by Sue Harrison
She was wise enough to know that arguing with him about a new boat cover would only make him more determined to keep the old. She had seal bellies of oil that were her own, and she could trade those, but she hated to waste them on hides for a boat cover. Perhaps she could convince Seal to leave her and Uutuk here while he traded at some First Men’s village a day or two down the coast. Surely he would not try to take the unwieldy boat by himself, but would invite another trader to travel with him. Without doubt, any man would be quick to point out that Seal needed a new cover, and Seal would listen to a stranger long before he would hear what she had to say.
K’os hated her helplessness. In many ways, her life would be easier without Seal, but how could she and Uutuk go by themselves to the River People? They could not paddle a boat all that way, and even if they could, she would not risk returning alone without a husband to the Walrus Hunters. What would keep them from reclaiming her as slave?
She was not welcome at Chakliux’s village. Of course, there were other River villages, but they were farther away from the coast. It would be very difficult to travel that far, she and Daughter alone, walking the tundra. Too bad Cen held so much anger against her. He knew all the River villages.
She thought of Gheli. K’os had given the woman enough poison to kill more than three men. How had she survived?
Suddenly K’os found herself smiling. She would like to have another chance at that one. She and Gheli saw the world through the same eyes. Theirs would be a fine battle, and K’os would have the advantage because Gheli did not know K’os was still fighting. Women were warriors in ways that men would never understand.
K’os allowed herself a moment to think about the wars she had fought and won: with Chakliux’s first wife, Gguzaakk; with Fox Barking; with Ground Beater. Each victory brought its own kind of power, and now, though she was years away from those conquests, she felt them strengthen her anew.
She lifted her eyes to the rise of land at the back of the beach and saw Uutuk standing there. K’os forced herself to smile. Uutuk lifted a hand in greeting and hurried toward her. The girl’s dark hair blew free in the wind, and K’os’s heart beat hard in fierce gladness. This daughter would bring K’os everything she wanted.
Perhaps that was the power that Gheli owned, the strength she had held against K’os’s poison—her hope in her daughter. K’os laughed. A daughter named for the woman Gheli herself had killed!
She pursed her lips in thought. And perhaps that was the way to weaken Gheli’s power, by destroying that daughter. Of course, the easy way was to tell Cen that Gheli was Red Leaf. Then Cen would kill Gheli himself. But K’os’s victory would be greater if she were the one to kill. Why deny herself joy? After all, there were many paths to the Four Rivers village.
K’os leaned down into Seal’s boat. On trading trips she always tied several empty gathering bags to one of the boat’s ribs. She chose the largest, tried to loosen the knot. Sea spray had tightened it beyond the strength of her fingers, so she used her teeth and waved away Uutuk’s offers to help. By the time she had freed the bag, the salt-crusted cords had burned her lips. She scowled at the pain and carried the bag to a tide pool, gathered three sea urchins, and went on to another pool.
“You have been working all morning, Mother,” Uutuk said. “Go to the storyteller’s ulax. Qung is there alone. You will learn much about these people by listening to her.”
K’os frowned. Did Uutuk think she was a child who needed instruction in the ways of the First Men? But then she realized that the girl was only worried that her mother was working too hard.
“Aa, Uutuk, you know what it is like when two old women get together. We would soon fill that ulax so full of words that no one else could get inside.”
Uutuk laughed. “At least let me gather the sea urchins.” She took the bag from K’os’s hands, then, leaning close, she lifted her chin toward the traders who sat on the beach and whispered, “See the young man standing behind that stack of hides? He is a River hunter, and his father is a trader.”
K’os lifted her head to look, but her eyes were not as strong as they had been, and she could see only that he was well built, taller than the First Men but short for a River hunter.
“He has the look of the First Men about him,” she said.
“Qung says his mother was First Men.”
K’os cleared her throat, steadied her voice. “Have you met his father?” she asked, and worked to keep her words low and quiet. She stooped to retrieve another sea urchin.
“Yes. His father’s name is Cen. He is a River trader.”
“Go see what he has,” K’os told her. “Perhaps he will take a belly of seal oil for something you would like.”
“Come with me, Mother,” Uutuk said. “What do I know about making trades?”
“You said he was a hunter, not a trader. A young woman might be able to get more than she should from a man like that.”
K’os saw the uncertainty in Uutuk’s eyes, but the girl handed back the gathering bag and walked the length of the beach toward the traders. K’os pretended to work at gathering sea urchins but quickly went from tide pool to tide pool until she was close enough to see Cen’s son.
Ghaden, yes, without a doubt. Though she was not sure she would have recognized him had she not been told who he was. He wore a First Men’s sax. Wise. Cen might be a fool when it came to women, but he was the best trader K’os had ever known. Too bad they could not travel together so that Seal could learn from watching the man. Of course, Seal was so set in his ways, he would probably learn nothing at all.
The boy had Cen’s nose, a pity that. But he also had his father’s strong-boned face. There was something about his eyes that reminded her of the First Men. And who could doubt that his wide shoulders had come from his mother’s people?
A livid scar curved down his neck from his left ear to somewhere inside the sax.
When Gheli had tried to kill the boy, she had used a knife, but this scar was too new, still plump above the skin that surrounded it.
K’os watched as Uutuk approached him. The young man puffed out his chest as though he were getting ready to boast of some great deed. Uutuk waited while others made trades, her head lowered modestly. She fingered a caribou hide, stroked a fox pelt.
The familiar River things called K’os, and she found herself longing to be away from beaches and the sea, to once again walk forest trails, to hear the wind in black spruce branches.
She let herself dream of the plants she would gather, of the people she would choose to heal, and those she would not.
Even among the River People, Uutuk, with her beautiful face, would soon find a strong husband. Then what would prevent K’os from becoming the healer in that young husband’s village? Soon she and Uutuk would gather so much strength for themselves that even Chakliux would not be able to stand against them.
Ghaden watched Uutuk from the corners of his eyes. It was difficult to remember that her mother was K’os. It brought him joy just to look at her. He wondered if all the women of her island, those Boat People women she had spoken about, were as beautiful as she was.
He missed what a First Men hunter was saying and forced his thoughts back to the trade the man was trying to make—sea lion skins for caribou hides. Ghaden pretended to consider the offer, but finally said, “I can get sea lion skins from Walrus Hunters, and even in those River villages nearest the North Sea.”
But then Ghaden appeared to reconsider. He ran his hands over the hides the man was offering.
“They are good,” he said, “large and well scraped.” He spoke softly—as though he were arguing with himself—but loudly enough that the First Men hunter could hear him. “If I give too good a deal, my father will not take me with him on the next trading trip.”
“Three for two, then,” the First Men hunter said.
“Three sea lion, two caribou?” Ghaden repeated and looked at the man with eyebrows raised.
“That is what I said.
”
Ghaden ran a hand over the top of his head, sighed as though he were frustrated. “You should be a trader yourself,” he said. “You make good deals.” Then he gave a grudging smile and pushed the pile of caribou hides toward the man. “Two for three,” he said. “Choose the ones you want.”
The First Men hunter reached out to clap a hand against Ghaden’s arm. “I have been doing this a long time,” he said. “You will learn. Your father will not regret bringing you.”
The hunter chose his hides and left the sea lion skins. Ghaden set them out with the trade goods. Another hunter who had been considering a parka wandered away, and Daughter, now alone with Ghaden, said in the River tongue, “You got what you wanted in that trade, nae’?”
He smiled at her. “They’re good hides,” he said, “and the hunter will be back to trade again.”
“You say this is the first trading trip you have made with your father?”
“To the Traders’ Beach, yes, though I’ve traded in River villages with him and with my sister’s husband, Chakliux.”
Daughter frowned. The name was familiar to her, as though it were something she had heard as a child. She tried to place it, but let it go when Ghaden asked, “Do you have anything to trade?”
“No,” she said, “but my mother has oil.”
“What does she want?”
“She told me to choose something.”
Daughter lifted a parka. It was made of caribou hide scraped until it was white. The seams around the arms and at the tops of the shoulders were inset with white fur.
Ghaden smoothed the fur with the tip of a finger and said, “Winter weasel. They’re small animals like lemmings, only thin and long with pointed noses and black-tipped tails. In the summer weasels are brown, and in the winter they turn white.”
She smiled at him and shook her head. “There are so many animals that I do not know,” she said. “I need to spend a year in a River village just to see what I have missed.”
“There might be some River hunter who would like to show you his village,” Ghaden said.
Daughter’s face burned in sudden embarrassment. She was old enough to know better than to say such things. What had happened to her tongue? It was suddenly as though her mouth belonged to a child rather than a woman.
“I was hoping my father might decide to travel as trader among the River villages,” she said and, glancing up at him, saw disappointment dim his eyes. She had only made it worse. “It would be good if we might travel together,” she said, then wished she could pull back those words as well. She was First Men, and First Men knew how to stay quiet when something is best left unsaid.
To divert his attention, she lifted the parka, exclaimed at the gray and white fur that trimmed the hood.
“Wolf,” Ghaden told her, and she saw that he was fighting to keep a smile from his lips.
Yes, why risk a smile that might lead another to believe that the trader thought he had the best side of the deal? But still Ghaden’s mouth jerked up at one side, quivered as though he hid laughter from her. And why not? She was acting like a child, saying all things wrong.
“These …” Daughter said, and lifted a row of danglers sewn across the front of the parka.
“Flicker beaks and feathers. Flickers are a bird of spirit power, and very seldom seen. A man who takes a flicker brings himself good luck for the rest of his life. So you see, flicker beaks are not traded lightly.”
She studied the seams. The stitches were as fine and even as if K’os had made the garment. “The work is very good,” she said.
“I should be the one to say that,” Ghaden told her. “You should tell me what is wrong with it, and why you will not give me as much as I want.”
A smile forced his eyes into thin crescents, like moons just reborn.
“It does not matter. I cannot trade for this parka,” she told him. “My mother and I have only a few seal bellies of oil.”
Daughter lifted the parka to her face and breathed in the clean smell of well-scraped hides. She laid it down, fingered the wolf fur ruff.
“It would be a good parka for a woman to own,” Ghaden said.
“A woman with a husband who has more oil than he needs,” said Daughter, then turned to walk away.
“What about the sax you are wearing?” Ghaden called to her. “Perhaps I would be willing to trade this parka for some oil, good seal oil stored in seal bellies, and for a First Men’s sax.”
“I need my sax,” Daughter said. “How would I survive in my father’s boat if I had only a parka to wear?”
She saw that her mother was still gathering sea urchins, and so hurried toward her, took the bag. It was heavy and full.
“Do you want these to go to the chief hunter’s ulax?” Daughter asked.
“It would be a good gift for them,” her mother said.
Daughter walked across the beach carrying the bag, and Ghaden again called out to her. “Perhaps there is something I might trade for sea urchins!”
Laughter bubbled from Daughter’s throat, and she went to him, took a green-spined urchin from the gathering bag, and laid it on his trader’s mat.
“A gift,” she said.
He pulled a flicker feather from one of the danglers on the parka and gave it to her.
“For luck,” he told her.
K’os watched Uutuk until she disappeared into the tall grasses at the rise of the beach, then hurried over to Ghaden. He was still staring at the path that led to the village, as though he could will Uutuk back. Finally he realized that K’os was standing in front of him.
“We have oil and caribou fat and dried caribou meat,” he told her, “parkas and pants made of caribou hide. There are wolf pelts and fox furs, birdskins and dried fish, shafts for spears as straight as the edge of the sea where it meets the sky.”
He spoke the words as traders do, in a rhythm that was nearly a song, and his voice was pleasing to the ear, like a storyteller’s voice. Cen had said he was a hunter, and yet it appeared he could also be a trader if he wished, or even a storyteller. A young man given many choices. K’os wondered whether Ghaden had the wisdom to make the right decision for himself.
“I’m Uutuk’s mother,” K’os said, speaking in the River language. “I saw that she was looking at this parka.” She bent close to study the seams. If she had doubted that Red Leaf was still alive, that parka lifted her doubt. Who else could sew like that?
“I told her that I would trade it for a First Men’s sax, well made, and several bellies of seal oil.”
“And she would not trade?”
“She said she needed her sax.”
“She’s a wise woman, my daughter.”
K’os looked hard into Ghaden’s face. “You do not know me, Ghaden?” she asked.
“I know you. I remember when my sister was your slave.” His voice was quiet, but she heard his anger.
“You hate me for that?” she asked. “You’ve never had a slave? I myself was slave to the old woman Gull Beak in the Near River village. Perhaps you remember her. She was old then. She must be dead by now.”
“Still alive when I left the village,” Ghaden told her.
K’os smiled. “Good. I liked her. Though it was not easy being a slave.”
“You could have treated my sister better.”
“I realize that now,” K’os said. “But I was ignorant then. As a girl I was the only daughter of a good hunter. As a woman my husbands were leaders of their people. I was respected as a healer, and I helped many. I didn’t know what it was like to be slave. Now that I do, I would never own a slave again.”
Ghaden studied her face as though trying to decide whether or not to believe her.
“Someone told me that the First Men don’t have the same plants that we River People do,” he said, as though they had never spoken about slaves. “Perhaps there are plants that you have found growing on First Men islands that River healers would find useful. My father brought caribou leaf to trade.”
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“I have plants,” K’os said slowly, thinking over what was in her medicine bag.
Who would guess that Cen would bring medicines? But why be surprised? She had been a healer when Cen knew her. Surely during that time he had learned the value of plant medicines. She needed caribou leaf. A pity that most of the plants she had brought with her also grew in the River People’s land.
“I have cixudangix,” she told him. It was only the seagull flower, but the root had the power to clot blood. “It’s difficult to get, even on First Men islands, and doesn’t grow anywhere near our River villages.” She was lying, but Ghaden would not know that. “A woman who has had a hard birth, or a man who is bleeding from a wound, these people should drink a tea made of the root.”
“I need proof of what it is,” he told her.
“You think because I was once slave that I will not trade in honesty?”
“How will I trade it to someone else if I don’t know what I have?”
He was no fool, this boy. He reminded her of his half-sister Aqamdax, a woman who had given K’os much to regret.
“I’ll give you a packet,” she told him. “Show it to some of the First Men elders. They’ll tell you what it is.”
“And if the elders think it’s a wise trade,” he said, “then I’ll give you caribou leaf in exchange.”
“Good. I’ll be back, and don’t be too quick to trade away that parka. It would be beautiful on my daughter.”
She went quickly to the chief hunter’s ulax. She was relieved to find no one there except the hunter’s old father, a man who spent most of his days living in a world that he had known as a child. When he saw her, he thought that she was his sister, a woman who was long dead. He called her that one’s name, and K’os thought she felt the sister’s spirit close. She shivered, and her arms pimpled with bumps.
She ladled him a bowl of broth and said, “Be quiet and eat. You do not know what you call down on us.”
Then she sorted through her medicine bag, found the packet she wanted, also took one of her seal bellies of oil, and left the ulax.
When she handed the cixudangix to Ghaden, she said, “You claimed you would take oil and a First Men sax in trade for that parka.” She lifted her chin toward the caribou parka, could not keep from touching the soft wolf fur that rimmed the hood. She had once made parkas like that, even more beautiful, but where had Red Leaf gotten all the flicker beaks? She had never seen so many. She and Uutuk could use the luck that a parka like that would bring.
