by Sue Harrison
The excitement of the successful hunt had passed, and the men were bored, a few going out to look for moose or caribou, usually coming back with nothing more than a few white-fronted geese.
Women were tired; even the boys who had come on the hunt were growing whiny. Their small squabbles escalated into arguments between mothers, and sometimes even the uncles or fathers became involved. The people needed to know when they would move back to the winter village. Already two families had left, hauling away their shares of the meat and hides.
Aqamdax and Star finished their cutting, and Star began to pester Bird Caller and Owl Catcher, who were scraping a caribou hide. Aqamdax saw Chakliux slip outside through the brush fence. Night Man was sitting with Man Laughing, their heads bent over a game of throwing sticks. Night Man was losing; Aqamdax could tell by the scowl on his face. She left the pile of lacing and walked to the edge of the camp, trying to keep tents and people between herself and her husband. Then she wondered why she bothered. She did not care what he thought, and it was apparent he had no concern for her, gambling away their food and hides to Man Laughing.
She slipped through the opening in the brush fence, told herself that she had not come to talk to Chakliux, only to escape the noise and people of the camp.
She did not see Chakliux, was disgusted with herself at her disappointment, but a movement at the edge of the river drew her eyes. She walked that way, her breath catching at each step until she was sure it was him, not wolf or bear. He crouched in a growth of willow, their long thin leaves yellowed by the frost and too brittle now to gather and store in oil for winter food. She slipped through the trees, squatted beside him as she had done so often when they both lived in the Near River Village, when they had shared stories and were learning one another’s languages.
He was sitting on a rock, slightly higher than she was, and the cool, pale sun of autumn lit his face so it was nearly without shadow. The wind blew his hair back from his forehead, pulled strands from the dark braids.
She smiled, but he did not return that smile. “We will leave soon for the winter village?” she asked him.
He did not answer, and she felt the familiar unrest that had plagued her when she was a girl, as though her muscles fought against her skin. She wanted him to talk to her, to tell her why he had not even looked at her these past few days. Now that the caribou hunt was over, now that they would soon return to winter camp, did he regret his promise to take her as wife? Did he think there would be too many problems with Night Man and Star? Had he said he wanted her as wife only to help her through her wild grief at the death of her son?
The emptiness of that grief still lived with her, woke her in the night with dreams of Angax floating away across the Grandfather Lake. She closed her eyes against the burn of tears, pushed back her parka hood, and allowed herself to think only of the warmth of the sun. Soon enough that warmth would be gone. Already the ground under her feet was cold, warning that winter was close, but why think so far ahead? No one, not even the strongest hunter, could be sure of living through any winter.
She relaxed, content to be beside Chakliux, and when sleep had almost claimed her, she heard his voice, soft and deep, whisper, “What do I see? The winter grows old and in anger sends the wind.”
She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him.
“The winter is not yet here,” she said.
He smiled at her, but it was a sad smile. “It’s not a riddle about winter,” he told her. “It’s about my mother.”
“What does it mean?” Aqamdax asked.
“It means that when she cannot control what is happening to her, she becomes angry and tries to bring destruction to anyone near.”
“You think she has stayed close, then, or perhaps walked back to our winter village?”
Chakliux shook his head. “If she was close, she would have done more than send the dog back to us. He had walked a long way. Of course, he was old and might have gotten lost.”
“But the Cousin People hunt here every year, do they not?” Aqamdax asked. “The dog had been here before.”
“Yes.”
“You think, then, that she cursed us?”
“The amulet was some kind of curse.”
“But Sok told us that you burned it and buried the ashes. How could she be stronger than that? If she has so much power, why did she stay slave to Fox Barking? If she has so much power, why did she leave when you told her to leave? Why did she take the old dog and not the golden-eye?”
Chakliux smiled again, and this time the smile lighted his eyes. He reached over to smooth back Aqamdax’s hair. “Why do I worry about her when I will soon have the wife I have wanted for so long?” he said.
At his words, Aqamdax had to blink back tears. Then once more they sat in silence, but Aqamdax’s thoughts were no longer dark visions of sorrow and death.
Chapter Thirty-two
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
THE OLD MAN CALLED himself Tree Climber, a foolish name for someone who scarcely had the strength to sit upright. His eyes were rheumy and looked sore. That was a good thing, K’os thought; a healer could do something about that. She felt the resentment of the old man’s wife. The woman had offered K’os nothing, not even water, until her husband scolded her, made an insult that included her brother and dogs.
K’os had pulled off both inner and outer parkas as soon as she came into the lodge. She laid them over her lap, tucked her hands under their warm fur. She saw the woman—Sand Fly, her husband called her—smile at her gnarled hands, and K’os hated her for that. But Tree Climber’s eyes had stayed on the round, dark-nippled mounds that were K’os’s breasts, peaking over the furred parkas.
Neither Tree Climber nor Sand Fly asked the questions that most would have asked: Why did she travel alone? Where was her husband? Her village?
People had to be careful if a woman alone came to their lodge. What if she was an outcast, driven from a village for doing some terrible thing? But then, too, she might be an animal-woman, sometimes human, sometimes not. Who would choose to insult someone like that? Who would refuse to give her food or water, a safe place to stay?
It had been a long time since K’os had enjoyed the warmth of a winter lodge, a long time since she had eaten a bowl of hot food. Tree Climber, old as he was, deserved some politeness, even if his wife was rude. So, though he did not ask questions, K’os said, “You heard of the fighting between the Cousin and Near River Villages?”
“The trader Cen lives here now,” Tree Climber said. “He told us.”
In her surprise, K’os almost forgot what she had been going to say. Cen! She had thought he was dead. Then he had not been killed in the fighting. Coward! He must have deserted the Cousin River warriors when he saw they had no chance for victory against the Near Rivers.
“You know Cen?” the old man asked, and leaned forward, looking into her face through the smoke of the hearth fire that burned between them.
K’os almost told him she did not, but then realized she had to tell the truth. If Cen was in the village, then he would certainly tell the people that he knew her. “Yes, I know him, but I am surprised to know he lives here. I had been told he was dead.”
“He’s lived here through the summer,” the old man said, “though he was away some, trading. Now he is hunting caribou with other men from our village. They have been gone nearly a moon.”
“No,” his wife said, correcting him. “Only since the full moon.” Then she asked K’os, “Are you Near River or Cousin?”
“Cousin, taken as slave to the Near River,” K’os told her, and saw the glee in the old woman’s eyes.
“They did not treat me well, as you can see,” K’os said, raising her hands.
The old woman covered her mouth as though she had not already noticed K’os’s hands, had not rejoiced in their deformity. “They do not hurt as much as you might think,” K’os said. “I can sew and do all things a woman must do.” She kept her voice sweet, did no
t allow anger to leak into her words, but she slid her eyes toward the old man, raised her brows.
“So why are you here alone?” Sand Fly asked, leaning forward, speaking loudly, as though to draw K’os’s eyes from her husband.
“The Near River men decided they would hunt the Caribou River this fall.”
“What about the Cousin River People?” Tree Climber asked. “That is where they hunt, nae?”
K’os lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “What could they do? Most of their hunters are dead. They took what caribou they could and returned to their winter village. But one night, while the Near Rivers were still at their caribou camp, I escaped. I do not want to be a slave. I will make some man a good wife. That is why I’m in this village.”
“To find a husband?” the old woman said, and began to laugh. “What woman finds her own husband?”
K’os ignored her laughter and looked into the old man’s face. “Your eyes bother you?” she asked.
He looked down, and K’os knew he was embarrassed.
“I am a healer,” she said softly. “Allow me to stay in this lodge until your hunters return. I will do what I can for you. Besides…” She got up and pulled her heavy packs from the entrance tunnel, where she had left them. She untied the largest, took out several sticks of caribou meat. “I did not leave the Near River hunters without helping myself to their drying racks.”
Tree Climber arched his eyebrows at his wife, but she turned her back to him. He looked at K’os, at the meat in her hands. “You are welcome in my wife’s lodge,” he told her.
Red Leaf pulled a caribou belly from the back of the cache. It was full of birds, bank swallows packed whole in oil. They would be good to take with her. Cen had much fish in his cache, and some frozen moose meat, several loops of intestines filled with fat and dried berries. She would take those and the pack she had stolen the first time she raided his cache.
Cen would be angry, but how could she live on dried fish all winter? They did not have enough fat to keep her warm in the cold. Her belly would be full, but her arms and legs would shrivel, her teeth grow loose in her head. Perhaps, though, she could make a camp beside a lake that had blackfish. Enough blackfish would keep anyone alive, good as they were, so full of oil that they could be burned for fuel as well as eaten. But she could not be sure of finding them.
Besides, with his share from the caribou hunt, Cen should have more than enough fat to get him through the winter, even some left to trade in the spring.
It would have been so much better if she could have spent the winter here. Why had K’os chosen this village?
When Red Leaf had lived in the Cousin River Village waiting for her daughter’s birth, she had heard Aqamdax mention K’os now and again. Aqamdax had nothing good to say about the woman. Of course, she had been K’os’s slave. What slave loves her master?
Red Leaf could not help but admire K’os’s strength. When Ground Beater, K’os’s husband, had died in the fire that burned Song’s lodge, she had made no accusations, even gave gifts to people in the village for helping her with the mourning.
Red Leaf carried her supplies to the entrance tunnel, where they would remain cold. Cen had left one of his dogs, an old bitch who would probably be eaten during the winter. Red Leaf would take her to carry some of the packs. The most important thing would be to leave the village before K’os saw her and realized who she was. Surely she would tell Cen what Red Leaf had done. Though Cen might allow her to leave with some of his food and his old and worthless dog, without doubt he would come after her if he knew she was the one who had killed Daes.
THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP
Aqamdax ran her fingers lightly over Chakliux’s hands. The touch startled him out of his thoughts, out of the darkness that had seemed to swallow him since K’os had left their camp.
“I must go back,” she said, leaning close to whisper the words.
“No,” he answered, then realized the foolishness of his protest. She belonged to another man, and this was a hunting camp. There was work enough here for three villages of women. But in this quiet place beside the river, hidden by the willow, the stillness seemed to hold him, and he wanted Aqamdax to stay.
“I must,” she said, and pushed herself to her knees. He reached for her, intended to hold her only for a moment, to whisper again his promise that he would take her as his wife.
Her parka hood was thrust back, and her hair lay in a thick shining river over one shoulder. He cupped the back of her head, and she leaned forward to press her face against his neck.
“When I have you as wife…” he said, and teased her ear with his tongue.
Then her hands were under his parka, cold against his skin. He pushed up her parka, raised his hands to the soft mounds that were her breasts. They held each other, hands stroking, for a long time, then Chakliux took off his parka, laid it on the ground. Aqamdax lay back against the fur, did not protest when he pulled her parka off over her head and filled his eyes with the sight of her. He slipped off his leggings and lay over her, the heat of her body searing his belly, the wind chilling his back.
We should not do this, he thought. If the Dzuuggi could not control his passion, how could he expect to teach others? But with Aqamdax warm under his hands, whispering her love…
You are hunter, he told himself, then heard the same words from another voice, perhaps that of his father Ground Beater or of Star’s father, Cloud Finder. What animal honors a man who takes another’s wife?
Chakliux pressed his hands against the ground, pushed himself away from her. There would be another place for this. A time when they would not have to hide from others.
He looked down at Aqamdax, saw that she was crying. “Without you, I would have died,” she said. “I would have gone on to be with my son.”
Chakliux again gathered her into his arms. How could he leave her? What was one more curse against his hunting? How could taking this woman be any worse than having K’os as mother?
He took her gently, as if he was the first man she had known, and when they moved together in the rhythm of their need, he whispered to her in her own language, and she spoke in the River tongue, their words binding them with promises and hope.
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
That night in Sand Fly’s lodge, K’os lay awake staring into the darkness. When she heard Sand Fly’s first snores, she considered going to Tree Climber’s bed. But he was so old, perhaps he could no longer enjoy a woman. Then each time he looked at her, she would be a reminder of what he had lost. Better to stay where she was, to make her eyes large when he spoke, to give sly smiles when his wife was not looking. Those things would be safer.
Sand Fly had taken her to the women’s place, showed her the women’s moon blood lodge and pointed out their cache. She had named the important people of the village. There was a shaman, and a chief hunter, First Spear, who had many wives. There was an old woman who considered herself a healer but was not, Sand Fly confided.
“Before I was a slave, I was a healer,” K’os reminded the woman, and again asked permission to make medicine for Tree Climber.
Sand Fly blinked round stupid eyes at her, as though considering the request, then went on naming the owners of each lodge. K’os hid her disgust, but to her surprise, when they returned to Sand Fly’s lodge, the old woman told her husband that K’os would make medicine for him.
The remainder of that day, K’os had made eye rinses and teas, then salves for Sand Fly’s joints and a tonic for her belly. They ate a good meal of fish stew, and K’os settled them into their beds as though they were children.
Even after Tree Climber added his snores to his wife’s, K’os could not sleep. Her legs ached. The days of walking had been difficult. Twice it had snowed and melted, making the mosses and grass slippery. Soon snow would come and stay. Sand Fly said the Four Rivers Village had had a storm nearly a moon earlier, but that snow, too, after several days had melted. It was a strange year. The winter might be severe, all
the more reason for her to live in this village until she decided how best to take revenge on a son who had no pity on his mother.
By now, he probably thought she was food for wolves, that her bones were being scattered by foxes and ravens. He would learn differently.
Chakliux and Sok had been blessed with caribou, those two. Fox Barking might have driven them from the Near River Village, but he could not destroy their abilities to lead.
How many men could take a group as decimated as the Cousin River People and, in only a few moons, give them the strength and confidence they needed to take all those caribou? They were still without enough hunters. A poor caribou hunt next year or the year after would cost them their lives. But what village—even the strongest—did not live from winter to winter, praying for hunting luck?
And how many men could take a strong village like the Near Rivers and lead it to destruction as Fox Barking had?
Her thoughts drifted to Sok. She would like to have that one in her bed. He was large and strong, his body thick with muscle. There was much similarity in face between Sok and Chakliux. They both had gull wing brows, large noses, high cheekbones. They were handsome men, and though Chakliux was smaller, the lithe lines of his body were not unpleasant, and his arms were nearly as thick as Sok’s. Of course, he had the otter foot. She smiled, remembering that Snow-in-her-hair had refused to accept him as husband because of that foot. Foolish woman!
K’os did not know Sok well, but the fact that he would take Snow-in-her-hair as wife did not say much for his wisdom. She was a beautiful woman, but small and full of complaints. Even one day in the Cousin hunting camp had been enough to tell K’os that. What if Snow’s son grew up to be like her?
K’os had seen a boy in that camp who looked much like Sok and had assumed he was the son of Sok’s other wife. What was her name?
Red Leaf, yes. K’os had heard stories in the Near River Village. Red Leaf had killed the old man named Tsaani, Chakliux’s grandfather. She had also killed the Sea Hunter woman who was Aqamdax’s mother.