by Sue Harrison
Chakliux felt a draught of air at the back of his neck, and he turned to see that the woman Uutuk had entered the lodge. She sidled past him, her eyes on her mother, her hands full of bulging water bladders. But when she saw Cen, she dropped to her knees, her mouth open.
Chakliux thought she would begin to wail, but she only stared, and finally she told Cen, “My husband needs to know that you’re alive.”
“Where is he?” Cen asked.
“He went to find your wife and your daughter Daes.”
Cen let out his breath. “They’re alive?”
“I think so,” she answered, “but who can say with this whole village dying? Gheli and Daes were still at their fish camp, and Ghaden went to find them. Your other daughter, the baby, is with Long Wolf’s wife. They are well. I just came from their lodge.”
“The baby’s not with Gheli?” he asked. “Why?”
“Daes brought her back to the village. I don’t know why.”
“You gave Long Wolf’s wife my medicine for protection?” K’os asked.
Her words chilled Chakliux, but before he could say anything, Cen strode over to K’os and grabbed her, one hand grasping her shoulder, the other twisted into her hair. “You will stay away from that lodge,” he told her. “If you do not, you will be dead.”
He released her so quickly that she stumbled and fell to her knees. Uutuk hurried to her, and Cen, his lips curled in anger, held a fist in Uutuk’s face and said, “I have nothing against you except your mother, but what I said to her, I say to you. Leave my baby daughter alone. I don’t want you in Long Wolf’s lodge.”
Cen strode toward the entrance tunnel, paused only to tell Chakliux, “Watch them!”
Chakliux unstrapped the pack from his back and let it fall to the floor mats. His foot ached, and he needed to rest.
“Your water is safe, Uutuk?” he asked in a gentle voice.
“It’s safe,” she told him.
He held out a hand, and she gave him a bladder, but then she clasped his wrist, pulled out the stopper, and drank.
“It’s safe,” she said again.
He drank, and she busied herself with women’s tasks, hanging the bladders and adding wood to the fire, a handful of dried meat to the cooking bag. K’os fixed her eyes on Chakliux and raised her voice in a mourning cry.
Chakliux ignored her and instead said to Uutuk, “Has she told you that I am more than brother by marriage to you?”
Uutuk frowned and turned away from the cooking bag, wiped her hands on her leggings, then squatted beside him.
“Did K’os give birth to you?” Chakliux asked.
“Ghaden didn’t tell you? I wanted him to tell you. I’m not …” She stopped and seemed to search for words. “Before I was First Men, I was from another place and another people. My grandfather and I came in a boat to escape the Bear-god warriors. The sea brought us to the First Men, and there K’os became my mother.”
Chakliux considered her words. He was Dzuuggi, storyteller, and knew all the wisdom of his people. He had never heard of the Bear-god warriors, and surely if they existed he would have known about them. He knew stories about the fierce warriors who had come long ago, killing the First Men. Perhaps they were Bear-god and the First Men gave them a name different from Uutuk’s people.
“Who are your people?” he asked.
“We are the Boat People,” she said in the First Men language, and then said something in another tongue, a strange language that Chakliux had never heard. That more than anything convinced him that she was telling the truth.
“Like you, I was found,” he said to her.
K’os had stopped her mourning cries and crept a little closer.
“He lies, Uutuk,” she said. “I should know.”
“Yes, you should know,” Chakliux said to her. “Since you are my mother.”
Uutuk gasped, then began to cough, as though the knowledge were choking her.
“Ghaden said nothing about that to me,” she said.
“Don’t blame Ghaden,” K’os told her. “My life began over with the First Men, and I no longer call this man my son. He has betrayed me many times. He even sent me away as a slave from his village. I’ve told you that story.”
Uutuk covered her mouth with both hands. “You are the one?” she asked.
“See why I didn’t tell you?” K’os said. “It was better that you thought of Chakliux as brother, for although he treated me poorly, he has been kind in most ways to Ghaden.”
K’os’s words were like strong arms squeezing his chest, and Chakliux drew a deep breath in order to break their hold. “You told her also how you treated my wife, Gguzaakk?”
K’os’s eyes narrowed, and she spat out, “Don’t believe him, Uutuk. He lies.”
“Let her make her own choice about that,” Chakliux said, then he told her how Gguzaakk and his son died of poison.
When Cen returned to the lodge, Uutuk was weeping, and K’os was hovering over her dead husband, her back to her daughter.
Cen began speaking even before he was through the inner doorflap. “Friend,” he said to Chakliux, “I need you to stay and watch over my little daughter. The woman who nurses her is pregnant, and her milk is getting thin. But Duckling is old enough to eat soft food, broths and such. Will you be sure her food is safe?” He lifted his chin to point at K’os. “This one has somehow poisoned most of the people in the village.”
“I did nothing to these people!” K’os said, her voice full of weeping. “Do you think I would kill my own husband?”
But Chakliux said to Uutuk, “She uses poison well. Be careful.”
Uutuk began to tremble, and she clasped her arms across her chest as though she were cold.
“Many people think she killed all her husbands,” Chakliux said. “I know what she did to my first wife and our little son. Don’t trust her.”
Then he looked at Cen, the man pacing from one side of the lodge to the other. “You can’t go now,” Chakliux told him. “Rest and eat first.”
Uutuk stood and scooped a ladle into the boiling bag, held it to K’os’s lips until she ate. Then Uutuk filled bowls for both men.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CEN’S STORY
CEN LEFT THE NEXT morning. The day of rest at his own lodge, though marred by K’os’s presence, had seemed to renew his strength, and he walked quickly, following the path that one of the women in the village pointed out. There were two handfuls dead and another two handfuls sick, three or four near death, others who looked as though they might recover. Each death was a wound in his heart. He had lived in this village for many years, and though he was related to none of the people by blood, save his baby daughter, they had become his family. If K’os had wanted revenge on him, she had chosen wisely.
By the third day walking, Cen was once again exhausted. His nights were torn by dreams of the sea; his days were filled with anger against K’os and Ghaden and even Ghaden’s new wife, Uutuk.
He had no warning that he was coming upon the fish camp, no smoke from a fire, no smell of drying fish, no sound of dogs. He simply walked out of the scrub that grew on either side of the trail into a clearing that had a lean-to of spruce boughs and the old ashes of a dead fire. At first he thought the camp was abandoned, and he wondered why he had not met Gheli and Daes and Ghaden on the trail. Of course, people often made fish camps close to one another. Perhaps Gheli’s was beyond this, but then he heard a distant bark, and suddenly a strong hand flung a pack from the lean-to, and Ghaden crawled out.
“Ghaden!” Cen shouted.
The anger that had been building in Cen’s mind made him forget that Ghaden still believed he was dead.
The young man jumped quickly to his feet, began to back away, chanting as he clasped an amulet that hung at his waist.
“I’m not dead,” Cen said, and sighed with the frustration of having to prove again that he had not been taken by the sea.
“I’m not,” he said. “Look.” He thrust the
point of a knife into the fleshy pad at the palm of his hand, squeezed until blood dripped to the ground. “The sea did not take me, though it has stolen some of my hearing and dimmed my sight.”
Ghaden approached slowly. Cen held out his hand, and Ghaden reached forward, caught a drop of blood with his fingers. Then suddenly he was crying in huge, hard gasps, and he grabbed Cen, pressed him to his chest, pounded his hands against Cen’s back until Cen broke away laughing, his anger suddenly gone.
“We have to catch Gheli,” Ghaden said, then stopped, shut his mouth as though he wished he had said nothing at all.
“She’s all right?” Cen asked.
“Yes.”
He studied his son’s face, frowned at what he saw there. “Daes?” he asked with a catch in his voice.
“They’re both fine. They’re together with Cries-loud. You remember him? He’s from Chakliux’s village, son of Sok …”
“I remember,” Cen said. “Why is he with them? Where are they going? Why haven’t they returned to the village?”
Ghaden tipped his head to look up at the sky. Finally he said, “There are things you need to know.”
“I can’t hear you unless you speak to my face,” said Cen.
Ghaden grimaced. “I’m sorry for what the sea did to you.”
Cen shrugged. “It didn’t take my life. Tell me again what you said.”
“I said, ‘Are you hungry? Let’s sit down and eat. There’re things I need to tell you.’”
The Four Rivers Village
UUTUK’S STORY
“She didn’t kill him, I know,” Two-heeled Fish said to Uutuk.
Two-heeled Fish was so ancient that she scarcely had the strength to sit up. Her granddaughter knelt behind her, so Two-heeled Fish could lean back against the granddaughter’s legs. The old woman raised a bony finger and pointed it at Uutuk’s face, a rudeness that made the granddaughter reach forward, lay a hand on her wrist, and pull the arm down.
“Most of these people in this winter village are so young that they were only children when she lived among us. My granddaughter says that Cen has returned. He knows K’os. He hates her. He was the one who made K’os leave.” Her voice was scratchy, and she spoke barely above a whisper. She turned her head to look at her granddaughter. “I told them last winter to let me die. But this one has a soft heart and a husband who is a good hunter.” She raised a hand to stroke the young woman’s face.
“Do you remember when K’os lived with us?” she asked her granddaughter.
“I remember,” she said. “Many people remember, and some want her to leave again, but others say she did no harm to anyone. They were only frightened because her husband died so horribly, and they are frightened again because of the sickness in this village. We’re fortunate that my sons and husband have already left on a caribou hunt. I spend much of my time with my grandmother, so I don’t eat out of the village hearths. The ones who ate from the hearth cooking bags are the ones who got sick.”
The granddaughter wore her hair twisted into a tight knot at the crown of her head. She had threaded thin slices of bone through holes in her earlobes. Her lodge was well made, nearly as large as Cen’s, and it seemed unusually empty with the men’s weapons and bedding gone.
“My mother lost a husband in this village?” Uutuk asked.
“A young man,” Two-heeled Fish said. “Very young, almost a boy. K’os could have been his mother.” She chuckled. “But he did not act like a son.”
Again the granddaughter’s face darkened in embarrassment, and she fussed with her grandmother’s thin white hair, brushing it away from the old woman’s face until Two-heeled Fish slapped at her hands.
“It’s true. He was always touching her,” Two-heeled Fish said. “I remember that they had a feast in the middle of winter and gave everyone gifts. I still have the shell comb she gave me, and a necklace of fish bone beads. I still have them both.”
Two-heeled Fish was without most of her teeth, and when she paused in her speaking, she moved her jaws as though she were chewing. Spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth, flecked white on her lips.
“She helped me, too, taught me about medicines. Why do you think I have lived so long? She told me how to make teas to heal diseases. Has she taught you?”
“Yes, she has taught me,” Uutuk said. “But there’s much I don’t know, especially about the plants that grow in this place. Everything is so different from the island where I lived.”
“You lived on an island? I did wonder about your name. Uutuk. It’s not River, nae’?”
“First Men.” Then, before Two-heeled Fish could ask another question, Uutuk said, “Tell me what happened to this husband.”
Two-heeled Fish pursed her lips into a tiny circle, shook her head, and said, “It was terrible, something that shouldn’t be talked about, but since she’s your mother, you need to know. He was killed with a knife.”
“Not poison?”
“No,” Two-heeled Fish said, “and that’s why I know your mother didn’t kill him. She knew too much about plants. If you want to kill a young husband like River Ice Dancer and you know about plants, it is easier to kill him with poison.”
“Enough!” the granddaughter yelled. “Enough, Grandmother. You’ll bring curses on us. Be quiet.” She looked across her grandmother’s head at Uutuk and lifted her chin toward the door of the lodge. “Go now. Surely your mother will tell you if you need to know anything else.”
Then Uutuk thanked them and leaned forward to press a yellow puffin feather into the old woman’s hand. “A good protection for you, Grandmother,” she said, and left the lodge.
Uutuk could still hear Two-heeled Fish chuckling as she walked back to Cen’s lodge. River Ice Dancer. Yes, K’os had told her about him. And there was an old man who had been her first husband, she had overheard her talking to Seal about the good gifts he used to give her. Then there was that chief hunter who had died in a fire. K’os had outlived them all.
Uutuk went back to Cen’s lodge. Chakliux was working on the thin, fine blades that River men used to make points for the tiny spears they shot from their fire bow weapons. She had seen those weapons for the first time at the Traders’ Beach, but they were not worth much. None of the First Men wanted them.
K’os was still sitting beside her dead husband, moaning and rocking. There would be a burial ceremony that evening. It would be good to get Seal’s body out of the lodge. It had begun to stink.
The River People put their dead on scaffolds, Ghaden had once told her, or they burned them if there was some curse involved. Most likely Seal would be burned. She worried about his spirit, if it could survive the flames, and she had made prayers for his safe passage to the world of the dead.
She went to K’os, laid a hand on her shoulder, leaned close to whisper, “Mother, tell me again about your young Four Rivers husband.”
Her mother looked up at her, and though K’os had been crying, there was no puffiness in her eyes, no redness. “Why, Uutuk, did someone in the village speak to you about him?”
“The old woman Two-heeled Fish,” Uutuk said quietly.
“Aaa, well, as I told you, he died. Someone in this village stabbed him. I think it was Cen, but I was blamed.”
Uutuk began to shake, and she clamped her teeth together to keep them from chattering. “Why would Cen do that?” she asked.
K’os smiled. “He wanted me for himself. But the people of this village thought that since my husband died in such a terrible way, I might curse them all. They made me leave. In the middle of winter, they made me leave.”
Her eyes darkened. “They thought I would die, but I didn’t.” Her words were a whisper.
Uutuk wrapped a fur seal pelt around her shoulders and sat down with a partially completed boot upper in her hands. She tried to sew, but her fingers trembled so much that all she could do was lift prayers for the dead.
The Wilderness Northwest of the Fish Camp
GHELI’S STORY
Gheli screamed when she saw Cen, and Daes dropped as though she had been taken by a spear, but Cries-loud stood where he was and said, “Is he alive, or are we all in the spirit world?”
“Alive,” Ghaden answered.
Then Gheli dashed away her tears and ran to Cen, flung her arms around him. He did not move to hold her, and finally she pulled away, looked into his face, and said, “Ghaden told you.”
She stepped back. “I will die for what I did to your woman and your son. I deserve that, but please don’t take revenge on my daughters.”
Daes stepped between the two. The girl was as tall as her mother and nearly as wide. She carried a large pack on her back, the tumpline cutting across her forehead, pulling her head back toward the pack. She curled her lips away from her teeth, spoke with words harsh and loud.
“So you did not know who she was.”
“I did not,” Cen told her.
“Will you kill me for what she did?”
“What blame do you hold? None of this was your fault.”
“Do you still claim me as daughter?”
Cen’s eyes grew soft. “Always, you will be my daughter.”
“A woman may throw away a husband and a man may throw away a wife. Can a daughter throw away a mother?”
“But then who would be your mother?”
“Perhaps that first Daes, who rides so uneasily within my body, sharing her name with me.”
“Perhaps that one,” Cen said quietly.
“I’ll return with you to our village.”
Gheli began to cry soundlessly, tears dripping from her jaw to the fur of her parka.
“Wait,” Cen told Daes.
“You won’t take me with you?”
“You need to know something. You all need to know something.” He looked at Gheli. “Ghaden has married a First Men woman. She and her family came with him to the Four Rivers village. She’s called Uutuk. Her father, Seal, is a trader, but he has died. Ghaden needs to return to the village for the mourning.”