by Sue Harrison
“Shut your mouth and look at this,” Ligige’ told him.
Still muttering, he squatted beside her.
“Look. This is what killed the dog.” She held up one of the balls of fat, and he took it from her, turned it in his hands.
“This? Is it poison?”
“Break it open.”
He took off a mitten and stuck his thumbnail into the fat. He jumped as the coiled ivory suddenly straightened, flinging bits of fat and the sour contents of the dog’s stomach into their faces.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Ligige’ asked him.
“I have heard of it. North Tundra hunters use them to kill wolves. Wolves eat like dogs. They swallow without chewing. The heat of their bellies melts the fat and releases the strip of ivory. They bleed to death, if they are lucky. Sometimes the wound festers….”
Ligige’ nodded. “So there is no evil spirit killing these dogs,” she said.
Blue-head Duck studied the ivory, plucked at the sharpened point with his thumbnail. “Do I tell the elders?” he finally asked.
“If you tell the elders, then soon whoever did this will know that you know.”
Blue-head Duck nodded. “Perhaps I will wait, though it might cost our village more dogs. Will you keep the ivory for me, and these?” He pointed to the balls of fat that were still intact.
“I will keep them.”
“Someplace cold.”
“I am not a fool.”
“No,” he said. He smiled at her. “You are not a fool.” He stood and poked at the dog with his foot. “I will get my daughter’s husband to take this outside the village … unless you want the meat.”
“No,” Ligige’ said. “I do not want the meat. Tell your daughter she can have it. She is carrying a child. I have only myself to feed.”
When Blue-head Duck left, she placed the ivory strips and balls of fat in an old fishskin basket. She set the basket just inside her entrance tunnel, packed snow around it, then went into her lodge.
Ligige’ was hungry, and her bladder was uncomfortably full, but she sat for a long time beside the hearth fire, staring into the flames.
Chapter Forty-two
THE NORTH SEA
HE HAD LEFT BEFORE they said he should. The ice in the bay had gone out, driven into the North Sea by high storm winds, but when the hunters took their iqyan beyond the inlet, they said the ice still floated in chunks the size of an ulax roof. They told Chakliux there was a slush between the floes that a man could guide an iqyax through, but wind at the wrong time, in the wrong direction, might drive the floes together, crush an iqyax as if it were no more than a sea urchin shell.
They told him one moon, maybe a little more, then he should go, but Chakliux followed them into the ice, learned how to maneuver his iqyax around the floes.
He wanted to check the beaches and to stop again at the Walrus Hunter Village, to see if Aqamdax had come to them during the winter. Each night, his sleep was disturbed by dreams of her bones lying without honor somewhere between the Near River Village and this village that was her home. How could he wait?
From full moon to new moon—three handfuls of days—he had paddled without problems, a strong south wind driving the ice from the shore. Each night he had found a good beach, had slept under his iqyax, in the lee of its tight skin. But then the wind changed, packing the ice back into the beaches, and freezing the floes into a hard solid sheet, forcing Chakliux to paddle far beyond the shores.
Day turned to night and back to day again. His body ached in weariness, but he was afraid that if he slept the iqyax would turn sideways to the waves and flip him upside down in the sea. Under the guidance of Day Breaker, he had learned to right himself if he flipped, but he was still uneasy in the skill. Better to stay awake. To watch.
The First Men had taught him how to carve a bailing tube, so much easier to handle than the wooden bowl he had once used. The tube was longer than his arm, wrist to elbow, narrow at both ends, flaring out wider in the center. He could lower it into the iqyax, place his mouth over one end and suck, drawing the tube full of water. He had learned to lift the tube by clamping his teeth around it and picking up his head, then blowing the water out. The last few days in the iqyax, water had seeped in almost constantly, and he had been very glad for the bailing tube, and always afraid that a shard of ice would pierce the softening sides of his iqyax.
At the end of the next day the winds calmed, and he found a lead as wide as his iqyax was long. It stretched toward land as far as he could see, and the ice on either side of the open water was thin enough to break with his paddle. He had heard First Men stories of hunters caught in leads, their iqyan crushed when the winds shifted, but he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and started paddling, working as fast as he could to reach land before the calm ended. The lead soon narrowed in thickening ice, so that Chakliux had to use his hand ax to chop space enough for himself to turn around. He paddled back out to sea and in the calm waters paddled east, telling himself he did not need sleep.
Finally, he could no longer lift his arms, and he knew there was no choice but to tie his paddle to the deck of the iqyax and follow the dreams that called him.
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
K’os hid herself well so they did not know she watched. Why remind them that she held the power of life and death over every man and woman, every child? Why chance that her power would overshadow their own and consume their ability with this new weapon she had given them?
Already, few of them spoke of where their bows came from. Surely not from her. Had they not made them with their own hands? Carved the wood themselves, strengthened it with strips of caribou hide? Had they not twisted the sinew strings, made the small notched spears that those bows threw so far and so quickly?
Let them pretend. She knew who had brought the bow to their village. Surely that was enough. At least for now. At least until they had accomplished what she wanted.
She watched as the men practiced. Arrow after arrow pierced the center of the padded caribou hide they used as target. She watched and held in her joy. They were ready, and soon she would give them more than caribou hide to shoot at.
Tikaani lowered his bow and nodded his head at Three Furs. The new arrowheads were what they had needed. He felt his chest swell in pride, as though the idea had been his rather than his brother Night Man’s.
Their first points had been of stone. Less than half the size of those they made for throwing spears, they had still weighed down the arrows so they curved too quickly in their flight and fell short of most targets.
Night Man had spent many days during the winter knapping various stones into arrowheads. None were light enough. Finally, he made several of bone. They were light but fragile.
It was not worth worrying about, Tikaani had told him. They could use stone heads for close targets, bone for those farther away and for smaller game, like geese. But Night Man had continued to work, and Tikaani did not discourage him, hoping that the man forgot his pain as he spent the dark winter lost in thoughts of stone and sharpness, bone and blood.
Now Tikaani studied the arrowhead his brother had made and tried not to remember that, during the past moon, Night Man had seemed to lose what little strength he had left. Aqamdax cared for her husband now as though he were a baby: cleaning him, turning him, forcing water down his throat. Almost every day, K’os brought medicine. Sometimes it seemed to help; other times it did not.
The thought of K’os made Tikaani uneasy. He needed to visit her more often. Since Ground Beater’s death, he no longer found the joy he once had in her bed. Perhaps because he was now recognized as chief hunter, he did not have to prove himself worthy of the honor by claiming the old chief hunter’s wife. Then, too, there were many mothers anxious for him to know their daughters. This summer he must take a wife. Why take K’os? He must choose a young woman who would bear him strong sons. He could still spend any night he chose in K’os’s lodge. Perhaps even this night….<
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He again studied the arrowhead in his hand. Night Man had carved a piece of caribou antler into a shaft as long and nearly as big around as his smallest finger. He tapered it to a point at one end and thinned it at the other so he could bind it to the arrow shaft. He had cut two vertical slits about half the length of the antler beginning at the point, one on either side of the shaft, then fitted a thin sharp edge of slate into each slit.
The arrowhead was light and strong, easier to make than knapped chert or obsidian heads.
Tikaani watched as Three Furs shot several arrows at their target. The man’s aim was true, and the new arrowheads easily penetrated the caribou hide. Tikaani sighed. Three Furs was a good hunter, but Night Man should be the one here with Tikaani, trying out the new points. Night Man was the kind of hunter any village needed. Strong and loyal, with a good mind. He deserved better than what he had—a living death and a Sea Hunter wife.
Little more than a year ago they had so much. Their father, Cloud Finder, was strong and alive, honored in the village. His sister Star had two young men who wanted her as wife. His mother had been full of laughter. His brothers Caribou and Stalker were both promising young hunters. Now only he himself was left whole and unchanged.
No, not unchanged.
Someday, he would find Chakliux. He would take great pleasure in being the one who killed him. In dishonor Chakliux would die, and he and Star and K’os, they would dance on his bones.
THE NORTH SEA
Chakliux awoke with the burn of salt water in his nose. He inhaled before he could stop himself, choked and panicked. When he realized he was upside down, he began to tear at the drip skirt that held him to the iqyax, then gathered his wits enough to pull the string that freed his paddle. He was still choking, his lungs starved for air, but he swung the paddle down and back, turning his body to gain momentum. The iqyax shuddered but remained inverted.
Again, he struggled with his drip skirt, but then he asked himself how long he would live outside his iqyax in the cold of the North Sea—even if he was able to swim free. Better to die now, better to take in that next mouthful of water.
His chest heaved, and darkness edged his vision. Then he saw Aqamdax, not her bones but her face. She opened her mouth to speak, and her voice came to him as clearly as if she were with him, in the water, in the cold.
“Look, I see something.” She held up one hand, and he saw the knotted sinew on her wrist, the shape of an otter head in a design of knots.
Like an otter, he twisted his body, thrust back, then forward, with his paddle. He felt the iqyax turn, rise beneath him, respond to his movement, lift him from the sea. He drew in a long breath, partially air, partially the water that streamed from his head and face. He gagged and choked. Vomited water. Choked again. Inhaled. Filled his lungs. Filled his lungs. Was alive.
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
K’os called and the boy came to her. He was young, eight summers, perhaps nine. A fine, strong boy and Fire Eater’s only son—in a lodge of girls, the only son. She dangled the charm before him.
“It is something I made for you,” she said.
He narrowed his eyes. A smart one, this boy, and that was why she had chosen him. A promise, he was, for the whole village. A boy like this might well be chief hunter someday. He had already been taken on a bear hunt, a rare honor for one so young. His first kill had not been a yellowlegs—that small, weak bird that was first-kill feast for so many boys. A lynx had been stalking him and his youngest sister, and the boy had killed it, earning himself a new name.
“Lynx Killer,” she said to him, speaking in a voice that would flatter—the voice she used when she spoke to men. “Lynx Killer, I have had a vision. You are to be the next chief hunter, after your cousin Tikaani. The spirits told me to make you this charm.”
He tilted his head, reached for the caribouskin pouch that dangled by its drawstring from her fingers.
She pulled the pouch away before he could touch it, then she smiled and allowed a rift of laughter to lighten her words. “It must be earned,” she told him.
“How?”
His voice was hard, held no respect, and a spark of anger burned in her chest. Too bad the child would not live long enough to know her true powers, though perhaps as he died he would begin to understand. Surely, as his spirit rose from his body, he would know who killed him. She smiled a sweet smile, tender, as a mother smiles at her son.
“You know the stand of black spruce that hunters call seven sisters?”
She saw his surprise.
“You wonder that I know such a thing, knowledge that is for men only,” she said. “I am the healer in this village. There are certain things a healer must know to hold the power needed to make medicines. Do not worry. This is not taboo for me. I am different. Ask your cousin Tikaani. He will tell you.”
The boy nodded slowly, but his eyes never left her face. “I know the seven sisters,” he said.
“Go there. You are to tell no one where you are going or why. Go there, if you are brave enough. Then sit down and close your eyes. Wait, and the spirits will tell you what to do. Take water with you, but no food. Take your knife and your spears. Once you leave the village, if you see someone and they ask you where you are going, only raise your spears and say, ‘I hunt.’”
“My father will not let me go there alone.”
“You are not alone. No man is alone when he goes on such a quest. Besides, your father already knows that you go. He has already given you his blessing. Go now, do not wait. Get your weapons and go.”
She watched as the boy ran back through the village toward his mother’s lodge. The woman was at the cooking hearths. K’os had seen her there only moments before, and he would have no trouble with his father. She walked back through the village, past Lynx Killer’s mother, her dark head bent toward the woman next to her, the two covering their mouths and whispering together as K’os dipped a bowl of meat from one of the boiling bags.
When K’os came to her own lodge, she lowered the hood of her parka before crawling into the entry tunnel, then she stood, smiled at Fire Eater. The man was lying naked in her bedding furs. She set aside the bowl of meat she had brought from the hearths, laughed and said, “Perhaps you will want to eat later.”
He joined her laughter.
She pulled off her parka, boots and leggings, knelt over him, lifted his hands to her breasts, then straddled his torso. “I saw your son,” she said. “He told me he is going hunting.”
A shadow passed over Fire Eater’s eyes, but she raised up and slid herself down over him. “I told him not to go far,” she said.
Ghaden arranged the pebbles between the two lines he had scratched out in the snow. Lynx Killer ran past him.
“Lynx Killer!” Ghaden called out, but the boy did not stop, did not even look at him.
Ghaden felt his disappointment well up into tears. Lynx Killer was the one boy in the village who almost always talked to him, even though Lynx Killer was nearly old enough to be a hunter. Ghaden lowered his head over his pebbles. He rubbed his fists across his eyes. What would Lynx Killer think if he saw Ghaden cry over such a silly thing? He blinked back his tears and swallowed them. They were salt in his mouth; they burned his throat.
He returned to his game. Each pebble was a caribou. They were crossing a river and would soon head into the hunters’ trap. He was not sure how hunters caught caribou, but the Cousin River boys talked about caribou hunts all the time. Aqamdax said if Night Man got stronger, they would go on a caribou hunt themselves, but Ghaden didn’t think Night Man was getting stronger.
“Ghaden!”
Ghaden looked up. It was Lynx Killer. The boy held several throwing spears in his left hand and had a hunting knife in a sheath on his right leg, bird darts and a dartthrower in his right hand.
“I am going to hunt. That’s why I couldn’t stop and play. Sorry.” His words were quick, spoken as though he was out of breath. Ghaden raised up on his knees and watched Lynx K
iller run through the village until the lodges hid him from Ghaden’s eyes.
It was a good place, this Cousin River Village, Ghaden thought. Especially since Aqamdax came to live with them. Old bone man couldn’t get them here. He didn’t even know where they were.
Ghaden looked down at his caribou game and drew in his breath. A bird dart lay across the pebbles. Lynx Killer must have dropped it. If Ghaden hurried, he could catch him before he left the village.
He jumped up, then looked back at the lodge. He should tell Yaa, but she was at the cooking hearths, so was Star. The old grandmother, Long Eyes, was inside, and Aqamdax and Night Man, but he didn’t want to disturb Night Man. He would run fast and be back to the lodge before they knew he had left. Ghaden untied Biter’s rope, and the dog followed him.
THE NORTH SEA
Though his chigdax had shed most of the water, Chakliux was cold, his hands stiff, his fingers numb. He untied a bag of dried fish from the deck of the iqyax and ate. The food strengthened him, and he looked out again over the ice, east then south. He blinked twice before he allowed himself to believe what he was seeing. Though ice still blocked his way, the shore was close. Surely, if he was patient, he would find an open lead that would allow him to beach his iqyax.
Winter had scoured the inlets and beaches into new shapes, but he thought he recognized a few hills that were just south of the Walrus Hunter Village. Soon he would be back at the Near River Village.
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
“Biter! You stupid dog turd.”
Ghaden had run through the village, Biter at his heels, but as they passed the last lodge, ignoring the jeering daughters who belonged to the woman Grebe, a hare had cut across the path. Biter jumped after it, disappearing into the brush before Ghaden could even react.
He followed the dog a short distance, called him, but Biter didn’t return. Finally Ghaden returned to the path, to the laughter of Grebe’s daughters. He held up Lynx Killer’s hunting dart and asked if they had seen him. The youngest girl said that he had walked north from the village and disappeared into the spruce forest just before Ghaden and Biter came. She was giggling, even as she told him.