by Sue Harrison
Today, the bay was full of men in iqyan, some fishing, others practicing with darts and harpoons. Several women fished from the beach with handlines, but most were gathered at the river end of the bay, taking red salmon.
Aqamdax noticed several traders’ iqyan drawn up on the beach. That was not unusual. There was still at least a moon, probably more, before storms would hinder travel. When some of the ache in her shoulders had subsided, she stood and continued toward the village.
Walrus Hunters often came to the village to trade. Since she was a child, Aqamdax had learned many of their words, as did all the First Men children. Sometimes Walrus Hunters took First Men wives, but usually when they did, the men lived in the First Men Village. Aqamdax wished her mother had gone with a Walrus trader. She probably would have returned by now, at least to visit.
Aqamdax carried the grass to the top of Qung’s ulax and laid it there. She saw Qung was not inside, so she hurried toward the beach. She would go to the salmon stream, do what she could to help Qung. In words loud enough for other women to hear, she would tell her that she had cut a large bundle of grass. Then they would know it was not laziness that had kept Aqamdax from the salmon.
She walked to the beach, stopped when she saw a group of men gathered around the traders’ iqyan. Each time traders came, she hoped they might be River men, but this late in the summer, she knew there was little chance, and so she felt no true disappointment to see the marks of Walrus traders on the iqyan bows. She turned her steps toward the salmon river. She would help Qung until it was time to tell stories, then they would help each other as they tried to guide the people back to old and sacred ways.
Sok knew she was Daes’s daughter. She looked so much like her that she had to be. But she was stronger than Daes. In her voice, even in the bones of her face, she was stronger. At first, she had spoken slowly, her words spaced with pauses. There were times when she spoke so softly that Sok could hardly hear what she was saying, but as the story grew, the woman also seemed to grow, until she sat so tall among them that he had to look up to see her face.
Now she spoke in a new voice, something that came from the top of the lodge. At first, Sok thought that there was someone outside who called down to them from the smoke hole. Then he realized that Daes’s daughter made both voices.
Ah, this woman would take Wolf-and-Raven’s heart even more than a birdskin parka or a shaman mask. Who would not want her as wife? Then Snow-in-her-hair would belong to him, if he could get Daes’s daughter away from her First Men husband. Her place as village storyteller gave her so much honor that no husband would willingly throw her away. Perhaps if her husband was a weak man, someone who did not understand the true value of things, he might consider some kind of trade, especially when Sok showed him the goods he had brought.
Sok was anxious for the stories to end, but they continued, Daes’s daughter alternating with a woman so old her face was as brown as a river otter’s. Tut sat between Sok and Chakliux, translating as the storytellers spoke, but the hard paddling of the day, the beach meeting with the hunters and chief of the First Men, the time spent making a crude shelter with caribou skins and their upturned iqyan, made Sok long for sleep. Sometime during the old woman’s last few stories, he closed his eyes and allowed Tut’s whispers to pull him into dreams.
He woke when those around him began to stand, and at first did not know where he was. Then he saw Tut. Chakliux was speaking to Cormorant, and Red Feather had joined a group of First Men, but Sok sought out Daes’s daughter. He watched for her husband, but no one seemed to claim her, though several hunters hovered over her, greed on their faces. Finally, when all the women and children had left the lodge, two men approached her. She spoke to them, her face shadowed in the lamplight. Tut also watched, and Sok asked her, “Which man is her husband?”
He waited while Tut, speaking in the throat-rich First Men tongue, asked a hunter.
“He tells us she has no husband,” Tut told Sok.
Sok did not hide his surprise. Daes’s daughter was not ugly. Her face was round, with a small chin and large eyes, a well-shaped nose, and when she smiled, which was seldom, you could see she had good teeth.
“She is a widow?” he asked, and when Tut repeated the question to the First Men hunter, the hunter laughed.
“She is a woman who has a different man in her bed each night,” Tut said to Sok, translating the hunter’s words. “He says that if you want her, you can probably have her, but for all the men she has known, she is barren.”
Sok nodded but tried to keep his interest hidden. The First Men hunter spoke again, and Sok impatiently waited for Tut to tell him what was said.
“She is called Aqamdax. Her father is dead. She lives with Qung, the old storyteller.”
The First Men hunter jutted out his chin toward the old one. The woman’s back was so humped, she had to tilt her head to look at anyone who stood in front of her. She had told many stories, and though Sok did not understand her words, he had heard the strength in her voice and sensed the honor of her place among these people.
The First Men hunter spoke again. This time he spoke in Walrus, his words broken and slow, though strangely easier for Sok to understand than when Cormorant or Red Feather spoke. “Qung much power. Food cache.” He laughed and drew a large circle with his arms. “Much full.”
He reverted to his own language and spoke long with Tut. Sok turned to Cormorant and Chakliux, the two speaking in the Walrus tongue. Chakliux spoke nearly as well as any Walrus Hunter, and Sok felt a quick barb of irritation.
Finally Tut pulled at Sok’s arm. “Listen,” she said, “this hunter says the young storyteller is called Aqamdax. Some years ago her mother left with a trader said to be of the River People. Do you know him?”
Sok shrugged. “There are many traders,” he said. “What is his name?”
Tut turned to the First Men hunter, asked Sok’s question.
The hunter spread his arms wide, shrugged, then went to talk to Aqamdax, but Sok stayed hidden in the shadows of the lodge. Tomorrow, he thought, when her stories have left her and she is only a woman, then I will speak to her.
Chapter Twenty-two
“I NEED TO KNOW the First Men word for grandmother,” Sok said to Tut.
Tut smiled at him. “You plan to do some trading?” she asked.
“What does it matter to you, old woman?”
“Perhaps it matters in many ways,” she told him. She had begun to wear her hair like the First Men women, hanging loose or pulled back into a thick roll at the base of her neck. She was a proud woman—something Sok had realized the first time he met her—and she held her head high. For some reason, she looked almost young now. Chakliux said she had found all three of her brothers still living and many nephews and nieces. “I do not want you to cheat my family.”
“I will cheat no one.”
For a moment she tilted her head, studied him. Finally she said, “I believe you. Say kukax. That is grandmother, but be careful how you use it. Some women do not want to be grandmother to a River man.” She walked away, looking back over her shoulder to smile at him and Sok knew that she was almost laughing.
They were the only traders visiting the First Men, though Tut told Chakliux that often whole villages of traders stayed in tents near the beach.
“It is a sheltered bay,” she had said. “A good stopping place between First Men villages on beaches to the west and the Walrus villages to the east.”
“I have heard it said that First Men live on islands all the way to the edge of the earth,” Chakliux had said.
Tut had shrugged. “Who can say? We know of villages a moon’s travel to the west. Storytellers say we once came from an island far out in the sea and that our hunters killed whales. If it is true, then somehow we have lost those powers.”
Cormorant and Red Feather laid out trade goods on mats near their upturned iqyan. They muttered that they had had no chance to replenish their stores since their last visit to th
e First Men. They had stopped at one village between the Walrus summer beach camp and this village, but the people had little there, only fish, grass mats. Chakliux had managed to trade for several rolls of dried sea lion throat, not enough for a chigdax, but a start. That was the best trade any of them made, and Sok had traded for nothing, holding all he had as bride price for the storyteller.
Chakliux squatted on his haunches and looked out at the water. The wind was small, and the bay was nearly flat. Two young men had come to the beach early, had pulled their iqyan from the racks and taken them out into the water. Fog lay over the inlet, pushed long fingers up the beach and into the low valleys between hill ridges. Chakliux watched the men until they were swallowed up in the gray. He wished he could take his own iqyax and paddle out with them, but he did not want to do something that would break taboos or show disrespect.
When they returned he would go to them, ask if he could look inside their iqyan, to see the size of ribs they used and how they attached the hatch coaming to the frame. Cormorant had told him they used sea lion skins instead of split walrus for their iqyan coverings. He wished he could speak the First Men language. He had so many questions to ask, but perhaps by the time they returned he could find Tut to translate as he spoke.
They had been here only one night, and already she seemed to belong again in the village. Her oldest brother gave her a place in his lodge. No, not lodge, ulax. That was what the First Men called their lodges. He would not be surprised if she decided to stay with the First Men, but he would miss her. She was outspoken like a child, and like a child seemed to delight in all things.
As though his thoughts had brought her, Chakliux saw Tut walk out of the fog, and with her an old woman, bent and stooped. Tut waved him to come, and he broke into a run, slowed by the sand under his feet.
“You remember Qung?” Tut asked when he approached them. “She wants to see your otter foot.”
A sudden tangle of beach peas wound around his ankles and he stumbled, but righted himself before he fell. He brushed sand from the palms of his hands and tried to stand with dignity, but Tut burst out laughing, and then so did he.
“Yes, I remember Qung,” he said. “The storyteller.”
Tut said something to the woman in the First Men tongue and Qung answered, her words carrying a sharpness that made Chakliux wonder if Qung were angry.
“She scolds me for my rudeness,” Tut said. “She tells me the Walrus Hunters have made me forget the polite ways of the First Men. So now then, I will be polite. What do you think of the fog? It is like this always here. I had almost forgotten. What do you think of the village? It is large and the people are strong, eh? Did you enjoy the stories last night?”
She did not pause long enough for Chakliux to answer, and finally said, “Now we are done with politeness. Show her your foot.”
Smiling at Tut’s strange ways, Chakliux pulled off his boot and unwrapped the hare fur pelts he used to cushion his foot. Qung bent so close to the ground that Chakliux was afraid she would tumble over. She spoke, her voice rising as though she asked a question.
“She wants to touch it,” Tut said to him.
“Tell her she may.”
Qung’s hand was cold against his skin. Again she spoke; again Tut translated. “She wants to know if you say chants, if you are trained in prayers and songs.”
“Tell her I am Dzuuggi. You know what Dzuuggi is?”
“Yes. A storyteller, as Qung is. Are you also shaman?”
“I claim no spirit powers. My strength comes from the stories I have learned and from my people’s riddles.”
Tut spoke to Qung and again Qung asked questions, her hands still on Chakliux’s foot. Finally, she straightened as much as she was able, groaning with the effort, and Tut said, “She wants a riddle. Not something about the River People, but something a First Men woman might be able to figure out.”
Chakliux thought for a moment, trying to remember some of the information Tut had given him about the First Men and their beaches, something simple that might be made into a riddle. Finally he said, “Look! What do I see? A fool follows its path.”
Tut told Qung, and the old woman raised her head, lifted her brows and smiled.
“Does she want the answer?”
“Let her think about the riddle for a time,” Tut said. “The First Men are a quiet people. They use up most of their words in their thoughts. She will ask if she wants to know.”
Qung pointed with her lips toward his foot, and Tut said, “She is grateful you let her see the foot.”
Then Qung turned and walked back into the fog.
“They ask about you,” Qung said as she worked her way slowly down the climbing log into the ulax.
Aqamdax looked up from the seal skin she was piercing with a birdbone awl. “Who?”
“Those Walrus traders.”
“They are the same ones that were here about a moon ago?”
“Two are.”
They had probably been told that she took many men into her bed. Aqamdax wondered what baubles they would offer her, then shook her head to rid it of such thoughts. There were still times when she could not sleep, but they had become fewer, and now that the village was about to have three story nights, she did not want the interference of men to pull the new stories she had learned from her mind.
“I do not want them to come here,” Aqamdax said.
“Even the two that are from the River People?”
Qung’s words jerked Aqamdax’s head as though it were an air-filled seal bladder tied on a string. “Two are River People? Do they understand our language? Did you speak to them? Do they know anything about my mother?”
“You ask too many questions,” Qung said, and stepped down from the last notch of the climbing log. She settled herself on a pillow of fox fur stuffed with goose feathers and said, “The big one and the small one, they are brothers. They are River. The small one has some special gift. His foot is like an otter foot with toes webbed, and he is a storyteller among his people. He Sings says the man is almost as good in an iqyax as a First Men hunter. The tall one I do not know much about. Some of the women say he wants a wife. Basket Keeper said he asked about you.”
“No one has asked about my mother?”
“Who would ask about your mother except you?”
“They understand the First Men language then?”
“No. I spoke to the otter one. The woman who came with them, Tutaqagiisix, she is one of us, married to a Walrus Hunter before you were born. Her brother is Small Lake. She has come back to stay with him. She translated the man’s words for me, and mine for him. He gave me a riddle. Do you want to hear it?”
Aqamdax folded away her seal skin and slipped the awl and finger protector into her ivory needle case. “Are the River men on the beach?” she asked.
“You do not want to hear the riddle?”
“The riddle?”
“The otter-foot man told me a riddle. It is a puzzle of words.”
“Yes, but not now. Save it for me.”
Aqamdax put on her sax and started up the climbing log.
“You should take something to trade. Traders give nothing away, not even information.” But it seemed that Aqamdax’s ears were closed to anything but her own thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-three
“TWO,” THE WALRUS TRADER said. “That is all. Look, the otter skin is old.” He held it to his nose, sniffed. “I can trade it to the Caribou People. They will not know the difference, but Walrus Hunters, other First Men, and even the River People will know. How could I give you more when I will get so little for it myself?”
White Hair lowered her head. Aqamdax had watched traders deal with old women before. Village hunters made sure they did not starve, but because their husbands were unable to hunt, the best animal hides no longer came to them. The women gradually traded off their best pelts—even those they had kept for themselves. If they had done a good job scraping and softening, and stored the pelt care
fully, an old one was nearly as valuable as one that was new, but why tell the man that? If he was any trader at all, he would know.
And, of course, he had not lied. Walrus Hunters and First Men would know the pelt was old, but they would also know its value.
“How much do you eat, grandmother?” the trader asked.
The old woman rubbed her hands over the surface of the dark dense fur but did not answer.
“Not much,” the trader said. “Two seal bellies of oil will last you a long time. Longer than it would have when you were young.”
“I have a husband,” White Hair said.
“Here then.” The trader pulled a thin ivory nose pin from one of his trade packs. “Take this, too. He will be happy.”
The woman reached for the nose pin, but Aqamdax clasped it first. The trader looked up into her face.
“Yes,” she said. “My uncle will like this.” She took the pin and dropped it into the old woman’s hands. “What did he offer you for that pelt, Aunt?” she asked.
“Two bellies,” White Hair said.
Aqamdax snorted. “You can get four, five caribou skins for this, can you not?” she asked the trader.
“It is old,” he replied, but stepped away from her, from the truth of her words.
Aqamdax picked up the fur. She held it to her nose, then turned toward the women closest to her. “Do you smell any rot?”
Several women stepped forward, fingered the pelt, sniffed it.
“No rot,” Calls Loud said. She was a bold woman, usually the first to cry out nasty names when Aqamdax passed her ulax, but now she smiled, a sly gladness in her eyes, a quick lift of her chin to show Aqamdax her approval.
Aqamdax pushed the fur into the trader’s face, held it against his nose. “Do you smell any rot?” she asked.
The trader pushed the fur away. “Take it. I do not want it,” he said.
“I would think this is one of the finest furs I have ever seen,” Aqamdax said. “I would think just to see this fur would be worth something.” She looked over her shoulder at Calls Loud, at Grass Eyes and Spotted Leaf. They murmured their agreement.