The Storyteller Trilogy

by Sue Harrison

  The sea had taken much from the man, and Ghaden in his foolishness had only made Cen’s life worse, and not only Cen’s but perhaps the lives of all the River People. K’os had many reasons for revenge.

  With Uutuk as his wife, Ghaden would never be rid of K’os, and what River village would welcome them? He would have to live with his wife’s people, at least until K’os died, and she was a woman who never seemed to grow old, as though the evil within kept the years from marking her.

  As the days of travel passed, Chakliux’s anger at Ghaden grew, so that at the end of an afternoon walking, his otter foot aching, he could scarcely keep sharp words from flying out of his mouth, though Cen did nothing to offend.

  Finally, on the last day, Chakliux began to fill his head with stories, thinking most often about Cen’s tale of survival, humming the story under his breath as he walked, giving the sea its due, but also praising Cen for his ingenuity as he fought for his life.

  The story seemed to pull away Chakliux’s anger. When he and Cen stopped that night to rest and eat, Chakliux could smile without fear that bitter words would slip out in foolish whining.

  “If we get an early start, we’ll be in the Four Rivers village by mid-morning,” Cen said. He folded a bit of caribou hide into a square and softened it on the edge of his sleeve knife, then pressed it against his right eye. “It’s worse in bright sun,” he told Chakliux.

  “My wife makes an eyewash of the mouse ears plant,” Chakliux said softly. “Perhaps some woman in the Four Rivers village will have some.”

  Cen pulled the pad away from his right eye, switched it to his left. Neither man said K’os’s name, but Chakliux knew they were both thinking about her, a woman who knew medicine, but could not be trusted.

  “There’s an old grandmother named Two-heeled Fish,” Cen said. “She knows something about plant medicine. Even if she doesn’t have any mouse ears, perhaps she can tell us where it grows.”

  Chakliux was building a fire, and he grunted his agreement. When the kindling caught and the flames began to lick at the larger branches, he pulled dried meat from his pack, set a basket of fat and dried berries between them. He ate enough to pull away some of his tiredness, then cut spruce boughs to make a lean-to shelter and a mat for them to sleep on, then gathered firewood for the night.

  They slept, Chakliux waking now and again to keep the fire burning, and in the morning they ate again, then started out. Chakliux thought ahead to what he would say to Ghaden, but Ghaden was no longer a child who could be scolded for foolish decisions, or for holding the truth away from his family. So when Chakliux reconsidered his words, they seemed futile.

  Could he change what Ghaden had done? And even if he could, would it be for the best, now that K’os was already among them? Perhaps Ghaden should stay with his wife and her family just to be sure that K’os did as little harm as possible. The best thing might simply be to remind Ghaden what kind of woman K’os was. Did Ghaden know that K’os had killed Chakliux’s first wife and baby? Most likely not. And if not, then Ghaden’s decision to marry K’os’s daughter was partly Chakliux’s fault. But what man wants to speak of things so painful or bring that remembrance into the happiness of his new family?

  Cen was leading the way, but when the trail widened, Chakliux took several hurried steps to walk beside him.

  Cen gave him a tight smile and said, “We’re nearly there.”

  For a time Chakliux didn’t say anything, but finally he asked, “How much did you tell Ghaden about K’os? You once lived in her lodge, nae’? Was she your wife?”

  Cen sighed. “In my heart, at that time, she was my wife,” he said, “but I didn’t pay a brideprice for her, and one day I found her with another hunter. Then I knew that she would never be content as one man’s wife.”

  “Did you tell Ghaden?”

  Cen shrugged. “I think I did. At least I warned him about her when we were at the Traders’ Beach and I saw that he was interested in Uutuk.”

  “Did you ever tell him how K’os helped start the fighting between the Near River and Cousin River villages?”

  “No, but he lived through those times. He should remember. He knew Aqamdax was her slave. He saw how she was treated.”

  “But he was a boy. Who knows what children understand?”

  Then Cen lifted his arm toward the sky, and Chakliux saw gray plumes of smoke above the trees.

  A sound came to Chakliux’s ears, a thin keening. “Listen,” he said to Cen.

  Cen cocked his head, and with a bitter look said, “I hear nothing.”

  “Most likely it’s only dogs,” Chakliux told him, leaning close and speaking loudly enough for Cen to hear. “They’re wailing as if they’re about to be fed.”

  The path widened, and the trees thinned, all their lower branches taken by women for their hearthfires. The keening grew louder, as did Chakliux’s discomfort. Not dogs, no. Not dogs. The ululations came from each lodge, and he needed no one to tell him that they were mourning cries. Finally even Cen heard it.

  He looked at Chakliux, shook his head. “Those aren’t dogs,” he said, and he broke into a run, holding his side as if the jolting gave him pain.

  Chakliux followed as quickly as he could, limping, hindered by his otter foot. Cen did not stop until he came to a large lodge at the river side of the village. He threw back the outer doorflap and made his way inside. Chakliux followed.

  K’os was hunkered at the back of the lodge next to a body covered in caribou hide and tied in a fetal position.

  “Why are you here?” Cen demanded. “Where is my wife?” He thrust a finger toward the body. “Who is that?” he asked, and his voice was terrible. “Where are my daughters?”

  Chakliux easily recognized his mother, though she had cut huge jagged hanks from her hair and scratched her cheeks until blood oozed. She looked old, and that surprised him. Her hair was graying, and her face was lined, her neck roped with slack flesh. She opened her mouth, and he saw that she had lost a few teeth. Strangely, her face was still beautiful, the bones defined, the eyes large and clear.

  She stared at Cen, then let out a long hollow wail and crossed her arms over her chest.

  Finally she screamed, “You are dead!”

  “Where are my children? Where is my son?” Cen demanded.

  Chakliux realized that they would get no answers until he could reassure K’os that Cen was not a spirit who had come for revenge.

  “Cen is not dead,” Chakliux said.

  K’os looked at him, first in surprise, and then he saw the hatred slide into her eyes.

  “You!” she said.

  “He’s not dead,” Chakliux repeated. “Who is this one that you mourn?”

  She tore her eyes away from Cen and glanced at the bound corpse. “My husband Seal,” she told him, lifting her chin. But then her eyes were again on Cen. “How did you live?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you later. Where is my wife? Where is Ghaden? Where are my daughters?”

  K’os pushed the hair back from her face and stood. “You see that we all mourn here,” she said. “Some illness has come to this village as a curse. The people say that we have brought it, but if we brought it, then why is my own husband dead?”

  Chakliux felt a draught of air at the back of his neck, and he turned to see that the woman Uutuk had entered the lodge. She sidled past him, her eyes on her mother, her hands full of bulging water bladders. But when she saw Cen, she dropped to her knees, her mouth open.

  Chakliux thought she would begin to wail, but she only stared, and finally she told Cen, “My husband needs to know that you’re alive.”

  “Where is he?” Cen asked.

  “He went to find your wife and your daughter Daes.”

  Cen let out his breath. “They’re alive?”

  “I think so,” she answered, “but who can say with this whole village dying? Gheli and Daes were still at their fish camp, and Ghaden went to find them. Your other daughter, the baby, is with Long
Wolf’s wife. They are well. I just came from their lodge.”

  “The baby’s not with Gheli?” he asked. “Why?”

  “Daes brought her back to the village. I don’t know why.”

  “You gave Long Wolf’s wife my medicine for protection?” K’os asked.

  Her words chilled Chakliux, but before he could say anything, Cen strode over to K’os and grabbed her, one hand grasping her shoulder, the other twisted into her hair. “You will stay away from that lodge,” he told her. “If you do not, you will be dead.”

  He released her so quickly that she stumbled and fell to her knees. Uutuk hurried to her, and Cen, his lips curled in anger, held a fist in Uutuk’s face and said, “I have nothing against you except your mother, but what I said to her, I say to you. Leave my baby daughter alone. I don’t want you in Long Wolf’s lodge.”

  Cen strode toward the entrance tunnel, paused only to tell Chakliux, “Watch them!”

  Chakliux unstrapped the pack from his back and let it fall to the floor mats. His foot ached, and he needed to rest.

  “Your water is safe, Uutuk?” he asked in a gentle voice.

  “It’s safe,” she told him.

  He held out a hand, and she gave him a bladder, but then she clasped his wrist, pulled out the stopper, and drank.

  “It’s safe,” she said again.

  He drank, and she busied herself with women’s tasks, hanging the bladders and adding wood to the fire, a handful of dried meat to the cooking bag. K’os fixed her eyes on Chakliux and raised her voice in a mourning cry.

  Chakliux ignored her and instead said to Uutuk, “Has she told you that I am more than brother by marriage to you?”

  Uutuk frowned and turned away from the cooking bag, wiped her hands on her leggings, then squatted beside him.

  “Did K’os give birth to you?” Chakliux asked.

  “Ghaden didn’t tell you? I wanted him to tell you. I’m not …” She stopped and seemed to search for words. “Before I was First Men, I was from another place and another people. My grandfather and I came in a boat to escape the Bear-god warriors. The sea brought us to the First Men, and there K’os became my mother.”

  Chakliux considered her words. He was Dzuuggi, storyteller, and knew all the wisdom of his people. He had never heard of the Bear-god warriors, and surely if they existed he would have known about them. He knew stories about the fierce warriors who had come long ago, killing the First Men. Perhaps they were Bear-god and the First Men gave them a name different from Uutuk’s people.

  “Who are your people?” he asked.

  “We are the Boat People,” she said in the First Men language, and then said something in another tongue, a strange language that Chakliux had never heard. That more than anything convinced him that she was telling the truth.

  “Like you, I was found,” he said to her.

  K’os had stopped her mourning cries and crept a little closer.

  “He lies, Uutuk,” she said. “I should know.”

  “Yes, you should know,” Chakliux said to her. “Since you are my mother.”

  Uutuk gasped, then began to cough, as though the knowledge were choking her.

  “Ghaden said nothing about that to me,” she said.

  “Don’t blame Ghaden,” K’os told her. “My life began over with the First Men, and I no longer call this man my son. He has betrayed me many times. He even sent me away as a slave from his village. I’ve told you that story.”

  Uutuk covered her mouth with both hands. “You are the one?” she asked.

  “See why I didn’t tell you?” K’os said. “It was better that you thought of Chakliux as brother, for although he treated me poorly, he has been kind in most ways to Ghaden.”

  K’os’s words were like strong arms squeezing his chest, and Chakliux drew a deep breath in order to break their hold. “You told her also how you treated my wife, Gguzaakk?”

  K’os’s eyes narrowed, and she spat out, “Don’t believe him, Uutuk. He lies.”

  “Let her make her own choice about that,” Chakliux said, then he told her how Gguzaakk and his son died of poison.

  When Cen returned to the lodge, Uutuk was weeping, and K’os was hovering over her dead husband, her back to her daughter.

  Cen began speaking even before he was through the inner doorflap. “Friend,” he said to Chakliux, “I need you to stay and watch over my little daughter. The woman who nurses her is pregnant, and her milk is getting thin. But Duckling is old enough to eat soft food, broths and such. Will you be sure her food is safe?” He lifted his chin to point at K’os. “This one has somehow poisoned most of the people in the village.”

  “I did nothing to these people!” K’os said, her voice full of weeping. “Do you think I would kill my own husband?”

  But Chakliux said to Uutuk, “She uses poison well. Be careful.”

  Uutuk began to tremble, and she clasped her arms across her chest as though she were cold.

  “Many people think she killed all her husbands,” Chakliux said. “I know what she did to my first wife and our little son. Don’t trust her.”

  Then he looked at Cen, the man pacing from one side of the lodge to the other. “You can’t go now,” Chakliux told him. “Rest and eat first.”

  Uutuk stood and scooped a ladle into the boiling bag, held it to K’os’s lips until she ate. Then Uutuk filled bowls for both men.

  Chapter Forty-six

  CEN’S STORY

  CEN LEFT THE NEXT morning. The day of rest at his own lodge, though marred by K’os’s presence, had seemed to renew his strength, and he walked quickly, following the path that one of the women in the village pointed out. There were two handfuls dead and another two handfuls sick, three or four near death, others who looked as though they might recover. Each death was a wound in his heart. He had lived in this village for many years, and though he was related to none of the people by blood, save his baby daughter, they had become his family. If K’os had wanted revenge on him, she had chosen wisely.

  By the third day walking, Cen was once again exhausted. His nights were torn by dreams of the sea; his days were filled with anger against K’os and Ghaden and even Ghaden’s new wife, Uutuk.

  He had no warning that he was coming upon the fish camp, no smoke from a fire, no smell of drying fish, no sound of dogs. He simply walked out of the scrub that grew on either side of the trail into a clearing that had a lean-to of spruce boughs and the old ashes of a dead fire. At first he thought the camp was abandoned, and he wondered why he had not met Gheli and Daes and Ghaden on the trail. Of course, people often made fish camps close to one another. Perhaps Gheli’s was beyond this, but then he heard a distant bark, and suddenly a strong hand flung a pack from the lean-to, and Ghaden crawled out.

  “Ghaden!” Cen shouted.

  The anger that had been building in Cen’s mind made him forget that Ghaden still believed he was dead.

  The young man jumped quickly to his feet, began to back away, chanting as he clasped an amulet that hung at his waist.

  “I’m not dead,” Cen said, and sighed with the frustration of having to prove again that he had not been taken by the sea.

  “I’m not,” he said. “Look.” He thrust the point of a knife into the fleshy pad at the palm of his hand, squeezed until blood dripped to the ground. “The sea did not take me, though it has stolen some of my hearing and dimmed my sight.”

  Ghaden approached slowly. Cen held out his hand, and Ghaden reached forward, caught a drop of blood with his fingers. Then suddenly he was crying in huge, hard gasps, and he grabbed Cen, pressed him to his chest, pounded his hands against Cen’s back until Cen broke away laughing, his anger suddenly gone.

  “We have to catch Gheli,” Ghaden said, then stopped, shut his mouth as though he wished he had said nothing at all.

  “She’s all right?” Cen asked.

  “Yes.”

  He studied his son’s face, frowned at what he saw there. “Daes?” he asked with a catch in
his voice.

  “They’re both fine. They’re together with Cries-loud. You remember him? He’s from Chakliux’s village, son of Sok …”

  “I remember,” Cen said. “Why is he with them? Where are they going? Why haven’t they returned to the village?”

  Ghaden tipped his head to look up at the sky. Finally he said, “There are things you need to know.”

  “I can’t hear you unless you speak to my face,” said Cen.

  Ghaden grimaced. “I’m sorry for what the sea did to you.”

  Cen shrugged. “It didn’t take my life. Tell me again what you said.”

  “I said, ‘Are you hungry? Let’s sit down and eat. There’re things I need to tell you.’”

  The Four Rivers Village

  UUTUK’S STORY

  “She didn’t kill him, I know,” Two-heeled Fish said to Uutuk.

  Two-heeled Fish was so ancient that she scarcely had the strength to sit up. Her granddaughter knelt behind her, so Two-heeled Fish could lean back against the granddaughter’s legs. The old woman raised a bony finger and pointed it at Uutuk’s face, a rudeness that made the granddaughter reach forward, lay a hand on her wrist, and pull the arm down.

  “Most of these people in this winter village are so young that they were only children when she lived among us. My granddaughter says that Cen has returned. He knows K’os. He hates her. He was the one who made K’os leave.” Her voice was scratchy, and she spoke barely above a whisper. She turned her head to look at her granddaughter. “I told them last winter to let me die. But this one has a soft heart and a husband who is a good hunter.” She raised a hand to stroke the young woman’s face.

  “Do you remember when K’os lived with us?” she asked her granddaughter.

  “I remember,” she said. “Many people remember, and some want her to leave again, but others say she did no harm to anyone. They were only frightened because her husband died so horribly, and they are frightened again because of the sickness in this village. We’re fortunate that my sons and husband have already left on a caribou hunt. I spend much of my time with my grandmother, so I don’t eat out of the village hearths. The ones who ate from the hearth cooking bags are the ones who got sick.”