by Sue Harrison
Cen should be grateful. Gheli had been a fool, trying to hide who she was merely by changing her name. Gheli or Red Leaf, what difference did it make? She had been the same selfish woman, but Cen had known only the good part of her, had no idea that his wife could kill. K’os should have told him, but when had Cen ever believed anything she said?
So now, did Cen hold a debt of revenge against her? What would happen if he killed her?
K’os snorted out a laugh. A foolish question. She knew what would happen. Seal would take Uutuk as wife.
Even a child could see the lust in Seal’s eyes every time he looked at the girl, especially when he thought K’os was not watching. Why else would Uutuk shrink away from the man every time he was close to her?
K’os shrugged her shoulders as if she were in a conversation with herself. Yes, if she died, Seal would take Uutuk. But that would not necessarily be so terrible. Surely in death K’os would have enough power to change Seal’s luck, add some hard times to his life. Of course, she would not wish bad luck on Uutuk, but the girl was young and could get herself another husband, a River hunter who would take her to Chakliux’s village.
Who did not know that spirits could enter dreams? If she were dead, K’os could whisper her wishes into Uutuk’s ears, and the girl would carry out the revenge K’os planned, not only on Seal, but on Chakliux and Aqamdax.
So death was not the worst thing that could happen to her. Why worry about Cen? How could she hide from him when they were both in the same village? She had changed some, not enough. Even with the tattoos and her hair cut into a fringe across her forehead, even in First Men clothing, he would recognize her.
K’os lifted her chin, set her teeth. She seldom played the part of hare, changing from flesh into earth to fool her enemies. Most often she was wolf.
“You speak our River language well,” Cen said.
Daughter lowered her eyes in politeness, but could not keep a smile from her lips. She leaned close to Qung and translated the compliment. Cen began to laugh, and Daughter looked up, confused.
“I understand what he says, child,” Qung told her. “After all, I am a storyteller, and a gift of languages is one that every storyteller should seek to own.”
They sat in Qung’s ulax, eating fish, dried and smoked and dipped in seal oil. It was a flavor of Daughter’s childhood, of her first days in K’os’s ulax, and the taste set her at ease with these new people.
She had slept long into the morning, woken to find Cen and his son waiting. She knew K’os and Seal would have work for her, but how could she turn away too quickly from Qung’s hospitality? K’os would understand, and Seal’s anger would not last for long.
She listened as Cen spoke about the journey he had made to his son’s village and then to this beach, but finally she picked up her sax and stood.
“I must find my mother. She will have work for me.”
Qung reached up and clasped Daughter’s wrist, pulled her down again to the floor mats.
“Your mother told me that you can stay here as long as you like,” Qung said. “Besides, you promised me stories about the island where you lived as a child, before you became one of us.”
Ghaden lifted his head, and Daughter saw his surprise.
“You’re not First Men?” he asked.
“Does she look First Men?” Qung said.
Ghaden stared at Daughter and smiled, half of his mouth lifting as though he were hiding a joke. She felt her face grow hot under his gaze, and she covered her embarrassment with words.
“I come from a village far over the sea,” she said, and looked at the floor, at Cen, anywhere but at Ghaden. “We named ourselves for the boats we made. I was very young so I have little memory of the village or my people. But my grandfather said that we were attacked by another village, by their warriors. He and I hid in a boat, and during the night, a storm came and took us out into the sea. I remember the long journey, and that each day seemed to grow colder, but eventually we found the First Men islands.”
“Your grandfather is no longer living?” Cen asked.
Tears gathered in Daughter’s throat, and she had to cough before she was able to speak. “He has been dead for five years now,” she said. “But I hold his wisdom and his stories here.” She laid a hand at the center of her chest, over her heart.
“Since you promised us stories,” said Qung, “now would be a good time.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at Cen. “Nae’?” She smiled as she said the River word.
“Yes,” Cen replied. “Now would be good time for a story about these Boat People. Do you remember their ulas? Do you remember their island? Do you know how many days you were in the boat?”
Qung began to laugh. “A trader’s questions, without doubt,” she said.
“And what is wrong with that, Aunt?” he asked. “I am a trader.”
Qung filled her mouth with a piece of fish and cut her eyes away from Cen, an insult but given in jest. She flicked her fingers at Daughter and said, “Begin, begin. We are listening.”
Daughter bowed her head for a moment, thought about where she should start. With the Bear-god warriors’ attack, she finally decided. Cen and Ghaden should enjoy that story. Men seemed to like tales of fighting. She told them all she could remember, then answered their questions. She repeated stories that her grandfather had taught her about their village and their people, the men and their fishing. Cen had questions about outrigger boats, but Daughter could not remember them well enough to explain.
Finally she said, “Perhaps it would be better if you asked my mother. She is good at describing things and could probably make you a drawing in the sand. The boat rotted long ago, and I was a child the last time I saw it.”
“You said your father’s name is Seal?” Cen asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought I knew most First Men traders, but I do not remember him.”
“He does not make many trading trips. It is a long way to our island. Have you ever been there?”
“No. There are too few villages between here and there. The distance is not worth a trader’s time.”
Ghaden leaned forward as if to draw Daughter’s eyes, and he said, “But my father has been to the Tundra People’s villages, where the sun disappears for the whole winter and dances in the sky all summer. He has traded with the men of the Caribou villages, with Walrus and River and First Men.” It was a gentle boasting, and it warmed Daughter’s heart toward Ghaden.
“And are you also a trader?” she asked.
“No, I am a hunter,” he said.
Daughter saw a flash of disappointment in Cen’s eyes, but it was quickly gone, and Ghaden said, “Sometimes I pretend to be a trader. It is worth the hardship to spend time with my father.”
Cen laughed, then said to Daughter, “Your mother is here with you?”
Most wives did not travel with their trader husbands. There were always women in each village willing to be wife for a little while, and what woman wanted to leave her ulax or her children for long nights on cold beaches, for long days on tundra trails?
“She likes to travel with him,” Daughter said. “But this is my first trip. My mother is a River woman, and she brought me because she hopes to find me a River husband.”
Qung snorted. “A River husband! What foolishness! A First Men husband is far better.”
Daughter bit her cheeks to keep from mentioning White Salmon, and she carefully kept her eyes from Ghaden. She had already said more than what was considered polite, and her thoughts were still too full of White Salmon to think of another man as husband. Besides, Ghaden’s River face was strange to her, his long hooked nose, his heavy brow. But she supposed any woman would get used to her husband’s face, no matter what he looked like. After all, the stump of her grandfather’s arm, shriveled as it had been, did not bother her. What was a large nose compared to that?
“Your mother is River,” Cen said, his words quiet as though he were speaking to himself. “How did she
get to the First Men islands?”
“That is something she never talks about,” Daughter said. “But once one of the other women in the village mentioned that she was slave to the Walrus Hunters. Perhaps she ran away from them, or perhaps they traded her to the First Men.”
“When you were still a child,” Cen said to Daughter, “there was much fighting between two of the River villages. Women and children were taken as slaves. Perhaps she is from one of those villages, and if she is, then I might know her.”
“Her First Men name is Old Woman,” Daughter told him, “but among the River people she was known as K’os.”
When Daughter said the name, she was handing a sealskin of fish to Qung and did not see the look on Cen’s face.
“K’os,” Qung said. “I have heard that name before.”
She glanced over Daughter’s shoulder at Cen, then pursed her lips into a puzzled frown. Daughter turned to look and saw that Cen had jumped to his feet and was walking toward the climbing log.
“You know her, Cen?” Qung asked.
He stopped and turned back, tried to laugh, but the laughter came out as though it were a curse. “Once,” he said, “a very long time ago, she was nearly my wife.” He lifted his chin and spoke to Ghaden. “Do you remember her?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ghaden said. “When I was living in the Cousin River village, she lived there then. My sister Aqamdax was her slave.” His words were bitter.
The line of Cen’s jaw tightened, as though he had clenched his teeth, but he thanked Qung for the food, then made polite excuses to leave. “Ghaden, come with me,” he said. “I have things for you to do. Perhaps there will be another time for storytelling.” Then as though he had just remembered that Daughter was still with them, he added, “It has been good to hear about the Boat People.”
They left, and Qung, shaking her head at all the food that still remained, shrugged her shoulders and said, “Men are always too busy to sit in one place for a long time.”
When they were outside, away from Qung’s ulax, Cen told Ghaden, “Uutuk is beautiful, but stay away from her. If she is like her mother, she will bring you nothing but bad luck.” Then, looking at Ghaden with eyes flat and cold, he said, “You have trade goods to set out, nae’? Trade quickly. We will not remain in this village as long as I had thought.” Then he strode away toward the chief hunter’s ulax.
Ghaden had heard tales about K’os, whispered things. She had killed her own husbands, they said. When he had returned to the Near River village with Chakliux and Aqamdax, they had agreed to stay only if K’os—slave then to the old woman Gull Beak—were sold to another village. Chakliux’s brother Sok had wanted to kill her, but Chakliux still claimed the woman as mother and would not have her blood on his hands.
She had also lived in Cen’s village—the Four Rivers village—and Ghaden had heard rumors that Cen had forced her to leave. Ghaden had never been to that village, though Cen lived there with his wife and two daughters. This year he would go, Ghaden promised himself, and meet those two sisters he had never seen.
Soon after Biter’s death, Ghaden had taken a young woman as wife. Three years later, she had died in childbirth. Since then, Ghaden had considered taking other women, but none had filled his heart, and so he had been content to stay in Chakliux and Aqamdax’s lodge, to provide meat for widows and elders.
Sometimes his father teased him about taking a Four Rivers woman as wife and coming to live in his lodge, but Ghaden’s spirit was with the people at Chakliux’s village. They had few enough hunters as it was. Besides, how could he leave Yaa? She had been both sister and mother to him since Red Leaf had killed his true mother, Daes. How could he leave Aqamdax and Chakliux, or even Sok? No, he would stay in Chakliux’s village, someday take another woman there as wife.
Uutuk’s face was suddenly bright in Ghaden’s mind, and he found himself thinking about the stories she had told. She did not speak like a storyteller but more like a mother telling tales to a child, and truly that was a gift any man would treasure in his wife.
No, Ghaden told himself. She was K’os’s daughter. Was he such a fool that he could not understand the danger in that?
When Cen saw K’os, she was wearing a First Men sax. Her back was turned and her hair had begun to gray, but he recognized her. There was strength in the set of her shoulders, grace in her movements, and who would not know the cunning needlework of her sax? Cut like a First Men garment, it was decorated in the manner of the River People, with bird beaks and shells and fringes of brightly dyed sinew.
She was working on a trader’s boat. The sewing basket at her side was one that Cen had given her, and the thought that she still owned it clutched at his heart. Sometimes she came back to him in dreams, as young and beautiful as when he first knew her, when he wanted nothing more in his life than to have her as wife.
Long ago, he had heard rumors that she had been sold as slave to the Walrus. He had avoided their village for that reason. But then she had begun to visit his dreams so often, he had decided that she was dead. He had not allowed himself to mourn, but instead rejoiced that there was no chance he would see her again.
She was evil beyond anything and anyone he had ever known. He shuddered to think of her raising Uutuk and wondered what horrors lived behind that girl’s dark eyes.
As K’os worked, she lifted her head once in a while and studied the iqyan. Surely she had noticed his, and he doubted that she would have forgotten the colors and symbols he used to mark his belongings.
For a moment he shifted his eyes out to the inlet, a sheltered bay, perfect for a village, good fishing in calm waters, and easy access to the sea. Fog had begun to move in, fingers spreading up the valleys and into the hills that rose behind the bay.
As trader, he wore the clothing of the villages he visited, partly because it was usually the best choice for the weather, partly so the villagers would accept him as one of their own. The First Men’s sax was a comfortable garment, loose in the shoulders for paddling, and the birdskins easily shed rain. But he had worn caribou hide pants for too many years to be warm when wearing only the long-skirted sax. The air was damp, and he felt the chill of it in his hips and knees.
He sighed and looked again at K’os. She bound her hair like a First Men wife, in a tight knot at the nape of her neck, and as she worked she raised a hand to twist several strands back into the bun. The gesture was too familiar. Suddenly he could feel the warmth of her hair lying over him as they lay naked together in his lodge. He could taste the woman smell of her.
Cen thought when he had found Gheli that K’os had lost her power over him, but how could he deny that there was still some part of her lodged in his heart? He was suddenly angry that he had so little control over what he felt. A man old enough to be a grandfather should not act like a young hunter, his lust ruling his mind.
He had been too long away from his wife. Perhaps there was a First Men woman who would trade favors for oil or dried caribou meat. If so, he needed to find her.
His disgust prodded him into movement, and he crossed the beach to the iqyax racks, purposely kept his back to K’os as he pretended to study the boats.
“I see you found yourself a First Men husband,” he said in the River tongue, though he directed his words at the iqyan.
“And you, have you found a new wife?” K’os asked, as though she had been waiting for him, as though they spoke often and there was no greeting or politeness necessary between them.
“A new wife?” Cen asked, puzzled. Then he tilted his head back and nodded. Of course, when K’os had left the Four Rivers village, Gheli had been sick. He had to admit that K’os had been good to them, had given Gheli many different kinds of medicines, but K’os must have believed that there was no hope.
“You think I’d live without a woman?” He turned to look at her as he asked the question.
She had changed more than he thought she would. For years she had remained the same, her skin unlined, hair dark, eye
s bright. Her life, after leaving the Four Rivers village, must have been difficult. Deep lines scored her cheeks from her nose to her chin. Folds webbed out from the corners of her eyes, and her skin still carried the scabs and sores of sea travel. Of course, even Uutuk’s face had been marred with sores, and they would heal, but where Uutuk’s cheeks were unmarked like a River woman’s face, K’os had taken the tattoos of the First Men. Blue lines, nearly black, crossed the flats of her cheeks.
The wind had pushed up her sax, exposing a bit of her thigh, and there, too, he saw the marks that proclaimed her a First Men woman. Still—though she looked older, and in spite of the tattoos—she was beautiful. No man would pass her without looking again to enjoy that face, and he supposed that for a First Men hunter, the tattoos enhanced her beauty. He had a sudden and foolish urge to pull the sax down over her leg, a possessiveness that should belong only to a husband.
She’s not mine, he told himself. She has never been mine, and I do not want her.
“But why would I need a new wife?” he asked. “It’s difficult enough for a trader to care for one, and to find a woman who is loyal even when her husband spends long months away from their lodge.”
“I didn’t think you would want to raise Daes without a mother,” K’os said. “I’d have been a good mother to her. You know I did not kill my young River husband. You above all people know that.”
He took a step toward her, squatted, squinting his eyes against the grit the wind blew into his face. “I still think you killed him.”
She smiled at him. “You’re wrong. How terrible for me that you convinced the Four Rivers People I did.”
“If I had convinced them, then you’d be dead. As it was, they only asked that you leave.” He raised his hands and spread them wide. “It seems that you’re doing well. I met your daughter Uutuk. She’s a fine young woman, and she speaks well of you and your husband.”
“Be glad for me, Cen,” K’os said. “I’m old, but my life is good. Tell me about the Four Rivers village and your family. Have you found a husband for Daes? She must be past the age of marrying.”