Call Down the Stars

by Sue Harrison

  Then the grandfather sang out, “Kelp! Kelp, Daughter.”

  Slowly Daughter removed her hands from her eyes, looked at what he had on his lap. Yes, she told herself, it was kelp. Kelp grew near beaches. She remembered her mother peeling the stipes and cutting off small pieces for Daughter to eat. She remembered the strong salty taste of it. She pushed herself off the ballast stones, held one hand out toward the grandfather. He gave her a wet, slimy leaf, tough, nearly too tough to eat, but she took a bite, chewed, and swallowed.

  It was not as good as fish, but better than otter. She sat down beside the grandfather, watched as he used his knife to harvest more kelp, then peel the stipes. Looking out over the side of the boat, she saw that kelp surrounded them. The sea was greasy with it. All the way to the edge of the earth where the fog lived, there was kelp.

  The grandfather gave her more, and she ate until her belly was full. Then, as he directed her, she lay the long strands of peeled stalks down the length of the boat, the bulbed ends at the bow.

  When the boat was full, he stopped cutting, and cautiously Daughter lay a hand on his cheek. His face was still hot and his arm looked terrible, but his eyes were clear. He ate more of the kelp, then again lowered his arm into the sea. Daughter didn’t want him to do that. She wanted him to sit upright so she could sleep on his lap. She tugged at him, but he pushed her away.

  “Sit down,” he said. “Don’t touch me.”

  Daughter stayed beside him, standing there, and thrust her lip out into a pout. He didn’t tell stories anymore. He didn’t want to hold her. She had wrapped her deerskin blanket around her, but it was wet and cold. The grandfather had the otter pelt. She squatted on her haunches beside him and slowly crept nearer until she was leaning against him and could warm herself with some of the heat that burned in his body.

  She was very still, hardly taking a breath, and the grandfather didn’t push her away or scold. She raised her fingers to her mouth, sucked, humming to herself, a song her mother had sung when Daughter was tired.

  Her eyes followed the long strands of kelp, lying like rope down the length of the boat and up into the bow. Then she studied the sky, hazy and starless, the moon a blur of silver. Even during the day, the sky was seldom clear, almost always full of gray clouds or fog. She wondered where the sun hid in this world of boat and sea, so different from the village where her mother and father lived. She wanted to go back to them. She had tried to tell the grandfather that, but he didn’t seem to understand, though once he had lost his temper with her and shouted, “No paddle. See, no paddle!”

  Then, in her mind, she had seen the fishermen of her village taking their boats out into the sea, backs and arms straining, paddles dipping and rising. For the first time, she realized that paddles were what moved boats through water. With some surprise, she had looked around their boat, even stood on her toes to study the outrigger log, and saw that it was true what the grandfather had told her. They didn’t have a paddle.

  So the boat was taking them wherever it wanted to go, and who knew where that was? She wished it would turn around and take them back to the village, to her mother and her father, to the sun, which almost always shone there. She had asked the boat to do that. Many times she had asked it, but the boat stayed in the fog, in the cold, far from land. It was a boat that loved the sea, a selfish boat that gave no thought to Daughter or the grandfather.

  Daughter shivered her way through the night, pressing as close to the grandfather as she dared. She slept only a little, and when the first light brightened the southeastern sky, she cupped her hands in the murky water at the bottom of the boat and drank. It was salt and blood and melted ice, but she was used to the taste.

  She raised her eyes as she did each day to look for the sun, and finally saw a brightness in the clouds. She decided the sun was there, though she could not understand why it chose to hide. The grandfather probably knew why, but he was still asleep, his mouth hanging open, his eyes closed.

  She sighed, and at that moment, the clouds parted, so a shaft of light fell to the sea, brightening it from gray to blue. The clouds were moving quickly, running over the sky, tumbling like boys playing games. She wondered if the sun was the mother, the clouds her boys, so large that they towered over her, blocked her from sight, like the little grandmothers in Daughter’s village, dwarfed by their sons, grown men, tall and strong.

  Daughter’s eyes followed another rift in the clouds, waited until it centered itself over the sun so more light could get through. But then within that rift, she saw the peak of a mountain.

  “Grandfather!” she called, and grabbed his good arm, tried to shake him awake. “Grandfather! Look!”

  But the grandfather only pushed her away, mumbled angry words. She went to the bow, crouched on the ballast stones and began to talk to the boat.

  “See,” she said softly, “go there, to the mountain.” She pointed toward the peak that pierced the clouds and seemed to float above the sea like an island in the sky. “Look,” she whispered to the boat. “Look. Do you see it?”

  She wished the grandfather would wake up, for surely he would know where the boat kept its eyes.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Yunaska Island, The Aleutian Chain

  “OLD WOMAN!” EYE-TAKER called. “Do not come back empty-handed. Our husband does not need a lazy wife.”

  Old Woman turned her back, as though she did not hear what had been said, but she moved her fingers in a silent curse against her sister-wife, then squatted beside a small plant that was struggling back from winter, a beach plant of some kind, one she had not seen before. For now she would leave it, watch it grow, so she would learn to recognize it during all seasons.

  That was the trouble with living in a new village, among these First Men. There was so much to learn. But surely one of the grandmothers would know if the plant was good for anything, or if it was harmful. Poisonous plants were too dangerous not to recognize, and people who lived a long time in one place knew which plants could kill or cause illness.

  She was still studying it—fixing in her mind the way the stems branched, the shape of the leaves, the smell of it—when the thin, bleating cry came out of the fog.

  At first the voice did not break through into her thoughts. It was a child’s voice, high and full of tears. Old Woman did not like children. How could she, when her own family had turned against her? She should be an honored grandmother, doing the easy jobs of the ulax, tending the cooking fire, telling stories, but here she was, the lesser wife, searching for firewood in a strange land where the soil could not even grow trees, where the largest animals were the otters and seals that came to the beaches from the sea. No, she did not need the problems of some whining child to interrupt her work.

  She glanced up for landmarks so she could find the plant again, then continued down the gray sand beach, picking up driftwood as she walked. When her arms were full, she would swing the sealskin sling from her shoulders, add the wood she had been carrying, then bend once more to her task. One slingful would not be enough. Eye-taker would send her out for more, but Old Woman was good at stacking her wood slowly so she could get warm inside the ulax before having to go back out into the wet fog of the day.

  She rounded a narrow point of beach, a small finger of gravel that protected a cove where the waves were generous. She was bent over a heap of branches when she again heard the child’s voice, more clearly this time.

  Strange, she thought as she straightened, arched her shoulders against the weight of the wood on her back. The voice did not come from the direction of the village or the hills. Had some child, playing in his mother’s fishing boat, been swept out to sea?

  She might not like children, but to rescue one—or at least go for help—would win her favor in the village. She untied the wood from her back and set the sling on the beach. She shielded her eyes with one hand, squinting into the haze. At first she saw nothing unusual, but then a darkness she had thought to be only a thin spot in the fog grew
larger.

  Old Woman was wearing a puffin skin sax. The long hoodless parka hung past her knees, and she wore no leggings, no boots. She pulled up the sax, balled it in one hand, and waded into the water. The cold numbed her skin and made the bones of her feet ache. She called to the boat, but received no answer, then saw a small white face peek up from the bow.

  The child held a hand toward Old Woman, and Old Woman forgot about her sax, allowed it to drop into the water. She turned sideways to more easily take the force of the waves, and waited until the sea brought the boat to her. She clasped an arm over the edge, began to tow it toward shore.

  The child, a girl, patted Old Woman’s shoulder, and Old Woman shook her head at the sores that covered the girl’s body. The child wore only the remnants of a parka, hoodless and made of something that looked like woven grass. From the waist down she was bare, more bone than meat, and her legs and feet were mottled blue around raw sores.

  She looked like a First Men child, with a round face and small nose, her hair dark and straight, but when she spoke, holding out both hands as though asking to be taken from the boat, Old Woman did not understand her words. They were not First Men, not Walrus, not even the language of the River People.

  Old Woman shook her head, held one hand palm up, and again grasped the boat, tried to guide it to shore. There was an undertow along the cove, and several times she lost her footing, but managed to right herself.

  The boat was a strange craft, neither raft nor iqyax, but made of two logs, the larger hollowed out like the dugout canoes some River People used, and the other, much smaller, left whole, but shaped to a point at both ends. The logs were held several arm’s lengths apart by four heavy poles that were lashed to the logs with bindings made of heavy rope.

  Old Woman remembered how First Men hunters, when caught in storms on the sea, bound their iqyan together with their paddles to make a more stable craft, one that was less likely to be capsized. The man who had made this boat was no fool, but the craft had seen hard use.

  It stank of old fish and worse. Slices of meat lay against the sides of the boat, and many of them had rotted into the wood, making their own stink. Long stipes of bull kelp extended from bow to stern. They were fresh, and from the smears on her face, it appeared that the child had been eating kelp blades, though perhaps, from the smell of her, she had also been eating rotten meat.

  A bundle near the back of the dugout was covered with an otter skin and a haired blanket that looked a little like caribou. The otter skin had been poorly fleshed, the smell told her that, but she could also see that chunks of fur had begun to loosen and fall out.

  The bottom of the dugout hit the slope of the beach, and Old Woman had to wait for the waves to lift the heavy waterlogged wood. With each wave she pulled, moving the boat-raft a little farther until she was satisfied that the sea could not easily reclaim it.

  The girl again put her arms out, and Old Woman lifted her from the dugout. The child was nearly as light as Eye-Taker’s new baby, though the length of her legs made Old Woman guess she had at least three summers.

  “How did you get in the boat?” Old Woman asked her.

  The girl babbled something, and her words seemed to carry the same rhythm as the First Men’s language, so Old Woman tried again, speaking more slowly in First Men, and then in broken Walrus. The girl covered her face as though in despair, but finally, with a shuddering sigh, she lowered her hands and turned to point at the heap under the otter skin.

  Old Woman did not want to see what it might reveal. The smell was too overpowering, but the girl began to cry, so Old Woman carried her to the stern. With two fingers, she pulled aside the otter skin, and she gasped when she saw the man.

  At first she thought he was dead, he was so pale, his eyes so sunken. His left arm was propped awkwardly on the edge of the dugout, and the skin had been torn away from wrist to elbow.

  The girl pointed to him and said something. A name, Old Woman guessed. The man’s chest moved in a shallow breath, as though in response to the sound of the girl’s voice. Old Woman repeated the word, then laid a hand against the child’s chest. She screwed up her face as though she had been insulted and said a different word. Old Woman repeated it, stroked the girl’s head, then patted her own chest.

  “They call me Old Woman,” she said, “though that is not my true name.” She pointed at herself and said, “K’os.”

  The girl looked into K’os’s eyes, pointed one small finger at K’os’s face. “K’os,” she said solemnly.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TEN

  Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

  602 B.C.

  “K’OS!” YIKAAS HISSED UNDER his breath.

  Kuy’aa shushed him, but the name rang out loud in the earthen lodge. Qumalix stopped her story and looked at him, arched her brows in question. Yikaas turned his head and pretended to be interested in something near the curtained alcoves at the side of the lodge, but the girl was not shy, and she called, “Why do you interrupt?”

  Yikaas bristled. Had she never been taught the correct way to address a Dzuuggi? She should have said, “There is one here who may desire to speak.” Or better yet, “Sitting here with us is a great storyteller, well-known among the River and the Sea Hunter peoples. Would that one wish to say something?”

  The girl treated him as though he were a child. He paused to gather his thoughts and rise above the anger that urged him to address her rudely.

  “Honored storyteller of the Sea Hunters,” he said to her, “surely you do not speak to me?”

  “Yes, I do.” There was no respect in her words. “We are not Sea Hunters or even Whale Hunters, as the River People call us. We are First Men, the first to come to this land and to live on these beaches.”

  That claim had long been disputed by the River People, as the girl obviously knew. Yikaas heard a murmur of protest from the River traders in the lodge, then, like a low growl, the response of the First Men. The power the girl had inadvertently given him brought a rush of joy. He could lead all the River People out of the lodge. They would follow him. He began to stand, but Kuy’aa jabbed him with her elbow and said, “A Dzuuggi defends peace, not discord.”

  He sighed and sat down again, heard a release of breath move through the lodge.

  “My apologies,” he said to the girl, his voice taut with anger.

  She smiled and inclined her head as though bestowing a favor.

  Sharp words rushed into his mouth, but he pressed his lips tightly against them, swallowed them whole. They lay in his belly like knives.

  “You have heard of K’os?” the girl asked.

  “She was a River woman who lived long ago,” Yikaas answered, “though we River have no pride in claiming her.”

  “Our stories of K’os begin with Daughter,” Qumalix said, “the little girl whom K’os would name Uuluk. Can you tell us more about K’os?” Qumalix was no longer taunting him, but seemed interested in what he had to say.

  Yikaas sighed. Why K’os? There were so many stories about honorable people.

  “There are better tales,” he said.

  “But K’os seems to belong to both your people and mine.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, glad to have her claim the woman. He drew in a long breath, then said, “The first stories we have about K’os tell of three River hunters who attacked her. They injured her so badly that she could never have children. According to those stories, she spent her life seeking revenge.”

  Qumalix nodded. “I have heard those stories. The honored woman who sits beside you told them once when we had gathered at the Walrus Hunters’ village.” She lifted her chin toward Kuy’aa, and the old woman murmured a few First Men words that Yikaas did not understand.

  “I have also heard the Chakliux stories. He was the child K’os adopted as her son. We have heard about the fighting between K’os’s River village and a neighboring village, how Chakliux—a man by then and trained as Dzuuggi—tried to bring peace, but K’os
tricked the people into war. We have also heard how K’os betrayed her own village, and that Chakliux was able to save many of the people of that village, even after their defeat. We know about the woman Aqamdax. She was one of our own, a great First Men storyteller. She loved Chakliux and became his wife, although she had once been a slave of the River People.”

  Qumalix said the last words spitefully, as if what happened long ago were still an insult. Why bring up such a thing? Yikaas wondered. Didn’t First Men storytellers also take on the role of peacemaker?

  “We, too, honor the woman Aqamdax,” he said carefully. “Her stories have been passed on, storyteller to storyteller, among the River People, so we will not forget how to forgive.”

  When he said this, Yikaas looked boldly into Qumalix’s eyes, and to his surprise, she blushed.

  She glanced away, brushed at the feathers of her parka, then squatted on her haunches, feet flat on the floor, arms clasped around her upraised knees. She lifted her chin, as though encouraging him to stand, and said, “Like the River People, we usually tell our stories while sitting, but there are too many in the lodge who would not hear you. Would you tell us more about K’os?”

  Yikaas was so surprised at her request that he turned to ask Kuy’aa what he should do. From the corners of his eyes he saw Qumalix smile, and he felt the blood rush to his face. Was he a child who had to ask permission? To hide his embarrassment, he leaned toward the old woman, brushed his cheek against hers, and whispered, “Will I insult anyone by doing this?”

  She smiled at him, her teeth no more than nubs above her gums. “Tell your story,” she said.

  He made his way to the girl’s side, and with all politeness asked her to translate for him. She stood reluctantly, but Yikaas began his story without apology. She was the one who had asked him to speak. He had not begged for the opportunity.