by Sue Harrison
Another bump, this one so strong that the iqyax frame bent and groaned; the knotted joints moved and heaved like the bones of a skeleton. The old woman cried out, and when she did, the Sea Hunter words she had been holding as amulet in her throat escaped into the iqyax, and the air around her was suddenly so thick with them that she could scarcely breathe.
Then she heard Yikaas’s voice, like a parent calming a child. “We are here, Aunt,” he said. “At the Traders’ Beach. It’s low tide, and we’ve found a few rocks. If it’s too rough for you, I’ll wait in the bay until the sea rises.”
The old woman lifted her fingers to her lips, pushed a path through the Sea Hunter words, and said, “Go in now, if you are able.”
She pulled the fur seal blanket like a caul over her face, wrapped her arms around herself, and tried to become small, so Yikaas could guide the iqyax, not only with his paddle but with the shifting of legs and buttocks.
Finally the hull ground into sand, and Yikaas untied his hatch skirting. A rush of cold air slid into the iqyax, released the stories, the words, her fear. Then his strong hands were under her arms, drawing her out, peeling away the layers of the fur seal blanket. He helped her stand, and she spread her feet wide on the earth to keep her balance.
“You have brought your grandmother?” someone asked. He spoke in the River language, but his voice carried the accent of a Sea Hunter.
“Her name is Kuy’aa,” Yikaas said. “It was she who brought me. We are storytellers, and we have come to learn.”
It was an answer he might have given when he was a child, and it pleased Kuy’aa to hear the humility in his words. What space is left for stories if a man fills his mind and heart with thoughts of his own importance? Soon those people he speaks about meld into himself, and he is no longer storyteller, but braggart.
“We are always in need of storytellers,” the Sea Hunter said. “Tonight we will hear tales from a woman who has come to us from the Whale Hunter Islands.”
Aaa, thought Kuy’aa, there are two of us then, foolish in our old age, grandmothers who would dare a death at sea to have one last chance to tell and hear stories at the Traders’ Beach.
Lost in her thoughts, she did not realize that Yikaas was speaking until it was too late to stop him.
“I had hoped to tell my own stories tonight,” he was saying, and the old woman flushed in embarrassment at his boldness.
The trader smiled and said, “We will be glad to hear you, but first you should rest. Tonight, you must listen.”
Kuy’aa lifted her chin at the trader, gave a nod, and knew that the man understood her gratitude.
He clapped Yikaas on the shoulder and laughed loud and long, reminding the old woman of the joy with which Sea Hunters live their lives. “There is much to trade for here,” the man said. “See that you trade well and wisely.” He lifted his chin toward the rise of the beach, toward iqyax racks and the path that led to the Sea Hunter village.
The old woman helped unload the iqyax, then carried a heavy pack of food and trade goods up the slope of the beach. The promise of stories was a balm that soothed the horror of the days spent in the iqyax and held at bay the fear that Yikaas, her chosen Dzuuggi, was less than her hopes.
The Dzuuggi pushed his way into the circle of people nearest the center of the lodge. The Sea Hunters called a lodge an ulax, Kuy’aa had told him. Each ulax was like a mound, built partially underground, raftered with driftwood, roofed with woven mats, sod, and grass thatching. The thick earthen walls seemed to press down on him, and he had to fight the urge to hunch his shoulders against their darkness.
It was not difficult to tell the Sea Hunters from the River People. Those hunters of sea mammals squatted on their haunches, arms around upraised knees. Yikaas snorted in derision and sat down in the way of men. But as he waited for the stories to begin, moisture seeped from the packed earth floor into his caribou hide pants, and he suddenly understood one reason they sat as they did. With his left foot turned on edge as it was—an otter foot, Kuy’aa called it, with webbed toes—he decided he would be more comfortable as he was rather than trying to balance himself crouched on his feet. So he remained sitting, but he decided to bring the fur seal pad from his iqyax for the next storytelling so he could stay dry.
He was tired, but his excitement at being with the storytellers was enough to keep him awake. When Yikaas’s eyes adjusted to the dim light of the seal oil lamps, he turned his head to search for Kuy’aa and finally saw her sitting with several old women at the back of the lodge. He could tell that she struggled to hold her eyes open, her head bobbing now and again as she drifted toward sleep. She had told him that the storytelling might last the night, people going and coming, listening for a while, then leaving to return later.
Among the River People, when a group of storytellers gathered, one story seemed to spawn the next. A person would give one version, then another told the same story in a different way. The older the story, the more variations. Most people claimed the old stories were best, but Yikaas thought that new stories were better. They seemed to stay in his mind long after the storytelling was over, as clear to his eyes as if he had lived them.
Soon the lodge was full of people. Women passed seal bladders of water and heaps of sea urchins, a rare delicacy for River People. Yikaas took two handfuls of the prickly shells and heaped them between his crossed legs. He used the flat of his stone knife to crack one open, then with his thumbnail dug out an egg-filled orange ovary and sucked it into his mouth. He closed his eyes at the richness of the taste, fat and salty.
Finally there was a whispering among the storytellers, and Kuy’aa stood up and tottered over to sit beside him. She poked him with one crooked finger, pointed with her chin at a man standing in the center of the lodge. He was so bent and wrinkled, so thin, that Yikaas was surprised he could stand. The old one began to speak, and Yikaas realized that though the years had melted away the old man’s flesh, they had not taken his voice. His language was Sea Hunter, but different in accent and rhythm, his words rising and falling like waves, loud and soft, harsh and calm.
“Whale Hunter,” Kuy’aa leaned over to whisper.
The young Dzuuggi looked at her with wise eyes and nodded as though he had known. He listened carefully to the old man, caught the word woman, and some reference to the sea, then found himself wondering if all the stories would be told in Sea Hunter languages. If so, he had made a useless journey. What good would it do him to sit forever listening to stories he could not understand? But then a young woman also stood. Daughter to the old man? Granddaughter?
She was wearing Sea Hunter clothing, a loose hoodless parka, her dark hair tucked into its collar rim. The parka hung nearly to her ankles, and the sleeves were long enough to cover her hands. It was black, decorated with shell bangles and sewn in squares of what looked like cormorant feathers. Her hair was cut short over her forehead in a fringe that hung to her eyebrows, and a thin needle of ivory pierced the septum of her nose. Her face was delicate, her cheekbones high under slanted eyes, her mouth small. He found that in watching her, he was holding his breath. She would visit him in his dreams, without doubt, that one.
She helped the old man sit down, then leaned over to hand him a water bladder, and with her woman’s knife cracked open an urchin shell. Wife, was she? Yikaas was disappointed. But if the old man were important enough—a Dzuuggi among Sea Hunters—then he had earned the right to a young and beautiful wife.
She began to talk to the people, first in the Sea Hunter language, then in the River tongue. Yikaas smiled. She was a translator, not wife, and best of all she spoke the River language well, with only the trace of an accent.
Perhaps when she translated his stories, she would decide she wanted to spend a night in his bed. His heart grew large with hope, and he sat very straight, lifted his head. He was wearing a fine parka, one of two his mother had made him especially for storytelling. It was caribou hide, scraped and smoothed until nearly white, then decorated
at shoulders and sleeves with rows of wolf teeth and dyed caribou hair. His mother had left fringes across the chest, each knotted around a jade bead.
When the translator’s eyes, resting for a moment on each storyteller, finally came to him, he smiled at her, but she gave no sign of recognition, skipped over him as though he were only a boy, slave to Kuy’aa.
He snorted his disgust. She was probably the slave. If so, he could have her in his bed for a bauble.
He waited, grew impatient as the old man continued to fumble with crooked and swollen fingers at the sea urchin the girl had given him. Would he never begin the stories? But suddenly the girl lifted her arms, spoke in a clear, strong voice. The old man looked up at her, smiled, then again fixed his attention on the sea urchin.
She was the storyteller? A girl barely old enough to be a wife? Was this how the Sea Hunters honored River People who had traveled so far? He started to get up, but Kuy’aa laid a hand on his arm.
“Be still and listen,” she said. “I heard this woman tell stories when she was just a child, when you were still learning and not yet ready to attend this celebration.”
Yikaas did as she bid, but anger filled him from navel to ears, making the girl’s voice difficult to hear. She spoke first in the Sea Hunter language, then in the River tongue. She began with polite comments, and Yikaas, realizing he needed to learn the story traditions of the Sea Hunters, made himself listen. She gave her name: Qumalix, a difficult word for a River man to say, spoken so deeply in the throat, but the Dzuuggi wrapped his tongue around it, let it settle as a whisper in his mouth until he knew he could say it without faltering.
Qumalix explained that her name meant to be like light, to brighten.
Yikaas sat with his mouth open, and in his surprise the anger flowed out of his body, was caught in the thin smoke of the seal oil lamps and pushed up through the square hole cut in the top of the ulax.
Qumalix, so close in meaning to his own name—Yikaas, light.
He looked at Kuy’aa, saw the knowing in her eyes, as though she were able to read his thoughts.
Then Qumalix said, “Aa, children, this is a story of times long ago. Listen and hear me.” She spoke boldly, like a woman who could rely on her own wisdom.
“The Bear-god People came like a tsunami from the sea….” she said.
The Bear-god People? Yikaas thought. A story he had not heard before. Perhaps, then, he should listen, at least for a while. Kuy’aa wanted him to stay, and it was always good to please an elder, nae’? Besides, he would not forget that in spite of her powerful name, Qumalix was only a girl, much too young to be given the honor of telling the first story….
PART ONE
Chapter One
Outlet of the present-day Oi River, Suruga Bay, Honshu Island, Japan 6447 B.C.
DAUGHTER’S STORY
THE BEAR-GOD WARRIORS came like a tsunami from the sea, their poorly-made and misshapen outriggers sunk so deeply in the water that at first the Boat People only stood on the shore staring, sure that a wave would swamp the dugouts before the warriors could beach them. But the sea gods were asleep, and no waves rose, the water smooth and gray as alder bark.
Cedar, second wife of Fire Mountain Man, had been grinding seeds with the stone pestle and mortar her father had given her as one of her bride gifts. Her little daughter, Day Soon, was tied to her back, the child content to play with bright shells an aunt had pierced and sewn to the deer hide sling that bound her to her mother.
As a child, Cedar had lived in another village far to the north, closer to the string of small islands where the Bear-god People lived. Though her own village was never attacked, she knew the stories of what they did, those hairy ones, more animal than human. She had told the people of this village about the Bear warriors, how their hair had gradually changed from straight black human hair to brown, wavy bear fur. How their arms, legs, and chests were also hairy like the bear they worshipped, and how their teeth were pointed like bear teeth. Even their language was only grunts and growls, like the bear language.
They had come long ago, the storytellers said, from the west and the north, bringing their strange customs with them, their savage worship. They kept bears captive, and when the animals died, the Bear-god People saved the skulls to bind on the doors of their homes so the bear spirits would protect their village.
They were a people of the land and did not know how to build good boats, how to hollow the straightest, strongest cedar tree using fire and adz to cut away the center so that many men could fit inside. They did not even have harpoons, except for those stolen from the villages they destroyed.
While the others stared, watching, wondering, Cedar raised her voice and called out a warning, to tell her husband’s people that these were Bear-god warriors, that they would rape the women and do worse to the men, take boys captive to feed to their bears, and dash out babies’ brains on rocks.
But they all looked at her in wonder. What men would do such hideous things? Surely if the Boat People welcomed them and offered food, these strangers would be content to establish a trading partnership. Did they not come from the north? Perhaps they would bring obsidian, like the traders from Hokkaido.
The Boat People flicked their fingers at Cedar, turning her words back so her foolish message would not taint their greeting. Then Fire Mountain Man came to her and, taking her arm, walked her to the edge of the beach, bid her stand in her place as second wife, seven steps behind him, two behind his first wife.
Cedar’s heart beat like bird wings in her chest, battering her lungs and ribs until they ached. Day Soon began to fuss, and First Wife gestured with a quick snap of her hand that Cedar should leave, take the child away so these men in their boats would not be insulted by a little girl’s cries. Cedar ran, her head lowered as if in shame, but she was grateful. She left the beach and hurried to her husband’s iori.
All Fire Mountain Man’s family lived in the iori—his uncles and brothers and their wives, one sister who was a widow and her children. It was a good, warm place, even in winter, with a huge central hearth and the floor dug into the ground, three or four handlengths down. The walls were framed with chestnut logs, sided with their bark, and the roof was thatched new every few years so rain could not make paths through the straw. Their iori was not as large as some of the others in the village, but the floor was well-packed, swept clean each day with the straw brooms Cedar made herself. She had brought the alder handles from her own village, and they were a comfort to her hands when she longed for the cooler winds of the north.
Each wife in Fire Mountain Man’s iori had an area for herself and her children. Cedar’s was the smallest of all, but good nonetheless, especially for a woman who had only one child, and that one a daughter.
She hurried inside and filled an earthenware pot with chestnut cakes and dried venison, a few smoked fish. She took three bottle gourds filled with water, a woman’s knife, Day Soon’s good luck charm, two deerskin blankets, and a pack made of rush matting. She shoved the knife, pot, blankets, and gourds, as well as some soft skins to swaddle Day Soon’s bottom, into the pack and hefted the awkward bundle to her head. She handed Day Soon a stick of dried fish to chew on and left the iori, walking quickly toward the hills that cupped the village. She passed the builders’ huts, saw that her husband’s newest boat lay on the estuary beach, the outrigger already attached, the main body deep and hollow, in need of only a little more adz work to remove the last of the char.
He had made the boat for First Wife’s oldest son, a man in his own right and trying to earn the respect of the village elders so he could claim a wife. A great lump of sorrow wedged itself into Cedar’s throat. What would happen to her husband and that boy-man? To all the good people of this village? Was it fair that their desire to live peacefully would mean their deaths? And what about the boat her husband had worked so hard to build? Made in honored ways, it would carry good luck for anyone who used it, perhaps even a Bear-god warrior who did not know enough to
worship the sea gods.
In considering those sea gods, Cedar suddenly remembered the small carvings her husband honored above all things. He kept them near the hearth, hanging from the support rafters on braided strings of whale sinew. They had been blessed by priests, and carried great powers. She could not leave them to fall into the hands of the Bear-god warriors. What chance did the Boat People have if those Bear-god men stole more power for themselves, even the power of the sea?
A scream came from the beach, and a terrible cry that sounded like a bear roaring. Almost, Cedar turned to run, but again, she thought of the sea god carvings, and so she quickly set Day Soon into Fire Mountain Man’s boat, placed the pack beside the child.
“Be quiet, Daughter. Stay in the boat until I come back to get you,” she said, and knew that the girl—now three summers old—would do as she asked. Cedar pulled out the deerskin blankets and covered Day Soon and the pack, then she ran back into the village, crept on hands and knees to her husband’s iori, and once inside cut down the sea god carvings.
When Water Gourd became old, his eyes grew too dim for him to aim his harpoon. Soon after, his hands knotted, and he could no longer work the adz to build boats, and his legs were too weak to chase the deer that roamed the mountains. Had the choice been his own, he would have claimed a place with the elders, giving out advice to those who had not lived long enough to become wise. But wisdom had never been one of his gifts, and now, in his old age, all he had to offer were his strong shoulders. Each day, tottering on wobbly legs, he made the journey to the spring that bubbled sweet water at the base of the second hill from the village. Each day he took empty bottle gourds, filled them, and brought them back—cool, wet bulbs sprouting from the ends of the nutmeg yoke he had carved especially to fit the curves and hollows of his ancient shoulders.
