by Sue Harrison
The thought lifted his heart, until some commotion at the back of the ulax interrupted Qumalix’s translations. She stopped, and the grandfather who had come with her stood and began to scold a man and woman for their rudeness. Qumalix leaned toward Yikaas and told him that they were husband and wife, known for their squabbles.
The husband stomped up the climbing log, hissing insults as he left. Then Yikaas asked himself why he should even consider taking a wife. He was young yet and had many years before he had to make such a difficult decision, choosing one woman above all others. What if he and Qumalix turned out to be like that man and woman—a joke in their own village? Why not just see if she was willing to come to his bed? He was Dzuuggi. Women never refused him.
Suddenly he realized that he had paused in his storytelling. Qumalix was looking at him with questions in her eyes. He made an apology and continued, living the story again as the words passed from his mouth. When he told of the bear’s attack, the people were so quiet, he could hear their breathing. When Biter died, some of the women wept, and men cleared their throats, made remarks about bears in gruff voices, low and soft.
Then the Sea Hunter storyteller rose from his seat and asked if he could tell another story. Yikaas wanted to hear one of Qumalix’s stories, and several of the people in the lodge seemed to feel the same way, for two of the women nodded their heads toward her. But in politeness, Qumalix gave her place to the Sea Hunter storyteller and again translated his words so the River People could understand.
Yikaas sat down in disgust. The man had had his turn. Qumalix deserved her chance. Yikaas’s anger grew as he listened, but dissipated when the Sea Hunter tried to lift his voice to the top of the ulax as Yikaas had, tried to speak in various voices and so become animal, woman, or man. He was not good at it, and some of the people in the back of the ulax began to grumble. Others left, but Yikaas sat very still, listened very hard, and learned how not to tell a story.
Finally the man was done, and the people, as though speaking in one voice, asked for Qumalix. Yikaas saw the disappointment on the Sea Hunter’s face, and he wondered if he had looked the same way when the people were dissatisfied with him. It was not a good thing for a storyteller to act like a child, pouting over criticism. How better to learn?
Kuy’aa leaned against him, and he thought perhaps that she was weary and wanted to leave. He felt his heart drop in disappointment, but he smiled gently at her and said, “Aunt, are you tired? I will take you to the lodge where you are staying.”
“No, no,” she said impatiently, as though he were a troublesome child. “What storyteller gets tired listening to others’ tales?” Then she added, “You did a good job. I was proud of you. You see that Sea Hunter storyteller?” She tilted her head toward the man and lowered her voice to whisper, “He’s jealous. He knows your story was better than his.”
“His hunting stories were good,” Yikaas said.
“Of course they were. When he told them, he was thinking more about the stories than himself. The second time he spoke, he was thinking about himself, and about you and about who was best.
“When a storyteller pushes himself forward like that, above what he is saying, then the story no longer lives. It is only told.”
It was wise advice, as was nearly everything Kuy’aa told him, and Yikaas opened his mouth to thank her, but she lifted fingers to her lips and nodded toward Qumalix.
Qumalix had begun to speak, explaining that her new story about Daughter took place five summers after the grandfather’s death. The people murmured their understanding, and she began.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Yunaska Island, The Aleutian Chain
6435 B.C.
DAUGHTER’S STORY
THE WIND BLEW OVER them, whining, keening. Early summer grass grew strong from the hummocks left by previous years’ growth. Daughter’s sax was still rucked up around her waist, White Salmon’s broad back and strong arms bare to the cold. She tucked her head against his shoulder. Their lovemaking had been quick, distracted, and she knew he was thinking about the evening ahead when he would speak to K’os and Seal about her brideprice.
She had given herself to him nearly a year ago, and during that time had prayed to make a baby. She could think of no reason for K’os or Seal to refuse White Salmon’s offer, but a child would bind them beyond any objections her parents might raise.
White Salmon’s brideprice offer was generous, surely more than most young men would give. No one could deny that she was skilled with a needle, that she was a hard worker and quick to smile, but she was not truly First Men. Who could say what her children would be like?
When young men began claiming Daughter’s friends—a year after their moon bloods had begun—Daughter herself had little hope that any hunter would consider her. Perhaps for a night, but as wife? No. She was too different. When White Salmon first came to her, she refused him. Why give herself to a man who would only use her? If he had been old, a poor hunter, weak in some way, she might have considered it, but why suffer the hope that his attentions would lay in her heart? Better to ignore him, pretend he had no interest. Then her soul would not be eaten with bitterness after he had forgotten her.
But he had persisted, and finally she had given in. They had climbed into the hills above the village, had lain together among the clumps of wide-bladed grass, the tall, thick stems of iitikaalux. She had used all the skills K’os had taught her, ways of pleasing a man, and she had seen that he was surprised, first at her knowledge, then, upon entering her, to discover that she had been unspoiled. He had been gentle with her that night, and Daughter had allowed herself the joy of their union. But the next day, she treated White Salmon as though nothing had happened between them. Only after he had come to her again and again, had begun visiting her in Seal’s ulax and made no secret of his intentions, boasting of the brideprice he would pay for her, only then had she allowed herself to hope that she might have a young hunter like other girls in the village, that she would be more than some old man’s second wife, slave in bed to her husband, slave in work to a sister-wife.
“I must go now. I have everything ready,” White Salmon told her. His voice was firm, and scattered any doubts Daughter had. K’os and Seal would have a difficult time finding a better man for her.
He sat up and pulled on his birdskin sax. Daughter had sewn him a fur seal parka, something she had kept secret and would give him tonight after he and Seal decided on the day their marriage feast would be held. Soon, Daughter thought. In three or four days, long enough for her and K’os and Eye-Taker to prepare the food. Long enough for Eye-Taker’s children to gather enough sea urchins and dig enough clams, catch enough pogies.
Seal had had little luck this summer in his hunting—another reason to be glad for a son-by-marriage to help bring in enough meat for the winter to come. But White Salmon had promised to provide the seal and sea lion meat for the feast, even to give some of the whale he had taken that spring, a fine humpback.
Daughter stood to brush the grass from the back of White Salmon’s sax. He clasped her hand quickly, then strode away. She watched until he disappeared in the fold of a valley, then turned and went the opposite way, to the place where she and K’os had buried her grandfather.
“He has gone to ask for me now, Grandfather,” she said and knelt beside the mound of rock that covered his body. She had carried most of the gravestones herself, bringing them up from the beach, hoping that the water that had rounded and smoothed those stones had once touched the shores of the Boat People’s island, hoping that her grandfather would feel some comfort in those sea-worn rocks. “Perhaps next time I come, I will be a wife.”
The words added to her hope, and she felt the same fluttering tightness that came to her belly each time White Salmon looked at her. She lifted prayers—for White Salmon and their marriage, for her grandfather—but finally she stood and started toward the village, walking in the long shadows of the evening, back through the grasses and the wind.
Daughter waited at the top of the ulax. She could hear their voices rising, Seal’s and White Salmon’s. Once in a while K’os would speak, but Daughter could not make out their words. There were many things to settle in a marriage agreement, not only brideprice, but living arrangements and hunting agreements. Daughter had told White Salmon that she would rather live with his family, and he had agreed, promising that once she had given him a child they would have their own ulax. Until then Daughter wanted to be out of K’os’s ulax, away from Seal and his groping hands, away from K’os’s jealousy as the years stole her beauty, but added to Daughter’s.
White Salmon was inside a long time, and while Daughter waited, the wind grew so strong it seemed to push the stars away, made them so small that they were mere pinpricks in the sky.
When White Salmon finally came up the climbing log, it was too dark for Daughter to see his face. She stood in the grass thatching and held out her hands, whispered his name, and when he did not respond, she clasped his arm. He said nothing, only jerked away from her grasp and jumped down from the ulax, strode into the night. Daughter stood in the wind trembling.
When she went inside, Seal bared clenched teeth in a smile that made her shudder. K’os had her back to the climbing log, but she must have heard Daughter, for she said without turning, “Some men think they can have what they want without paying its worth. Some men are foolish, and foolish men do not make good husbands.”
Daughter’s fear, her disappointment, changed into anger, and though usually she did not answer K’os’s criticisms, this time she said, “Mother, do not speak about your husband in such a way. For at least he has brought us a seal to eat, two since winter.”
She heard K’os hiss and was wise enough to leave. Even boys of ten or eleven summers had already taken five or six seals. K’os’s angry, scolding voice followed Daughter as she slid down from the ulax roof. What could they do to her if she and White Salmon simply decided on their own to be husband and wife? No brideprice. No hunting agreement.
She went to White Salmon’s ulax, stood outside for a long time, hoping that perhaps he would come out, that they could talk this through. He was a proud man, and she had no doubt that K’os and Seal had insulted him. How had K’os convinced Seal that he was better off without a son like White Salmon? Of course Seal’s sons, now grown, were generous and, unlike their father, good hunters.
Daughter climbed up to the ulax roof, took long breaths, inviting the wind into her chest to give her courage, and called down to White Salmon’s family. At first there was no response, but finally White Salmon’s mother stuck her head out the roof hole. The light coming up from the ulax made her face look like a mask worn by dancers to ward off evil and scare away spirits. Something broken after use, burned to keep those spirits from returning.
“Why are you here?” she asked. Her voice was hard and angry.
“I need to speak to White Salmon,” she said, nearly whispering.
“Leave him alone. He does not want to see you.”
“Please …”
“Go away.”
The woman climbed back down into her ulax, but Daughter stayed, waited, hoping that White Salmon’s anger would fade, that he would come to her. When the cold of the night ate into her bones and she could do nothing but shake, she left. Why stay when she knew she could not even open her mouth to speak without shredding the words through chattering teeth?
She went to the chief hunter’s ulax, slipped inside. During the years since the grandfather’s death, K’os had joined her husband twice on trading trips. Both times, Daughter had stayed in the village. During the first trip, she had lived with Eye-Taker and her children, but during the second Daughter had stayed with the chief hunter and his large family. That summer, the chief hunter had lost a wife in childbirth and the remaining two wives said they needed Daughter’s help in sewing clothing for their children, to make up for the lost needle of that dead wife.
Daughter had been happy there, so much did the chief hunter’s wives treat her like one of their own, scolding and teaching and laughing.
In the chief hunter’s ulax all things seemed easier. If something was not finished by night, well, then, it could be done the next day. If Daughter sewed a crooked seam, then she could fix it. If someone spilled oil, well, the smell of it would sweeten the crowberry heather that padded the floor. There was little anger, little regret, and no day was marred by Seal’s heavy-lidded eyes watching her from the shadows.
Where else could Daughter go, now that White Salmon’s family did not want her?
Only one lamp burned in the ulax. The chief and his wives and their children were already in their sleeping places, but the grandmother was still awake. In her old age, she found sleep difficult to capture. She smiled a welcome to Daughter, patted the floor beside her, and when Daughter sat down, she handed her a needle and a cormorant skin sax that needed mending.
So then, for that night, Daughter stayed awake, sewing, and when morning finally gave the old woman heavy eyes, Daughter tucked her into a sleeping place, and sat alone in the ulax until she heard one of the wives wake. Then Daughter crept up the climbing log, and out into the day. Her sorrow was blunted, both by lack of sleep and also because of the pretense she had lived as she sat up with the grandmother—that she belonged to the chief hunter, a daughter loved, one whose marriage would be celebrated rather than cursed.
For the next few days, Daughter stayed in Seal’s ulax, kept her fingers busy with sewing. Once she returned to the chief hunter’s ulax, but by then even the grandmother knew what had happened to her, and Daughter could not bear their pity. Better to be with K’os, who treated her brusquely as though all that had happened was Daughter’s fault. She tried not to hope that White Salmon would come for her, but every footstep on the ulax roof set her heart racing.
The morning of the fifth day, Seal came inside, windblown and smelling of fish. “We are ready,” he told K’os, lifting his chin toward Daughter and raising his eyebrows in question.
K’os shook her head, and Daughter’s belly tightened in dread. Something was happening. Had they agreed to give her to some other man? Someone old who could offer a better brideprice?
She dropped her sewing and got to her feet, clutched her fingers around the amulet that hung from her neck. The ulax was warm, but suddenly she wished she was wearing more than just the woven grass panels that hung from the belt at her waist.
“What have you done?” she asked Seal.
“Nothing,” he said and smiled at her, his mouth wide. “Your mother and I think it is a good time for you to be away from this village. We will make a trading trip. You are coming with us.”
“No,” she said. “You go, but I will not. Eye-Taker needs my help with her children.”
“You think that if we leave you, White Salmon will claim you as wife while we are gone?” K’os said.
Daughter did not answer.
“He will not. Ask Green Twig’s father how much White Salmon offered for her.”
The words were as vicious as a slap, and it was all Daughter could do to stay on her feet. But K’os had lied to her before, in small things, in foolish ways. Daughter said nothing, merely took her sax from a peg on the wall and slipped it on.
“When do you leave?” she asked Seal.
“Tomorrow, if the weather is good. Perhaps the next day.”
She climbed from the ulax, went to the beach, hoping to find White Salmon there, or at least one of his brothers. He was at the iqyax racks, laughing and talking with other young men. Once she would have joined them, stood behind White Salmon as a wife does, in respect, but this time, she interrupted what he was saying, boldly lay a hand on his sleeve, pulled him to face her.
“What I hear about Green Twig, is that true?” she asked.
He looked down the beach, then over his shoulder at the sea, up toward the sky as though she were not there. One of the other young men covered his laughter with a hand and turned away.
/> “I have pledged a brideprice,” White Salmon finally said.
Anger controlled Daughter’s tongue, and when she would rather have given gentle words, she could think of nothing but curses, so she turned away, let the wind take the men’s laughter from her ears.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A ROCK HAD ROLLED down from the top of the grandfather’s grave, and Daughter set it back in place. Who would take care of the grave once she was gone? Soon earth tremors and wind would move all the stones, and grass would grow over her grandfather’s bones. Then, even if she did return, how would she know where he was? It seemed a cruel thing to leave him here with people who were not truly his own, but what else could she do?
“I will try to return, Grandfather,” Daughter said to the grave. “But K’os wants to visit her own people, the River men, and I am not sure that she will come back to this island.”
Daughter hunched her shoulders so that the stiff collar of her sax covered her ears. She should have worn the hooded otter fur parka K’os had made her for the trading trip, but Daughter needed the comfort of familiar clothes.
She lifted her head and spoke a few words in the River language, as though the wind could understand. Perhaps it did, she told herself. Perhaps the wind that blew over the First Men’s islands also carried the clouds and rain to the River People.
K’os said that Daughter spoke the language well. Seal pretended to speak it, but he knew only a few broken phrases, words that traders might use. He pronounced those in strange ways so that when he said them, boasting of his knowledge, Daughter had to think hard to know what he meant. More than once he had cuffed her when she did not understand.
“So, Grandfather, I have come to say good-bye, and to tell you that I will not forget you or your stories and your wisdom. I will teach my children about the Boat People and about you and how you saved me from the Bear-god warriors.”