by Sue Harrison
Cen pulled her down beside him. “The boy is fine,” he told her, then looked over at the child as though making sure what he said was true. “He will be a good trader, someday, but before then I will make you my wife. When your old husband dies, I will claim you,” he said, “and someday I will take you back to visit your people.”
“Yes,” Daes whispered. “Yes.” Of course she would be his wife. She would be anyone’s wife if it meant she could get back to the First Men and to Aqamdax. Once she returned to her own village, she would never leave it. Until then she would be whatever Cen wanted her to be.
For a time, Fox Barking spoke of Sok’s greediness, his selfishness, but then the man suddenly seemed to change his mind. He praised Sok’s hunting skills, his dogs and his two young sons. He said Tsaani should pass on his wisdom and his place even before his death; he should give Sok all his bear hunting songs. Who could say, perhaps if Sok was chief bear hunter, then Wolf-and-Raven would beg him to take his daughter.
Though Tsaani lay with his back turned, at first he grunted a few answers. What else could you do with a man who did not understand rudeness? Finally Tsaani was silent, even though Fox Barking began to speak about the village dogs and the curse that had been brought to them all by Chakliux. When Fox Barking still did not stop talking, Tsaani drew his breath in through his nose and made snoring noises. Then he heard Fox Barking get up and leave, but not before he rummaged through Blueberry’s food bags.
At least the man did not leave hungry, Tsaani thought, and tucked his laughter into his cheek as he drifted into dreams.
When their lovemaking was finished, Cen wiped himself on the furs of his sleeping place, adjusted his breechcloth and slipped on his leggings and parka. He watched Daes as she dressed, his eyes dark, soft. She could not look at him. Once, she had believed he could fill the emptiness of her first husband’s loss. She had been foolish, but her pain had been so great she would have done almost anything to escape it. She had given herself to Cen, breaking the taboos of her mourning. In punishment, she had conceived.
She had known she could not stay with her people, so she had left the village. How else could she protect her daughter from spirits angered by what she had done?
Too late, she had discovered the hardships of a trader’s life. How could she stay with him, chance the storms, travel the rivers and tundra, all the while caring for a child? She had asked him to take her to a village where she could deliver their baby, had pleaded that he find her a husband, a hunter, who would care for her.
In sorrow, he did so, and left her, but came back each year, sometimes twice a year. She had told him it was best for their son. Finally this summer, Ghaden was strong enough to make the journey to the First Men Village. This year, Daes would not let Cen leave without her. She laid her hands against his back, stroked his wolf fur parka.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I will be glad to become your wife. Then we will return to my village. I will see my daughter again. You can build a lodge there, and when you are not trading, you will have a warm place to stay, and a wife waiting for you.”
He turned and looked into her eyes. “Tell your husband he must die soon,” Cen said.
“He will not live through another winter,” Daes told him, and felt a sudden sadness, knowing her words were true. “But I will go when you say. If you want me to come now, I will come.”
Cen narrowed his eyes, tipped his head and stared at the caribou hide walls. “From here,” he said, “I go upriver to the Rock Hill Village and beyond. By the time the ice breaks, I will be back. Be ready to go with me then.”
“Go away,” Tsaani called, and in his need for sleep did not regret his rudeness. “I have had enough people in this lodge. Go away, and do not come back until morning.”
Tsaani turned his head toward the doorflap, but the lodge was so dark he could not see. Even the hearth fire, where the edges of old coals should glow red, was dark.
You did not bank the coals, old man, he told himself. But he was sure he remembered doing it—pushing ash over the embers to slow their burning through the night—right after Wolf-and-Raven left. Maybe you dreamed it, he thought.
Blueberry would have to borrow fire from her mother’s lodge in the morning. Ah, well, it would do little harm, since her mother would know it was Tsaani and not Blueberry who let the fire go out.
He looked one last time toward the hearth, then saw an edge of light, and another, then darkness blocked the light again. Tsaani’s heart thudded, moving from the slow pace of sleep to the quickness of fear. There was some spirit in the lodge, something between him and the hearth.
The bear, Tsaani thought. The bear. Had Tsaani showed disrespect? Had he forgotten some song of praise? Had he eaten meat without gratefulness? No. He had done all things in honor. He had cut off paws and head; he had sliced the bear skin in strips so it would be used by animals and birds for food and bedding, and not wasted. All this was done in respect, following the ways of Tsaani’s grandfathers and their grandfathers.
Then he saw that the bear had the head of a person. It had hands and feet, and the dark fur was only a parka.
Tsaani’s heart slowed in relief, and he sagged back against his bedding furs, but then anger came to him and he said, “Why are you here? Why do you come to an old man in the middle of the night? You may not need sleep, but I do!”
The one who stood over him did not speak, and when in the black shadows Tsaani finally saw the knife, it was too late.
Daes crouched outside the entrance tunnel of Brown Water’s lodge. It was the middle of the night. She should not be outside in clothes she wore only on best occasions. Brown Water hated her. She was always telling their husband he should throw her away.
I should have asked for my own lodge, Daes thought. Happy Mouth and her little daughter, Yaa, would have come with me. Let Brown Water do all the work to keep her own lodge.
But it was not an easy thing for a woman to build a lodge when her husband no longer hunted. Where would she get the caribou skins, especially when Brown Water claimed anything of worth that came to their husband? Besides, why do the extra work? In a moon, maybe two, she would leave the River People’s village and return to the First Men.
Daes bent her head to listen. She could hear her husband’s snores, but there was no noise coming from the women’s side of the lodge, and Brown Water usually snored louder than anyone. Brown Water was waiting for her to return. She would accuse Daes of being with Cen. What defense could Daes offer? The best thing to do was wait for Brown Water to fall asleep, then crawl into their husband’s sleeping robes. Daes would claim she had come back early—that Brown Water had been asleep—and if she awoke later to wait for Daes, she was foolish, because Daes had been in their husband’s bed most of the night.
But if Daes was going to wait for Brown Water’s snores, she needed to set Ghaden down. He was heavy, and her arm was numb from his weight. She looked at her son, but in the darkness could not see his eyes. She ran her fingertips lightly against his lids. He blinked. She pressed a finger to his lips and whispered for him to be quiet, then said that she needed him to stand, just for a little while.
As she bent to set him down, she saw something move in the darkness. Someone was walking past the lodge. A spirit. What else could it be? Even the River People knew spirits moved between lodges during the night.
She squirmed back into the entrance tunnel, but Ghaden slipped from her grasp and ran out into the night—into the path of whatever spirit was walking. Daes almost decided to stay hidden, to hope that the spirit, seeing an innocent child, would pass without harming him, but then she felt the aching loss of Aqamdax and realized it would be the same for her if she lost her son. She crawled from the lodge tunnel and stood up.
The stars were close, as they always were on nights the spirits walked. In their light she saw Ghaden, then drew in her breath as she realized he had clasped the spirit around the legs.
“The boy is mine,” she said in a small voic
e, and fought to keep her words from trembling. Daes reached toward Ghaden, and it seemed that the motion of her arms pulled her body, as though she did not walk but floated over the packed ice path. She grabbed her son and picked him up. She kept her eyes turned down, away from the spirit’s face. In the starlight she saw the spirit’s furred boots, caribou hoof rattlers tied at the ankles.
Then Ghaden placed something long and hard against her chest. It was a knife, and she pulled it from his hands. It smelled of blood.
“Ghaden,” she said, “where …” She lifted her head and saw that the one standing before her was no spirit.
“You killed something?” Daes asked. “You need help?” But as she asked she wondered, Who hunts at night? Only animals. So perhaps this is an owl or wolf, and my eyes deceive me into believing it is someone from this village.
“If you need help,” Daes said quickly, “I and my sister-wife Happy Mouth will come.”
The hunter reached out and took the knife from her hand. Daes gave it easily, as though it were nothing more than a feather lying across her palm. She turned toward Brown Water’s lodge, but though her feet had floated easily when she walked away from it, now she seemed to sink with each step.
First her feet went through the ice, then into the soil. The earth was cold and pressed hard against her flesh as it drew her in. It pulled the heat from her body like marrow sucked from a bone.
Then she felt the knife. There was no pain, only the force of the blade plunging. It pushed her farther and farther into the ground until only her eyes and the top of her head remained above the earth. Then she saw that Ghaden, too, was being sucked in, his feet already buried, his legs pale in the starlight so that he seemed like a birch tree growing. But then the knife came for him. He crumpled to the ground, and the blood that welled from his wound ran into Daes’s eyes, until she could see nothing more.
Chapter Four
CHAKLIUX’S BREATH WAS A cloud in the cold air. The dark spruce that grew around the village were rimed with frost, but the early morning sky was clear. By midday, the sun would turn the ice paths into mud.
More than once Chakliux had fallen into the black muck of those paths, but though his clubbed foot affected his balance, he limped only when he was tired or when he ran. This morning, he carried a large sael, the birchbark container full of dried fish for his grandfather’s dogs.
Chakliux enjoyed visiting Tsaani. With only a few comments or a simple story, the old man could send Chakliux’s mind on a journey that lasted the whole day.
As he walked past Day Woman’s lodge, Chakliux lowered his head and hoped he would not see her. She carried her heart in her eyes, and he could not look at her without feeling himself drawn back into being her child, the baby she had left to die. Each day that he spent in this village seemed to pull away more of his power. He wished he could return to his own people and learn to be himself again, but he needed to stay at the Near River Village. Both Tsaani and Wolf-and-Raven had begun to trust him, to know that he worked for peace.
The raucous calls of camp jays came to him, breaking the silence of late winter. For a moment he lifted his eyes toward the birds, and so did not see the bundle of fur until he tripped over it. He dropped the sael but caught himself with his fingertips. As he stood, he realized the fur was not some blanket carelessly left outside a lodge, but a young woman. He recognized her—Daes of the Sea Hunters—and knew also that she was dead, her eyes open and staring, her cheeks white with frost. She lay on her stomach with her head turned back, as though trying to look over her shoulder at whatever had caused her death.
A curse, Chakliux thought, and closed his eyes in the sudden knowledge that the Near River People would blame him as they blamed him for the dogs. Even his brother, Sok, though Sok treated Chakliux with respect, could not hide his growing worry as dog after dog died.
Chakliux knelt beside the woman, then saw the blood on her back, the wounds. This was no curse. Since when did curses use knives?
So what should he do? Call the shaman? Tell Sok? Each village had it own ways. What did the Near River People do?
Tell the husband, Chakliux thought. The men here had louder voices than in his own village. They expected to know things first and to make most decisions.
Chakliux stood and, in doing so, heard a quiet moan. First he thought it was from Daes, perhaps from her spirit, but when he crouched down, he saw that her little son lay under her. He could not remember the boy’s name. The groan came again, and though Chakliux did not want to touch the dead woman for fear of cursing his hunting skills, he pushed her body aside and drew out the child.
In dying the mother must have pulled him under her, Chakliux thought, and in that way kept him from freezing. But the boy was cold, his skin white, his eyelashes and brows frosted. The child cried out, and Chakliux saw the knife in the boy’s back, the handle dark with blood.
No, not a curse, Chakliux thought. Something worse.
The girl Yaa was the first in the lodge to hear Ghaden’s cry. The sound came from outside. Why was her brother out there? Yaa wondered, her thoughts still mixed with her dreams. She looked over at her mother, but Happy Mouth was asleep, and Brown Water, even if she was awake, would never bother herself over Ghaden. Ghaden’s mother, Daes, was not in her bed. She must be outside with him, Yaa thought, but she wrapped herself in one of her sleeping robes and got up.
She bent to stir the hearth coals, then heard the cry again. It sounded as though Ghaden was hurt. She went to her mother, shook her awake. She opened her mouth to explain, but another call came—a man’s voice, asking for help.
Happy Mouth nearly knocked her daughter over scrambling from her bed, and though she motioned for Yaa to stay back, Yaa followed her out the entrance tunnel.
“Ghaden!” Yaa cried when she saw the boy in Chakliux’s arms. She grabbed her mother’s hand. “Mother, he is hurt,” she said, and pulled her toward Chakliux, but Yaa stopped when she saw Daes, white and frozen on the ground. Yaa had seen dead people before. She recognized the stiffness and pallor of death. Her stomach rose to her throat and she began retching, dry heaves that seemed to turn her belly inside out.
“Get Brown Water,” her mother said to her, hissing the words. “Do not wake your father.”
Yaa cupped her hands over her mouth and, sucking in through her fingers, filled her lungs with air until her belly stopped heaving, then she scooted inside. Both Brown Water and her father were awake.
“Mother,” Yaa addressed Brown Water in politeness, “your sister-wife needs you.”
Brown Water wrapped herself in a robe and said, “You were foolish. I told you to stay inside.”
At first Yaa thought Brown Water was speaking to her, but then she realized the woman had tilted her head and was looking around the lodge as though she spoke to someone up by the smoke hole.
“You think we did not know you were going to the trader?” Brown Water said.
Yaa looked up toward the top of the lodge. Had Brown Water seen Daes’s spirit floating somewhere up there?
“What has happened?” asked Yaa’s father, Summer Face, his voice raspy with age and sleep.
Yaa went over to his bed, a place she was not supposed to be, but this was different. No one had to tell her that Daes was his favorite wife, and of all his children, even those grown and living in other lodges, Ghaden was also his favorite, but that did not bother Yaa. She was her mother’s favorite. Ghaden’s mother, Daes, though she fed Ghaden and sewed his clothing, did not want to hold him or spend time singing to him or telling stories. It was good their father loved him best.
Yaa knelt beside the old man. He raised himself up on one elbow and looked toward the door. “What has happened?” he asked again. “Where is everyone?”
“They are outside,” Yaa said, “but I am here with you. I will not leave you. Do not worry.”
Summer Face squinted and peered around the lodge. The bedding where Happy Mouth and Brown Water had slept was crumpled, but Daes’s
sleeping furs had not been unrolled. “Daes, my wife,” the old man whispered, and he raised his voice to ask, “Where is Daes, daughter?”
“Outside with my mother,” Yaa answered and held her breath. Her heart pounded in her chest as loud as a drum. “Would you like water or food?” she asked, speaking over its loudness. “I can get you something.”
“Yes,” her father said, and relaxed back into his sleeping furs. “Water. Daes will bring me food later.”
Yaa left her father and stood on her toes to reach for one of the caribou bladder water bags hanging from the lodge poles. She hoped her father’s eyes were dim enough that he could not see her hands shake. She carried the water to him and waited as he raised himself to drink from the carved wooden mouthpiece. When he had finished, he lay back and closed his eyes.
Yaa wondered what she should do next. It was strange, she thought, how in some ways her father reminded her of Ghaden—not so much Ghaden now, but Ghaden as a baby, the care he required and how often he slept. Thoughts of Ghaden brought a sting to her eyes, and she turned away. Her father did not need to see her cry, but how could she hold in her tears? Her brother was hurt, and Daes was dead.
There had been blood, so much blood … and Ghaden had looked so little and white. The Cousin River man had him. Some of the other children said the Cousin River man was cursed. Perhaps he had killed Daes and hurt Ghaden. But no, probably not. Why would he call for help if he had been the one to hurt them?
She pressed her eyes with her fingertips and tried to push the tears back under her lids. How would Ghaden feel when he found out his mother was dead? He might decide to die himself.
Yaa remembered the times she had taken the best pieces of meat before Ghaden, with his slower baby hands, could reach them. She remembered yelling at him when she was playing with her cousins. She had not always been the best sister, but she would be. From now on, she would be….
