven stopped outside and listened. Two people inside, maybe three, he thought. He waited. The sky had begun to darken, but still there was light enough to see the village, the white-gray smoke rising from each of the many lodges—three tens at least. And ten, twelve people in each lodge.
He had never seen a bigger village, nor a village that had so much food, especially at this time of year, before the birds had laid spring eggs. The winter caches, platforms raised on poles higher than a man’s head, were still packed with meat and fish, dried berries and fat, and it had not been an easy winter. How did one man hold so many people together in peace? How did he empower his hunters to feed them? Was he a caller, a shaman who could bring in caribou, bear, or moose so his people always had meat?
Raven had come alone. It had not been an easy decision. What was more important, to have the freedom of speaking to Dyenen, one on one, of trading, shaman to shaman; to have the freedom of making his trades without White Fox’s knowledge of what he was doing, or to have the advantage of hearing without the old man knowing that he understood? In some ways the decision had been made for him. White Fox was enjoying his evening with the River girl, the woman he had traded for. Why interrupt? Why have the man’s resentment like a dark cloud over this trading session with Dyenen?
Again Raven heard the voices, the high singing words of a woman. Speaking in what language? Not that of the River People, not even Caribou. Then another voice, a man’s voice, a young man, someone strong—a hunter?—speaking also in that unknown tongue. Then Dyenen’s voice, the voice of a man growing old, but not yet feeble. For a long time Raven stood outside the lodge. When the voices stopped, he waited for the man and woman to come out, but no one came, and from inside the lodge, there was only silence.
So, Raven thought, these people are like the First Men, sitting together sometimes a whole day without speaking. It was a custom that always made Raven feel as though his muscles would soon jump through his skin. He laid his left hand against the lodge and raised his right hand to scratch at the caribou hide door covering, a custom of politeness among the River People. The voices began again, and this time, Raven, one hand still pressed against the lodge cover, felt the lodge tremble as though the old shaman spoke not to people but to the lodge itself.
Then Raven had had enough of waiting, enough of wondering. He scraped his nails against the caribou skin, once, twice, and Dyenen called for him to come in. Raven lifted the door flap and crawled in through the narrow entrance tunnel. There was a fire in the center of the lodge, wood smoldering, the smoke making an uncertain path to the smokehole overhead. The smoke burned Raven’s eyes, and he blinked away the irritation, waited until the tears cleared, then settled himself on his haunches beside the fire. Suddenly he realized that he and Dyenen were the only ones in the lodge. There were no others, no people to own the voices Raven had heard.
“You are alone?” Raven asked, without the politeness of a greeting, without the raising of hands or the offering of food.
“You speak the River language?” the old shaman said.
“Some, not well.”
“Better than you led me to believe.”
Raven smiled. “Three days I have been in this village. Quickly I learn.” He shrugged and then remembered that the River People did not shrug shoulders but instead held hands out, fingers pointing up. “In ways of politeness I have ignorance,” he said.
“So I see,” said Dyenen.
“White Fox has discovered the … the joys of your women,” Raven said.
Dyenen did not reply, did not act as though he had heard. Raven pulled his smile into his mouth. The River People were not ones to discuss women, even in jokes, though their women often seemed eager to join a man in his bed.
“There was … I heard a woman, a man,” Raven said and turned his head to look into the shadows of the lodge, to see if his eyes, clouded by smoke, had missed seeing them, or if there was some other door into the lodge. But there was no one and no door.
Again Dyenen ignored Raven’s words, and instead passed him a dish with fish and the leaves of the plant the Walrus People called goose tongue. Raven took some of each and ate.
In silence they sat, watching the fire, Raven still blinking his eyes against the smoke. Finally he said, “I have come to trade.”
For a long time Dyenen said nothing. He ate, leaned forward to put more sticks on the fire, and ate again. Finally, he said, “I did my trading today. I have what I need.”
Raven pulled the basket of Kiin’s carvings from under his robe. “You did not see everything. I have things to trade, shaman to shaman.”
He looked up to be sure Dyenen was watching, then stood and swung his black feather cloak from his shoulders, laid it on the floor of the lodge between himself and the old man. What could be better to show the white of Kiin’s ivory, the yellow and gray of her wood?
Squatting again, Raven cradled the lidded grass basket in both hands and slowly opened it. He brought out the largest carving first—a walrus, as long as a man’s hand. Kiin had carved the body from a whale’s tooth. The long sharp tusks were curves of walrus ivory. Raven did not look at the shaman, but heard the man’s indrawn breath. Beside the walrus, Raven laid three seabirds, the smallest no larger than the last joint of his little finger, each carved with wings spread as though to catch the wind. He set out ivory seals, some with glittering obsidian eyes, and a sea otter lying on its back, a baby on its belly. There was a man in an ikyak, a puffin almost as large as the walrus, lemmings, and, most beautiful of all, a wolf, an animal Kiin had never seen until she came to the
Walrus People’s village. The wolf was sitting with its head thrown back, and Raven set it so it looked up, as though the lodge’s smokehole were the moon.
“Almost I hear its song,” the old man finally said, one crooked finger pointing at the wolf. They sat for a long time, Dyenen with his eyes on the carvings. This time the silence did not bother Raven. It was a silence of praise, better somehow than words. Finally, Raven picked up the smallest seabird, a gull, wings out, head to one side. Without speaking, he handed it to the shaman. The old man’s hands trembled as the bird fell into them, but he leaned close to study it, lifting the carving to the tips of his fingers, moving it in the varying light of the fire.
Finally Dyenen asked, “Did you carve these?”
“No.”
“Why do you show them to me?”
“For trade.”
The man’s eyes widened. He sucked in the sides of his cheeks until his face seemed more bone than flesh. “I have nothing to give,” he said. “You will not take pelts or dried fish.”
“No, I will not.”
Dyenen handed the carving back to Raven. “I have seven daughters,” he said. “One is yet a child and another a new baby. The other five have husbands. I have no one to offer in marriage.”
“Wives I have.”
“What then?”
“We are shamans,” Raven said, choosing his words carefully, letting them run through his head first in his own Walrus tongue, then bending them into the clicks and throat sounds of the River People language. “Power I have. Power I offer in these.” He swept a hand out over Kiin’s carvings. “The same I ask in trade.”
Slowly the River shaman raised his head; slowly he pulled his eyes away from the carvings.
“You do not feel their power?” Raven asked, lifting his chin toward the carvings.
“They pull at a man’s eyes,” the shaman said.
“At his soul,” answered Raven.
The shaman shifted on his pad of furs. He looked into the fire, taking long breaths, then he cupped his hands in the fire’s smoke, as though it had the power of water to cleanse.
“Power is not something to be traded. It must be earned,” the shaman said.
“You do not wish for more power to …” Raven paused as he searched for the word he needed. “… to help your people?”
“I do not want what I should not have.”
Raven picked up the walrus carving, let his hands caress the whale tooth ivory, let himself wonder again how Kiin could get such smoothness from the sharp edge of a knife.
“You have a large village,” Raven said. “You need this power. Your people need it. To stay strong.”
“You came then for me?” Dyenen asked with a sly smile. “Not for yourself?”
“What trader comes for another, whether that trader be shaman or not?” Raven said. “I come for myself. For my own power.”
“Ah,” said Dyenen.
“Your power I know,” Raven said. “Your power is here. This village.” Raven spread his arms as though he could see the River People’s village through the lodge’s caribou skin walls. “So many people with food for all, with peace for all.”
“Why should I share that power?” Dyenen asked.
Raven held one hand over the carvings as a man holds hands over a fire. “If you do not feel it, you do not need it,” he said.
“And if you trade me these,” Dyenen asked, “what about your own power?”
“Carvings I have of my own, carvings I cannot trade.”
“If you do not need these, then why do I?”
Raven held his hands out, fingers up, made himself smile, but the man’s words grated in his chest. “If you do not feel it, you do not need it,” Raven said again, and handed the shaman the walrus carving. From the edges of his eyes he watched as the old man cupped the carving in his hands and began a slow chant, eyes closed.
Raven waited, impatience battering from within.
Finally Dyenen said, “Yes, I will trade.”
Raven pressed his lips in a line to keep the laughter that suddenly came to him from escaping his mouth. “Power for power,” he said.
“Power for power,” Dyenen agreed.
The old man stood up, took a step forward to balance himself, and went to a curtain of caribou skin at the side of the lodge. He thrust the curtain aside and reached into the darkness under it. He came back to Raven with a pelt in his hands, laid it reverently at Raven’s feet. “This for the carvings,” he said.
The skin was of an animal Raven did not know. It was large—as long as a man’s arm—and was whole, with head, legs, and short black tail attached. The skull had been removed, so the head skin folded forward from the neck like a closing flap.
Raven reached out to touch it, let his fingers hover above it, and when Dyenen made no objection, allowed his hand to settle into the soft, dense fur. The animal was the gray-yellow color of old grass, and the ears were tufted with black.
Dyenen reached over and lifted the animal’s head, and Raven saw that the skin had been left open at the neck so the whole animal was a pouch. Dyenen pushed his hand inside and pulled out packs of folded caribou skin, each knotted with colored strings.
“You asked how one shaman kept so many people together in peace, with game enough to hunt, with fish enough to catch,” Dyenen said. “You asked about my power.” He spread the packs beside the carvings. “These are my power,” he said. “I had thought to give them to a son, but my wives give only daughters. When a man is old, he must pass on his knowledge before the spirits take him. Otherwise what he has learned loses its worth. Better to share knowledge with a man who honors the spirits than with someone who has no understanding of powers beyond his own.”
Raven looked at the packs. Two tens, three tens in all, each no larger than his hand.
“May I open them?” he asked, his fingers above the knots of the pack nearest him.
“A man would lose power if he opened the packs without knowing their secrets,” Dyenen said.
For a moment, Raven felt the weight of disappointment, but he drew his hands away. Why take the chance of destroying the power that was so close to being his?
“You will trade these for the carvings?”
The old man nodded. “For all,” he said.
“For all,” Raven repeated, “but you must tell me the secrets hidden in the packs.”
“Yes, if you do the same for me.” Dyenen pointed to the carvings.
Raven raised his head and thought for a moment. Kiin seemed to give her carvings no special treatment, nor had she told him of any taboos that must be kept. But yes, he did remember her anger when Lemming Tail put one in water. Kiin had told the woman they must be cleaned with oil, so he said, “If a man honors each carving in his heart and sometimes rubs them with oil—oil of sea animal, not tallow from land animal—then the powers stay strong.”
Dyenen nodded and, placing the walrus on the feather cloak, picked up each of the carvings, studied each, turning it in his hands, holding it to the firelight.
Raven waited for a long time, watched the old man fondle the carvings, but gradually Raven’s eyes grew heavy with the need to sleep, so he finally said, “And now … you will tell me what I need to know?”
Dyenen looked up at him in surprise. “There is too much power in these packets for the knowing to come in a few words,” he said. “You must study with me for many days—one moon and half of the next.
The old man placed the packets back into the fur skin and handed it to Raven. “Take it with you. Treat it with respect. This animal, the lynx, has power. It is a medicine animal that holds good things in its belly. Take this with you, but do not open the packets until I have told you what you need to know.”
Dyenen stood and, taking the carvings one by one, set them in different places on the lashings of the lodge’s willow frame. Then he went to the entrance tunnel and waited until Raven picked up his cloak and left.
Raven came out into the night and lo
oked up to see the wide band of stars that lightened the skies. The stars were fires, the Walrus People said, of those who had died. He wondered if the Walrus People’s dead knew the dead of the First Men, those people, Kiin had told him, who danced in the lights. And he wondered where his own light would be when he died. He clutched the lynx skin to his chest.
Why think of death? he asked himself. Better to think of the power that would soon be his, of the village he would someday have, as large and strong as the River People village.
CHAPTER 44
The Whale Hunters
Yunaska Island, the Aleutian Chain
KUKUTUX HEARD THE ANGRY VOICES even through the ulaq walls. She ran to the climbing log, then backed away as the whalebone rafters trembled with the weight of the men who were yelling. The old trader—Waxtal—was first into the ulaq, then Owl and Spotted Egg, the two men still yelling at Waxtal in words of the Caribou language, words Kukutux could not understand.
Spotted Egg carried a short blunt throwing spear. He raised it over his head, gestured with the pointed end toward Waxtal. Waxtal, eyes darting toward the climbing log, dropped to his knees and wrapped both arms over his head. “No,” he cried out in the language of the First Men, then began to speak in the traders’ tongue. When he finished talking, he lowered his arms to look up at Spotted Egg, but Spotted Egg again threatened the old man with the spear.
Kukutux stood, her back against an earthen wall, watching. The old man’s body was smeared with dirt, his face drawn and gray, and Kukutux remembered that Hard Rock had said Waxtal had spirit powers.
Yes, Kukutux thought. He has the look of someone who has been fasting.
Waxtal sidled toward the climbing log, but Spotted Egg took two quick steps toward the old man, his spear raised. Kukutux pressed herself more tightly against the wall. She looked away from the men, but then heard a thin pleading cry, and could not make herself stay still. With a thrust of her heel, she pushed away from the wall. She caught Spotted Egg’s left side with her shoulder and shoved him hard, then ran to stand between him and Waxtal. The hit was quick enough to make Spotted Egg lose his balance, and he lowered his spear to catch himself with the fingertips of both hands.