The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  It was something that could not be done without the right grass, dried in the right way, Qung had told Aqamdax, then sent her to gather. In exchange she promised to tell Aqamdax two stories, old ones that most First Men had never heard. Aqamdax had not told Qung she would have gathered the grass for her anyway, without promise of stories.

  Of course, the village women, especially the old ones, would talk, would use subtle words to shame her, but still, they came to hear her stories. Yes, they would listen and nod, hum their agreement, or sometimes interrupt to tell her another way they had heard the same story told. But that was good. How else did a person learn except by listening to others’ ideas, then choosing what was best?

  Usually in summer, there was little time for stories, save those a grandmother or aunt might tell in teaching, stories that were a part of every child’s life. The story evenings, with most of the village people gathered in one ulax, were better saved for the long dark of winter. This summer the salmon runs were small, not so that the people would starve—seals, sea lions and halibut were plentiful—but some worried about curses and spells, perhaps in punishment for old ways forsaken.

  Now, to help the people remember those ways, He Sings had asked for story evenings. This night and the next and the next after that, Qung and Aqamdax would tell stories. They would talk until the elders could be sure all things were being done in honorable ways.

  During the past few days, as Aqamdax worked gaffing salmon, cutting grass, sewing, weaving, she told stories to herself in silent words that colored her thoughts as brightly as the grasses and flowers colored the hills.

  As she practiced the stories, she sometimes stopped to lift prayers, and each prayer was a request that the people would not realize that the greatest change in the village was the new storyteller, a woman who had once taken hunters to her bed without worry over hunting taboos or the hearts of their wives.

  Chakliux switched his paddle, three strokes left, then again, three strokes right. The rhythm seemed as natural as breathing.

  When Old Tusk first began to teach him, the iqyax was strange, like a man he did not know, someone to face with arms crossed, right hand drawing strength from the hard bone haft of a sleeve knife. Now the iqyax was as familiar to him as his own body. When he paddled he was truly otter, the sea as much his home as any grass-covered hill.

  He looked back at his brother, Sok, and wondered if he regretted his agreement with Yehl, the Walrus shaman. The birdskin parka, a shaman’s mask, a drum, a whistle, a medicine bag and the iqyax Sok was paddling were more than they ever could have gotten for a golden-eyed dog, but in exchange they had to bring back the First Men storyteller. How could they hope to convince a village to give up its storyteller just so she could be wife to an old Walrus Hunter shaman? Even if they persuaded her to come with them, who could say whether Wolf-and-Raven would agree to give his daughter as second wife for even all the powers of feather parka, mask and drum?

  There were four iqyan on this journey: Chakliux’s, Sok’s and those belonging to two Walrus traders, Cormorant and Red Feather. Tut also accompanied them, the old woman requesting one last visit to her own village, to stay or perhaps not. She rode in Cormorant’s iqyax, while Red Feather carried most of the trade goods, a bride price to offer the storyteller’s father, brothers or uncles. Chakliux, Cormorant and Red Feather would each receive goods in exchange for accompanying Sok, but for Chakliux the greatest gift was the journey itself, the opportunity to visit a First Men village, to meet those hunters who were brothers to the sea otter.

  Though Sok carried less than Chakliux did, though he was larger of arm and chest than the other men, he was always behind. Sometimes looking back, Chakliux could not even see him. Then he turned his iqyax, paddled until he knew his brother was not hurt or capsized. Sok had not learned to use his strength to aid his paddling. Instead, he fought the sea, using his paddle like a spear to be thrust and torn out, as though each wave were an enemy to be defeated. His face was raw and blistered from the salt—more than Chakliux’s, more than Cormorant’s or Red Feather’s—as though the sea recognized his enmity.

  After days of travel, they were near the First Men’s village. They had already turned their iqyan into the broad inlet that led to the Traders’ Beach. Now and again Cormorant would lift his paddle to point out a river or a stretch of sand where the First Men fished or hunted or set up summer camps. Soon they would be there, a place Chakliux had always hoped to see, had dreamed to visit, and Sok would begin trading for this storyteller.

  A chill climbed Chakliux’s spine even though the summer sun warmed the wind that swept into the inlet. Sok was not a trader. He did not understand the subtle use of words and eyes. Perhaps he would listen to Cormorant and Red Feather. Perhaps he would listen and learn how a man gets what he wants.

  Qung had told Aqamdax to carry the grass carefully, holding it so it lay across her outstretched arms. Aqamdax had not walked far on her return to the village when she wished she had cut less. Usually, walking back was easier, most of the way downhill, but by the time she saw the village, her arms and shoulders ached so badly she wanted to fling the grass into the wind, tell Qung she had been unable to find the place where it grew. But how could she do such a thing, when Qung had done so much for her?

  Qung was old. Each day her arms hurt; each night the pains in her joints pulled her from her dreams. How could Aqamdax complain about a few more steps?

  She began to recite one of the stories she would tell that evening, trying to find the words that sounded best, repeating phrases as she walked, listening to the sound of her voice. At the crest of the hill behind the village, she stopped, squatted for a moment on her haunches and rested her forearms on her knees. She closed her eyes, then opened them again, looked out over the bay. The hill was crowded with grasses, salmonberry bushes and heavy growths of stunted willow, but the hunters kept this place cleared so boys could watch the bay for signs of salmon, seals and sea lions.

  Today, the bay was full of men in iqyan, some fishing, others practicing with darts and harpoons. Several women fished from the beach with handlines, but most were gathered at the river end of the bay, taking red salmon.

  Aqamdax noticed several traders’ iqyan drawn up on the beach. That was not unusual. There was still at least a moon, probably more, before storms would hinder travel. When some of the ache in her shoulders had subsided, she stood and continued toward the village.

  Walrus Hunters often came to the village to trade. Since she was a child, Aqamdax had learned many of their words, as did all the First Men children. Sometimes Walrus Hunters took First Men wives, but usually when they did, the men lived in the First Men Village. Aqamdax wished her mother had gone with a Walrus trader. She probably would have returned by now, at least to visit.

  Aqamdax carried the grass to the top of Qung’s ulax and laid it there. She saw Qung was not inside, so she hurried toward the beach. She would go to the salmon stream, do what she could to help Qung. In words loud enough for other women to hear, she would tell her that she had cut a large bundle of grass. Then they would know it was not laziness that had kept Aqamdax from the salmon.

  She walked to the beach, stopped when she saw a group of men gathered around the traders’ iqyan. Each time traders came, she hoped they might be River men, but this late in the summer, she knew there was little chance, and so she felt no true disappointment to see the marks of Walrus traders on the iqyan bows. She turned her steps toward the salmon river. She would help Qung until it was time to tell stories, then they would help each other as they tried to guide the people back to old and sacred ways.

  Sok knew she was Daes’s daughter. She looked so much like her that she had to be. But she was stronger than Daes. In her voice, even in the bones of her face, she was stronger. At first, she had spoken slowly, her words spaced with pauses. There were times when she spoke so softly that Sok could hardly hear what she was saying, but as the story grew, the woman also seemed to grow, until she sat s
o tall among them that he had to look up to see her face.

  Now she spoke in a new voice, something that came from the top of the lodge. At first, Sok thought that there was someone outside who called down to them from the smoke hole. Then he realized that Daes’s daughter made both voices.

  Ah, this woman would take Wolf-and-Raven’s heart even more than a birdskin parka or a shaman mask. Who would not want her as wife? Then Snow-in-her-hair would belong to him, if he could get Daes’s daughter away from her First Men husband. Her place as village storyteller gave her so much honor that no husband would willingly throw her away. Perhaps if her husband was a weak man, someone who did not understand the true value of things, he might consider some kind of trade, especially when Sok showed him the goods he had brought.

  Sok was anxious for the stories to end, but they continued, Daes’s daughter alternating with a woman so old her face was as brown as a river otter’s. Tut sat between Sok and Chakliux, translating as the storytellers spoke, but the hard paddling of the day, the beach meeting with the hunters and chief of the First Men, the time spent making a crude shelter with caribou skins and their upturned iqyan, made Sok long for sleep. Sometime during the old woman’s last few stories, he closed his eyes and allowed Tut’s whispers to pull him into dreams.

  He woke when those around him began to stand, and at first did not know where he was. Then he saw Tut. Chakliux was speaking to Cormorant, and Red Feather had joined a group of First Men, but Sok sought out Daes’s daughter. He watched for her husband, but no one seemed to claim her, though several hunters hovered over her, greed on their faces. Finally, when all the women and children had left the lodge, two men approached her. She spoke to them, her face shadowed in the lamplight. Tut also watched, and Sok asked her, “Which man is her husband?”

  He waited while Tut, speaking in the throat-rich First Men tongue, asked a hunter.

  “He tells us she has no husband,” Tut told Sok.

  Sok did not hide his surprise. Daes’s daughter was not ugly. Her face was round, with a small chin and large eyes, a well-shaped nose, and when she smiled, which was seldom, you could see she had good teeth.

  “She is a widow?” he asked, and when Tut repeated the question to the First Men hunter, the hunter laughed.

  “She is a woman who has a different man in her bed each night,” Tut said to Sok, translating the hunter’s words. “He says that if you want her, you can probably have her, but for all the men she has known, she is barren.”

  Sok nodded but tried to keep his interest hidden. The First Men hunter spoke again, and Sok impatiently waited for Tut to tell him what was said.

  “She is called Aqamdax. Her father is dead. She lives with Qung, the old storyteller.”

  The First Men hunter jutted out his chin toward the old one. The woman’s back was so humped, she had to tilt her head to look at anyone who stood in front of her. She had told many stories, and though Sok did not understand her words, he had heard the strength in her voice and sensed the honor of her place among these people.

  The First Men hunter spoke again. This time he spoke in Walrus, his words broken and slow, though strangely easier for Sok to understand than when Cormorant or Red Feather spoke. “Qung much power. Food cache.” He laughed and drew a large circle with his arms. “Much full.”

  He reverted to his own language and spoke long with Tut. Sok turned to Cormorant and Chakliux, the two speaking in the Walrus tongue. Chakliux spoke nearly as well as any Walrus Hunter, and Sok felt a quick barb of irritation.

  Finally Tut pulled at Sok’s arm. “Listen,” she said, “this hunter says the young storyteller is called Aqamdax. Some years ago her mother left with a trader said to be of the River People. Do you know him?”

  Sok shrugged. “There are many traders,” he said. “What is his name?”

  Tut turned to the First Men hunter, asked Sok’s question.

  The hunter spread his arms wide, shrugged, then went to talk to Aqamdax, but Sok stayed hidden in the shadows of the lodge. Tomorrow, he thought, when her stories have left her and she is only a woman, then I will speak to her.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “I NEED TO KNOW the First Men word for grandmother,” Sok said to Tut.

  Tut smiled at him. “You plan to do some trading?” she asked.

  “What does it matter to you, old woman?”

  “Perhaps it matters in many ways,” she told him. She had begun to wear her hair like the First Men women, hanging loose or pulled back into a thick roll at the base of her neck. She was a proud woman—something Sok had realized the first time he met her—and she held her head high. For some reason, she looked almost young now. Chakliux said she had found all three of her brothers still living and many nephews and nieces. “I do not want you to cheat my family.”

  “I will cheat no one.”

  For a moment she tilted her head, studied him. Finally she said, “I believe you. Say kukax. That is grandmother, but be careful how you use it. Some women do not want to be grandmother to a River man.” She walked away, looking back over her shoulder to smile at him and Sok knew that she was almost laughing.

  They were the only traders visiting the First Men, though Tut told Chakliux that often whole villages of traders stayed in tents near the beach.

  “It is a sheltered bay,” she had said. “A good stopping place between First Men villages on beaches to the west and the Walrus villages to the east.”

  “I have heard it said that First Men live on islands all the way to the edge of the earth,” Chakliux had said.

  Tut had shrugged. “Who can say? We know of villages a moon’s travel to the west. Storytellers say we once came from an island far out in the sea and that our hunters killed whales. If it is true, then somehow we have lost those powers.”

  Cormorant and Red Feather laid out trade goods on mats near their upturned iqyan. They muttered that they had had no chance to replenish their stores since their last visit to the First Men. They had stopped at one village between the Walrus summer beach camp and this village, but the people had little there, only fish, grass mats. Chakliux had managed to trade for several rolls of dried sea lion throat, not enough for a chigdax, but a start. That was the best trade any of them made, and Sok had traded for nothing, holding all he had as bride price for the storyteller.

  Chakliux squatted on his haunches and looked out at the water. The wind was small, and the bay was nearly flat. Two young men had come to the beach early, had pulled their iqyan from the racks and taken them out into the water. Fog lay over the inlet, pushed long fingers up the beach and into the low valleys between hill ridges. Chakliux watched the men until they were swallowed up in the gray. He wished he could take his own iqyax and paddle out with them, but he did not want to do something that would break taboos or show disrespect.

  When they returned he would go to them, ask if he could look inside their iqyan, to see the size of ribs they used and how they attached the hatch coaming to the frame. Cormorant had told him they used sea lion skins instead of split walrus for their iqyan coverings. He wished he could speak the First Men language. He had so many questions to ask, but perhaps by the time they returned he could find Tut to translate as he spoke.

  They had been here only one night, and already she seemed to belong again in the village. Her oldest brother gave her a place in his lodge. No, not lodge, ulax. That was what the First Men called their lodges. He would not be surprised if she decided to stay with the First Men, but he would miss her. She was outspoken like a child, and like a child seemed to delight in all things.

  As though his thoughts had brought her, Chakliux saw Tut walk out of the fog, and with her an old woman, bent and stooped. Tut waved him to come, and he broke into a run, slowed by the sand under his feet.

  “You remember Qung?” Tut asked when he approached them. “She wants to see your otter foot.”

  A sudden tangle of beach peas wound around his ankles and he stumbled, but righted himself before he fell.
He brushed sand from the palms of his hands and tried to stand with dignity, but Tut burst out laughing, and then so did he.

  “Yes, I remember Qung,” he said. “The storyteller.”

  Tut said something to the woman in the First Men tongue and Qung answered, her words carrying a sharpness that made Chakliux wonder if Qung were angry.

  “She scolds me for my rudeness,” Tut said. “She tells me the Walrus Hunters have made me forget the polite ways of the First Men. So now then, I will be polite. What do you think of the fog? It is like this always here. I had almost forgotten. What do you think of the village? It is large and the people are strong, eh? Did you enjoy the stories last night?”

  She did not pause long enough for Chakliux to answer, and finally said, “Now we are done with politeness. Show her your foot.”

  Smiling at Tut’s strange ways, Chakliux pulled off his boot and unwrapped the hare fur pelts he used to cushion his foot. Qung bent so close to the ground that Chakliux was afraid she would tumble over. She spoke, her voice rising as though she asked a question.

  “She wants to touch it,” Tut said to him.

  “Tell her she may.”

  Qung’s hand was cold against his skin. Again she spoke; again Tut translated. “She wants to know if you say chants, if you are trained in prayers and songs.”

  “Tell her I am Dzuuggi. You know what Dzuuggi is?”

  “Yes. A storyteller, as Qung is. Are you also shaman?”

  “I claim no spirit powers. My strength comes from the stories I have learned and from my people’s riddles.”

  Tut spoke to Qung and again Qung asked questions, her hands still on Chakliux’s foot. Finally, she straightened as much as she was able, groaning with the effort, and Tut said, “She wants a riddle. Not something about the River People, but something a First Men woman might be able to figure out.”

  Chakliux thought for a moment, trying to remember some of the information Tut had given him about the First Men and their beaches, something simple that might be made into a riddle. Finally he said, “Look! What do I see? A fool follows its path.”