Cry of the Wind

by Sue Harrison

  But Chakliux did not wait for whatever else Black Stick had to say. He ran to the river, swam out toward the carcass. The cold water bit into his chest, tried to chew its way to his heart.

  I am otter, Chakliux told himself. I am otter. The cold cannot stop me. His arms and legs grew stiff, but he managed to reach out, grab the caribou. Ghaden was not there.

  “Ghaden!” he screamed. “Ghaden!” Then he heard voices from the shore, looked up to see Sok, Sky Watcher and Black Stick on the bank. Ghaden, his hair and clothing dripping water, was with them, Biter at his side.

  Chakliux kept his grip on the caribou, maneuvered it so he was pushing the carcass, and kicked his way to shallow water. Sky Watcher pulled the caribou ashore.

  Sok helped Chakliux to his feet, but Sky Watcher leaned over the carcass and pointed at a foreshaft protruding from the caribou’s neck. He pursed his lips at the markings and said, “Near River.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  THE NEAR RIVER CAMP

  ANAAY CUPPED HIS HANDS over his ears to shut out the sounds of mourning songs. Could any man expect to lead such fools? How had those women happened to place themselves between the men and the animals? They had cursed the hunting as soon as the caribou caught their smell. And which foolish mother—Red Leggings, was it?—had allowed her four-year-old daughter to stay with her? Did the woman think the child was big enough to catch a dead caribou?

  But had the men been much better? Most came into the river with only one spear, and when that was cast they had no weapons but the short blades of their knives. As soon as the first woman was hurt, then her husband stopped hunting and tried to get to her, driving the caribou away from the other hunters.

  Anaay raised his walking stick and stood at the center of what was left of their camp. He lifted his voice in a chant of protection, but as his mouth sang, his mind formed other words: Fools! Fools!

  Dii smoothed Awl’s hair. Awl coughed, then tried to smile.

  “K’os says your ribs are broken, only that,” Dii said.

  Where was First Eagle? If he were here, Awl would feel better. But what if he were one of those killed? Dii was not sure how many men had died. Only a few, she thought. More women and children had lost their lives, but among the Cousin women, only Stay Small had been killed, crushed between two caribou while trying to help First Eagle’s sister Red Leggings. And what good had it done? The sister was dead, and also her little daughter.

  Blue Flower stopped and squatted beside Dii. The woman claimed to be a healer, but K’os said she knew less about medicines than a child.

  “You should get her off the wet ground,” Blue Flower said, and pointed with her chin at the water oozing from the mud.

  Dii had known the place was not a good campsite, but how could she say that when Anaay was the one who chose it? On each side of the camp, the ground made a long, shallow slope that cupped toward the river. Didn’t Anaay realize that the slope made a natural walkway for the caribou?

  Dii looked up at Blue Flower. “Would you please go get First Eagle?” she asked. The woman frowned, and Dii changed her request. “You are healer. Will you stay here with Awl while I get her husband? He will help me move her.”

  “K’os has looked at her?” Blue Flower asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What does she say?”

  “Broken ribs.”

  “That is not terrible. There are worse injuries. First Eagle is busy with others. Is she spitting blood?”

  “No.”

  Blue Flower shrugged. “I have more important things to do than look for a Cousin woman’s husband, but if I see First Eagle I will tell him to come.”

  As Blue Flower walked away, Dii called after her. “Have you seen my husband?”

  Blue Flower snorted. “You do not hear his chants?”

  The noise of mourning, the cries of pain, seemed to funnel down the sloped ground to where Dii sat, but she listened carefully and finally heard Anaay’s voice. He was singing a prayer song she had not heard before; he was asking for power, protection. For himself, not others.

  “Anaay, see what your foolishness has cost us,” Dii whispered, filled with the same revulsion she had known when she first came to him as wife.

  He had put them in the caribou’s path, so that when the animals panicked, they turned and overran the camp. He had not asked for advice though he knew nothing about river crossing hunts. Besides, this river was claimed by the Cousin People. Why did Anaay think he could hunt here?

  What good were his prayer chants if they were sung in selfishness? Did a man ever get so powerful that taboos could be forgotten? Did a people ever prosper once they had forsaken ways of honor and respect?

  THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP

  Yaa crouched on the leeward side of Chakliux’s tent. Her arms ached from wrists to shoulders, and her fingers felt as though they were still knotted around her scraping burin. The excitement of having so much meat in the camp had faded, and now she could think only of the hard work left to do. They had had a celebration feast, but the true feast, with dances and storytelling, would not come until they were back at the winter village. There were many days of scraping and cutting, walking and carrying before then.

  The sky was gray and cold. She closed her eyes against it, let herself drift toward sleep. Star had put her to work scraping hides. It was only the first scraping, and most hides had been skinned so well that there was little to do, but why take the chance that small pieces of fat would soak their way through to the hair, stealing the hide’s strength, or that blood would rot it?

  Each woman used a caribou leg bone scraper, one end of the bone sliced diagonally and notched into tiny teeth, drawing the tool toward herself, counterbraced against her forearms with a leather strap.

  Yaa, her arms still too small to use a caribou bone tool well, worked with a burin scraper she could hold in her fist, best for ragged edges and holes that pierced the hides, those places too easily caught by leg bone scrapers.

  Yaa had lost count of how many hides she had done that day, finishing the edges after Star or Aqamdax had scraped the rest. Enough to go through all her burins. Night Man had some ready, Star told her, and had sent her to get them. But surely it wouldn’t hurt if she took a short rest. How could Star complain? None of the women rested more than she did.

  Yaa heard someone walk up and stop beside her. She sighed. It was probably Star, ready to scold. She opened her eyes only enough to see through the lashes. Cries-loud was standing in front of her.

  She began to greet him, but her words got tangled in her throat and came out as a squeak. He flopped down beside her, grinned. “You don’t have to help anymore?” he asked.

  “I’m just resting. They sent me to Night Man to get more scrapers.”

  “You tired?”

  She nodded. “Yes. But there’s a lot more hides left to do, and after that the leg skins…” She glanced at Cries-loud from the corners of her eyes. She didn’t want him to think she was complaining. “I’m glad, though,” she said quickly. “It’s good to have this meat and all these hides.”

  “It is good,” he said. “The winter won’t be so hard.” He lifted his head to look out past the tents of their camp. He was quiet a long time before he said, “Sometimes I think if I watch long enough, I’ll see her.”

  Yaa’s throat tightened. He was talking about his mother, Red Leaf. A part of her wondered how he could still care. Red Leaf had killed Daes and the elder Tsaani, then Day Woman, Cries-loud’s own grandmother. But there was a part of Yaa that understood. She knew what it was to lose a mother.

  “She did bad things,” Cries-loud said, “and I know I’m not supposed to talk about her. My father says she is dead, and our sister.”

  “How can he expect you to forget her?” Yaa said. “She was a good mother to you and to your brother.”

  “I miss her—and my friends at the Near River Village,” he said.

  “Me, too.” Yaa’s words were almost a whisper. She usuall
y didn’t let herself think of the Near River Village. There was too much sadness in those thoughts, and perhaps some chance for curses.

  “She didn’t kill my grandmother,” Cries-loud said.

  Yaa didn’t know what to say, so she picked up a stick lying on the ground, poked a design into the mud.

  “The night my mother left, I brought my baby sister to her, and I watched so she could sneak away in the darkness. I even walked with her a long ways out on the tundra. She didn’t do anything to my grandmother. She never went near her lodge.”

  Yaa frowned. “She might have come back. Later.”

  “Why would she? She got away. If she came back, someone might see her. Besides, she liked my grandmother.”

  “Have you talked to your father about this?”

  “He won’t listen.”

  Yaa drew circles in the dirt. Finally Cries-loud leaned close, gave her a small stone. “I found this,” he said. “You can have it.”

  It was white, translucent, like a little chunk of the moon somehow fallen to earth. She looked up to thank him, but he was already on his feet, walking away. She closed her hand around the stone, felt herself blush. What did it mean when a boy gave you something? She wished her friend Best Fist were here. It would be a good secret to share, this gift. Yaa stood up, slipped the stone into the amulet pouch she wore at her neck. Suddenly she wasn’t tired anymore. She ran to Night Man’s tent, got the burins and brought them back to Star.

  Star scolded her for taking so long, but Yaa didn’t care. She hummed a quiet song, her thoughts on Cries-loud. She finished scraping the edges of a hide, folded it flesh side in, rolled it and took another from Star’s pile. She draped the hide over her scraping log, dipped her hand in water and rubbed the edges, then as she worked allowed herself to remember Red Leaf.

  Cries-loud looked much like her, large and strong. Red Leaf could do hides more quickly than anyone in the village, but though Yaa could remember good things about the woman, she felt no compassion for her. Two good people were dead because of Red Leaf’s selfishness.

  And perhaps Day Woman. Though Cries-loud had said…

  Then Yaa caught her breath, shivered though she was not cold. If Red Leaf did not kill Day Woman, who did?

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ALL DAY THE COUSIN men stayed at the river, watching. They kept the women and boys away, did not tell them what they had found. They had argued over the first caribou. The Near Rivers had killed it. Should they give it to their women to butcher? Would that break some taboo?

  “They took our meat, raided our caches,” Night Man said, narrowing his eyes at Sok, spitting out his words in anger. “Why should we be concerned about taking their meat?”

  When the other men agreed, Chakliux put aside his uneasiness, helped carry the animal to the women, but that had been before they found the Near River body, a hunter Sok and Chakliux knew as Muskrat Singer. During the rest of that day, the river brought them seven caribou, two hunters and a young woman, all dead.

  That night, they told their women, and at the beginning of the next day, even before sunrise, Chakliux and Sok, Sky Watcher and Take More loaded the bodies on a travois, took turns pulling it upriver to find the Near River camp. Each of the men carried weapons, but Chakliux expected no fight.

  When they approached the camp, they were almost ignored. Most of the people were gathered around the injured or the dead. One old woman tended a boiling bag, but Chakliux saw no other food being prepared. One tent was still standing; the others were only trampled mounds of hides and broken sticks.

  Fox Barking came to them. His parka was stained with blood, his face and hands smeared with dirt. He lifted a walking stick toward the clear sky of the east, toward the round ball of the sun, and said, “You have come to see our defeat? Look, even the sun pulls away the clouds and watches us.”

  “We have come to offer help,” Take More said. “We have food, if you need it, and we have brought these bodies with us.”

  Fox Barking stepped past them, lifted the blankets that covered the bodies on the travois. Then he called out, “No Teeth, your son is dead. Black Mouth, here is your wife.”

  Mourning cries pierced the air, and Near River women gathered around the travois. Fox Barking began a chant, something Chakliux had once heard his grandfather Tsaani sing. In disgust, he turned toward the river. The earth was wet, and mud swirled into the water from the softened banks.

  “And you also have our caribou, the ones we killed?” Fox Barking called after him, the harsh words interrupting his chants. “You brought us our dead, but not our meat. You intend to keep that?”

  “Come and get it yourselves. We will not haul it for you,” Sok said.

  Fox Barking lifted his lip in a sneer. “So you both decided to live with the Cousin People, or what is left of them,” he said to Sok and Chakliux. He smiled at Sok. “It does not surprise me that Chakliux would choose to do so, but you have known a better way. The stink of their camp does not bother you?”

  Sok turned his back on the man, as though he did not hear his taunts.

  “And your wife, Red Leaf? Did you let her live or did you kill her? And the child, was it boy or girl? Or did you wait to find out?”

  Sok turned, and as he turned he brought his arm up, slapped Fox Barking hard across the face. Fox Barking lifted his walking stick, but Sok grabbed it and broke it across his knee. He stalked away, called back to Chakliux, “You deal with him. I will see you in camp.”

  “Go with Sok,” Chakliux said quietly to Sky Watcher and Take More.

  Take More made a vulgar gesture at Fox Barking, then hurried to catch up to Sok, but Sky Watcher shook his head. “I will stay. You do not need to be alone here with these people.”

  “Your brother is a fool,” Fox Barking said, rubbing the side of his jaw. “But I do not have to tell you that.”

  “We have your meat,” said Chakliux. “If you need it, send some of your women to get it. Do not come yourself and do not send your men.”

  THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE

  They spent four days in mourning. Most of the men had wanted to return to the winter village and from there go out in twos and threes to hunt what caribou or moose they could find. Anaay insisted that they stay where they were, and most stayed, but Black Mouth took his dead wife and left, though Anaay told him the wolves would smell death, steal the body before Black Mouth could get back to the village.

  Later, in the privacy of his tent, Dii saw her husband dance a curse against Black Mouth, and she shuddered to think what would happen to the man, alone with his dead wife on that long trail to the winter village.

  Others wanted to go. Dii could see the wanting in their eyes. Several families—those who had not lost anyone—stayed two days into the mourning, then they also left. Anaay was right about the wolves, many said. It was best to burn the dead bodies after the mourning. Was that not a custom that their grandfathers’ grandfathers had followed? Then bones could be cleaned and taken with them to the winter village. At least they could do that.

  Dii was one of the women chosen to stay awake the night of the burning, to guard the bones and ashes from wolves and ravens, from spirits who would smell the smoke and think there was a gift for them in the people’s fires. She trembled when she thought ahead to that night, and she protected herself with amulets and every chant and prayer she knew. She did not eat anything the day before—none of the fish the men were catching from the river, none of the ptarmigan K’os took in her traps. Why flavor her breath with the taste of meat? Spirits drawn by the smell of burning flesh did not need to be reminded that they could no longer eat.

  She wished Blue Flower’s husband, the Near River shaman, had not been killed in the fighting. If they had a shaman, he would probably be the one to guard those burning bodies, and she could stay safe in the camp.

  Anaay had lit the fire when it was still light, but by night, he and the hunters with him had gathered on the farthest side of the camp, a good way upriver f
rom the byre. Anaay sent her with a curt nod of his head and only one word, “Go,” as though even in speaking to her, he took risk. Six women were chosen. All but one were Cousin, and the truth of that smoldered in Dii’s breast.

  “We are wives now, not slaves,” Green Bird said as their husbands sent them off. “Wives have the same value whether Cousin or Near River.”

  But the other women laughed at her. Light Hair, the one Near River wife, laughed the hardest.

  “Even if you give your husband two handfuls of children, all strong sons, you will not have the value of a Near River wife,” she said. Then, though she, too, had been condemned to watch the bone fire, she held her head high and looked at them from haughty eyes.

  Two women had babies under their parkas, but the children belonged to their Cousin husbands. The other three, Dii among them, had no children, and Dii had had her moon blood time during their journey to the Caribou River, and so knew she had not conceived during those nights of caribou singing.

  They walked in the darkness, stumbling over tussocks and uneven ground. The men had given them torches, but said not to light them until they reached the fire. Too much light might give spirits a path back to the camp.

  Dii had pulled the hood of her parka tight around her face, kept her mouth closed, pinched her nose shut, releasing her nostrils only when she had to breathe. Why give those spirits that live in the night more ways to enter her body?

  One of the other women, Owl Catcher, leaned close to Dii, asked, “What about K’os? Why didn’t Anaay send her instead of you?”

  Dii had wondered the same thing, had felt the hurt of her husband’s choice, but she only said, “Who can trust K’os? Would you want her here with us?”

  Owl Catcher did not answer, so Dii knew she had given the right response to a question asked spitefully. At the fire, though repulsed by the sound and smell of burning bodies, Dii felt her empty belly twist at the reminder of fat and meat. Then suddenly she had to turn from the heat and light of the flames, stumble into the darkness to retch.