The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  “And he did nothing to help?” Aqamdax asked.

  “He is a selfish man,” Chakliux said. “These many moons since, he has had many favors given to him because of what he knew, and finally, when it was to his benefit to tell the killer’s name, he did, but only to Sok and to me, because we were chosen to lead the Near River People, Sok as chief hunter and I as chief of the elders. Fox Barking wanted all power for himself.”

  “If Sok is not the killer, then who is?”

  “Red Leaf.”

  Aqamdax sat without moving, the words like the thrust of a knife to her chest.

  “She took her husband’s boots and parka to disguise herself,” Chakliux said. “She used one of his knives.”

  “Why?” Aqamdax asked.

  “Red Leaf thought Sok would throw her away so he could take Snow-in-her-hair as wife. She thought if he could get his grandfather’s dogs and weapons, he would become the chief hunter and hold enough honor in the village that Snow-in-her-hair’s father would allow her to come to Sok as second wife.”

  “And my mother …”

  “Just happened to see her.”

  “So Fox Barking drove you and Sok from the village.”

  “Yes. Our mother also chose to come with us, and Ligige’, Snow-in-her-hair and her baby, Cries-loud and—”

  “Snow-in-her-hair is Sok’s wife?”

  “Yes. She was pregnant with his child, so her father let her become second wife.”

  “And you have Sok’s sons?”

  “Only Cries-loud.”

  Aqamdax sighed, pressed her lips together. “The other … is dead?”

  Chakliux nodded. “We also have Red Leaf.”

  Aqamdax pulled in her breath. “No one killed her?”

  “She carries Sok’s child in her belly. Still, Ghaden has no reason to worry. She has nothing more to hide.”

  “And when the baby is born?” Aqamdax asked.

  “Then Sok and I will decide what we must do to avenge our grandfather.”

  That night Aqamdax and Chakliux took turns sitting at the door. Star had taken her mother with the others to wait outside the village, then they would use bows and spears against the Near River hunters in ambush while the few who remained in the lodges fought from within.

  It was not until dawn that Aqamdax noticed the first sign of movement. Her heart quickened, and she squinted, trying to see in the gray light. Their best chance for survival was for the Near River hunters to recognize her, to realize she also had Ghaden and Yaa, so she stood outside the lodge, waiting for the first men to come.

  Chakliux had asked her to awaken him as soon as she saw anything. With the two of them, they had a better chance the Near Rivers would leave their lodge alone, but still she knew that in the frenzy of fighting the Near River men might not care.

  She had raised chants and prayers when she awoke; in the tradition of the First Men, she had thanked the Maker for her life and welcomed the sun. She had stilled her heart with quiet songs each time the fear of death washed over her.

  Now, for a moment, the horror of what she was seeing held her captive, and she could not move. The Near River men came from all sides of the village, each with spear and spearthrower in his hands. The head of each spear glowed with fire.

  Aqamdax’s scream woke Chakliux, and he jumped to his feet, grabbed his spear. Night Man was sitting up in his bed, knives in both hands.

  Aqamdax ran into the lodge, grabbing not for weapons but for water bladders.

  “Fire!” she screamed. “They shoot fire at the lodges!”

  “Stay inside!” Chakliux called to her, then grabbed one of the scraped caribou hides that lined the floor, took it with him, waited in the tunnel until one of the fire spears hit the top of the lodge. Then he jumped out, flipped the caribou hide over the fire, smothering it before the flames could spread.

  Already other lodges were burning. People fought the fires with water and hides, but soon the flames spread through the whole village. Near River spears took a few of the boys and men, but most of the Near River hunters stood by the food caches, stomping out flames that caught in nearby brush, preventing the fires from consuming the caches.

  When the flames roared at their worst, Chakliux knew he could no longer keep Star’s lodge from catching. “Bring what you can carry,” he called to Aqamdax. “Get the children outside. I will help your husband.”

  The smoke had seeped into the lodge so that Chakliux almost had to feel his way to Night Man’s bed. His eyes burned, and the heat from the fire seared his throat and lungs as he fought to draw in breath. He grabbed the corners of Night Man’s sleeping mats and pulled him outside. The smoke was not as dense lower to the ground, so he bent almost double, gulping in the cooler air.

  He could not see Aqamdax and the children, and though he called out for them, the voice of the fire, as loud as wind or sea, smothered his words. When they reached the edge of the village, he told Night Man he would go back for Yaa and Ghaden, for Aqamdax, but then, as though he had been given a gift, they were beside them, their hands also on Night Man’s mat, and the four of them pulled Night Man to safety.

  They did not fight. Why die for no reason? Two Cousin River boys and a woman who had tried to attack were killed. Fisher also was dead, and Runner had a spear in his back. He would not live, the old women said. That gave the village only three hunters and Night Man.

  The Near Rivers left that day, taking whatever they could carry from the caches and most of the young women, all the dogs except Biter. They left the elders, the wounded, to live in the charred remains of the village with not even enough food to last through the next few days.

  And what about K’os and those she had taken with her? Why had she not returned? the few who remained in the village asked themselves. Had the Near Rivers killed her? More likely, she and the boys had been unable to overpower their guards. Well, less mouths to share what food they had. Besides, the old women said, they did not need a healer. They would be dead before the next winter. Most of them would be dead before summer arrived.

  When the Near River men returned to where they had left K’os, they came with shouts, as though she should rejoice with them in their victory. Instead, she lifted her chin and looked away, answered them in anger.

  When the Cousin River women who had come from the village asked why K’os did not return to join the attack, she pointed at the bodies of the two boys and Sun Girl’s mother, the three who had volunteered to slit the Near River guards’ throats. So the Cousin River People came to the Near River Village in mourning, soot still black on their faces, their arms and clothing cut to show their grief.

  K’os’s greatest sorrow was over the number of Cousin River women who had chosen to go to the Near River Village. She had thought more would be killed in the battle, especially after she convinced the men to let the women use weapons.

  Who could believe the Near River hunters would use fire against the Cousin River Village? Who could believe Fox Barking would think of an idea like that?

  Now with so many women from the Cousin River Village, there was less chance she would become wife, more chance she would stay slave. But she walked into the Near River Village with her head held high and did not let herself remember the last time she had been there, with Ground Beater, Tikaani and Snow Breaker, now all dead.

  It did not matter what had happened to them, she told herself. She was alive. There were Near River men, wounded in battle, who could use her help. She had brought her medicines, and soon it would be summer, a time to gather new plants. If there were not enough wounded men for her to heal, she was sure there were those who would become sick. She patted her medicine bags. She was also sure she could heal them.

  Chapter Fifty

  OF THOSE WHO REMAINED in the Cousin River Village, five were hunters, including Chakliux and Night Man. There were six boys seven summers and older, one handful of younger women, three handfuls of old women. Five handfuls of children and babies. Twisted Stalk had hid
den two tiny female pups under her parka, and a young mother who had recently lost her baby said she would nurse them. So with Biter, they had three dogs.

  Aqamdax sighed and continued to sort through the contents of K’os’s burned lodge. Knife blades, scrapers, cooking stones, an assortment of beads had all survived the flames. She also found a bundle of fox furs, charred only at two edges, a few tattered pieces of woven sleeping mats and a water bladder.

  Three old women were fighting over the contents of the lodge next to K’os’s. Aqamdax, her despair spilling into words, raised her voice and interrupted their squabbling.

  “Aunts,” she said, “everything must belong to all of us. If we fight among ourselves, what hope do we have?”

  The three women were suddenly silent, then all of them turned on her, shouting insults and taunts. Aqamdax closed her eyes against tears, then opened them to see Chakliux beside her.

  He led her out of the smoking ruins, down the path and into the cool quietness of the forest. “These are not your people, Aqamdax,” he said. “Why do you stay? Come with me; bring Yaa and Ghaden. We will find Sok, spend the summer fishing and hunting together. Our lodges will be warm next winter, and we will have enough food. During those long moons when we wait for spring, I will build an iqyax frame. Then next summer, when we have enough fish put away to keep us through a long journey, you and I can return to your people.”

  “Chakliux, I cannot leave Ghaden,” she told him. “Yaa may want to return to her mother, but….”

  “Yaa’s mother was killed in the fighting,” Chakliux said softly. He caught Aqamdax’s mittened hands in his own. “I will build two iqyan. We will wait until Ghaden is old enough to paddle one, then we will go, but until then, bring your brother and Yaa, and come with me.”

  Aqamdax pulled her hands away. “I cannot leave my husband.”

  “There are many women in this village who need husbands. Let him be husband to one of them.”

  “Chakliux,” Aqamdax said and began to cry. She laid one hand across her belly. “I cannot leave Night Man. I carry his child.”

  They made one lodge, using lodge poles and caribou hides that had survived the fires. The women with babies, the children, were crowded inside. The others, mothers with older children, the hunters, and the old women made lean-tos. They set them in a ragged circle, their open sides toward the lodge, as though to draw warmth from those within.

  They lifted their voices in mourning songs, and the words rose into the night sky, riding the smoke that spiraled up from the hearth fires.

  Chakliux approached the lean-to where Night Man lay. His sister Star sat on one side of his bedding mats, Aqamdax on the other. Yaa and Ghaden were huddled together at the back of the shelter, and Star’s mother sat twisting her hands, staring off into the distance as though she waited for those dead ones who would never return.

  Night Man purposely averted his face, but Chakliux went to him, lay two large hares on the ground beside the fire.

  “We do not need your meat,” said Night Man.

  Star looked anxiously at her brother, began to gnaw her bottom lip. “We need the meat,” she said. “We need the pelts.”

  Night Man raised his voice. “This lodge has a hunter.”

  “I have come to ask for a wife,” Chakliux said. “There is no shame in taking meat from a man who will be husband to your sister.”

  Though Aqamdax understood that Chakliux was doing this for her, the words were knives to her chest. Chakliux had grown up with Star. Surely he knew she would not be a good wife.

  It would not be an easy thing to have him live in the same lodge, to see him share Star’s bed during the night, but he was a hunter. He would bring meat. She lifted her head to look at Night Man and could see that he was torn by Chakliux’s offer. Chakliux had been enemy. How could Night Man welcome him as brother? But if he did not, was he throwing away the lives of his wife and their child, his sister and his mother?

  “You would take this man as husband?” he asked Star.

  Star stood and walked slowly to Chakliux’s side. “You think you can live again as Cousin?” she asked.

  “I can live as Cousin,” he said.

  “Then I will be your wife,” she told him. “Do you have bride price gifts?”

  “Only the promise of my hunting.”

  Star pursed her mouth into a pout, but Night Man said, “That is bride price enough.” He lifted his good hand as though to encompass the ruins of the village beyond the circle of lean-tos. “What more can we ask?”

  “There is one thing I must do first,” Chakliux said. “My brother Sok, his wives and children, our mother and an aunt have made a camp three days from here. They wait for me. I must tell them I will stay in this village.”

  “I have heard of the hunter Sok,” Night Man said. “Tell him he is welcome here.”

  “I will tell him.”

  “When will you leave?”

  “If you allow me a place beside your fire tonight,” Chakliux said, “I will leave in the morning, and return as soon as I can.”

  “You have a place beside my fire,” said Night Man.

  Chakliux picked up the two hares, handed them to Star. “Not a bride price,” he said. “Someday I will give something better.”

  She took the hares, sat down, laid them across her lap and stroked their fur. Biter pulled away from Ghaden, his eyes on the hares, but Yaa caught him around the neck and held him back.

  “Wife,” Night Man said to Aqamdax, “skin them. We need meat tonight.”

  Aqamdax took the hares from Star, and Star wailed like a child. Her mother looked at her, startled, then raised her voice to sing a mourning song. Star glanced at Chakliux, then changed her cries from petulance to mourning.

  A handful of days passed, then two handfuls, and still Chakliux did not return. Star shouted out her anger at the old women in the camp, at the children, and twice Aqamdax had to stop her as she stood, knife in hand, ready to shred the sides of their lean-to.

  He would not be back, Aqamdax told herself. Surely, when he had time to think, time to realize how difficult it would be to have Star as wife, he would stay with Sok, and Aqamdax would not see him again.

  The people had made another lodge, this one smaller, the covering pieced from caribou hides charred and weakened by the fires, but now the old women and some of the older children had a place. Ghaden and Yaa spent the nights in that lodge, though Ghaden was not allowed to take Biter with him.

  The first few days after Chakliux left, Star had joined Yaa and Aqamdax to set out traplines. Now she did nothing except lash out in anger or crouch inside the lean-to, refusing to eat, refusing to speak.

  Each morning Night Man worked to sit longer, and finally he was able to push himself up, first to his knees, and then to his feet, though he stood only a short time. His right arm still hung useless, and Aqamdax made a sling to bind it against his body.

  Several of the old women salvaged bits and pieces from half-burned baskets and wove fish traps. The three men strong enough to hunt prepared spears and weapons for caribou. The boys made bolas to bring down birds that would soon come from the south.

  The twelfth day after Chakliux had left them, Aqamdax took Biter with her to check traps. She hoped the dog might catch a hare or ptarmigan. She stopped by a tangle of highbush cranberry and picked a few wizened berries, offered several to Biter. “Next year will be better,” she told him. Biter, his fur ragged, his body gaunt, whined as though he understood her words. Suddenly, he jumped away from her, began to run. She followed him for a few steps, then saw that he chased a hare. She returned to her trapline. Each loop was empty.

  Such things always happened at this time of year, she reminded herself. Winter traps had already caught most of the small animals that lived near the village. She would have to move the trapline farther away.

  When Biter returned, he carried the front half of a hare in his mouth. She praised him, surprised that he would bring anything at all when th
ey shared so little with him.

  It was a sign, that hare, Aqamdax thought, a reminder of all good things. She was alive and deep inside her belly she carried a child—a son who would be a strong hunter, or a daughter who would sew and weave and someday give Aqamdax grandchildren.

  She smiled, raised her eyes to the blue sky. The wind was a spring wind, and it swept through the forest with a warmth that lifted the last of the winter’s cold from the brown and gray earth. Aqamdax began a soft song of praise, a thanksgiving for her life, for the life of Night Man’s child, for Ghaden and for Yaa. For her husband and his family.

  Suddenly, Biter’s ears pricked forward. He whined, laid the hare carcass on the ground, set one of his front feet on it, then barked.

  Aqamdax slipped her knife from its scabbard and crouched beside the dog, clasped a hand over his muzzle to quiet him. She waited, then heard someone call her name. “You will let me have this?” she asked Biter and reached for the hare.

  He lifted his foot, and she took it slowly, slipped it into the carrying bag slung from her shoulder. Biter gave her one backward glance and began to run. She followed him, then saw them, all of them—Chakliux and Sok, Red Leaf and Snow-in-her-hair, Cries-loud and Day Woman, last, her voice rising above all the others, old Ligige’.

  “We have come with my brother,” Sok called out. “We hear there is a village near that needs hunters.”

  Aqamdax allowed her eyes to meet Chakliux’s, a long look of joy and welcome. She called Biter to her, then waited as the others passed, greeted them as they greeted her, though Red Leaf said nothing, only walked by, her hands cradled over her belly.

  Aqamdax joined Ligige’, last in line. “I am glad you chose to come, Aunt,” she told her, “but even with Sok and Chakliux, we have only five strong men to hunt for us.”

  “Ah, child,” Ligige’ told her, “Perhaps we have only five hunters, but how many villages have two storytellers? You and Chakliux will help us forget our bellies. Your stories will give us strength for what we must endure, and remind us that life is sacred and the earth is good.”