by Sue Harrison
Then Chakliux’s hands were on her shoulders, and she felt his strength. She relaxed, leaned her head back against his chest, but Night Man said, “I gave him to the lake. He is there now, with the water spirits.”
The words were like the blade of a knife, cutting through her flesh and into her bones until she could only scream.
She wrenched herself from Chakliux’s grasp and ran.
“Do not go after her,” said Night Man. “You already cursed yourself by touching her. She still bleeds from the birth.”
But Chakliux turned from Night Man and followed Aqamdax down the hill. He found her kneeling on the shore, hands held out toward the lake. He wrapped his arms around her, but she struggled against him.
“My son,” she said, and looked out at the water. “There, I see him. He is floating on that wave. If I wait, he will come to me.”
“Aqamdax, Aqamdax, he is gone. There is nothing on the water. We must go back to the village. Ligige’ has medicine for you, something that will help you regain your strength.”
She stood, and Chakliux tucked an arm around her, tried to lead her away, but she broke from him and started out into the water, the blanket trailing from her hands. He went after her, caught her. He expected a struggle, but she allowed him to take her back to shore. Then, turning to him, she smiled and held up a short branch, forked on one end.
“I told you,” she said. “Here he is. Look. He is not dead. See.”
She knelt and wrapped the branch carefully in the sodden blanket, held it to her breast. Chakliux, tears burning his eyes, gathered her close and walked her back to the village.
PART TWO
THE STORIES HAD TAKEN them from winter and on through the summer. Each morning and each evening the old woman had told the boy more about Aqamdax and Chakliux. She still had much to tell him, but already the fireweed blossoms had climbed to the tops of their stalks. Soon the leaves would turn, and the people would follow the caribou.
The old woman pushed herself to her feet and crawled out the doorflap of her fishcamp lodge. After tonight, they would have a few days without stories while they walked back to the winter village. She stretched her arms, saw how frail they had become, little more than skin over bones. The long walk would not be easy for her, but then she saw the boy coming, his face bright with a smile, and she knew she would have the strength.
He lifted a hand in greeting, and she welcomed him into her lodge, offering fresh fish that she had roasted outside over the fire. She did not wait for him to finish eating before she began. The stories pressed too hard in her throat, the words scrambling over one another to get to the boy’s ears.
“The Near River Village,” she said, “K’os and Fox Barking. Listen:”
K’OS, SLAVE OF THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE:
He names himself Anaay and hopes to call caribou. Fool! It will take more than the power of a name to get the stink of fox out of him.
That night after he bought me for his wives, he took me to Gull Beak’s lodge. He told me I would live there, and I was glad for that. Her lodge might as well get used to me, for soon it will be mine. I thought we would spend the night there, Gull Beak and I, but he sent her away.
He brought no gifts, and being slave, I expected none. He took me to Gull Beak’s bed and with a knife in his fist, forced me to lie belly down.
“I know your hands,” he told me.
So I knew he had not forgotten what they did to me so long ago. He and his friends. Two of those three men have felt my revenge. Fox Barking is next, and he will die more horribly than the others.
Look! What do I see? Ravens rejoice over their feast, taking the eyes first.
Fox Barking, do you understand the riddle?
Chapter Ten
THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE
“HOLD HER STILL,” K’OS said.
The child lay on her side on a mat of caribou hides while her father gripped her legs. K’os had wrapped a round river rock, half the size of her fist, in the furred pelt of a river otter. She lifted the stone in one hand, said to the father, “The pelt is sacred, you see.”
He nodded, and K’os placed the stone in the child’s armpit, then pushed down on the arm.
The girl’s sobbing rose to a shriek as the arm bone slipped back into the shoulder socket.
“You have killed her,” Red Leggings, the mother, cried out, but the girl’s father spit out a quick reprimand.
“Foolish woman, the arm is back in place. See for yourself.”
“She must sit up now,” K’os said.
The man lifted his daughter to his lap and watched as K’os bound the upper arm to the girl’s body with a band of caribou hide.
“It is done,” said K’os. “I will give your wife caribou leaves to heat and lay over the shoulder. They will deaden the pain.” She raised her head to look at Red Leggings. “You know how to make tea from willow?”
Red Leggings looked away, but her husband said, “She knows.”
“Give your daughter willow tea when she complains of pain.”
K’os drew out another length of scraped and softened caribou hide from her bag of supplies and fashioned a sling. She lifted her chin toward Red Leggings and said, “Come here. I will show you how to tie it.”
Red Leggings crept forward, sniffing as if she were a child, but K’os ignored her red, accusing eyes and wrapped the girl’s arm, tied the sling so the knot would not rub at the back of the neck.
She nodded at Gull Beak, and the woman removed a packet of caribou leaves from the medicine bag and handed it to K’os. K’os opened the pack, took a leaf, laid it on her arm, rubbed it against her skin. She was a slave, and she was Cousin River. It would take a long time to earn the people’s trust.
“You see?” she said. “It will not hurt her.”
But the girl’s father looked at Gull Beak and asked, “It is caribou leaf as she said?”
“It is caribou leaf. I was with her when she gathered it,” Gull Beak answered.
“Her shoulder will hurt, but in a day or two she should begin to move her arm,” said K’os, as though the girl’s father had not expressed his doubt, as though Gull Beak were not even in the lodge. “Use the caribou leaves and give her willow tea. Make her wear the band and sling for a few days.”
“Blue Flower told me that there are songs that should be sung,” Red Leggings said.
K’os shrugged. “Tell Blue Flower to come and sing, but for the rest of today, keep the girl quiet and let her sleep.”
As she and Gull Beak left the lodge, K’os said, “So what will you ask them in exchange for our medicine?”
“You think a caribou hide is too much?”
“She is their only daughter. Ask for a hide, and also for that string of seal teeth I saw hanging on a lodge pole. That will be mine, if you can get it. If not, I will take half the hide.”
She glanced from the sides of her eyes to see if Gull Beak would protest, but she did not. After all, the woman’s lodge was already full of good things that K’os’s skills had brought her: beads and hides and pelts, baskets and even a stone lamp that burned grease, something brought into the village by a trader.
Gull Beak lifted her chin toward the center of the village. “Take a turn at the hearths. If someone needs us, I will come for you. I have beads to sew on the winter boots I am making my husband.”
K’os did as Gull Beak told her. Better to take a turn at the hearths than to be put to work in the river gaffing fish or scraping the moose hide Fox Barking had managed to cheat away from some hunter.
The wind was sharp. It cut through the village from the north and carried the smell of winter. The balsam poplar were turning yellow, leaves dropping to color the earth and make a bed for the snow. Two groups from the village had already left to hunt caribou, but Fox Barking stayed. He said he was fasting so he could hear the caribou more clearly. But so far his hunger had not called them into his dreams. Strange how in the lodge of a man who was fasting the stew bags—left full
each night—were almost empty by morning.
Fasting or not, Fox Barking must soon decide where they would hunt. Otherwise the caribou would be past them, secure in their winter grounds.
He planned to take K’os and Dii, leave Gull Beak here in the winter village. There was so much to do in preparation for the hunt that K’os had not yet had the opportunity to finish her special gift for Fox Barking. She had to work when Gull Beak was busy somewhere else and would not walk in on her. Could K’os risk Gull Beak’s seeing the strips of flycatcher skin, the kingfisher feathers, the fox eye? What about the gull feathers or the bits of grebe neck skin? If a wife could bless a man with her sewing skills, why couldn’t a slave curse him with hers?
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
Night Man raised his left arm and, gritting his teeth, slowly straightened it. Five times he moved it up from his side, splayed his fingers, then lowered it and tightened his hand into a fist.
“Something good has happened here,” he finally said.
“As my child grows, so you gain strength,” Star replied, and laid her hand on the small mound of her belly.
Aqamdax bent her head over her sewing and pretended not to hear them. She could feel no joy for her husband’s returning strength. Perhaps his spirit realized that if Night Man became sick again, Aqamdax would not work for his healing. And what chance would he have with only Star and Long Eyes to care for him?
“Perhaps Aqamdax’s son took the pain with him when he died,” Star said.
Aqamdax sucked in her breath. Was there no end to Star’s foolishness? She stood up, left her sewing in the middle of the floor. It was a boot for Night Man. Let his sister finish it. Aqamdax pulled on her winter parka. It was cold outside, and the ground grew harder with each night’s freeze. Two days before, it had snowed, though the sun had melted the snow by noon. She left the lodge without saying where she was going or when she would return. How could she tell them when she did not know herself?
She started toward Ligige’’s lodge, but instead walked to the spruce woods. The trees took the brunt of the wind, and Aqamdax pushed back her parka hood so the ruff just covered her ears. There was a large black boulder midway through the woods, and she walked until she came to it. The rock seemed to have no special powers, nothing to give but also no need to take, especially from someone like Aqamdax, whose sorrow had made her weak.
She squatted on her haunches, facing the path that led back to the village. When had she left the First Men Village? she asked herself. Only two years ago?
What a fool she had been to abandon the old woman Qung and her comfortable ulax. There Aqamdax had learned to be a storyteller, was finally held in honor by the people who had despised her for so long. Surely, if she had been patient, one of the men would have taken her as wife. Surely a First Men husband would not have killed his own son.
Aqamdax’s throat ached with unshed tears.
Other women have lost babies, she told herself. Yellow Bird, Ligige’ and Twisted Stalk had all come to her, whispered their sorrow, told of babies who had died long ago. Those women now treated her as one of them, bonded through pain as sisters—at least one solace in the midst of her agony.
“It has been long enough,” Bird Caller told her only the day before. “Go back to your husband’s bed, get the hope of another child.”
Bird Caller had missed her last moon blood time, and Aqamdax could see the joy of hope the woman carried within her. But Bird Caller’s husband had not killed her first child.
How could Aqamdax go to Night Man’s bed? How could she bear to have his hands on her? She lowered her head to her arms and allowed herself to cry. Sometimes the tears helped, though she hid from Star and Night Man. Why show them her weakness? Suddenly there was a strong hand on her shoulder. She gasped and jumped, then saw it was Chakliux.
She blinked away her tears.
“You are all right?” he asked.
She cleared her throat, nodded.
“It’s snowing again,” he said.
She looked up at the sky, watched the large flakes drop slowly to the ground.
“Night Man sent you to find me?” she asked.
“No. I came here to get away from the village, to have time for my own thoughts.”
He squatted beside her, crossed his arms over his upraised knees. He lifted his chin at her parka and said, “Perhaps you could make me one like that.”
Aqamdax had cut her parka in the manner of the First Men’s bird-skin sax, so it was wide enough to pull over her legs when she squatted on her haunches. She pulled it down now, tucked it around her feet.
“It would get in your way when you are hunting,” she said, then saw that she had hurt him. “But if you want one…”
“If you have time to make it,” he said.
“I have time,” Aqamdax said. Then, covering her embarrassment with words, she added, “Soon you will leave for the caribou hunt. Night Man has said he will not go. You will hunt with Sok?”
“Perhaps.”
He placed an arm around her shoulders, and lifted her left hand, pushed back the sleeve of her parka so he could see the bracelet she wore. It was a sinew bracelet with knots made to look like the face of an otter. He had brought it back from the Walrus People and given it to her the night he came to warn the Cousin People of the Near River attack.
“You still wear it,” he said.
She smiled. Her face felt stiff from her tears, but it was good to smile. She tipped her chin toward his side where the whale tooth carved into the whorls of a shell hung from his belt. She had given him the tooth. It had been passed down in the First Men Village, storyteller to storyteller, from a time so ancient even Qung did not know why it was carved in such a way.
He looked into her eyes, and she was suddenly uncomfortable. She began to speak about the snow and the trees. She told Chakliux about the first time she had come through these woods, she and her little brother Ghaden with the trader Cen and Night Man’s brother, Tikaani. She told Chakliux about her father and mother, about games she had played as a child.
Even as she spoke some inner voice chided her, saying she had become too much River, trying to fill the world with her words. Had she forgotten the rudeness of interrupting a person’s thoughts with needless chatter?
Finally Chakliux said, “Hush, Aqamdax. You do not need to hide your sorrow when you are with me. Sometimes tears are the best thing.”
Then she turned her head into his shoulder, and he held her as she wept.
Chapter Eleven
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
THE DOGS WERE BARKING, but dogs often barked. Surely most of the people had left the village to hunt caribou. Snow was falling hard. It covered Red Leaf’s tracks, and that was a good thing, but she felt its chill through her parka. Her daughter moved against her chest, and Red Leaf held her breath in fear the baby would begin to cry. She waited, but the child only settled herself more deeply into sleep.
In the gray light of dusk, Red Leaf studied the caches, each a roofed square of logs set high on four legs. She chose the nearest one, lifted the ladder and set it into place. The dogs raised their barking into high-pitched yips. Someone might come out to check, but perhaps they would think it was only a fox, and what could a fox do with all the cache ladders propped against lodges and woodpiles?
She climbed the ladder, unlatched the cache door and looked inside. There were several caribou hide packs stuffed full. Choose well, she told herself, and selected the largest one. She took it, crept down the ladder and hurried away. If the snow did not get too deep, she might be able to reach her lean-to before morning.
She had pitched the lean-to at the base of a fallen spruce. The roots had taken a large round of sod from the earth, and she used it as a wall against the north wind, overlapping spruce branches and draping a caribou hide to make a shelter. For a time, she was able to trap hares and ptarmigan, but during the last handful of days, her snares had stayed empty, and she had run out of the dried fish
she brought with her from the Cousin River Village.
Ah, she had told herself after she finished eating the last piece, it is good the fish is gone. The less I have from that place, the better. But with nothing to put in her belly except a weak tea made of willow, the bark bitter now that winter was so close, she began to dream of going back.
Of course, Sok would kill her if she did. What choice did he have? No matter that she had killed his grandfather to give Sok the honored place of chief hunter in the Near River Village. No matter that she had given him two fine sons. She would die. She felt a brief stirring of anger but pushed it down, pretended it was not there. What else could Sok do? He had to avenge his grandfather’s death.
Her daughter moved again, so with each step Red Leaf made small jostling movements. At least she was far enough from any village that if the baby cried no one would hear her. Except the wolves that sometimes followed when she left her shelter. She stopped, strapped the caribou pack to her back, and to keep the baby quiet began to sing a lullaby she had learned from Aqamdax when that Sea Hunter woman had been her sister-wife. At least Sok had had the sense to throw Aqamdax away. She was not a terrible woman, but who could say what curses she brought, coming from the Sea Hunter Village? They did not follow sacred ways.
The wind was increasing, and the snow fell so hard that it hindered Red Leaf’s walking. She wished she had brought snowshoes with her when she left the Cousin River Village, but in her hurry, she had forgotten many things. Besides, who would have believed a winter storm would come so early?
At least when she reached the spruce woods, the trees would break the wind. She continued to walk. With the caribou pack strapped to her back and the weight of the baby against her chest, she bent closer to the ground with each step. In time, the wind shifted and blew from the north, and Red Leaf lifted one arm to shield her face. Night had fallen, and she could see nothing.
Suddenly she ran into something, hitting her arm hard enough to draw a quick cry of protest from her lips, then a breath of gratitude.