The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  He kicked the women away as the men held him, then screamed out to ask why they were attacking him. He was a respected trader. For many years he had come to this village. Had he ever cheated anyone? Had he ever abused their hospitality?

  His last question seemed to renew their anger, and one of the women shouted at him, “What about my sister-wife? What about her little son? You kill them, then say you show respect?”

  He knew the woman, her loud voice, her harsh ways. She was Brown Water. Her words pierced his eardrums like birdbone needles. What had she said about killing? Did she mean Daes? Ghaden?

  “Who is dead?” he shouted out, but his question brought more screaming, more anger. Several men hit him—hard, heavy blows to his face and belly, so that he curled his body to protect himself. His thoughts swirled as though he lived a dream. He raised his head for a moment to look back at his bed, almost expecting to see himself lying there asleep, dreaming the pain.

  Chakliux had watched the Near River hunters and a number of women, Brown Water leading them, leave the village. He knew they were going to the trader’s camp. Several men motioned for him to join them, but he shook his head. Because Daes was killed by a trader’s knife, they thought the trader did it? What man would be so foolish as to leave such a clear sign?

  Chakliux had watched the trader, had seen how skillfully he bargained, how well he judged men. If he had murdered someone, he would not leave his knife behind. Chakliux wanted no part of whatever they planned to do to the man.

  “You heard what happened?”

  Chakliux turned at the sound of his brother’s voice.

  “I found her,” Chakliux answered.

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was dead when you found her?”

  “Yes, and the boy nearly dead.”

  “Do you think he will live?”

  “Ligige’ stopped the bleeding, and the shaman prays. Perhaps he will live, perhaps not.”

  “They think the trader did it?”

  “One of the trader’s knives was still in the boy’s shoulder.”

  Sok snorted. “Cen is not stupid,” he said. “If he killed someone, he would not leave his knife.”

  “You think they will kill him?” Chakliux asked.

  Sok lifted his hands, fingers spread. “Who can say?” he answered. “They will probably bring him back to the village before they decide what to do.”

  “Should we wait for them?” Chakliux asked. “A man should not be killed for what he did not do. If we talk to them …”

  “I will wait for them. You should not,” Sok answered, then said, “You know what some people say about the dogs.”

  Chakliux nodded. “Yes.” How many had died since he came to the village? Seven, eight? They blamed him. The Near River dogs had been strong and healthy until he came.

  “If they blame you for dogs, they might blame you for other things as well,” Sok said. “I will wait for them, try to talk to them.”

  Chakliux turned toward their grandfather’s lodge, took several steps along the path before his brother called out to stop him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To feed our grandfather’s dogs.”

  “You have not yet fed the dogs?”

  “No.”

  Sok clicked his tongue as though Chakliux were a child to be scolded. “I will do it,” Sok said. “Go. Leave the village for the day. Do whatever it is you like to do, but leave the village.”

  Chakliux could see the irritation in his brother’s eyes. Feeding dogs was usually a boy’s job. Chakliux did it because he liked being with Tsaani. How else could he show his gratitude for the man’s patience, his willingness to accept Chakliux without sympathy or fear of his difference?

  Chakliux walked back toward Red Leaf’s lodge. His brother was right. He should leave the village, stay away until night. Red Leaf would not be sad to see him go, even just for a day. He was one more to feed, another man to sew for. She was a good wife to Sok and a good mother to Sok’s sons, but she did not try to hide her resentment of Chakliux.

  Red Leaf was a large woman, as tall as Chakliux and wide of hip and shoulder—a woman who would give a man large, strong sons. Her face was as square as her body, skin dark and smooth. When Sok came into the lodge, Red Leaf’s eyes never left him. Her hands, usually capable and strong, fluttered when he spoke, and when she brushed the snow from his parka, her fingers lingered against the fur.

  Any acknowledgment of Chakliux came with the downward curl of her lips, the narrowing of her eyes, but this time she smiled and gave him a bowl of meat and broth, then circled to brush snow from his parka.

  “You were the one who found her,” she said from behind his back. “Do you think spirits killed her?”

  Chakliux tipped the bowl to his mouth and drank. He wiped his lips with his hand and said, “Spirits do not use knives.”

  “You did not see anyone? Someone who might have killed her?” Chakliux squatted on his haunches beside the hearth fire. Red Leaf knelt beside him and whispered, “Night Walking says Brown Water herself might have done it.”

  “I saw no one,” Chakliux answered. “She had been dead a long time when I found her.”

  Red Leaf’s lips tightened.

  Chakliux set the bowl on the scraped caribou hides that covered the floor. “I will hunt today,” he said, but did not look at the woman. What was wrong with her? This was not a celebration. Daes was dead; her child was badly hurt, perhaps dying. Worst of all, someone had done the killing.

  In his own village, Chakliux had been taught the stories of his people, stories to pass down so certain things would not be forgotten. In several of those stories, people had killed others, but that had been long ago, when animals and men could talk to one another. This killing was now.

  Chakliux took his weapons and hunter’s bag. He pulled his parka hood snug around his face and left the lodge. When he reached the edge of the village, he heard the sudden noise of raised voices, the mourning cries of women. Their songs were like ice against his teeth. The child has died, he thought, and felt his anger rise against the one who had done such a thing.

  He peered between the lodges. A crowd had gathered on the far side of the village. They had captured the trader. Chakliux walked quickly toward the river. Sok was right. He did not need to be here. When he got back to the village that night, if he heard any whispers of anger toward him, he would return to his own people. What hope did he have to bring peace to this village if they thought he would kill a woman and a child?

  Once he was back at the Cousin River Village, he would listen carefully, watch carefully, and if he discovered the killings were something planned there, he would see that life was given in exchange for life.

  When Happy Mouth came for Ligige’, she first asked about Ghaden.

  “Not dead,” Ligige’ replied. She had cleaned the wound often, singing when she removed the poultice so spirits would not enter the boy’s body through the knife hole.

  Ghaden whimpered and Ligige’ held up the boy’s hands to show Happy Mouth that his fingertips were pink with only a few small patches of frostbite. She smoothed back the dark hair from his forehead. The skin on his face was also healthy, and only two narrow lines of dried blood marked his lips, split from the cold. Daes had been a good mother. Even in death she had fought to keep her son warm through the long night.

  “His feet?” Happy Mouth asked.

  Ligige’ peeled back the blankets. Ghaden’s feet, too, were pink, no white blotches or blackening of toes.

  “They say you should come now,” Happy Mouth said. Her lips worked in a strange way, as though she fought to keep from crying.

  Yes, Ligige’ thought. The boy was worth a woman’s tears. Now that Daes was dead, Happy Mouth would most likely raise Ghaden as her own.

  “I can stay here,” Ligige’ said. “I have no one in my lodge to feed. My brother has his own wife now.”

  “Ligige’ …” Happy Mouth said s
oftly.

  Ligige’ looked up into the woman’s face and realized the pain there was not for Ghaden but for her. Ligige’’s heart squeezed itself small as though trying to hide within her chest. “Who?” she asked.

  “Your brother,” Happy Mouth said. Again her lips worked to hold in tears. “He is dead.”

  Ligige’ bent to adjust the blankets around Ghaden, then she lifted her head, took a long breath. “He was an old man,” she said, though in her thoughts he had never been old.

  Happy Mouth shook her head. “Dead by the same knife,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  At first Ligige’ did not understand the words. Surely her brother had been called by one of those spirits that brings death to elders—one that stops the heart or slows the breathing, steals speech or reason. But a knife? The same knife that killed Daes?

  “Someone killed …” Her voice cracked on the words. “Why?”

  Happy Mouth did not answer. She helped Ligige’ to her feet, guided her from the lodge. Ligige’ barely heard Happy Mouth call her daughter, Yaa, scarcely understood her as she told Yaa to stay with Ghaden, to come for her or Brown Water if the boy awoke or if he turned suddenly hot or cold.

  Ligige’ lifted her eyes into the brightness of the morning. Her brother’s spirit was there, watching, she was sure. She saw his face, gentle with a smile, teasing her, laughing with her, sharing stories.

  “I am oldest,” she whispered, and looked up so her brother would hear.

  Cen stared into the faces of the men who held him. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and his head seemed to pound with each beat of his heart. He was sure they had broken his nose, several of his ribs, and perhaps his left wrist.

  During the years he had been a trader, he had often faced death. Once his iqyax was destroyed in the surf. Another time he had fallen into a sinkhole while walking overland between villages. He had often been caught in winter storms.

  He had managed to drift ashore in the wreckage of his iqyax, though the cold of the waves nearly killed him. In the sinkhole, he had spoken to the grasses around him, asked them to lend him their strength, and so clawed out by pulling and clinging. He had lived through the storms in snow caves he carved with his own hands. But this was different. With winds and water a trader had a chance if he stayed respectful. With men …

  They dragged him to the center of the village. There they stood him up, naked in the cold wind except for his breechcloth. The hunters and the women shouted at him, threw rocks, hit him with sticks.

  The image of Daes came into his mind. She stood before him in her new parka, the one he had brought her from the Walrus Hunters. She opened her mouth. Instead of words, blood flowed, and so he knew she was dead. The knowledge was ice in his heart, and suddenly he did not care if the River People killed him. He and Daes would be together. Away from this village, away from these people. But if Ghaden were alive, could Cen allow himself the joy of Daes? Who would protect their son? Who would care whether or not he grew up to be a good and strong man?

  Cen gathered his strength, held himself as straight as he was able.

  “Tell me,” he called out. “Tell me. Is my son still alive?” His question was met with anger, with men lifting fists and spear shafts against him until he had to curl himself down into a ball, his face tucked between his knees, his arms crossed over the back of his neck.

  Finally one of the men pulled him to his feet. The man was large, his head broad and scarred, the left side of his face puckered as though he had once been burned from forehead to mouth. “You ask about the boy,” he said. “Why?”

  “I did not kill him,” Cen answered through lips cut by broken teeth. “Why would I kill my own son? Would any of you kill your sons? Then why think I would? Do I look like one of those Not-People who live at the edge of the Far Mountains?” He paused to take a breath, and the pain was like a spear piercing his chest. He spat out blood and hoped it was only from the cuts in his mouth. “I did not kill my son,” he said.

  The shouting dimmed and the men circled him. Cen felt their eyes on his face. Encouraged by their attention, he said, “Most of you know that when I brought the Sea Hunter woman here, she carried my son in her belly. But how can a trader have a wife? I could not hunt for her, could not train a son to hunt. So I brought them here to this good village. Each year I came back, to trade with you, and to see my son. Someday I hope he will come with me, also be a trader.”

  A tall thin man called out at this, assured the trader he would not live to see his son grown.

  “He is alive then,” Cen said, and a woman, hidden from his view by the men around him, hissed at the one who had spoken.

  “He is alive,” Cen repeated.

  “He is,” the scarred man finally said. A young man pushed his way to Cen’s side. Cen had seen him before. Yes. He called himself Sok, and had traded yesterday for several things.

  “The boy is alive,” said Sok, “but his mother’s spirit calls him, as does the spirit of my grandfather, who was also killed.”

  The trader stared at the man. Was he saying someone else had died? Three had been attacked?

  “Dead by a knife we saw in your hands yesterday.”

  “You have the knife?” Cen asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Many of you traded for knives yesterday,” Cen said. “Do you think if I had some reason to kill the woman and my son and an old man I do not know, I would be fool enough to use my own knife? To leave it?”

  There was silence broken only by the moaning of several women, by the mumbling of the men. A wave of pain washed over Cen but he fought it down. “Bring the knife here,” he said. “Let me see it. I might remember who bought it in trade.” He looked at the men surrounding him. Was there fear in any of the faces?

  “Bring the knife,” Sok said. “I need revenge on the one who killed my grandfather.”

  Chakliux walked the river. It was still frozen, some of the ice swept bare, some covered with snow hardened by wind. In one moon, perhaps two, the ice would weaken, and a rush of water, ice and earth from far upriver would roar down to the sea. Even now, Chakliux could see scars from previous breakups, places where whole trees had been uprooted and large portions of the bank swept away.

  If he had not seen it happen before, it would be difficult to imagine. The river under ice and snow seemed so quiet, as though it would never be anything but a white path for Chakliux’s feet.

  Chakliux missed his own village, his own people. He missed telling stories, but at least this village had a river. For as long as he remembered, Chakliux had loved the water. As a child at fish camp, he was told many times to stay away from the river, but still he played and paddled in the shallows. Eventually, he had learned to swim, even though the cold of the water made his bones ache.

  He was an otter, the shaman finally decided. Who could deny that? Who could not see his otter feet? Had he not been an animal-gift baby, sprung somehow from a clot of animal blood? Besides, everyone knew people did not swim.

  After that, K’os did not try to keep him from the water. His skills were useful in building and repairing the village fish traps, in recovering lost hooks and handlines. He had a place in his village and was honored for his difference.

  He was not otter enough to swim in the sea, but once or twice he had seen traders using boats built by the Sea Hunters. Iqyan, they were called, those boats, as sleek as an otter and sheathed with sea lion skins or split walrus hide. How different they were from the clumsy rafts and poles The People used to ferry themselves across the river in summer.

  Those Sea Hunters, a trader had once told him, considered themselves brother to the sea otter. Once one of their hunters had come to the fish camp to trade. He was shorter and darker-skinned than The People, with long arms and wide, strong shoulders. Chakliux had seen him roll the iqyax and come up from the river, water dripping over his wide smiling mouth. He wore a birdskin parka, so that some of the women said he was not man but seabird and fought among themselves t
o decide who would invite him to her bed in hopes of bearing a magic seabird child.

  Chakliux and the men had been more interested in the skin coat he wore over the birdskin parka. It was made, the Sea Hunter said, from seal intestines, each intestine split and flattened, then scraped so thin you could see light through it. The strips were sewn together so the seams did not leak water. When the man rolled his iqyax, the intestine parka protected him so the sea could not seep through his clothing and stop his heart with its cold.

  Someday, Chakliux had decided, he would have his own iqyax. He did not want to be a trader. It was not a comfortable thing to meet new people when you were different, when you saw questions and worry in the eyes of all who looked at you. He was happy being a hunter. If he learned to hunt from an iqyax, his family would not have to live on fish only, on caribou or even bear. They would also have the fat and oil of sea mammals—seals and sea lions; and walruses, for he would take his iqyax downriver to the North Sea and hunt.

  Yes, he was a hunter. He found joy when an animal chose to give itself so The People could live, but it was difficult to keep up with the other hunters, to carry his share, to hold his balance on trails over muskeg and through river brush. His legs were made for water, not land.

  Once, according to the old storytellers of his village, the Sea Hunters had even hunted whales. As Dzuuggi he was entrusted with secrets—stories seldom told around winter fires, but which must be remembered, at least by a few. These stories said there was an island, almost at the far edge of the world, where men still hunted whales. The Sea Hunter told them those whale hunters had died long ago when a mountain in anger destroyed them for some reason no one could remember.

  Since meeting the Sea Hunter, Chakliux had dreamed of trading for an iqyax of his own, perhaps even learning to build one. Now, looking at the river, he thought for the first time of seeking those ancient whale hunter people himself. Were they still there, on that far island? Would it take a lifetime of summers to find the edge of the world?