The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice calling from the top of the ulax. It was K’os. Daughter set down the boot sole and climbed partway up the log, whispered to her mother that Qung was asleep.

  “I have fireweed leaves made into tea. Would you like some?” Daughter asked.

  K’os waved a hand in refusal and said, “I have something to tell you.”

  Even after many years away from her own people, K’os was much more River than First Men, direct in her way of saying things, without the quiet joy of shared food or tea.

  K’os climbed into the ulax, and Daughter put away the boot sole, squatted beside the oil lamp, and waited as her mother took off her parka and sat down.

  “Your father has accepted a brideprice for you,” K’os said, and she did not seem concerned about what Daughter thought or how she felt. “The man is Ghaden, and he is a hunter.”

  “So I have heard,” said Daughter, leaving her mother to guess whether she meant she had heard about Ghaden’s hunting or about Seal’s choice. “I will miss you.”

  “You think I would let you go by yourself and live as wife to a man I do not even know?” K’os asked. “I am a better mother than that.”

  Daughter’s relief was so great that she had to close her eyes against the burn of tears.

  “And Seal?” she asked. “What does he say?”

  “He is a good father,” said K’os, but she looked away, as though she were embarrassed at making the claim. “He promised that we would spend a year with you. That way he will have opportunity to trade with the River People and perhaps the Caribou. While he trades, I will teach you River medicine so that you will not only be wife among the River People but also healer.”

  Questions filled Daughter’s mind, but her throat was so thick with gratitude that she had to drink from her cup of fireweed tea before she could find her voice. “After that year you will return to our island?” she finally asked.

  “Most likely,” K’os said, “but a year is a long time, so we will wait and see what happens.”

  Daughter wanted to ask if she might return with them, but why request a promise that her mother might not be able to keep? Instead she thought of all the good things that come to a woman when she is a wife—her own ulax, children, and a man to share her bed. She thought of Ghaden’s smile and the kindness that shone from his face. Then, to hold in her tears, she fixed her eyes on the flames that danced in the stone lamp and listened as K’os told her how to give joy to her husband during that first night they would spend together in Daughter’s bed.

  That evening in the chief hunter’s ulax, K’os helped Daughter wash her hair, first with urine to strip out the old oil, then with three bladders of fresh water to rinse away the urine. They rubbed the hair dry with lemming skins, then K’os used an ivory comb—a marriage gift from the chief hunter’s wives—to smooth out the tangles.

  Daughter’s hair hung to her waist, and was so dark that sometimes in the sunlight it seemed to shine blue. K’os combed fresh seal oil through the strands, then also oiled Daughter’s face and arms and breasts. She stepped back and smiled, but when Daughter returned the smile, K’os face changed—a quick tightening of the jaw, a clenching of teeth, a look too fleeting for Daughter to name.

  “You are beautiful,” K’os said, “and perhaps it is good that you do not have the First Men’s tattoos, since you will be River.”

  “Even many of the Traders’ Beach women do not mark their faces,” Daughter told her, something she had noticed when they first came to the village.

  K’os nodded and squinted her eyes, tipped her head to study Daughter’s hair.

  “A braid might be good, Uutuk,” she finally said, “since you are marrying River. To let your husband know that you respect his people.”

  Daughter made a face. She liked the First Men custom of a bride going to her husband with her hair loose, then the next day binding it in a bun at the nape of her neck, a proud sign that she had been accepted as wife.

  “A small braid,” K’os told her, and knelt beside Daughter, used her fingers to divide a section of hair at the left side of Daughter’s face.

  When she had finished, she tied it with a bit of sinew thread, then lifted Daughter’s hand to the braid. “Here, see?”

  Daughter smiled. It was no bigger around than her smallest finger, but as K’os said, it would show respect for Ghaden’s customs, even though most of her hair still fell loose over her shoulders, as a woman’s hair should.

  “You are beautiful,” K’os said again, “and if you remember all the things I taught you about the ways a wife can please …”

  She was interrupted by a voice crowing from the top of the ulax, one of the chief hunter’s young sons. He hopped to the floor from the middle of the climbing log, carrying a pack nearly as large as he was. He thrust it at Daughter.

  “Here, for you, from that River man. The one who is not a trader.”

  The pack was square and cut from hardened caribou hide, laced with babiche at each seam, much like a storage pack K’os had used during Daughter’s childhood until the damp, foggy air of their island had rotted it. Daughter untied the cover flap and reached inside, gasped when she pulled out the white caribou parka.

  “For you! For you!” the chief’s son shouted, his thin arms jerking as he danced in a little circle, scuffing up the grass and heather on the hard dirt floor. “Leggings, too. Look inside.”

  Daughter took out the leggings. They were made of many small pelts, reddish in color. She stood and held up the parka and leggings so her mother could see.

  “The parka is caribou,” Daughter said, “but what are the leggings?”

  “Red squirrel,” her mother told her. “They will be warm and light and should last you for more than one winter.”

  The chief’s third wife, a woman much given to necklaces and fancy clothing, came out of her sleeping place, and, seeing the parka, exclaimed her envy. She began to finger the fur ruff and count the flicker beaks. Daughter’s joy bubbled into laughter.

  “You are First Men, and used to your sax,” K’os told Uutuk, “but you need to wear his gifts.”

  Daughter set a hand on her puffin skin sax. She had mended and cleaned it for this night, and it was a reminder of her island, but she knew K’os was right. She had to learn River ways.

  She had not worn leggings since she was a little girl, and she soon had the chief’s wife and son laughing as she tried to keep her balance, standing on one leg, then the other to pull on the garment. K’os helped her with the parka, then took a necklace she had been wearing and draped it over Daughter’s head.

  “Your father wants you to have this,” she said.

  Daughter thanked K’os, but the necklace seemed dark and old against the white of the parka, as if her father’s hands once again lingered too close.

  Qung’s teeth were so worn with age that when she smiled, her mouth seemed like a wide, empty cave. Her laughter came from deep in her throat, and her happiness drew wrinkles in her cheeks.

  “A wife!” she said to Ghaden. “Will you know what to do with her?” She made a series of coarse jokes, and it seemed so strange to hear them come from an old woman that Ghaden could not help but laugh.

  “I have food enough for everyone,” Qung said. “Or will you spend the night in the chief hunter’s ulax? You and your bride are welcome here, you know.”

  Ghaden could see the hope in her eyes, and he made a joke of his own, saying, “There are more people than sleeping places in that ulax. Do you think my new wife would like to share our first bed with the chief hunter?”

  Qung laughed. She crawled over to the floor cache that held her storage bags of dried meat and fish. She began pulling them out one by one, pawing through them and piling fish and caribou meat on the mats beside her oil lamp.

  “You might go and see if anyone has sea urchins to trade,” she told him as she arranged peeled stalks of fresh iitikaalux beside the meat.

  He would rather have wait
ed in the ulax for Seal to bring Uutuk, but Ghaden did as she asked. Thoughts of bedding Uutuk drove away his need for food, but he was sure that Seal would want to eat.

  At least they were not in a River village. There the marriage would be celebrated with a feast and a long night of dances and songs and riddles. The First Men were more wise about taking wives and did little to celebrate other than the exchange of a brideprice.

  It did not take him long to find someone with sea urchins, a girl willing to take a necklace in exchange for her morning of gathering. When Ghaden returned to the ulax, Seal and Uutuk were there.

  Uutuk was wearing the caribou parka and leggings, her hair a dark and shining river over the white of the parka.

  Praise for her beauty filled Ghaden’s mouth, but a husband did not say such things to his wife, lest it seem he were praising himself, so he only lifted the bag of sea urchins and said, “Sea eggs for our celebration.”

  Seal squatted beside the food mats and accepted the fish and meat Qung offered him. She gave him a bowl of seal oil for dipping, and Uutuk ladled out soup from the caribou hide bag that hung over the oil lamp. She gave the first bowl to Seal. He lifted it to his mouth and slurped loudly in appreciation.

  She filled another and gave it to Ghaden. He tried to catch her eyes, but she kept her face lowered. It was the custom to do so among First Men brides, but he was disappointed. He had hoped that she would show some joy in being his wife, or at least gratitude for the parka.

  Seal leaned toward his daughter and ran a hand over the flicker beaks, lingering for a moment on the mounds of her breasts. Anger filled Ghaden’s mouth, but he shut his lips tightly over it, swallowed it down, and accepted Seal’s actions as compliment.

  They ate, mostly in silence, and Uutuk continued to serve them as though she had long been his wife. When Seal and Ghaden had finished, Qung boldly helped herself to the remaining food.

  “Where is your father?” she asked Ghaden, her mouth crammed with dried fish.

  “I did not tell you?” Ghaden asked. “He and two other traders decided to travel to villages west of the Traders’ Beach.”

  Qung raised a bowl of broth to her mouth and looked at him over the rim. “He should be here,” she said.

  “They plan to be away five or six days. I decided not to wait for him.”

  “A good decision,” said Seal, his voice nearly too loud for politeness.

  “He should be here,” Qung said again.

  “But he is not,” Ghaden said firmly. Should a hunter let an old woman make his decisions?

  Then Uutuk knelt beside Seal to ask, “Would you go get my mother now? She should not be left out of the feast.”

  “She is happy at the chief hunter’s ulax,” Seal said. “She does not need to be here.”

  “I want her here,” Uutuk said.

  “I will get her,” Ghaden told them, grateful for something to take him out of the ulax, away from Qung’s questions and demands.

  Daughter let her eyes shine at him, and he felt his cheeks burn, as though he were a young boy having his first thoughts about bedding women.

  When Ghaden left, Daughter busied herself rearranging the food on the mats while Qung continued to eat, and when Daughter heard voices from outside, saw bits of dirt sift down from the ulax rafters, she got to her feet and straightened her parka. For her mother, she told herself, but Ghaden was the first down the climbing log, and she had to lower her head when she saw the desire on his face.

  She turned away, stood on her toes to reach a water bladder. Then Ghaden’s hands were on hers, his body pressed close against her back, and he pulled down the bladder, held it until she looked up at him. His smile made Daughter’s belly tighten, and her breath caught high in her throat.

  K’os broke the silence with compliments about the food and praise for Daughter’s parka. She asked Ghaden about his hunting, and Ghaden squatted on his haunches beside her, answered her respectfully, as though she were his own mother.

  But Daughter, watching them as she ate, saw the caution in Ghaden’s eyes, heard the care in his answers, and saw that K’os, too, was careful, stiff and proper as she seldom was to a man.

  When the women had eaten their fill, and Qung and Daughter were putting away the food, the truth came into Daughter’s mind, prickled there like a stone inside a seal flipper boot.

  Ghaden and her mother did not like each other. Then why had K’os been so eager for Daughter to become Ghaden’s wife?

  K’os turned away from Ghaden, spoke a blessing that Daughter had never heard before, something in the River language about wives and husbands and children.

  “A marriage blessing,” K’os said, and translated it for Seal.

  He nodded his approval, and added a First Men blessing, then made a joke about sleeping places and the secrets women hold between their legs.

  Ghaden laughed, as did Qung, but K’os did not join in. She held a smile on her face, and Daughter recognized it as a trader’s smile, a guarded joy, held without words so the trading would continue to be good.

  As Qung raised her old woman’s voice into a song about getting children, K’os and Seal stood up, took Daughter’s arms, and pushed her toward a sleeping place. Then the woven grass curtain closed behind her, and for a few moments Daughter was alone.

  In the darkness she could still see her mother’s smile, and she wondered what great treasure K’os planned to own in exchange for a daughter’s life.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  THE SUMMER BEFORE, DAUGHTER had given herself to White Salmon. So many of the young women in her village, a year past their first moon blood time, had already been chosen as wives that Daughter had begun to worry she would be the only woman, save a few elderly widows, without a husband.

  When White Salmon had shown some interest in her, she had welcomed him into her bed. After all, K’os had been diligent in teaching her how to please a man.

  Now that she waited for Ghaden, she wished she had saved herself for her husband. He had been raised River. How often had K’os told her that River men did not like to share their wives, except with their hunting partners? When he found she had known another man, would he throw her away? Even in the warmth of the fur-lined sleeping place, she was suddenly cold.

  A roar of laughter pushed at her from the ulax, and the dividing curtain was thrust aside. Ghaden was shoved in with her. Seal called out a coarse joke, but in the light that filtered through the woven grass of the curtain, Daughter saw that Ghaden was not laughing. His eyes were soft. He raised his hands, placed them on either side of her neck, then lifted her hair and ran gentle fingers up the back of her head.

  “I have wanted to touch your hair for a long time,” he said. “It is as soft as eiderdown.” He spoke in the First Men language, and she felt even more honored by that than by his compliment.

  He had taken off his parka, most likely the reason for the laughter, and she noticed that he had oiled his skin. She laid her hands on his chest. The warmth of him lifted the cold from her fingers and some of the fear from her heart. He looked into her face as though he were seeing her for the first time. She raised her fingers to his nose, and he began to laugh.

  “First Men do not have much by way of noses,” he said, and pressed his cheek to hers. She shivered, wrapped her arms around his shoulders. They were wide, his muscles tight and hard under his skin.

  Then memories of White Salmon came to her, as if he had thrust his way between them. Daughter did not want to think about him, his fingers stroking her skin, his body within hers. Ghaden cupped her breasts in his hands, and Daughter’s breath came hard into her throat. But in the close heat of the sleeping place, White Salmon again pushed his way between them, a ghost haunting.

  “My husband,” Daughter whispered, “there is something you must know.”

  Ghaden pressed his fingers to her lips, turned her so she was leaning against his chest, then lifted her into his lap as if she were child. His mouth was so close that his words we
re a soft wind against her ear.

  “My little wife,” he said, “I am sure Qung told you that my mother was First Men. Though I was raised by the River People, I understand First Men ways. You have had other men in your sleeping place.”

  It was not a question, and so Daughter knew she did not have to answer him, but she said, “Only one, and I thought he would be my husband, but Seal would not accept his brideprice.”

  Ghaden lifted his head from hers, and she raised her hand to her eyes, pressed her fingers against the lids to hold in her tears. What would K’os say, what would Seal do, if Ghaden threw her away even before the night was over?

  “Do you wish you were with him?” Ghaden asked.

  “No!”

  He made a sound in his throat, and Daughter was surprised to realize that he was laughing. “Speak quietly, wife. They will think you have refused me.”

  She turned herself to face him, straddling his lap, her legs wrapped around his waist. “I will miss my island.” They were words that she had never thought to say to him, but as little as she knew him, she had already begun to understand that Ghaden was a man to whom you could tell secrets. “I will not miss him.”

  “You are sure?” he asked.

  She raised her hands to stroke his face. “Forever I will be a good wife to you,” she told him.

  He leaned forward and laid her down against the sleeping furs, lowered himself over her. Then she could no longer see White Salmon’s face or even remember what he looked like. There was only Ghaden.

  When their lovemaking had ended, Ghaden fell asleep, a leg wrapped over her, a hand resting on her breast. For a time she lay awake, feeling her husband’s seed leak from her body.

  During all the advice K’os had given Daughter about bedding a man, she had never mentioned that a woman could also find pleasure. Perhaps it was a thing so rare that K’os herself had never experienced it.