Call Down the Stars

by Sue Harrison

  She handed him the seal belly, and leaned over his trade goods to pull out the ivory stopper. She gently pressed a finger against the side of the belly until a fine spurt of oil erupted from the opening.

  “Taste it,” she told him. “It’s new oil, and there’s no seal hair in it. You won’t find better.”

  He rubbed at the spilled oil with his hand, then licked his palm. “How many bellies do you have?” he asked.

  “Six.”

  “Four and a sax,” he told her.

  “My daughter has made necklaces. Shells from our island that you can’t find here.”

  “I have enough necklaces.”

  K’os shrugged, and held her hands palm up. “We don’t have a sax to trade,” she said. “But I’m sure there are ways to get one. I’ll tell Uutuk what you have said. Will you put the parka away if I give you the oil now?”

  “Bring it,” he told her, then asked, “Where will you get the sax?” He picked up the parka and placed it in one of his packs.

  “Young women as beautiful as Uutuk always have something to trade, and old men are willing to give more than they should.”

  She walked away and did not look back.

  K’os found Uutuk sitting at the top of Qung’s ulax. She climbed up and squatted on her haunches beside her. In the custom of the First Men, they did not speak for a time, but finally K’os said, “You should go back down to the beach. Ghaden might be willing to make a trade with you. Take three seal bellies of oil. They are in the chief hunter’s ulax in the sleeping place closest to the climbing log. Take some necklaces and two sealskins, also some dried fish. Do not tell your father that you took them. I think Ghaden will be glad to trade.”

  K’os saw the joy on her daughter’s face and hid a smile in her cheek. “Be wise, Daughter,” she said to Uutuk. “You trade for more than a parka.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

  602 B.C.

  YIKAAS RAISED HIS VOICE to call out praise for Qumalix’s stories, and others in the ulax did the same. Qumalix let her eyes rest for a moment on his face, and she smiled at him. He stood, stretched, then began to work his way toward her through the crowd, but suddenly a rough hand pushed him aside. A First Men storyteller—the one named Sky Catcher—stepped in front of him and, elbowing his way past elders and children, reached Qumalix first.

  He spoke to her in the First Men language, interrupting others. Finally, as though the man were a boy, Qumalix raised a hand and made the sign for silence.

  Yikaas felt a bubble of laughter rise into his throat, but then she leaned toward Sky Catcher and whispered into his ear. The man smiled and pressed his fingers against her shoulder as if he were a husband with a wife.

  Then the old woman Kuy’aa was beside Yikaas and, standing on tiptoe, her head at his shoulder, she said, “Remember him? His name is Sky Catcher. There’s a story he tells about the hunter who called the sun to the First Men’s islands. He offered to tell Qumalix that story.”

  “Here? Now?”

  Kuy’aa avoided his eyes, but said, “The First Men word he used means somewhere outside, in the wind. Away from here.”

  Yikaas glanced toward Qumalix. She and Sky Catcher were laughing, heads bent close. Pain and anger filled him to bursting, and he spoke to Kuy’aa through the edges of his teeth. “I’m going now. Do you want to leave, or will you stay and listen to more stories?” He offered his arm to help her up the climbing log, but she shook her head and settled down on her haunches as another storyteller began speaking.

  Yikaas started up the climbing log, but could not keep from looking back one more time. Qumalix was pulling on her sax, and she was still speaking to Sky Catcher. Yikaas shrugged as though to tell himself that he did not care, and he climbed out into the wind.

  Morning fog was down on the bay, and all things seemed cold and wet. The grayness entered at his heart and pushed up into his head, seemed to close off everything but his own thoughts, his own pain. He walked to the beach, to the mats where the traders had set their goods, and began to look for something he might buy with the caribou hides he had brought from his village. But the oil the traders offered had a sour smell, the pelts were dull and thin, and even the beads were misshapen.

  The fog pressed against his ears like hands set at the sides of his head. Words spoken were lost before he understood them, and finally he turned away from the traders and walked across the beach to the iqyax racks. There he hunkered down on his haunches, arms around his knees like a First Men hunter, and thought about Qumalix and Sky Catcher. He shook his head as he remembered Sky Catcher’s hand on her shoulder as if he already owned her.

  What if he did?

  The idea came so suddenly that it seemed as though someone had shouted it. What if Qumalix were promised to Sky Catcher? Perhaps that was why she had come so far to the Traders’ Beach. After all, they were both First Men, and both storytellers.

  Yikaas heard a giggle behind him and turned, his heart jumping at the sudden break in the silence. His first thought was Qumalix, but he laughed at himself over that. When had he ever heard her giggle? She was a woman, not a girl. Her laughter was full and strong, never foolish.

  Two First Men girls walked out of the fog. They wore their hair loose, in the tradition of unmarried women, and their cheeks were marked with tattoos. One girl was plump and the other thin, but aside from that, they looked like twins, so much alike were their faces.

  They swooped down on him like murrelets going into their burrow nests and both began to speak at once, using the First Men tongue. Suddenly the thin one stopped and held her hands over her mouth.

  “You River,” she said to him in his own language.

  He could not help but smile at the way her First Men mouth bent the River words. “Yes, I’m River,” he said.

  “Speak First Men?”

  He shook his head, and the girls sank to the sand together, giggling and whispering. Suddenly they leaped to their feet, grabbed his arms, and pulled him up, motioning that he should come with them.

  He voiced a few protests, but made no effort to break free as they stumbled up the sand and gravel dunes toward the village. The fog blocked his view of their ulax until they were nearly upon it. He realized they were at the inland side of the village, where the ulas were smaller and backed tightly against the hills. The girls motioned for him to climb to the moss and grass roof, and he did so, then turned to look down at them.

  They leaned their heads together, covered their mouths as they whispered to one another, then the sister who was plump, her eyes mere slits above her round, fat cheeks, smiled at him with her lips open, the tip of her tongue sliding over her teeth.

  She spoke in the First Men language, but Yikaas had no trouble understanding what she meant. They joined him at the top of the ulax, then gestured for him to follow them inside. He threw one quick look toward the storyteller’s ulax, thought of Qumalix and how they had shared stories hidden in the foothill grasses. Then he remembered Sky Catcher, his wide, broad face, his strong arms and shoulders, his short, powerful legs. He was a man of beads and feathers, of oiled hair and chin labret. When a man like that walks, the earth feels his steps. When a man like that speaks, what woman does not listen?

  Yikaas lowered himself into the ulax.

  Only the two girls were inside. Each had taken off her sax. They were small-breasted, but their skin was smooth and fragrant with oil. They looked at him from under half-closed lids. Why should he mourn over Qumalix? He pulled off his parka, and they each came to him with a bladder of oil. They began at his shoulders, rubbed his skin until they had driven the fog from his bones. He closed his eyes and pushed Qumalix from his mind.

  “So,” Sky Catcher said to Qumalix, “I have told you the story of Sun Bringer. What do you have to give in exchange?”

  Sky Catcher kept finding reason to touch her, to cup a hand over her knee or place an arm around her shoulders. She had finally wiggled so far away fro
m him that he could not reach her without looking foolish, and as she had guessed, Sky Catcher was not a man to choose the part of a fool.

  His story had been good, and he had given Qumalix permission to tell it. She had listened carefully, deciding even as he spoke where she would make changes so her listeners would feel as if they were the young man who had tricked the sun into coming so far north to a land of snow and ice. Sky Catcher had told her that even yet, hunters in their iqyan could follow the path the sun had taken in coming to the First Men. What hunter—driven far out to sea by storms or drawn by whales—did not seek those warm rivers that flowed up from the south and along the edges of the First Men’s islands? What hunter did not sing songs of gratitude for those trails the sun had left in its quest for the beautiful First Men women Sun Bringer had boasted about?

  When Sky Catcher finished his story, he leaned toward her and looked into her eyes.

  “Too bad you were not here in those long ago days,” he said. “Then the sun would have lingered even into winter nights. How could it turn away from your face?”

  It was as fine a compliment as Qumalix had ever received, but for some reason it sent her thoughts to the storyteller Yikaas, and she wondered if he would ever say such a thing. Then she was disgusted with herself. Why think about Yikaas? Anyone could see that Sky Catcher was more handsome, with his small straight nose and bright dark eyes. He was wider of shoulder and stronger of arm. Yikaas even walked with a limp. No wonder he was storyteller rather than hunter.

  And what woman would choose a storyteller above a hunter? What hunter would trade caches with a storyteller? Far better to rely on yourself than on the generosity of others.

  “You have not answered my question,” Sky Catcher said, an edge of irritation in his voice.

  Qumalix was used to a man whose temper came quickly. Her father was that way, though his was always an anger of words, spoken and quickly forgotten. He had not wanted her to return to this far village, the fear clear in his eyes until her grandfather had agreed to accompany her.

  “If you bring back a husband,” he had told her as they were leaving, partly in jest, a joke to cover the tremor in his voice, “be sure he is a hunter.”

  Her father would most likely be pleased if she brought back Sky Catcher, a man who was both hunter and storyteller. But what if she brought Yikaas? Aa, her father would be angry. A River man who could speak no First Men words. A River man who could not hunt from an iqyax. Nor would she be accepted in Yikaas’s village. She had no River skills, had never even set a trapline, but surely it could not be too different from the bird traps she set at murrelet holes.

  And making a parka, how difficult could that be for a woman who knew how to sew birdskins?

  She was pulled from her thoughts by Sky Catcher’s face too close to hers.

  “A story, of course,” she said in answer to his question. “What else do I have to give you?”

  “What story do you know that I might like to hear?” he asked, his words coming from lips outthrust, as though he were pouting. “You think I want to hear stories about women? What man wants that?”

  His words were as sharp as a slap, and his insult burned as though he had hit her, but she said, “I have whale hunting stories.”

  “Those would be better,” he told her, “but I think I have heard all your whale hunting stories.”

  She shrugged. “Then I will tell you about Daughter. Listen if you want. Otherwise leave.”

  He allowed his eyes to rest at her hips and chest, and suddenly she wished she were not alone with him in this place too far from the village. She wrapped her arms around her knees, clasped her right hand over the crooked knife that she had strapped to her left forearm. It lent her courage, that small knife, and suddenly her mouth filled with words. As she began to talk, Daughter’s story settled around her like the strong walls of an ulax, a protection against a man who wanted more than Qumalix was willing to give.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

  6435 B.C.

  DAUGHTER’S STORY

  K’OS REACHED OUT AND clasped Uutuk’s hands. They crouched at the top of the chief hunter’s ulax, alone except for the wind.

  “One of the reasons we brought you with us on this trading trip was to find you a husband,” K’os said. She released Uutuk’s hands and stood, placed her fists at the small of her back, and leaned into the wind, flexing her shoulders. She laughed and said, “I am too old to spend so much time gathering sea urchins.”

  Uutuk stood up beside K’os, placed strong hands on her mother’s shoulders, and kneaded the muscles. K’os closed her eyes.

  “Aa, Uutuk, you are a good daughter,” she said, and with eyes still closed she asked, “What do you think of the River man Ghaden?”

  Uutuk’s hands paused, but then she began to kneed even harder until K’os wrenched away from her grip.

  “Uutuk, you are breaking my shoulders!”

  Uutuk looked out over the village and murmured an apology, but she was facing the wind, so when her words came to K’os’s ears, they were as twisted and tangled as beach grass. K’os reached to turn the girl toward her.

  “I could not hear you.”

  “He is a good trader,” Uutuk said, “and I hear luck favors him when he hunts, but he is River.” She held her hands palm up as though to ask the sky what it thought.

  “So am I,” K’os said. They were speaking in the First Men language, and K’os changed her words to River. “Which means you are as well.”

  “Do you think if he took a First Men wife, he would be willing to go and live with her on her island?” Uutuk asked.

  She crouched again and pulled her sax over her knees, down to her feet. K’os squatted also, and cupped a hand to her mouth so the wind would not blow away her words.

  “No,” she said. “He wouldn’t come. He’s not a trader. He’s a hunter. You can’t expect a grown man to become a boy again and learn to hunt sea animals when he already knows how to take caribou and moose and bear. But at least his father is a trader and has taught Ghaden how to use an iqyax. If his First Men woman was a very good wife, perhaps sometime before she grew old he would take her back to her island so she could visit her people.”

  “You want me to marry a River man.”

  “Only if he’ll be a good husband to you and a good father for your children.”

  “White Salmon would have been a good husband and a good father.”

  There was a sharpness in Uutuk’s voice that surprised K’os. The girl had barely complained when Seal refused White Salmon’s brideprice.

  “He offered too little for you,” K’os told her. “What man values a wife when he can get her so easily? I don’t always agree with your father, but that time he was right. If White Salmon had truly wanted you, he would’ve been willing to hunt another summer for your brideprice.”

  “I did not know he offered so little,” Uutuk said. She spoke again in the First Men’s language, and her voice was small, like a child’s voice. “He told me he would give ten bellies of oil, ten otter skins, five thick pelts from fur seals, and many bellies of dried fish. He said if that was not enough his mother had a birdskin sax and three pairs of seal flipper boots she would be willing to give, but that I would have to sew for her during the first winter I was wife.”

  “He lied,” K’os said.

  Uutuk crossed her arms over her knees. “Why would he lie?” she asked, and her voice held the sound of tears.

  “Who can say?” K’os answered. “Perhaps he thought you would be a better wife if you believed he had given so much for you.”

  “What did he offer?”

  “You don’t need to know. More than many young women would bring, but not enough for you.”

  K’os pushed herself back until she was sitting behind Uutuk, then gently pulled the girl’s hair from the collar of her sax and began to comb it with her fingers, fighting the wind as it tried to steal the strands from her
hands. “White Salmon is not gifted in his hunting. Even his iqyax and his weapons are poorly made. Do you think any sea animal is honored when he sees an iqyax with weak joints or a gaping cover? Do you think a harpoon with a crooked shaft will ever hit its mark? Perhaps the reason he said he offered so much for you was to hide the fact that his hunting skills are less than they should be.”

  K’os leaned forward over Uutuk’s shoulder to look into her face. “Do you remember when you were a little girl, and I would braid your hair in the way of a River woman?”

  Uutuk smiled. “I remember.”

  “Let me braid it for you.”

  “Do what you want,” Uutuk said.

  “There’s too much wind up here.” K’os lifted her chin to point toward the leeward side of the ulax.

  Uutuk slid down the sod roof and reached up to help her mother. Then she sat cross-legged like a River woman and let K’os weave her hair into braids.

  “What would you take for the parka?” Ghaden asked Cen.

  “You have someone who wants it?”

  “Two women are interested.”

  “Good!” said Cen. “Play them off against one another. Get as much as you can.”

  “They’ve offered oil and a sax.”

  “See if you can also get a pair of seal flipper boots and a chigdax. They trade well among the River People. Their women don’t know how to make either.”

  “In my village, all the River women know how to make a chigdax.”

  “Hayh!” Cen said, flicking his fingers in the air. “Your sister is more generous than she has a right to be.” But he laughed, taking the sting from his words.

  “Two handfuls of seal bellies?” Ghaden asked.