The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  She studied the seams. The stitches were as fine and even as if K’os had made the garment. “The work is very good,” she said.

  “I should be the one to say that,” Ghaden told her. “You should tell me what is wrong with it, and why you will not give me as much as I want.”

  A smile forced his eyes into thin crescents, like moons just reborn.

  “It does not matter. I cannot trade for this parka,” she told him. “My mother and I have only a few seal bellies of oil.”

  Daughter lifted the parka to her face and breathed in the clean smell of well-scraped hides. She laid it down, fingered the wolf fur ruff.

  “It would be a good parka for a woman to own,” Ghaden said.

  “A woman with a husband who has more oil than he needs,” said Daughter, then turned to walk away.

  “What about the sax you are wearing?” Ghaden called to her. “Perhaps I would be willing to trade this parka for some oil, good seal oil stored in seal bellies, and for a First Men’s sax.”

  “I need my sax,” Daughter said. “How would I survive in my father’s boat if I had only a parka to wear?”

  She saw that her mother was still gathering sea urchins, and so hurried toward her, took the bag. It was heavy and full.

  “Do you want these to go to the chief hunter’s ulax?” Daughter asked.

  “It would be a good gift for them,” her mother said.

  Daughter walked across the beach carrying the bag, and Ghaden again called out to her. “Perhaps there is something I might trade for sea urchins!”

  Laughter bubbled from Daughter’s throat, and she went to him, took a green-spined urchin from the gathering bag, and laid it on his trader’s mat.

  “A gift,” she said.

  He pulled a flicker feather from one of the danglers on the parka and gave it to her.

  “For luck,” he told her.

  K’os watched Uutuk until she disappeared into the tall grasses at the rise of the beach, then hurried over to Ghaden. He was still staring at the path that led to the village, as though he could will Uutuk back. Finally he realized that K’os was standing in front of him.

  “We have oil and caribou fat and dried caribou meat,” he told her, “parkas and pants made of caribou hide. There are wolf pelts and fox furs, birdskins and dried fish, shafts for spears as straight as the edge of the sea where it meets the sky.”

  He spoke the words as traders do, in a rhythm that was nearly a song, and his voice was pleasing to the ear, like a storyteller’s voice. Cen had said he was a hunter, and yet it appeared he could also be a trader if he wished, or even a storyteller. A young man given many choices. K’os wondered whether Ghaden had the wisdom to make the right decision for himself.

  “I’m Uutuk’s mother,” K’os said, speaking in the River language. “I saw that she was looking at this parka.” She bent close to study the seams. If she had doubted that Red Leaf was still alive, that parka lifted her doubt. Who else could sew like that?

  “I told her that I would trade it for a First Men’s sax, well made, and several bellies of seal oil.”

  “And she would not trade?”

  “She said she needed her sax.”

  “She’s a wise woman, my daughter.”

  K’os looked hard into Ghaden’s face. “You do not know me, Ghaden?” she asked.

  “I know you. I remember when my sister was your slave.” His voice was quiet, but she heard his anger.

  “You hate me for that?” she asked. “You’ve never had a slave? I myself was slave to the old woman Gull Beak in the Near River village. Perhaps you remember her. She was old then. She must be dead by now.”

  “Still alive when I left the village,” Ghaden told her.

  K’os smiled. “Good. I liked her. Though it was not easy being a slave.”

  “You could have treated my sister better.”

  “I realize that now,” K’os said. “But I was ignorant then. As a girl I was the only daughter of a good hunter. As a woman my husbands were leaders of their people. I was respected as a healer, and I helped many. I didn’t know what it was like to be slave. Now that I do, I would never own a slave again.”

  Ghaden studied her face as though trying to decide whether or not to believe her.

  “Someone told me that the First Men don’t have the same plants that we River People do,” he said, as though they had never spoken about slaves. “Perhaps there are plants that you have found growing on First Men islands that River healers would find useful. My father brought caribou leaf to trade.”

  “I have plants,” K’os said slowly, thinking over what was in her medicine bag.

  Who would guess that Cen would bring medicines? But why be surprised? She had been a healer when Cen knew her. Surely during that time he had learned the value of plant medicines. She needed caribou leaf. A pity that most of the plants she had brought with her also grew in the River People’s land.

  “I have cixudangix,” she told him. It was only the seagull flower, but the root had the power to clot blood. “It’s difficult to get, even on First Men islands, and doesn’t grow anywhere near our River villages.” She was lying, but Ghaden would not know that. “A woman who has had a hard birth, or a man who is bleeding from a wound, these people should drink a tea made of the root.”

  “I need proof of what it is,” he told her.

  “You think because I was once slave that I will not trade in honesty?”

  “How will I trade it to someone else if I don’t know what I have?”

  He was no fool, this boy. He reminded her of his half-sister Aqamdax, a woman who had given K’os much to regret.

  “I’ll give you a packet,” she told him. “Show it to some of the First Men elders. They’ll tell you what it is.”

  “And if the elders think it’s a wise trade,” he said, “then I’ll give you caribou leaf in exchange.”

  “Good. I’ll be back, and don’t be too quick to trade away that parka. It would be beautiful on my daughter.”

  She went quickly to the chief hunter’s ulax. She was relieved to find no one there except the hunter’s old father, a man who spent most of his days living in a world that he had known as a child. When he saw her, he thought that she was his sister, a woman who was long dead. He called her that one’s name, and K’os thought she felt the sister’s spirit close. She shivered, and her arms pimpled with bumps.

  She ladled him a bowl of broth and said, “Be quiet and eat. You do not know what you call down on us.”

  Then she sorted through her medicine bag, found the packet she wanted, also took one of her seal bellies of oil, and left the ulax.

  When she handed the cixudangix to Ghaden, she said, “You claimed you would take oil and a First Men sax in trade for that parka.” She lifted her chin toward the caribou parka, could not keep from touching the soft wolf fur that rimmed the hood. She had once made parkas like that, even more beautiful, but where had Red Leaf gotten all the flicker beaks? She had never seen so many. She and Uutuk could use the luck that a parka like that would bring.

  She handed him the seal belly, and leaned over his trade goods to pull out the ivory stopper. She gently pressed a finger against the side of the belly until a fine spurt of oil erupted from the opening.

  “Taste it,” she told him. “It’s new oil, and there’s no seal hair in it. You won’t find better.”

  He rubbed at the spilled oil with his hand, then licked his palm. “How many bellies do you have?” he asked.

  “Six.”

  “Four and a sax,” he told her.

  “My daughter has made necklaces. Shells from our island that you can’t find here.”

  “I have enough necklaces.”

  K’os shrugged, and held her hands palm up. “We don’t have a sax to trade,” she said. “But I’m sure there are ways to get one. I’ll tell Uutuk what you have said. Will you put the parka away if I give you the oil now?”

  “Bring it,” he told her, then asked, “Where
will you get the sax?” He picked up the parka and placed it in one of his packs.

  “Young women as beautiful as Uutuk always have something to trade, and old men are willing to give more than they should.”

  She walked away and did not look back.

  K’os found Uutuk sitting at the top of Qung’s ulax. She climbed up and squatted on her haunches beside her. In the custom of the First Men, they did not speak for a time, but finally K’os said, “You should go back down to the beach. Ghaden might be willing to make a trade with you. Take three seal bellies of oil. They are in the chief hunter’s ulax in the sleeping place closest to the climbing log. Take some necklaces and two sealskins, also some dried fish. Do not tell your father that you took them. I think Ghaden will be glad to trade.”

  K’os saw the joy on her daughter’s face and hid a smile in her cheek. “Be wise, Daughter,” she said to Uutuk. “You trade for more than a parka.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

  602 B.C.

  YIKAAS RAISED HIS VOICE to call out praise for Qumalix’s stories, and others in the ulax did the same. Qumalix let her eyes rest for a moment on his face, and she smiled at him. He stood, stretched, then began to work his way toward her through the crowd, but suddenly a rough hand pushed him aside. A First Men storyteller—the one named Sky Catcher—stepped in front of him and, elbowing his way past elders and children, reached Qumalix first.

  He spoke to her in the First Men language, interrupting others. Finally, as though the man were a boy, Qumalix raised a hand and made the sign for silence.

  Yikaas felt a bubble of laughter rise into his throat, but then she leaned toward Sky Catcher and whispered into his ear. The man smiled and pressed his fingers against her shoulder as if he were a husband with a wife.

  Then the old woman Kuy’aa was beside Yikaas and, standing on tiptoe, her head at his shoulder, she said, “Remember him? His name is Sky Catcher. There’s a story he tells about the hunter who called the sun to the First Men’s islands. He offered to tell Qumalix that story.”

  “Here? Now?”

  Kuy’aa avoided his eyes, but said, “The First Men word he used means somewhere outside, in the wind. Away from here.”

  Yikaas glanced toward Qumalix. She and Sky Catcher were laughing, heads bent close. Pain and anger filled him to bursting, and he spoke to Kuy’aa through the edges of his teeth. “I’m going now. Do you want to leave, or will you stay and listen to more stories?” He offered his arm to help her up the climbing log, but she shook her head and settled down on her haunches as another storyteller began speaking.

  Yikaas started up the climbing log, but could not keep from looking back one more time. Qumalix was pulling on her sax, and she was still speaking to Sky Catcher. Yikaas shrugged as though to tell himself that he did not care, and he climbed out into the wind.

  Morning fog was down on the bay, and all things seemed cold and wet. The grayness entered at his heart and pushed up into his head, seemed to close off everything but his own thoughts, his own pain. He walked to the beach, to the mats where the traders had set their goods, and began to look for something he might buy with the caribou hides he had brought from his village. But the oil the traders offered had a sour smell, the pelts were dull and thin, and even the beads were misshapen.

  The fog pressed against his ears like hands set at the sides of his head. Words spoken were lost before he understood them, and finally he turned away from the traders and walked across the beach to the iqyax racks. There he hunkered down on his haunches, arms around his knees like a First Men hunter, and thought about Qumalix and Sky Catcher. He shook his head as he remembered Sky Catcher’s hand on her shoulder as if he already owned her.

  What if he did?

  The idea came so suddenly that it seemed as though someone had shouted it. What if Qumalix were promised to Sky Catcher? Perhaps that was why she had come so far to the Traders’ Beach. After all, they were both First Men, and both storytellers.

  Yikaas heard a giggle behind him and turned, his heart jumping at the sudden break in the silence. His first thought was Qumalix, but he laughed at himself over that. When had he ever heard her giggle? She was a woman, not a girl. Her laughter was full and strong, never foolish.

  Two First Men girls walked out of the fog. They wore their hair loose, in the tradition of unmarried women, and their cheeks were marked with tattoos. One girl was plump and the other thin, but aside from that, they looked like twins, so much alike were their faces.

  They swooped down on him like murrelets going into their burrow nests and both began to speak at once, using the First Men tongue. Suddenly the thin one stopped and held her hands over her mouth.

  “You River,” she said to him in his own language.

  He could not help but smile at the way her First Men mouth bent the River words. “Yes, I’m River,” he said.

  “Speak First Men?”

  He shook his head, and the girls sank to the sand together, giggling and whispering. Suddenly they leaped to their feet, grabbed his arms, and pulled him up, motioning that he should come with them.

  He voiced a few protests, but made no effort to break free as they stumbled up the sand and gravel dunes toward the village. The fog blocked his view of their ulax until they were nearly upon it. He realized they were at the inland side of the village, where the ulas were smaller and backed tightly against the hills. The girls motioned for him to climb to the moss and grass roof, and he did so, then turned to look down at them.

  They leaned their heads together, covered their mouths as they whispered to one another, then the sister who was plump, her eyes mere slits above her round, fat cheeks, smiled at him with her lips open, the tip of her tongue sliding over her teeth.

  She spoke in the First Men language, but Yikaas had no trouble understanding what she meant. They joined him at the top of the ulax, then gestured for him to follow them inside. He threw one quick look toward the storyteller’s ulax, thought of Qumalix and how they had shared stories hidden in the foothill grasses. Then he remembered Sky Catcher, his wide, broad face, his strong arms and shoulders, his short, powerful legs. He was a man of beads and feathers, of oiled hair and chin labret. When a man like that walks, the earth feels his steps. When a man like that speaks, what woman does not listen?

  Yikaas lowered himself into the ulax.

  Only the two girls were inside. Each had taken off her sax. They were small-breasted, but their skin was smooth and fragrant with oil. They looked at him from under half-closed lids. Why should he mourn over Qumalix? He pulled off his parka, and they each came to him with a bladder of oil. They began at his shoulders, rubbed his skin until they had driven the fog from his bones. He closed his eyes and pushed Qumalix from his mind.

  “So,” Sky Catcher said to Qumalix, “I have told you the story of Sun Bringer. What do you have to give in exchange?”

  Sky Catcher kept finding reason to touch her, to cup a hand over her knee or place an arm around her shoulders. She had finally wiggled so far away from him that he could not reach her without looking foolish, and as she had guessed, Sky Catcher was not a man to choose the part of a fool.

  His story had been good, and he had given Qumalix permission to tell it. She had listened carefully, deciding even as he spoke where she would make changes so her listeners would feel as if they were the young man who had tricked the sun into coming so far north to a land of snow and ice. Sky Catcher had told her that even yet, hunters in their iqyan could follow the path the sun had taken in coming to the First Men. What hunter—driven far out to sea by storms or drawn by whales—did not seek those warm rivers that flowed up from the south and along the edges of the First Men’s islands? What hunter did not sing songs of gratitude for those trails the sun had left in its quest for the beautiful First Men women Sun Bringer had boasted about?

  When Sky Catcher finished his story, he leaned toward her and looked into her eyes.

  “Too bad you
were not here in those long ago days,” he said. “Then the sun would have lingered even into winter nights. How could it turn away from your face?”

  It was as fine a compliment as Qumalix had ever received, but for some reason it sent her thoughts to the storyteller Yikaas, and she wondered if he would ever say such a thing. Then she was disgusted with herself. Why think about Yikaas? Anyone could see that Sky Catcher was more handsome, with his small straight nose and bright dark eyes. He was wider of shoulder and stronger of arm. Yikaas even walked with a limp. No wonder he was storyteller rather than hunter.

  And what woman would choose a storyteller above a hunter? What hunter would trade caches with a storyteller? Far better to rely on yourself than on the generosity of others.

  “You have not answered my question,” Sky Catcher said, an edge of irritation in his voice.

  Qumalix was used to a man whose temper came quickly. Her father was that way, though his was always an anger of words, spoken and quickly forgotten. He had not wanted her to return to this far village, the fear clear in his eyes until her grandfather had agreed to accompany her.

  “If you bring back a husband,” he had told her as they were leaving, partly in jest, a joke to cover the tremor in his voice, “be sure he is a hunter.”

  Her father would most likely be pleased if she brought back Sky Catcher, a man who was both hunter and storyteller. But what if she brought Yikaas? Aa, her father would be angry. A River man who could speak no First Men words. A River man who could not hunt from an iqyax. Nor would she be accepted in Yikaas’s village. She had no River skills, had never even set a trapline, but surely it could not be too different from the bird traps she set at murrelet holes.

  And making a parka, how difficult could that be for a woman who knew how to sew birdskins?

  She was pulled from her thoughts by Sky Catcher’s face too close to hers.

  “A story, of course,” she said in answer to his question. “What else do I have to give you?”

  “What story do you know that I might like to hear?” he asked, his words coming from lips outthrust, as though he were pouting. “You think I want to hear stories about women? What man wants that?”