The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  His words were as sharp as a slap, and his insult burned as though he had hit her, but she said, “I have whale hunting stories.”

  “Those would be better,” he told her, “but I think I have heard all your whale hunting stories.”

  She shrugged. “Then I will tell you about Daughter. Listen if you want. Otherwise leave.”

  He allowed his eyes to rest at her hips and chest, and suddenly she wished she were not alone with him in this place too far from the village. She wrapped her arms around her knees, clasped her right hand over the crooked knife that she had strapped to her left forearm. It lent her courage, that small knife, and suddenly her mouth filled with words. As she began to talk, Daughter’s story settled around her like the strong walls of an ulax, a protection against a man who wanted more than Qumalix was willing to give.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

  6435 B.C.

  DAUGHTER’S STORY

  K’OS REACHED OUT AND clasped Uutuk’s hands. They crouched at the top of the chief hunter’s ulax, alone except for the wind.

  “One of the reasons we brought you with us on this trading trip was to find you a husband,” K’os said. She released Uutuk’s hands and stood, placed her fists at the small of her back, and leaned into the wind, flexing her shoulders. She laughed and said, “I am too old to spend so much time gathering sea urchins.”

  Uutuk stood up beside K’os, placed strong hands on her mother’s shoulders, and kneaded the muscles. K’os closed her eyes.

  “Aa, Uutuk, you are a good daughter,” she said, and with eyes still closed she asked, “What do you think of the River man Ghaden?”

  Uutuk’s hands paused, but then she began to kneed even harder until K’os wrenched away from her grip.

  “Uutuk, you are breaking my shoulders!”

  Uutuk looked out over the village and murmured an apology, but she was facing the wind, so when her words came to K’os’s ears, they were as twisted and tangled as beach grass. K’os reached to turn the girl toward her.

  “I could not hear you.”

  “He is a good trader,” Uutuk said, “and I hear luck favors him when he hunts, but he is River.” She held her hands palm up as though to ask the sky what it thought.

  “So am I,” K’os said. They were speaking in the First Men language, and K’os changed her words to River. “Which means you are as well.”

  “Do you think if he took a First Men wife, he would be willing to go and live with her on her island?” Uutuk asked.

  She crouched again and pulled her sax over her knees, down to her feet. K’os squatted also, and cupped a hand to her mouth so the wind would not blow away her words.

  “No,” she said. “He wouldn’t come. He’s not a trader. He’s a hunter. You can’t expect a grown man to become a boy again and learn to hunt sea animals when he already knows how to take caribou and moose and bear. But at least his father is a trader and has taught Ghaden how to use an iqyax. If his First Men woman was a very good wife, perhaps sometime before she grew old he would take her back to her island so she could visit her people.”

  “You want me to marry a River man.”

  “Only if he’ll be a good husband to you and a good father for your children.”

  “White Salmon would have been a good husband and a good father.”

  There was a sharpness in Uutuk’s voice that surprised K’os. The girl had barely complained when Seal refused White Salmon’s brideprice.

  “He offered too little for you,” K’os told her. “What man values a wife when he can get her so easily? I don’t always agree with your father, but that time he was right. If White Salmon had truly wanted you, he would’ve been willing to hunt another summer for your brideprice.”

  “I did not know he offered so little,” Uutuk said. She spoke again in the First Men’s language, and her voice was small, like a child’s voice. “He told me he would give ten bellies of oil, ten otter skins, five thick pelts from fur seals, and many bellies of dried fish. He said if that was not enough his mother had a birdskin sax and three pairs of seal flipper boots she would be willing to give, but that I would have to sew for her during the first winter I was wife.”

  “He lied,” K’os said.

  Uutuk crossed her arms over her knees. “Why would he lie?” she asked, and her voice held the sound of tears.

  “Who can say?” K’os answered. “Perhaps he thought you would be a better wife if you believed he had given so much for you.”

  “What did he offer?”

  “You don’t need to know. More than many young women would bring, but not enough for you.”

  K’os pushed herself back until she was sitting behind Uutuk, then gently pulled the girl’s hair from the collar of her sax and began to comb it with her fingers, fighting the wind as it tried to steal the strands from her hands. “White Salmon is not gifted in his hunting. Even his iqyax and his weapons are poorly made. Do you think any sea animal is honored when he sees an iqyax with weak joints or a gaping cover? Do you think a harpoon with a crooked shaft will ever hit its mark? Perhaps the reason he said he offered so much for you was to hide the fact that his hunting skills are less than they should be.”

  K’os leaned forward over Uutuk’s shoulder to look into her face. “Do you remember when you were a little girl, and I would braid your hair in the way of a River woman?”

  Uutuk smiled. “I remember.”

  “Let me braid it for you.”

  “Do what you want,” Uutuk said.

  “There’s too much wind up here.” K’os lifted her chin to point toward the leeward side of the ulax.

  Uutuk slid down the sod roof and reached up to help her mother. Then she sat cross-legged like a River woman and let K’os weave her hair into braids.

  “What would you take for the parka?” Ghaden asked Cen.

  “You have someone who wants it?”

  “Two women are interested.”

  “Good!” said Cen. “Play them off against one another. Get as much as you can.”

  “They’ve offered oil and a sax.”

  “See if you can also get a pair of seal flipper boots and a chigdax. They trade well among the River People. Their women don’t know how to make either.”

  “In my village, all the River women know how to make a chigdax.”

  “Hayh!” Cen said, flicking his fingers in the air. “Your sister is more generous than she has a right to be.” But he laughed, taking the sting from his words.

  “Two handfuls of seal bellies?” Ghaden asked.

  Cen nodded, then said, “And the sax and a chigdax. Maybe boots. I want to bring my wife a good price for this parka. It has much luck in it. Don’t forget to explain about the flicker beaks.”

  “I told them.”

  “Good.” Cen looked up at the sky, found the brightness that was the sun hidden behind a bank of high clouds. “The day is half gone. Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat,” Ghaden said.

  “Qung will have something in her cooking bag.”

  Ghaden left the beach, turned to watch as Cen lifted his voice to beckon several hunters to his display of trade goods. Two groups of Walrus men had come that day. The Walrus were always greedy for weapons, and Cen had a good supply of birch spear shafts. He would make some fine trades.

  Ghaden did not go immediately to Qung’s ulax, but instead visited the cache where he and Cen stored food and extra trade goods. He had promised one of Aqamdax’s parkas to a First Men hunter in exchange for six bellies of oil. He took the parka from the cache as well as a few wolf pelts, a packet of bear teeth, and several claw necklaces. Perhaps the man would be willing to trade a few more bellies of oil for a bear claw or a wolf pelt.

  Ghaden rubbed at the scar on his neck. Sometimes it prickled, as though the bear’s spirit now and again thought of him. Among the First Men a bear claw might bring much in trade, or perhaps nothing at all. As Cen often told him, the value of any on
e thing changed from man to man.

  “That one, the River boy,” K’os said, and pointed to Ghaden as he stood speaking to several First Men hunters. He was holding up a wolf pelt and dangled something from his left hand, but K’os was too far away to see what it was.

  “As husband for Uutuk?” Seal asked.

  “Only something to consider,” she told him. “I know his family. His sister is married to the chief of the elders in one of the River villages, and his mother was First Men, so he speaks our language.”

  “It might be better for us if she married a hunter,” Seal said. “Since I am a trader and can get anything we need….”

  “More than what we need,” K’os interrupted him to say. “There are not many traders who are as gifted as you.”

  He pressed his mouth into a frown, and K’os could hear the boasting under his words when he said, “So what good will it do her to marry a trader?”

  “He is a hunter,” K’os said. “His father is a trader, and Ghaden sometimes travels with him.”

  “A good hunter?” Seal asked.

  “Qung told me that he killed a brown bear when the animal attacked him.”

  Seal tilted his head and made a noise in his throat. Laughter or disdain? K’os was not sure.

  “Should I tell Uutuk to stay away from him?” she asked.

  Seal puffed out his chest with a long breath. “See what he offers in a brideprice. See if he is willing to come and stay on our island and hunt there.”

  K’os nearly explained that Ghaden would not know much about hunting sea animals, but she held her tongue. Let Seal believe what he wanted. Once Ghaden had Uutuk as wife, it would be too late for Seal to change things just because the man hunted caribou rather than sea lions.

  She dipped her head in acknowledgment, then asked, “May I get you something to eat?”

  “The chief’s first wife fed me,” he said. “But it has been a long time since I had you in my bed.”

  K’os curled her lips into a smile, allowed her eyes to drop briefly toward Seal’s crotch. “When you have made enough trades, come and find me,” she said. Then she walked away, swinging her hips.

  When she knew Seal could no longer hear her, she looked up at the sun, hidden as it was behind a thick mat of clouds, and she said, “Look! What do I see? In giving it takes. In taking it lives. A riddle for you, my sister in the sky.”

  Ghaden hummed under his breath and considered the fur seal sax. It was beautiful and more practical for a River man than a birdskin sax, warmer and not easily torn, but River women did not sew feathered birdskins and so a birdskin sax would have more worth.

  “Two teeth and a claw,” the man said, “and for a wolf pelt, I will give you these seal flipper boots.”

  The boots were old, but they looked as if they had seldom been worn.

  “I kept them oiled,” the man said.

  Ghaden traded the teeth and claw for the fur seal sax, gave him his choice of pelts for the boots, then asked if he knew of anyone else who had seal flipper boots to trade.

  “Sometimes the old women make extra pairs and are willing to take food for them. You have caribou meat?”

  “Some,” Ghaden told him, his mind already on Qung. He and his father would give the old woman a good supply of dried meat for allowing them to stay in her ulax, but she might have boots to barter, or know of someone who did.

  He went to her after he had completed his trades with the First Men hunter. Qung gave him the names of three women, and each had something worthwhile to trade, a pair of boots, delicate shell bead necklaces, a puffin skin sax, grass baskets so finely woven that Ghaden could scarcely believe a woman’s fingers had made them.

  He traded for all of them and stowed the goods in his cache. Then he went to Cen and offered to take his place at their trading mats.

  Cen was gone for a good share of the afternoon, and during that time Ghaden went to his cache, brought out the seal oil bellies, the puffin skin sax, the seal flipper boots, the grass baskets, two caribou hides of his own, and a handful of shell necklaces. He piled these things with Cen’s trade goods and took the caribou parka.

  Ghaden had intended to tell Cen about the trade, but as soon as Cen returned a group of Walrus men crowded around him, began making offers for spear shafts and knapped points, so Ghaden let his father take over the trading and returned to Qung’s ulax. There were questions he needed to ask her about First Men customs and brideprices.

  He was still with Qung when Cen came in. Ghaden looked up, surprised to see that his father had left his trade goods. A man had little to worry about in this village as far as anyone taking what did not belong to him, but why leave the trading in the middle of the day when the best barters were often made?

  “The parka is gone,” Cen said, interrupting rudely, without greeting Qung.

  “I am glad you have come to my ulax,” Qung said, and rose to her feet. She was so bent by her humped back that she reminded Ghaden of a duck, waddling on widespread legs. She hobbled to a low-slung hook where she kept a water bladder and offered it to Cen.

  Cen’s face reddened. He took the water, murmured his thanks, then drank.

  “Sit down,” Qung said, the words like an order given to a child. “Are you hungry?”

  “No.” Cen bit out the word.

  “Now, you have something to say to Ghaden?” she asked, raising her eyebrows into the wrinkles of her forehead.

  “Yes, I have something to say to Ghaden. The white caribou parka is gone.”

  “I traded it,” Ghaden told him.

  Cen took in a mouthful of air, then blew it out between his teeth. “You should have told me,” he said, his voice low and quiet.

  “It was a good trade.”

  “What did you get?”

  “A puffin sax and one of fur seal, two pair of seal flipper boots, necklaces and baskets, and eight bellies of oil. I put out the fur seal sax, the oil and boots, and some of the necklaces, but the puffin sax and the baskets are in my cache.”

  Cen was still angry, but Ghaden could see that he was pleased about the trade goods, and gradually his anger faded. But he held up one finger, and like an old woman shook it in Ghaden’s face.

  “You should have told me, and even though it was a good trade, you should have asked me before making it. The parka belongs to my wife.”

  “Grass baskets and a birdskin sax will not please her?” Qung asked.

  Cen blinked and looked at the old woman as though he had forgotten she was with them. “She is not difficult to please,” he said. “She would be happy with the baskets alone, but I want her to know …”

  He stopped as if unsure how to say what he meant, and Qung said, “You want her to know that you missed her and that you think she is a good wife.”

  Cen merely grunted, and when he walked to the climbing log, his footsteps were heavy, as though he needed to remind himself of his own importance. At the top of the ulax he looked down at Qung and said, “See if you can teach him some wisdom, Aunt.”

  After Cen left, Qung put her hands over her mouth and began to laugh, but when Ghaden joined her laughter, she settled herself back onto her haunches and said, “Your father is right, you know. You should not have made that trade by yourself. What if you had taken too little?”

  “It was not a problem,” Ghaden told her.

  She tilted her head, asking a question without speaking.

  “I own the caribou hide parka,” he said. “I traded it to myself. If my father was not pleased with the trade, then I would have given more.”

  “This Boat People woman—Uutuk, K’os’s daughter—you plan to give it to her?” Qung asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “I am old, but I see well enough.” She lifted her chin toward an ulax rafter and told him, “Bring down that seal belly for me. I need oil for the lamp.”

  He stood and reached for it, took out the stopper, and poured oil into the side of the stone lamp farthest from the clump of moss sh
e used for a wick.

  “Be careful,” she said, “or you will douse the fire.”

  When the bowl of the lamp was full, she waved one hand at him and said, “Hang it up again.”

  He replaced the belly on its peg, then she pointed at the floor with pursed lips. “I think you had better sit down and talk to me.”

  He turned toward her but remained standing.

  “Sit!”

  He sat.

  “You are making a brideprice,” she said, “but you hardly know this girl. Her father is not much, and you have heard about her mother. What River man has not?”

  “Yes, I know her mother,” Ghaden said, “and I know what she did to my sister.”

  “Daughters are like their mothers. Surely you are old enough to have realized that.”

  “Uutuk is not like K’os.”

  Qung began nodding her head, keeping a rhythm as though she were listening to a drumbeat. Finally she said, “And what if you are wrong? Are you willing to chance that you might bring another K’os into your village?”

  “I told you. She is not like K’os.”

  “You have seen her sewing?”

  “It is very good.”

  “She has her own medicine bag, a sea otter. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “You know that K’os is a healer?”

  “I know.”

  “And she also uses her knowledge of plants to kill.”

  “Some people say that.”

  “Did you know that she sews very well?”

  “I have seen parkas she made.”

  “Then how can you say Uutuk is not like her mother?”

  “In these things—in the good ways—she might be like K’os.”

  “Only in good ways?”

  “Uutuk is not K’os. There is no hatred in her.”

  Qung began nodding again, and finally even closed her eyes, so that Ghaden thought she had fallen asleep. He had nearly decided to get up when she said, “Uutuk seems to be a good woman, which means either that she is a good woman, or that she is very good at being evil.”