by Sue Harrison
She rolled him back into his bed, tucked his robes around him, and pushed the knife under nearby floor mats. Someone would find it there. Not K’os, she hoped.
She took a water bladder from the rafters, rinsed her hands and face. She suddenly saw herself caught by K’os or Cen, naked and bloody, River Ice Dancer dead on his sleeping mats, and she shivered. But no one came, and when Red Leaf had managed to wash away all the blood, she dressed again and went out into the night.
She walked back to Cen’s lodge, listened long in the entrance tunnel, a lie resting on her lips: she had been to the women’s place to vomit. Why curse others in this lodge with her illness?
She listened and heard nothing, so she finally crept inside. K’os and Cen were still asleep, both lying where they had been when she left the lodge. Red Leaf’s bed was still warm. Had she been gone only that short a time? So quickly, a young, strong hunter was dead.
He was cruel, Red Leaf reminded herself. He was selfish. But she remembered his mother’s joy when he had been born, only son of the Near River hunter Wolf Head. She remembered his first kill, the celebration over a hare taken with a boy’s hunting stick. Red Leaf began to shake. She sat up and clutched the wooden bowl K’os had left next to her bed. Her retching woke Cen, and he squatted beside her, stroked her hair, murmured soft prayers until Red Leaf was able to lie down again. He stayed with her until she fell asleep.
In the morning Red Leaf felt someone bend over her. She opened her eyes to see K’os.
“You are alive,” K’os said, her voice betraying her surprise. She prepared another cup of water laced with powder from the red-stringed pouch. Red Leaf drank it.
CHAKLIUX’S CAMP
In his dream, Sok again heard the wind. It was Snow-in-her-hair, though her voice was weak, as if she called from a great distance. He opened his mouth, cried out for her to wait. He went outside, saw the faint light of the new morning, the sun still hidden by the curve of the earth.
Then, as though Snow-in-her-hair were standing beside him, he heard her voice, clear and hard as ice. “I have waited long enough,” she said. “I am going now. Come if you wish.”
“Let me tell my brother that I go,” Sok begged. “He has come all this way with me. He needs to know so he will not worry.”
Snow-in-her-hair laughed, a laughter touched with anger. “You ask me to wait just so you can tell your brother? What kind of brother is he, trying to keep you here when you do not want to stay? Go, see if he is worth your concern. Then if you hurry, you will find me.”
Her voice faded, and he ducked back into the tent, felt the heat of the banked coals pushing hard to keep the cold outside the caribou skin walls. He crouched beside Chakliux, saw that his brother had fallen asleep sitting up, leaning back against one of their storage packs, his fur blankets drawn over his head. Sok called his name, but Chakliux did not answer. Sok pulled away the blankets, saw the gleam of his brother’s eyes, open as if in death. Sok called again, but Chakliux did not move. In growing fear Sok lay a hand against Chakliux’s chest. There was no heartbeat. Snow-in-her-hair. In her fear that Sok would not come with her, she had taken Chakliux. Sok cursed his dead wife, and the curses rose with his mourning wails.
When Sok finally came to himself, he was outside, a pack strapped on his back, snowshoes on his feet. He felt like a child first coming to know the world. His chest ached as though from an old wound, but he found that his body moved in spite of his pain, and that his mind worked, his thoughts no longer the muddle they had been since Snow had died. But now he also mourned his brother, took each step in sorrow, drew each breath in fear. What if Snow, in her need for him to join her, had taken not only Chakliux but also the others who held him to the earth: his sons?
THE HUNTERS’ SPRING
Aqamdax woke to nausea. She pulled back her bedding furs and crawled over Snow Hawk toward the doorflap. Outside, she began to retch, but her belly was empty, so she brought up only bile. When her stomach stopped heaving, she scooped up a handful of snow, let it melt in her mouth and trickle down her throat. She went back into the lean-to and rubbed her hands dry in Snow Hawk’s thick fur.
The day before, she had decided to chance a hearth fire. The nights had grown too cold for her to survive without one. So now she coaxed the coals back to life.
“It is morning,” she said to Snow Hawk, “though the sun is not yet up in the sky. How is your stomach? Are you sick?”
They had eaten much the same things, the two of them, though Aqamdax knew Snow Hawk also hunted on her own. But the dog seemed well, and once Aqamdax had eaten a little, she felt better, as strong as though she had not been sick.
Snow Hawk spent more time away from Aqamdax each day. Aqamdax worried at first, thinking Night Man, on some hunting trip, would see the dog and know Take More had allowed them to live. She worried about wolves. What chance would Snow Hawk have against a pack, except the same chance any female had—that one of the males would want her? But each day at dusk Snow Hawk returned to take her share of food, to sleep outside the tent, untethered, to creep inside if the night grew too cold.
Each morning Aqamdax checked and reset her traps, gutting and skinning any hares she caught, then she rolled the pelts flesh side in to store with the carcasses under the caribou hide cover of her platform cache.
This day, her traps held three fat hares, and when she had finished skinning them, she took her spear sticks and walked to the south side of the woods. The wind had died, though it kicked up a skiff of snow now and again over the tundra beyond the trees.
Aqamdax had become more accurate with the spear sticks, and her muscles did not burn as they once had after time spent throwing. Now she was trying to learn to throw while making a short run. She had seen the men take game in such a way, but though her spear went farther, she found it more difficult to keep her eyes on her target, and so lost her accuracy.
She retrieved her spear sticks, had them in her hand, when a voice suddenly called out, “You need a throwing board.”
Aqamdax whirled, a spear ready, but as quickly as she turned, she lowered her weapon. Take More stood at the far side of the marsh clearing, a dog beside him, a haunch of frozen caribou meat on the travois the dog was pulling.
“You would greet an old man in such a way, one who has brought you meat?”
Tears gathered in Aqamdax’s eyes, but she called out as though she were a wife offering the hospitality of her lodge to one of her husband’s friends. “You are hungry?”
“Perhaps I could eat. I started out this morning in darkness so my wives would not see what I brought you.”
“You can stay for the night?” Aqamdax asked.
Take More laughed. “You are not afraid I will ask for more than food?”
“I think you respect my husband and will not ask his wife to share her bed.”
Take More’s face reddened, but Aqamdax pretended not to see. Perhaps, for bringing meat, the old man deserved more than a bowl of stew, but what wife could offer such hospitality without the approval of her husband?
He helped her put the haunch in her cache and answered her questions about the people in the village. He said that Ghaden, Yaa and Sok’s sons were well, that Ligige’ spent much time telling others how to live their lives, and that Sok and Chakliux had not yet returned. Aqamdax closed her eyes in quick sadness when he said that Twisted Stalk had given her niece Dii to Night Man.
When he had nothing more to tell her, Take More spoke of being young, hunting and marrying wives. Finally, he ran out of words. Then he left, and her tent seemed too quiet, too empty. But that night, as Aqamdax went to sleep, she repeated his hunting stories to herself, whispered them into her dreams, and she did not feel so alone.
Chapter Fifty-seven
CHAKLIUX’S CAMP
IN THE DREAM, AQAMDAX was beside him, her hands gentle on his face. She leaned close, and he raised up to gather her into his arms. Suddenly she was not Aqamdax but Star, her face white and drained of blood, ice gla
zed over her cheeks, her eyes dark and sightless.
Chakliux cried out, and the sound of his voice woke him. His heart slowed as he realized he had been dreaming, then he scolded himself. He had fallen asleep. In the darkness of the tent, he looked over at Sok’s bed, saw the raised outline of a light-colored fur robe and sighed his relief. Sok was asleep, but what if he had awakened while Chakliux slept? He could have wandered outside….
Chakliux crept forward on hands and knees, reached to pat his brother’s shoulder. The empty hare fur blanket collapsed under his hand. He jerked the blanket away. Even Sok’s sleeping mats were gone. Chakliux quickly pulled on his boots and strapped snowshoes to his feet.
Outside, he was surprised to see that the sun had risen, a pale yellow disk barely above the horizon, the sky dark toward north and west. New snow had come during the night. Less than a hand’s breadth had fallen, but it had drifted over Sok’s trail so that Chakliux found nothing but the first few steps Sok had taken, heading west.
Why would Sok go in that direction? Their village was south and east. Then Chakliux knew Sok was following his dead wife, walking west toward the land of the spirits.
Aaa, Sok, Chakliux thought, after all this have I lost you?
Everything seemed the same, each ridge, each frozen stream like the one he had just crossed. Once a white fox trotted past him, once ravens circled, but otherwise, the earth and sky were empty. Sok sang his sons’ names under his breath, a rhythm for his feet, a reminder of the direction he should travel and why. He pitched his parka hood back, allowed the air to cool his head so he would not sweat, and when his ears began to ache from the cold, he drew the hood forward again. As the sun moved in its shallow arc, he fought against sleep, walking with his head down, his eyes closed.
Sleep was escape, a place without decisions, without pain. There he would not have to tell Aqamdax that her husband was dead, killed by Snow-in-her-hair. He would not have to face each empty day without the wife he needed, without the brother he had learned to love. But he made himself walk, and he breathed his sons’ names, with each step spoke them into his thoughts until their faces danced before him, until their voices were louder than Snow’s as she called to him from the wind.
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
Brown Foot scratched at the side of K’os’s lodge. He was mumbling small curses against an old wife too lazy to get up in the morning to feed her husband, and against River Ice Dancer’s dogs, the animals barking as he waited.
“What?” he finally shouted out. “Are all women lazy this morning? Is everyone still asleep? Look!” He raised his walking stick toward the southeast. “There is the sun.” He blew through his lips, a sound of rudeness, and pulled aside the outer doorflap. He went into the entrance tunnel and did not pause to call again before stepping inside the lodge.
When he saw K’os was not there, he stopped his flow of curses. Then, glimpsing the thatch of River Ice Dancer’s dark hair above his sleeping robes, Brown Foot slapped his walking stick against the floor and shouted, “What hunter sleeps away a good day?”
When the man did not answer, Brown Foot stepped closer and prodded him with his stick. “Where is your wife?” he asked. “Your hearth is cold.” He squatted on his haunches and muttered, “She’s a foolish woman, going out to the food cache before starting your morning fire. You might decide to get another. I have a granddaughter, you know….”
He pushed a hand under River Ice Dancer’s blankets, then his mouth fell open. He stared at his fingers. They were sticky with clotted blood.
“How is your wife?” Near Mouse whispered, standing on tiptoe to peer over Cen’s shoulder into the lodge. Sand Fly scuttled past him, set the baby’s cradleboard on the floor. She unlaced the bindings and stripped out the moss padding, full of the baby’s wastes, then threw the moss into the hearth fire.
The two old women had entered as if the lodge belonged to them, and Cen clenched his fists to keep his impatience from becoming anger. He was tired, awakened in the night by Gheli’s vomiting. She had quieted and then he had slept, but that sleep had been cursed with strange dreams and half-formed thoughts.
At dawn, K’os had given Gheli more medicine, tea made with a pale green powder.
“It is the strongest medicine I have,” she had told Cen. “It should drive away her pain, loosen her bowels and force the evil from her body. But if those pain spirits are too great…” She shook her head. “It is the best I can do for her,” she had said softly. “Perhaps you should ask one of the elders to come and make prayers.”
Now, as Cen answered Near Mouse’s question, he found his eyes tearing and had to look away. “Gheli is still sick,” he said. “Is there anyone in the village who might know prayers?”
“Our shaman died two…no…three summers ago. He was old, and my husband told us—”
“I know,” Cen said, interrupting her. Near Mouse was a woman of too many words, and he did not have time for her foolishness. “Is there anyone else?”
“Perhaps old Brown Foot.”
Cen shook his head.
Near Mouse pursed her lips into a frown. “He is always after more than his share of food, that is true,” she replied, “but he knows many prayers. He was brother to our shaman.”
Cen glanced at Sand Fly; the woman was nursing his daughter. “He knows prayers,” she said without looking up from the baby.
“I will ask him to come,” Cen said, and pulled aside the doorflap, then stepped back in surprise as Brown Foot burst into the lodge.
He was babbling, his eyes wide, his words so scrambled that Cen could make out only K’os’s name.
“What? What has happened?” K’os cried out. She grasped his shoulders, shook him until he said, “Your husband, that young man from the Near Rivers, someone has killed him. He is dead. There is blood all over. Blood on his bed…on the floor…”
He continued to babble, even as he followed Cen and K’os when they ran from the lodge.
Near Mouse crept close to Sand Fly. “He said K’os’s husband is dead?” she whispered. She glanced up as Red Leaf moaned, leaned from her bed to retch, dry heaves that brought up nothing.
“And this one…” Sand Fly nodded toward Red Leaf. “You think she will live?”
Near Mouse shrugged her shoulders.
“It is strange,” Sand Fly finally said, using a finger to break the baby’s suction on her breast. She ignored the child’s quick squeak of protest, lifted her to a shoulder and patted her back until she burped, then nestled her at the other breast. “Before Red Leaf was sick, she came to our lodge and spoke to my husband and me. She seemed afraid of K’os, but we did not think much of it. After all, she is a trader’s wife, and claims her father was a trader, too. How can you know if a woman raised like that tells the truth? She said that K’os wanted Cen to be her husband.”
“Why would K’os want Cen with a fine young hunter like—” Near Mouse stopped before saying the dead man’s name.
For a time neither woman spoke, the silence between them broken only by the soft throat sounds of the baby’s nursing, then Sand Fly said, “Before that Near River hunter came to our village, when K’os lived in my lodge, she had eyes for any man, even my husband.” She raised a hand to cover her smile.
“Did she ever say anything about Cen?” Near Mouse asked.
“Yes, sometimes, and she watched him. I remember that she did….”
“But she would not kill…why would any woman—”
Near Mouse’s words were interrupted by a cry from Red Leaf. Even the baby jerked away from Sand Fly’s breast.
“Who is dead?” Red Leaf cried. “Who has died? Tell me!”
Near Mouse glanced at Sand Fly, then hobbled to Red Leaf’s bed. “Gheli, you are sick,” she whispered. “You are sick. You cannot worry about what has happened. There will be time to think about that when you are well.”
“River Ice Dancer?” Red Leaf whispered, her eyes stretched wide.
“Hush, child,” Near
Mouse said, and pressed a hand to Red Leaf’s mouth. “Hush, now, do not say his name.”
Red Leaf twisted away from Near Mouse’s hand. “No!” she screamed. “No! She told me she would do it. She told me that if I did not give her Cen…if I did not give her my baby…”
“Be still, Daughter,” said Near Mouse, and pushed Red Leaf back into her bed. “Be still, be still.”
Red Leaf took a long shuddering breath, closed her eyes. “K’os has killed us both,” she said. “Now she has killed us both.”
Chapter Fifty-eight
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
“YOUR NEAR RIVER HUSBAND, you left him?” Night Man asked.
Dii pulled the hare fur blanket more tightly around her shoulders. He had come to her during the night. In silence he had mounted her and taken her as wife. Now, this morning, even before she had left her bed, he was full of questions.
Be fair, she told herself. What husband would not ask a new wife the same thing? You have been away from this village too long. Have you forgotten that his mother, Long Eyes, cried each time her husband left to hunt? The people in Night Man’s family care much for those who belong to them. His questions mean nothing more than that. Would you rather have another husband like Anaay?
But how much should she tell Night Man? Why take the blame for Anaay’s death when K’os had been the one to make the poison? And why admit to hiding his body?
“Yes, I left him,” she said. Not a lie. She had left him—at least his body—and she hoped she had not led his spirit to this village.
“Why?”
“He did not need me,” she said softly. “He had another wife.”
“What?” Night Man asked. “Why do women always mumble? How can I hear you when you whisper your words?”