by Sue Harrison
“Yes. I am hungry.” He pointed with his lips at Qung and the basket. “You do not want to see what I brought?”
Tut repeated the question, and with laughter lifting the corners of her mouth, translated Aqamdax’s reply. “She says that Qung is not greedy. She will give Aqamdax a fair share.”
Aqamdax filled a bowl from a boiling bag that hung over an oil lamp and handed it to Sok. He squatted on his haunches and ate. Most women would have found something to do—sewing, or weaving grass—but Aqamdax squatted beside him and watched him. It made him uncomfortable. He kept his eyes straight ahead, and when he finished the bowl, he handed it to her.
There was no politeness in the woman. She did not offer him more to eat or wait for him to speak first, but turned and said something to Tut.
Again Tut laughed. “She says that she is not a fool. She sees by your gifts that you knew she did not have a husband. So she asks, since you did not come to see her husband, why are you here?”
He matched her rudeness with his own and answered, “I am still hungry.”
Tut told Aqamdax, and Sok waited for a scowl or angry words, but she did not seem insulted. She simply stood and filled his bowl, then handed it back to him. Again she watched him eat; again he ignored her.
Finally, as he finished the food, she spoke. Tut left Qung’s side, not bothering to stand, waddling like a puffin, her legs bent beneath her.
“Aqamdax says her mother lives with the River People,” Tut told Sok.
Before Sok could say anything, the old woman Qung called out in a strong voice.
“Qung says that you did not answer Aqamdax’s question,” Tut said. “She wants to know why are you here. Why do you bring these gifts?”
“I enjoyed your stories,” Sok answered.
“So that is worth a belly of oil, perhaps a seal skin,” Qung continued, pausing now and again so Tut could translate. “You give too much. It is not expected in this village. We will take one thing, and you can have the rest to trade.”
A rude people, these First Men, Sok thought, then wondered if it was more rude to say what you thought or to hide true intent under a cloak of words or a basket of gifts.
“I have come to ask Aqamdax to return with me to the Walrus Village and become a wife,” he said.
Tut translated, and both Qung and Aqamdax stood with mouths open. Sok waited for one of them to speak, but they said nothing.
Finally he said, “I know it is not an easy decision. I will leave you now and come back tomorrow.”
Without waiting for Tut to translate, Sok stood, thanked them for the food and left the ulax.
“What did he say?” Aqamdax asked. “He will come tomorrow for your decision,” Tut told her. Aqamdax looked at Qung with worried eyes. “You would give up being storyteller to become a trader’s wife?” Qung asked her.
Aqamdax could not answer.
Chapter Twenty-four
AQAMDAX WADED INTO THE bay, first up to her knees and then beyond. The water rose to cover the sparse dark hair that protected her woman’s cleft, then past her belly and up to her small round breasts. For a moment a wave caught her up off her feet and a swell of fear made her draw in her breath, but then the water set her down again. She had never been in so deep and, like most First Men, could not swim. Usually, each morning, she went to the river, to the shallow pool it had carved out where it emptied itself into the bay. There she and the other women would stand, knee-deep, facing the new sun, splashing their bodies with water to cleanse and strengthen themselves.
Today she went to the bay, like hunters did, to the challenge of deeper water and the harsh, bone-aching cold. She had chosen the bay water to harden herself so she would be ready for what she must do next, not only to harden her flesh, but also her soul. Otherwise, how could she hope to survive? Surely her spirit would abandon her and come back to this place she loved, to the rocks and grasses and beaches that were her home.
“So you asked her?”
Sok nodded.
Chakliux watched as Sok cracked the knuckles of his left hand, then his right. “And?”
“And she will give me an answer today.”
“You think she will come with us?”
“There is a chance. They say she is barren. Though her storytelling powers are great, she is unable to give a husband a child.”
“Perhaps she is content being only storyteller.”
“What woman does not want to be a wife? Even a storyteller cannot expect the village hunters to provide as much food as a husband and sons.”
“Perhaps that is true,” Chakliux answered, “but sometimes a gift is in itself enough, worth more than meat or oil.”
“I have told her I would give many gifts,” Sok answered.
Chakliux looked away, did not try to explain to his brother what he had meant.
They were sitting at the iqyax racks, their backs to the wind, hoods up to protect their ears from the cold.
“Do not hope too much, brother,” Chakliux said.
The wind cut suddenly around the racks, sending a spray of sand into their faces. Chakliux closed his eyes and tightened his hood. Tut had told him that the wind was stronger here than where the Walrus Hunters lived, and traders claimed it was stronger still farther to the west. Chakliux blinked the sand out of his eyes, then noticed that something moved out on the water.
An otter, he thought, and pushed back his hood to see better. The dark otter head rose from the water, lifted and became not otter but woman, hair as black and shining as obsidian, molded like a garment over the woman’s shoulders and breasts.
He heard Sok gasp beside him, then felt his brother’s hand hard on his arm. “Turn your head, brother,” Sok said.
And Chakliux knew his words were not because the woman was naked. The First Men took less care about hiding their bodies from one another than the River People did. It was because the woman was completing some sacred washing, a tradition among the First Men, as Tut had once explained.
Still, the woman’s grace held him, and suddenly he knew she was the storyteller Aqamdax. She lifted her hands toward the sky, then lowered herself again into the water, where again she seemed to become otter. Sok was right; this was something sacred. He turned his head, closed his eyes.
Qung did not look up when Aqamdax entered the ulax. The old woman was weaving one of her grass baskets. It was small, no larger than her fist, not much use for gathering or storage, a basket for the eyes, as Qung would call it.
“Sit here,” she said without looking up from her work.
Aqamdax sat down beside her.
“Watch,” Qung said.
Aqamdax focused her eyes on Qung’s deft fingers. The body of the basket rested in her left hand, and she held thin strands of split grass in place between her left forefinger and middle finger as her right hand twisted weft strands over warp. Usually after Qung told her to watch, both women sat in silence, but this time Qung began to speak, her fingers working in rhythm to her words.
“Making a basket is little different from weaving a story,” she began. “The strands of grass are like words. Each has its own place; each has strength to add to the whole. I choose the grass carefully—strong inner blades, dried slowly—just as I choose my words.” She dipped her fingers into a small wooden bowl of water. “I keep it wet, so it will remember how it grew strong under the rain, and thus remain strong as I weave, just as stories remain strong, and grow stronger with each remembering.”
Again she was silent, and Aqamdax bent her head to watch Qung’s fingers. She wove a long time, then she stopped, inverted her basket over a carved wood form, the same size and shape as the basket itself. She sorted through the split strands of grass at her side, selected two, crossed them at their centers, looped them over each other, twining them together. Now they were weft strands, weavers. She added a warp strand between them, twined the weavers over it, continued to add warp grass. She looked up at Aqamdax.
“You have decided to go with th
e traders, have you not?”
Aqamdax twisted her fingers together in her lap. “My mother lives among the River People. Perhaps I will find her.” She did not mention what Mouth and the other women had said.
Qung pulled herself into a ball, tucking her arms around her upraised knees, lowering her head so Aqamdax could not see her face. Finally she spoke, her words almost a whisper. “If you marry a trader, perhaps you will come back.”
“Perhaps each year,” Aqamdax said.
Qung lifted her head. “You will not forget the stories?”
“I will never forget the stories.”
Again silence. Qung fingered the basket she had just begun, then suddenly thrust it at Aqamdax. “You have much to learn. Watch me, and follow my hands.” She took up her own basket and began to weave. Aqamdax, her fingers sticky with nervousness, watched, tried to imitate. It was difficult. The grass was so thin, the circle of warp and weft so frail under her hands. She wove, and Qung set her own basket down to watch, shook her head, ripped out Aqamdax’s work, told her to start again.
All afternoon, they wove, and still Aqamdax had no more done than when she had begun. Finally, Qung checked her work and nodded her head, allowed Aqamdax to continue, then showed her how to add more warp strands. Aqamdax wove, though her neck and shoulders ached, her eyes burned.
“Enough,” Qung finally said. “Put it away. Your River man will come soon.”
Aqamdax set aside the small circle of weaving she had completed. She combed out her hair, oiled her skin until it shone, changed her woven grass aprons for those she saved for celebrations, woven in bright colored bands and hanging to her knees, one from the front of her belt, the other from the back.
When she came out into the ulax, Qung looked at her, squinted her eyes and said, “They named you well. Aqamdax—cloudberry. The cloudberry holds its single berry on a stem high above the plant. That way, it sees all things, but it is also the first to die in the frosts of winter. Just like the cloudberry, you lift your head too high, always trying to see too much of the world around you. You should be more cautious like the crowberry, nestled safe in its heather branches.”
Aqamdax had hoped for Qung’s compliments, or even some suggestion about dealing with the River trader. After hearing Qung’s words, she nearly fell back into the practiced retorts she had used with He Sings’s wives, but she closed her lips tightly over the harsh words and instead replied, “But, Aunt, what tastes sweeter than the cloudberry after the first frost?”
Qung did not answer.
He came with the old woman Tut, not a woman Qung was anxious to have in her ulax. After all, she had chosen to leave the First Men for a Walrus Hunter, not even a good hunter, Qung had heard, but who can be sure that whispers tucked behind hands are ever true? She looked good. Old, but who did not grow old? Only those who died young.
She was a woman of voices, that Tutaqagiisix, with some magic in her tongue that allowed her to speak the languages of traders after only a few days of listening to them. Qung had always envied the trick. Once, as a young girl, she had even tried to trade some treasured bauble for the knowledge of how Tut did it. But Tut claimed not to know—as if such a claim could be true—and so in that way Qung also learned of the woman’s greed.
It was good that she had gone to the Walrus. When a person allows greed in one part of life, it soon spreads. No one needs a woman who takes more than her share in oil or food, in good luck or in bad.
Besides, if Tut had stayed, Qung might not have been chosen as storyteller. Then how would she have lived after her husband died? She owed much to Tut’s decision to leave this village, Qung reminded herself, and for that reason, she gave the woman a seat of honor near the oil lamp, beside the River trader who had come to take Aqamdax away from her.
Sok had asked Tut the ways of politeness followed by the First Men. Silence, Tut had told him. Quietness. At first Sok had smiled, sure she was making a joke. What man goes to a lodge and keeps his words in his mouth? Why else did people come together but to eat and talk? But Tut had repeated her claim, then said, “How better to show your respect for another person’s thoughts than by silence? Is it polite to cover those thoughts with your own ideas? What is polite about that?”
It was a strange way of thinking, but Sok could understand how a people might come to believe such a thing. There were times when he needed to leave his own lodge, if only to get away from Red Leaf’s many words, her need to fill all the space around him with her songs and chatter and constant touching.
So now as he took the place indicated by Qung, he followed Tut’s lead, waiting for her eyes to tell him when he should speak. At first the silence made him uncomfortable. It was louder in his ears than if someone had been screaming. Then he began to look around the ulax, at the stone lamps that burned oil, sending up a nearly smokeless flame so the air of the ulax was much clearer than that of River lodges. He studied the woven grass mats that hung from wooden frames around the large central room. Behind those mats Tut had told him, were separate places for sleeping. The ceiling was thatched with grass and grass mats held in place by strips of driftwood and willow branches. The floor was padded with grass. Where sleeping curtains did not block his view, Sok could see that a trench, a handlength in depth, had been dug into the floor near the earthen walls, and he wondered if there were times during the year, perhaps in spring, when snow melted, that the walls seeped water.
Now, in summer, the ulax seemed dry and warm, sturdy enough to stand against the high winds that often swept the beach.
Finally Qung spoke, uttering a few words. Tut replied but did not bother to translate. Tut had told him they would speak of the weather, of small happenings in the village, much as the River People did when anyone came to visit. Then they would eat, and when that was finished, Tut would broach the subject of a bride price.
Aqamdax sat quietly in a place that seemed filled with piles of dried grasses. Whatever her hands were making was so small, Sok could not really see it. Perhaps she was beginning one of the grass baskets the women of the village worked on, but this one seemed very small. Of course, he supposed that all baskets began small, not that he ever paid much attention to women and their basket making.
Aqamdax was a tall woman, taller than Red Leaf, but smaller boned, narrower, though most of the First Men seemed to be of stocky build. She wore her hair long and loose, tucked back over her ears. Her face was round, her eyes long.
Qung and Tut talked together for a long time. Finally Qung said something to Aqamdax. She raised her head, and Sok felt the heat of her eyes on his face. His body tightened with desire, but he reminded himself she was to be Yehl’s wife.
Aqamdax got up, filled a bowl with dark, sweet sea lion meat. She offered him the bowl, then also a seal bladder of water. Qung gave Tut food, then both First Men women filled bowls for themselves, sat and ate. In some villages, Tut had told him, the men ate first, the women later, but here the women often ate with their men and it was not taken as something impolite. Such a thing would not be done among the River People, especially during the starving moons of late winter when people’s lives depended on the strength of their hunters.
When they had all finished eating, Tut spoke to Qung, then said to Sok, “Now you must ask.”
For an instant he did not see the women sitting beside him, but instead the small face, the large eyes of Snow-in-her-hair. The words he had rehearsed came to him and he spoke of Yehl, the Walrus shaman, the strength of the man, the wisdom. He talked about the gifts that Aqamdax and Qung would receive, the honored place Aqamdax would have in the Walrus Hunter Village as storyteller, and as he spoke, Tut translated his words for Qung and Aqamdax.
Chakliux walked the edge of the beach. This night Sok would know whether or not the storyteller would come with them. Chakliux shook his head. Why should she? She had every reason to stay here, with her people, her family. Sok was foolish to think he could get her, but why complain about Sok’s foolishness? It had given Chakliu
x an opportunity to come to this First Men village, to study their iqyan, to watch their paddling and to think of ways he could make his own iqyax stronger and improve his skills. Two men had even taken him with them to hunt sea otters. They had lent him otter darts to use in his spearthrower, had let him make the first throw when they found a group of otters. They had come back with two, and generously given Chakliux the otter teeth.
They were a good people, these First Men, full of jokes and laughter, with rich, strong voices they lifted in song when they were in their iqyan. Chakliux had been told they were not quite human, but now that he had come to know them better, he thought those who said so were wrong. Perhaps other First Men, far to the west in the islands at the edge of the world, were not quite human, but these First Men were as human as he was. He looked down at his otter foot, then laughed at himself. How many thought he was not quite human? Even Blueberry. Even the children in the village where he grew up.
The sky was darkening for the short summer night. Chakliux turned and walked back toward the tent shelter he and Sok shared with the Walrus traders. He could see the light of their fire near the entrance. He wondered if Sok had come back from the storytellers’ ulax. Whatever had happened, they would soon leave this village and return to the Walrus Hunters.
He sighed. How strange. Though he did not know their language, had no wife or family here, he wanted to stay.
Aqamdax drew her brows together and frowned. She said something to Qung, and Qung spoke to Tut.
Sok leaned toward Tut. “Is she angry?” he asked.
Tut held one hand up toward him. Sok clenched his fists. For all that Tut was telling him, he might as well not even be here. Again he gestured toward the pile of trade goods he had brought as bride price. He had things he could yet offer, gifts he had held back in case Qung and Aqamdax needed more persuasion.
He started to stand. “I have more. In my tent,” he said.
Tut, still speaking to Qung, glanced at him. “Sit down and be still,” she said, as though he were a child.
