by Sue Harrison
“You gave them too much,” Sok said.
“It is a good dog,” Chakliux said.
“Not for the dog. For K’os.”
“There are some debts that take much to repay.”
“I do not want her here. Bad luck follows her.”
“She will be gone by tomorrow.”
Sok nodded his approval, and Chakliux pointed with his chin toward one of Sok’s dogs, a black male with a white belly and chest, large head, small ears.
“That dog,” Chakliux asked. “Would you take a golden-eye for him?”
K’os complained and grumbled as she worked, and though the others ignored her, Yaa found herself watching. She remembered when Aqamdax was K’os’s slave, how wicked K’os had been. When Cries-loud convinced Yaa that Red Leaf did not kill Day Woman, Yaa’s first thought had been of K’os. Surely she was a woman evil enough to kill. But when Red Leaf died, K’os had been slave, and truly she looked like a slave, her parka ragged and thin, her face gaunt. What slave would escape to kill, then return to her master?
So K’os could not be the killer, but if it was not her, then it must be someone who lived in the Cousin River Village. Yaa shivered and clasped her woman’s knife, the only weapon she had, and wished she was a boy with a long-bladed hunters’ knife to protect herself and Ghaden.
Chapter Thirty
K’OS WAITED UNTIL THE darkest part of the night. She knew the cycle of the moon, that it would hide its face until nearly dawn. She would have to walk carefully in the darkness, but with the dog it would not be difficult. She had worked the day before, as Chakliux had ordered her, at first in anger but then in glee, as she realized the women were so busy they would not notice the meat she stole.
With the many caribou they had killed, the Cousin River People would live through this winter. But there would come a year when the caribou were not so plentiful, and then what would they do, with so few men to hunt and so many women to feed?
Of course, some of the old ones would die this winter. They always did. And there were always other deaths, unexpected.
When she was a slave in the Near River Village, K’os had asked about Gull Beak’s sister-wife, Day Woman. Where was she? Had she died?
Gull Beak had said Day Woman decided to leave the village with her sons Sok and Chakliux. It was best. The woman was a problem, Gull Beak told her. Always crying, always worrying. K’os had expected to see Day Woman here. She was old, but not too old to help with a caribou hunt.
K’os had whispered her questions to Aqamdax, had claimed concern for Day Woman out of friendship, but Aqamdax knew her too well, smiled in scorn and told K’os not to mention the woman’s name. She was dead.
“Sickness or accident?” K’os had asked.
“Sickness,” Aqamdax had finally answered, but her hesitation told K’os there was something Aqamdax had chosen not to tell.
“Long Eyes?” K’os had asked.
“Back in the winter village with Ligige’,” Aqamdax replied.
“Ligige’?”
“Aunt to Sok and Chakliux,” Aqamdax said. “From the Near River Village.”
“So, she, too, came with my son?”
“Yes.”
K’os had nodded toward Snow-in-her-hair. “That one also.”
“Yes, as Sok’s wife.”
“He had another wife, as I recall, though I have forgotten her name,” K’os said.
“Let it stay forgotten,” said Aqamdax. “She is dead.”
“Accident or sickness?” K’os again asked.
This time without hesitation, Aqamdax answered, “Sickness.”
In the darkness, K’os crept from the storage lean-to, her pack in her hands. She took the hare fur blanket Star had loaned her for the night. She had laughed to discover that Chakliux had taken Star as wife, offered sympathy for Aqamdax’s dead baby, but held a spiteful joy in her heart when Star told her what Night Man had done.
“Young babies often die,” K’os had told Star, and looked down at Star’s belly.
Star had crossed her hands over her stomach and hurried away. K’os would have liked to stay, to see the child that Star would give Chakliux. This one she would most likely allow to live, even if it was a boy. Chakliux might find more anguish in watching his son raised by a woman like Star than in losing the boy as an infant.
K’os went to the makeshift storage caches, to those that held the best meat, and filled her packs. Then she returned to her lean-to, took the water bladders, rolled the bedding mats and crept to where Chakliux had tied the dogs. There were four, and she approached them cautiously, offered pieces of meat to keep them quiet. She knew he had put the golden-eye nearest the tent door. In the darkness she groped for the dog’s tether, cut it and led the animal out to the brush fence. She was stopped there by one of the boys stationed as watcher.
“I am Chakliux’s mother,” she told him. “You know me, K’os.”
“He said you were leaving tomorrow.”
“I am leaving now,” she said, and slipped out through the brush fence before he asked any questions about the dog.
She had counted paces from the fence the day before. Eight from where she had stood with Fox Barking. The other distance she had measured only with her eyes. She took three long steps, stooped down and groped the ground, moved slowly closer to the brush fence. Finally she found Fox Barking’s fine birch-shafted spear, chuckled in satisfaction.
She turned it point up, spoke a curse against Fox Barking, then another against Chakliux. Those two men, between them, had ruined her life, had robbed her of all good things. But already poor stupid Dii would have begun giving Fox Barking K’os’s poison. As for Chakliux, she would find something better. He had already done a fine job of cursing himself, taking a wife like Star.
K’os pulled the dog with her into the river. The cold water bit at her legs, and the current tried to sweep her from her feet, but she held tightly to the dog, allowed him to float her through the deepest parts. When they got to the other side, K’os changed into dry boots and gave the dog time to lick his feet and legs, then she looked up at the sky, set her course by the tail of stars the River People had named for the Cet’aeni, those tailed enemies who lived in trees, and she started toward the Four Rivers Village.
Chakliux was awakened by Star’s screech, but he merely rubbed his eyes, stretched. Then she was beside him, shaking him, pulling him from his blankets.
“Your mother…your mother…your mother…”
Chakliux reached up and placed his fingers over her lips. “Be quiet. My mother is gone, I know. And she took one of the dogs.”
Star raised her eyebrows at him in surprise. “The golden-eye,” she said.
“No. Sok has the golden-eye. I traded the dog for one of his.”
“You knew your mother would go? She told you?”
“I have lived long enough with her to know she would do such a thing, and that she would take the dog and steal some meat.”
“And you let her?”
“What is best, to have her here with us or to lose a little meat and Sok’s old dog?”
Slowly Star smiled, but then she thrust her bottom lip out into a pout. “I wanted her to stay long enough to make me a fine parka. I thought she might if you gave her the pelts.” She tilted her head up and closed her eyes. “I wanted fox fur and lynx with strips of black from the leg skins of swans. I wanted shell beads and flicker beaks for luck. So who will make it now?”
Chakliux’s stomach twisted at the thought of Star’s being mother to his children. Would their sons or daughters be like her, with minds so bent and foolish? He pushed her away from his bed, and in doing so saw that his fingernails were rimmed with blood from the butchering. He remembered the nights he had touched Star as wife, and it suddenly seemed that the blood was her blood, a curse on all he did, pulling away his power and protection.
He flexed his fingers, and they were stiff, as if the blood had spread from his nails to his hands. And then it was t
he blood of all the men, Cousin and River, killed in the fighting.
He had told himself that he had done what he could, but was that really true? Had he worked hard enough for peace? Or had he allowed anger and impatience to weaken his prayers?
There had been moons when he was merely content to be a hunter, not Dzuuggi, not leader. And there had been that long winter when he went in search of Aqamdax, traveled all the way to the First Men, thinking she had escaped to that faraway place, when she had only been taken as a slave to the Cousin River Village.
“You will find someone to make my parka?” Star asked him.
He frowned at her, shook his head to clear his thoughts, then he lost all patience, answered curtly. “Do as all women do. Make it yourself.”
He pulled on boots, leggings and parka, then left the tent, strode quickly away so she would not catch up with him. He walked past Sok’s tent to assure himself that the golden-eyed dog was there. He was, sitting alert and watching the activity of the camp while Sok’s other dogs slept. Then Chakliux went to the river.
Frost whitened the ground, making the grass brittle under his feet. The few dark leaves that remained on the alders rattled in the wind, fluttered like a caribou’s ragged spring coat. But each of Chakliux’s steps released the clean, pungent smell the earth takes on before winter.
He took off his boots, waded into a shallow sandy pool, breaking through the skin of ice that webbed the surface. He scrubbed his hands together under the water until the blood was gone from his nails and his skin was bright red from the cold. He looked into the river. It had been dark with silt after the hunt, stained with caribou blood. Now it ran clear, and Chakliux could see the rounded cobbles that covered the riverbed, gold and brown.
The part of him that was otter longed to swim, to feel the pull of the current and the clean rush of the water. He stepped back to the shore, took off his leggings and parka, sliced into the water with a shallow dive, skimmed the bottom. The cold pressed against his chest, reached for his heart with strong grasping fingers, numbed his body to everything but the power the river held within itself even now, as it prepared to rest, dark and silent under winter ice.
Chapter Thirty-one
K’OS STOPPED, TOOK THE pack from her back and set it on a raised tussock. The sun was up over the horizon, and it was a relief to be walking in light. She slipped down her pants, lifted her parka and spread her legs to urinate. The dog raised his leg against a tussock, and K’os laughed.
He looked up at her, and she gasped, bent closer. She grabbed his muzzle, lifted his head. The dog had dark brown eyes, and the fur circling his mouth was sprinkled with gray. He growled at her, and she cuffed him. He drew his teeth back, and she lifted Fox Barking’s spear. He cowered, his back legs trembling, tail tucked. K’os ground her teeth and screamed out her anger, slammed the butt end of the spear into the earth.
Then suddenly she tilted back her head and laughed. Why not appreciate Chakliux’s trick? After all, who had taught him devious ways?
She squatted on her heels, studied the dog, thinking. She was strong enough to carry the dog’s packs as well as her own, but was she willing to give up the protection a dog offered?
Against what? she asked herself. If he had been the young golden-eye, that was one thing, but this animal? A good dog would have leaped to attack when she threatened him with a spear.
How far could she walk until he would no longer find his way back to the camp? Perhaps another half day. It was at least a three-day walk yet to the Four Rivers Village. If the animal could help her carry part of the load even a short way, she would take advantage of that.
She dug through her river otter medicine skin and found the packet she had bound with red-dyed sinew tied in four double knots. She pulled out a raven’s feather she had been saving and broke off several strands of her hair, then twisted them around the center of the feather.
“Look, what do I see?” she said aloud, holding the feather across her eyes, “Darkness, even in sunlight.” The dog whined at her words.
THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP
The dog came to them three days later. Squirrel brought him into camp. He was limping, his paws filled with xos cogh thorns. An amulet was bound around his neck: a raven’s feather tied with long strands of dark hair.
Chakliux burned the amulet outside camp, then he buried the ashes. Even K’os’s power was less than fire, less than earth. He pulled the spines from the dog’s paws and rubbed plantain mixed with caribou fat into the wounds. Throughout that day, the dog drank much water, ate grasses, vomited bile.
After the dog defecated a loose, bloody stool, Twisted Stalk fed him a tea of yellow dock and washed his feet in water filled with shredded willow bark, but the animal only grew weaker. Chakliux took him outside camp, sat with him, lifted prayers, sang chants, something he had never done for a dog. When the animal finally died, Chakliux burned the body as he had burned the amulet, then buried the ashes deep in the earth.
He prayed and fasted a day and a night before returning to camp, then washed himself in the river. But though he did all these things, fear pressed into his heart. He answered questions in rudeness and could not stay away from the brush fence, as though he was waiting for the Near Rivers to attack. When his hands were busy packing meat and repairing weapons, his eyes were on the people, watching them, wondering if the dog had brought some illness as a part of K’os’s revenge.
THE NEAR RIVER CAMP
For three days after the Near River men returned to their caribou camp, Anaay sent hunters out to search for game. He ordered the women to begin packing for the journey back to the winter village, then went into his tent, told Dii to keep the people away.
She brought him water and stew made with the delicate head meat of the few caribou they had managed to salvage from the hunt. He ate, but when she turned her eyes toward his bed, offering the comfort of her body, he refused her.
She scolded herself for her relief and tried to keep her thoughts away from those Cousin women who had left them. Awl and her husband had shamed the whole camp when they decided to stay with the Cousin River People. Most of the other women had also stayed, and their husbands had returned without them. With fewer Cousin in the camp, the Near River women were more blatant with their insults.
That night, sleeping alone in the tent she had once shared with K’os, Dii again dreamed of caribou. She woke in panic, sure they were about to trample their lean-tos. She crawled from the tent, lifted her eyes to the moon. It was no longer full, but gave light enough for her to pick out each tent and hearth. She stood and realized that the ground was not shaking. There was silence, save for the occasional call of a night animal.
Then she knew that the shaking had again been in her bones and that the caribou were east of the camp, a day’s walk.
“You are foolish,” she whispered. “Caribou do not sing to women.”
But still she could hear them above the silence of the night. The clicking of their legs was loud in her ears, the soft thunder of their hooves, the grunts of the bulls, soon to be in rut. When she shut her eyes, she could see them. For a long time under the moon, she knelt at the center of the camp and watched caribou.
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
Red Leaf saw the woman coming into camp, and at first thought she was a hunter, so boldly did she walk, head up, with a fine spear in one hand, a large pack on her back. She was alone. What woman walked alone any distance? And she was tall, taller than most women. But when she drew close, Red Leaf could not mistake the face.
It was K’os, the Cousin River woman. Red Leaf had pitied her when she lost her husband in a fire during their visit to the Near River winter village. But they had made a poor choice in staying with the old woman Song. Elders could be careless with fires, and Song had kept a Sea Hunter lamp burning in her lodge. What foolishness!
So what was K’os doing here? She was one of those taken captive to the Near River Village. Hadn’t Aqamdax told her that? Then surely K’os
would have heard what Red Leaf had done. Red Leaf turned away before the woman saw her face. Her chest felt as though someone were standing on it, and she could not breathe.
Now what choice did she have? Cen and the hunters would probably be gone until the next full moon. Perhaps beyond that. She would have to leave the village before then, but at least she would have time to pack food and warm clothing.
For a moment she saw her son Cries-loud’s face, his tears when she left the Cousin River Village. Her throat tightened. Two sons lost to her, and now a second husband.
Then she heard K’os call, a greeting strangers used with one another, something more appropriate from man to man.
Red Leaf did not turn. Instead she quickened her steps, walked toward Cen’s lodge. Though the snow that had almost cost her life had long ago melted, the ground was frozen hard under her feet, so that each of her steps jarred her bones.
Then a hand was on her shoulder, and she heard K’os say, “You did not hear my greeting?”
Red Leaf stopped but did not turn, kept her head down.
“Are the men hunting?” K’os asked.
“Yes, they hunt,” Red Leaf said quietly.
K’os rudely tilted her head down to try to look into Red Leaf’s face, and Red Leaf hoped the tunnel of her parka hood made shadows enough to distort her features.
“Is there an elder I might speak to? Someone who would be willing to give me shelter?” K’os asked. “Though the people in this village do not know me, they knew a brother of mine who lived here long ago. He and his wife are both dead now, I was told, but he was a fine hunter. Someone will remember him.”
Red Leaf pointed toward a lodge at the center of the village, then, with head still down, walked around K’os. She did not let herself breathe until she crawled into the entrance tunnel of Cen’s lodge.
THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP
Aqamdax watched Chakliux pace, and it seemed as though his nervousness seeped into her hands, making her fingers clumsy. She and Star were working together, cutting long strips of lacing from a caribou hide.