Call Down the Stars

by Sue Harrison

  “My story begins a few years before Daughter’s story, and of course, it begins with K’os,” Yikaas said. He spoke in a storyteller’s voice, pitched deep to reach everyone in the lodge. “The evil in K’os had been there so long that it had rotted its way into her spirit,” he said. “Like the otter meat in Daughter’s boat, it had melded into her flesh.”

  A hiss of appreciation rose from the River People, and Yikaas smiled. He paused, and Qumalix spoke, translating his words into her people’s language. The First Men nodded their interest, murmured their approval, and so the story continued, First Men and River words twisting around one another, twining like the weaver strands of a fine grass basket.

  The River People’s Village, Near Iliamna Lake, Alaska Early Spring, 6452 B.C.

  K’OS’S STORY

  K’os stood in front of the elders’ council, held her trembling so tightly within her heart that she could smile in spite of her anger.

  “She has been a good slave for you?” Chakliux asked Gull Beak.

  Gull Beak shrugged. “She taught me much about plants, but …” The old woman paused.

  It seemed to K’os that through the years Gull Beak had come to look even more like a bird, with her small close-set eyes and a nose that hung nearly to her chin. Her back had narrowed and sprouted a hump, and her arms and legs, always too large for her body, seemed grotesquely so.

  “But?” Chakliux asked.

  “But it is sometimes frightening when a slave knows more than you do.”

  He gestured toward K’os’s hands. They were misshapen, the knuckles swollen, fingers bent like claws. “Is she still able to sew?” he asked.

  “Yes. She makes beautiful parkas.”

  K’os locked her eyes onto Chakliux’s face. Sometime during this discussion he would look at her. She conjured tears to soften her gaze.

  “I’m not a man who condones slavery,” Chakliux said. “I think it is better for us that we own no slaves.”

  There was a murmur of protest from two of the elders: Gull Beak herself and the stuttering Sun Caller.

  Wolf Head stood. He was tall; the thick thatch of his black and gray hair nearly brushed the domed caribou hide roof. “You would set her free?” he asked. “You can’t trust her. Remember what she did to that young man whom I once called son? She bewitched him into taking her as wife, then made him steal everything from my cache. Now he is dead, as she should be.”

  K’os opened her mouth to protest. Was it her fault that men wanted her? Who could have guessed that the boy would steal a bride price from his father? Who could have guessed that someone would kill him so soon after he became her husband?

  “I know as much about this woman as anyone,” Chakliux said, “the evil she has done. My own wife was her slave, but there is one thing I cannot forget. Without her, I would be dead, sent to the spirit world as a baby because of my foot. I owe her a life.”

  “Chakliux,” K’os murmured, extended her hands in supplication, blinked so the tears she had been holding in her eyes would fall. “What mother could love a son more than I love you?”

  “Don’t listen to her, brother,” the man named Sok called out. “She has nothing in her heart but hatred.”

  Sok and Chakliux were full brothers by blood, but they did not look alike. Sok’s face was wide-boned, thick-featured, while Chakliux’s was narrow, refined. Sok’s dark eyes slanted down at the outside corners and Chakliux’s slanted up. Only now and again in the tilt of the head, in a full-throated laugh, could K’os see much likeness between them. For a moment, her thoughts went to that day when she had killed their father. With satisfaction she remembered the knife entering his heart, the surprise in his eyes. But that death was not nearly enough to pay for what he and his friends had done to her, what they had taken from her.

  He had been a large man, and Sok was even larger, larger by far than Chakliux, wide of shoulder and as strong as any man K’os had ever known. But Chakliux was strong also, and his strength was that of the spirit, something that K’os in all her years of raising him had not been able to break. She had killed his first wife and their baby, had rejoiced when she heard of the death of his second wife. Now he had the Sea Hunter woman Aqamdax. Together they had made a son—a fine, healthy boy—and though K’os spoke curses against all three of them each day, some greater power seemed to protect them.

  “You do not really know me, Sok,” K’os said. “You have heard from others that I am evil, but I am not. As Chakliux said, I saved his life. His mother—your mother—didn’t want him. He would have died on the Grandfather Rock where she left him as an infant if I had not decided to take him as my own son.

  “It seems you will not listen to your own brother. Listen then to those people in this village who have benefited from my medicines. Would an evil woman heal people who keep her as slave?”

  “Be quiet,” Chakliux told her, and there was no softness in his voice.

  She tried to force tears again, but anger had dried her eyes, and she had to clench her teeth to keep curses from spilling out in words she might regret.

  “My wife and I do not want to live in the same village as K’os,” Sok said.

  A murmur spun through the circle of elders.

  Sok had more power than he deserved, K’os thought. Now that he and Chakliux had decided to return to this village, Sok was considered the people’s chief hunter, though many of the Near River men coveted that honor. The Near River People had endured too many starving winters after the fighting. Though they had been the victors over the Cousin River People, many of their young men had died, and there were not enough hunters to feed everyone.

  As a slave, K’os dreaded the deep cold of midwinter. She had fish to fill her belly, but fish is never enough to keep the cold from eating a woman’s bones. Each night K’os could hardly sleep with the shivering that racked her body, and if dreams finally came, they were filled with the taste of caribou meat, dripping fat.

  When Sok and Chakliux and the Cousin River men had visited the Near River village at the end of the winter just passed, they seemed to bring luck with them. It was the starving time of the year, yet the hunters took caribou and bear and even a moose. Then the people allowed their bellies to think for them, and they asked Chakliux and his people to live in their village. They began to call Sok their chief hunter, to honor him even above their own men.

  Who wanted to live among a people so foolish that they could not think beyond a full cache and a boiling bag of meat?

  “Set me free, and I will go,” she said to the elders. “You will not see me again.”

  Sok shook his head, and Chakliux raised a hand toward K’os in warning. “I told you to be quiet,” he said.

  Then Gull Beak cleared her throat and said, “I’m an old woman, a widow without a husband. How can I survive without my slave to help me fish and gather wood?”

  For a long time Sok and Chakliux whispered together, and though K’os could hear some of Sok’s words, she could make no sense of them. He seemed to be talking about his wife. What foolishness! As if he must consider a young woman during a council of the elders.

  Finally Sok raised his head, nodded at Gull Beak. “Many people have told me that you are a hard worker. They say there is no laziness in you. As you know, my wife is young, and I have three sons, one nearly grown and ready to take a wife of his own, but the other two …” He stopped and smiled. “Who, in passing my lodge, does not hear Carries Much complaining about the work he has to do? Who does not hear our baby crying most of the day? Would you consider being my second wife?”

  The shock of the question shone in Gull Beak’s eyes but did not still her tongue. “Could I keep my lodge?” she asked.

  “If you are willing to sew for me,” Sok said, and looked down at the parka he was wearing. The caribou skins were well-scraped and soft, but there was no beauty in the seamwork. “My wife has many gifts, but she has something yet to learn about sewing.”

  Gull Beak smiled, the smile of
a woman suddenly worth something, and bile rose into K’os’s throat, nearly choked her. Who in this whole village was better with needle and awl than she? Even Gull Beak’s fine parkas could not begin to compare with what K’os could make, and everyone knew that.

  As though Chakliux could hear the bitter thoughts in her mind, he stared at her until she lowered her eyes.

  “Then there is no reason to wait,” he said. “The sooner we get this settled, the sooner we can leave the winter village for our fish camps.”

  When the Cousin River People had agreed to come and live in the Near River village, they claimed and repaired empty lodges or lived with Near River families until they could make their own. They came with laden travois, with caribou fat and moose meat, dried fish and birds bagged whole in grease. Even their dogs were fat, and their children’s faces were bright and round. The Near Rivers welcomed them into their warm, well-made lodges, and once again village caches were full.

  But come spring, the people had decided to keep to their own traditions, to return to their own fish camps, though K’os had heard the council of elders encourage the men to visit one another, so friendships forged during winter would not die.

  K’os shook her head at the marvel Chakliux had wrought in bringing the two villages together. Where did he get his power, her son Chakliux? Not from his worthless father, or the sniveling woman who had given him birth, not even from the man who raised him, K’os’s dead husband, Ground Beater. Ground Beater had valued peace, but he had been a coward. Perhaps Chakliux had taken his power from K’os, his courage also, and the need for peace from Ground Beater. Why not? Most children hold some part of each parent in their faces—the eyes of a mother, the smile of a father—why not also a portion of the spirits of those who have raised them?

  Chakliux left his place in the elders’ circle and pulled aside the doorflap, but Sok followed him, whispered something into his ear. K’os hid her right hand within her left and signed curses against Sok’s tongue.

  Chakliux clasped Sok’s arm as though in reassurance, and called out from the lodge. The young man, Cries-loud, came inside. If it had been some other boy, K’os might have hoped that they had decided to give her a husband, but Cries-loud was Sok’s son.

  “My son and his friends will take you to the Walrus Hunters’ village and trade you as slave,” Sok said to her.

  “The Walrus?” K’os said stupidly, and stuttered on the name as though Sun Caller’s broken voice had invaded her throat.

  “If they do not want you,” he said, “they can give you to the Sea Hunters.”

  The contents of K’os’s stomach rose into her throat. She had heard stories about those Sea Hunters, how women and slaves spent days, months, tucked inside hide-covered boats to travel to their villages. How could she bear to stay within the close sealskin walls of a Sea Hunter’s boat, tossed by waves, ever fearful of sea animals? What would happen to her spirit if she drowned? Would she live forever in the sea, never find her way back to the River People?

  Fear brought anger, but then a soft voice came to her, a reminder of stories she had heard years before. Something had happened with the Walrus Hunters. Sok had stolen … no, killed … What was it? Then, suddenly pushing down from the smokehole, wind filled the lodge, brought with it the gift of remembrance. Again K’os heard Aqamdax’s story voice. It came to her from the past, a day when Aqamdax had spun tales at some celebration.

  She had told the people that she, Sok, and Chakliux had stopped at the Walrus Hunters’ village, and while they were there, the Walrus’s great shaman Yehl had died. The people had blamed Sok, Aqamdax as well, but Chakliux had worked his magic to bring them safely home to the River Village.

  If the Walrus discovered that Cries-loud was Sok’s son … Laughter bubbled into K’os’s throat. Ah, but why let Sok know about the fine weapon she would take with her on this trading trip? She lowered her head, made herself shudder, then spat out careful insults, hatred bound by cunning.

  Yaa sat outside in the lee of Aqamdax’s lodge and tried to keep her mind on the sinew thread she was making, but with each twist of her hand, her belly also knotted until she could do nothing but stare at the elders’ lodge, sit and wait for Cries-loud to come out. She knew what Chakliux had planned. During the night, she had heard his whispers as he spoke to Aqamdax. Usually she did not listen to their night conversations, those quiet words that often led to the joyous tossing and twisting of the two under their robes, for Aqamdax seldom slept on the women’s side of the lodge.

  Yaa’s brother Ghaden, now with eleven summers, also slept on the men’s side with his old dog, Biter. Yaa and Angax were left to sleep on the women’s side, but Yaa did not mind that. Angax was a good boy with Aqamdax’s round face, Chakliux’s eyes, nose, and mouth. They had given him the name that had belonged to Aqamdax’s first baby—the son that had been fathered and drowned by Night Man. He had five summers and was full of words, talking Yaa to sleep nearly every night. But the night before the elders’ meeting, Angax had fallen asleep quickly. Then Yaa had heard Chakliux speaking to Aqamdax. There had been no teasing in his voice, and though Yaa had turned away from them on her bedding mats, pulled her robe up over her ears, some small part of her still listened. When she heard Cries-loud’s name, she had shamelessly pushed her sleeping robe away so she could hear what Chakliux said.

  She and Cries-loud were promised to one another, and by the end of the late fall caribou hunts, they had had enough hides for a lodge cover. Each day during that long winter, when her other work was completed, Yaa scraped and cleaned those hides. During the coming summer, when she wasn’t cleaning and slicing fish, she would stitch the hides together into a lodge cover so that when she and Cries-loud returned from fish camp, they could live together as husband and wife.

  Cries-loud wanted to give a bride gift for her, though in the Cousin River village, before the Cousin People came to live with the Near Rivers, the custom of bride prices and bride gifts had largely disappeared. With the village destroyed, nearly every lodge burned, with more women left than men, what father would demand a bride price? It was enough to find a hunter willing to take another wife to feed.

  In the village they were already considered husband and wife, for sometimes Cries-loud stayed the night in Aqamdax’s lodge, slept in Yaa’s bed, though they did not do much sleeping. But they had not yet given a feast to celebrate. It would be foolish to do such a thing in the spring. Why consume all that was left in the caches during one day and night of eating? Better to portion it out carefully so the men had the strength they needed to hunt.

  It was enough that when she and Cries-loud were together, he could not keep from touching her, always lifting a hand to brush at her hair, to cup her chin, to squeeze a breast. More than once they had endured the taunting of a group of children who caught them holding one another, or the tittering of an old woman who came upon them in one of the nearby willow brakes.

  But Chakliux had decided that Cries-loud should be one of the young men to take K’os to the Walrus Hunters, to trade her there for whatever they could get.

  Yaa lay in her bed that night, wishing for Cries-loud’s arms around her, for his assurances that no matter what Chakliux wanted, he would stay in the village. Who could trust K’os? Even as a slave she could do damage. They had been with the Near Rivers only a few moons, and already Cries-loud’s old aunt Ligige’ seemed much weaker, and Twisted Stalk, that old woman sharp of tongue, had died, though she had seemed to be healthy and strong in spite of her age.

  Yaa could not help but wonder if K’os, with her plant poisons or her curses, had caused that death. Apparently others felt the same way for the elders had decided K’os must leave. But why did Cries-loud have to be one of those who took her?

  In the morning before the elders met, Yaa found Chakliux with his dogs. He had the best dogs in the village. Most were golden-eyed—those wise dogs long coveted by River men—and most could claim the brave dog Snow Hawk, dead now two summers, as moth
er or grandmother.

  “Brother,” she said quietly, and Chakliux, crouching beside one of the dogs, had startled.

  “I didn’t know you had left the lodge,” he said, looking up at her.

  She tossed her head, an insolence not of words. Her parka hood was pushed back to her ears, and the wind caught a strand of her hair, pulled it loose. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Here?” Chakliux asked, and stood to face her, brushing at a blaze of mud a dog’s foot had left on his caribou hide pants.

  “Here is good,” she said. “I know you have to go to the elders’ council.” His eyes were a clear brown, and when Yaa looked at him, she always felt as if she could see into the goodness of his soul. “The council is about K’os, nae’?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “mostly that.”

  “They will kill her?”

  “I owe her my life, you know that,” Chakliux said. “She was mother to me when no one else would be, but I think we are all agreed that she can no longer live in this village.”

  “So you will sell her?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Where?”

  “Not to any River People.”

  “The Walrus,” Yaa said, and, lowering her head, admitted, “I heard you talking to Aqamdax last night.”

  She glanced at him to see what he would say, but the kindness had not left his eyes.

  “Don’t let Cries-loud go,” she said. “K’os will try to do something to him to get back at you and Sok.”

  “Cries-loud is stronger than you think, Yaa,” he said. “You cannot be a good wife to him if you also try to be his mother. Let him make the decision. I will not force him to go.”

  He told her to feed the dogs and left her standing there. Later, she took a chunk of caribou sinew outside and squatted in the lee of the lodge to twist the sinew into thread. When Cries-loud was called to the elders, she was there watching.

  The wait seemed forever, but finally the doorflap of the elders’ lodge was flung open and Cries-loud came outside. Yaa stood, and the movement caught his eye. He motioned, and she hurried to him.