by Sue Harrison
Aqamdax pressed her lips together, bit at the insides of her cheeks. “She wants Biter dead. She has asked that they bring him to her for food.”
“Biter? No! Ghaden couldn’t stand it.”
“Listen, Yaa, even if I turn down Tikaani’s offer …”
“You can do that?”
“Be quiet and listen. I have to go back in soon. They will take Biter for food anyway, not yet but soon. The caches are getting low and winter has been hard. We have to show them that he is a dog worth keeping.
“I have a plan that might work, but there is something you must do. It will be easier now that Star is here.” She nodded toward the women’s lodge. “Tomorrow, I will leave the women’s lodge. The next day Tikaani wants my answer. That morning I want you to feed Biter and feed him well, then take him out to K’os’s trapline and leave him there. Afterward, go back and dress Ghaden warmly and make him play outside. Keep him outside until Biter comes back. You can do that?”
“Yes.”
Star’s voice, raised in complaint, came to them through the lodge walls. “I have to go inside,” Aqamdax said. “Do not forget. Two days from now. In the morning.”
“I will do it.”
Aqamdax scooped up an armload of wood, then crawled back into the lodge. She set the wood near the door, then listened to Star’s complaints about the snow she had brought in, the cold, and the laziness of those people who called themselves Sea Hunters.
When Aqamdax left the moon blood lodge and returned to K’os, the woman barely spoke to her. Aqamdax brought in wood, melted snow for water, fed K’os’s dogs, then she offered to check the traplines.
“You only want to steal my food for your husband,” K’os said.
Aqamdax lowered her head, pulled on her boots. The woman was right. She did plan to steal food, but only one hare. Her stomach twisted as she suddenly pictured each snare gaping and empty.
“I will bring back what I find,” Aqamdax said, then pulled on her parka. She took a pair of snowshoes from the lodge entrance and carried them as she walked through the village to Star’s lodge. Yaa was outside.
“Do I bring Biter now?” Yaa whispered as Aqamdax walked by.
“Not until I am out of the village,” Aqamdax said, stooping to put on the snowshoes. “Take him to K’os’s traps and stay with him until he is following my trail, then go back and get Ghaden ready.”
She straightened and went on.
The first snare was empty, the string still tied into its loop with fine strands of grass. The next snare held a hare, stiff and frozen. Aqamdax sighed her relief, loosed it from the snare, brushed off the snow, and slipped it under her parka to thaw. The rest of the trapline was empty.
Aqamdax started back toward the village, and at the halfway point, stopped to wait for Biter. Yaa should have released him by now.
Aqamdax waited until the cold began to seep into her feet, then finally she walked to the next snare, and the next. Still Biter did not come. Could Yaa have forgotten? No, Yaa was as reliable as any grown woman. Most likely, Biter had been distracted by some animal.
She decided to see if she could find Biter’s tracks. If he had followed some animal into the woods, she might yet find him. At the edge of the woods, she found his trail, then noticed that there was another line of tracks a short distance to her left. They were Biter’s. He had turned and doubled back.
Fool! Aqamdax said to herself. Do you think your plan would have worked anyway? Someone would have realized the hare was killed by a snare rather than a dog, even if you thawed it enough to make it look like a fresh kill.
She had taught Biter when he was half-grown to hunt small animals and bring them back to her or Ghaden, but in this village, he was almost always tied. He had not hunted for a long time. Even if she had been able to get him to take the hare back to Ghaden, some old woman would probably claim Biter had robbed her snares.
She pulled the hare from her parka and tied it on the stringer she had fastened to a belt at her waist, then continued to the village. She rounded the curved path that led to Star’s lodge, then stopped. A small group of women were gathered outside the lodge. Then she saw Biter. The dog sat on his haunches, his head lifted, tongue out. A large hare, its neck discolored with blood, was lying on the ground beside him, left at the entrance of the lodge, just as a hunter leaves his kill for his wife.
Several of the older women turned, saw Aqamdax and looked away, but she could hear what they said to one another, so was able to understand that Biter had brought the hare to Ghaden, the boy sitting outside the lodge, digging in the snow, playing as children play.
Finally one of the younger women turned to Aqamdax, asked her, “This dog, did it come from the Near River Village?”
“Yes. One of the elders gave him to Ghaden.”
Then many women were asking questions: How old was Biter? Who had taught him to hunt? Did the animal ever eat his kill and refuse to give it to the boy?
Aqamdax answered the questions as best she could, hiding a smile in her cheek when she realized that some of the older women were speaking to her for the first time, women who usually would not consider talking to a slave, let alone a slave owned by K’os.
Finally, as the group got larger, several men joined them, and they, too, began to ask questions. Aqamdax heard Tikaani’s voice, the man working his way to the center of the crowd until he stood before the dog. His words were for Biter, a quick praise, something one hunter might say to another. He leaned forward, reached for the hare.
Biter bared his teeth, growled and set one paw over the animal, then he picked it up in his mouth, dragged it to Ghaden’s lap and dropped it.
Tikaani tilted his head back and laughed.
“Who taught the dog to hunt like this?” he asked, and Yaa, standing beside Ghaden, one hand lying on her brother’s shoulder, lifted her small chin toward Aqamdax and, speaking in a clear voice, said, “Our sister, Aqamdax.”
The next night Aqamdax was no longer slave but wife. Ignoring K’os’s angry eyes, she moved her few belongings into Star’s lodge, then helped Night Man move his things from the hunters’ lodge. Even Star’s mother, Long Eyes, seemed to come out of the strange dreaming world she lived in and prepared food, though she called Ghaden by one of her dead son’s names. She seemed not to see Aqamdax, even walked into her several times, then pulled back, startled but staring through her, as though Aqamdax were as clear as water.
That night, after Tikaani had left the lodge and Ghaden and Yaa were asleep—Biter, in his new status as hunter, was now allowed to sleep in Ghaden’s bed—Aqamdax rolled out her mats beside those of her husband.
Though she had lived with the River People for nearly a year, she had never grown accustomed to the way they slept, all in one place, with no curtains to close off sleeping areas, to separate husbands and wives from other members of the family. She noticed that in politeness Star and Long Eyes had turned their backs on them, unlike K’os, who seemed to derive some strange pleasure from watching when Aqamdax had been forced to please a man. But why judge the Cousin People by K’os?
Aqamdax sat down beside Night Man. He was lying against a backrest of woven willow, his bad shoulder cushioned with a pad of soft wolf fur. He was thin and pale, a tall man with a large beaked nose that grew straight out from the bridge and bent halfway down so it reminded Aqamdax of an elbow. His eyes were the lighter brown of the River People, the same color as Chakliux’s eyes, and they were set deeply into their sockets. His mouth was full and wide and sometimes quirked up into a short quiet laugh, and she had noticed that when the pain from his shoulder was most severe, he pressed his lips together, drawing them tight across his teeth.
Unlike the First Men, the River People made a ceremony of marriage, more than just a father or uncle pushing the hunter and woman together in laughter into a sleeping place. They had been given a blessing of words, then afterward a feast celebration. Since Night Man could not bear the jostling of a crowd, he and Aqamdax had stayed in the lodge, wa
ited for village people to come to them.
Aqamdax had no new clothes for the celebration, though Star gave her a slim belt of caribou hide embroidered with red-dyed caribou hair and small disk beads made of shell. Aqamdax had allowed her hair to hang loose, had worn her hoodless inner parka, ground squirrel fur facing out, and tied the belt at her waist. Star’s mother had stayed in the lodge with them, humming some strange song that sounded like wind moaning.
Night Man, like most hunters, spoke only when necessary. When they were first in the lodge, alone except for Long Eyes, Aqamdax had leaned close to her new husband, whispered, “Thank you for making me your wife.” But even then he only grunted, nodded, averted his eyes.
For a brief moment she thought of Chakliux, a man with whom she had discussed many things, had argued and joked and made riddles. She fingered the twisted string of sinew she still wore on her wrist. K’os had not deemed it worth taking, unlike Aqamdax’s necklaces. Aqamdax’s sudden longing for Chakliux, his gentle wit, his stories, was as sharp as a knife, but she reminded herself of her life with K’os, the nights she was forced to take men into her bed, the cold days she was sent on foolish errands. Then she could see Night Man only with gratitude, could only be glad she was no longer slave.
Yaa turned on her bed and squeezed her eyes shut. She did not want Aqamdax or Night Man to think she was watching them, though she was curious about what they would do on this first night together. She had seen her father in bed with her mother when she was very small, had watched them moving together and sometimes heard them make happy moans in their throats. She wondered if it would be the same with Aqamdax and Night Man.
Night Man did not look strong like most hunters. He walked slowly and used a walking stick like her father had. Night Man was young, but he did not seem young. He had been hurt somehow, one of the Cousin River girls had told her, though mostly the girls would not play with her, seldom spoke to her. That was all right. She had enough to do, trying to please Star and take care of Ghaden, and, until today, worry about Aqamdax. It would be better now, though she felt sorry that Aqamdax had to be wife to a man who was probably too sick to hunt, a man who smelled strange, almost like rotten meat.
She could hear the two whispering together, then Aqamdax was on her knees in front of Night Man and the two of them pulled off his shirt. Yaa forgot to keep her eyes closed, opened them wide when Night Man cried out as the shirt slipped over his shoulder. A wave of the rotten meat smell wafted across the lodge, then Aqamdax was helping Night Man settle himself against the backrest.
Yaa suddenly remembered she was supposed to be asleep. She closed her eyes and listened as hard as she could, even slowing her breath so it would not cover the sounds of their voices.
She heard a rustle next to her bed, then realized Aqamdax was beside her.
“I know you are pretending, sister,” Aqamdax said, but her voice was gentle. “Open your eyes and help me.”
Slowly Yaa opened her eyes.
“Where does Star keep the medicines?” Aqamdax asked. “Where does she keep scraped hides?”
Yaa scrambled out of her bedding furs and brought Aqamdax an armful of hides, some with fur, some without. Aqamdax chose a few smaller ones, well-scraped on both sides.
Yaa stood and watched as Aqamdax moved cooking stones into the hearth coals and stoked the fire. “My husband is sick, and I do not want to wait until morning to help him,” she told Yaa, then poured water into an empty cooking bag, ready to add the stones when they were hot.
“Will he die?” Yaa asked.
“No, he will not die,” Aqamdax told her. “I will not let him.”
K’os had not gone to the feast. Why celebrate? What respect would come from allowing a woman, not even human, to be wife?
Besides, who could say where Aqamdax’s loyalty would lie? She had lived with the Near Rivers. If she heard K’os’s plans, would she somehow contrive to warn them? There was little danger that she could do so now, when both villages were in winter camps, but what if the young hunters decided, after this hard winter, that they were not strong enough to fight in the spring? Then they would have to wait through the summer—what good would it do to attack when so many families were scattered to various fish camps? But during summer, there were times when Near River and Cousin River People were less than half a day’s walk apart. What would keep Aqamdax from slipping away to warn them?
Of course, K’os might be able to convince the hunters to attack before the village families went to their fish camps. If she could not do that, she would have to kill the Sea Hunter woman. That would be difficult, especially now that Aqamdax lived in a lodge with many other people. If food was poisoned, too many would die; others in the village might be suspicious. She had to be more careful now. She had used poison too freely when she was young. But she had found that sometimes there were better ways to achieve revenge than by killing, and often there were better ways to kill than by doing it herself.
Aqamdax used hot poultices to draw out the poison in Night Man’s shoulder. The wound had rotted deep into the muscle of his arm. There were painful lumps in his neck and down his side, even at the joint between his left leg and groin. She was able to draw some of the poison out, and by morning he said the pain was less. Even his eyes were clearer.
“You are a healer,” he had whispered during the night, but she had told him she was only a wife.
Near morning, Night Man slept, and Aqamdax also allowed herself a few moments of sleep, listening, even through her dreams, to the sound of his breathing.
She awoke with Star standing over them, her nose wrinkled at the wooden bowl of clotted blood and pus.
Star poked Aqamdax with one toe and asked, “What did you do to him?”
“I cleaned his wound,” Aqamdax answered, and sat up. She had slept in her ground squirrel parka, without bedding furs, content to be inside a warm lodge.
“I do not want Ghaden to see this mess,” Star said.
Aqamdax nodded. Star was right. It would not be a good thing. She put on her outer parka and carried the bowl and the worst of the hide rags to the refuse pile just beyond the women’s place.
When she returned to the lodge, Night Man was awake. His eyes brightened when he saw her, and he held out his good hand. “Wife,” he said, and the word was warm in Aqamdax’s heart. “I am hungry.”
“You know where our cache is?” Star asked her.
“Yes.”
“Good. Get what you need for him and yourself. Most of what we had in the lodge was eaten last night.”
The cache was close to K’os’s, a square of logs held high on log legs. It was a strange way to keep food, Aqamdax thought, but then the River People did most things in strange ways. Their boats were rafts of trees tied together. They were so heavy, it took several men to carry one around rapids and shallow water.
Each cache had a ladder—two long poles tied together with crossbars made of stout branches. They were easy to climb, even with an armload, and could easily be taken down so animals did not get into the cache. She climbed up, untied the door string and opened the cache. It was still at least half full. Even K’os’s did not have that much meat, and K’os made sure any man who slept with her or Aqamdax paid in caribou or fish.
Aqamdax pulled out a caribouskin storage container, opened it and removed a frozen chunk of meat. Near the door were baled stacks of dried and frozen fish. She took several fish to give to Biter.
She stopped at the top of the cache and looked carefully around, checking for clouds of frozen breath that might mean wolves or a loose dog had followed and were waiting for her to come down with meat, but there was nothing except the drift of smoke from the roof holes of each lodge and the gray twilight of morning. She fastened the door and climbed down.
Walking back to the lodge, she met other women. She lowered her head, prepared to hear their abusive words, as she had every morning, tongues clicking against the roofs of their mouths as they spoke about the strangeness of th
ose who were not River People. But this morning the women greeted her as they greeted one another. One even stopped to ask how Night Man was feeling. Then Aqamdax saw K’os, the woman walking toward her, eyes straight ahead, as though no one was worthy of her gaze.
One of the children had told Aqamdax that K’os was old, and she must be, to be Chakliux’s mother, but her face did not look old. Only her hands, gnarled and dark, told of her age. Aqamdax held her head high, meeting the woman as wife to widow. She expected that K’os would pass her as she had other women, without speaking, without even a flash of the eyes to show recognition, but she stopped, extended a mittened hand and said, “Tikaani tells me your husband is in much pain.”
“The wound has never healed,” Aqamdax said, hoping her words were not an insult to the one recognized as healer. When K’os said nothing, Aqamdax, too eager to fill the quietness between them, asked, “Does this village have a shaman who knows the chants and prayers that might drive away evil spirits?”
K’os’s eyes darkened. “He died last fall,” she said. “Right after we returned from our summer fish camp. He was old, but he did not know much. I have plants that will help Night Man. I gave some to his mother before winter started. If I had known he was not getting better, I would have brought more.”
Surely the woman understood that giving things to Night Man’s mother was worse than giving them to a child, Aqamdax thought. Besides, she did not trust K’os. She might decide to give poison rather than medicine.
“I will bring you some.”
Aqamdax nodded her thanks, then continued toward Star’s lodge. She would accept K’os’s medicine but not give it to Night Man. Perhaps her own poultices would be enough to help him grow strong again. Aqamdax entered the lodge, saw that her husband was sitting up, his lips tightened in concentration as he and Ghaden worked together to string rawhide into the web of a snowshoe.
It is good to be wife, Aqamdax thought. Had she ever wanted anything more than that?
Chapter Forty-one