Call Down the Stars

by Sue Harrison

  “They know, everything except Seal’s death,” Ghaden said. “And they know that Uutuk’s mother is K’os.”

  Gheli choked out a strangled sound. “Don’t trust her,” she said to Cen. “The last time she was in our village, she wanted you as husband.”

  The hardness in Cen’s eyes faded, and he wrinkled his brow, studied Gheli’s face. “I remember,” he said.

  “She threatened to tell you who I was.” Gheli held her hands out as though to beg for understanding. “I was afraid for my daughter. I thought if you knew who I was, you might kill Daes in revenge.”

  “You know me better than that,” said Cen, sadness in his voice.

  “I knew how much you loved that woman I killed. I knew how much you cared about your son Ghaden. K’os said she would kill our Daes if I didn’t convince you to take her as wife, and when I could not, she said that I must choose between my own life and Daes’s. She had poison to give me, and I pretended to take it. I pretended to get sick.”

  “But by then K’os had River Ice Dancer as husband,” said Cen.

  “What problem is that for a woman who kills as easily as K’os? If she could have you, River Ice Dancer would die. If not, he was young and a hunter, good enough to keep her fed through the winter.”

  “But she did kill him.”

  Gheli shook her head. “I needed to get K’os out of the village. To save my own daughter’s life.” She glanced at Daes, and the girl closed her eyes, hunched her shoulders against her pack.

  “You killed him, too?” Cen asked.

  “I knew they would blame K’os. How could anyone think I did it? I was sick, nearly dead.”

  “I stayed with you that night,” Cen said, as though speaking to himself. “I was awake …”

  “You slept. Long enough.”

  Daes began to moan, a long cry, as though she were in pain. Cen pulled the tumpline from her forehead, unstrapped her pack, and set it on the ground. She backed up to sit on the pack, and he put an arm around her shoulders, placed a hand under her chin to lift her face toward him. “Whatever your mother did, still she has loved many, including you. Including me. The woman K’os has never loved anyone but herself. Listen to me, Daes. There are terrible things happening in our village. Seal is not the only one who died.

  “You heard what your mother said. K’os once tried to poison her. Why not poison the people who blamed her for a murder she did not commit?”

  “What about Bird Hand?” Daes asked. She spoke slowly, as if she had been afraid to ask the question.

  “He’s alive, but his new wife died.”

  Daes rubbed her forehead with the heel of her hand, then stood and hefted the pack to her back. “I need to go to him,” she said.

  “Wait, we’ll all go,” Cen told her.

  “What about her?” Daes asked, pointing at Gheli.

  Cen was silent for a long time, and when he raised his eyes, he looked at Ghaden. “She was a good wife and gave me two daughters to make up for a woman I lost, but I can’t stop you if you want to kill her. Your mother died, and you will always carry the scars from Red Leaf’s knife.”

  “I’ve spent five days now with her and Cries-loud and Daes,” said Ghaden. “We’ve talked through our anger and our grief. How can I kill a woman who is mother to my sisters, wife to my father? But I don’t think she should return to the Four Rivers village. K’os will tell others about her.” He looked into Cen’s eyes. “Cries-loud had planned to take her and Daes to the next village. He can still do that.”

  “Yes, take her,” Cen told Cries-loud. “Perhaps she’ll be safe there.”

  Gheli opened her mouth in joy, began to babble out her gratefulness. Cen raised a hand. “You’ve cost us more than you can ever repay. You have supplies and a son willing to take you to another village. I throw you away. Find another husband. My daughter Daes stays with me.”

  Gheli began to cry, but silently, her eyes open, her mouth firm. She watched as Daes and Cen walked away from her, then turned to follow Cries-loud.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  GHELI’S STORY

  THEY SLEPT THAT NIGHT on the trail, Cries-loud and Red Leaf, the two speaking of days long ago, of good times and caribou hunts, feasts and celebrations. She asked about Sok and his new wife, his children, and she also asked about Cries-loud’s wife.

  Cries-loud tried to tell his mother good things about Yaa, but could think of nothing but that she worked hard, that she always kept his clothing clean and repaired.

  “You need another wife,” Red Leaf told him. “It’s good for a man to be loyal to his first wife, but you need sons and daughters to take care of you when you’re old. What would I do if I had no one?” And she dared to lay a hand on his arm.

  “I plan to get another wife. Soon,” he said.

  He did not try to explain how each time, when he had a woman chosen, that somehow he waited too long to ask her, so another man claimed her before he had a chance. He told himself that it was because he didn’t need another woman playing mother to him, telling him what to do. Planning his life. He didn’t tell her about those nights when he lay awake, still holding Yaa after their lovemaking, his heart so filled with her that he doubted he had enough room for another woman. Or how after he returned from a hunting trip, all he wanted was to see Yaa, to talk to her, to take her to his bed. How could he explain those things to his mother when he did not understand them himself?

  “Yes,” he finally said. “This time, when I return to Chakliux’s village, I’ll find a young woman to be my wife. You’re right. I need a son or daughter to take care of me when I’m old.”

  Then, though the sky still held a little edge of the day’s light, he wrapped himself in his bedding furs and escaped into sleep.

  Each day as they walked, Red Leaf talked about Cries-loud’s childhood and all the joys she could remember from that time. Each night as they sat near their small fire, she studied his face as though to help herself remember him.

  The walking took longer than they had thought, nearly three handfuls of days, but finally they saw the smoke from the village, rising above the tag alders that bordered the trail they followed.

  Then Red Leaf told him, “I had a dream in the night, and it said that I should go into the village alone, that a woman will be welcomed with less suspicion than a man and woman together.”

  He began to protest, but she laid a hand across his mouth.

  “This is what I want.”

  Her stubbornness reminded Cries-loud of Yaa, so he knew there was little chance she would change her mind.

  “Let me stay here at least for the day,” he said. “Then if they won’t take you in, you can come back to me, and we’ll go somewhere else, to another village, until we find a place for you.”

  She considered what he said, finally agreed. “That’s good. Do that. If I’m not back by tomorrow morning, then return without me to the Four Rivers village, and be sure that Cen has told the people I’m dead.” She clasped her hands into fists, clenched and unclenched her fingers.

  “They will mourn you,” Cries-loud said, “and I will join that mourning.” He looked away when Red Leaf’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Someday, bring Duckling and Daes to see me.”

  Cries-loud thought of the many days walking, too much of a summer lost in traveling, but he said, “I’ll bring them. Watch for us.”

  Then Red Leaf smiled, looked into his eyes one last time, and left him.

  UUTUK’S STORY

  By the time Cen, Daes, and Ghaden returned to the village, three more people had died, but no one else had become sick. The rest had recovered and were weak, but it seemed that they would live. Ghaden found his wife in Two-heeled Fish’s lodge, grinding boneset root for medicine.

  “Did you find Cen’s wife?” she asked.

  “It’s not good what we found,” Ghaden told her, then, noticing that Two-heeled Fish was listening, he said, “Cen’s wife is dead.”

  “From the sickne
ss?” Uutuk asked.

  “No, wolves,” Ghaden told her.

  The old woman began to croon something that he assumed was a death song. He pulled Uutuk to her feet and made excuses to Two-heeled Fish, led Uutuk from the lodge.

  “You know the scars I carry on my back,” he said to her, his voice low so anyone passing could not hear what he said.

  “I know.”

  She ran quick fingers over his shoulder, and the heat of her hand made him realize how much he needed her. But first he wanted to tell her what had happened. They found a place near the river, in the lee of trees that cut the wind. There he told her about Red Leaf. As he spoke, she covered her mouth with both hands and made small cries of sadness.

  “Uutuk,” Ghaden said quietly, “you know that Chakliux stayed here because he thinks your mother did this to the village. Red Leaf also told us that K’os tried to poison her.”

  “Do you believe my mother would do that?”

  “Did she say anything to you about eating the food here in this village?”

  Uutuk’s eyes grew wide.

  “She told me that the taboos of the Four Rivers village were very different. That women here eat things that might make my children sick or cursed. We’ve eaten only from our own boiling bag since we came.”

  Ghaden moved to kneel in front of her. “Don’t you see, Uutuk?”

  Then Uutuk leaned forward to put her arms around his neck, and she wept.

  “I have this question, Brother,” Uutuk said. She and Chakliux were just outside Cen’s lodge, the two of them. K’os was inside, where she had stayed since Chakliux had come to the village. He did not even allow her to go to the women’s place to relieve herself. Instead she used a watertight salmon skin basket, and complained of Chakliux’s foolishness.

  “Ask,” Chakliux told Uutuk.

  “Why is she still alive? If she has done all the things you say, or even some of them, why have you not killed her?”

  “I owed her a life,” he said.

  “You paid that when she killed your son.” Uutuk’s words were loud, but she spoke in the First Men language, which they both understood, though the people of the Four Rivers village did not.

  He shook his head. “Each time I decided that she should die, something happened to change my decision.”

  “You are afraid of her,” Uutuk told him. “She is a woman who curses everyone she knows. If she has this much power in life, think what she would be able to do in death, especially to the family of the one who kills her. But we could cut her bones apart, like men do when they take a powerful animal. That will keep her from coming after us.”

  Her words shocked Chakliux, and he had no answer for her.

  “Do the River People not also believe that the cutting of joints protects the killer?”

  “Sometimes we do that, but the best protection comes through prayers and chants and amulets.”

  “Then we will do both.”

  “You hate her so much?”

  Her eyes overflowed, and she turned away from him. “She has always treated me well,” she said in a small voice. “But when so many people tell me what she has done, how can I trust her not to hurt my husband or the children we might have?”

  “Uutuk, we have no spirit powers, and the shaman of this village is old and weak. Even with our prayers and chants and the cutting of the body, how can we be sure we do not bring her anger again to us and to our families? Ghaden has told you how much she hates my wife, Aqamdax.”

  “I will take the chance, Brother,” Uutuk said. “And now is the time to do it, when your wife is not here in the village, so if K’os’s spirit has a moment between death and my cutting, at least she will not be able to reach Aqamdax or your children.”

  Chakliux crouched on his haunches, his back to the lodge. “We have to wait until her forty days of mourning have ended,” he said. “Even if she does not truly grieve over Seal, I would not want to bring the curse of a widow’s taboos on either of us.”

  “We are stronger than you think, my brother,” Uutuk said. She sat on the ground, crossed her legs like the River People do, and unlaced her caribou hide boots. “I have heard the stories of your otter foot, and the power in it.” She smiled. “Has no one told you the stories about my feet?”

  “You have otter feet, too?” he asked, the doubt clear on his face.

  “Not otter,” she said. “Look.”

  She pulled off her boots and flickered the grass that lined them from her feet, then pointed to the place where her small toes should be.

  “What happened?”

  “This toe I cut off in mourning for my grandfather,” she said, lifting her right foot. “The other toe my grandfather cut off when I was very small. They say a child does not remember when they have only three summers, but I remember.”

  “It is good that the man is dead,” Chakliux said.

  “Oh no, Chakliux. Let me tell you what happened. I told you how my grandfather and I took a boat from our island to the islands of the First Men.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was not an easy journey, and we did not do it willingly, but a storm had taken our paddle, so we could not return to our own people. We were caught in a current that carried us north. During that time we ate all our food. My grandfather cut off his own toes to use as bait for fish, but he caught nothing. We were starving, so I asked him to use my toe, and finally he did.” She smiled at Chakliux, showing her white and even teeth. “Then he caught many fish, and so we had food enough to live until K’os found us.”

  “So that toe saved your life and your grandfather’s life.”

  “Yes.”

  “A strange family we have, you and I, that both of us have our power in our feet!”

  They laughed together, then Chakliux said, “It is not much, that kind of power.”

  “So far, it’s been enough, nae’?” she said to him in the River tongue, then switched again to the First Men language. She pulled on her boots, straightened, and said, “I told you my story so you would understand that as a little child, I was willing to give much to protect my grandfather. I am willing to do even more for my husband and any children we might have.”

  She lay a hand over her belly, and Chakliux, having seen his own wife do the same, asked, “Already?”

  Her answer was shy. “I think so,” she said, “though my husband does not yet know. Please do not tell him until we decide what to do with K’os.”

  “We will give her nothing beyond her mourning,” Chakliux said. “We cannot allow her to take more lives.”

  The Wilderness Northwest of the Fish Camp

  CRIES-LOUD’S STORY

  Cries-loud spent the day hunting, and brought two fat hares and a brace of ptarmigan back to his campfire. He cleaned them and cooked them on spits, ate as much as he wanted, and wrapped the remainder in grass to save for the next day.

  As the night darkened, he heard the noise of someone walking. He jumped to his feet, had knife and lance in hand before he even thought, but then his mother called out, and he ran to her. She was smiling.

  Before he could ask questions, she said, “I couldn’t let you leave without seeing you one more time.”

  Though she still smiled, he could see that tears brightened her eyes. “They didn’t have a place for you?” he asked.

  “They do. They know Cen and somehow had heard that he’s dead. I didn’t tell them any differently. There’s an old man who will take me as wife.”

  “If he’s old, how will he feed you?”

  “He’s not too old to hunt, and he has three sons who live in the village. We won’t starve, and when we finally hear the truth about Cen, I’ll tell him that even though Cen is alive, I want to stay with him, that I’m weary of being a trader’s wife. By that time, my parkas and my trapping will have made him happy, and maybe I can even give him a son or daughter.”

  Cries-loud beckoned her toward the fire, invited her to eat.

  “Just a little,” she told him
. “I must return, and I don’t want to get lost in the dark. I just wanted you to know …”

  “I’m glad you’ve found a place, Mother.”

  “Perhaps you can visit me someday,” she said, “you and your wives and those children you will get.”

  She was eating quickly, as though she had had nothing all day, but he told himself that she was not that hungry, just that she wanted to leave and return to the old man.

  She ate a ptarmigan and then wiped her fingers on her pants and stood. For a moment, Cries-loud once more became a little boy, and tucked himself into her arms. She was the first to break away, and she turned quickly and said in a voice heavy with tears, “Watch over my daughters.”

  Then she was gone, and Cries-loud heaped branches on his campfire until the flames leaped, making light to fill some of the emptiness.

  The Four Rivers Village

  K’OS’S STORY

  K’os leaned close to the side of the lodge, tried to hear what her children were saying, but the double caribou hide cover and the rocks and sod of the walls swallowed their words. Somehow Chakliux had managed to turn Uutuk against her, and all this had happened because of the woman Red Leaf. If Cen and Ghaden had not gone after Red Leaf, then Chakliux would not have had so much time alone to talk Uutuk into hating her.

  Still, the girl should know better! Had K’os been anything but a good mother to her? Aaa! What made children so selfish? Chakliux kept her in this lodge, did not allow her to see the sun. How could she store up heat in her bones against the coming winter?

  “Don’t allow your anger to eat your own flesh,” she told herself. “How will you fight if you are weak?”

  She settled her mind on the people of the Four Rivers village. How many had died? Three tens, she thought. Six handfuls! Yes, but many of the hunters had already left for the caribou hunts, so those she had killed were mostly children and old ones, a few of the wives who had stayed behind. Then, too, the young, strong ones had grown sick from her poison, but it hadn’t killed them. She had not only used the purple-flowered plant from the First Men, but also baneberry. The First Men’s poison was better. When she used it on the first few who died—all elders—it had caused no great alarm. They seemed to have died in their sleep, though one had stumbled from her daughter’s lodge, clutching her throat and gasping for each breath.