by Sue Harrison
“Your daughter needs a good husband, someone who might someday be chief hunter of this village,” said Sok.
Wolf-and-Raven slurped noisily from his bowl, then looked at Sok over the rim. “My wife also tells me that.”
“I will be a good husband to her.”
“She would be second wife.”
“I would honor her as though she were first wife.”
“We had this same conversation before your grandfather’s death. I told you then I would give Snow-in-her-hair only as first wife.”
“You know that since she would not take Chakliux, the hunters fear her. They think she might bring them bad luck.”
Wolf-and-Raven raised his eyebrows. “And you are not afraid of her, even though she refused your brother?”
“Why should I fear someone who refused my brother? You think he would curse me? We are hunting partners. He lives in my wife’s lodge.”
“That is true,” Wolf-and-Raven said. “That is true.”
“You know I have much I will give for her, more than just the First Men woman, as much as any daughter could bring.”
“Why do you think I would want the Sea Hunter woman?”
“You must hear her as she tells stories. She has powers you cannot believe. When words come from her mouth, they carry you to other places, other times. She is gifted, that one.”
For a long time Wolf-and-Raven sat without speaking. For a long time Sok waited. He had nearly decided to stand, to leave and tell Aqamdax they would not have the storytelling, but then Wolf-and-Raven spoke, slowly, quietly.
“Say nothing to your wife Red Leaf. I do not want my wife to know yet.”
The words put hope in Sok’s heart, and he leaned forward, gripping the food bowl so tightly the wood groaned within his hands.
“You say this Sea Hunter woman will tell stories tonight?” Wolf-and-Raven asked.
“Yes.”
“I will be there. I will listen. If she pleases me, we will make a trade. Tomorrow, you will give her to me as second wife, but my daughter stays with me during the caribou hunt. You can claim her when the hunt is over.”
No fool, this one, Sok thought. He would have two wives and a daughter to help him butcher his meat and prepare his hides. He would get little help from the First Men woman, but at least she would learn and be ready for the next year. Perhaps Blue Flower would be more willing to teach her than Red Leaf was.
“It is good,” Sok replied. He left the lodge quickly, before Wolf-and-Raven could change his mind.
Aqamdax scattered fresh grass and dried fireweed flowers over the floor. The River People covered their floors with caribou hides, but she used grass as she had been taught. What smelled better than grass and dried flowers? She had brought woven mats with her and hung them against the walls. The pattern of the weaving drew the eye away from the ashes of the hearth fire to the beauty of the lodge walls. The first time Red Leaf had seen Aqamdax’s lodge, she had covered her mouth with one hand, hiding surprise or laughter, Aqamdax did not know, but who could expect these River women to understand something that was beautiful when they made their baskets from fish skin?
There was a scratching at her door, and she bent to call through the entrance tunnel, welcoming the one outside, hoping it was Chakliux.
When she lived with the First Men in the chief hunter’s ulax, she had always been glad when men came to see her, glad to know she would not face the darkness of the night alone. With Chakliux, she felt a different kind of gladness. She wanted to look into his eyes when she told him a riddle. She wanted to hear his voice, deep and full from his chest, when he spoke to her. Even with Day Breaker, she had never felt that way.
She was not sure why Chakliux pleased her. He was not a large man, though his arms were strong. Perhaps it was the power of his otter foot. Perhaps it was the quickness of his mind. Often before she slept her thoughts turned to him, and just as often she told herself she should not think so much about her husband’s brother. But even in her dreams he came to her, and who could control dreams?
She smiled, but her smile changed to a mouth open in surprise when the one who entered her lodge was not Chakliux but one of the old women of the village, one of Chakliux’s aunts, though Aqamdax could not remember her name.
“W-welcome, Aunt,” she stammered.
The woman cocked her head at her as though considering the relationship Aqamdax so easily claimed. “Aunt to your husband, that is true,” she finally said.
There was a sharpness in her voice that drew Aqamdax’s anger, and the words came too quickly to Aqamdax’s tongue. “You are not sure you want to be aunt to someone who is not quite human. According to my people’s stories, we are brothers to the sea otter. Considering your nephew Chakliux, perhaps we are more closely related than you think.”
The old woman narrowed her eyes and opened her mouth, and at that moment Chakliux came into the lodge. Hii! Aqamdax thought, a good way to begin my first storytelling, insulting one of the elders, aunt to my husband. Why do I always speak before I think?
Then, to Aqamdax’s surprise, the old woman began to laugh. It was a deep, rolling laugh, something that might come from a young woman’s mouth, and Chakliux, watching, also began to laugh, until even Aqamdax found her lips curling into a smile.
The old woman sat down near the center of the lodge, near the fire, and Chakliux sat down beside her, his legs crossed. Aqamdax brought them bowls of fish soup and a bladder of water.
The aunt wiped her eyes on her sleeve and accepted the soup from Aqamdax’s hands.
“Red Leaf told you that you need not prepare food for the listeners?” Chakliux asked.
“Yes,” Aqamdax answered, grateful to find out that the woman had told her the truth. “But it is not yet time for stories, and you are family.” She looked into the old woman’s eyes, saw the slight raising of her eyebrows. A good sign.
“This wife of Sok’s,” the old woman said, turning to speak to Chakliux as if Aqamdax had left the lodge, “she has the wrong husband.”
Aqamdax’s hands were suddenly still. Did she know about Sok’s plans to trade her to Wolf-and-Raven?
Chakliux opened his mouth, then closed it again as though he could not decide what to say. Finally he looked at Aqamdax, holding her eyes as he spoke. “My brother has told me of his plans to trade her. Perhaps to Wolf-and-Raven.”
“Wolf-and-Raven could do worse,” the old woman said, “but you are the one who should have her.”
“Yes, I am,” Chakliux said, and did not move his eyes from Aqamdax’s face.
Sok wore his finest parka. Red Leaf had made it of wolf and marten, the lighter, longer-furred wolf skins worked diagonally and alternating with the smooth, dark brown marten pelts. At the center of the back, she had made the sun pattern from pieces of a yellow-white hide Sok had bought in trade. It was so thick and stiff, Red Leaf’s hands had cracked and bled in the sewing. She had decorated the parka sleeves with scraped caribou intestine, some frozen and dried into a pure whiteness, alternating with strips she had dyed red, and others dyed black. The front of the parka was hung with fish teeth, drilled and sewn to dangle in two long rows from his shoulders to his waist, and behind each fish tooth she had hung a dark, iridescent cormorant throat feather.
It was a parka that pulled the eyes, so when Sok entered the lodge everyone looked at him, watched him. He took the honored place at the back of the lodge, his words loud and joking. Aqamdax stood near the entrance, two bladders of water hanging from each of her wrists. She had decided to dress as she did when telling stories among her own people, her woven aprons tied at her waist, and, because the lodge was not warm—at least not as warm as Aqamdax was used to—she also wore her black cormorant feather sax. She had worn it with the feathers turned in toward her body during the long journey over the North Sea, so some of the feathers were broken, and she had had to resew several seams, but it still looked beautiful, as fine as anything she had seen a River woman wear. Sok lifted his chin
toward her, then gestured that she should take her place as storyteller. She had arranged a pad of sea otter skins at one side of the fire, so now she sat there, hardly aware that Red Leaf came to her, took the water bladders and hung them from her own wrists.
Suddenly Aqamdax could not remember any River words, could only recall the language of her own people. Her eyes widened in fear, and she glanced at Chakliux, who smiled at her. Yes, she should be his wife, Aqamdax thought. Then she would not be trying to tell stories before she was ready, trying to earn her way into the lodge of a man she did not want.
They were waiting, the men and women and children who had crowded into her small lodge; others peered in from the entrance tunnel. Perhaps if she began in the First Men tongue, she could more easily change to River words, but who could say? The River People might be insulted.
Finally Chakliux stood, his eyes firmly on Sok, as though telling him to be still, to wait. “I begin the stories in the tradition I learned as a child,” he said, and with his words, spoken so clearly in the River tongue, the language again came into Aqamdax’s mind. “First a riddle.”
There was a murmur from the people, of anticipation or of discontent, Aqamdax was not quite sure, but she could only feel gratitude.
“Look, I see something,” Chakliux said.
“What?” asked one of the children, a small boy of about three summers.
His question brought a rill of laughter from the people, and Chakliux laughed, too.
“They grow together in sacredness to help the people,” he said.
There were many guesses: trees and animals, fish and birds, until finally the old woman, the aunt, lifted her head and said, “What is more sacred to our people among growing things than the plants that give us berries? They live close to the earth, pull strength from the soil and give it to us through their fruit.”
“Ligige’, you are wise,” Wolf-and-Raven said, then asked, “Who can tell Chakliux the answer to his riddle?”
Ligige’, Aqamdax thought. She had to remember the woman’s name. Aqamdax could go to her with questions, and perhaps someday … but no. She could not let herself wish to become Chakliux’s wife. Not when she was promised to Wolf-and-Raven. Not when she still belonged to Sok.
“Crowberries and cloudberries grow together,” said Carries Much, one of Sok’s sons.
Aqamdax saw Sok lift his eyebrows and glance at Chakliux. Chakliux nodded his head at his nephew, and Sok crowed out his pleasure at his son’s answer.
“You are wise,” Chakliux said.
The people murmured their agreement, and Aqamdax realized her fear was gone. The storytelling would still be difficult, and she would make no claim to the place of storyteller. In this village, that place belonged to Chakliux. She was content to tell stories to the children, but tonight she would help Sok catch the wife he wanted. Perhaps in return, someday, he would help her find a way to become Chakliux’s wife.
Aqamdax settled herself on the otter fur pads, crouching on her haunches as her people did. “Among my people, I am a storyteller, trained by a storyteller,” she began, and she did not stumble over her words.
“Each of you knows the River stories better than I do, so I will not try to tell them to you. It is better that you tell them to me.” They nodded their heads, eyebrows raised. A good beginning. “So tonight my husband offers his hospitality in hopes that you might like to hear new stories from the people you call Sea Hunters. They have long been your trading partners, and sometimes we trade wives as well.”
She smiled and there was a wave of laughter.
“So first I tell you of the sea otters, our brothers, and how they came to be.” She spoke of that brother and sister, found to be lovers, and so dishonored among their people; how, still needing to belong to one another, they had jumped into the sea and were made the first otters. When she finished that story, she told another, of the great carver Shuganan, then she began the story of Chagak. Although the River words did not flow as easily from her mouth as her own language, she knew the people had begun to live her stories, to become the ones she spoke about. Sometimes she had to pause and search for a word, but if she could not remember what she needed to know, she would look at Chakliux. Each time, he formed his lips so she could see the word before he spoke, and it seemed as though she used her breath to give life to what he said.
When she came to the otter part of the story, she changed her voice as she had done among her own people, so that it seemed as though the otter rather than Aqamdax spoke.
She tightened her throat, brought the voice from the darkness that was now closing around the smoke hole. The first sound after the otter voice was the delighted crowing of the children. She had used her voices with them before, and they had learned to expect them. But with a rumbling like the grinding of the earth when it moves beneath a village, the hunters began to murmur, and she heard the women’s higher voices, calling out in small whimpers as if they, themselves, were suddenly children.
Then Wolf-and-Raven was on his feet, screaming at her, pointing with his walking stick, singing out words that seemed to be curses. She looked at Chakliux, but he had his back to her, his hands already clamped on Wolf-and-Raven’s arms. Then Sok was beside her, shouting to the people as they shoved their way from the lodge.
“There is nothing to fear here. She does not call spirits. It is her own voice. She makes these voices herself. She is a storyteller, that is all. Why are you afraid?”
But they did not stop, and finally only Sok and Chakliux, Ligige’ and Wolf-and-Raven were left with Aqamdax in the lodge.
“You expect to trade someone who has no respect for a shaman’s powers? You think I will take her in exchange for my daughter?” Wolf-and-Raven shouted at Sok. “The spirit voices are something only a shaman has the right to use.”
Sok stood with his mouth open. Aqamdax waited for him to speak, to explain to Wolf-and-Raven, and when he did not Aqamdax said, “I hold no disrespect. I am a storyteller. I made the voices myself. I can do it now if you want. Many voices. That is how the First Men tell stories.”
“I will hear no more of your stories,” he said, and left the lodge. Sok followed him.
Chapter Thirty-four
“BLUE NECKLACE THINKS SHE is a witch,” Yaa said, “but I don’t. She doesn’t call spirits. She just tells stories.”
Yaa brushed her hair from her eyes. She had snagged it in a root at the top of the den and pulled a hank loose from her braids. In the dim light, she could not see Ghaden’s face clearly, but she could hear him as he ate.
“She’s my sister,” he said, his words slurring over the fish in his mouth.
“Yes, and she’s a storyteller.”
“You’re my sister.”
“We’re both your sisters,” Yaa told him patiently. It was a litany they seemed to have to go through each day, the assurance that Aqamdax was his sister.
“You’re her sister, too?” he asked.
Yaa frowned. He’d never asked that question before. “No, well, maybe, since her mother and my mother were sister-wives.” Relationships between people were complicated. Sometimes cousins were also husband and wife. Then were their children sisters and brothers to each other or were they cousins? Best Fist said both, but sometimes Best Fist had strange ideas. There were many rules about the ones you could marry and those you were related to. Yaa was just learning them herself. They were too complicated for Ghaden to understand.
Since Yaa had been bringing Ghaden to the den, she had swept the floor and removed all the debris. She had even thought about leaving a blanket, but knew some animal would smell it and either take it or rip it up, maybe even decide to move in, although she had been urinating in the far corner to leave her scent, marking the place as her own.
“Wolf-and-Raven was mad at her, right, Yaa?”
“He was just cross. You know sometimes he gets cross. Like Brown Water.”
“Umph,” Ghaden said, and Yaa was not sure if it was a sound of agreement
or disagreement.
She took a bite of her fish and chewed it slowly, trying to make it last a long time. It was a trick she had learned one spring when she was Ghaden’s age. If she ate slowly, her mouth remembered the taste, then when food was scarce, she could close her eyes and pretend she was eating.
Now even Brown Water’s caches were full, packed with dried fish and fish roe, with small birds left whole and dried berries stored in oil. They had layered fish heads in pits and left them to ferment, and soon, if the hunters had good fortune, there would be caribou meat, smoked and dried.
“He’s mad at big man,” Ghaden said, interrupting Yaa’s thoughts.
“Who’s mad?”
“Wolf-and-Raven.”
“Oh.” She wished she had had the sense to take Ghaden home after the first few stories. Before Aqamdax had done the voices. It seemed as if he could not think about anything but what had happened. “I told you he was just cross,” she said.
“At big man, too?”
“Who’s big … oh, Sok.”
“Umph,” Ghaden said again. “Wolf-and-Raven was cross with Sok.”
“Sometimes that happens, but usually they’re friends.”
“Will my sister have to go back to her other village?”
Yaa tipped her head and looked up toward the darkest part of the den. She hadn’t thought of that before, that perhaps someone would make Aqamdax return to the Sea Hunters. She hoped not. It was good to have a grown-up person who was like a sister, not a mother. It was good to have another lodge to go to when Brown Water was angry.
