The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  “Enough!” he finally bellowed, startling Daughter into tears. “We have longed for fresh water, begged for it until our mouths were cracked and parched, and now you give us so much that our boat sinks? What kind of gift is that?”

  Thunder roared from the clouds, and Water Gourd cowered, afraid. How foolish of him to question the sky! Surely the spirits of pain spoke through him, for he was a man who knew the ways of respect.

  The thunder came again, and again, then a crack of sound and lightening, the brightness so quick that Water Gourd would not allow himself to believe what his eyes had seen—a mountain in the distance.

  “I dream,” he said, and made himself small under the dark fur of the otter pelt.

  Chapter Eight

  HIS ARM HAD CRACKED and was leaking pus. Water Gourd kept it now almost always in the sea, and once in the middle of a dream considered cutting it off, letting it float away. Perhaps then it would carry off the evil spirits of illness, but the thought never became more than that, an idea that he did not have the strength to act upon. If Daughter had been older, he might have asked her to do it, to cut the arm off and release him from the agony of putrefaction into the cleaner pain of the knife.

  Thoughts of knives and cutting became so great that they pushed away all other dreams, and each time he awoke, Water Gourd was surprised to see the arm still with him, misshapen and discolored, skinned like the carcass of an animal.

  Three days after the ice storm, he could no longer hold down food. The fever gripped his mind, and he grew to hate the sun as it burned through the fog and into his eyes. He dreaded night when the darkness confused him, tormented his thoughts with images of death.

  Daughter’s small face, pinched with concern, floated before him, and sometimes he felt her cool hands against his skin. But other times it seemed as though he had not seen her for days, and he worried that she had fallen into the sea. Did she know enough to stay away from the edges of the boat? Weren’t children always falling—into water, on stony beaches, into hearth fires?

  Then he would see her once again, her presence comfort enough that he would allow himself to sleep.

  Daughter squatted on her haunches in front of the grandfather. She didn’t know much about sickness, only that it frightened her, and she was afraid now. Sometimes the grandfather grew so hot that his skin almost burned her hands when she touched him, and at other times he was so cold that he shook the outrigger with his shivering.

  She pulled a piece of otter flesh from the side of the boat and chewed at it. Most of the slices the grandfather had put there had frozen to the wood during the ice storm, and when the ice finally turned to water, the meat remained, hardened and stuck, as though it had melted into the boat. It tasted bad—sharp, bitter—and sometimes her stomach ached after she ate it.

  They still had fish, gutted and tied to the outrigger poles, but Daughter was too small to reach them. Gulls had begun to swoop down and tear them away, battling with one another over each piece. They made her angry, those birds, stealing her food. What would the grandfather do when he woke up and saw that his fish were gone? Would he think she had been greedy enough to eat them all herself?

  She found a water gourd and took several swallows, then held it up toward the grandfather so he would see it, but he didn’t wake up. She pulled a little at the otter pelt he had wrapped around himself, but though he mumbled something, he did not open his eyes. She set the gourd down in the bottom of the boat and crept onto the grandfather’s lap, pulled a corner of the pelt over herself.

  She had forgotten her mother’s face, but she remembered the smell of her and the good milk that came from her breasts, warm and rich and sweet. Grandfathers didn’t have milk; at least this one didn’t. If he did, he never offered it to her, but he was warm and was good at catching fish.

  She looked down at her left foot, at the red scar on the side where her little toe had once been. It had hurt when he cut it off, but it didn’t hurt now. She had thought it might grow back, but so far it had not. She remembered the fish the grandfather had caught with her toe. Her stomach growled when she thought of that good fish, its fat, oily flesh.

  She was tired, but she tried to keep her eyes open. She didn’t want to be asleep when the grandfather woke up. She needed to tell him to catch more fish. She raised her maimed foot to his face, held it there as long as she could, hoping that if he woke and saw it, he would be reminded of fishing. But finally she was too sleepy to do even that.

  Her eyes closed, and in her dreams her mother came to her, offered her a soft brown nipple, and when Daughter sucked, it tasted like fish.

  The grandfather’s voice woke her. At first Daughter thought that he was crying. He began to struggle as though to free himself from the otter pelt. He thrust his good arm up, then brought it down hard. His elbow caught Daughter on the side of the head. The blow stunned her, and she cried out, rolling herself into a ball and sliding from his lap. It was night, but the moon was full, and Daughter could see well enough to understand that whatever the grandfather struggled against was outside the boat. She backed away from him, put her fingers in her mouth, and watched.

  Something had hold of his arm, the hurt arm, the one he kept in the water. She wanted to see what it was, but she was afraid. What if it was a fish so large that it pulled him right into the sea? What would she do then? She wasn’t strong enough to keep the grandfather in the boat. She began to cry, but finally crept forward and grabbed one of the grandfather’s ankles. If the fish wasn’t too big, maybe her strength would be enough to hold him in.

  She looked at the grandfather’s face, saw to her surprise that his eyes were closed.

  “Open eyes,” she called to him. “Open eyes!”

  His eyes popped open and he stared at her, but still, he seemed as though he were a man asleep.

  “Pull!” she said. “Pull hard.”

  He shook his head, blinked.

  “Pull,” Daughter said again.

  He opened his mouth and roared such a terrible sound that Daughter lost her grip on his ankle and sat down hard in the cold water at the bottom of the boat.

  But as he roared, he pulled his arm from the sea. It came up dripping with long brown strands, which at first Daughter saw as rotted flesh. She scurried to the bow of the boat, sat there on ballast stones that poked hard into the bones of her rump.

  Then suddenly, to her surprise, the grandfather was laughing, laughing as he had when they caught the first fish. She covered her face with her hands, but split her fingers so she could see between them. He was cradling his arm on his lap, unwinding the brown. Eating it! Daughter gagged.

  Then the grandfather sang out, “Kelp! Kelp, Daughter.”

  Slowly Daughter removed her hands from her eyes, looked at what he had on his lap. Yes, she told herself, it was kelp. Kelp grew near beaches. She remembered her mother peeling the stipes and cutting off small pieces for Daughter to eat. She remembered the strong salty taste of it. She pushed herself off the ballast stones, held one hand out toward the grandfather. He gave her a wet, slimy leaf, tough, nearly too tough to eat, but she took a bite, chewed, and swallowed.

  It was not as good as fish, but better than otter. She sat down beside the grandfather, watched as he used his knife to harvest more kelp, then peel the stipes. Looking out over the side of the boat, she saw that kelp surrounded them. The sea was greasy with it. All the way to the edge of the earth where the fog lived, there was kelp.

  The grandfather gave her more, and she ate until her belly was full. Then, as he directed her, she lay the long strands of peeled stalks down the length of the boat, the bulbed ends at the bow.

  When the boat was full, he stopped cutting, and cautiously Daughter lay a hand on his cheek. His face was still hot and his arm looked terrible, but his eyes were clear. He ate more of the kelp, then again lowered his arm into the sea. Daughter didn’t want him to do that. She wanted him to sit upright so she could sleep on his lap. She tugged at him, but he pushed her a
way.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Don’t touch me.”

  Daughter stayed beside him, standing there, and thrust her lip out into a pout. He didn’t tell stories anymore. He didn’t want to hold her. She had wrapped her deerskin blanket around her, but it was wet and cold. The grandfather had the otter pelt. She squatted on her haunches beside him and slowly crept nearer until she was leaning against him and could warm herself with some of the heat that burned in his body.

  She was very still, hardly taking a breath, and the grandfather didn’t push her away or scold. She raised her fingers to her mouth, sucked, humming to herself, a song her mother had sung when Daughter was tired.

  Her eyes followed the long strands of kelp, lying like rope down the length of the boat and up into the bow. Then she studied the sky, hazy and starless, the moon a blur of silver. Even during the day, the sky was seldom clear, almost always full of gray clouds or fog. She wondered where the sun hid in this world of boat and sea, so different from the village where her mother and father lived. She wanted to go back to them. She had tried to tell the grandfather that, but he didn’t seem to understand, though once he had lost his temper with her and shouted, “No paddle. See, no paddle!”

  Then, in her mind, she had seen the fishermen of her village taking their boats out into the sea, backs and arms straining, paddles dipping and rising. For the first time, she realized that paddles were what moved boats through water. With some surprise, she had looked around their boat, even stood on her toes to study the outrigger log, and saw that it was true what the grandfather had told her. They didn’t have a paddle.

  So the boat was taking them wherever it wanted to go, and who knew where that was? She wished it would turn around and take them back to the village, to her mother and her father, to the sun, which almost always shone there. She had asked the boat to do that. Many times she had asked it, but the boat stayed in the fog, in the cold, far from land. It was a boat that loved the sea, a selfish boat that gave no thought to Daughter or the grandfather.

  Daughter shivered her way through the night, pressing as close to the grandfather as she dared. She slept only a little, and when the first light brightened the southeastern sky, she cupped her hands in the murky water at the bottom of the boat and drank. It was salt and blood and melted ice, but she was used to the taste.

  She raised her eyes as she did each day to look for the sun, and finally saw a brightness in the clouds. She decided the sun was there, though she could not understand why it chose to hide. The grandfather probably knew why, but he was still asleep, his mouth hanging open, his eyes closed.

  She sighed, and at that moment, the clouds parted, so a shaft of light fell to the sea, brightening it from gray to blue. The clouds were moving quickly, running over the sky, tumbling like boys playing games. She wondered if the sun was the mother, the clouds her boys, so large that they towered over her, blocked her from sight, like the little grandmothers in Daughter’s village, dwarfed by their sons, grown men, tall and strong.

  Daughter’s eyes followed another rift in the clouds, waited until it centered itself over the sun so more light could get through. But then within that rift, she saw the peak of a mountain.

  “Grandfather!” she called, and grabbed his good arm, tried to shake him awake. “Grandfather! Look!”

  But the grandfather only pushed her away, mumbled angry words. She went to the bow, crouched on the ballast stones and began to talk to the boat.

  “See,” she said softly, “go there, to the mountain.” She pointed toward the peak that pierced the clouds and seemed to float above the sea like an island in the sky. “Look,” she whispered to the boat. “Look. Do you see it?”

  She wished the grandfather would wake up, for surely he would know where the boat kept its eyes.

  Chapter Nine

  Yunaska Island, The Aleutian Chain

  “OLD WOMAN!” EYE-TAKER called. “Do not come back empty-handed. Our husband does not need a lazy wife.”

  Old Woman turned her back, as though she did not hear what had been said, but she moved her fingers in a silent curse against her sister-wife, then squatted beside a small plant that was struggling back from winter, a beach plant of some kind, one she had not seen before. For now she would leave it, watch it grow, so she would learn to recognize it during all seasons.

  That was the trouble with living in a new village, among these First Men. There was so much to learn. But surely one of the grandmothers would know if the plant was good for anything, or if it was harmful. Poisonous plants were too dangerous not to recognize, and people who lived a long time in one place knew which plants could kill or cause illness.

  She was still studying it—fixing in her mind the way the stems branched, the shape of the leaves, the smell of it—when the thin, bleating cry came out of the fog.

  At first the voice did not break through into her thoughts. It was a child’s voice, high and full of tears. Old Woman did not like children. How could she, when her own family had turned against her? She should be an honored grandmother, doing the easy jobs of the ulax, tending the cooking fire, telling stories, but here she was, the lesser wife, searching for firewood in a strange land where the soil could not even grow trees, where the largest animals were the otters and seals that came to the beaches from the sea. No, she did not need the problems of some whining child to interrupt her work.

  She glanced up for landmarks so she could find the plant again, then continued down the gray sand beach, picking up driftwood as she walked. When her arms were full, she would swing the sealskin sling from her shoulders, add the wood she had been carrying, then bend once more to her task. One slingful would not be enough. Eye-taker would send her out for more, but Old Woman was good at stacking her wood slowly so she could get warm inside the ulax before having to go back out into the wet fog of the day.

  She rounded a narrow point of beach, a small finger of gravel that protected a cove where the waves were generous. She was bent over a heap of branches when she again heard the child’s voice, more clearly this time.

  Strange, she thought as she straightened, arched her shoulders against the weight of the wood on her back. The voice did not come from the direction of the village or the hills. Had some child, playing in his mother’s fishing boat, been swept out to sea?

  She might not like children, but to rescue one—or at least go for help—would win her favor in the village. She untied the wood from her back and set the sling on the beach. She shielded her eyes with one hand, squinting into the haze. At first she saw nothing unusual, but then a darkness she had thought to be only a thin spot in the fog grew larger.

  Old Woman was wearing a puffin skin sax. The long hoodless parka hung past her knees, and she wore no leggings, no boots. She pulled up the sax, balled it in one hand, and waded into the water. The cold numbed her skin and made the bones of her feet ache. She called to the boat, but received no answer, then saw a small white face peek up from the bow.

  The child held a hand toward Old Woman, and Old Woman forgot about her sax, allowed it to drop into the water. She turned sideways to more easily take the force of the waves, and waited until the sea brought the boat to her. She clasped an arm over the edge, began to tow it toward shore.

  The child, a girl, patted Old Woman’s shoulder, and Old Woman shook her head at the sores that covered the girl’s body. The child wore only the remnants of a parka, hoodless and made of something that looked like woven grass. From the waist down she was bare, more bone than meat, and her legs and feet were mottled blue around raw sores.

  She looked like a First Men child, with a round face and small nose, her hair dark and straight, but when she spoke, holding out both hands as though asking to be taken from the boat, Old Woman did not understand her words. They were not First Men, not Walrus, not even the language of the River People.

  Old Woman shook her head, held one hand palm up, and again grasped the boat, tried to guide it to shore. There was an undertow along the cove
, and several times she lost her footing, but managed to right herself.

  The boat was a strange craft, neither raft nor iqyax, but made of two logs, the larger hollowed out like the dugout canoes some River People used, and the other, much smaller, left whole, but shaped to a point at both ends. The logs were held several arm’s lengths apart by four heavy poles that were lashed to the logs with bindings made of heavy rope.

  Old Woman remembered how First Men hunters, when caught in storms on the sea, bound their iqyan together with their paddles to make a more stable craft, one that was less likely to be capsized. The man who had made this boat was no fool, but the craft had seen hard use.

  It stank of old fish and worse. Slices of meat lay against the sides of the boat, and many of them had rotted into the wood, making their own stink. Long stipes of bull kelp extended from bow to stern. They were fresh, and from the smears on her face, it appeared that the child had been eating kelp blades, though perhaps, from the smell of her, she had also been eating rotten meat.

  A bundle near the back of the dugout was covered with an otter skin and a haired blanket that looked a little like caribou. The otter skin had been poorly fleshed, the smell told her that, but she could also see that chunks of fur had begun to loosen and fall out.

  The bottom of the dugout hit the slope of the beach, and Old Woman had to wait for the waves to lift the heavy waterlogged wood. With each wave she pulled, moving the boat-raft a little farther until she was satisfied that the sea could not easily reclaim it.

  The girl again put her arms out, and Old Woman lifted her from the dugout. The child was nearly as light as Eye-Taker’s new baby, though the length of her legs made Old Woman guess she had at least three summers.

  “How did you get in the boat?” Old Woman asked her.

  The girl babbled something, and her words seemed to carry the same rhythm as the First Men’s language, so Old Woman tried again, speaking more slowly in First Men, and then in broken Walrus. The girl covered her face as though in despair, but finally, with a shuddering sigh, she lowered her hands and turned to point at the heap under the otter skin.