Call Down the Stars

by Sue Harrison

  “Besides,” she said to him, “I need to talk to you without Uutuk listening.”

  “What I know, my wife will know,” he said.

  K’os raised her eyebrows at him and smiled as if she were a fond mother considering a foolish child. “As you choose.”

  Ghaden wanted to walk away from her, but he told himself that he was stronger than her insults. So, as if she had been respectful, as a wife’s mother should be, he squatted on his haunches, crossed his arms over the tops of his knees, and nodded so she would know that he was listening.

  “I will not be welcome in my son’s village,” she said. “I think that I should wait for you and Seal here at this camp. When you are ready to go to the Four Rivers village, come back for Uutuk and me.”

  “Uutuk?” Ghaden said. “I will take her with me to my village. Chakliux may have told you to leave, but he has nothing against my wife.”

  “She’s my daughter. That will be enough. They’ll accept Seal as a trader, and he is a man able to take care of himself. Besides, what First Men trader is not welcome in Chakliux’s village, married as Chakliux is to a First Men woman? But Uutuk is young, and I am afraid for her. Leave her here with me.”

  “You think I cannot take care of my own wife?”

  “I think it would be wise to go first by yourself.”

  Ghaden considered K’os’s words for a long time, and before he gave his answer, K’os added, “When I was young, I was a fool. I had good husbands, but I didn’t appreciate them. I owned a slave, and I did not treat her well. I had a son who saw things differently than I did. Sometimes he was right, sometimes I was, but just because we did not see life in the same way was no reason for me to carry the anger I had against him.

  “One good thing about growing old is that it gives you time to get wisdom. When I found Uutuk and her grandfather on the beach of my husband’s island, I thought only of myself, that they might help me gain more respect from the people of that village. But Uutuk’s grandfather was a very wise man. He taught me much, and for the first time I saw how selfish I was and how little I did for others. I’ve changed since my son last saw me. I don’t expect him to believe that, but I hope you will.”

  In the falling darkness, the fire seemed to take on strength, and Ghaden saw it now, yellow and red, in K’os’s eyes.

  “I know that you’ve been a good mother to my wife,” he said. “I see that you treat your husband with respect. If you think that it is best that Uutuk stays with you here, then I will leave her, but I would feel better if Seal also stayed to protect you.”

  “We’ll be safe,” K’os said. “But be wise in speaking to Chakliux. If you tell him that you’ve taken a wife, I think it best that you do not mention I am her mother. There are people I would like to see who live in that village—your sister Yaa, the boy Cries-loud.” She let out a soft laugh and shook her head as though she were reliving old memories. “He must be a man by now. If you think you can trust him, you might bring him to see me. If Chakliux is pleased that you took a First Men wife, and you decide that you want to take Uutuk back to the village to meet your sisters, then you might bring Cries-loud with you when you come to get her. He had much sorrow in his life, losing his mother as he did, and I’ve always admired his strength in that loss.”

  “He’s a strong hunter and provides well for my sister Yaa,” Ghaden said.

  K’os released another riff of laughter. “Yaa is his wife?” she asked.

  “For many years now.”

  “I’m sure he has filled her with sons and daughters,” said K’os, and narrowed her eyes at Ghaden when he did not reply.

  Ghaden turned his head and saw Uutuk carrying a bundle of wood, a good excuse for him to end the conversation with K’os. She did not need to know that Yaa and Cries-loud had no children, that each baby Yaa carried came too early and died soon after birth. If he trusted K’os more he might ask if she had any medicine that would help, but if her claims in having changed were not true, she did not need to know more than necessary about Yaa or Cries-loud. After all, Cries-loud had been one of the young men who had taken her to the Walrus Hunters to be sold as slave. Perhaps K’os still resented him for that. Chakliux had always claimed that she was a woman who lived for revenge. What if he was right? What if she knew curses that would spoil any chance Yaa still might have to bear a healthy child?

  Ghaden strode to his wife and took her armload of wood. Uutuk murmured a politeness and winked her eyes at him. He felt a warmth grow in his groin, thought of his wife’s fingers, her soft and cunning touch.

  “Daughter, you have worked hard,” K’os said. She got up from the log where she was sitting and offered Uutuk her place. Then she stood behind the girl and began to comb out her braids.

  Ghaden watched K’os in the firelight, untangling the strands, saw his wife close her eyes and relax, heard Seal’s muffled snore coming from the spruce bough lean-to.

  There were better men than Seal, and women who could be trusted more than K’os, but nothing Chakliux could say would convince him that he had not chosen wisely in taking Uutuk as wife.

  The first to see Ghaden when he and Seal entered the village the next day was Yaa. Two long funneled gathering baskets full of fall cranberries, ripe and overflowing, were slung from her shoulders by wide bands of caribou hide, but she squealed and dropped the baskets, did not even turn her head to see whether or not the berries scattered when the baskets hit the ground.

  She flung herself into his arms, and to Ghaden’s amusement Seal asked, “You have another wife here in this village?”

  He spoke in the First Men language, so as Ghaden laughed out his denial and introduced his sister, he began to translate the words for Yaa, but she had heard enough of the First Men language in her life to have an idea of what he said, and the three of them stood laughing together as the villagers gathered around.

  When Chakliux pushed his way through the people, he grabbed Ghaden in a rough hug, then turned to look at Seal. He took in his sax, labrets, and nose pin, then smiled and spoke a welcome in the First Men language, but Ghaden could see the questions in Chakliux’s eyes, the beginning of worry there.

  Chakliux stepped back and slapped a hand on Ghaden’s shoulder. “Where’s Cen?” he asked.

  To his embarrassment, Ghaden felt his eyes fill with tears.

  Chakliux sighed out several hard breaths, then began to shake his head and finally said in denial, “No, tell me Cen is well.”

  The words were like a blessing, and for the first time since Ghaden had found his father’s paddles floating in the North Sea, a small shaft of hope lightened his sorrow, but then the reality of his own knowledge came to him, and he told Chakliux, “My father’s iqyax was caught in a storm. He and the two traders he traveled with all drowned.”

  The words made the truth of his father’s death hit him again, and his throat closed on his sorrow. Then, though Ghaden had not seen her approach, Aqamdax was with them, her youngest, a daughter born just before Ghaden had left in the spring, slung on her back. She pulled him into an embrace, laughing, joyous, until she leaned back and looked into his face.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, her words a demand as though she were a mother asking a child the cause of his tears.

  “Cen,” Chakliux said softly, and Ghaden was grateful, because his sorrow over Cen’s death and his joy at seeing his sister again had stolen his words.

  Yaa pressed close, clasped Aqamdax’s hand, and pulled her older sister away, repeating Ghaden’s explanation as she did so. As though he were seeing the people of his village for the first time, Ghaden noticed that each man, each woman looked a little older, Chakliux with a few gray strands of hair over his ears, Aqamdax with worry lines etched a little more deeply between her eyes.

  Sok came up behind him, planted a large hand on his shoulder, yet even Sok seemed smaller—still huge, but not quite as large as he once had been.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Dii and I will mourn him, even if yo
u have already made a mourning.”

  “We honored all three men the four days it takes for a spirit to leave the earth,” Ghaden said, “but a remembering here in this village would be a good thing. After that, I will go and tell his wife and my sisters in the Four Rivers village.”

  He had mumbled the last words, speaking more to himself and Chakliux than to anyone else, so he was surprised to hear a voice raised, a man volunteering to go with him. He turned and saw Cries-loud.

  Yaa pushed between them. “Perhaps you would take me as well,” she said.

  “I think there are things here a wife should do while her husband is away,” Cries-loud said to her.

  Yaa’s face pinched tight in hurt, and Ghaden knew that though they had lived together as husband and wife for a long time, the years had not bound them closer. They had taught one another well how to quarrel, how to wound.

  “I will take my wife,” Ghaden said, speaking before he thought, thinking only of how to ease the tension between the two. He had never liked to see his sister unhappy.

  “You have decided to take a wife? Soon?” Chakliux asked, and Ghaden wished he could pull the words back into his mouth and swallow them down before anyone heard.

  He had meant to speak first to Aqamdax, then to Chakliux, to tell them about Uutuk, rather than spill out what he had done before the entire village. There were mothers here hoping he would choose one of their daughters as his wife.

  For some strange reason since the fighting so many years ago, more boy babies had been born than girl, but still, among people his age, there were too many women for the number of men. So Ghaden had many young women to choose from.

  “Now that I mourn my father,” Ghaden said, “I will not take another wife at least for this year. Though if there is some woman who needs food, I will provide it.”

  He saw the understanding come into Chakliux’s eyes.

  “Where is she? Who is she?” he asked.

  Ghaden stood on his toes to see over the crowd, and finally found Seal standing at the edge of the group. He had turned away to study the village. Several younger boys had ventured close to him and were eyeing his sax, discussing the harpoon slung over his shoulder. The weapon did not have much purpose in the woodlands of the River People, and Ghaden wondered why Seal had brought it. Perhaps to tempt some hunter into a trade.

  “A First Men woman,” Ghaden said, and heard the murmuring begin, saw angry looks cast at Seal.

  “His daughter?” Sok asked and jerked his head toward Uutuk’s father.

  “Yes,” Ghaden said quietly. “She is a wise woman, a healer who knows many plants …”

  “What good will a First Men healer do in this village?” Sok asked, then before Ghaden could answer, he added, “I hope you’ve told her that you plan to choose a wife from your own village as well.”

  One of the women said, “What man would do that to a new wife?”

  Ghaden turned his head at the voice and saw that it was Dii. In disgust, she gave her husband a shove, and several hunters in the group raised hands over mouths to hide their smiles. Dii was only half the size of Sok, and though no man in the village, save Chakliux himself, would dare voice disagreement with him, Dii was afraid of no one.

  “A healer is a healer,” she said. “We need one in this village, nae’? If she has learned the useful plants that grow near First Men villages, then she will learn our plants as well. Gull Beak will help her.” She lifted her voice as she left her husband’s side to shout her question into Gull Beak’s ear.

  The old woman opened her mouth in a smile. “Aaa, long ago I had a slave who taught me much,” Gull Beak said, her voice too loud. “What use will my knowledge be if I die without passing it on? But there is much I do not know.”

  “It will be a beginning for her,” Dii said to Ghaden. “But you will have to help your wife learn our language, and learn quickly.”

  “She speaks it.”

  “How so?”

  Ghaden paused. He did not want to mention K’os, not even the fact that Uutuk’s mother was River. There would be too many questions, but then he smiled and turned that smile on Chakliux as well. “She’s a storyteller,” he said, “and sometimes translates for the River and the First Men at the Traders’ Beach so they can understand each other.”

  He saw a softening in Aqamdax’s eyes. She arched her brows at her husband as though daring him to question Ghaden’s choice.

  “She comes to you, my sister, with a message from Qung,” Ghaden said, and though he knew his words would bring Aqamdax joy, he was not prepared for the sudden tears, her choked voice as she asked, “Qung is alive? She is well?”

  “She is well,” Ghaden answered, “and has taught my wife several new stories for you.”

  Then Aqamdax, as though she had never left the First Men, covered her face with her hands, forgetting that she was a River wife and should hold in her tears until she was alone in her lodge.

  Though Sok was still glowering at Ghaden over Dii’s head, Chakliux said, “Your wife is welcome. Did you leave her alone somewhere? Most First Men women would be frightened in our forests.”

  “She’s with her mother,” Ghaden said. “I’ll go and bring her to the village tomorrow.”

  Chakliux lifted his chin toward Seal. “Let him stay if he wishes. Is he hunter or trader?”

  “Trader.”

  “Tell him that once his daughter is here, we’ll have a day of mourning to remember your father, but then we’ll be glad to make trades. Will he and his wife spend the winter with us?”

  “Perhaps here or at the Four Rivers village,” Ghaden said. “He plans to return to his own people in the spring.”

  “Then he has a long time to trade. Ask him to join us for food in our lodge. He’ll be happier, I think, with people who speak his language.”

  Chakliux turned and said something to Aqamdax, who hurried away. Those who had gathered also left, except for a few of the older women who stood together with hands cupped around the edges of their mouths, whispering, no doubt, about the wife Ghaden had married. Most of the old ones would not be kind to her. He remembered how he and Yaa and Aqamdax were treated when they first came from the Near River village to live among the Cousin People. But the old women had gradually become used to seeing them, to hearing their voices, and finally had accepted them. It would be the same for Uutuk if he could keep K’os a secret.

  Thoughts of K’os brought her request to his mind, and he hissed out his apprehension. Things were no better between Yaa and Cries-loud.

  He and Cries-loud often hunted together, but not as partners. Ghaden did not trust the man enough for that. Cries-loud was strange. He often disappeared into the woods for long days and nights, hunting, he said, though there were times when he came back with nothing at all, even in the fall when the forests and tundra were blessed with summer-fat game.

  Yaa, gifted at all things a woman should do well save having children, could not always pull Cries-loud from his dark moods. Surely it did not help that every baby she gave her husband had died, the last just before Ghaden left for the Traders’ Beach.

  It was difficult to know a man who seldom joined in the jokes and laughter that hunters and warriors share, who did not often speak out his ideas or thoughts. Ghaden wished K’os had asked for someone else, but maybe she understood Cries-loud, for it seemed to Ghaden that K’os herself was also given to dark moods. Perhaps for that reason she believed that Cries-loud would not betray her to a village of people who would rejoice more in her death than in her life.

  “Are you coming?”

  The question pulled Ghaden from his thoughts, and he looked up into Chakliux’s face, saw the softness in the man’s eyes, and knew that Chakliux, too, mourned Cen. “I lost my father when I was just a little younger than you,” he said. “The pain will lift, but slowly. The best mourning is to live a good life.”

  Ghaden called Seal to join them, and they walked to Chakliux’s lodge, where Aqamdax waited for them. Aqamda
x had three strong sons and three daughters. The youngest daughter was asleep in a carrying board hung on one of the lodge poles; the oldest son, Angax, a boy who looked much like Chakliux, worked on a spear shaft settled on his crossed legs.

  The lodge was filled with the smell of meat cooking, and Aqamdax and Chakliux soon had Seal telling stories about his life as trader among the First Men.

  Ghaden sat with a niece on his lap and discussed hunting with Angax. Tomorrow he would bring Uutuk to this good place. He could imagine no greater happiness, save if his father were alive and here with them as well.

  Cries-loud thrust out his lower jaw and said, “Your brother was never lauded for his wisdom.”

  Yaa ducked her head and did not answer, though Cries-loud knew that she had been gifted with as sharp a tongue as ever lived in a woman’s mouth. The only good was that she seldom used her words against him, and this time was no exception. But after all, how could she answer?

  Ghaden’s foolishness was legend in this village. He had managed to get himself nearly killed by a brown bear; he had kept a dog in his lodge as though it were a child. Even before he was to the age of remembering, he had drawn evil down on himself and his mother.

  “Why bring a wife into a village that has too many women already?” Cries-loud said. “He could have had a good River wife, without even paying a large brideprice. I expect that First Men fathers get much in trade goods for their daughters.”

  Yaa lifted her hands as though to concede, and Cries-loud was suddenly ashamed. Why blame Yaa? A sister did not have the power to change the choices her brother made. But more words of derision jumped from Cries-loud’s mouth, as though there were some spirit in his throat that spoke for him.

  “He’s a fool. He talks about visiting the Four Rivers village, perhaps spending the winter. He should stay here, he and his new wife. At least he could help feed our people.”

  Yaa turned her back, busied herself with caribou packs. He could tell by her stiff, jerky movements that she was upset, and he waited, hoping she would say something. He carried a heaviness in his chest that seemed to lift only when he exhausted himself hunting, or when he became mad enough to set his heart racing. He was close to that degree of anger now, but he needed Yaa to fight against him, otherwise his anger merely dissolved into disgust.