Song of the River

by Sue Harrison

  Sometimes it was almost too difficult for any man to be Dzuuggi. The moons with the Walrus and First Men, a time when he was only hunter, had been good.

  He envied Sok. What man could want more than a woman who honored him? Red Leaf and Aqamdax, two good women. It was sad Sok could not keep Aqamdax. Yet every man must value his life, and if Sok had not given her to the Walrus shaman, the shaman might have killed him or cursed him with illness.

  Of course, when Aqamdax refused to come with them except as Sok’s wife, he could have left her with her own people. But if they had not brought her back, would the Walrus shaman have allowed Chakliux to stay in the village if he could not return to the Near River People? So, then, though Sok had earned trade goods, he had also helped Chakliux.

  As Chakliux passed Aqamdax’s tent, he heard the soft sounds of a song, something she had sung when they were in the iqyan. He felt his heart twist as though touched by her sorrow, but told himself that soon she would feel happiness in being wife to the village shaman, joy in finding new stories here in this village.

  It was not until he came to the beach that he heard the first wails of women mourning.

  THE FIRST MEN VILLAGE

  “I know you,” the old woman said. She leaned forward, and because of the large hump that deformed her back, Cen thought she might topple face first to lie at his feet, but she twisted her head so she was looking up, eyes squinted into slits. His heart gave a lurch, then he chided himself. Was he afraid of an old woman?

  “I have been here before,” he said boldly. “Do you see anything you want?” He swept his hand out over the trade goods he had displayed beside his iqyax.

  For a moment she looked down, and he thought he had distracted her, but again she turned her head to study him, again she said, “I know you. You were here …” She paused. “Four summers ago. No, five.”

  “Grandmother, I have been to many villages in five summers. I cannot say for sure that I was here. Perhaps. I did make a trip out this way about that time, though I have not been back until now.”

  She seemed not to hear him, and instead began to murmur to herself. She fingered his trade goods and finally left. Then the younger women were looking, all speaking at the same time, several of them snapping their dark eyes at him, in insult, he knew, but also to see if he noticed their impertinence. These First Men women were not ones to throw themselves into a man’s bed, but usually, in most First Men villages, there were one or two who might show favor to a trader. He counted on finding such a one at this village as well. In the privacy of her dark sleeping place, he would ask about Aqamdax, would say that some other trader claimed she was good in a man’s bed. The young woman, in her eagerness to show Cen she could please better than Aqamdax, would probably answer all of Cen’s questions—and his needs.

  Through the day, Cen traded, building his supplies with First Men trade goods that would bring much to him among the Caribou and Tundra People, but no woman gave sly hints that she would welcome him.

  Later, when hunters were trading, Cen ventured to ask if any woman in the village gave hospitality.

  One hunter smiled at him, showing a broken front tooth and high pink gums. “You are too late,” he said. “There was one, but a River trader came and took her as wife.”

  Cen shook his head. River trader? They seldom came this far. Though their log rafts allowed them to travel the quieter rivers, they were not able to handle the harsh winds and high waves of the North Sea. Of course, a man could travel overland, but why waste so many moons in order to visit a few First Men villages? In the same amount of time he could trade in many Caribou and River settlements, even perhaps cross the great rivers to the land of the North Tundra People, those hunters who had no true villages but lived in thin tents, following the wind.

  But Cen reminded himself that the First Men considered any trader who was not Walrus or First Men to be River. Did they not also call him a River trader?

  “So there is no one?” Cen asked.

  The First Men hunter shrugged, held out his hands, then picked up several bone-tipped bird darts, set them down again. Perhaps, Cen thought, it would be best to come out and ask, though often when someone was named, people acted with suspicion and refused to say anything. He could not truly remember what she looked like, though she had often been in his thoughts on this journey. He had watched all the young village women, seeking one who might look like Daes, but none had. Of course, daughters did not always look like mothers. Perhaps she had grown to look like that father who had drowned, or like one of her grandmothers.

  He leaned toward the hunter who had again gone back to the bird darts. “Two for a handful of bola stones,” Cen told the man.

  The hunter looked at him with surprise in his eyes.

  “But do not tell other hunters until I have left. I cannot do that for everyone. I would have nothing to trade at other villages.”

  The man held a hand up, palm out. “Save them for me. I will be back.”

  “Choose the ones you want,” Cen told him.

  The hunter chose his darts, each fletched with silver-white shearwater feathers. Cen tucked them under his upturned iqyax, then waited, offering other hunters other deals, bickering and challenging, always trying to make them feel they had bested him, that their trading talents were greater than his.

  Finally the hunter returned, a double handful of sharp andesite bola stones bound in a square of seal skin. Cen studied them, turning several in his hand. Without speaking, he took the darts from the iqyax and handed them to the man. Then he leaned forward and, speaking in a low voice, asked, “There is a woman I have been told about. They call her Aqamdax.”

  The hunter began to laugh. “You have been told,” he said. “Yes, I am sure you have been told.” He laughed again. “There is not a man in this village who does not miss that one.”

  “She is no longer here?” Cen asked.

  “She is the one who left with the River trader. He claimed to want her for her stories, but no one in this village believed that.”

  “So she had no First Men husband?”

  “No.”

  “And no brothers or uncles?”

  “No one. The chief hunter took her into his ulax for a time, but finally she stayed with old Qung.” He lifted his head toward a group of women who had settled themselves on a grassy knoll above the beach. “The old one there at the center of the group.”

  She was the humpback who had claimed to know him. She sat on her haunches, her head bent so far forward it appeared to rest on her upraised knees. Though he could not hear what she said, Cen could tell she was speaking.

  “She is our village storyteller. Aqamdax went to her to learn. The women were not happy about that, but she did well. Her stories were good to hear.”

  The man continued to speak, telling Cen about Aqamdax’s talents, in storytelling and in bed, but soon Cen no longer heard. Why listen? Aqamdax could not help him. He had wasted his time coming to this village, and now he had to return, risking his life again in the North Sea. Worse than that, he had to make a new plan, a way to get revenge on the River People—and to take Ghaden, for what father would allow his son to be raised by an enemy?

  THE WALRUS VILLAGE

  The hunter’s spear was tipped with a bone and clamshell point stained the color of old blood. He held it just below Aqamdax’s jaw, the point pressing into her skin.

  Several Walrus Hunters had brought her from the summer tent. They walked her out of the village and told her in a mixture of Walrus and First Men to stand at the edge of the beach, then all but one left. That one now stood between her and the village, as though she were a danger to those who lived there, as though she must be held at bay with threats and weapons.

  Women gathered behind the hunter and shouted out their anger, but Aqamdax could also hear high thin wails coming from the village. Were they mourning cries?

  Had someone died? Were the Walrus a people who killed to show their sorrow? She knew of wives who
died grieving the loss of a husband or a child, of elders who, on losing a son, went to their sleeping places and waited for death. But why kill? For revenge, yes, but in sorrow?

  Her heart beat so rapidly it made her hands and arms shake. She took a long breath, tried to see beyond the hunter to find Chakliux or even Sok, but she saw only the Walrus women, crowded together in a close circle.

  She thought back to her own father’s death, remembered how another person’s smile would make her lash out in anger. How could anyone smile when her father was dead? Did they not feel the sorrow that had burned her heart until it was nothing more than a hard, dark cinder?

  So if these Walrus were mourning, perhaps they would lose some of their anger when she shared their pain.

  Then, in spite of the spear at her throat, in spite of the old women who leaned in to spit at her, Aqamdax lifted her voice into the ululation that was the First Men’s mourning song.

  By the time she saw Chakliux, the spear had been withdrawn and the women had joined her mourning cries.

  Aqamdax sat between them without speaking, without looking at either of them. Chakliux could feel her anger, and Sok’s. Old Tusk was chosen to watch them. He had taken them to an open stretch of beach a short distance from the Walrus Hunter Village. He had threatened to tie their wrists and ankles, but had left the leather thongs lying at his feet. Though he did not bind them, he thrust his spear toward them in quick jabs if they tried to speak.

  Old Tusk did not look at Chakliux, but now and again made quiet comments about wind and tides, as if they were hunters sitting together to watch the sea.

  For a time Chakliux listened to him, but finally he asked, “Who died?”

  Old Tusk raised his spear, hissed, but said, “Who do you think? That one she was to marry.”

  “The shaman?” Sok asked.

  Old Tusk lowered the point of his spear so it was only a hands-breadth from Sok’s throat. “You are not allowed to talk,” Old Tusk said. His eyes shifted to Chakliux. “They think the woman killed him.”

  “How could she do such a thing? She was in a lodge all night,” Chakliux said.

  Old Tusk lowered his spear. “Some say she is a shaman. Others think she holds evil spirits.”

  “The shaman was old. He just died,” Sok said.

  Old Tusk shrugged his shoulders. “Some say that is true.”

  “So the elders will decide whether or not she killed him?” Chakliux asked.

  “They will decide.”

  “Then what will happen?”

  “They might let you leave. They might kill you. Perhaps they will kill only the woman.”

  “There is nothing you can do?”

  “How can I let you go if you killed our shaman?”

  “We killed no one!” Sok said, his words almost a shout.

  Old Tusk lowered his spear once more to Sok’s neck. “Be quiet. You cannot talk,” Old Tusk told him. And again he was guard, not friend, watching them carefully, shifting his spear to point at one, then another, and lifting his eyes on occasion toward the edge of the village where the elders had gathered to make their decision.

  Aqamdax was thirsty; the wind had dried her throat, even her eyes. It would be good to have some water before she died.

  That morning, before they had come for her, she had been hungry, but now she did not think she could eat.

  She should not have lifted her voice in mourning. She should have been glad to let the Walrus man kill her. There were worse ways to die than by the quick thrust of a spear.

  How foolish she had been to leave her village. Even the years she had spent in He Sings’s ulax had been better than her life since she had left.

  Who was a better teacher than Qung? Who had more patience? If the Walrus killed Aqamdax, all that learning would be lost. Qung was old. Would she live long enough to train another storyteller? Perhaps thinking Aqamdax had a long life yet to live, Qung would be in no hurry to teach someone else. Perhaps she would wait too long, and many of their people’s stories would be lost.

  Aqamdax looked up at the Walrus man who guarded them. He was a young man, his face made dark with a line of tattoos across his nose and cheeks. He had pushed back the hood of his parka, and Aqamdax could see that his hair was greased and pulled into a tight braid on either side of his head.

  She began to speak, knowing her words might bring the spear, but perhaps they would also float to her village, so Qung would understand she must teach another to be storyteller.

  “I am here, Qung,” Aqamdax said, speaking in the First Men tongue. “It might soon be said that the Walrus killed me. It might soon be told in ulas that I am dead.”

  The Walrus Hunter growled out in anger, but Aqamdax spoke more loudly, and when she had finished her message to Qung, she began to tell stories. If she must die, then why not die as storyteller?

  From the edge of her eye, she saw the Walrus Hunter move his spear close to her face, but she did not stop speaking. Her words were in her own voice, then in the voice of sea otters and of the wind, in the voice of children and hunters. She closed her eyes so she would not see the spear, closed her eyes so she would not stop speaking when the clamshell cut into her throat, so her words would flow even as her blood spilled.

  PART THREE

  I LISTEN TO SOK, this man I must again call husband. His face is layered with a thick coat of grease. He hates the gnats, he says, though there are not that many of them. A person can scoop a hand before the eyes and clear a path for seeing. Who needs more than that?

  Gnats stick to his face like knots of black hair, and I hate to hear him call me to his bed.

  I try to see him as he was in my village, his hair smooth and shining, his arms sleek with muscle, legs as thick and strong as the driftwood climbing log that leads from Qung’s ulax.

  On the journey to the Walrus village, we slept under his iqyax, its curved back like the shell of a clam, shiny and wet from the tide flats.

  But now I see myself as clam, dug up and waiting. His hands seek their way through the feathers and skins of my sax, under careful seams and small stitches to my bare legs. He enters me, devours me, then he sleeps, head resting on my head, his grease-killed gnats pressed into my hair.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE

  CHAKLIUX HAD TAKEN HIS iqyax up the Near River, waited two handfuls of days for Sok and Aqamdax, who had walked with the dogs from the Walrus Hunter Village. They had camped with him last night. This morning, after Chakliux had hidden the iqyax high in the sheltering branches of a black spruce and covered it with bark, they started out together to the Near River Village. They had less than a day’s walk, most of it along a trail the Near River People had made through the brush that grew beside the river.

  Sok told him that Aqamdax had been no trouble, that though at first she was afraid of the dogs, she soon learned to secure their packs and to tie them so they wouldn’t gnaw away their ropes, how much to feed them so they wouldn’t be lazy the next day. Already, she knew the River words all dogs understood. But though Sok spoke of his wife with praise, Chakliux did not have to look hard to see the anger in Aqamdax’s eyes, the disdain. When she accepted something from Sok’s hands, or followed him meekly to his sleeping blankets, he saw that she mocked him with curled lips and slitted eyes.

  What else should Sok expect? Chakliux asked himself. Aqamdax had been tricked into becoming wife, had been given to a people who almost killed her, and even then, Sok had done nothing to save her.

  Though her mockery displeased Chakliux, he, too, found reason to praise her. How many women—how many hunters—would have thought to join the mourners’ song when their lives were threatened? When she was accused of causing the death of that old one they called shaman, she had not denied it, but used her storytelling voices to show the people her powers.

  How could the Walrus Hunters risk killing her when she might be able to seek revenge? Without their shaman to guide them, how could they protect themselves?


  Chakliux had seen the dead man. He had been curled like a child, hands clutched over his chest. There was no mark of fire or knife, no fear caught in the open eyes. He had been an old man. Old men die. Why think Aqamdax did it? He had said as much to Sok when Sok did not want to take Aqamdax with them, had reminded Sok that if the woman truly did have powers, most likely she would have killed them rather than the shaman. So to save her life, and perhaps theirs as well, they agreed to leave, agreed to take back all their trade goods, even Snow Hawk and Gray, the dogs they had brought from the Near River Village.

  Old Tusk told Chakliux that they would place the shaman’s body in the lodge where Aqamdax had stayed, then would burn the place over him when the days of mourning had ended. If a woman could kill a shaman, what hope did anyone have of standing against her powers? Had she not walked across the floor of that lodge, her power seeping out at each step? Better to send that power away in smoke so it would settle far from the Walrus Hunters, who always tried to live lives of respect.

  Yaa was the first in the village to see them. She was checking her mother’s trapline, the one she set for hares near the riverbank. Ghaden trailed behind her, Biter at his side. The boy was as quiet as a shadow, crowding close each time she stopped and staying three steps back when she walked. She had just found the second hare, the animal strangled in the trap’s clever sinew loop, when she heard the sound of brush snapping. Her first thought was of bears, so she pulled Ghaden close to her, crouched down, gripped the scruff of Biter’s neck and clamped his muzzle closed with one hand.

  Then the leaves parted and she recognized Sok. The Cousin River man, Chakliux, walked with him, and behind them was a woman, tall and dark-skinned, who wore a strange feathered garment. Almost, Yaa called out to them; almost, she spoke a welcome, but then did not. She did not know the woman. With her dark-feathered parka, she might be some relative of Raven. Why draw the attention of one so powerful as that? Yaa let them pass.

  Once they were gone, Yaa wanted to run and tell everyone in the village what she had seen, but she knew Brown Water would scold her for leaving without checking and resetting the traps. Even her mother would be angry with her. There were only three more. She looked back to be sure Ghaden was following her. He walked with one hand entwined in Biter’s fur, the other rubbing his eyes. She stopped, knelt down in front of him.