by Sue Harrison
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
Chakliux stood in the sacred woods and stared at the death scaffolding. She was there now, Star and that daughter they had made together. Star had not been a good wife, and his life would have been easier without her, but his mourning for her had somehow tangled itself into his remembrances of his first wife, Gguzaakk, a woman he had loved. And his sorrow at losing Star’s little daughter seemed to renew his anguish at the loss of the son Gguzaakk had borne him, and that baby Night Man had killed.
Had his prayers and chants, his willingness to fight for Sok’s life, not lifted the curse he had brought upon himself and Aqamdax? What good were those rituals, and even the stories he had learned as Dzuuggi, if they could not give a man the chance to live each day anew? Was there nothing stronger than those spirits that seemed to find joy in destroying a man’s life?
“So then,” he cried out, lifting his voice beyond the bones of the dead, shouting to be heard above the trees that protected Star’s body, “if there is one out there, some spirit who is great enough to lift the curse I have brought upon myself and my family, then I ask your help in finding my wife Aqamdax.”
He waited but felt nothing except the darkness of his despair, the fear that he had lost more than even those he now mourned. He made a chant for the dead and turned back toward the village. After a night of sleep, he would go look for Aqamdax, and he would not return until he found her or her bones.
He started back, cutting across a clearing he had skirted on his way to the death platform, leaving a trail marked by the webbed circles of his snowshoes. Then suddenly a flock of ptarmigan, their winter plumage as light as the snow, broke up through the crust of white and rose into the winter sky. Chakliux thought of a riddle he had learned as a child.
Look! What do I see? White hidden by white.
Then he asked himself, “Why do you think everything should be easy to understand? Have you forgotten that the gift of each riddle is its unraveling?”
And as he walked back to the village, he prayed for the vision to see what was hidden, for the wisdom to understand the riddles that bound his life to the earth and the prayers that would open his eyes to the truth.
THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE
“I come as wife, not slave,” K’os said.
Gull Beak raised her eyebrows. “Anaay told me he would take you as wife sometime during the caribou hunt. Where is he?”
But before K’os could answer, Blue Flower asked, “And that other wife he took, the Cousin woman, where is she?”
“I do not know,” K’os told them, and tried to hide her confusion. Was Fox Barking still alive, then, or had Dii somehow been able to hide his death? K’os nearly smiled. Perhaps the girl was more cunning than she had thought. “I was one of those women who left the hunting camp and returned to my own people,” she said. “There are men in this village who can tell you that.” She lifted her chin at Sun Caller. “My son Chakliux bought me from Anaay.”
Gull Beak snorted. “You think, then, that we would consider you no longer a slave? A Cousin woman owned by a Cousin man? You are less than a slave.”
The other women murmured their agreement. Anger rose bitter in K’os’s throat, and when she spoke again, her words seemed honed by the edges of her teeth. “Perhaps that is true,” she said, “but there is something more. As I told you, I was wife. A man of this village paid a bride price for me.”
“Who?” Gull Beak asked.
“River Ice Dancer,” said K’os, and watched as the women looked at one another.
Sun Caller coughed, and Gull Beak’s face was suddenly pinched and white.
“We left the Cousin River Village together, my husband and I,” K’os said, “and we went to the Four Rivers Village. We had lived there only a little while when someone in the village killed him. I had taken medicine to a sick woman and stayed with her for the night. When I returned to my lodge, my husband was dead, killed with a knife. There are Four Rivers men who claim close ties to the Cousin River People. I think one of them killed him. I came here to find my husband’s father, Wolf Head, and plan vengeance on those who took my husband’s life.”
The women began to murmur among themselves, and Sun Caller stammered out a few words of polite concern, but K’os lost patience with them. What group of women, in making a decision, ever acted quickly? They could spend days debating whether or not anyone in the village should help her. So without giving Gull Beak a chance to reply, K’os left and led her dogs to the fine strong lodge where Wolf Head lived with his two wives.
Chapter Sixty-five
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
THE SLEEP THAT CLAIMED Chakliux was so quick and so deep that when he heard the voice calling, he knew he was living in his dreams. He sat up and saw Long Eyes standing beside his bed.
“Rekindle your hearth fire,” she said to him, her voice strong.
And because it was a dream, Chakliux did what she asked, bringing the fire into a blaze so the flames lit Sok’s lodge.
“I was surprised you decided to sleep here,” Long Eyes said to him.
She settled herself beside the fire, sat straight, her shoulders back, as though she were a young woman. He saw that her eyes were clear, without the confusion that had clouded them since her husband’s death. But why should he be surprised? He had asked that hidden things be revealed. How better than in a dream?
“This is my wife’s lodge,” he said.
Long Eyes laughed. “But you are alone. She is not here, nor is your brother.”
“He sleeps in the hunters’ lodge.”
She nodded as if she knew, then said, “They say you mourn my daughter.”
“She was my wife. I mourn her and the child she carried.”
“It was your child,” Long Eyes said.
“Yes.”
Though the lodge was warm, she still wore her parka, and like a mother with a baby, she had tied a band around it just under her breasts. “I would have carried that child on my back,” Long Eyes said. She patted the band. “I made myself this belt to hold her in place.” She reached into a pouch that hung from the band and pulled out a ball of sinew thread.
“I did not know your words could be so clear, Mother,” Chakliux said.
She looked at him with narrowed eyes. “No one knows,” she said. She twisted the thread around her fingers, made a web between her hands. It caught Chakliux’s eyes, and he watched as she knotted the sinew into shapes: a tree, a circle.
“You are surprised?” she asked.
“I saw storytellers from the Walrus Hunter Village do that. They taught me.”
She nodded. “That other wife of yours, the Sea Hunter woman, when she first came to my lodge as Night Man’s wife, she had a bracelet made of knots. It was an otter. You think I did not notice that? When I saw it, I knew you had made it. Who else? Is there another otter anywhere in this village? Perhaps you did not know that my mother was Walrus, raised by those people before she was given as wife to my father. She taught me some things.
“When I was still a girl my father traded me to my husband for three yellow-eyed dogs. My father made a joke. He said I should change my name to Three Dogs. He was a foolish man, but I got a good husband, and four strong sons, then my daughter, Star.” She held her hands apart, let Chakliux see the knot at the center of her web. “This, you see, is Star’s child.” She jerked her hands and suddenly the knot was gone. “Children die too easily,” she said.
She looked at him and laughed. “Children die too easily, but I would have kept all mine, and my husband, if it were not for you.”
“I did not kill your husband,” said Chakliux. “It was River Jumper, and he was sent by K’os.”
“I have heard your story. My daughter told me. She loved you, so she believed you. You remember my sons? Tikaani was the oldest. Perhaps you did not kill him, but you are to blame for that war between our villages. You were supposed to stop the fighting, remember? Then I had Caribou and Stalker, a year apart, tho
se two. The old women said they would die. They said I would not have milk enough for both. But they grew to be strong, healthy boys. Do you claim you did not kill them? Now Night Man is dead. They think I do not know, but I hear their whispers. Four sons dead, a husband dead, and my daughter and her baby.”
“I did not kill your daughter.”
Long Eyes began to laugh.
Yaa drifted in and out of sleep. She was spending the night in Star’s lodge, watching over Long Eyes. The old woman had a habit of wandering at night, but to Yaa’s surprise, this night, Long Eyes had fallen asleep slumped over her work, the sinew thread she had been twisting still dangling from her fingers. Yaa had spread bedding furs beside the old woman and gently laid her down and covered her.
After Yaa finished sewing the last seam of Ghaden’s boot, she rolled out her own bed. For a little while, sleep claimed her, but then the rhythm of a song wove itself through Yaa’s dreams and woke her up.
What was it, that song? Yaa asked herself, then remembered that the last time she had stayed with Long Eyes the old woman had been singing it, muttering the words under her breath. The rhythm teased at the back of her mind, and finally Yaa recognized it—a song the women of the Near River Village sang. But Yaa had never heard a Cousin River woman sing it.
Who would have taught Long Eyes? Could she have learned it as a child?
Yaa began to hum the song, allowed its familiar words to lull her back toward dreams, but suddenly she was very much awake. How could Long Eyes have remembered that song when she could not even remember to eat? Something was not right.
Yaa sat up, looked at the old woman’s bed. It was empty, the covers thrown back, and her parka was missing from its peg. Yaa scrambled from her bed, pulled on boots and parka and went out into the night calling Long Eyes’s name.
She ran the paths of the village, saw no one. Her heart was like a stone in her chest, and she could not breathe. Chakliux and Ligige’ had trusted her to watch Long Eyes. Now they would think she was worthless, a little girl who could not be given any responsibility. She held in her tears and turned toward Chakliux’s lodge. He might be angry, but at least he would help her look.
Long Eyes stood and lifted her arms, tilted her head back to look at the top of the lodge. “You did not kill my daughter? Do you deny that you put that child in her belly? Do you say it was not yours?”
“It was mine,” Chakliux said softly. He heard a sound behind him, and looked back to see Yaa on her knees, peering into the lodge from the entrance tunnel.
Suddenly he knew he was awake. Long Eyes had not come to him in a dream. Somehow she had slipped away from her lodge, from Yaa, who was supposed to watch her.
“If the baby was yours, then you killed her,” Long Eyes said. She pulled the sinew from her fingers, let it drop into the hearth fire, watched as it curled and burned. Then she reached into her left sleeve, drew out a long-bladed obsidian knife.
“A sacred knife,” she said, and held the blade point up, turned it so the fire lighted the facets of the knapped edge.
Chakliux did not want to draw Long Eyes’s attention to Yaa by looking at her again, so he said, “A riddle.”
“I am too much Walrus,” said Long Eyes. “I have never been good with riddles.”
“This one is easy,” Chakliux told her. “Look! What do I see? A child remembers the sun.”
Then Yaa was gone, and Chakliux hoped she had understood. Long Eyes shook her head. “It is too difficult for me, but see if you understand mine.”
“Look! What do I see? Blood in the snow. Blood in a woman’s bed.”
When he gave no answer, she shrieked with laughter. “You do not understand?” she asked. “I thought you were so wise. How could I let your child live? He would carry your curse and kill as you have killed.”
“But why not wait until the baby was born? Why kill Star, too?”
“Then there would be more babies. Star was young. She would have given you many children.”
“She was your daughter,” Chakliux said softly.
“She was your wife,” Long Eyes answered. She licked her lips, moved her feet in a quick shuffling dance as though she were pleased with herself. “Do you know how easy it is to kill someone who thinks you are old and weak?” she asked. She raised the knife, twisted it and closed her eyes as though she was caught in the remembrance of Star’s death. “The baby, when I cut it out, was a girl. I might not have killed it had I known. Your wife, she was so sure she carried a boy.”
As she stood with her eyes closed, Chakliux moved quickly toward her, but suddenly she slashed out at him, nicked the palm of his right hand with the tip of her blade. He jumped back.
“You are like your Cousin mother,” Long Eyes said. “She was more difficult to kill.”
“My mother?”
“That one who died in her bed. Didn’t you listen to my riddle? What better way to avenge my husband’s death than to kill those you love?” She lifted her knife, plunged it into the air as though to show Chakliux what she had done. “She fought. But I was the one with the knife.”
“And now you have decided to kill me,” Chakliux said.
“I cannot kill you,” Long Eyes told him, “but perhaps there are others in this village who will do so when they see what you did to an old woman who could not protect herself, one who could barely speak.”
She raised the knife, and though Chakliux dove toward her, tried to knock it from her hands, she plunged the dark blade into her neck before he could reach her. She dropped to the floor, her hands cupped at her throat. She looked up, but Chakliux saw that her eyes were not on him. He turned. Sok and Take More were standing behind him.
Long Eyes moaned, closed her eyes and then was still. Sok took a blanket from Chakliux’s bed and covered her.
Yaa peeked in from the entrance tunnel. “She is dead?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Chakliux, and opened his arms to the girl. She ran to him and hid her face against his chest. “So you understood my riddle,” he said.
“I remembered Sok’s sun parkas,” she told him. “And Take More was with him in the hunters’ lodge.”
“Long Eyes killed her own daughter?” Sok asked.
“And our mother,” Chakliux told him.
“Then Red Leaf did not,” said Sok. “And Aqamdax did not.”
“No, and now there is no one left to seek vengeance.”
THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE
Wolf Head was a large man, his voice so loud that K’os heard him scolding his wives while she was still outside the lodge. She called out, waited until the younger wife opened the doorflap. The woman’s eyes rounded with surprise when she saw K’os.
“You have come back?” she asked, then gasped as K’os pushed past her into the lodge.
She came in behind K’os, sputtering apologies to her husband. K’os pulled River Ice Dancer’s amulet from the neck of her parka, held it so Wolf Head could see. His eyes moved from the amulet to her hair, cut short near her ears. Wolf Head stepped forward, clasped the amulet, then looked hard into K’os’s eyes.
“You recognize it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“I come in sorrow to tell you that your son is dead, killed by the Four Rivers People. They stole his dogs and travois, furs and meat, but I was able to escape from them and return to you with a few of his belongings.”
Wolf Head looked at his wife. “What did she bring?” he asked.
“Two dogs, a travois,” she said.
K’os saw the young woman glance at her sister-wife, River Ice Dancer’s mother.
“My tears flow for you,” K’os said, and the woman turned away. “The things they stole were the bride price your son paid for me. I will help you win revenge.”
“What did he give for you?” Wolf Head asked.
“Eight dogs, six travois, pelts and meat and fish. The Four Rivers People stole all of it, but I was able to—”
“Be quiet. You have too many words for
a woman.” Wolf Head leaned close to his younger wife, whispered something, and she hurried from the lodge.
He was rude, but K’os had known that Wolf Head was a hard man and treated his wives poorly. She held back her anger, did not allow it to color her cheeks or edge her words.
“Six dogs, you say.”
“Eight.”
“Six travois.”
“Yes.”
He turned away from her and paced the length of the lodge. “Fox pelts?” he asked.
She nodded. “Fox and lynx, wolf, caribou hides,” she told him.
K’os heard a noise at the lodge entrance, saw that the wife had returned. Gull Beak was with her.
“This slave says she was wife to that one who stole the dogs and travois from our village,” Wolf Head said. “She claims he gave my fox pelts as part of her bride price. She has returned two of the dogs.” Wolf Head drew his lips back in a smile. His teeth were long and yellow. “Treat her well,” he said to Gull Beak. “Few slaves would be so loyal.”
K’os let out her breath in a hiss. “I was wife to your son, River Ice Dancer,” she cried.
“During the past moon someone stole my dogs and travois, my furs and much meat from my cache. You think my son would steal a bride price from his own father?” Wolf Head said. “Foolish woman. I have no son.”
Chapter Sixty-six
THE GRANDFATHER LAKE
AQAMDAX’S EARLY-MORNING WORK was done, wood gathered, the dog fed. She banked more snow around her tent and added spruce boughs to the entrance tunnel she had made of bark and willow poles.
When she was finished, she untied Snow Hawk, took the dog with her to the lake. The ice that covered the shore rose in thick hard ridges, but when it reached the lake it smoothed into a wide white plain that spread as far as Aqamdax could see. She walked until she came to a place where the wind had swept away the snow and the ice was bare. She padded the palm of her mitten with a strip of caribou hide, then used a stone hand ax to begin another hole. She measured the width of the hole against her forearm to be sure it was wide enough to hold her fish trap. She worked until her hand was numb from pounding and her fingers would no longer grip the stone.
