by Sue Harrison
Chapter Sixty-five
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
THE SLEEP THAT CLAIMED Chakliux was so quick and so deep that when he heard the voice calling, he knew he was living in his dreams. He sat up and saw Long Eyes standing beside his bed.
“Rekindle your hearth fire,” she said to him, her voice strong.
And because it was a dream, Chakliux did what she asked, bringing the fire into a blaze so the flames lit Sok’s lodge.
“I was surprised you decided to sleep here,” Long Eyes said to him.
She settled herself beside the fire, sat straight, her shoulders back, as though she were a young woman. He saw that her eyes were clear, without the confusion that had clouded them since her husband’s death. But why should he be surprised? He had asked that hidden things be revealed. How better than in a dream?
“This is my wife’s lodge,” he said.
Long Eyes laughed. “But you are alone. She is not here, nor is your brother.”
“He sleeps in the hunters’ lodge.”
She nodded as if she knew, then said, “They say you mourn my daughter.”
“She was my wife. I mourn her and the child she carried.”
“It was your child,” Long Eyes said.
“Yes.”
Though the lodge was warm, she still wore her parka, and like a mother with a baby, she had tied a band around it just under her breasts. “I would have carried that child on my back,” Long Eyes said. She patted the band. “I made myself this belt to hold her in place.” She reached into a pouch that hung from the band and pulled out a ball of sinew thread.
“I did not know your words could be so clear, Mother,” Chakliux said.
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “No one knows,” she said. She twisted the thread around her fingers, made a web between her hands. It caught Chakliux’s eyes, and he watched as she knotted the sinew into shapes: a tree, a circle.
“You are surprised?” she asked.
“I saw storytellers from the Walrus Hunter Village do that. They taught me.”
She nodded. “That other wife of yours, the Sea Hunter woman, when she first came to my lodge as Night Man’s wife, she had a bracelet made of knots. It was an otter. You think I did not notice that? When I saw it, I knew you had made it. Who else? Is there another otter anywhere in this village? Perhaps you did not know that my mother was Walrus, raised by those people before she was given as wife to my father. She taught me some things.
“When I was still a girl my father traded me to my husband for three yellow-eyed dogs. My father made a joke. He said I should change my name to Three Dogs. He was a foolish man, but I got a good husband, and four strong sons, then my daughter, Star.” She held her hands apart, let Chakliux see the knot at the center of her web. “This, you see, is Star’s child.” She jerked her hands and suddenly the knot was gone. “Children die too easily,” she said.
She looked at him and laughed. “Children die too easily, but I would have kept all mine, and my husband, if it were not for you.”
“I did not kill your husband,” said Chakliux. “It was River Jumper, and he was sent by K’os.”
“I have heard your story. My daughter told me. She loved you, so she believed you. You remember my sons? Tikaani was the oldest. Perhaps you did not kill him, but you are to blame for that war between our villages. You were supposed to stop the fighting, remember? Then I had Caribou and Stalker, a year apart, those two. The old women said they would die. They said I would not have milk enough for both. But they grew to be strong, healthy boys. Do you claim you did not kill them? Now Night Man is dead. They think I do not know, but I hear their whispers. Four sons dead, a husband dead, and my daughter and her baby.”
“I did not kill your daughter.”
Long Eyes began to laugh.
Yaa drifted in and out of sleep. She was spending the night in Star’s lodge, watching over Long Eyes. The old woman had a habit of wandering at night, but to Yaa’s surprise, this night, Long Eyes had fallen asleep slumped over her work, the sinew thread she had been twisting still dangling from her fingers. Yaa had spread bedding furs beside the old woman and gently laid her down and covered her.
After Yaa finished sewing the last seam of Ghaden’s boot, she rolled out her own bed. For a little while, sleep claimed her, but then the rhythm of a song wove itself through Yaa’s dreams and woke her up.
What was it, that song? Yaa asked herself, then remembered that the last time she had stayed with Long Eyes the old woman had been singing it, muttering the words under her breath. The rhythm teased at the back of her mind, and finally Yaa recognized it—a song the women of the Near River Village sang. But Yaa had never heard a Cousin River woman sing it.
Who would have taught Long Eyes? Could she have learned it as a child?
Yaa began to hum the song, allowed its familiar words to lull her back toward dreams, but suddenly she was very much awake. How could Long Eyes have remembered that song when she could not even remember to eat? Something was not right.
Yaa sat up, looked at the old woman’s bed. It was empty, the covers thrown back, and her parka was missing from its peg. Yaa scrambled from her bed, pulled on boots and parka and went out into the night calling Long Eyes’s name.
She ran the paths of the village, saw no one. Her heart was like a stone in her chest, and she could not breathe. Chakliux and Ligige’ had trusted her to watch Long Eyes. Now they would think she was worthless, a little girl who could not be given any responsibility. She held in her tears and turned toward Chakliux’s lodge. He might be angry, but at least he would help her look.
Long Eyes stood and lifted her arms, tilted her head back to look at the top of the lodge. “You did not kill my daughter? Do you deny that you put that child in her belly? Do you say it was not yours?”
“It was mine,” Chakliux said softly. He heard a sound behind him, and looked back to see Yaa on her knees, peering into the lodge from the entrance tunnel.
Suddenly he knew he was awake. Long Eyes had not come to him in a dream. Somehow she had slipped away from her lodge, from Yaa, who was supposed to watch her.
“If the baby was yours, then you killed her,” Long Eyes said. She pulled the sinew from her fingers, let it drop into the hearth fire, watched as it curled and burned. Then she reached into her left sleeve, drew out a long-bladed obsidian knife.
“A sacred knife,” she said, and held the blade point up, turned it so the fire lighted the facets of the knapped edge.
Chakliux did not want to draw Long Eyes’s attention to Yaa by looking at her again, so he said, “A riddle.”
“I am too much Walrus,” said Long Eyes. “I have never been good with riddles.”
“This one is easy,” Chakliux told her. “Look! What do I see? A child remembers the sun.”
Then Yaa was gone, and Chakliux hoped she had understood. Long Eyes shook her head. “It is too difficult for me, but see if you understand mine.”
“Look! What do I see? Blood in the snow. Blood in a woman’s bed.”
When he gave no answer, she shrieked with laughter. “You do not understand?” she asked. “I thought you were so wise. How could I let your child live? He would carry your curse and kill as you have killed.”
“But why not wait until the baby was born? Why kill Star, too?”
“Then there would be more babies. Star was young. She would have given you many children.”
“She was your daughter,” Chakliux said softly.
“She was your wife,” Long Eyes answered. She licked her lips, moved her feet in a quick shuffling dance as though she were pleased with herself. “Do you know how easy it is to kill someone who thinks you are old and weak?” she asked. She raised the knife, twisted it and closed her eyes as though she was caught in the remembrance of Star’s death. “The baby, when I cut it out, was a girl. I might not have killed it had I known. Your wife, she was so sure she carried a boy.”
As she stood with her eyes closed,
Chakliux moved quickly toward her, but suddenly she slashed out at him, nicked the palm of his right hand with the tip of her blade. He jumped back.
“You are like your Cousin mother,” Long Eyes said. “She was more difficult to kill.”
“My mother?”
“That one who died in her bed. Didn’t you listen to my riddle? What better way to avenge my husband’s death than to kill those you love?” She lifted her knife, plunged it into the air as though to show Chakliux what she had done. “She fought. But I was the one with the knife.”
“And now you have decided to kill me,” Chakliux said.
“I cannot kill you,” Long Eyes told him, “but perhaps there are others in this village who will do so when they see what you did to an old woman who could not protect herself, one who could barely speak.”
She raised the knife, and though Chakliux dove toward her, tried to knock it from her hands, she plunged the dark blade into her neck before he could reach her. She dropped to the floor, her hands cupped at her throat. She looked up, but Chakliux saw that her eyes were not on him. He turned. Sok and Take More were standing behind him.
Long Eyes moaned, closed her eyes and then was still. Sok took a blanket from Chakliux’s bed and covered her.
Yaa peeked in from the entrance tunnel. “She is dead?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Chakliux, and opened his arms to the girl. She ran to him and hid her face against his chest. “So you understood my riddle,” he said.
“I remembered Sok’s sun parkas,” she told him. “And Take More was with him in the hunters’ lodge.”
“Long Eyes killed her own daughter?” Sok asked.
“And our mother,” Chakliux told him.
“Then Red Leaf did not,” said Sok. “And Aqamdax did not.”
“No, and now there is no one left to seek vengeance.”
THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE
Wolf Head was a large man, his voice so loud that K’os heard him scolding his wives while she was still outside the lodge. She called out, waited until the younger wife opened the doorflap. The woman’s eyes rounded with surprise when she saw K’os.
“You have come back?” she asked, then gasped as K’os pushed past her into the lodge.
She came in behind K’os, sputtering apologies to her husband. K’os pulled River Ice Dancer’s amulet from the neck of her parka, held it so Wolf Head could see. His eyes moved from the amulet to her hair, cut short near her ears. Wolf Head stepped forward, clasped the amulet, then looked hard into K’os’s eyes.
“You recognize it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“I come in sorrow to tell you that your son is dead, killed by the Four Rivers People. They stole his dogs and travois, furs and meat, but I was able to escape from them and return to you with a few of his belongings.”
Wolf Head looked at his wife. “What did she bring?” he asked.
“Two dogs, a travois,” she said.
K’os saw the young woman glance at her sister-wife, River Ice Dancer’s mother.
“My tears flow for you,” K’os said, and the woman turned away. “The things they stole were the bride price your son paid for me. I will help you win revenge.”
“What did he give for you?” Wolf Head asked.
“Eight dogs, six travois, pelts and meat and fish. The Four Rivers People stole all of it, but I was able to—”
“Be quiet. You have too many words for a woman.” Wolf Head leaned close to his younger wife, whispered something, and she hurried from the lodge.
He was rude, but K’os had known that Wolf Head was a hard man and treated his wives poorly. She held back her anger, did not allow it to color her cheeks or edge her words.
“Six dogs, you say.”
“Eight.”
“Six travois.”
“Yes.”
He turned away from her and paced the length of the lodge. “Fox pelts?” he asked.
She nodded. “Fox and lynx, wolf, caribou hides,” she told him.
K’os heard a noise at the lodge entrance, saw that the wife had returned. Gull Beak was with her.
“This slave says she was wife to that one who stole the dogs and travois from our village,” Wolf Head said. “She claims he gave my fox pelts as part of her bride price. She has returned two of the dogs.” Wolf Head drew his lips back in a smile. His teeth were long and yellow. “Treat her well,” he said to Gull Beak. “Few slaves would be so loyal.”
K’os let out her breath in a hiss. “I was wife to your son, River Ice Dancer,” she cried.
“During the past moon someone stole my dogs and travois, my furs and much meat from my cache. You think my son would steal a bride price from his own father?” Wolf Head said. “Foolish woman. I have no son.”
Chapter Sixty-six
THE GRANDFATHER LAKE
AQAMDAX’S EARLY-MORNING WORK was done, wood gathered, the dog fed. She banked more snow around her tent and added spruce boughs to the entrance tunnel she had made of bark and willow poles.
When she was finished, she untied Snow Hawk, took the dog with her to the lake. The ice that covered the shore rose in thick hard ridges, but when it reached the lake it smoothed into a wide white plain that spread as far as Aqamdax could see. She walked until she came to a place where the wind had swept away the snow and the ice was bare. She padded the palm of her mitten with a strip of caribou hide, then used a stone hand ax to begin another hole. She measured the width of the hole against her forearm to be sure it was wide enough to hold her fish trap. She worked until her hand was numb from pounding and her fingers would no longer grip the stone.
“Tomorrow we will finish it,” she finally said to Snow Hawk.
The dog was curled near the hole, tail over nose, back against the wind. Aqamdax had food enough to last until she caught more fish. Three hares were buried in the snow at the floor of her entrance tunnel, and she still had some dried salmon, a little caribou meat, blackfish that she had caught in a net suspended between two holes in the lake ice. Snow Hawk still hunted for her own meat, and sometimes, like Biter, brought back part of a carcass—ptarmigan or hare—for Aqamdax.
Still, Aqamdax was often hungry, but who was not hungry in winter? She did not let herself think of the full caches at the Cousin River Village, or of the seal meat and oil her own people would have put away. Instead, as she walked back to her lodge, she thought of the grayling or pike she might catch tomorrow in her trap.
The sky, heavy with clouds, was darkening toward night, and the wind gripped Aqamdax like hands, pushed her as she walked, drew tears from the corners of her eyes. She wiped them from her face, then stopped short, reached down to grip the ruff of fur at Snow Hawk’s neck. She crouched beside the dog, felt the animal tremble. Through the brush, she could see her lodge, its peak dark against the snow. Smoke spiraled from the top, more than should come from a fire banked before she went to the lake.
Night Man? she wondered. She shrugged her pack from her shoulders, pulled out her spear and crept closer. With her belly growing, she was more clumsy and did not throw the spear well. What chance did she have?
She crooned a song under her breath to calm herself and tried to think. Perhaps she should wait until night, get some of the meat she had hidden in the entrance tunnel and walk to the Near River Village. Eight, ten days might take her there. Perhaps some man would accept her as his wife, especially since she had Snow Hawk.
Yes, she would do that, but she would not wait for night. She could check the snare traps she had set in that direction. Surely she would have caught something. She had set so many….
“We will go now,” she said, whispering the words to Snow Hawk, but Snow Hawk suddenly jumped away and began to bark in quick joyous yips like a pup. Aqamdax stood, and when she saw the one who came from the tent, she could not move, could not speak. She waited as he ran to her, Snow Hawk jumping at his side.
“You are not dead,” were her first words to him, and Chakliux, his laughter
broken by tears, held her close and answered, “Nor are you.”
“How did you find me?”
“Ligige’ said she told you to go to the Grandfather Lake. I was afraid that your son would call you and you would go…”
He pushed back her hood and buried his face in the softness of her hair.
“But then you found my camp.”
“I saw that your fire was banked and the coals were still alive. I saw that you had cached your meat, so I knew that you had decided to live.”
He put his arm around her and walked her to the lodge. She knelt and crawled inside, waited as Chakliux followed her. He squatted beside the hearth and added more wood to the flames.
“You were right,” Aqamdax said. “My son does call me.” He looked at her with fear in his eyes, and she moved into the light of the fire, clasped his hands and set them over her belly. “Each night he calls,” she told him, “but not from the lake.”
She smiled as his eyes grew wide, as his laughter filled the walls of her lodge. Then he wrapped her into his arms and claimed her as wife with his tears.
EPILOGUE
HE WAS STILL ONLY a boy, his arms and legs thin with much growing yet to do. But the old woman could see that he had changed. Though he was boy outside, inside he was more nearly a man. The People had celebrated their return to the winter village with a feast. The caribou hunt had been good, and the old and very young who had been left behind were content now with bellies full of caribou meat.
For the first time in many years, she sat with the other women in the storytelling lodge, her mind open for the storyteller’s words. The boy sat down in the Dzuuggi’s place and began to speak. His words carried full and strong. The old woman listened and felt the stories fill her anew with understanding.