by Sue Harrison
K’os hid a smile. He was good at riddles himself, this boy. Good at snares. He should be an old woman. He had the cunning to catch and strangle. “Your sister was born before I found my way to the Four Rivers village,” she told him. “Cen put another baby in your mother’s belly, too soon after your sister’s birth. But what else would you expect from a man who measures life by what he owns? Your mother died, and the baby also, a son.”
She saw the sorrow in his face, so made her voice low and sad. “I’m sorry. The loss of a mother is not an easy thing. Perhaps the knowledge that you have a sister will lift some of your pain.”
He turned away from her, and K’os crouched down on her haunches, rested her elbows on her knees, waited for Wolf Head to return.
Yehl listened patiently to the River man who called himself Wolf Head. The man was a warrior, but he had begun to grow old, and there was a weariness in his eyes that spoke of loss.
Yehl could understand pain like that. He still mourned his father, a shaman, strong not only of mind, but of spirit.
Only once during all the years of the old man’s life had his judgment been faulty. Yehl leaned toward Wolf Head as though he were listening, but his eyes were seeing that time when his father was still alive. Then men easily brought in enough walrus to feed everyone in the village, enough seals for oil and hides. Their children were healthy and strong, their women eager to please. But all things changed when his father had welcomed a group of River traders to the village.
Yehl seldom allowed himself to think about what had happened. With a woman as powerful as Aqamdax—no doubt a witch who carried evil as easily as other women carry amulets—surely her curses would come back to them if Yehl allowed her to live in his thoughts.
For a year he had mourned his father’s death. For a year he had kept himself away from women, had cut his flesh and bled into the hearth of his lodge. Had cut his hair and torn his parkas. When that year had ended, he took his father’s name, Yehl, and also took his place as shaman. What better way to keep the old man’s spirit alive and in this village?
Even now, as he spoke with Wolf Head, Yehl felt his father hovering over them, and the old man’s strength gave him confidence. After all, what could these River People do to harm this village? They were only traders, looking for a few baubles. There was a slave, too, Wolf Head had told him, a woman to carry their packs, a woman good in a man’s bed. What would it hurt if they stayed a day or two? Weren’t the Walrus Hunters known for their hospitality?
“Their chief hunter has given us permission to come into the village and trade,” Wolf Head said.
Squirrel snorted out laughter. “And what did we bring to trade besides this old woman?”
“I told you to bring something to trade, nae’?” Wolf Head said. “You have dogs to carry your packs.”
“Young men must save their caribou hides for bride prices,” said Black Stick.
“That’s your choice,” Wolf Head told him. “Don’t complain about it to me.”
Black Stick scowled. Wolf Head lifted his chin at K’os, gestured for her to follow, then said to Cries-loud, “You three do what you want. Stay here or come. Don’t make any trouble with their hunters.”
Wolf Head led, and K’os was next with the dogs. Cries-loud, Squirrel, and Black Stick walked behind them, each holding weapons, eyes challenging anyone who came close.
The lodge was set near the center of the village, and when she saw it, K’os began to long for the heat of a hearthfire.
She tried to accompany Wolf Head into the entrance tunnel, but he pushed her back, made her wait while the boys crowded ahead. Finally, after she had staked the dogs and fed them, she was allowed in, told to bring her packs. Squirrel held the inside doorflap open as she stooped to maneuver the packs through the door.
Her knees creaked as she stepped into the lodge, and a cramp spasmed across her shoulders when she stood to her full height. But the warmth was wonderful, soft against her face after so many days walking the tundra.
Wolf Head spoke to the Walrus men in their language. He spoke slowly and with many pauses, but K’os knew only those Walrus words she had picked up as a young woman when she welcomed a Walrus trader into her bed, and those were not words men spoke to discuss trade goods.
The Walrus leader wore many necklaces, and his hair was strung with beads and feathers. He held himself straight and stiff, but K’os thought she could see something close to fear in his eyes. He was tall, thick both of arm and of belly. His nose was as narrow as a gull’s bone and had been broken and poorly set. He squinted when he spoke, as if his words came not only through the efforts of his mouth but also his eyes.
He called himself Yehl. K’os knew she had heard the name before. Was there not some shaman from the Walrus people who had also used that name? But that had been years ago. Perhaps this new leader was son or grandson of the old shaman, and the power of that man’s name had clouded the people’s eyes, so they did not realize that this new Yehl was less than they thought.
K’os was so intent on watching him that she nearly missed Wolf Head’s signal. He wanted her beside him. She tried to move gracefully under the weight of her pack, and when she came into the light from the smoke hole, she set a smile on her face. Wolf Head murmured for her to show Yehl one of the parkas she had made. She crouched, untied her pack, and pulled out a ground squirrel parka, soft and warm.
She watched Yehl as he unrolled it, clenched her teeth in triumph when she saw the wanting in his eyes. For the first time, he looked at her. She made her smile into a slave’s smile, shy and humble, and she wondered how much of her young beauty still showed in a face that was growing old. Even her hair had begun to betray her with strands of white, and her hands grew more gnarled each year.
Yehl asked a question and Wolf Head grunted an answer. He nodded at K’os and told her, “He asks if you have ever been a wife.”
In a quiet voice, K’os said, “I had two good husbands before I was taken as slave. One was chief hunter of the Cousin River village. Perhaps you have heard of those people.”
Wolf Head translated her words, and Yehl spoke in reply. “He knows the village,” Wolf Head said.
“Perhaps then he has heard of my husband Ground Beater.”
When Wolf Head asked, Yehl inclined his head, considered for a moment, then raised his fingers in the traders’ sign for no.
Wolf Head spoke, then explained, “I told him that Ground Beater was a good man.”
“Thank you,” said K’os, though she knew he thought only of himself. The more he could get for her, the better for him, the better for the River Village.
Yehl asked something, and Wolf Head said, “He wants to know what happened to your husbands.”
It was a dangerous question. A woman who was widow might carry some curse from her dead husband to a new husband, and K’os had been widowed twice, three times counting River Ice Dancer, but why bring up a young man who had shared her bed for only a few nights? She spoke slowly, carefully.
“My first husband was given to me when I was a girl. My father chose him because he was an honored elder. He was very old, but he lived a long time after we married and died in his sleep, full of years and full of honor.”
She waited while Wolf Head translated, then she continued. “As I told you, my second husband Ground Beater was chief hunter of our village. He had traveled to another village to trade. While there, he stayed with an old woman in her lodge. She was careless with her fire and during the night the lodge burned, killing my husband, and the old woman and her husband as well.
“Not long after that, my village, the Cousin River village, was destroyed by the Near River men. I was taken slave, and have been slave ever since.”
Again she paused, and waited for Wolf Head. Yehl nodded, gave trader signs to say that he had heard of the fighting between the Near River and Cousin River villages. Who had not?
K’os lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “Many of us were taken as slaves,” s
he said, “though now the villages are at peace, and most of the slaves have been adopted or taken as wives. But who in the Near River village can trust me? I was wife of the chief hunter. They fear I seek revenge. So I am still slave.”
Wolf Head held one hand up as though to stop her words. This time when he spoke to Yehl, he spoke for a long time, so that K’os began to wonder whether he translated what she had said or made up some story of his own.
Her heart thumped hard in her chest, pulsing in her wrists and at the sides of her neck. She was angry at her fear. This Yehl would be easy enough to control. Why worry? Wolf Head didn’t want to kill her and risk a curse. He would leave her here. Her heart slowed, and she nearly smiled. No. Be still, be silent, she told herself. All your dread was foolishness, but do not tempt Wolf Head with a smile.
Yehl watched the slave woman as the River man spoke. Wolf Head’s words were broken, and his accent was strange. More than once Yehl had to ask him to repeat what he had said. Yehl wanted the woman, but he tried to keep all evidence of that wanting from his eyes. She was old, perhaps beyond the years of bearing children, but any man could see that she still held the beauty of her youth. Her hair was thick, and her skin smooth. She kept her hands tucked up the sleeves of her parka, but once or twice as she spoke, she used them to emphasize her words, and he had noticed that they were misshapen, the knuckles swollen, the fingers twisted. Most men would be put off by those hands, but his own mother’s fingers had been the same way, gnarled and bent and often painful, even when she was a young woman. She had still been able to sew and do all the things a woman must do.
If this woman could sew, if she truly had made the parka, as Wolf Head insisted, then she would be worth much, as slave or as wife. There seemed to be nothing to worry about in her husbands. One had lived to be a very old man, and that was good. The other was chief hunter of his village. Perhaps she had brought him bad luck, but more likely the bad luck had come with the old woman whose lodge had burned.
Finally Yehl interrupted Wolf Head’s blathering to ask, “What do you want for her?”
Wolf Head seemed surprised by the question. When he did not answer, Yehl said, “She is old. I cannot give you much.”
“Three sealskins of oil, and the split hide of a walrus,” Wolf Head replied.
“The parka comes with her?”
“For that I need another sealskin of oil.”
“I will give you the oil for the parka,” Yehl said, “and though I am sure, as you told me, that she made this parka, her hands worry me. Perhaps she made it long ago, when she was young.”
K’os saw the consternation on Wolf Head’s face. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“He thinks you did not make the parka.”
“Tell him to give me an awl and needles, a woman’s knife, and skins to sew.”
Wolf Head made the request, and Yehl spoke to one of the older women who had crowded in at the back of the lodge. She brought K’os a needle, knife, and awl, handed her a sealskin. Before she began to sew, K’os slipped off her own parka, gave it to Wolf Head.
“Show the women this one,” she said. “Who else would make a slave’s parka but the slave herself?”
There was nothing fancy about it, no shoulder tufts of fox fur, no insets of frost-whitened gut, no beads, no feathers. But anyone could see the quality of the work; anyone could see how well it fit her.
Several Walrus women studied the parka, turned it fur side in to check the seams. Finally the oldest raised her eyebrows in grudging admiration. K’os bent her head over the sealskin as the old woman spoke.
“She says it is a good parka, a fine parka,” Wolf Head whispered to K’os.
K’os did not answer. She worked as quickly as she could, punching holes with the awl. Then she knotted the sinew thread around her needle and made her seam, the stitches small and even and tight. Without speaking she handed the sealskin to Wolf Head. He gave it to Yehl. Yehl looked at it, then glanced at K’os. His eyes stopped on her breasts, on her waist and the small bulge of her belly, peaking up from the drawstring of her pants.
He is mine, K’os thought, and she smiled at him. He nodded to the old woman, and she gave K’os back her parka. K’os slipped it on over her head, passed her hands quickly over her breasts. He would take her as slave, no doubt. A slave cost less than a wife. But once she had won her way into his bed, there would be no end to her power.
Chapter Fourteen
Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula
602 B.C.
YIKAAS WAS SO CAUGHT in his story that for a time he continued to speak over the words of those around him. Then he realized that the comments were not the usual murmurs of approval storytellers expect. Women were whining, old men complaining; two young mothers, babies tied to their chests, got up and left, shaking their heads as if to empty their ears of his stories. A Sea Hunter man raised his voice in rudeness, shouted out something that sounded like an insult.
Yikaas looked at Qumalix, lifted his hands in question.
She spoke to her people, listened to their replies, and when she finally turned to Yikaas, she said, “They are tired of your story. They do not know the people you talk about, and they do not like K’os.”
“Of course they don’t like K’os,” Yikaas said. “She’s selfish. She’s evil.”
Qumalix shrugged. “So they do not want to hear about her. She makes them angry.”
“Sometimes stories do make people angry,” Yikaas said. “If we don’t hear about evil, how will we understand what is good? Besides, your story about Daughter ends with K’os.”
“I am glad to learn about K’os,” Qumalix said. “But that is because I am a storyteller, and the more I know, the better my stories become.” She stretched a hand out toward the people sitting in the lodge. “My people say they have learned enough about K’os. Perhaps it is time to talk about Chakliux or Sok. They seem to be good men. Why not tell us their stories?”
An old Sea Hunter woman stood. Her face was as lined and brown as tree bark, and she spoke in a reasonable voice, without whining, without complaining. When she had finished, Qumalix said to Yikaas, “This old woman is known for her wisdom, and she has raised three strong sons. She says it is good to know and to understand a little more about a woman like K’os. But she also says that her ears are heavy with hearing about one so wicked, and now she would rather have another story about Daughter.”
Though his heart burned with anger, Yikaas was polite, and he took his place with those who listened. But as Qumalix spoke about Daughter, her words were only words, and he could not lose himself in the story. Instead his mind strayed back to what he had told the people. His voice had been strong, his words well chosen, yet they did not like his story.
Maybe the fault was not with him but with the Sea Hunters themselves. Perhaps their minds were like the minds of children, and they needed simple stories that were easy to understand, stories like the one about Daughter.
He sighed and turned his thoughts back to Qumalix’s tale, but still he found nothing good in it, and finally when he had listened long enough so that his departure would not seem impolite, he rose quietly and left the lodge.
He walked down to the inlet, crouched on his haunches, and stared out at the water. An eagle was perched on a sandbar, tearing at a fish it held in one claw. When it finished eating, the bird spread its wings and lifted itself into the sky until it disappeared into the clouds.
Yikaas wished he could as easily leave his memories of the storytelling. The wind blew sand into his face, scoured his skin like the Sea Hunters’ criticism had scoured his heart. He felt as though he were a little boy, unsure of himself, and he not only doubted his stories but also began to wonder if Kuy’aa had been wrong in making him Dzuuggi. After all, she was an old woman. What did old women know? They did not hunt and so learned little from the animals. They seldom traveled to other villages. What was any woman’s life but the lodge she kept for her husband and the children she gave him? How coul
d you expect to gain wisdom from that?
He heard a scraping in the sand behind him, and turned to see that Kuy’aa had followed him to the beach. He was disgusted with her. Couldn’t she see that he needed to be alone?
“Why are you here?” he asked, and his voice was rude.
She looked at him as though he were a naughty child, her eyes as hard as limpet shells. Slowly, she lowered herself to sit in the sand beside him, and the wind blew the sparse white strands of her hair back from her forehead.
“I came to talk to you about your story,” she said.
“They don’t know anything about storytelling, those Sea Hunters,” said Yikaas.
“You’re sure?” she asked. “How strange that they know nothing about storytelling when they’ve been listening to stories all their lives. They must be very stupid.”
“I’ve been telling stories all my life,” Yikaas said. “I know more than someone who has only listened.”
“And you are so old,” she said.
“If you have nothing more to offer than ridicule, then I waste my time here at this village,” he said. “I know my way home. I don’t have to wait until the traders are ready to return. I’ll go alone.”
“That would be foolish. You would miss all of Qumalix’s stories.”
Yikaas scowled at her. “Why should I listen to her stories? She doesn’t want to hear mine.”
Kuy’aa was quiet for a long time. She pulled a shaft of beach grass from the sand and began to shred it with her thumbnail. “You’re wrong,” she finally said. “Perhaps some of the Sea Hunter people do not want to hear you, but Qumalix does.”
“She told you that?”
“What storyteller does not want to hear new stories? Old stories comfort us, and new stories teach us. We need both, but I think there is something here you do not understand. You and I, we are storytellers, and we listen so we can learn. The people listen so they can live the stories. Your tales of K’os are good, but who wants to become K’os? Would you?”
“Of course not,” Yikaas said. “K’os is a woman. What man wants to become a woman?”
