by Sue Harrison
“We do,” said Hollow Cup.
“Bring it.”
She and her sister Yellow Bird brought the hide, folded flesh side in.
“Open it,” Twisted Stalk told them. “Now wrap it around her.”
Yaa shuddered as the women laid the hide over her shoulders. It had not yet been scraped even the first time, and was thick with fat and severed blood vessels.
“There. Now the river will think she is caribou, and she will not curse anything,” Twisted Stalk said.
“We should make a chant,” Star suggested, and the women looked at one another, unsure of what to sing.
“Aqamdax,” Twisted Stalk said. “You are storyteller. Make a chant.”
The first songs that came to her mind were those she had learned in her own village, but would words used by the First Men be good for caribou? Probably not. Then she remembered something Chakliux had taught her, a thanksgiving chant River People used.
It was only a child’s song, but she sang it anyway, and soon the other women joined her. What is better than thankfulness? What carries more power than praise?
As she sang, Aqamdax noticed that Yaa was shaking. Not with cold, no, the caribou hide would quickly pull away the chill of Yaa’s river crossing. Most likely in nervousness, that she must travel alone to the men’s killing grounds.
So when the chant was finished and Yaa started out, walking and running, going as quickly as she could with the heavy caribou hide weighing her down, Aqamdax began another chant, one that she sang only in her mind, a song of strength and courage for her small sister as she carried the good news of caribou.
Chapter Twenty-two
YAA TREMBLED UNDER THE weight of the caribou hide, but she made herself run. What was a pounding heart and tired legs compared to a winter belly full of caribou meat? She pushed her way through the brushy banks, once nearly lost the caribou hide when greedy willow branches reached out to grab it from her, but she clasped the hide, twisted her body and got away.
She remembered a story she once heard Chakliux tell, about a man who had been able to become a tree. She wondered if that willow was the man, and she wondered if he would curse her for her selfishness in keeping the hide.
“It is not mine to give you,” she whispered, and hoped the wind would take her words back to where that tree-man stood, his feet woven into the soil.
Finally she came to a place where the river bent and flowed from the north, then turned back again to flow from east to west. The willows and alder were flattened, each branch showing the white of fresh breaks. Caribou tracks scarred the earth. As the river straightened, the brush thinned and she saw the men, heard their voices, their laughter.
There was smoke. She could smell it, and the aroma of cooking meat. Then she heard the exclamation of a high-pitched boy’s voice. Ghaden, she was sure. She stopped where she was and waited. Let the men come to her, but she lowered the hide so they could see her face.
Ghaden yelled her name and screamed out some foolishness about a caribou eating her. Then Night Man, Chakliux and Sok were beside her, all asking questions. Yaa was not sure whom to answer first, so she waited until Chakliux held up one hand, and the men were silent.
“Why did you come?” he asked, and his voice was hard, angry, so that Yaa knew she had risked much in coming to this sacred place.
“The women sent me,” she said.
“Why?” Night Man asked, and his voice was even more terrible than Chakliux’s.
Suddenly the weight of the caribou hide, the heat and smell of it were like rocks set on her shoulders, and her legs collapsed under her. Then Sok’s hands were standing her up again, but no one took the hide, and she had to concentrate so hard not to fall that she barely had strength to speak.
“Caribou, m-more caribou,” she stammered out.
Suddenly all the hunters were crowded around her, and their interest seemed to lend power to her voice. “I saw Squirrel and Black Stick and Caribou Tail coming. I saw them from the tree where I was watching. They were waving their walking sticks three times up in the air. That’s the sign for caribou, nae?”
Then she was unsure. After all, no one had taught her the signs. She had only overheard what Ghaden was learning. Perhaps she was wrong and everything she had told the women was foolishness. What would the men do to her?
“That is the sign,” Ghaden said, pushing his way between Sok and Chakliux.
He looked into her face and then slipped under the hide with her, lifted some of its weight to his own shoulders.
The men were talking, trying to decide whether to go back to the village or to stay where they were.
“Did the boys make any signal as to which direction the caribou were coming?” the hunter named Sky Watcher asked.
“No.”
“You know the signs?” Sok asked.
Yaa dropped her eyes. “Only a few.”
“A walking stick held high and swept in one direction or another. Did they make such a sign?”
Yaa closed her eyes and tried to see the boys again as they came. “They were running,” she said. “They put their sticks up in the air, made three swings down and forward, toward the camp.” She opened her eyes and looked at Sok.
“We should go to the women, tell them what to expect,” said Sky Watcher.
“I am the slowest,” Chakliux said. “I will stay and take care of what is here. Ghaden can help me.”
Then all the men were busy, each gathering weapons and supplies. They had left the dogs with the women, even Biter, so Yaa waited to see if Chakliux wanted her to help carry any of the supplies the other hunters left.
She squatted down, pulled the hide over her hair and watched until Ghaden tugged at Chakliux’s arm, lifted his chin in her direction. She saw Chakliux’s surprise.
“I thought you had left,” he called to her. “Return to the women. There are things here you should not see.”
Yaa sighed, stood and hauled the hide up around her shoulders as best she could. At least this time she did not have to run.
Aqamdax worked quickly, cutting meat, retouching or exchanging her knife blade when it dulled, then cutting again. With each animal, she slit the belly first, removed liver, heart and kidneys, then the skirt of fat that covered the intestines. The stomach, roasted whole, full of the sedges and grasses eaten by the caribou, was a feast in itself, and the intestines, cleaned and scraped, made good carrying tubes for drinking water or to store a mix of fat, meat and dried berries. The women would boil the heads into a rich soup and cook the bones for marrow fat.
The heavy straps of sinew along the backbone made the best thread, and the women would save bones and antlers for tools and weapons, cooking utensils, scrapers, needles and awls. The hooves were good for glue and dance rattlers, the teeth for ornaments. It was a useful animal, the caribou, though Aqamdax did not think its fat was as good as sea lion fat, its teeth as beautiful as seal teeth.
Star had wandered off, leaving Aqamdax and Twisted Stalk to work without her. Twisted Stalk had begun to mutter angrily under her tongue, words of disgust about Star, but Aqamdax acted as though she did not hear them. She was already Star’s sister through marriage, and soon would be her sister-wife. She did not want to add to the problem by criticizing the woman, though everyone knew Star was lazy.
Then suddenly the dogs were barking and the men were coming, all but Take More running. Night Man came to Aqamdax, told her Yaa had found them, that the caribou were coming toward the camp. The women continued to work, though Star began to wail about Chakliux. Where was he? Had he been hurt? Was he killed in the hunt? And where also was her son Ghaden?
Night Man called to his sister, told her that Chakliux was coming, and Ghaden as well. Aqamdax kept her head lowered, tried not to let her relief show in her eyes.
Twisted Stalk chanted a quick praise song, then said, “Your husband, Night Man, he is good to you. I know you grieve for your son, but sometimes women do not understand the ways of men.”
And though her anger at Night Man pushed words of disdain into her mouth, Aqamdax kept her teeth clamped tight and said nothing at all as her knife sliced and cut.
The boys said the caribou came from the north, a large herd of so many animals they could not see the end of it, even from the tallest trees. The caribou split around the spruce ridges and those that went east did not cross the river, but instead followed it east. The group that went west of the ridges stopped at the bank just upriver from the Cousin People’s camp and stayed there. A few animals began to cross but came back, then they all lay down, chewing old grass they coughed up from their stomachs.
It was as though they knew the people needed time to prepare for them, Twisted Stalk said, and men and women worked together, butchering caribou and packing dogs, even floating some of the meat upstream, wrapped in the haired hides, to the hunting camp. Once everyone was at the camp, the women worked all night, taking short breaks to sleep, then cutting and cutting, grateful that the men were there to retouch knife blades and help with the heavy hides.
In the morning, when the caribou seemed ready to move, the women cached whatever meat was not yet on drying racks, and were grateful that the days were cold enough so the raw meat would keep.
The boys and Yaa were left to tend the drying fires and guard the meat from wolves and scavengers, and the women again walked downriver to catch those caribou that gave themselves to the men’s spears.
THE NEAR RIVER CAMP
River Ice Dancer straggled into camp long after the other young men had returned. Anaay spoke to him in disgust, asked what had kept him so long. Had he found a woman somewhere out there on the tundra?
Anaay expected an angry retort, but River Ice Dancer only shrugged and said, “I see you do not want to know what I have to tell you.”
He went to Sun Caller. The old man was sitting outside his tent using a hammerstone and antler tine to break slices of chert from a core stone.
“The other watchers,” River Ice Dancer asked, “did they see caribou?”
Sun Caller shook his head. “None, and no s-sign of them.”
River Ice Dancer puffed out his chest. “I did,” he said. “A herd crossed the river where the Cousin men hunt.”
Anaay had followed River Ice Dancer to Sun Caller’s lean-to, and now, as though he had given no insult, he asked, “And are the Cousin hunters there?”
“They are, and they took many caribou.”
“Those are the ones I heard in my dreaming.”
Least Weasel, one of Sun Caller’s sons, joined them, listened to Anaay and said, “If they are the caribou you heard, then all your fasting and prayers did us little good. Or were you praying for the Cousin People rather than us? For years the Cousin have hunted that river, and we have chosen to hunt the tundra. Why have you brought us here? So we could watch others get their caribou while ours pass in some other place?”
Anaay, sputtering his outrage at Least Weasel’s insolence, began to defend his caribou dreams, but River Ice Dancer interrupted to say, “The second herd was much larger.”
“What herd?” Least Weasel asked.
“The one that followed the first. They came half a day later, split to go around a ridge. Some went west and others east. I found a tall tree on that ridge and climbed it. From there I could make out the Cousin camp on the other side of the river. It looked as though they had chosen to follow those that went west, though the greatest number of caribou went east.”
“Those caribou that honor the sun will also honor our hunters,” Anaay said, his words loud and strong above the voices of the men. “Our spears will take many. Go now and prepare to hunt. We leave as soon as River Ice Dancer has a chance to rest and eat. He will show us the way, and we will take caribou.”
He went into his tent and did not listen to those men who lifted their voices to ask who among them knew how to hunt caribou in rivers. How could they hunt without the help of brush fences to direct the animals to their spears? How could they hunt in water? Wouldn’t the river carry them away?
Chapter Twenty-three
THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP
AQAMDAX WRAPPED HERSELF IN bedding furs and closed her eyes. She could never remember being so tired. The second hunt had brought in twice as many caribou as the first. When the killing was finished, the men had joined the women, floated and carried the prepared meat to the main camp, but the women stayed at the butchering site, removing hides, gutting carcasses, slicing off bits of the raw meat to eat as they worked so they did not have to stop except to change or sharpen knives.
At the end of the second day, the men came once more and helped take the rest of the meat back to camp. Again, they decided to float it upstream in hides, though when Take More lost a whole hide filled with boned meat, the women in their tiredness screamed out their fury.
The meat was a gift to the river, Sok told them, and Take More was wise rather than clumsy. Most of the women decided Sok was right, but Twisted Stalk continued to grumble. She had been the one to butcher that meat, and the hide had been particularly fine, with broad white bands down the sides of the animal. She had planned to use it for a parka that winter.
A few newly killed caribou always escaped the women’s hands to float downstream, Twisted Stalk said. Wasn’t that enough? How greedy was this river?
She complained until all the women hurried past her, eyes averted. Aqamdax hummed apologies under her breath, hoping whatever the river did to Twisted Stalk for her insolence, the curse would not spread to others in the camp.
Finally Chakliux had to remind Twisted Stalk that worse things might happen if she continued her complaints. Then they walked in silence, loaded with meat, most women too tired to talk, too tired even to offer thanksgiving chants for meat that would keep them living through another winter.
THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE
Dii rejoiced to travel again toward the Caribou River, but a part of her grieved as she remembered her mother and father, her brothers and uncle. Only the year before, they had been alive. Only the year before, she and her friends had no concerns but the small problems that came to all girls. She and her cousin Awl had giggled behind splayed fingers about the hunters who led them. Now most of those hunters were dead, and her friends were wives or slaves to Near River men.
Dii reminded herself that she could not complain about how Anaay treated her. Her cousin Awl was also fortunate in her new husband.
Dii looked ahead to where Anaay walked. Besides his walking stick, he carried only weapons, as did most of the men, while the women carried heavy loads. At least Anaay had three strong dogs, and they helped much.
K’os was wise with dogs. She had suggested that they split the load between two travois and allow one dog to carry only a light pack, then switch the dogs, giving each a time to rest.
“Too bad Gull Beak did not come,” Dii had joked to K’os. “Then Anaay’s women could also take turns in carrying light and heavy loads.”
She thought the comment would make K’os laugh, but K’os only lifted her chin and slitted her eyes as though she were angry.
They walked a day and into a night before setting up camp. The young men sent out as scouts had found a good ridge, dry and with a line of trees to break the wind.
Anaay chose several hunters to go on ahead, to seek those caribou that River Ice Dancer had seen. The men and women who remained in camp stayed in separate tents. Why chance that a wife would ruin her husband’s hunting luck? Perhaps even the breath from her throat would do that. Who could risk such a thing?
By morning, the scouts had returned. The caribou were close, they said, only a half day’s walk, even less. Dii, sure that the men would tell the women to walk downriver of the herd while they walked east, repacked the dogs’ travois and her own pack and set them outside the camp, toward the west.
But Anaay said they would all go together, traveling east to stop the herd’s progress, then scouts would circle and force the caribou toward them, make the animals cross the r
iver.
Dii saw the eyes of the Cousin women open wide in surprise, heard their whispers.
How would the caribou react when they saw women with the hunters? What greater insult could be given? And when the animals were killed in the water, who would catch them if the women were upstream with the men?
“I could speak to my husband,” Dii said to K’os, but K’os shook her head.
“You think he would listen? You think any of these men will listen? Are we the hunters?”
Dii saw the burden of that knowledge in each Cousin woman’s eyes, and as they broke camp, they worked in silence.
Twice during that half-day walk, Dii tried to approach Anaay, to tell him what she knew about river hunting, but each time other men turned her away. Finally she called out, crying her husband’s name. Anaay looked back at her, and when she raised her hands in supplication, he strode to where she stood among the women. In relief, Dii began to explain that the women must be downstream, out of sight of the men during the hunt, but when she ventured to look up into Anaay’s face, she saw that his cheeks were red in anger, the scar that ran from brow to jaw as stark as snow.
He raised his walking stick, and she ducked, but he caught her across the shoulders. Her pack took the brunt of the blow, and the force of it knocked her to the ground. He slashed the stick against her arms and legs until finally she curled herself into a ball, her pack like the hard shell of a clam, protecting the soft flesh beneath. When his anger was spent, Anaay walked away, and Dii slowly pushed herself to her feet. She took her place again beside K’os, tried to make her aching legs keep up with K’os’s long strides.
“Why do you try to help him?” K’os asked. “He is a fool. Let him stay a fool. It is best for us to keep our mouths shut, to stand back and let others take the punishment that Fox Barking’s wisdom will bring them.”
That evening Dii and K’os set their tent apart from the others. K’os brought stones to make a separate hearth, and none of the other wives came near.
