by Sue Harrison
“I will ask him to come,” Cen said, and pulled aside the doorflap, then stepped back in surprise as Brown Foot burst into the lodge.
He was babbling, his eyes wide, his words so scrambled that Cen could make out only K’os’s name.
“What? What has happened?” K’os cried out. She grasped his shoulders, shook him until he said, “Your husband, that young man from the Near Rivers, someone has killed him. He is dead. There is blood all over. Blood on his bed…on the floor…”
He continued to babble, even as he followed Cen and K’os when they ran from the lodge.
Near Mouse crept close to Sand Fly. “He said K’os’s husband is dead?” she whispered. She glanced up as Red Leaf moaned, leaned from her bed to retch, dry heaves that brought up nothing.
“And this one…” Sand Fly nodded toward Red Leaf. “You think she will live?”
Near Mouse shrugged her shoulders.
“It is strange,” Sand Fly finally said, using a finger to break the baby’s suction on her breast. She ignored the child’s quick squeak of protest, lifted her to a shoulder and patted her back until she burped, then nestled her at the other breast. “Before Red Leaf was sick, she came to our lodge and spoke to my husband and me. She seemed afraid of K’os, but we did not think much of it. After all, she is a trader’s wife, and claims her father was a trader, too. How can you know if a woman raised like that tells the truth? She said that K’os wanted Cen to be her husband.”
“Why would K’os want Cen with a fine young hunter like—” Near Mouse stopped before saying the dead man’s name.
For a time neither woman spoke, the silence between them broken only by the soft throat sounds of the baby’s nursing, then Sand Fly said, “Before that Near River hunter came to our village, when K’os lived in my lodge, she had eyes for any man, even my husband.” She raised a hand to cover her smile.
“Did she ever say anything about Cen?” Near Mouse asked.
“Yes, sometimes, and she watched him. I remember that she did….”
“But she would not kill…why would any woman—”
Near Mouse’s words were interrupted by a cry from Red Leaf. Even the baby jerked away from Sand Fly’s breast.
“Who is dead?” Red Leaf cried. “Who has died? Tell me!”
Near Mouse glanced at Sand Fly, then hobbled to Red Leaf’s bed. “Gheli, you are sick,” she whispered. “You are sick. You cannot worry about what has happened. There will be time to think about that when you are well.”
“River Ice Dancer?” Red Leaf whispered, her eyes stretched wide.
“Hush, child,” Near Mouse said, and pressed a hand to Red Leaf’s mouth. “Hush, now, do not say his name.”
Red Leaf twisted away from Near Mouse’s hand. “No!” she screamed. “No! She told me she would do it. She told me that if I did not give her Cen…if I did not give her my baby…”
“Be still, Daughter,” said Near Mouse, and pushed Red Leaf back into her bed. “Be still, be still.”
Red Leaf took a long shuddering breath, closed her eyes. “K’os has killed us both,” she said. “Now she has killed us both.”
Chapter Fifty-eight
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
“YOUR NEAR RIVER HUSBAND, you left him?” Night Man asked.
Dii pulled the hare fur blanket more tightly around her shoulders. He had come to her during the night. In silence he had mounted her and taken her as wife. Now, this morning, even before she had left her bed, he was full of questions.
Be fair, she told herself. What husband would not ask a new wife the same thing? You have been away from this village too long. Have you forgotten that his mother, Long Eyes, cried each time her husband left to hunt? The people in Night Man’s family care much for those who belong to them. His questions mean nothing more than that. Would you rather have another husband like Anaay?
But how much should she tell Night Man? Why take the blame for Anaay’s death when K’os had been the one to make the poison? And why admit to hiding his body?
“Yes, I left him,” she said. Not a lie. She had left him—at least his body—and she hoped she had not led his spirit to this village.
“Why?”
“He did not need me,” she said softly. “He had another wife.”
“What?” Night Man asked. “Why do women always mumble? How can I hear you when you whisper your words?”
Dii lifted her chin, turned her face toward him. “I left him,” she said again. “He was not a good husband to me.”
Night Man shrugged.
A foolish reason, no doubt, Dii thought. Remember what Twisted Stalk told you about Night Man and Aqamdax. You think he will have sympathy for your problems with Anaay?
“You blame him for your decision to leave?” Night Man asked, his question edged with bitterness.
Be wise, she told herself. Consider your words before you say them.
“You, Husband,” she said, “could you stay with a wife who had killed your brothers or your father?”
“Your Near River husband was the one who killed your father and your brothers?”
“I do not know, but someone in his village did. I could no longer live among them.”
“Ah,” he said. His cold eyes skipped over her face and down to where her hands were crossed over her breasts. “Perhaps then this time I have chosen a good wife.”
She opened her blanket to him, but though he raised his eyebrows in approval, he flicked his fingers at her and lifted his chin toward the hearth. Dii dressed and rekindled the fire, then went out to the cache. The first night was past—surely the worst of any she would face as Night Man’s wife. She sighed her relief and watched the cloud of her breath rise into the shadowed blue light of the morning.
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
“You have forgotten that I did not want K’os to stay,” Sand Fly said, standing up from her place among the women to point one bent finger at her husband, Tree Climber. “You were the fool who thought she would come into your bed.”
A rift of laughter passed through the people who had gathered in the chief hunter’s lodge, and two dark spots of red burned in Tree Climber’s pale cheeks. “I heard no complaints when she gave you medicine for your joints,” he said to her.
“It does not matter why she is here or who helped her when she came,” Cen told them. “I knew her from another village, and still did not think she would kill her own husband. But now we must decide what to do with her. We cannot keep a woman like K’os in this village.”
“She claims she did not kill her husband,” Brown Foot said.
“Jumps-too-far found her knife under her dead husband’s body,” said Sand Fly. “I know it is K’os’s knife. She had it when she came to us.”
“Send her away,” said Brown Foot. “It is winter. She will not live long without dogs or food.”
“No,” Cen replied. “If K’os killed her husband, she has no right to live. Is there some man here who will kill her? I will make it worthwhile for him. I have trade goods and meat.”
“Always in this village,” Tree Climber said, “when someone has killed or broken our strongest taboos, we send them away. It is best, especially with a woman. You do not know our ways, Trader.” Tree Climber nodded at the chief hunter, a middle-aged man, short and broad, his eyes squinted as though he always looked toward far places. “First Spear, what is your choice?”
“Long ago, when I was a child, this woman’s brother lived in our village,” First Spear said. “He was a good man, married to my sister. He gave me my first knife.”
K’os’s knife lay at the edge of the hearth, bloodstains on the caribou hide that wrapped the handle. First Spear pointed with his chin at the weapon. “The knife found under the body looks like one K’os’s brother made me,” he said. “You know this brother of hers died long ago. Perhaps this is some vengeance K’os’s dead brother planned. Perhaps he directed her to our village.”
“This brother of hers,” one of the oldest m
en said, “I remember him. He made that blade. See how it is knapped. Do any of you know a man in this village who makes blades in such a way?”
First Spear nodded at Cen. “Do you have any idea where the knife came from?” he asked.
“As I told you before, I knew K’os when she lived in the Cousin River Village. She had the knife then. It is almost like an amulet to her.”
“Did she ever tell you where she got it?”
Cen pressed his lips into a tight line. “One of her brothers gave it to her,” he said.
A soft hiss of breath went out from the people.
“So then,” First Spear said. “There are things here not easily understood.” He looked over the heads of the men to the women, who sat near the lodge walls. “Sand Fly, you said K’os gave you medicine. Did it help?”
“A little.”
“And she gave medicine to Cen’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“The medicine helped?”
Sand Fly shrugged. “Gheli is no worse.”
“What does that have to do with the killing?” Cen asked.
“How could a woman who heals also kill?”
“But what if she did?” said Cen. “You would let her stay here in this village, take the chance that she would kill again?”
One of the hunters stood up. “If she stays, my wife and I, my father and his wife, we will leave,” he said.
Several others nodded their agreement.
“Send her away,” said Brown Foot. “If she did the killing, her husband’s spirit will take revenge. If she did not, then he will protect her, and she will find another village where she can live.”
First Spear nodded, and the men, old and young, called out their agreement. Cen heard the women, their voices like a soft wind at the edges of the lodge as they talked among themselves. Finally Sand Fly stood and said, “Brown Foot is right. Why chance doing harm to someone innocent?”
When the elders left the lodge, Cen spoke politely for a few moments to those around him. Perhaps their decision was best. Who was he to question them? He had never stayed long enough in any one village to understand the loyalties and hatreds that bound the people to one another and gave foundation for arguments, reasons for choices. He was weary, anxious to return to his wife and daughter.
The men of the village had left three young hunters with K’os, and only at Cen’s insistence had bound her wrists and ankles, tied a gag over her mouth. He had known her long enough to realize that she could charm any young man if given the chance.
Near Mouse had stayed with Gheli, and now, as Cen hurried back to his lodge, he was suddenly afraid that K’os had escaped and found some way to kill his wife. But when he went inside, he found Gheli and Near Mouse sitting beside the hearth, playing with the baby. Daes was lying on a hare fur blanket, her legs kicking as she reached toward some trinket Gheli held just beyond her fingers.
“You are feeling better, Wife?” he asked, though the question was foolish. Who could not see that she was better?
Near Mouse looked up at him and chuckled. “I think your wife is well.”
Cen squatted beside them, lay his hand on his wife’s shoulder. Perhaps, then, the decision to allow K’os to leave the village was the right one. He had a little daughter, a good wife. In spring he would return to the Cousin River Village and bring his son, Ghaden, here to live in this fine lodge with his sister Daes and his new mother, Gheli.
Chapter Fifty-nine
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
K’OS BENT OVER RIVER Ice Dancer’s body, cut the thong that held the amulet he wore at his neck. First Spear had told her she could take it, but had said she was a fool for wanting it. Did he think she was afraid of whatever power that amulet carried? If it could not protect River Ice Dancer against the killer’s knife, then it was good for only one reason: to prove to the Near River People that he was dead, and then to convince them to avenge his death.
She heard the murmurs around her—those who thought she had killed her husband and those who did not, arguing still over her guilt. The old women of the village had dressed River Ice Dancer in his finest parka, and she noticed as she removed the amulet that they had bound a scabbard at his waist. She was surprised to see the bloodstained handle of her own knife protruding above the leather that covered the blade, and she drew in her breath as she suddenly realized that her knife had been used to kill him. It was thirsty for blood, that knife, and had served her well. She had used it to kill Chakliux’s father, Gull Wing, after he, Fox Barking and Sleeps Long had raped her and left her for dead. How could she allow it to rot with River Ice Dancer?
She lifted her voice in a mourning cry, then through her tears said to the women nearest her, “I was making him a parka.” She gazed around the lodge as though confused, then her eyes came to rest on a fishskin basket. She pointed, and the women passed it from hand to hand until it reached K’os. She pulled out the partially completed parka, held it up so they could see its intricate pattern of light and dark fur.
“Like water on ice,” one of the women whispered. Then another murmured, “If K’os planned to kill her husband, why would she make him something so beautiful?”
K’os raised the parka, held it above her head, moved her feet in a slow dance of mourning, her shoulders heaving as she sobbed. Finally she threw herself over River Ice Dancer’s body, covering him from chin to groin with the parka. She buried her head in the fur and cried out her anguish, but as she lay over his body, her hands worked under the parka to remove her knife from the scabbard. She slipped it up her sleeve even as three old women pulled her away, one cursing, two crooning their sympathy. They walked her to the entrance tunnel. There K’os hefted the pack they had allowed her, went outside and called the two dogs they said she could take. They were River Ice Dancer’s dogs, and one pulled a travois laden with tent and tent poles, food and some of her belongings.
As she left the village, she sang mourning songs until she knew they could no longer hear her voice.
When the sun had nearly tucked itself again into the earth, K’os made a camp in a group of spruce trees. She set up the tent, tying the dogs near the entrance, and she built a fire, lighting it with the smoldering knot of spruce she carried in a birchbark container hung from her waist.
She huddled close to one of the dogs. He snapped at her. K’os snarled, and the dog tucked his tail between his legs, cowered and finally accepted a small piece of dried meat from her hands. The night would be long, and she was cold, but she would not die.
Her hatred alone would carry her to the Near River Village, but someday she would return to the Four Rivers. Perhaps she would come in stealth, or perhaps with warriors, but she would return. Then Cen would suffer, for who but Cen could have killed River Ice Dancer? He alone had the strength and a reason.
Of course, for him to do such a thing meant that Red Leaf had told him of K’os’s threats. Not the whole truth, K’os was sure, but some part of it.
K’os smiled, searched through her pack until she found her medicine bag. She drew out the small pouch tied with red sinew. At least she could comfort herself with the thought of Red Leaf’s retching out her life, bleeding from nose and mouth until finally even her vomitus and feces were only clotted blood.
K’os tipped back her head and laughed. That night, in spite of the cold, she slept well.
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
Cen knelt beside Red Leaf, gently shook her awake. “Gheli?”
She heard his voice from her dreams, opened her eyes slowly and smiled at him.
“It is morning. Are you well enough for me to go and get wood? I will return as quickly as I can.”
“Go,” she said, her words broken by the dryness of her throat. “First, could you bring me some water?”
He untied a bladder, held it to her mouth, and when she had finished drinking, he tucked the sleeping robes around her shoulders. She watched him leave, waited for a short time, then rolled out of her bed. She went to her stac
k of baskets, chose one made of salmon skins, dark and translucent, sewn side by side, tail ends down to form the base. She pulled out a pouch of caribou hide, no larger than her hand. It was bound with red sinew, tied with four knots. She took it to the hearth fire and used a stick to tuck it into the coals.
She flexed her fingers. She was a large woman, a little clumsy, but her hands were as nimble as a child’s, gifted with needle and awl, cunning enough to substitute a packet of ground willow root for one of baneberry and to do it so quickly that the trade was not even noticed by someone standing near.
As the poison burned, Red Leaf thought of that harmless pouch K’os now carried in her medicine bag. And she wondered what other lives she had saved. Perhaps they would count as a payment for those she had taken.
THE HUNTERS’ SPRING
Aqamdax wiped her hand across her mouth, lay back on her bed. Snow Hawk tried to lick her face, but she pushed the dog away. She patted the floor mats, and Snow Hawk lay down.
Was this the third or fourth morning that she had awakened to light-headedness and nausea?
“I do not need to be sick, Snow Hawk,” she said to the dog. She closed her eyes. Stories of people and their illnesses spun into her head, mocked her with medicines she did not have, until finally she retreated into the helpful tales mothers told small daughters. Sometimes those stories offered women the best advice.
Suddenly Aqamdax began to laugh. Snow Hawk whined and pressed her cold nose into Aqamdax’s face. Aqamdax wrapped her arms around the dog, but Snow Hawk broke away, crouched with forelegs on the ground, rear end raised, tail wagging.
“A game?” Aqamdax said, and sat up to ruffle the dog’s fur. “Yes, Snow Hawk, a game.”
How foolish not to realize… But she had not been sick with her son, and her moon blood times had not been regular since his birth.
“Now you have two people to guard,” she told Snow Hawk, “until Chakliux comes for us.”
She slipped one hand under her parka, felt the soft hood she had made for her dead baby. Tears came to her eyes, and she began to cry—in sorrow for that little one who had died, in joy for the new baby she carried so close to her heart.
