by Sue Harrison
They walked out of the village, into the trees that overlooked the winter lodges. Cries-loud had grown into a tall man, as big as Sok. When Yaa thought about his mother, Red Leaf, she realized how much Cries-loud looked like her. Red Leaf’s face, with strong features, was more like a man’s than a woman’s. She had been so gifted with needle and awl that people said her parkas could feed a village for a winter, they could bring so much in trade. But where Red Leaf’s heart had been hard and evil, so that killing was nothing to her, Cries-loud was more like his father—though brusque and sometimes thoughtless, a good and fair man.
Cries-loud found a dry piece of ground, orange with shed spruce needles, and pulled her down to sit beside him.
“Wife,” he said, “there is something I have to tell you.”
“You plan to take K’os to the Walrus Hunters’ village,” she answered. The words fell heavy from her mouth. “I heard Chakliux talking to Aqamdax about it. Just you and K’os?”
“No. Squirrel and Black Stick and Wolf Head will go with us.”
When she heard Wolf Head’s name, some of her fear lifted. Squirrel and Black Stick were little more than boys, but Wolf Head was an elder still in the strength of his middle years. He would have more wisdom when dealing with someone like K’os. Perhaps, to avenge the death of his son River Ice Dancer, he would even kill K’os before they got to the Walrus village, and then the journey would be only a trading trip.
“I have always wanted to go to the Walrus village,” Cries-loud said. He didn’t look at her, but gazed out into the forest, as if he could see beyond the trees to the distant beach where the Walrus Hunters lived.
“K’os will try to trick you, or do something terrible,” Yaa said. “Remember the curses she made against all of us when Chakliux forced her to leave the caribou camp?”
“I have amulets to protect me, and my weapons.”
“Don’t eat anything she gives you,” Yaa said.
“I’m not a fool.”
His words were tinged with exasperation, like a boy speaking to his mother, and Yaa remembered what Chakliux had told her. She hung her head, angry with herself. Cries-loud reached for her, slipped his hands under her parka, and sought her breasts. He was impatient in his lovemaking, and Yaa had spoken to Aqamdax about that, how his hands were too hard and moved too quickly to bring her much pleasure, and how once he entered her, he worked only for his own satisfaction.
“Tell him what you want,” Aqamdax said to her, as though she were surprised Yaa had not thought of that herself.
But as Cries-loud laid her back on the ground, as he pulled at the drawstring of her pants, she decided this was not the time to tell him. She had been mother enough for one day.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOK SHOUTED OUT HIS news as soon as he came into the lodge, his voice raised to be heard above the baby’s cries. “I have taken another wife.”
Dii, their baby squalling in her arms, was arguing with Sok’s son Carries Much about feeding the dogs. She turned her back on Carries Much and stared at Sok.
“Without talking to me about it?” she said, her voice so low and controlled that at first Sok did not realize she was angry.
As a child, she had been taught to show politeness, to close her mouth over hasty retorts and sharp words. So now, as usually happened when she was upset, tears scalded her eyes, and she turned her anger in at herself. How foolish! Why did she always allow tears to close her throat over what needed to be said?
“Who?” Carries Much asked, and stood with his arms crossed, legs spread in imitation of his father.
The lodge was suddenly quiet; even the baby was still, as though he were listening to hear the name of the one his father had chosen. The hearth fire popped and sent a circle of sparks up toward the smokehole. Sok pulled the moosehide mitts from his hands and strode to his weapons corner, pulled out a throwing lance as well as several arrow shafts, his back to Dii and Carries Much as though he had not heard the question.
“Your son asked you something,” Dii said, and her voice was steady.
“Gull Beak,” Sok answered, his back still to them.
He set two shafts back into place but kept the others in his hands. He turned to face Dii and said again, “Gull Beak.”
“Gull Beak?” Dii repeated stupidly, and her anger drained as quickly as it had come.
“Which one is Gull Beak?” Carries Much asked.
“The old woman who lives at the edge of the village, not far from the river,” Dii told him. She raised a hand to her face, gestured the shape of Gull Beak’s nose.
Carries Much hooted out a laugh, but then, with a quick look at his father, clamped his lips together and said solemnly, “She’s a good woman for a wife.”
The compliment, usually given to a young woman by an elder, seemed strange coming from a little boy’s mouth, and Dii had the sudden urge to laugh. But for fear of insulting Sok, she did not. One thing she knew, Sok would have a good reason for making Gull Beak his wife. He might be a strict husband, little given to jokes or teasing, but he was not foolish.
“A gifted seamstress,” Dii said, and she smiled ruefully at the parka her husband now wore—warm but with no skill in the seams or cut, the amulet charms awkward in placement.
“She will make a new parka for you? For me, too, and for Cries-loud?” Carries Much asked, always concerned about his older brother.
“Yes,” said Sok, his voice gruff. “Have you fed the dogs? They’re barking.”
“He was just leaving to do that,” Dii said, and raised her eyebrows at the boy.
He scuffed a foot against the floor mats, gave an exaggerated sigh, and put on his boots. The baby had begun to fuss again, and Dii raised her caribou hide shirt, lifted a breast until he had the nipple in his mouth, then sat down near the hearth fire, batting at the smoke sucked toward her when Carries Much opened the doorflap.
“An extra fish for the white female!” Sok called after his son, then said to Dii, “She’s pregnant again.”
Dii knew, but pretended surprise. “Perhaps she’ll give you more golden-eyed dogs,” she said.
Sok shrugged. “Her pups are usually strong and healthy,” he told her. “I have men who want them, no matter what color their eyes.”
Dii raised her chin, pursed her lips into a firm line. She wanted him to know that she was not totally pleased, that at least he owed her an explanation. “Why?” she asked him. “Other than for the parkas.”
“I don’t want another wife,” Sok said to her. He crouched on his haunches, set down his arrows, and leaned forward to stroke the side of her face.
She turned her head away from his touch, saw him frown.
“I had no choice,” he said. “Chakliux wants K’os out of the village.”
“It would be better for all of us if she were dead.”
“And what man would kill her?” Sok asked, his words too loud.
Dii lowered her head. It was a question no one could answer. Who would doubt that K’os, even dead, could still be a threat? Surely her spirit would avenge her death, destroy those who had destroyed her. They might be able to bring a shaman from another village, buy songs of protection, even cut her body apart at each joint so the spirit would be bound to the gravesite, but as evil as K’os was, who could be certain that all those things would be enough?
“Chakliux wants to take her to the Walrus village, sell her there as slave.”
“Will you go?” she asked, and she held her breath until he told her no.
“The only problem is Gull Beak,” Sok said. “She needs someone to fish for her, to carry wood. You know who her husband was and how little he did for his wives. He couldn’t even give them sons.”
His eyes rested for a moment on the baby at Dii’s breast.
“Some husbands are better that way,” Dii said, and smiled at him. She did not regret that Fox Barking—the husband she and Gull Beak once shared—had not left her with a baby. What if the child had turned out to be like
his father, lazy and cruel? But she knew Gull Beak had mourned her whole life for want of a son or even a daughter. What joy did an old woman have in living without children or grandchildren?
“She did not want K’os to be sold?” Dii asked.
“No. So I did what had to be done. Gull Beak will stay in her own lodge; she will sew, and in return I will hunt for her, as will our sons, and we will see she has enough wood and fish. She still keeps a trapline. Not even Ligige’ does that anymore.”
“And it will not be too much, to hunt for two old women?” Dii asked. Chakliux and Sok supplied meat not only for their own families but also for their aunt, Ligige’.
“It won’t be easy, but Cries-loud is a man now, and Carries Much already has six summers. His strength will grow as Gull Beak’s diminishes. And even that one,” he pointed with his chin at the baby, “he will soon be hunting.” He grinned at her. “Maybe by then I will have given you a daughter to help you with your work.”
“I would be glad for a daughter,” Dii said.
“As would I.” Sok leaned forward, rubbed his cheek against hers, cupped a hand over the baby’s dark head, then picked up his arrow shafts.
“Is Chakliux going?” she asked as he started toward the door to the entrance tunnel.
“Where?”
“With K’os to the Walrus Hunters’ village.”
“No, not Chakliux,” he said, and something in his voice made Dii’s heart press into her ribs.
“Not Chakliux,” she said softly.
The doorflap settled down behind Sok, let a gust of new air into the smoke of the lodge. She clasped the baby to her chest with one hand and went after Sok, crawling and stumbling. She pulled aside the inner doorflap, called to him just as he was leaving the entrance tunnel.
“Who?” she asked and continued after him, standing up in the snow and mud at the entrance of the lodge, her caribou shirt rucked up over the baby, her side and belly bare to the wind.
“Who, Sok?” she called, her voice strong enough to make him turn.
“Squirrel,” he said, “and his brother Black Stick, and Wolf Head.”
He paused, and she said, “Who else?” But she knew, she knew even before he told her.
“You have heard?” Yaa said. She came into Aqamdax’s lodge, and the condition of her parka told Aqamdax what Yaa and Cries-loud had been doing.
“About K’os and Cries-loud?” Aqamdax said, answering question with question. “I knew last night. Turn around. You have spruce needles all over the back of your parka.”
Yaa turned and waited as Aqamdax picked off the needles and scattered them into the hearth fire.
“Why did you let Chakliux choose Cries-loud?” Yaa asked.
“You think Cries-loud is not strong enough to stand against K’os?”
Yaa did not answer.
Aqamdax clasped Yaa’s arms and stared hard into her face, then spoke to her as though Yaa were still a child. “A man will not allow himself to truly belong to a woman unless that woman is ready to let him be a man. Chakliux did not force Cries-loud to take K’os. He gave him a choice. Honor that choice, Yaa.”
Yaa opened her mouth to speak, but began to cry. “He will never be content in this village,” she said, the words coming broken from her mouth. “He’ll always be looking for his mother. That’s why he wants to go to the Walrus village. He thinks she’s still alive.”
“Then pray that he finds her,” Aqamdax said, “and that if he does, he’s wise enough to realize what kind of a woman she is.”
“She’s his mother. He sees nothing beyond that. He will never see beyond that.”
Aqamdax settled herself on a pad of fox pelts and picked up the mat she had been weaving. “I hope that Cries-loud soon fills your belly with a child, Yaa,” she said, her head bent over her work. “It’s time you became mother to someone other than your husband.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THEY WAITED THROUGH TWO days of sleet and rain. On the morning of the third day, the new spring sun returned to burn through the haze, lifting the cold from the earth in great clouds of fog. They began walking, four men, four dogs, and K’os.
By midday they had left the familiar spruce woods for dense alder thickets. Branches caught in the dogs’ packs and plucked at parkas, scratched faces until Wolf Head led them to the edge of the river, to that path of mud cleared by the ice and debris of spring breakup.
By night, they had come to the strip of tundra that was the buffer between the North Sea beaches and the forests, felt the teeth of winter gnashing in the wind from that sea, saw distant mountains of ice, white peaks created by wind and waves, now diminishing each day under the onslaught of the spring sun.
Wolf Head did not seem to worry much about K’os. After all, she was old. What harm can an old woman do? K’os kept a smile hidden in her cheek as she fostered that opinion. She stopped often as they walked, complained about her feet and her back and the load they made her carry.
She had nothing against the brothers Squirrel and Black Stick. Squirrel had been well named. He was small and quick, with dark, round eyes and a hank of black hair that hung down over one side of his forehead. He spoke in a high, chattering voice, and was usually ignored by his brother. Like Squirrel, Black Stick was short, but he was thick of bone, with a sturdiness that made K’os dream of sharing his bed.
But Cries-loud deserved more than her indifference or her daydreams. Sok’s son. Chakliux’s nephew. He called himself husband to the young woman Yaa, though they had not celebrated with a marriage feast. He wouldn’t get much out of Yaa in his sleeping robes, proud as she was, an old woman in a girl’s body. Perhaps, for all that Sok had done for her, K’os should teach Cries-loud the joy of taking a woman who appreciated him.
When they made camp, Wolf Head told K’os to stake the dogs and feed them. Then he sent her to gather wood for their fire, not an easy task at the edge of the tundra, and for all her work, she brought back only sticks of willow and alder, which would burn slowly with acrid smoke and give little heat, less light. They would probably have her gathering heather during their next day’s walk, that and tundra willow. How else could they have a fire? She carried her load of wood back to camp, saw that men had put up two lean-tos, open sides facing one another. She dumped her wood and laid a fire between the lean-tos, used a fire-bow and club grass fluff to get a flame started.
She warmed herself by crouching close until Squirrel ordered her to get more wood before the short spring night darkened around them. She hissed at him and stayed where she was, hands cupped around the tiny flame. Cries-loud came to her, grasped her shoulders from behind, and pulled her to her feet.
“Go now as you are,” he told her, “or go bloody from my walking stick.”
She lifted a hand to the side of her face, cowered as if she were afraid of him, and left the warmth of the fire. When she had gathered another armful of sticks, she returned to the camp, saw that Cries-loud had stood at the back of one of the lean-tos to watch her as she worked.
“Do you need a woman tonight, Tigangiyaanen?” she asked him, keeping her voice low so the others would not hear.
He laughed. “My woman, yes.”
K’os snorted. “She’s a child. What does she know about pleasing a man? When you take her to your bed, how long does it last for you?” She snapped her fingers. “That long?” she asked.
She walked past him, dumped the load of wood, and without being told returned to the thickets to gather more. At least there was a good supply of ice-broken limbs on the ground, scoured by the dry winds of a cold winter, so they were not as green as they might have been. She brought in three more armfuls, enough for the night, and each time she gazed boldly into Cries-loud’s face, and if she spoke to him, she called him Tigangiyaanen.
Finally, as she brought the third armful, Wolf Head told her to sit down and eat some of the dried meat Gull Beak had given her for the trip. She chose to sit beside Cries-loud, and as she ate, she spoke to him boldly as i
f she were not a slave.
He ignored her and tried to begin a conversation with Black Stick or Squirrel, but they were tired, and only grunted at him. He asked Wolf Head questions about the Walrus Hunters, and once or twice Wolf Head answered. At those times, K’os listened also. She hadn’t yet decided whether she would stay with the Walrus. At least with them, there was less chance of being killed for running away. She was only an old woman. Who would care if she left? One less person to feed.
But if she had tried to leave the Near River village, Wolf Head would have come after her, would kill her in revenge for the loss of his son. Better alive and a slave than to die under Wolf Head’s knife.
From what Wolf Head said about them, the Walrus seemed to be a good people, full of laughter and joking. If so, she would not bother to tell them that Cries-loud was Sok’s son. Why cause problems when she might decide to stay with them? She would work her way from slave to wife and from wife to healer. Once she was their healer, there would be no limit to what she could do. In sending her away, Chakliux had given her more gift than he realized.
The fire, though smoky, warmed her, and the food comforted her belly, so that she began to relax, and she allowed herself to dream of weapons she might use to kill those who needed killing. Lost in her dreaming, she nearly missed Cries-loud’s question.
“I’m sorry,” she said to him. “I wasn’t listening. What did you say?”
“Why do you call me Tigangiyaanen?”
“You’re a man now,” she said. “You should put away your boy’s name. Who better deserves to be called a great hunter, a strong warrior? Squirrel?” She covered her mouth with her hand, but fanned her fingers so he could see that she was laughing.
He smirked. There was an innocence about him that appealed to her, but with his mouth in a half-smile, he looked too much like Sok.
“Think about it. A new name is always a good thing.”
She took another bite of dried fish. It filled her mouth with the woodsmoke smell of a lodge.