by Sue Harrison
“My mother,” said Daughter, “she was supposed to be here. My grandfather is very sick.”
She saw the sudden concern in their faces, and the children closed around her, so that it was all she could do not to push them away. “My mother?” she asked again.
“She was here,” Seal said, “but she left a long time ago. She must be visiting.”
He told his two sons, boys of eight and ten summers, to go to all the ulas, to find K’os and send her home. Then Eye-Taker ordered one of the girls to bring a sax. They slid it over Daughter’s head, and not until she felt the weight of the garment on her shoulders did she realize how cold she was. She began to shiver, her teeth clattering so hard that she could not say anything without chopping up the words.
“I will go with you back to your ulax,” Eye-Taker said, and pushed Daughter toward the climbing log, hurried her outside. “My father was a shaman. I know chants that might help.”
Daughter nodded. She remembered the woman’s father. He had died shortly after she and the grandfather had come to the village. The shaman had worn three labrets, one at each corner of his mouth and a third below his bottom lip. The weight of that labret had made his whole lip hang forward so his teeth were always bared in a grimace that sometimes still came to Daughter in nightmares. He had been a man of loud voice and many words, and at his death it seemed that those words had moved from his tongue into Eye-Taker’s mouth. Always the woman was boasting about him, and when she spoke, she spoke as boldly as a man.
When they got back to the ulax, Water Gourd was moaning. His eyes were closed, and his breath bubbled from his mouth as though a river had suddenly decided to live in his lungs. The roll of pelts Daughter had left under his head had slipped to one side, and he was lying crooked in his bed. She knelt and again slid herself under the grandfather’s shoulders, raising him until he seemed to breathe more easily.
Eye-Taker began to chant, and her words hammered in Daughter’s ears. Daughter leaned forward and, in hopes that her need was strong enough to tie him to the earth, she whispered to the grandfather, told him how much she would miss him if he died.
Finally Eye-Taker’s sons clambered into the ulax, each shouting and yelling, telling the story of where they had found K’os.
Their words were difficult to hear over the chants, and Eye-Taker did not stop, but began to dance and hop until Daughter felt that the whole ulax was filled with foolishness, and that she alone was there to protect her grandfather. But finally, in spite of Eye-Taker’s loud voice, she understood what the boys were saying.
Her mother had been in bed with Chiton, a man whose wife had just given birth. Surely there was a curse in doing something like that. Daughter’s cheeks burned in shame, and she tried not to think of what the other girls in the village would say to her.
Anger clasped her throat like a hand and squeezed until she could not breathe, could not speak no matter how hard she tried. She leaned forward and lay her cheek against the grandfather’s forehead, allowed tears to drop from her eyes to his face.
Then K’os was in the ulax, and the boys were quiet. Even Eye-Taker stopped her chanting. K’os threw off her sax. Her medicine bag hung from her waist, and she pulled out a packet bound with blue string knotted twice. She used her teeth to untie it, and spilled its contents into the palm of her hand. She licked her fingertips, dipped them into the gray powder, and stuck her fingers into the grandfather’s mouth, into his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. She did this twice, and it seemed to Daughter that the grandfather’s breathing eased.
Daughter sucked large gulps of air into her mouth as though her lungs worked for both of them. The grandfather’s eyes opened, and Daughter again found her voice.
“Grandfather,” she said, “Mother has made medicine for you. Soon you will be well.”
Daughter smiled and glanced up at K’os. The woman had a strange look on her face, almost regret, nearly sorrow, and the fist returned to Daughter’s throat, again squeezed off her words. Eye-Taker pushed in to stand beside the grandfather. The woman nodded her head in a hard rhythm, as though her skull were a drum. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. A chant without words? What good was that? Then Eye-Taker gave voice to the words, and Daughter realized she was not making a chant for healing but sang in mourning, a death song.
“No!” Daughter said.
The word was like a knife, and it opened her throat, escaped as a scream that made Eye-Taker’s sons raise the flats of their hands to their ears.
“No-o-o-o! No, Grandfather! No! No! No!”
She leaned forward over his body, and when Eye-Taker and K’os tried to pull her away, she kicked and scratched until finally they allowed her to stay where she was.
“Leave her there for the night,” Eye-Taker told K’os. “Maybe tomorrow she will regain her reason and grieve as a granddaughter should.”
So all night Daughter stayed with the grandfather, guarded his body with prayers and chants.
In the morning, when she finally allowed the village women to come near, they saw with horror that she had cut off another toe, the smallest on her other foot, and that she had placed it in the old man’s hand. When they tried to pry it from his fingers, Daughter growled at them like an otter, stood with teeth bared until K’os asked them to leave the toe where it was.
“I knew a man who cut off a finger and offered it to the spirits in exchange for his son’s life,” K’os told the First Men women.
“The son was dying?” one of the women asked.
“Nearly dead.”
“And did he live?”
“He lived,” K’os said.
Then the women made no further protests, only whispered among themselves about the strange customs and foolishness of other people. K’os herself sewed up Daughter’s wound, and from that day said nothing about it, offered no comfort or admonition.
“After all, what do we know about these Boat People?” K’os asked Eye-Taker. “I shared an ulax with Taadzi, and still could not understand everything he did, but he was a wise man. A good grandfather to Uutuk.”
And though for several days after the death, people spoke of K’os’s visit to Chiton’s ulax, she was so faithful in mourning Water Gourd that the whispers soon died. And when Seal took K’os back to his own bed, all the village honored him for his selflessness. What other man would keep a woman who had dishonored him, was nearly old, and could give him no children?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula
602 B.C.
“THANK YOU,” YIKAAS SAID softly.
Qumalix smiled at him, and the wind took a strand of her hair, pulled it from the collar of her sax, and carried it to Yikaas’s cheek. Qumalix caught it with long fingers, tucked it back into her sax.
“It’s a good story,” she told him, “but I do not tell it as well as the one who taught me.”
“The old man who is with you?” he asked.
“No, he’s my grandfather. He was never a storyteller. Words do not come easily to him. Though he holds many stories in his mind, he has trouble telling them.” She laughed and tipped her head as though remembering.
“Who taught you then?”
“His father.”
Yikaas drew in his breath. “A man so old?” he asked.
“He’s dead now. Dead many years. So you see, I had to learn quickly and when I was very young. When he no longer had strength to do anything but lie still, I used to sit beside his bed, and he would tell me stories. Each word came from his mouth as slowly as a woman punches awl holes to make a seam.”
“A good way to learn patience,” he said.
She nodded, her eyes turned toward the sky, and he knew that she had left him for a moment to revisit those days of learning.
“I gathered his words like an old woman who picks up spilled beads, and his slowness gave me opportunity to consider the light and color and life in each.”
She plucked two blades of grass, let the wind tak
e them from her fingers. Yikaas felt the warmth of her body like comfort, and he knew she must be tired, but he did not want her to leave. He opened his mouth to say something, hoping words might bind her, but she spoke also, their voices tumbling together so that he did not know what she had said.
She laughed, and he could hear the embarrassment in her laughter. What had the grandmother told him? The Sea Hunters—the First Men—were a people who did not need to fill the air with words. When they spoke it was because something needed to be said.
“I’m sorry. What did you say?” he asked.
“Only that I have talked enough today. Now it’s your turn. I told you a story, so you must tell me one. Storytellers are traders, nae’? Journey for journey.”
Aaa, she would stay, but Yikaas warned himself to see nothing more in her request than a storyteller’s need to learn. Perhaps she felt as he did when he had told too many stories, and the sound of his own voice grew so wearisome that he could not tell whether his words were strong or weak. Those were the times to listen to others, to allow their tales to stir his own spirit and again give him delight in storytelling.
“Do you have something you’d like to hear?” he asked.
“I do not know many River stories. Tell me one that you like.”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Do you remember when you were talking about Daughter, how K’os mentioned a father who cut off a finger to save his son’s life?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to hear a story about that boy?”
“The son?”
“Yes. His name was Ghaden, and he grew to be a man who was known for his strength and wisdom.”
“I would like to hear about Ghaden,” she said.
She tucked her legs up into her sax and leaned against a hillock of grass. She pulled a strip of dried fish from her sleeve and handed it to him, then took one out for herself and said, “I’m ready. Tell me a story.”
Yikaas took a bite from the fish and, looking out at the star-filled sky, pictured his own village: the domed caribou hide winter lodges, the meat caches, the wide river that flowed nearby. Ghaden had lived in a village much like that. A little closer to the sea, the elders said, but Ghaden had lived so long ago that no one knew for sure.
In those days, animals could turn themselves into people, and the stories that Yikaas now told as Dzuuggi were being lived.
He closed his eyes and saw Ghaden, son of a Sea Hunter mother and wide of shoulder like her people. Tall like his father, who was part River and claimed some Walrus blood, a people known for their bravery, those Walrus Hunters. Walrus Hunters still lived not far from the Traders’ Beach, but they were a different people, had come from the north, were fierce and strong, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies. Those first Walrus Hunters were gone now, and no one knew where, though some of the storytellers said they had taken their iqyan far to the south and lived there on distant shores and islands, hunting not walrus but whale. It seemed a foolish story. Why would anyone leave the rich waters of the North Sea for that land where monsters lived, cet’aeni, nuhu’anh, and more? But enough of wondering. Qumalix had asked for a story.
Yikaas opened his eyes and began. “As a boy, Ghaden had learned to live with sorrow,” he said. “His mother had been killed by a woman named Red Leaf when Ghaden was hardly to the age of remembering. Red Leaf had also tried to kill Ghaden, but he survived, though no one had expected him to live. Red Leaf had used a knife, and Ghaden’s wounds were deep.”
“Was that when the father offered his finger in exchange for Ghaden’s life?” Qumalix interrupted to ask.
“Yes. And Cen was given his son’s life in trade. Later, Cen moved to another village and took a wife named Gheli.”
“Aaa, yes, Gheli,” Qumalix said.
“That’s another story for another day,” said Yikaas, speaking to her as if she were a child. But she took no offense, only laughed, and so Yikaas continued.
“Cen and Gheli had two daughters, and though Cen was a trader and traveled much, and Ghaden was his only son, for a long time, Cen dared not come to the village where Ghaden lived because he was afraid the men there would kill him.”
“Why?” Qumalix asked. “He was a River man, nae’?”
“Remember in the story I told about K’os how two of the River villages had fought against one another until one was destroyed with only a few hunters left?”
“I remember.”
“Even the village that won the battle had many of their young men killed, and so after a few years, they decided to forget their anger and become one people. In that way they combined the strength of those hunters they had left.”
“What does that have to do with Cen and Ghaden?”
“Before Cen married Gheli, he and Ghaden had lived in the village that had lost the battle. The problem came when Cen and the hunters of that village went to fight. Cen saw that they were outnumbered, and he left them in the night, and did not return.”
“He was a coward,” Qumalix said.
“Yet brave enough to cut off his finger when he thought the spirits might accept it as a gift and spare Ghaden’s life.”
“It’s all very confusing.”
“You will understand my story,” Yikaas told her.
“It would help me if you spoke my language, and I did not have to listen to River words.”
Her complaint angered Yikaas, but he shrugged and said, “Then I would need a teacher.”
“Your aunt, Kuy’aa, speaks the language. At least a little,” she said.
Anger took control of his tongue, and Yikaas answered, “Well, go get her. She can teach me now, quickly, so I can speak this story in words more gentle to your ears.”
He saw her jaw tighten, and she jammed a large piece of fish into her mouth, as though to prevent herself from a sharp reply. Finally, speaking through the fish, she said, “I will listen to your River words.”
“Stop me if you don’t understand something,” he told her. “I would be glad to teach you new words.”
He waited, wondering if she would offer to teach him her language in exchange, but she did not, and so when he began, Yikaas spoke in a hard voice, touched with disappointment—a good voice for Ghaden’s story.
Near Iliamna Lake, Alaska
Late Winter, 6447 B.C.
GHADEN’S STORY
“You’re wasting food, feeding him,” the hunter Sok said.
Ghaden squatted beside Biter, ran a hand through the dog’s dark fur.
“He’s old, Ghaden. He doesn’t hunt anymore, and he won’t be able to keep up with us when we travel to our fish camps.”
Ghaden didn’t have an answer. Sok was right. Biter was a dog celebrated for his wisdom, but now he was old and in pain.
“I’ll take him,” Sok said. “My aim is true. He will die before he even feels the bite of the spear.”
Ghaden kept his head down. With sixteen summers, he had long been a man, and what man shed tears for a dog? He could not let Sok see his eyes.
“I’ll do it,” Ghaden said, and his voice was firm, hard.
Sok grunted and walked away. Ghaden stayed beside the dog, spent a long time combing his hands through Biter’s fur.
Finally he said, “We should hunt today, Biter. See, look at the sky. Before long, clouds will settle in, and tomorrow we will get more snow. But the river ice is solid, and it will be easy walking. Wouldn’t a fresh hare taste good tonight? If we get two we can give one to Yaa. Cries-loud has not yet returned from following those early caribou that left their tracks so near the village.”
He thought of all the dogs he had known. Ligige’s dog that even in his old age had helped kill that evil one, Night Man. Ligige’ had been dead for two winters now, even in her last days full of wisdom and mischief.
The summer before her death, she had traded for another dog, and during her last sickness had given the dog to Ghaden. It was a female, and he had mated her with Biter, gotten himself three good pups. One h
ad the look of Biter, the same dark brown markings and some of Biter’s wisdom, though with a young dog, it was hard to tell. Ghaden had kept that pup for himself, given one of the others to Yaa’s husband Cries-loud, and traded another to Cries-loud’s younger brother, Carries Much, for fox pelts—less than the pup was worth, but Carries Much needed his own dog.
Sok had grumbled when Ghaden gave the dog to the boy, though Carries Much was Sok’s own son. Sok had wanted the dog himself, but he was harsh with his animals, a good man with his wives and his children, but not so good with dogs—ignoring them for too long when he did not need them, stingy with their food.
Ghaden slipped into his sister’s lodge, gathered snowshoes, two thrusting spears, and a bow. It was still winter, but the day was warm enough so that the bow, when pulled taut, would not break, and for taking small animals, Ghaden was better with an arrow than a spear.
Aqamdax was sitting with her young daughter, helping the girl string sinew thread through awl holes widely spaced in a piece of caribou hide. The girl’s tongue was thrust from the corner of her mouth as she concentrated. She grunted in frustration when the thread twisted, and Aqamdax, though her eyes were on Ghaden, said to her daughter, “Remember what you do?”
The little girl let the needle hang loose, watched as the thread spun to untangle itself.
“Sometimes when you try too hard,” Aqamdax explained, “things get tangled, and the only way to untangle them is to let go.”
For a moment Ghaden closed his eyes. It was difficult to have a sister who always knew his thoughts.
“Be safe,” she said to him as he left.
Unlike other dogs in the village, Biter usually slept in the lodge, but during feeding times, Ghaden staked him outside. He untied the dog, urged him with a shout and promises of good hunting. Biter groaned, heaved himself to his feet.
They walked the packed paths of the village, wove their way between the winter lodges and down to the river. Snow covered the ice in a strong, hard crust, but as Ghaden walked, he used the butt end of a spear to test the surface. Even small cracks could release water that would remain trapped and unfrozen under a layer of snow. If a man broke through into that water, he would soak his boots and freeze his feet. More than one hunter had been lost that way.
