The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  She smiled and there was a wave of laughter.

  “So first I tell you of the sea otters, our brothers, and how they came to be.” She spoke of that brother and sister, found to be lovers, and so dishonored among their people; how, still needing to belong to one another, they had jumped into the sea and were made the first otters. When she finished that story, she told another, of the great carver Shuganan, then she began the story of Chagak. Although the River words did not flow as easily from her mouth as her own language, she knew the people had begun to live her stories, to become the ones she spoke about. Sometimes she had to pause and search for a word, but if she could not remember what she needed to know, she would look at Chakliux. Each time, he formed his lips so she could see the word before he spoke, and it seemed as though she used her breath to give life to what he said.

  When she came to the otter part of the story, she changed her voice as she had done among her own people, so that it seemed as though the otter rather than Aqamdax spoke.

  She tightened her throat, brought the voice from the darkness that was now closing around the smoke hole. The first sound after the otter voice was the delighted crowing of the children. She had used her voices with them before, and they had learned to expect them. But with a rumbling like the grinding of the earth when it moves beneath a village, the hunters began to murmur, and she heard the women’s higher voices, calling out in small whimpers as if they, themselves, were suddenly children.

  Then Wolf-and-Raven was on his feet, screaming at her, pointing with his walking stick, singing out words that seemed to be curses. She looked at Chakliux, but he had his back to her, his hands already clamped on Wolf-and-Raven’s arms. Then Sok was beside her, shouting to the people as they shoved their way from the lodge.

  “There is nothing to fear here. She does not call spirits. It is her own voice. She makes these voices herself. She is a storyteller, that is all. Why are you afraid?”

  But they did not stop, and finally only Sok and Chakliux, Ligige’ and Wolf-and-Raven were left with Aqamdax in the lodge.

  “You expect to trade someone who has no respect for a shaman’s powers? You think I will take her in exchange for my daughter?” Wolf-and-Raven shouted at Sok. “The spirit voices are something only a shaman has the right to use.”

  Sok stood with his mouth open. Aqamdax waited for him to speak, to explain to Wolf-and-Raven, and when he did not Aqamdax said, “I hold no disrespect. I am a storyteller. I made the voices myself. I can do it now if you want. Many voices. That is how the First Men tell stories.”

  “I will hear no more of your stories,” he said, and left the lodge. Sok followed him.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  “BLUE NECKLACE THINKS SHE is a witch,” Yaa said, “but I don’t. She doesn’t call spirits. She just tells stories.”

  Yaa brushed her hair from her eyes. She had snagged it in a root at the top of the den and pulled a hank loose from her braids. In the dim light, she could not see Ghaden’s face clearly, but she could hear him as he ate.

  “She’s my sister,” he said, his words slurring over the fish in his mouth.

  “Yes, and she’s a storyteller.”

  “You’re my sister.”

  “We’re both your sisters,” Yaa told him patiently. It was a litany they seemed to have to go through each day, the assurance that Aqamdax was his sister.

  “You’re her sister, too?” he asked.

  Yaa frowned. He’d never asked that question before. “No, well, maybe, since her mother and my mother were sister-wives.” Relationships between people were complicated. Sometimes cousins were also husband and wife. Then were their children sisters and brothers to each other or were they cousins? Best Fist said both, but sometimes Best Fist had strange ideas. There were many rules about the ones you could marry and those you were related to. Yaa was just learning them herself. They were too complicated for Ghaden to understand.

  Since Yaa had been bringing Ghaden to the den, she had swept the floor and removed all the debris. She had even thought about leaving a blanket, but knew some animal would smell it and either take it or rip it up, maybe even decide to move in, although she had been urinating in the far corner to leave her scent, marking the place as her own.

  “Wolf-and-Raven was mad at her, right, Yaa?”

  “He was just cross. You know sometimes he gets cross. Like Brown Water.”

  “Umph,” Ghaden said, and Yaa was not sure if it was a sound of agreement or disagreement.

  She took a bite of her fish and chewed it slowly, trying to make it last a long time. It was a trick she had learned one spring when she was Ghaden’s age. If she ate slowly, her mouth remembered the taste, then when food was scarce, she could close her eyes and pretend she was eating.

  Now even Brown Water’s caches were full, packed with dried fish and fish roe, with small birds left whole and dried berries stored in oil. They had layered fish heads in pits and left them to ferment, and soon, if the hunters had good fortune, there would be caribou meat, smoked and dried.

  “He’s mad at big man,” Ghaden said, interrupting Yaa’s thoughts.

  “Who’s mad?”

  “Wolf-and-Raven.”

  “Oh.” She wished she had had the sense to take Ghaden home after the first few stories. Before Aqamdax had done the voices. It seemed as if he could not think about anything but what had happened. “I told you he was just cross,” she said.

  “At big man, too?”

  “Who’s big … oh, Sok.”

  “Umph,” Ghaden said again. “Wolf-and-Raven was cross with Sok.”

  “Sometimes that happens, but usually they’re friends.”

  “Will my sister have to go back to her other village?”

  Yaa tipped her head and looked up toward the darkest part of the den. She hadn’t thought of that before, that perhaps someone would make Aqamdax return to the Sea Hunters. She hoped not. It was good to have a grown-up person who was like a sister, not a mother. It was good to have another lodge to go to when Brown Water was angry.

  “She has a husband, so she can stay here,” Yaa told Ghaden, but she wondered what Aqamdax would do if Sok threw her away. She hoped when she was old enough to be a wife that she found a husband from her own village. It was easier that way. One thing was sure. She would never agree to go as far away as the Sea Hunter Village.

  “What about the girl?” Tikaani asked.

  “Leave her.”

  “She’ll go back and tell her mother, then they’ll have hunters follow us.”

  Cen snorted, but he knew Tikaani was right. They needed to get the boy alone, but his sister seldom left him.

  “We could kill her,” Tikaani suggested.

  It was not a wise thing to kill a child. What parent would not want revenge?

  “We’ll take her, too,” Cen finally said. “Someone will buy her, if not in your village then in another. She is not old enough to be a wife, but she looks strong. Someone will want her for a slave, a girl they will be able to trade for a bride price in a few summers.”

  “Do you think the boy will remember you?”

  “I think so, but not like this.” He gestured toward his face, lined and dirty, the tufts of white caribou hair in his braids. “But I have things a boy would like. A small spear, fishhooks and a handline.”

  “If we do not take him soon, we must leave. I thought we would have him three, four days ago.”

  “Sometimes he is alone when the girl is at the hearths.”

  “The dog.”

  Cen pulled a haunch of a fresh-killed hare from a pouch he wore slung at his waist.

  “So then, we wait,” Tikaani said. “K’os can wait as well. We will have a good report for her when we return.”

  Cen thought about K’os. She was not one who appreciated waiting, but he didn’t care what she thought. He wanted Ghaden.

  Chakliux sat on a rock at the edge of the forest. He had found this place when he first came to the Near River Village, when
Sok had been more like enemy than brother and Red Leaf had complained loudly of the extra work he caused her. It had been a long time since he had come to the rock. He was welcome now with Sok and Red Leaf, true uncle to Carries Much and Cries-loud. Red Leaf had no brothers to help her sons with weapons and hunting, to teach them the ways a man must know, so he tried to teach them, both the ways of the Near River and the Cousin River hunters.

  When Sok gave Aqamdax her own lodge, she began to sew for Chakliux, all her clothing sewn with fine stitches in double seams according to the tradition of the First Men. She had already made him a new chigdax and was working on a birdskin parka, not as warm as parkas made of caribou or wolf, but good in summer, and good to shed the rain.

  Sometimes, it almost seemed that they were married, and once when Sok suggested that he share Aqamdax’s bed—something allowed a brother who had no wife—Chakliux almost agreed. But he was not sure what Aqamdax might want, so he did not go to her.

  Now he still did not know what was best. Perhaps before asking her to be his wife, he should offer to take her back to her own village. A journey to the First Men Village would be dangerous at this time of year, but he could tell her that he would take her back next summer. Perhaps she would be willing to be wife for the winter—but then how could he bear to let her go?

  He was working on soapstone bola weights, carving each one into the beaked head of a raven. The bola would be a gift to place with his father’s bones, a sign of the mourning Chakliux made for him in his heart. Chakliux was not a good carver, but the work relaxed him, the soapstone soft under the chert blade of his sleeve knife. In spite of the frost that hardened the ground each night, the morning sun was warm, and the trees that circled three sides of the rock shielded him from the wind.

  Chakliux heard a noise and looked up, saw Sleeps Long, hunting partner to his mother’s husband, Fox Barking. The man had wrinkled his face with a frown, though usually his lips were slack, as though it was too much effort to close his mouth.

  Chakliux nodded at the man, and Sleeps Long said, “Your father has asked that I speak to you.”

  “What does Fox Barking want?” Chakliux asked, trying to keep his voice from showing that he would never consider Fox Barking father, never be able to give the man that honor.

  “Two more dogs have died.”

  “His dogs?”

  “No, they belong to Blue-head Duck. One was a bitch with a belly full of pups.”

  Chakliux shook his head. With the golden-eyed dogs now in the village, he had hoped all talk of dogs being cursed was past.

  “How did they die?”

  “No one knows.”

  “They were not sick?”

  “No.”

  “What does Fox Barking expect me to do? I have no more golden-eyed dogs to give.”

  “He wants you to know that some of the hunters think the curse has returned. He wants you to know they think you have brought bad luck again to our village.”

  “Tell him that dogs die. Remind him that they died before I came here and will die after I leave. I brought strong dogs from the Cousin River Village, and strong dogs from the Walrus Hunters. That is all I can do. Except for my grandfather’s dogs, I have not even kept a dog for myself. Until Black Nose has another litter, I cannot offer Blue-head Duck a dog to replace the ones he lost. Tell Fox Barking that if he wants something done now, he should give Blue-head Duck one of his own dogs.”

  Sleeps Long muttered under his breath, but Chakliux did not want to know what the man said, so did not ask him to repeat it. Chakliux returned to his carving, and finally Sleeps Long walked away.

  No, he could do nothing about the dogs, but there was something he could do. He would go to Sok now, tell him he wanted Aqamdax. Perhaps Sok would be angry, but why should he care? He had said last night that he did not want Aqamdax as wife. Would he expect the woman to spend the winter in the Near River Village without a husband?

  Aqamdax had stayed inside her lodge all morning. She was sure Sok would come to her and throw her away. She had hoped he would come early, before most of the women were awake. She did not know the customs among the River People. If he threw her away, did that mean she had to leave the lodge? Or even the village? Would there be some family willing to take her in until she found a way back to the First Men?

  She wished Chakliux would come to her. His advice was always good, always wise, and her best chance was if he would take her as wife. But if he wanted her, wouldn’t he have come before now? Perhaps he had changed his mind. Perhaps he, too, wanted her to leave the village.

  She picked up a basket she had begun weaving several days before. She had tried to weave it as Qung did, twining split strands of grass into delicate stitches. She had nearly completed the circle of the bottom, but today her fingers shook, and she could do nothing. She set down the work and paced the lodge, side to side. She heard a sound in the entrance tunnel and waited, her heart squeezing out tight, hard beats under her ribs. She recognized the top of Sok’s head and moved away from him as he stood.

  He looked long at her. His eyes were cold.

  “I am sorry …” she began, but he interrupted.

  “Be quiet,” he said. “I do not want to hear your voice again.”

  She closed her mouth, clasped her hands together, forced herself to keep her fingers still.

  Sok was wearing the same ceremonial parka he had worn the night before, but his boots and leggings were the ones he wore each day, without caribou hoof danglers or dyed hair embroidery.

  “You are no longer my wife,” he said, and the words were like a slap against Aqamdax’s face. “I throw you away. You have not been my wife long enough to keep this lodge. Unless you find a husband who can pay me for the caribou hides, you must leave it as well.”

  Again, she opened her mouth to speak, but he pointed at her, thrusting one finger close to her face. “Do not speak to me,” he said, then ducked back out through the entrance tunnel.

  She stood still for a long time, his words pressing against her until she felt she could not breathe. Then she slipped on her leggings and boots, the parka she had made in the manner of the River People.

  A dog, she thought. I must have a dog. She might be able to walk to her people’s village if she could find a dog for protection and to help carry supplies. She had things to trade, a chigdax—but no, what if she found a trader willing to take her by boat? She would need a chigdax.

  She had baskets. They would bring something. She had little food to spare. Perhaps some of her seal oil.

  She would go to the old woman Ligige’ first. Perhaps she knew someone willing to trade a dog. Perhaps she would know if Chakliux was also angry with her.

  No, first she should go to Ghaden and Yaa, tell them good-bye. Perhaps when he was grown Ghaden would choose to be a trader like his father. Someday he would come to Aqamdax’s village, and she would get to see him again. But the knowledge that that would probably never happen was a hard lump in her throat, and she felt tears prick at the backs of her eyelids.

  She reminded herself that she might have never come here, might never have known she had a brother. Just knowing, having met him, was worth much, even if she had to leave.

  She packed what was hers, rolled mats and sleeping robes, then paused and looked around her lodge. She smiled, one quick smile, remembering that she had wanted her own lodge when she had lived with the First Men. Now that she had one, she was leaving it. She reached up, took a half-filled water bladder from the lodge poles and slung it over one shoulder, picked up a pack she had prepared as trade goods and left the lodge.

  Sok came into Red Leaf’s lodge bringing a rush of chilled air, pungent with the smell of smoke and old leaves. He looked at Chakliux. “She is yours,” he said, “but she is not welcome in this lodge.” He lifted his chin toward Chakliux. “You are welcome,” he said.

  “I will give Red Leaf caribou hides, half my share from our hunt for the hides in Aqamdax’s lodge.”

  Sok
shrugged, looked away. Chakliux reached for his parka, but Red Leaf stopped him. “Wait,” she said. “You cannot go yet.”

  Sok narrowed his eyes at his wife, spat out a few words in anger, then left the lodge.

  Red Leaf smiled. “You cannot go to a bride without preparing yourself. I have oil. I have dried fireweed to sweeten your hair. Do you have a gift you can take her?”

  Chakliux felt his face grow hot. He had spent the night thinking of a gift, but that was not something he wanted to tell Red Leaf. He had finally decided on the shell-and-jasper necklace he wore for ceremonies.

  “I have a necklace,” he said.

  “Good. Here.” She handed him a sael of goose grease, rendered to a light yellow. He took a small amount, smoothed it carefully into his hair, then relaxed as Red Leaf combed it in with her fingers.

  Wife. The last time he had prepared himself to take a wife, the woman was Blueberry and he had felt only sorrow. Now he thought of Aqamdax and knew joy, as bubbling and full as the day he had taken Gguzaakk.

  Ah, my Gguzaakk, be glad for me, he thought. Find a good hunter for yourself in that spirit world and someday we will all be together, you and I and our little son, your spirit hunter and my Aqamdax, and perhaps other sons and daughters.

  “I do not want people to see you here,” Brown Water told her. “You are not welcome in my lodge. Do not come in. Leave us.”

  The woman’s eyes were hard and dark as stone, but Aqamdax did not turn away. “I need to see my brother,” she said.

  “He is not your brother.”

  “Daes is my mother. Ghaden is my brother.”

  Brown Water gasped as Aqamdax spoke Daes’s name aloud, and Aqamdax saw the fear in her eyes.

  “You think I am not human to speak a dead one’s name? You are wrong. But I do not fear my own mother, and what more can I lose, now that I have lost everything? I want to see my brother.”

  “He is gone. I do not know where. He is with Yaa.”

  Aqamdax did not know if Brown Water was telling her the truth. Perhaps it would be best to pretend to believe her. She would find Ligige’, then return and ask again if she could speak to Ghaden.