The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  “Yes,” he said softly. “I remember her. She is called K’os …” He grimaced. “Her husband was a boy from the Near River village. When he died, some people thought that she …” He paused.

  Ghaden had discussed the problem with K’os the evening before and was ready with an answer. “K’os has told me that she thinks the people of this village did the right thing. How could they know who killed the man? But as you can see, she did not. Otherwise, surely his spirit would have taken revenge on her when she left the village. Instead it guided her to the First Men, where she became wife to Seal.”

  Blue Lance was a small man, short but powerful in his arms and shoulders. Unlike most River hunters he let his hair go free, without braid or ornament. A scar, wide and white, crossed the top of his nose, and at some time in his life he had had tattoos sewn into the skin on either side of the scar. He wore necklaces, many different kinds, but his parka was plain, though well made. His sons were much like him, but taller and not so quick to smile.

  Blue Lance escorted Ghaden and Seal and their wives into the village. His sons, scowls on their faces, ran ahead to tell others that traders were coming. It was a small village, smaller than Ghaden had anticipated for all K’os’s fine words about it, and he turned to see if there was surprise or disappointment on her face, but she was smiling, and he heard her say to Uutuk, “Little has changed since I was here. Aaa, but look! Three new lodges near the river!”

  Ghaden followed her gaze to the lodges, saw by the growth of grasses and plants near them that they were not new at all, but had been in place for some time. But of course, K’os meant since she had lived in the village, and that had been what? Ten years ago? Even more.

  Children crowded around them, shouting out questions, tumbling and arguing and jumping as all children do. Women asked for this thing and that, making offers even before goods were displayed. Then several grandmothers came, each carrying bowls of stew. They offered them to Seal and Ghaden and even to K’os and Uutuk.

  Ghaden accepted the food gladly, ate where he stood, scooping the hot meat from the bowl into his mouth. The food warmed his belly, let him relax a little, but he had not forgotten the main reason for their stay, and as he ate, he peered over the rim of his bowl at the various women, tried to decide which one was his father’s widow.

  One of the grandmothers came close, peered into his face, and said, “He looks like that one who just died.”

  There was a sudden murmur of surprise, then agreement, and even Blue Lance drew close, squinted at him, and said, “Yes.” Then in explanation he added, “That man was a trader also.”

  Ghaden lowered his bowl. How had they found out about Cen’s death? He pressed his lips together, licked at the grease that had coated them. “I’m his son, Ghaden,” he said.

  There were more murmurs of amazement, then one old grandmother spoke out. “He told us about you. He said that one day you would come to our village. I hope you can stay until your sister Daes returns. She had to go back to her mother’s fish camp and tell her what had happened.”

  “My father’s wife is still at fish camp?” Ghaden asked.

  “Yes, but your other sister, the baby, is here in the village. Don’t worry about Daes. She didn’t go alone. Someone came from Chakliux’s village to tell us, and he went with her. You must know him. Cries-loud.”

  “Cries-loud?” Ghaden said. “I thought he left to hunt, at least K’os …”

  He realized that he was speaking his thoughts aloud and closed his mouth, flushed in embarrassment.

  Then K’os stepped forward and said, “I’m only an old woman, but some of you will remember me.”

  Blue Lance held up a hand, gestured for her to be quiet. “Let me tell them,” he said, and explained who she was and what had happened to her.

  Some of the people turned away, making signs of protection against spirits, but several old women came forward, one to apologize for what had happened to K’os years ago, the others only to stare.

  “We’ve come to share your mourning,” K’os said.

  Then there was a whispering in the crowd, a movement of women’s hands, and Ghaden heard the cry of a baby. A young woman stepped forward and Blue Lance said, “This is Long Wolf’s wife. The baby is your sister. They call her Duckling.”

  The woman thrust Duckling into Ghaden’s arms so quickly that he did not have time to protest. The baby was heavy, round and fat, and he could not help but notice that she looked very much like Cries-loud, but how could that be? Cries-loud was not related in any way to Cen.

  Duckling smiled at him, poked a baby finger at his face, and he was suddenly full of sorrow for a little girl who would never know her father. He swallowed hard to open his throat, then noticed that Uutuk had come to stand beside him.

  “May I hold her?” she asked, and Ghaden, balancing the baby on the flats of his hands, was glad to give her up. Uutuk looked into the child’s face, made a little song, and said, “She looks like her brother.”

  “Her brother?” Ghaden asked, still thinking of Cries-loud.

  “Like you, her brother,” said Uutuk, then Ghaden saw the shine of tears in his wife’s eyes. “Perhaps someday she will have sons that you can teach,” she said.

  She handed the baby back to Long Wolf’s wife. Duckling pressed her head into the woman’s chest and began to squawk. The woman tucked her under her parka, and the baby was suddenly quiet.

  “She was hungry,” Long Wolf’s wife said to no one in particular, as if they did not already know.

  Then Blue Lance lifted his hands, and the people parted, allowed him and Ghaden to walk through. Ghaden turned to gesture toward Uutuk, but the crowd had already closed around her, and he saw that she and K’os and Seal were digging into packs to lay out trade goods. Perhaps not a wise idea when the people were still mourning Cen, but he would have to discuss it with them later.

  Blue Lance’s lodge was made in the same way as those in Chakliux’s village, with a down-slanted entrance tunnel of sod to trap cold air, and several storage areas dug out at the sides of the tunnel. Inside, the caribou hide lodge cover tinted all things gold.

  Two women were at the back of the lodge, and Blue Lance barked something to them, set them scurrying to bring water. Gratefully, Ghaden drank. Walking always made him thirsty, but when they offered food he realized that his stomach was unsettled and he did not really want to eat.

  “I mourn,” he said, to soften his refusal.

  Then Blue Lance’s face crumpled. He closed his eyes and sat very still for a long time.

  Finally he said, “Your father was my hunting partner when he was not trading.” He opened his eyes, but tented his fingers over his face. “We need to make a mourning,” he said, “and we need to get his wife and daughter back into the village.”

  He suddenly jumped to his feet as though he were the one who must do all these things. He began to pace, and his wives looked at one another, worry evident in their eyes. They were sisters, without doubt, faces nearly identical.

  “Do you think this man Cries-loud will also want to share the mourning?”

  “He might. I wonder if I should go after them. It might comfort my sister to know I’m here.”

  Blue Lance shook his head. “There is no need to go,” he said. “Surely Cries-loud will return with them in the next few days. But it might be best to tell Seal that we should wait to trade until after the mourning. What if your father’s ghost comes to visit us and sees that instead of making a mourning for him, we celebrate his death with trading?”

  Ghaden almost smiled. “I don’t think he would be insulted,” he said.

  K’os watched the people, her eyes narrowed to slits. It was not difficult to tell that they had loved Cen. For some reason the thought made her angry, and once again she wished that she had been the one allowed to take his life, rather than the sea. But, she told herself, at least his spirit could not take revenge on her.

  In spite of the chief hunter’s request that Ghade
n and his family stay with him in his lodge, Seal was pouting. Even now, as they joined the elders in that lodge, Seal spat out complaints about people who would make a man wait through a mourning to trade his goods. He told K’os to translate, but as they took their places near the hearth fire, she made up compliments rather than passing on his insults. When he realized what she was doing, he closed his lips and refused to speak at all.

  Then she simply said, “My husband, too, mourns for Ghaden’s father, and among the First Men, respect is shown by a man’s silence.”

  Then the people stopped directing questions to him, whispered among themselves, and nodded, watching Seal from the corners of their eyes.

  “What did you tell them?” Seal finally demanded.

  “Only that you mourn as we all do,” K’os said.

  He grunted at her and she added, “You have earned their respect. Can you not see that?”

  Then Seal lifted his head, began to hum a mourning song under his breath, and K’os saw him stiffen with pride each time he noticed one of the elders watching him.

  K’os got up and, over the protests of the women, began to help serve the men. Few were eating, but she kept busy, arranged fish on mats, handed out water bladders. She even managed to slip away and bring in an armload of wood for the fire, and finally she was able to get one of the wives alone, to ask softly, “How long ago was the man Cries-loud here? When did he leave to find the dead one’s wife?”

  “Yesterday … no, the day before,” the woman said.

  “And how far to her fish camp?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve never been there,” she said, “but I think her daughter Daes said three or four days’ walking. But that would be with heavy loads, dogs, and a baby.”

  K’os nodded and gathered a handful of bladders. “Let me fill these,” she said. “You know that I used to live in this village. You were only a girl then, but I think you remember me. In those days they called you Wing.”

  The woman looked at her with caution in her eyes, a carefulness that told K’os she was right in thinking the wife remembered her.

  “I know where to fill these, the place on the river where the bank dips.”

  But Wing shook her head. “No,” she said, “the river has changed. That part of the bank was swept away one year during spring breakup. Sit down with your husband. I’ll send one of the children for water.”

  K’os sat down behind Seal, closed her eyes, and thought of Cries-loud. Surely his fear for Red Leaf’s life would have made him walk quickly. Perhaps even by tomorrow he would reach her to warn that Ghaden was coming to the village. Then they would be on their way north or east, where no one could find them. K’os held a smile under her tongue. All the better, she thought. She didn’t want Red Leaf in the village when the poison began to work. The woman knew too much about K’os’s gifts and might figure out what was happening, blame it on K’os.

  Cries-loud, be a good son to your mother, K’os thought, take her far from this village and don’t bring her back until I’ve had my revenge. Then, if you wish, bring her. Since she so cunningly saved herself from my poison, I would like to see if she can save herself from Ghaden as well. If she can, then perhaps she would agree to work with me to seek her own revenge on Chakliux’s village, on Sok, that husband who tried to kill her, on Chakliux, who did nothing to save her. Then K’os’s thoughts were so sweet that it seemed as if her mouth were filled with the rich taste of new fat.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  CRIES-LOUD’S STORY

  CRIES-LOUD TRIED TO slow his steps, to give heed to his sister’s begging.

  “You walk too fast, Brother,” she said, panting out the words. “Look, it’s almost night. We need to make camp.”

  “How much farther?” he asked. He stopped and waited for her.

  “A long way,” she said, but she did not look up at him, and so he decided that she was lying.

  He had known her only three days, but already he understood her quite well. She was strong for a woman, and could make a good campsite quickly, but she told untruths about the smallest things. At first he thought she did so only to protect herself. When she brought in a small armload of wood, she would say there were few branches on the ground, or when the meat burned she would babble about some spirit that had distracted her. He had heard many women do the same.

  But other times, Daes would tell a story that he knew could not be true, some great feat she had done, saving Cen’s life when he overturned his iqyax in the river, making medicine for the chief hunter whose cut arm healed in one day. They were foolish stories, but the strangest thing was that she seemed to believe them. At first he had been amused, but then when some of her stories were about people who had died, he began to fear their ghosts, and so he told her that his sorrow over her father’s death had risen from his heart to plug his ears, and he could not hear her.

  Then she was quiet, and when she finally rolled herself into her sleeping robes, Cries-loud made soft chants of protection, waved an amulet into the smoke of the fire, even burned a few pieces of dried caribou meat in hopes of protecting himself from whatever spirits she might have angered.

  So now he had little doubt that she was lying again, that the camp was close. He was also tired, but it would be much better to get to his mother’s fish camp this night, to talk out their plans before they slept, then in the morning be ready to go. He had little idea where he would take her, and he supposed that Daes would have to come with them. He also knew he would have to tell his mother that Cen was dead. He wondered if she had truly loved the man or had become his wife only to get his protection. Surely she could have chosen a better husband. Cen had been a good man, but Red Leaf must have lived in fear that he would find out she had killed that first Daes.

  Why not take a husband who was only a hunter, who never left the Four Rivers village to trade, who owed no revenge for the death of a woman or for the stabbing of his son?

  But then, Red Leaf had never been one to plan wisely.

  “You lie,” he said to Daes, and his words were hard, loud.

  Daes took a step back, then another. “No,” she said, and made tears come into her voice. “I do not lie. It’s a long way yet, and I’m weary with my mourning. I need to stop and sleep and sing prayers for my father’s spirit.”

  “Stop if you wish, but I’ll go on as long as I have light enough to see.”

  She crouched down on the path, the pack on her back nearly as large as she was. He had told her to bring extra clothing and food, and unlike most men who traveled with women, he, too, had a pack. She had asked to bring a dog, but he did not want the worry of feeding it, keeping it quiet. He flicked his fingers at her in irritation and strode away.

  He wished he had not brought her. If he had known that once they were little more than half a day from the village it would be only a matter of following a river until they came to the camp, he would have sent her back. But he had not known, had not even thought to ask, and she had not told him. He felt another spurt of anger flood his chest, and then he heard her coming behind him. Almost, he turned, almost, he told her to stay, that she should go back to the village alone. But those other times she had made the journey, she had at least had a dog to protect her. What if wolves got her? Did he want to add the loss of a daughter to his mother’s sorrow? It was enough that she had lost her husband.

  So he only quickened his pace, went on as though she did not follow, and he didn’t even look back to see if she kept up with him.

  That day, at midafternoon, the wind had turned cold, cutting down from the north, and when the sun tucked itself into the trees that stood dark at the horizon, snow began to fall. It was not a snow that would stay. It was mixed with rain, and even that which gathered on the north side of grass tussocks and at the base of willow brakes was soon eaten away, but it chilled Cries-loud to the bone, and he began to wonder if Daes had been telling the truth about the fish camp.

  He saw that the river forked, so
he stopped to look for high ground, a place where they could make camp. But Daes came up beside him and said, “Take the left fork. We’re nearly there. It’s only a short walk now.”

  He hunched his shoulders against the weight of his pack, heard his bones creak under the straps. He reminded himself that his sister carried a heavier load than he did. Then he began to walk again, head lowered against the wind.

  Gheli pressed the milk from her breast, felt the relief from its aching fullness. The thin stream spurted out toward the fire. Each day she told herself that she must return to the village and reclaim her baby, but then in her mind she would see the child Ghaden, think of him as a man, grown and powerful, standing over her. But worse than that, she could see Cen beside him, screaming his fury when he realized that he had protected the woman who had killed Daes, that one he still called to from his dreams.

  It was dark when she heard the voices. She retreated to her tent, but kept her head near the entrance, even stopped breathing to listen. Daes and at least one man. Cen? Her heart thudded in hope, and thoughts crowded her mind—reasons she would give to explain why she had stayed at the fish camp, had allowed Daes to take Duckling back to the village without her.

  Her worry suddenly turned into anger. She hadn’t allowed Daes to make that trip without her. Daes had taken the baby without permission, had left although Gheli had told her to stay.

  As the voices came closer, Gheli realized that she was not hearing Cen. No, it was someone else, not even a voice that she recognized. She pulled the few weapons she had from their places against the tent wall, grabbed a handful of dried fish, and crept away in the darkness. What if Daes had brought Ghaden?

  Gheli slipped into the thick brush of alder that stood behind the lean-to and waited there, still and quiet, until she saw Daes come into the clearing. The girl lifted her voice and called, looked behind at her companion and said something that Gheli could not hear. The young man strode into the camp, and as his face was lighted by her fire, Gheli’s heart lurched against her ribs. Not Ghaden, Cries-loud! Her eyes suddenly burned with tears. He looked much like Sok, tall with a hawk-beak nose. But his face was square like hers, and he also had her eyes. Her son. Her son!