Call Down the Stars

by Sue Harrison

  Fear, then sadness crossed her face. She nodded her head as though she knew what he was going to say.

  “I brought someone with me,” he began. Yaa took a long breath, and he added, “To help you with your work.”

  “That is good,” she said, but her voice was thin, fragile. “She’s welcome, my husband. Here in this lodge …” Her words broke. She cleared her throat, then continued, “Until you are able to build her a lodge of her own.”

  “No,” Cries-loud said.

  “I’ll be a good sister-wife to her,” said Yaa, and she began to speak of all the things the two wives would do together.

  “No,” Cries-loud said again, but knew there was only one way to quiet Yaa once she started talking to hide her pain, and so he went back into the entrance tunnel and picked up Duckling. The girl had fallen asleep, but she opened her eyes and, seeing his face, smiled. He pressed his cheek against her forehead, and crept into the lodge. He expected to hear Yaa cry out, but she was quiet. He stood up and saw that her eyes were closed, her face drawn tight.

  “Yaa?” he said.

  Her eyes flew open, and she stretched her mouth into a wide smile of welcome. When she saw the baby, she clasped her hands to her chest and stood with her mouth open, as though she had forgotten how to speak.

  “You don’t want your daughter?” he asked.

  “My daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  She took the child, began to laugh. Suddenly she stopped and said, “She belongs to your new wife?”

  “You are my only wife, Yaa,” he told her. “She belongs to you, to both of us.”

  Then Yaa started to cry, silent sobs that shook her so hard she had to give the baby back to Cries-loud. He stood there holding them both, his wife and his daughter, and he reminded himself that hunters do not cry over such little things as babies, hunters do not cry for happiness. But then he thought, Perhaps sometimes they do.

  Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

  602 B.C.

  The next evening, when a group of men had returned from six, seven days hunting sea lions, and the women had decided to take a rest from fishing, Yikaas again told his story about K’os’s death. Qumalix was there to translate for him, and other storytellers, including Kuy’aa and Sky Catcher, also listened.

  When Yikaas had finished his tale, Sky Catcher called out, “Wait. You claim that is how K’os died?”

  “So it is said,” Yikaas answered, using the words familiar to all storytellers.

  “I have heard a different story.”

  Sky Catcher spoke belligerently, and Yikaas saw him for what he was—a child whose body had grown into manhood, but whose mind stayed small.

  “Tell it,” Yikaas said graciously, and stepped back to make room for him.

  Qumalix gave Yikaas a bleak look, and so he understood that she did not like to translate for the man, but Sky Catcher stretched his mouth into a broad smile and began, even forgetting the polite words most storytellers use to let their listeners know a new tale is being told.

  “K’os was an evil woman,” he said, “and she wanted to kill the Four Rivers People for throwing her out of their village many years before. She also wanted to kill Chakliux.” He paused for a moment as if searching for what to say about Chakliux, and finally he added, “She hated Chakliux for many reasons, mostly because he was so wise and good.”

  The people in the ulax murmured at that, and a few threw out suggestions as to why K’os wanted to kill her own son, but Sky Catcher ignored them and went on with his story. It was not a good story, and Yikaas soon grew impatient. Sky Catcher spoke too long about the conversations between Cen and Ghaden and the agreement they made to kill K’os.

  The two carried out their plan, and K’os died in the night, with both men’s blades in her chest. But even in describing the death, Sky Catcher’s words were flat, and Yikaas tried not to rejoice in the people’s complaints.

  When Sky Catcher finished, most of the listeners were polite, but one man, a First Men hunter, said, “Keep the story as Yikaas told it.”

  Sky Catcher began to shout insults at the man, but Qumalix laid a hand on his arm and said, “I have also heard a different story about K’os’s death. Perhaps you would like to hear that one.”

  Sky Catcher curled his lip at her, but at least he sat down to listen.

  Qumalix’s story started much like Yikaas’s had, but when Gheli left Cries-loud, she stayed to live in that far River village as wife to an old man there. Yikaas listened patiently, thinking he would find fault with her story as he had with Sky Catcher’s, but then, as with all Qumalix’s tales, he was caught into her words, and somehow he was again a boy, learning stories that he would someday tell himself.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The Four Rivers Village

  6435 B.C.

  QUMALIX’S STORY OF K’OS’S DEATH

  CHAKLIUX SAT ALONE, STARING into the hearth coals. He had been given a place in the lodge next to Cen’s. The man who owned the lodge had lost his wife and children, and after his mourning had decided to go hunt caribou. The empty lodge seemed full of the dead ones’ ghosts. They haunted Chakliux’s dreams and pushed him into a decision to kill K’os. How else could she be stopped?

  Chakliux banked the hearthfire and pulled on his parka. He walked through the village. Though it was a sunny day, there were few people outside. Many were still sick, and others kept mourning vigils in their lodges.

  He saw an old woman scurrying toward the river. She was carrying empty water bladders, and when he caught up to her, he offered to fill them. She raised her eyebrows at him and for a moment hugged the bladders to her chest, as though she were afraid, but then she smiled, showing a mouth empty of teeth, her lips collapsed in over the gums. But her eyes were bright, peeking out at him from the wrinkles of her face.

  She waited at the top of the bank while he slid down the incline to the pool where the women got water. He filled each bladder, tied their strings together, and slung them over his shoulder. When he climbed back up toward her, she held out a hand, as though she were strong enough to help him up the last few steps to level ground.

  “You’re the otter foot,” she said to him, and her voice was surprisingly clear and loud, a young woman’s voice coming from an old mouth.

  “Yes,” he said, “And you, Aunt, what do you call yourself?”

  She looked at him warily as though trying to decide whether to trust him with her name. Finally she said, “Aunt is good,” and Chakliux hid his smile. Who could blame her? With all that had happened in this village, why trust anyone?

  “Did you lose people, Aunt? Do you mourn?”

  “A grandson,” she said softly, and her eyes filled.

  “I hope there is some way to lift the curse that has come to your village.”

  She looked down at his foot. “Some say you have power,” she said, “others that you brought the curse.”

  “What do you think?” Chakliux asked her.

  “I think it is the woman, but who listens to me? I am old. But they forget that I remember the first time she came.”

  “You remember when K’os was here before?”

  The old one hissed and lifted a hand, tapped his mouth with her fingers. “Don’t say her name. It might give her the power to leave the lodge.”

  “Cen is with her. He won’t let her leave.”

  “She can do all kinds of things. She’s like a shaman. She can sit there and be with Cen while her spirit is out here doing evil. She is like that. I saw it in her the first time she came to us. She lived with my friend and her husband. They were old then, and died long ago, but they didn’t see what she was. We should have sent her away the first day she came.” She nodded and began to mumble as though arguing with herself, and finally she spoke out to say, “Of course, she still might have come back. She’s one of those who forgets nothing.” She gave him a sly look, arched her sparse brows. “They say you are her son, and the girl, the young wife Uutuk, she’s the dau
ghter. Is that true?”

  “She raised us both. There was a time when I called her mother.”

  “So perhaps you helped her in the cursing,” the old woman said.

  “No, we did not.”

  She laughed. “What else would you say? That you helped her? We still have enough men left in this village to kill you both.”

  Her words were a boast and also, Chakliux recognized, a way to comfort herself.

  “You’re lucky you have Cen,” she continued. “He’s the only one who stands between you and death. And look what has happened to him. Your mother’s curse has even taken his wife.

  “I know what it is to mourn, but this curse is more terrible than most. I sat beside my grandson for two days watching him die.” Again her eyes were wet, and she did not bother to blink away the tears. They pooled in the pouches above her cheekbones. “Everything he had ever eaten came up,” she said, gesturing toward her mouth, “and his bowels …” She shook her head. “I wanted to take his pain. Why did this happen to him when he was young, and here I am old and nearly worthless?” She held out her hands to show him that they were shaking. “I should be the one dead,” she said. “I should be.”

  “Aunt, there’s always need for your wisdom,” Chakliux said gently. He gave her the water bladders, and before she went into her lodge, she said, “Sometimes people call me Near Mouse.”

  He knew the poison. It was from the baneberry plant. Years ago, K’os had tricked the woman Dii into poisoning her own husband with it. The death had been no loss. Fox Barking was a man who caused all those around him problems, but at that time he had been leader of a village, and Dii was fortunate to avoid the punishment of death.

  The man’s death had been a blessing for Chakliux’s family. His brother Sok had taken Dii as wife, and their marriage was a good one. She had given Sok healthy children, and not only that, she had the gift of dreaming caribou. Their village had not been hungry since Dii came to them, for she could almost always tell the hunters where the herds were traveling. What a fool Fox Barking had been to see her gift as a threat to his own power.

  Chakliux sighed. K’os’s death would cost him much. Perhaps his own life. Uutuk had offered to help him, but how could he allow her to be involved? She was too young, and still loved K’os as mother.

  Chakliux was not a vengeful man, and though Cen thought it was only just for K’os to die a slow and painful death, Chakliux did not want to see her suffer. Besides, a lingering death would give her time to curse those who caused it. He went back to the lodge and chose two throwing spears, each with a long stone point, then went to the village hearths. The four fires had been started again, but there were no women tending boiling pots. The fires burned only so that anyone careless enough to allow their own hearth to go out could come and get coals.

  Chakliux squatted beside one of the fires and held his spears in the smoke. For a long time he prayed for strength, for wisdom, for safety. He took his hunting knife from its sheath and prayed over it as well, and when he felt he had gathered enough power, he left the hearths and walked to Cen’s lodge.

  K’os was waiting for him. She stood slowly, her eyes burning. “You will kill me yourself,” she said, then held a hand out toward Uutuk. “In front of my daughter?” she asked.

  “Leave, Uutuk,” Chakliux said. “You don’t have to be here. Why see this? Remember the good things this mother did for you, and think of nothing else.”

  Uutuk scrambled to her feet. She had begun to cry.

  “Where is your husband?” Chakliux asked her, but he did not take his eyes from K’os.

  “He and Cen went hunting ptarmigan.” Her crying made the words difficult for Chakliux to understand.

  “And Daes?”

  “She doesn’t want to stay with me in this lodge any more than she must,” K’os answered, and Chakliux could not help but marvel at the calmness of her voice. She was wearing only caribou hide pants and a few necklaces, her chest bare in the custom of the First Men. If he could not have seen her hands or face, he would have thought she was young. She held her shoulders so straight, and her breasts were still plump, unlike those of most old women. Her eyes, too, were bright, but hard and cold, as they had always been. She was holding the upper of a caribou hide boot, furred, and cut to fit to a sealskin sole that lay on the floor at her feet. Uutuk had a similar boot in her hand, this one with the sole partially attached, dangling at the heel, gaping like an open mouth.

  “You think you can kill me?” K’os said. “Why now, when you have never been able to do it before?”

  “Go, Uutuk!” Chakliux told the girl, but Uutuk hesitated, looking first at him, then at her mother. “Now, Uutuk!”

  “Do it quickly,” Uutuk said to him and suddenly gagged. She caught her breath and straightened, moved a hand to her belly. K’os’s eyes went wide.

  “No!” Uutuk said, and she covered her stomach with both hands.

  K’os threw back her head and began to laugh. “No wonder you are both so anxious to kill me. Even you, Uutuk. You think I will curse that babe you carry?” She dropped the boot from her hand and spread her arms wide, took a step toward Uutuk, and suddenly Chakliux realized that she had a knife in her hand, a small-bladed crooked knife. One a woman would use for sewing. She clapped a hand on Uutuk’s shoulder and the girl flinched, but K’os’s grasp was strong. She pressed the knife close to Uutuk’s neck.

  “Such a small blade,” K’os said. “What damage could it do?” She laughed. “There is poison you probably don’t know, Chakliux.”

  Uutuk groaned.

  “You were foolish, Chakliux, not to get her out of here one way or another before you came in with your spears. But how good for me that you did not. For now I know that I have a grandchild. I think I might like to take him with me to the spirit world. It’s a long journey and better made with a companion, nae’? Think what a favor I did all these Four Rivers People who once tried to kill me. I let them go together. Now they’ll have a village there. And you think I have no compassion. Remember, they made me go alone, in winter.” She moved the knife. “Aaa, I was telling you about the poison. It’s used by whale hunters on the tips of their harpoons. It stops the breathing; it stills the heart. Uutuk, a small scratch might allow you to live and only take the babe, but I’m not sure. I’ve much to learn about this poison. Perhaps it will take you, too. Then the three of us can go together, you and me and our baby.”

  Then, suddenly, someone in the entrance tunnel called to Chakliux. The old woman Near Mouse came in carrying a bag that smelled of cooked meat. She stopped just inside the door. Her mouth fell open, and she let out a scream. In that moment, Uutuk dropped to the floor, and K’os lost her grip on the girl’s shoulder. Then Chakliux threw a spear, took K’os high in the center of her chest, threw another that caught her in the throat. The weight of the spears and the thrust of Chakliux’s throws took K’os backward to the floor.

  Blood pooled around her head and neck, and when she no longer twitched, Chakliux went close enough to kick the crooked knife from her hand. Uutuk came into his arms, and they held one another. He thought she was crying, but when she finally pulled away, he saw that her eyes were dry.

  “I cannot mourn her,” she said softly.

  “Leave now,” he said, and asked Near Mouse to take Uutuk back to her lodge. When they were gone, he knelt beside K’os’s body and carefully cut her apart at each joint.

  Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

  602 B.C.

  “Your story is better,” one of the River men told Qumalix.

  “No,” said another. “Yikaas’s story is the way it happened.”

  An old woman spoke up and said, “I heard that Ghaden killed her, to protect his wife, and when K’os was dead, her throat looked like a wolf had torn it out, so everyone knew that the dog Biter had come back to protect Ghaden.”

  Several others murmured that they had heard the same story. Another said that Uutuk had killed K’os, and another that Cen h
ad done it. One old man told them that he heard Cries-loud had killed K’os to protect his mother.

  “Which one should we believe?” a little boy asked. “How do we know what is true?”

  Then Kuy’aa stood up. “Perhaps the truth is that K’os died many times in many ways. Did she deserve any less than that?”

  Yikaas and Qumalix sat together in the storyteller’s ulax. By the time everyone had left and old Kuy’aa was snoring in one of the curtained sleeping places, Yikaas himself had been ready to sleep. But now that he and Qumalix were alone, his mind was suddenly clear. Even his eyes no longer burned from the smoke of the seal oil lamp.

  “Your story about K’os’s death was good,” Yikaas said. He turned so he could watch Qumalix’s face as he spoke to her. The walls of his heart suddenly seemed too thin, so that with each pulse of his blood, they trembled, but he held his voice steady, and spoke with a boldness he did not feel. “I still think my story is right, but that doesn’t mean that yours isn’t good.”

  He expected an angry retort. Qumalix always said what she thought, and he had grown to like that. She looked at him with brows raised.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  “Because it is good,” he told her.

  “No, not about my story, about your own. Why do you say yours is right?”

  “The storytellers in my village have been telling the right story since it happened.”

  “And mine haven’t?”

  He shrugged, turned his head to stare at the seal oil lamp. He missed the good hearthfires of his own people. The poor flickering lamp gave so little flame. How was a man supposed to have his thoughts strengthened by that?

  “Look,” he finally said, and slipped his caribou hide boot from his right foot. He expected her to be surprised, and she was, so surprised that she spoke in her own language, then, apologizing, said, “Otter foot,” in the River tongue.

  “I understood the first time,” he told her. He had not lived in a First Men village most of the summer without picking up some of their words. “This is why my story is right and yours is wrong. My foot proves that Chakliux’s spirit, some small part of it, lives in me.”