by Sue Harrison
He lowered his bowl and licked his fingers clean. “I need to know where it grows, because Yaa has gone looking for the plant and has not returned.”
“The little girl, Yaa?” Snow-in-her-hair asked. “Aqamdax’s sister?”
“Yes.”
“Why do you sit here and eat? Go look for her.”
Surprised at his wife’s outburst, he picked up the packet of dried marigold, but Snow-in-her-hair snatched it out of his hand.
“I will take this to Aqamdax. You look for Yaa.”
She took their son, who was asleep in his cradleboard, and left the tent. Sok set down his bowl, wiped his hands on his leggings. He chose a short lance and went out. He walked west along the river, away from the camp, until the brush was so heavy that he was forced to turn back.
“Foolish girl,” he said, looking up as though he spoke to the stars. They were so thick that the center of the sky looked white. The frost of his breathing rose to meet their light, and Sok wished he could be warm in his bed. He would find the girl quickly. How far could she walk? Then he would return to the tent, roll himself warm into his sleeping furs and dream of the bull moose, his wide antlers still stained dark from the blood of their growing.
Chapter Thirty-eight
THE DOG, HIS DENSE fur soaked and glazed with ice, packs still strapped to his back, jumped so quickly against Sok’s chest that Sok almost had his lance into him before he realized it was Biter.
Sok slapped the butt end of his spear along the dog’s ribs in reprimand, but Biter jumped up again, then lifted his head and howled. The noise raised the hair on Sok’s arms, and he shivered, held in the harsh words that had risen to his mouth.
Biter started to run, looked back at Sok, and barked until Sok followed him. The dog stopped near a shallow pool at the side of the river. A cold wind dipped down into the water, and he saw Snow-in-her-hair and Ghaden pulling on a sodden heap of fur. It was Yaa.
Sok slid down to the pool and hefted the girl to one shoulder, grabbed Snow-in-her-hair’s arm and helped her up the bank. Snow-in-her-hair fell to her knees, began retching. Sok waited beside her, stroking the back of her parka.
Finally Snow raised her head. “Our son is with Twisted Stalk. I decided to look for you…” She gagged and waved Sok toward camp.
“I will be back for you,” he said, and was surprised to see Biter sit down beside Snow and Ghaden, as though to protect them.
Aqamdax was walking toward Chakliux’s tent when the first mourning cries began. She broke into a run, her hand over the top of the bowl that held the medicine she had made from Snow-in-her-hair’s dried marigold. But when she arrived at the lean-to, she saw that Chakliux was still sitting beside his wife, and though Star’s eyes were closed, her breathing seemed more regular.
“Who?” Aqamdax asked.
“It comes from the river side of the camp,” Chakliux said, then took the medicine from Aqamdax’s hands. He lifted Star’s head to his lap and forced open her lips, poured the liquid from the bowl into her mouth. She swallowed, once, twice, but the rest spilled down her chin and into the folds of her parka. “You have more?” he asked.
“A little. Snow-in-her-hair had some dried marigold her mother had given her. She said she would help look for Yaa….” Aqamdax’s heart quickened. “Has she returned?”
Chakliux shook his head, then lay Star back against the bedding furs and crawled outside. “Stay here,” he told Aqamdax.
Aqamdax knelt beside Star, raised a quiet chant, though it was a First Men chant and probably would not help a River woman. What hope did they have without a healer? They needed to be back in the winter camp, with Ligige’. She knew more of plant medicines than Aqamdax or Twisted Stalk.
Aqamdax sang until she heard Chakliux’s voice scolding the women for their mourning cries. She went out to meet them, saw Sok with Yaa in his arms. Then she hurried ahead of him to make space in the lean-to so he could lay the girl beside Star.
Aqamdax covered her, tried to rub warmth into her hands. Yaa was not breathing, but Aqamdax felt a weak pulse at her wrists.
“I cannot stay,” Sok said. “My wife was the one who found her. I need to get her back to our lean-to. She’s wet….”
He left, and others crowded in. Then Aqamdax heard Night Man’s voice.
“Why are you here? You should be at the moon blood lodge.” He began a string of accusations, but Aqamdax ignored him. What was more important? Night Man’s anger or Yaa’s life?
Then her thoughts were only on Yaa, and she tried to sift through the suggestions of those around her. If the heart was beating, did that mean there was a chance for the girl to live? Surely her spirit had not yet left her body.
There was something Aqamdax had heard, a story Qung had told her about a young man caught in the cords of his harpoon when he was taking a whale. They had somehow brought his breath back to him. What had they done?
She flipped Yaa over to her side and pounded on her back. Once when Ghaden had choked on meat, the pounding had helped.
“She has swallowed water?” Night Man asked, as though he had only just noticed the girl. The question made Aqamdax angry. He thought so little of others, this man she had once loved as husband.
He squatted beside her. “My brother…” He glanced up at Chakliux, pressed his teeth into a grimace. “My oldest brother once fell into the river from a raft. My father…”
He grasped Yaa’s jaw with his right hand, pressed until her mouth opened. He lifted his chin toward Aqamdax. “Put a finger down Yaa’s throat,” he told her.
Aqamdax hesitated.
“Do it.”
She stuck her finger down Yaa’s throat.
“Farther.”
Suddenly Yaa bucked under her hand, gagged. Aqamdax pulled her hand out, and Yaa began to vomit water. Aqamdax picked her up, turned her facedown and held her as the water poured from her throat.
Ghaden heard what the women said, though he wanted to cover his ears to their foolishness, to the whispers that his sister was dead. He buried his face in Biter’s fur and hid his tears. If the mourning cries would go away, if the women would stop their sad talk, then perhaps all things would be as they had been. Ghaden would wake in the morning to find Yaa beside him, scolding him for something he had done or not done, but all the while smiling at him with her eyes.
How could she be dead? She was young. Now all he had for a mother was Star. The women said Yaa had traded her spirit for Star’s. He had heard them say that. But why would she do that? Yaa knew that Star was not a good mother. But maybe it was because of the baby. If Star died, the baby would die, too. That was what happened to babies still inside their mothers.
He cried until his eyes seemed to hold no more tears, and when Aqamdax came to him, he clung to her so fiercely that when she said “Yaa wants to see you,” the words were nonsense in his head.
Did Aqamdax mean he was to go with Yaa to the spirit world? He was not sure he wanted to do that. The old knife wound in his back began to ache, as though to remind him that he had been close to death once before.
“She is dead?” he finally whispered.
“No, who told you that? She doesn’t feel well enough to sleep with you and Biter tonight, but she is not dead.”
Aqamdax brought him to Chakliux’s lean-to. Yaa was lying there beside Star, still and quiet, her face full of shadows in the flickering light of the fire. He knelt beside her, stroked her face. She did not move, and for a moment Ghaden thought Yaa had died in that short time it had taken Aqamdax to come and get him, but then Biter pushed his way to her side, licked her face, and Yaa turned her head away as she always did.
Ghaden laughed. “Why did you fall in the river, Yaa? Why did you do that?” Ghaden asked.
Yaa opened her eyes, and her eyelids drooped like they did when she was tired. She opened her mouth, but closed it again without saying anything, then she surprised Ghaden by breaking into laughter. She laughed until she choked, then gagged, and Aqamdax had to help
her sit up.
Ghaden was afraid he would be in trouble, but Yaa only said, “I had to get Star the plant.” She panted after saying just those few words.
“Did you get it?” Ghaden asked, then wished he had not.
But Aqamdax smiled and said, “She had it in her hand when Sok brought her back to camp.”
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
In the morning, K’os took a turn at the boiling bags. The women were more busy than usual, scraping the new caribou hides, cutting meat, and preparing for the feast they would have that night. But K’os did only what she wanted to do, nothing as difficult as scraping hides. There would be enough of that during the winter.
When Red Leaf left Cen’s lodge, she carried a throwing stick, stringer and basket, so K’os was sure she would be checking her traps, perhaps gathering crampbark berries, always sweeter after the snow came.
K’os walked quickly through the village, as though she had something important to do, and she carried a cilt’ogho of dried blueberries, a fishskin basket of caribou meat. She stopped at the hearths, added berries to each of the three boiling bags that hung near the fires. As she worked, she watched the people, memorized the new faces, those of the hunters who had just returned and the wives, the older children who had been with them.
Several women spoke to her, asked when she had come to the village. She told them the same story she had given Sand Fly, that she had been a slave. That she had escaped. She smiled sweetly and offered the women some of the berries in her cilt’ogho. Finally, when their attention was distracted by a child who brought them a first kill—a boy with a large camp jay, its breast pierced by a sharpened wood spear—then K’os slipped away. Let them rejoice over such a foolish thing without her.
She walked with quick strides to Cen’s lodge, slipped into the entrance tunnel, did not scratch or call to announce her presence. She pulled aside the inner doorflap, curled her lips in derision when she saw Cen sitting cross-legged, Red Leaf’s daughter in his hands. He was making soft noises into her face, and the baby was laughing with that surprising deep laughter that denotes a strong child.
“Gheli trusts you with her daughter?” K’os said, and saw the surprise on Cen’s face. He was wearing a shirt, and K’os recognized Red Leaf’s needlework on the back, a design of dark and light points that reminded K’os of grass in wind.
“Why are you here?” Cen asked her.
He carried the baby to her cradleboard and laced her in.
K’os slipped off her parka. She wore nothing under it save leggings and short woven grass aprons front and back. Aqamdax had made her the aprons, had said they were like those Sea Hunter women wore in their lodges.
“Your wife made you the shirt,” K’os said, and squatted on her haunches, her knees wide apart, an apron hanging down between her legs.
She heard the soft intake of Cen’s breath, saw that his eyes were on her crotch. “You have lived too long with the River People, Trader,” she said to him. “Have you forgotten how Sea Hunter women dress? I had a Sea Hunter slave once. She made me this apron.” K’os lifted the front flap. “She wove it from grass. Perhaps you should get some of these to trade.”
She dropped the apron flap into place and walked over to Cen, took his hands in hers and raised them to her breasts.
He jerked away. “Leave this lodge, K’os,” he said, his voice hard. “I have a wife. I do not need you.”
She raised a hand to his face, scraped a fingernail along his jaw. “I have spoken to your wife. She told me she would welcome a sister. Ask her yourself. She says it’s lonely being wife to a trader, a man who also hunts. Consider the joy of having two wives. One who stays here in the lodge to keep your food cache safe and raise your children, another who travels with you to warm your bed when you sleep in a trader’s tent.”
“A wife who will also warm other men’s beds when she thinks I do not notice,” Cen said. “A wife who will plot against me. You think I need a wife like that? Leave, K’os. You are not welcome here.”
He turned his back on her, and K’os made signs for curses against him and against Red Leaf’s daughter. She waited to see if he would say anything else, but he did not. And finally, when, with his back still turned, he slid a knife from a sheath at his waist, held it up so she could see the sharp edge of the long chert blade, she slipped on her parka and went back to Sand Fly’s lodge.
She squatted on her haunches just outside the entrance tunnel and thought of all the young men in the village. They would not be difficult to get into her bed, but they did not have a son in the Cousin River Village like Cen did. They would have no reason to visit the Cousin People, especially so soon after the Cousins’s defeat. Why risk bringing the curse of that bad luck to the Four Rivers Village?
Finally, she got up, went again to Red Leaf’s lodge, crawled into the tunnel and pulled aside the doorflap. Cen looked up, scowled when he saw her.
“You thought I was Gheli?” she asked, her voice curling around the words, twisting them from sweetness into spite. “You think she is the woman you need? She will give you sons? But what about that son you already have? Did you know that Chakliux has him now?”
“Why would Chakliux have the boy?”
“You know the elders gave Ghaden to Star,” she said. “Chakliux took her as wife. You know Star well enough. Why do you think Chakliux wanted her? Perhaps he is a fool, or perhaps Chakliux, with his otter foot, wants the assurance of a son who will care for him in his old age.”
K’os felt a sudden gust of cold air, turned and saw that Red Leaf was peering into the entrance tunnel. The woman’s eyes were round with fear. She held up a handful of raspberry branches. “For tea,” she said, her voice weak. “And I have hares from my traps.”
“I was telling your husband something you should know,” K’os said. “About his son, a boy named Ghaden.”
“I have told Gheli about Ghaden,” Cen said.
“Has he told you that someone in the Near River Village, that place where I was slave, killed the boy’s mother and wounded Ghaden?”
“Yes,” said Red Leaf. Her voice was even and controlled, but her hands trembled.
“But there is something I am sure neither of you know,” K’os said. “Did you know, Gheli, that the elders in the village thought Cen was the one who killed Ghaden’s mother?”
“I did not know,” Red Leaf said slowly, but kept her head down, her eyes away from Cen.
“Leave us, K’os,” Cen said. He turned as though K’os had already gone and said to Red Leaf, “I did not kill Ghaden’s mother.”
“I know,” Red Leaf said.
She could not keep her eyes from the mutilated finger on Cen’s left hand. She knew the story of that finger, given as sacrifice to save Ghaden’s life when the boy lay dying of wounds from Red Leaf’s knife. The guilt of what she had done pressed down over Red Leaf’s head until she thought her neck would snap under its weight. The pattern of circles that danced from the walls of Cen’s lodge no longer looked like clouds, but seemed to be eyes, watching, dark in accusation.
Red Leaf opened her mouth to confess what she had done, but before she could speak, K’os said, “If you are so concerned, Cen, you should have returned to the Cousin River Village to claim Ghaden after the fighting. Why did you leave him with a people who had been defeated?”
Cen turned on her, anger coloring his face. “Why do you care?”
“I do not,” K’os said sweetly, “though it might bother your wife to think you have less concern for your son than you would for one of your dogs.”
Her husband’s pain pulled Red Leaf from her guilt. “Enough, K’os,” she said. “You should leave.”
K’os breathed out a laugh. “Ah, but Gheli, I have not told you what you both will be glad to know. The Near Rivers found the one who killed the Sea Hunter woman. It was Sok’s wife. Her name is Red Leaf.
“Do you remember Sok?” K’os asked Cen.
Cen frowned. “I remember him, but not hi
s wife.”
“A pity,” K’os said.
“Why did she kill them? Does anyone know?” Cen asked, and K’os laughed inwardly at the change in the man. Had he forgotten how eager he was to have her leave?
“She killed the old man because he was chief hunter and she wanted Sok to be given that honor. She killed your son’s mother and tried to kill your son only because they happened to see her.”
“They were returning from…
Cen’s words drifted into silence, and K’os said, “From your trader’s lodge.”
“What did they do to the woman?” he asked, his voice suddenly hoarse.
K’os looked hard at Red Leaf. The woman seemed frail, as though she had suddenly grown old. “They killed her,” K’os said. “With a knife. The same way she killed Ghaden’s mother. They say Sok himself did it.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE
THE SOUND CAME SO gradually that at first Dii did not know what it was, but when the smell of salt came to her on the wind, then she realized it was the sea.
They topped a rise, and the land fell beneath them into a wide, flat expanse of wet mud, marked at the tide line by ridges of ice.
They were not a people of the sea. They understood rivers, wild at times and dangerous, but still confined by the land. The sea was too immense. Who among them knew the spirits that controlled it or the chants needed for protection? What would be considered an insult? How should a people act to show respect?
The women crowded close behind their men, clung to their children.
Dii shuddered at the sight of water spreading to the far horizon. Some storytellers said it curled up the curve of the sky in quest of the sun, to capture the warmth of its fire. But others said no. Why would the sea want to leave its bed? How would the fish live, the seals and whales?
Dii did not notice when the people’s awe first gave way to grumbling, but finally, as she took in the vast tide flats, she understood that her husband’s dreams had again been wrong. They had come to the end of the land, and there were still no caribou.