by Sue Harrison
As though called by her husband’s words, the woman descended the climbing log, her long thin legs white under the edges of her suk.
“Smoke,” her husband called. “A trader has come. He has brought food, but needs you to prepare it.”
“Only oil and dried fish,” Raven said.
“This is the trader’s woman,” the Ugyuun man said, and leaned forward to ask Lemming Tail’s name.
For a moment Raven had to stop and think what the name was in translation, then he said, “She is Lemming Tail. The baby under her parka is Mouse, my son.”
The Ugyuun woman began chattering to Lemming Tail, peeking inside the parka and making soft sounds in her throat at the baby.
“My wife does not understand the First Men tongue,” Raven said, but the Ugyuun man laughed and, jerking his head toward the two women, said, “There are some things all women understand.”
Raven, too, laughed, then leaned back to listen as the Ugyuun men began telling stories of hunts they had made, seals and sea lions they had taken. They were men who did not know the power of hunting walrus, but Raven was careful to keep his disdain hidden under words of praise.
They began their trades for small things—baskets, necklaces—then for whalebone and soft brown sea otter pelts. Raven gave oil, dried meat, parkas, leggings. When Lemming Tail was busy with the women, Raven went to the ik. In pulling out their trade goods, he took her carvings, dug out a space in the beach gravel, and buried them. Later, in trade for a small section of walrus hide, he got four necklaces—two of shell, one of whalebone, and another of stone. He came to Lemming Tail as she worked, and gave her the necklaces.
“For your carvings,” he said.
Lemming Tail, smiling at the women around her, leaned back to whisper into her husband’s ear, “When do we leave? It is too dark here, and the women stay in this ulaq all day. I am ready to go. Why did you come here? For a few necklaces and otter pelts?”
Raven also smiled at the women, smiled as he pulled his wife to her feet, smiled as he helped her up the climbing log to the clear outside air. They sat down on the roof. Lemming Tail breathed in, then coughed, clearing her lungs of the oil lamp smoke. She reached inside her parka for Mouse, the baby squalling his protest as she took him from her breast. Then he blinked his eyes in the sunlight and reached up to grab his mother’s hair.
“No,” Lemming Tail said, and pulled the hair from his fist.
Raven took the boy, set him on the grass and thatch of the ulaq roof. “He needs to be in the sun,” Raven said. He had once thought the boy was his, but seeing so clearly the features of Shale Thrower’s husband on the boy’s face, he could not even pretend to believe what Lemming Tail still insisted was true.
“I spent too much time with Shale Thrower,” Lemming Tail had told Raven. “Why else would my child look like her husband? But that is your own fault. You were the one who brought Kiin into our lodge.
Who can stay long in a place with that woman? Her tongue is as sharp as a harpoon head.”
Taking Lemming Tail to Dyenen was a good thing, Raven thought. Why have Mouse around to grow up looking like another hunter? It was not as if the man was Raven’s brother or hunting partner, not as though everyone would think Raven had shared her willingly. Surely he would find a better wife than Lemming Tail. Someone who knew how to keep a lodge clean, and would not stray from his bed.
“So,” Lemming Tail said, “when do we leave here?”
“When we get what we came for.”
“Which is what? I have my necklaces. You have furs and the spear shafts you wanted.”
“I came here to get you a son.”
Lemming Tail narrowed her eyes. “You will trade me for a night’s pleasure to these dirty Ugyuun men?”
Raven laughed. “You have never refused a night with any man before, woman,” he said.
“I have been a good wife to you. Have I ever refused your bed? Was I like Kiin, stiff and still as though your hands were not even touching me?”
Raven frowned. Finally he said, “We are here to get you a son. A baby, one already born.”
Lemming Tail’s mouth opened, and she moved her lips as though to speak, but no words came out.
“Dyenen wants Kiin not only because of her carvings but because she had two sons, born at the same time. He is an old man, but his wives have given him only daughters. He wants a son.”
Lemming Tail curled her lips into a scowl. “So I must take some other woman’s son, raise him as though he were my own. I must work twice as hard to raise two babies!”
Raven shrugged. “I could have killed you,” he said. “You cost me a wife, someone whose carvings are so valuable that a man could live on the trades he gets for them.” Raven turned and stared at Lemming Tail, allowed his anger to burn in his eyes.
“Kill me then,” she said. “At least in the spirit world I will have time to spend in joy, in laughing, not always caring for babies, one not even my own!”
Raven ground his teeth in anger, but calmed himself with thoughts of the power that would be his if Lemming Tail went to Dyenen without trouble.
“You would give up being a shaman’s wife?” Raven asked softly.
“A shaman whose power is known to all the traders of the world? You would give up the parkas and leggings, embroidered with dyed hair and hung with shells? You would give up being his woman of the sleeping robes, while his other wives do the sewing and cooking?”
Raven was still, letting his words work in Lemming Tail’s mind.
Finally she turned to him. “He is old?” she asked.
“Old but strong, with good years left to him.”
“He is ugly.”
“No.”
For a long time, she said nothing, then, straightening her shoulders and brushing her hands over the front of her fur parka, she said, “Tell me about his lodge. Tell me what he has in it. Tell me how a woman of the River People should act—to please her husband.”
CHAPTER 69
The Ugyuun People
The Alaska Peninsula
IT IS A DREAM, KIIN TOLD herself. How many times since she left the Walrus village had she dreamed that the Raven had found her? More than she could remember. This was just another of those dreams. The Raven would never come to the Ugyuun village to trade. What did the Ugyuun people have that anyone would want?
Kiin had spent the day walking the beach looking for driftwood and bone, to carve and as fuel for cooking hearths. She had filled two baskets—one that hung on her back, a tumpline across her forehead, and one that she carried atop her head. For all that the Ugyuun people had done for her, at least she could gather fuel for them.
She had left Shuku with Small Plant Woman and so had been able to work that much faster. But now, even with the weight of wood on her back and the pressure of the full basket against the top of her head, she was sure she had done nothing more than dream her gathering.
Her steps seemed slow as she approached the ik, but how else did a person walk in a dream? Inside the ik were the Raven’s paddles, banded with yellow. Red ocher colored the ik’s thwarts. Tied to the ik’s ribs were Raven’s walking stick, trade packs, and storage bags of food. Kiin’s heart clenched inside her chest, but she reached out to touch the ik’s walrus skin covering. The oiled hide was smooth against her fingers.
“It is not a dream,” the inner voice of her spirit whispered.
“He could not know I am here,” Kiin said. “But he would not come here to trade.”
She reached down and stroked the hardened caribou hide of a trade pack, then moved her hand to a thwart. She touched the wood, and a splinter caught one finger, pricked into her skin. She pulled her hand back, sucked at the drop of blood that welled from the wound.
“It is not a dream,” her spirit said again.
“It is not a dream,” Kiin repeated. She backed away from the ik, set both baskets of wood near the path that led to the village, and ran up into the hills. She did not stop running un
til she had found a thick growth of willow where she could hide. She crouched down, clasping her knees to her chest, and panted until she had caught her breath.
If he has come to bring me back, I cannot escape, Kiin thought. If he has come to trade, and no one tells him about me, he will never know I am here.
Her spirit voice whispered, “Shuku. Small Plant Woman has Shuku. What if the Raven sees him? Then he will know.”
Kiin lowered her head to the tops of her knees. Her heart was a stone in her chest as she remembered Eagle’s promise to her that morning: “The next good day, I will take you with me to the Traders’ Beach. You and Small Plant Woman can go in her fishing ik. I will take my ikyak. Perhaps my brother also will go. We will make a trading trip.”
The man had laughed, and Kiin had joined his laughter. A few days to the Traders’ Beach, then she would be with Samiq, with Takha. With all her people.
Tears stung her eyes, and she pressed her lips against her knees to hold her sobs inside her mouth.
Her spirit voice chided her: “So you will sit here like a child until he finds you? You will let him have Shuku again? After all you have done to return to your people?”
“What can I do?” Kiin whispered.
“Go back to the village, find out which ulaq the Raven is in. Find Small Plant Woman and Shuku. Go now. You do not have time to cry.”
Kiin stood up, wiped her hands over her face. There was a path that led from the village into the hills where berries grew. She pushed her way through the willow thicket until she found the path, then followed it back to the village. For a time, she crouched beside the refuse heap at the mountain side of the ulakidaq. She waited until one of the village women came by, an old woman with empty berry baskets hanging from each arm. Kiin had seen her before, but could not remember her name.
“Grandmother,” Kiin called out, “I need your help.”
The old woman looked at Kiin, frowned. “You are the Walrus woman that Eagle found during his long hunt,” the woman said. She was a large-eared woman, and she spoke loudly, as though to fill those ears with her own voice.
“I am Kiin of the First Men,” Kiin answered. Then, choosing her words carefully, she said, “I need to see Small Plant Woman. Could you bring her to me?”
The woman snorted. “I am old. You are young. You cannot walk to her ulaq yourself and see her there?”
Kiin gestured toward the woman’s berry baskets. “If I promise to fill your baskets, will you get her for me?”
The woman raised her eyebrows, and her face creased with a slow smile. “You will fill all four?” she asked.
“All four.”
“Today?”
“Yes.”
She handed Kiin the baskets and started back toward the village. Her walk reminded Kiin of Shuku’s wide-legged waddle. When the woman had gone a short way, Kiin called to her.
The old woman stopped and looked back over her shoulder at Kiin.
“When you tell Small Plant Woman to come to me, do not say my name.”
The old woman snorted. “I do not remember your name, Walrus woman,” she said.
“Whatever you say to her, whisper so others do not hear,” Kiin said.
The old woman wrinkled her nose, and Kiin held up the berry baskets. The old woman shrugged and toddled on toward the village. Kiin stepped back into the trees that fringed the refuse heap and waited.
The chief hunter was a young man. His face was dark, his eyes sunken beneath a jutting forehead. He wore his hair in a strange way, pulled back and up, then tied at the top of his head. The man’s suk, though decorated with shell trim and fringe, was in poor repair, and his ulaq stank of old urine and rotted meat.
Lemming Tail raised one hand to cover her nose, but Raven, aware of the insult, grasped her wrist and pulled her hand down to her side. “It is no worse than my lodge before Kiin,” he whispered to her.
Lemming Tail drew back her lips and hissed at him, then smiled at the chief hunter. The hunter’s wife gestured to Lemming Tail, and she went with the woman and helped serve food to the men.
Both men ate, neither speaking until the meat was gone. The Ugyuun woman offered water from a seal bladder, and after he and the chief hunter had drunk, Raven asked, “Do many traders stop here?”
“Many come,” the chief said. “Many trade.”
“Ah-h-h-h,” Raven said. “I am glad.” He smiled. “But now I understand why your men are such good traders. A man like me must be careful of a village like this: full of men who understand trading and make hard bargains.
The chief laughed. “So,” he said, “you will stay with us?”
“Not long,” said Raven. “I came to you to make one trade. I need something for a man much like you—the chief hunter of our village.”
“My weapons are not for trade,” the chief said.
Raven held up his hands. “This is nothing for hunting. Our chief is a strong hunter. Three summers ago he found a good wife, a woman of the First Men. Their first summer together, she gave birth to a son, but the baby died. Since then, she has lost three babies who came too soon from her womb. The shaman tells us that she grieves so much for her first son that she cannot give the chief a living son. Now she does not eat, does not sleep, and talks only of going to the Dancing Lights with her children.”
“He is better to let her die. Then she will be happy and he can get another wife.”
“He does not want another wife. He thinks she will be happy if she has a son. So I was sent to find a son, a child of a First Men village. My wife came with me,” Raven said and pointed with his chin to Lemming Tail. “She nurses our own son, Mouse, and has enough milk for another.”
The chief looked at Lemming Tail and nodded.
“Do you have a child here, a baby boy of perhaps six, eight moons, that we could take back to be raised as the son of a chief?”
For a time the Ugyuun man said nothing, then he asked, “You would give a good trade, much oil, much meat?”
“All the oil I have with me, all the meat, except enough for the journey my wife and I must make to take us back to our own village.”
Again the chief nodded. “I will talk to my hunters,” he said. “I will see if one will give his son to be raised by a chief.”
Small Plant Woman came out calling Kiin’s name. Kiin hurried to meet the woman, shushing her, then pulled her into the willow trees.
“Kiin …” Small Plant Woman said. “Why do you hide?”
“Where is Shuku?”
“In the ulaq, asleep in your sleeping place. Where is the wood?”
“Beside the path that leads up from the beach,” Kiin said.
“Good,” said Small Plant Woman, then asked again, “Why are you here?”
“I saw a trader’s ik on the beach.”
“Yes, A trader and his wife came this morning after you left to gather wood.”
“Why do they come?” Kiin asked.
“To trade, why else?”
“I know him,” Kiin said. “He killed my husband’s brother.”
“So you are afraid of this trader? He seems like a good man. He laughs often, and his wife is a hard worker, though she does not speak our language.”
“Is his wife called Lemming Tail?” Kiin asked.
Small Plant Woman laughed. “Do you think my husband would bother to find out such a thing?”
Kiin tried to smile, but her face was stiff, as though her tears had dried into a mask. “This trader—he has threatened to kill my husband and take me as his wife.”
“Then you are right to hide,” Small Plant Woman said. “I will find out how long he plans to stay. Will you wait here?”
“I must go get berries for … for …” She held up the old woman’s berry baskets.
“Blackfish.”
“Blackfish,” Kiin said. “Bring Shuku. I will take him with me.”
“You do not need him. I will keep him safe.”
“The trader,” Kiin said, “he will know hi
m.”
“What man recognizes a baby, especially one who is not his own?”
“If he brought Lemming Tail with him, she will know whose baby it is.”
Small Plant Woman shrugged. “Then stay here and wait. I will bring Shuku.”
CHAPTER 70
LEMMING TAIL WAITED until the chief had left the ulaq, then she came to Raven’s side, leaned up against him, and whined, “When can we leave? Already I am itching with their lice. Already I am sick from their food.”
Raven blew a sigh of disgust from his mouth and pushed the woman away. “When they bring us the baby. Then we will leave.”
“When will that be?”
“I do not know.” He made a slashing motion with his hand and said, “Leave! Go do things a woman should do!”
The chief’s wife turned and looked at them, a smirk on her face, and Raven’s cheeks grew hot in embarrassment—laughed at by an Ugyuun woman. But why be angry with an Ugyuun woman when the one at fault was Lemming Tail? What would be better than to give Lemming Tail to Dyenen and be rid of her?
There was the sifting of dirt from the ulaq rafters, and the sound of voices at the roof hole.
“I have a baby for you,” the chief called. He came carrying a bundle in one arm, stepped down three notches of the climbing log, and jumped to the floor. “His mother is dead, and the father says it will be too much trouble to raise him to the age of hunting. But the man wants much oil.”
“I have much oil,” Raven said. He stood and waited as the chief brought the baby to him.
He unwrapped the child.
“How many moons?”
“Ten,” the chief said. The baby lay quietly in the chief’s arms, his eyes fixed on something in the rafters. He was about the same size as Mouse and had the round face, the long eyes of the First Men.
Raven nodded. “Good,” he said, then called to Lemming Tail. “Take him. I will go get the oil.”
Lemming Tail sat in the chief’s ulaq as Raven and several of the Ugyuun men carried in ten seal stomachs of oil and three of dried fish, another two of seal meat.
Mouse jabbered, poking at the Ugyuun child with his pudgy fingers, but the Ugyuun baby gave no response. Lemming Tail laughed at her son. “You will both be good hunters,” she said, and looked up to see the chief’s wife watching, the woman with a smile on her face.