Call Down the Stars

by Sue Harrison

  Then Sky Catcher said, “Not worried enough to take her back to Gheli after that first day on the trail.”

  “Well,” said Yikaas, “think about this. Daes turned out better than she could have. Look how selfish her mother, Gheli, is. She won’t go back to the winter village because she thinks Ghaden might be there. She puts her own daughters’ lives at risk …”

  “Ha! That is foolish,” said Sky Catcher. “Better to be a little cold in a fish camp tent than dead because someone remembers that you killed his mother.”

  Qumalix interrupted in a soft voice. “What about her name?” she asked. “What do you think of when I say the word daes?”

  “It is a River word. What does it mean?” Sky Catcher asked.

  “A shallow bit of water, not much good to anyone.”

  “The right name for her,” said Yikaas.

  “But what chance does it give her?” asked Sky Catcher. “The name itself is a curse, and it would always remind Gheli of what she did to that first Daes.”

  “If you remember the stories of the first Daes,” Yikaas said, “you know that she was a selfish woman. Not wicked, but selfish. She left her daughter Aqamdax to run away with Cen. She married an old man she did not care about just because he would take her son Ghaden as his own. It really wasn’t until she was dying, Red Leaf’s knife slicing away her life, that she reached beyond herself and thought of someone else.”

  “Who?” asked Sky Catcher.

  “Remember, she lay over Ghaden so he would not freeze to death.”

  “But Ghaden was just a little boy. Any mother would do the same.”

  Qumalix translated what Sky Catcher had said, then raised her hands to press them against the sides of her head. “You two need to learn each other’s languages,” she told Sky Catcher and Yikaas. “My head aches from carrying your words back and forth.”

  Sky Catcher laughed and thrust a hand toward the top of the ulax. He said something and started up the climbing log, but Qumalix shook her head at him. Yikaas realized he had been holding his breath, waiting for her answer, afraid she would do as Sky Catcher asked. Instead, she looked at Yikaas, lifted her mouth in a half-smile.

  “He complains for lack of sleep,” Qumalix said, but avoided Yikaas’s eyes.

  Sky Catcher said something else, yelled it down rudely from the top of the ulax before he went outside. Qumalix’s face turned red, and to cover her embarrassment, Yikaas asked, “So, do you think the name Daes passed on that first Daes’s selfishness?”

  Qumalix shook her head. “How could anyone know?” she said.

  Kuy’aa had settled down on her haunches, and Yikaas squatted beside her, asked her the same question. She tipped her head to look at him and said, “Perhaps. Perhaps not. The important thing to remember is that she was selfish, and she lied without shame.”

  Yikaas noticed that the old woman was lifting her voice higher and higher to be heard above the arguments of those around them. Finally she began to laugh and said, “Yikaas, you are the loudest of us all. Tell them to be quiet. I think they need another story.”

  So Yikaas whistled and clapped his hands until the people in the ulax had stopped their arguing.

  “My aunt is ready to continue her story,” he told them, but Kuy’aa tugged at his hand, shook her head.

  She placed her fingers against her throat and said, “You take a turn.”

  “I don’t know Daes’s story.”

  “They’ve heard enough about Daes. Tell them about K’os and Daughter. Talk to them about Ghaden. A storyteller has to realize that people don’t want to think about someone like Daes for very long. We are often too much like her, not quite evil and not quite good. Tell us about K’os. She is so evil, we feel good about ourselves. Or tell us about Ghaden and Daughter. We want to be like them, so it is easy to fall into their story.”

  “But they want to know what Cries-loud tells Daes.”

  “You can’t think of some way to put that in a story about K’os or Ghaden?”

  Yikaas smiled at his aunt’s wisdom and lifted his voice to begin.

  Near the Four Rivers Village

  6435 B.C.

  K’OS’S STORY

  K’os woke from her dream smiling. They were less than a day away from the Four Rivers village. The path was familiar now to her feet. Aa, she had been young when she lived here, wife to the boy River Ice Dancer. She laughed under her breath. He had cost her much, that one. The fool! Who could believe he would steal her brideprice from his father’s caches? And worse, that his father would take K’os as slave after River Ice Dancer died?

  She owed Cen for that death. Who else would have killed the boy but him, though she had never decided why he did it. Perhaps only so she would take the blame, and the Four Rivers People would drive her out of their village.

  Cen was dead, but surely his spirit would know what she did to Ghaden, the son receiving the revenge she had intended for his father. And the people of the Four Rivers village, they, too, would know her vengeance. It would not take long. She had found a wonderful poison on her First Men’s island, a plant that also grew here in the River People’s country, but was not well known and was difficult to find.

  The First Men placed it on the points of their whale harpoons, a secret K’os had learned while bedding a hunter. It had taken her some time to learn how to use the plant, dry it down to increase its strength. She had tried it on birds—baby gulls children kept as pets—watched in delight as the birds staggered and gasped and died within a day, the poison so strong that none of them escaped.

  K’os always buried the birds after the poison had stopped their hearts. After all, what would a mother do with a dead bird her child brought her other than strip the feathers and add the flesh to her boiling bag? And who knew when someone might in generosity give you a bowl of that soup?

  Age had changed K’os much, but she did not doubt that some of the Four Rivers People would recognize her. She would have to play the part of a First Men wife and play it well, satisfy them that they had been wrong in driving her away. How strange that with all the people she had killed, the one she did not—River Ice Dancer—had been responsible for her slavery. Gheli, Red Leaf, would be an enemy, but with Cries-loud sent ahead to warn his mother of Ghaden’s arrival, they would probably not see the woman at all.

  “We are close?” Uutuk asked.

  “I have set traplines near this trail,” K’os told her. “It is less than a day’s walk to the village. You think it is better to travel like the First Men, with iqyan and paddles?”

  Daughter rolled her eyes toward the sky. “Much better,” she said.

  “You will like the village. It is not as large as Chakliux’s. At least it was not when I lived there, but the people are good and generous. I stayed for a time with an old man and woman. They are surely dead by now. But they were like a mother and father to me, even helped me celebrate my marriage with a give-away. It was a good time, but when my husband died, some of the people in the village thought that it was my fault. They made me leave, but I hold no anger against them.”

  K’os had never told Uutuk about River Ice Dancer’s death, and the girl looked at her now through frightened eyes.

  “They blamed you?”

  “He was killed as he slept, most likely by a young hunter who had something against him, but I was a new wife and not of their village. It was easier to blame me than to think that one of them did it.”

  “How can you not be angry?”

  “Think of this,” K’os said. “If I had stayed, I would never have found you and your grandfather.”

  K’os cut her eyes away quickly when she saw the tears on Uutuk’s cheeks. The path narrowed, and Uutuk dropped back to walk behind her. By the time they could walk side by side again, the girl’s tears were gone, but K’os clicked her tongue in satisfaction when she saw the worry in Uutuk’s eyes.

  “You think they still blame you, Mother?” Uutuk asked.

  “No, it happened too l
ong ago, and to a young man who was not of their village. They will have forgotten, most of them. And those who remember will see that I could not have been guilty. If I had killed my husband, his spirit would have never allowed me to survive those days of wandering alone in the forest and tundra.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Uutuk said, but though she smiled, her forehead was still creased with concern.

  Good, K’os thought. Worry, Uutuk, and take none of them into your heart.

  Ghaden began a traders’ song as soon as he saw the smoke from the village hearths lying in a thin haze above the trees. Even before they came to the village, a hunter met them on the trail, he and two of his grown sons. Ghaden glanced at K’os, and she called out a greeting. “Blue Lance! We come to trade.”

  The man squinted at her for a moment, then Ghaden saw the dismissal in his face. He didn’t recognize her, but she was only an old woman. Why worry? What harm could she do?

  “Your song says that you’re a trader,” Blue Lance said, the words rising like a question.

  “My wife’s father, Seal, is the trader,” Ghaden told him. “He’s First Men and doesn’t speak the River language, so I sang the song for him.”

  Ghaden did not intend to introduce K’os. What man would? But Blue Lance had begun to stare at her again, even as he told Ghaden that he was the village’s chief hunter and introduced his sons, Moon Slayer and Bird Hand. Blue Lance said that soon the Four Rivers men would leave to follow caribou, but that the traders were welcome to stay until then.

  “It will be good for the young men of the village to have something to think about besides hunting,” he told Ghaden with laughter in his voice. “We have too many fights, too many loud words.”

  It was the same in every village, Ghaden thought. Older hunters had learned to keep their excitement within, spend their energy to make and repair weapons, then pray for the strength and purity to have a good hunt. The young men were like dogs too long tethered, barking and snapping at one another, at their wives and even their children. Yes, traders would be a good diversion.

  “We accept your hospitality,” Ghaden told him, “and thank you for it.” Then, turning to Seal, he explained what Blue Lance had said.

  Seal’s dark face split into a grin. “Just like our young men, anxious to hunt.”

  Ghaden translated, and Blue Lance began to laugh, slapped a hand on Seal’s shoulder, a good sign for any trader. Then Blue Lance lifted his chin toward K’os, asked, “She is wife? Mother?”

  “Perhaps you remember her,” Ghaden said. “A long time ago she lived in your village. She is here now as wife to Seal and mother of my wife.” Ghaden glanced at Uutuk, huddled at the back of the group.

  “Aaa! Too bad that one is already wife. You could get much in trade for her.”

  “She’s a good wife,” Ghaden said carefully, so not to give offense. “I don’t want to trade her.”

  The chief hunter did not seem to hear what he said, and Ghaden realized that the man’s eyes were again on K’os.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I remember her. She is called K’os …” He grimaced. “Her husband was a boy from the Near River village. When he died, some people thought that she …” He paused.

  Ghaden had discussed the problem with K’os the evening before and was ready with an answer. “K’os has told me that she thinks the people of this village did the right thing. How could they know who killed the man? But as you can see, she did not. Otherwise, surely his spirit would have taken revenge on her when she left the village. Instead it guided her to the First Men, where she became wife to Seal.”

  Blue Lance was a small man, short but powerful in his arms and shoulders. Unlike most River hunters he let his hair go free, without braid or ornament. A scar, wide and white, crossed the top of his nose, and at some time in his life he had had tattoos sewn into the skin on either side of the scar. He wore necklaces, many different kinds, but his parka was plain, though well made. His sons were much like him, but taller and not so quick to smile.

  Blue Lance escorted Ghaden and Seal and their wives into the village. His sons, scowls on their faces, ran ahead to tell others that traders were coming. It was a small village, smaller than Ghaden had anticipated for all K’os’s fine words about it, and he turned to see if there was surprise or disappointment on her face, but she was smiling, and he heard her say to Uutuk, “Little has changed since I was here. Aaa, but look! Three new lodges near the river!”

  Ghaden followed her gaze to the lodges, saw by the growth of grasses and plants near them that they were not new at all, but had been in place for some time. But of course, K’os meant since she had lived in the village, and that had been what? Ten years ago? Even more.

  Children crowded around them, shouting out questions, tumbling and arguing and jumping as all children do. Women asked for this thing and that, making offers even before goods were displayed. Then several grandmothers came, each carrying bowls of stew. They offered them to Seal and Ghaden and even to K’os and Uutuk.

  Ghaden accepted the food gladly, ate where he stood, scooping the hot meat from the bowl into his mouth. The food warmed his belly, let him relax a little, but he had not forgotten the main reason for their stay, and as he ate, he peered over the rim of his bowl at the various women, tried to decide which one was his father’s widow.

  One of the grandmothers came close, peered into his face, and said, “He looks like that one who just died.”

  There was a sudden murmur of surprise, then agreement, and even Blue Lance drew close, squinted at him, and said, “Yes.” Then in explanation he added, “That man was a trader also.”

  Ghaden lowered his bowl. How had they found out about Cen’s death? He pressed his lips together, licked at the grease that had coated them. “I’m his son, Ghaden,” he said.

  There were more murmurs of amazement, then one old grandmother spoke out. “He told us about you. He said that one day you would come to our village. I hope you can stay until your sister Daes returns. She had to go back to her mother’s fish camp and tell her what had happened.”

  “My father’s wife is still at fish camp?” Ghaden asked.

  “Yes, but your other sister, the baby, is here in the village. Don’t worry about Daes. She didn’t go alone. Someone came from Chakliux’s village to tell us, and he went with her. You must know him. Cries-loud.”

  “Cries-loud?” Ghaden said. “I thought he left to hunt, at least K’os …”

  He realized that he was speaking his thoughts aloud and closed his mouth, flushed in embarrassment.

  Then K’os stepped forward and said, “I’m only an old woman, but some of you will remember me.”

  Blue Lance held up a hand, gestured for her to be quiet. “Let me tell them,” he said, and explained who she was and what had happened to her.

  Some of the people turned away, making signs of protection against spirits, but several old women came forward, one to apologize for what had happened to K’os years ago, the others only to stare.

  “We’ve come to share your mourning,” K’os said.

  Then there was a whispering in the crowd, a movement of women’s hands, and Ghaden heard the cry of a baby. A young woman stepped forward and Blue Lance said, “This is Long Wolf’s wife. The baby is your sister. They call her Duckling.”

  The woman thrust Duckling into Ghaden’s arms so quickly that he did not have time to protest. The baby was heavy, round and fat, and he could not help but notice that she looked very much like Cries-loud, but how could that be? Cries-loud was not related in any way to Cen.

  Duckling smiled at him, poked a baby finger at his face, and he was suddenly full of sorrow for a little girl who would never know her father. He swallowed hard to open his throat, then noticed that Uutuk had come to stand beside him.

  “May I hold her?” she asked, and Ghaden, balancing the baby on the flats of his hands, was glad to give her up. Uutuk looked into the child’s face, made a little song, and said, “She looks like her brother
.”

  “Her brother?” Ghaden asked, still thinking of Cries-loud.

  “Like you, her brother,” said Uutuk, then Ghaden saw the shine of tears in his wife’s eyes. “Perhaps someday she will have sons that you can teach,” she said.

  She handed the baby back to Long Wolf’s wife. Duckling pressed her head into the woman’s chest and began to squawk. The woman tucked her under her parka, and the baby was suddenly quiet.

  “She was hungry,” Long Wolf’s wife said to no one in particular, as if they did not already know.

  Then Blue Lance lifted his hands, and the people parted, allowed him and Ghaden to walk through. Ghaden turned to gesture toward Uutuk, but the crowd had already closed around her, and he saw that she and K’os and Seal were digging into packs to lay out trade goods. Perhaps not a wise idea when the people were still mourning Cen, but he would have to discuss it with them later.

  Blue Lance’s lodge was made in the same way as those in Chakliux’s village, with a down-slanted entrance tunnel of sod to trap cold air, and several storage areas dug out at the sides of the tunnel. Inside, the caribou hide lodge cover tinted all things gold.

  Two women were at the back of the lodge, and Blue Lance barked something to them, set them scurrying to bring water. Gratefully, Ghaden drank. Walking always made him thirsty, but when they offered food he realized that his stomach was unsettled and he did not really want to eat.

  “I mourn,” he said, to soften his refusal.

  Then Blue Lance’s face crumpled. He closed his eyes and sat very still for a long time.

  Finally he said, “Your father was my hunting partner when he was not trading.” He opened his eyes, but tented his fingers over his face. “We need to make a mourning,” he said, “and we need to get his wife and daughter back into the village.”

  He suddenly jumped to his feet as though he were the one who must do all these things. He began to pace, and his wives looked at one another, worry evident in their eyes. They were sisters, without doubt, faces nearly identical.