by Sue Harrison
In the morning, Dii went early to the cooking hearths. She hoped other women would be there, would tell of the hunting plans their men had made. She thought she would probably go with Anaay, but he was old, and as leader of the elders, he was sure to receive a share of the meat. Perhaps he would stay in the winter village and let others do his hunting for him.
To her surprise, the hearths were deserted, the coals still banked from the night before. Were all the wives helping their husbands pack food and supplies? Would they leave even yet this day?
Dii gathered armfuls of wood, then carefully pushed back the ashes of the eastern hearth. With one of the willow tongs, she exposed the coals, then sprinkled on handfuls of clubgrass fluff, encouraged the flames with her breath. One by one, she started each of the five hearth fires, and hung several of the empty cooking bags she had brought from her lodge on the tripods.
“Those are not from last night?”
Dii looked up. It was Gull Beak. Her eyes were circled with dark rings, and her hair hung in strands that had loosened from her braids.
“Yes,” Dii said.
“You ate from it?”
“Only the ptarmigan and hare stew,” she answered.
“Were you sick?”
“No. Were you?”
“I did not eat until I was back in my own lodge, but all the men who ate at your lodge were sick. K’os and I and Blue Flower were awake all night giving teas to soothe bellies. You did not know?”
“I slept.”
“Anaay was not sick?” Gull Beak asked.
“He ate only ptarmigan and hare,” Dii told her, “though he was angry all the moose meat was gone.”
Gull Beak shook her head. “He should be grateful,” she said. “I’m going to bed. If Anaay wants me, tell him I am busy. Scrape out the cooking bags and rinse them before putting more meat in.”
After Gull Beak left, several other women came to the hearths, one of them—mother to the young man called River Ice Dancer—called to her.
“So you, too, were awake all night with a sick husband?” she asked.
“Anaay was not sick,” Dii said.
The woman frowned. “Perhaps he is used to your poor cooking. I have heard that Cousin women are worthless in preparing food.”
Though usually Dii said nothing when the Near River women taunted her, this time she did not ignore the insult. “The food came from Gull Beak’s lodge,” she told them.
But as she walked away, she wondered what had brought the sickness. Perhaps in taking the moose, the Near River hunters had broken some taboo. Or maybe it was in punishment for what the Near Rivers had done to the Cousin River Village. No, she decided. How could such a small punishment be given for burning an entire village?
Chapter Fourteen
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
RED LEAF HAD EXPECTED a trader’s lean-to, so when Cen tied Tracker outside the large, well-made lodge, questions bubbled from her mouth.
“You live here?” she asked.
When he did not answer, she decided he had only borrowed Tracker to help him find the caribou hide, and now he was returning the dog to its owner.
“So Tracker is not your dog,” she said.
Again he did not answer, and so she began to speak of what had occupied her mind during the walk to the village. “You said you needed a woman. What happened to your wife?”
Finally, when he had the dog tied and fed, Cen turned to Red Leaf and said, “Gheli, you are a woman of too much mouth. Be quiet. If you watch and listen you will learn all you need to know, and because of your silence, people will think you are wise.”
He turned his back on her and walked toward the food caches. Did he expect her to follow? How should she know what he wanted her to do when he would not answer her questions? Suddenly, she was angry. He had asked her to come with him. She could have walked to her own shelter. By night, she would have been there, but here she was in this strange village with a man who would kill her when he heard her true name.
Cen stopped, looked back at her, then lifted his chin toward the lodge. “Go inside,” he told her.
She crawled into the entrance tunnel, stopped to scratch at the inner doorflap. There was no answer, so she went inside. The lodge was large, beautifully made. The caribou hide lining stretched up almost to the smoke hole and was decorated with dark and light circles of caribou hide in a pattern that reminded Red Leaf of clouds. The floor was covered with grass mats, woven much like those Aqamdax made. At the center of the lodge, the floor had been dug down more than a hand’s length into the bare earth and lined with rock and sand for a hearth.
Red Leaf stirred the ashes, but there was no spark of life. She debated with herself whether or not to start a fire. What if this was not Cen’s lodge? What would the woman who owned it think if she came in to find a stranger had begun a fire in her hearth?
Perhaps she would be glad for a warm lodge, Red Leaf told herself, and reached into her parka for the cilt’ogho that held the coal she had brought from her own shelter.
She thought it might be dead, she had been away so long, though she had fed it another knot of wood. She dumped the coal and ashes into the hearth, smiled to see the faint spark of red at the center of one of the knots. She coaxed the fire with clubgrass fluff and curls of birchbark until she had flames, then she added wood.
When the fire was strong, Red Leaf pulled her daughter from the warmth of her parka. The child wailed in the sudden chill of the lodge.
“Hush, be still,” Red Leaf crooned to her.
She threw the baby’s moss swaddling into the fire and wiped her clean, then padded her ground squirrel wrappings with fresh moss from a small bag of supplies tied to the belt that held up Red Leaf’s leggings. She placed the baby again under her parka, fastened the binding that held her secure under Red Leaf’s breasts.
When the child began nursing, Red Leaf went outside, filled a boiling bag with clean snow. In the lodge, she hung the bag from a tripod set over the firepit. She found several empty water bladders and softened them by rolling each between her palms so they would be ready to fill when the snow melted.
Finally she heard someone in the entrance tunnel, and she stood, her mouth full of words in explanation of why she was here and what she was doing.
It was Cen. He nodded at the fire and handed her a fishskin bag filled with smoked salmon. The smell of it made Red Leaf’s stomach roll.
“Eat,” he said, then held out his hand.
She gave him a piece of fish and took one for herself, then ate so quickly that her belly still felt empty when she was done. She checked the snow in the boiling bag. It had melted. She filled a water bladder, gave it to Cen, then went out for more snow. When she returned he was leaning against a woven willow backrest.
“The stream on the north side of the village is a good place to get water,” he told her. “The women keep it open most of the winter. It empties into a small lake not far from here.”
“The women will not care if I get water there?”
He shrugged. “I am not a woman. What can I tell you? Let me see your daughter.”
Red Leaf was surprised at his interest, but she pulled the baby from her breast, slipped the child from under her parka and held her so Cen could see. The child’s eyes were closed, but her mouth was pursed and moved as though she still nursed.
“You have named her?”
“No.”
“I should name her now that I am her father,” Cen said.
Red Leaf tried not to show her surprise. Already he considered himself father? “She needs a name,” Red Leaf agreed.
“There was a woman I once knew, a good woman,” Cen told her. “Her name needs to be remembered.” He looked at the child, narrowed his eyes as if to judge how well that name would fit her. “Yes,” he finally said. “She is Daes.”
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
The wind woke Aqamdax, and she lay listening as it pressed against the walls, searching for a way to get
inside. Did it know that they were a lodge of only women and children? Chakliux and Night Man were spending the night with the other men in the village. Their hunters’ lodge had been destroyed in the fighting, and now they had only a crude lean-to, but as Chakliux had said, their songs were still sacred, and their stories still good to hear.
Aqamdax raised herself on her elbows. Star’s mouth was open in sleep, and Long Eyes lay still. Ghaden and Yaa were curled together with the dog Biter. Aqamdax lay back down, but her chest was heavy with the knowledge that Chakliux would leave the next day. She clasped her sleeping robes in both hands, held tight, forced her thoughts away from the emptiness of her belly, the ache of her breasts. How could she live with both Chakliux and her son gone?
Soon her husband would take her into his bed. She wondered each night if he would call her, but some men waited two, three moons after the birth of a child before feeling safe from any blood power their wives might carry. She tried not to think of his hands on her, and instead saw her belly again swell with a baby. This time, she would never let the child out of her arms. She would run away, like Red Leaf had run away, rather than take the chance that Night Man would kill it.
Her muscles seemed to tense and jump under her skin, and she turned on her sleeping mats, one way, then the other. Finally, she slipped from her bed, grabbed her parka and boots, and went out into the night.
She had expected the air to be cold—a light snow had fallen only the day before—but the wind had changed and now blew from the south, bringing warmth like a remembrance of summer. She put on her parka and boots, then walked quickly through the village, found the path that led into the spruce woods.
A foolish place to go alone in the night, Aqamdax told herself. There were wolves. Perhaps a lynx. But still she walked, frightened at what she was doing but directed by the emptiness that had opened again within her chest.
What difference if they killed her, those wolves? That lynx? At least she would be with her son, with her mother and father. Perhaps she would walk forever, past the woods, on into the tundra until death in one way or another found her.
She pushed away the faces that came to her mind: Ghaden, Yaa, Chakliux, Ligige’. Ligige’ was old, so she did not have many more summers to live. And Ghaden and Yaa had each other. But Aqamdax could find no excuse for leaving Chakliux.
When she came to Black Rock, she was suddenly tired. She climbed up on it, tucked her parka around her feet and lowered her head to her raised knees. It is a good night to be outside, Aqamdax told herself, and looked up at the stars, tried to keep her thoughts from her sorrow.
Chakliux left the hunters’ lodge. The others were asleep, but since Night Man had killed Aqamdax’s son, Chakliux hated to be in the same lodge with him. His breath seemed to poison the air, and his dreams battled against Chakliux’s dreams, disturbing his sleep. Chakliux worried that such enmity would take away the men’s hunting luck, so finally he left, took his frustrations into the night, where the winds would pull them away.
He carried his sleeping robe with him, the woven hare fur blanket that Red Leaf had given him when he first lived with the Near River People. It was cunningly made, that robe, with twists and loops that held in a man’s heat, even on the coldest nights, but who could say? Perhaps those same twists and loops were a net catching Night Man’s dreams and directing them to Chakliux. Or perhaps the blanket held Chakliux’s anger, so that even though it felt light, it was heavy with his need for revenge. How could he leave it in the hunters’ lodge, where it might steal away hunting skills—the accuracy of a spear, the strength of a bow?
He walked toward Black Rock. It was a good place, that rock. The thought of it calmed him. That he found Aqamdax there, even in the night, did not seem strange. He boosted himself up beside her, felt her tremble, and realized that she was crying.
He wrapped an arm around her, and she leaned against him. Though they spoke no words, his anger seeped away, and Aqamdax was quiet, so only their breath moved between them.
THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE
The night before the caribou hunters left the village, Anaay awoke Dii and pushed himself into her bed. She was surprised. Surely a man about to go on a caribou hunt should not carry the smell of a woman with him.
As a girl, she had heard the stories women told at hearth fires, words passed behind hands. They spoke of the men’s need for women after the caribou were killed, when there was no longer a chance of losing hunting luck.
The women, exhausted from butchering, often did not share their men’s joy in coupling, but only endured, grateful that at least they could lie down during this chore, and glad to know that the men would sleep quickly and soundly afterwards.
Dii’s mother had chided the women when they complained about their men’s desires. Who were the ones to risk their lives so the people could have meat? Who were the ones to work hardest in killing those caribou? Not the women.
Be grateful, she had told Dii, when your husband wants you. Be glad that you are able to bring joy to his life.
So Dii did not allow herself to worry about Anaay’s choice as he came to her bed. Instead she closed her eyes and remembered him as he spoke to the hunters, remembered the honor he earned by dreaming caribou. And she did not let herself think of her own dreams, the singing that had come to her bones as warm and strong as a south wind.
Chapter Fifteen
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
AQAMDAX MOVED AGAINST HIM, and Chakliux felt the prickling of the calluses on her palms as she stroked his arms and chest. His hands found their way under her parka, and he did not stop himself until he was holding her breasts, the nipples rising firm and hard under his fingertips. Then he pulled away, apologizing for what he had done.
“No, Chakliux, do not stop,” Aqamdax begged. “I need you to hold me. I need…”
He gathered her close, as if she were a child, stroked her hair, pressed his cheek against hers, and made himself content with only that. Even in his years with Gguzaakk, in the joys they had shared as husband and wife, he had never wanted a woman as much as he wanted Aqamdax, but to take her now, in this place, hiding from her husband and his wife, with his need fed by anger…
Tomorrow he would leave for the caribou hunt. How could he expect animals to give themselves if he did not have the strength of will to do what was right? How could he expect animals to honor him if he brought dishonor to his wife and his wife’s brother? And how could he expect Aqamdax to stop him?
When they had both lived in the Near River Village, they had been friends. He had shared the joys and sorrows of his own life, and she had shared hers. He knew that in the First Men Village, she had taken many men into her bed, but only to fill the emptiness of her life.
Perhaps her need now was not truly for him but only to forget her loss.
“Chakliux,” she whispered, “please, I want to be your wife. I don’t want to live with Night Man. I will throw him away and stay with you. I do not care if you keep Star. I will be second wife.”
She cupped her hands at the sides of his face, and though, in the darkness, he could not see her eyes, he knew from her voice that she was crying.
“I will give you a son. Many sons.”
“Aqamdax,” he said, and clasped her wrists, pulled her hands to his chest. “Be still, be quiet and listen. When the hunt is over, and we have taken the caribou we need for winter, then you can throw away Night Man and I will take you as wife. In the spring, if you want, we will leave this village. If you would rather live with your own people, we will go there. Whatever you want we will do, but not until we have taken the meat we need to live through the winter.”
She was quiet then. Quickly she raised one hand to his face, then just as quickly drew it away. She slipped down from the rock. “Hunt safely; hunt well,” she said.
Later, in Star’s lodge, Aqamdax lay in her bedding furs and remembered the promises so many people had made to her: Day Breaker, that First Men hunter who had pledged to take her a
s wife; her mother, who had said she would return but never did; Night Man, who had promised her sons and instead…
Why trust Chakliux? some voice whispered to her from the darkness. Why trust anyone? But how could she allow herself to doubt? During those few quick moments she had been in Chakliux’s arms, the pain of her loss had diminished, and she had almost felt alive again.
She clasped her amulet, felt the hard lump that was a piece of the stick she had brought back from the Grandfather Lake the night her son had died.
Though she had no memory of doing so, Chakliux had told her that she waded out into the lake and brought back this stick, had wrapped it like a baby. She kept it with her for three days before she realized what it was.
She remembered that realization, seeing the stick in a hare fur blanket, screaming at the knowledge that her baby was dead. She was in her birth lodge, still bleeding and unable to live in the village, but Ligige’ had been with her….
Until tonight she had not cared if she was alive or dead. The pain she carried was so much greater than anything her eyes saw, her ears heard. But now Chakliux had given her hope. He would become her husband. They would have to endure the separation of the caribou hunt. During that time she would remain wife to Night Man, and pray each day that he would not ask her into his bed.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Biter’s growl.
She and Star were on their feet almost at the same time, then Ghaden and Yaa as well. Ghaden ran to the weapons corner, was grabbing his spear when Night Man thrust aside the inner doorflap and came into the lodge.
He gave no greeting, only blinked until in the hearth coals’ light he was able to fix his eyes on Star.
“Sister, I have decided to go with them,” he told her. “I have one good arm. That is enough to throw a spear.”
Only a moon before, if Aqamdax had heard her husband say such words, she would have rejoiced that his strength was returning, but tonight it meant nothing to her until he said, “Wife, you will go with me.”