by Sue Harrison
When Yaa remembered that, she was grateful for Star and Long Eyes, for the warm lodge they shared with her and with Ghaden, especially on storm days like this one.
“Star,” Yaa said, seeing that Biter’s scratching was becoming more frantic, “I have to let Biter out.”
Star looked at Yaa with empty eyes, but Ghaden gripped Biter’s fur.
“He cannot go into the bowl like you,” Yaa told him. “If he goes inside maybe Star will get angry and tie him outside.”
She did not want to remind him that the Cousin River People often ate dogs, more than the Near River People did, especially dogs that did not have golden eyes. She saw the knowledge in Ghaden’s face. He released his hold, and Yaa whispered, “Go to Star. Climb into her lap. You might distract her enough for me to let Biter out.”
“He will come back?” Ghaden asked, looking up at the crust of snow that had formed over the smoke hole.
Yaa, too, looked up, told herself she would have to clear the snow away now, and also during the night, if the storm did not stop.
“Biter’s too smart to stay out in this storm,” Yaa told Ghaden, then waited as he climbed into Star’s lap and used his fingers like a comb to stroke Star’s hair. Yaa crept to the entrance tunnel, opened the flap for the dog, crawled after him to the outside doorflap, broke the snow away from the edges and let him out. She waited for a moment, then called him. She peeked outside, could see that he stood with his nose pointed up, as though to smell the wind, then he turned and followed her back inside.
“Stay away from the tunnel. Don’t go out,” Star said when Yaa returned. Ghaden was sitting in front of her and had her hair combed down over her face. Yaa found a shell comb from one of Star’s baskets and crouched beside him. She motioned with her head toward Biter, and Ghaden crawled over to the dog, wiped the snow from the dog’s fur.
Yaa pulled the comb through Star’s long, thick hair. “I’m right here,” she told Star. “Don’t worry. We won’t go outside.”
The men sat together in the hunters’ lodge. Those with wives grumbled of too much time spent listening to children whine and women complain.
Tikaani looked at his brother, Night Man. He seemed to be a little stronger, able to stand now and hobble across the lodge if he braced himself with a walking stick. Though his legs were not injured, the wound in his shoulder had not yet healed, and it had spread its poison through his body, leaving painful lumps at his groin, the backs of his knees and under both arms.
It was a poison that even K’os was not able to stop, and she blamed its power on the Near River People, told the men that they must destroy that village or the poison would spread from Night Man to every Cousin River hunter. In the autumn, with food and wood plentiful, it was something to think about, killing those Near Rivers. The warriors honed their skills with spears and spearthrowers, with knives, and also with the new sacred weapon K’os had won for them through her cunning.
But now there was more to think about than revenge. Now, the village food caches were nearly empty. With the poor salmon runs, they did not have enough food to get them through until spring, even though their caribou hunting had brought them more meat than usual. The hunters’ lodge was also nearly out of firewood, though he knew K’os had a large supply brought to her by the hardworking First Men woman he and Cen had captured from the Near River Village. She would not be slave for long, that one. Already the children looked forward to hearing her stories, and elders also made one excuse or another to listen.
Storytelling was a good diversion for children, but young hunters lost patience listening to old men. What good were their stories? Could they fill bellies or warm lodges?
Black Caribou was speaking, his tale long and rambling, but finally he finished, and before another old man could begin, Tikaani interrupted with a riddle.
Black Caribou narrowed his eyes, but Tikaani ignored him.
“Look! What do I see?” Tikaani said. He glanced at the old men who looked at him in surprise. Did they think it strange that a young warrior would speak? Hard times called for new ways. “Look! What do I see?” Tikaani said again. “There are no tracks under it.”
The old men did not look at him. Some moved their jaws as though they had to chew on his words, to tear them into pieces to understand the hidden meaning.
Finally Night Man spoke, drawing the old men’s eyes. “An empty food cache,” he said.
“An empty food cache,” Tikaani repeated, proud of his brother’s quick mind.
“I have food enough,” said Black Caribou.
“For you or for the whole village?” Tikaani asked. “Because if you have only food for yourself, then that is not enough.”
“For myself and my wife,” Black Caribou answered in a smaller, less boastful voice.
“It is because of the fish,” another of the elders said.
“The Near Rivers, their curse,” said one of the young men. “Chakliux, that one.”
Some agreed; others lifted voices to disagree, and though Tikaani might have welcomed the debate at another time, today there were more important things to talk about.
“How will we gain revenge if we die before summer?” he asked.
The men were silent.
Finally Black Caribou said, “Tikaani is right.”
“So then you will go out in this storm and hunt?” Night Man asked, and lifted his hand toward the top of the lodge, where the wind cried out against the warmth of their fire. “Even our wood supply is running low.”
“The women are lazy.”
Night Man shrugged. “They worry about their own lodges first. What else do you expect? They think about their children.”
“Who do they think feeds their children?”
“I will go out to hunt,” Tikaani said. “Once this storm ends.”
“You expect to find anything other than hares?”
“I have no problem eating hares.” He looked at Black Caribou’s soot-stained face, at the other hunters in the lodge. They were thin, but not yet starving, at the stage of hunger that brings irritation, not lethargy. Still it was a difficult time to get men to hunt. The women’s traps had taken all the small game close to the village, and the caribou had traveled south to their sheltered winter feeding grounds. What hunter wanted to spend days in the snow only to bring back women’s meat—hares, ptarmigan?
“So who will come with me?” Tikaani asked.
He waited but no one spoke.
Finally Night Man said, “I will go.”
Tikaani nearly refused the offer, but then saw the pride in his brother’s eyes. “Good,” he said. “Night Man and I will go.” He waited again, sure that Night Man’s offer would shame other hunters into joining them, but the men kept their heads lowered, eyes averted.
“There is nothing to hunt,” someone said. The words were whispered so Tikaani could not tell who spoke. What good was a man’s pride if it kept him from taking hares in a time of little food? And who could say? Even a man out looking for hares sometimes found a caribou.
“When the wind dies, when the snow stops, Night Man and I will go,” Tikaani said. “It is good for our women that there are two hunters in this village.”
The wood was heavy, and her hands were numb, so sometimes Aqamdax did not realize she had lost her grip on the branches until they fell at her feet. She dragged the tree top, and cradled the smaller broken branches in her left arm. At the edge of the woods, she stopped, looked out into the white of the storm. Without the trees to catch a portion of the wind and snow, she could see nothing but the next step. Even the prints of her snowshoes had been filled, as though she had never come to the woods, as though she had stayed warm and safe in K’os’s lodge.
The lodges of the Cousin River Village were spaced farther apart than those of the Near River People, and she was afraid she might have the poor fortune of walking between them, walking through the village and beyond. She wished she had counted her steps from the last lodge to the edge of the woods.
Ten tens, she thought. Surely no more than that. She tightened her grip on the branches, ducked her head against the wind and began counting. After each ten steps, she stopped, but every time saw only a curtain of white. The wind seemed to suck the air from her lungs, but she went on until she had counted ten steps ten times. There was nothing. Only white, snow, wind.
“You are not far enough,” she said, speaking the words aloud, thinking the sound of her voice would give her courage, but the wind took the words before they could come to her ears.
She did not realize she had sunk to her knees until she leaned forward and felt the snow against her face. She closed her eyes. Perhaps if she rested, only for a short time …
No. Had she forgotten the many River stories of people lost in storms who had slept themselves into death? She lifted one leg, planted her foot on the ground, dropped the wood to push herself up, hand on knee, then picked up the wood and continued to walk.
She concentrated on her feet, moved one then the other. Surely she was past the village by now. There were ways to build caves in the snow, to make a shelter. Chakliux had told her a story about a snow cave….
Her mind worked so slowly that her thoughts seemed as thin and foolish as dreams. They dig, they stop and dig and … But they have dogs in the stories. Don’t they have dogs? To help dig? No, perhaps not. Wolves? Bears? Fool, who would share a den with a bear?
Suddenly the wind and snow were dark, as solid as the earth. She hit hard against that blackness, then slid down, forcing splinters from the branches through her mitten and into the palm of her hand. Then she was in the snow, buried by it, the softness folding over her head like water, cutting away the wind but also taking her breath. She drew in a mouthful, felt it burn her lungs. She battled to her feet and realized that she had run into a lodge.
She began to laugh, high foolish laughter. Then there were people around her. She looked into the faces of Cousin Village hunters. Tikaani and Black Caribou, Runner and Speaks First. She had found the hunters’ lodge.
“You are not hurt?” Tikaani asked, bending over her.
Then Aqamdax’s thoughts were clear, as though she had not made the hard journey for wood, as though it was a day without winds or snow or deep, harsh cold.
She tilted her head toward the tree top she had dragged from the forest. “I thought of you,” she said to the men. “I know you must spend much time hunting. I thought I should bring you wood.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
“YOU KNOW STAR DOES not take care of Night Man, and my mother …” Tikaani lifted his hands. Why say anything more? His mother had lost too much, too quickly.
“Aqamdax is a slave. She has no lodge, nothing. Where will they live?” Black Caribou asked.
“With my mother and Star.”
“Who will hunt for them? Night Man barely has the strength to walk across the village. Is it not enough that you must bring meat for your mother and Star and those children Star decided she must have?”
“I feed Aqamdax already,” Tikaani said, and after a moment Black Caribou nodded, though he said nothing about K’os and the fact that Tikaani also supplied much of the meat that went to that woman’s lodge.
“Then if you think you can get her, do what is best. She is a hard worker. I still do not know how she managed to bring that wood to the hunters’ lodge. Do you know that she came back later to cut and stack it?”
“Night Man told me.”
Black Caribou narrowed his eyes as though he had just thought of something. “Does Night Man want a wife?” he asked.
“What man does not want a wife?” Tikaani replied. He did not mention the argument he and Night Man had had about K’os’s slave woman. When Night Man was strong enough to hunt again, then he could throw her away and take another woman, or if she had pleased him, keep her and take a second wife. Night Man had finally agreed, but was still worried that a Sea Hunter woman would change his luck.
A foolish thing to worry about! It would be a good thing if she did. Their family had had nothing but bad luck since Chakliux had convinced Cloud Finder to give the Near Rivers some of his golden-eyed dogs.
Tikaani and Black Caribou left the hunters’ lodge, walked together to Black Caribou’s lodge.
The storm had lasted for three days, but now the sky was the clear high blue that sometimes comes in mid-winter, a cold day when breathing curls the inside of the nose and makes the lungs ache.
“You will go to K’os now?” Black Caribou asked as he ducked into the entrance tunnel.
“Yes.”
Black Caribou shook his head, chuckled deep in his throat.
Tikaani said nothing, but he understood what the man meant. Asking K’os would be the most difficult part. More difficult because he had not visited her for many days. He was too busy, had too many people to hunt for, too many worries. Besides, he had filled her cache that fall, even before he filled his share of the hunters’ cache, before he gave meat to his mother and sister. Why should K’os complain when he had given her so much? But he wondered what it would cost him to win his brother a wife.
K’os threw the scrap of caribou hide at Aqamdax and screamed out her frustration. Her hands ached so badly she could not even grip the needle. Worse, her fingers had begun to turn in on themselves, and now she could not straighten them. They looked like claws, hooked and deformed. She had tried all the medicines she knew, but winter limited her. There were roots and leaves that were best used fresh, and she would not be able to find those until spring.
K’os had thought it would be a good winter. With her husband, Ground Beater, dead, she thought other hunters would be more likely to visit her, but those hunters had not come, not even Tikaani, though he had brought meat. The few men who did visit usually asked for Aqamdax. And if they pretended to want K’os, their eyes still strayed to the Sea Hunter woman. Were they fools? Aqamdax had no power to give them. She was only Sea Hunter, only a slave.
Someone scratched outside the lodge. K’os heard a hunter’s voice. Tikaani. She hid her hands under a hare fur robe, then invited him inside.
He stood before her, and she lowered her eyelids, met his eyes, then looked away quickly, an insult most women learned when they were still young. What else should he expect? He had not come to visit her for a moon of days or longer. She lifted her chin and looked at him, but did not get up to give him food or water, did not offer a place by the hearth fire.
She knew Aqamdax was watching her, saw the indecision in the woman’s eyes. Should she be the one to offer food? Should she fetch water?
“I have come to speak to you about something important, K’os,” Tikaani finally said.
K’os held a smile in her cheek, hid it well behind her teeth. She had forced him to speak first, to break silence rudely and thus give her the advantage of his disrespect.
She sat quietly for a time, enjoyed the discomfort she saw in Tikaani’s eyes, the confusion she felt coming from her slave as Aqamdax waited for K’os’s orders. Finally K’os nodded her head toward the caribou boiling bag where a thick soup of meat, broth and dried berries simmered.
K’os and Tikaani ate in silence, Aqamdax standing behind them. K’os knew the woman would jump at the snap of her fingers, bring water or more food, even hurry outside to fetch firewood. K’os had learned how to control her. Anger and blows did not work with this one, and it had taken a few days of frustration for K’os to finally understand what would, but since then, all things had been easy. Very easy.
“So what is it you want to tell me?” K’os finally said, making sure she asked the question just as Tikaani had lifted the bowl to his lips and filled his mouth.
Again, she held a smile behind her teeth as she watched Tikaani struggle to swallow quickly, then nearly choke on his meat.
“I have come to find my brother Night Man a wife.”
“You think I will marry a cripple, someone who cannot hunt, who cannot even fish in the summer with the old men?”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, K’os realized that Tikaani had not meant her but the slave Aqamdax. In horror she saw the corners of his mouth curl, saw his shoulders shake with silent laughter. When was the last time anyone had laughed at her? Not since she was a girl. Was Tikaani such a fool that he did not know her power? Had he forgotten the sacred weapon she had stolen from old Blue Jay? Had he forgotten the price she had been willing to pay for that?
“You have taught me too well, K’os,” Tikaani said to her. “There is not a man in this village who would dare ask you to be wife.” His words were as smooth as oil.
K’os narrowed her eyes, trying to see through those words, to discern other meanings under what he said.
“Not even you?” she asked him.
“What do I have to offer? I have a sister and mother, two children and a brother to hunt for. Perhaps I will also have to provide for my brother’s wife. How can I ask for a woman like you when I have so little to give?”
K’os pressed her lips together. It would be good to believe him. Perhaps she did believe him, but it would be best if he did not know it.
She crossed her arms over her chest, hid her hands under her sleeves and laughed. Then, still smiling, she said, “The woman has already gathered enough wood for me to last the winter, and I am tired of feeding her. What do you offer me in exchange?”
“What do you want?”
“What I truly want cannot happen until spring. I assume your brother wants the woman before that.”
“Yes.”
