The Storyteller Trilogy (108 page)

“What’s wrong with him?” Blue Flower asked, her face a pale moon peering from the darkness.

“Stomach pains,” Dii answered, afraid to say more.

“Diarrhea?”

“Yes.”

“Wait.”

Dii had not taken time to put on her boots. She stood in her lodge moccasins, and the cold of the ground seeped into her feet, made her bones ache. Finally Blue Flower poked her head out again. “Nagoonberry root,” she said. “Let him chew it, or make a tea.”

Dii had many questions, but Blue Flower closed the doorflap in her face. She went back to her tent, could smell her husband’s sickness before she even stepped inside. He was lying with his knees drawn to his chest. She knelt beside him broke off a piece of the root, pressed it against his lips.

“It will help you,” she said. “Blue Flower sent it.”

He opened his mouth.

“Chew it,” she told him. “I will make a tea.” She waited until he clamped the root between his teeth, then she put the rest into her own mouth, chewed until it was pulp, then spat it into a cup and poured in a little water. She pushed the cup into the coals and waited until the water was warm, then she took it to Anaay, tried not to see the mess he was lying in. She tipped his chin up, pulled what remained of the root from his mouth, then dipped her fingers into the cup and dripped the mash down his throat.

He seemed to relax, and Dii let herself hope that the nagoonberry was working. Suddenly his teeth clamped on the edge of the cup. His head snapped back, and his arms and legs flailed. She tried to hold him still, but he broke away from her, continued to twitch and jerk.

She lifted a chant, clasped the amulet her father had given her when she was still a child. Fear made her tremble. What hope could she have for protection when Anaay himself was so cursed? She began to cry, tears dropping from her cheeks to the front of her parka, but she did not stop singing until finally Anaay lay still. His eyes were open and had rolled up into his head so she could see only the whites. He jerked, and she jumped away, dropped the cup of mash. Then he was looking at her. Perhaps the tea and her prayers had worked.

“I’ll get you clean clothes, Husband,” she told him. “You can sleep here in my tent….”

Then she noticed he had not blinked, and suddenly she knew that he was seeing nothing at all.

THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP

Sok shook himself awake. He thought he had heard a fox barking. Had it been true or only a part of his dreams? Either way, what else could it mean but death? He crawled to the open side of the lean-to, saw that Owl Catcher, sitting beside Snow-in-her-hair, had fallen asleep. One look at his wife froze his heart.

Her mouth and eyes were open. Sometime during the night, her spirit had found its way from her body. He tried to begin a mourning cry, but no sound came from his throat. Perhaps when Snow left, she had taken his voice with her. He leaned over his wife’s body, gathered her into his arms, wept silently.

“I’m strong enough,” Star said.

“You may be,” Chakliux told her, “but what about Snow-in-her-hair? What about Yaa?”

“Let them stay here with Sok. He can care for them. I need to get back to my lodge. My baby is growing, and soon I will not walk so easily.”

Chakliux sighed. He slipped on his parka and boots. When Star was in such a mood, there was no way to reason with her. But perhaps she was right. They were only four, five days from the winter village. Why not allow most of the people to go on to the village? Why should everyone stay for the few who were too weak to travel? The women needed time to repair their lodges for winter, and the men needed to divide out the caribou among the families.

As Chakliux started toward Sok’s lean-to, Star crawled out after him, whining that he should fill the boiling bag and bring more wood for the fire.

“If you are well enough to walk to the winter village, you are well enough to feed yourself,” he told her, and grabbed several strips of dried meat from a rack at the side of the tent, ate as he walked.

When he drew closer to Sok’s lean-to, he heard Owl Catcher’s voice, thin and broken, chanting a mourning song. Suddenly the meat Chakliux had eaten was like something rotten in his belly. He threw the rest of it to one of the dogs tied beside the tent, then he went inside. He wrapped his arms around Sok and let his tears join his brother’s.

THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE

“I think you are wrong about K’os,” Red Leaf said to Cen. She would have never spoken to Sok in such a way, but Cen was a man who would listen to a woman, even his wife.

“She’s not a good woman,” he told her. “You do not know K’os like I do.”

“She makes beautiful parkas.”

“You make beautiful parkas.”

“Think how much you will get if both of us are making parkas for you to trade.”

She saw Cen raise his eyebrows at the thought, and her heart beat hard in hope.

But then he said, “I lived with her once. In her lodge in the Cousin Village. I intended to take her as wife, but one day when I came home, she was in her bedding furs with another man.”

“She was not your wife, you said.”

“It would have been no different if she had been. The hunters laughed at my anger, told me she welcomed any man into her bed if he had enough beads or furs.”

“So let her sleep with them,” Red Leaf said. “When she’s your wife, what she gets in beads and furs will belong to you. You will have more to trade.”

She thought Cen would be angry with her for saying such a thing, but to her surprise, he laughed. Then he stood and pulled off her caribou hide shirt. He pushed her back into his bed. She opened her legs to him, and for a little while she did not think about K’os.

THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE

D
II’S FIRST THOUGHT WAS
to go to Sun Caller. He was an elder; he would know what to do. Perhaps she should also get Blue Flower. But when she looked again at her husband, shrunken in death, lying in a pool of his own blood and feces, she knew they would guess he had been poisoned.

And who would believe K’os had done it? She had left them so long ago. Dii still bore the marks of Anaay’s beating. It would not be difficult to think she had taken revenge.

She could steal one of the dogs. She had food and her tent…. No. The Near Rivers would come after her. The people had to avenge his death. Would Anaay’s spirit be any more forgiving than Anaay had been?

Dii went outside, looked up at the stars. She still had most of the night left, and Anaay owned three strong dogs, two travois. Dii was small, did not eat much. With Anaay’s share of the caribou, with fish she had caught and dried and the supplies they had brought with them, there was enough to get her back to the Cousin Village. What was that from here? Four, five days’ walk. Perhaps a little more.

She packed the travois carefully, tied Anaay’s weapons and his walking stick to the largest. Then she used lengths of babiche to bind Anaay’s joints so his spirit could not harm her, then to tie him and his mess into the grass mats she rolled around his body. She layered the travois with spruce branches from the tent floor and dragged Anaay to it. She tied him to the poles, took down her tent and draped it over him, bound it and the tent poles to the travois.

She crept through the village to Anaay’s tent, took it down also. She had wanted to leave it, but who would believe a man as selfish as Anaay would leave without taking his lean-to, even battered as it was by the caribou’s hooves?

It took Dii four trips to carry everything back to the travois. She harnessed the strongest dog, a golden-eyed male, to the travois that held Anaay’s body, then tied the other male to the second travois. The third dog, a young female, she loaded with packs that held Anaay’s bedding and his extra clothing.

Before the sun rose, she led the dogs in a wide circle around the camp, away from the sea and east toward the Cousin River Village. She would travel most of the day, find a place to leave Anaay’s body, then return to her own people. Perhaps a woman with three dogs and two travois would find a man willing to take her as wife. If not, surely one of the old women would welcome her.

And who among the Near Rivers would doubt that Anaay had chosen to live somewhere else rather than admit he had claimed caribou where there were none?

THE COUSIN RIVER HUNTERS

“She is dead,” Chakliux said.

Aqamdax glanced up at him, was suddenly frightened that he looked so tired, so small.

“Snow?”

“Snow. How is Yaa?”

“Stronger.”

“Strong enough to travel to the winter village if we make a travois for her? Sky Watcher says he will pull it.”

“You will leave before the mourning is ended?”

“I cannot,” he said. “I’ll stay with Sok, but why keep everyone four days in this place when we are so close to the village?”

“I’ll stay. Yaa and Ghaden and I. It’s better not to move Yaa.”

“If she’s strong enough, it would be best to have her at the village. Ligige’ is there. Her medicine is good. She might have been able to save Snow. I should have sent a hunter for her. I should…”

Aqamdax stood and lifted a hand to Chakliux’s face. “The river took her, Chakliux,” she said softly. “Do not waste your days in regret. Your brother needs you. He has lost much.”

“All things were going so well, Aqamdax, until that time we were at the river. Perhaps by what we did—”

Aqamdax placed her fingers over his mouth, stopped his words. How could she bear to hear what he said? What they did was a betrayal to Night Man and Star. Not to anyone else. Why should Snow be punished? Or Yaa?

“We have lost our luck, you and I,” Chakliux said.

“No,” said Aqamdax. “Nothing has changed for us. How many times in a hunt do people die? Hunters drown; women become sick. Children are lost in the traveling. Yet on this hunt, only one has died. Do not say our luck is gone. I’ll go to the winter village, and when I get there, I’ll throw away Night Man. When you and Sok return, then I will be your wife.”

She leaned close to him, and he put his arms around her. When she went back to the tent to prepare Yaa for the journey, Aqamdax was crying.

Chakliux helped the people load their supplies, and though Star whined and pleaded to stay with him, he sent her back with the others. Sky Watcher pulled Yaa’s travois and fended off Star, who thought she should ride with Yaa. Once, Aqamdax looked back at Chakliux, then she set her eyes on the trail and did not turn. Ghaden and Biter walked beside her. She carried her own packs and some of Star’s.

With their loads, it would take them five days, Chakliux thought—at least that with Star causing trouble and Yaa on the travois.

Chakliux watched until trees and hills hid them from his view, then he went back to his brother, to the bundle that was Snow-in-her-hair. The women had made a short mourning for her, had washed her and dressed her in the best clothing they could find in the camp—boots from one woman, leggings from another, a necklace given, a stone from an amulet. But now only he and Sok remained to mourn, and Chakliux wondered if, without the women, a proper mourning could be made. Perhaps Aqamdax was right. She should have stayed.

He had set several charred coals on the hearth stones. When they were cool, he used the handle of his sleeve knife to pound them into powder. He sifted the powder into a bowl of rendered caribou fat and used his fingers to knead the mixture until it was smooth. Then he blackened his face, watched as Sok did the same.

Sok pulled a knife from his belt scabbard, lay his left hand on a rock, held the blade, trembling, over his smallest finger.

Chakliux reached out, caught Sok’s wrist. “No,” he said. “You would honor the ways of the North Tundra People to mourn your wife?”

As Dzuuggi, Chakliux knew those stories of the men who crossed the North Sea to trade with the River People and the Walrus Hunters. He had heard how they mutilated themselves to show mourning. “Will she know it is from you, that finger?” Chakliux asked his brother. “She will think some Tundra hunter remembers his dead wife.”

Chakliux took the knife, pushed up his parka sleeve and slashed his forearm, once, twice. He stood and allowed the blood to drip into the fire, to rise with the smoke in honor of Snow-in-her-hair. He gave the knife to Sok, watched as Sok slashed his arm four times. Then Chakliux began the mourning chants.

A storm found the Cousin People during their second day of walking. By midmorning, the wind whipped the snow until it blasted their faces like sand. The dogs fought their harnesses, and women fell under loads made heavier by the weight of ice.

At noon they found a strand of black spruce to shelter them. The men helped the women set up their lean-tos, but even in the lee of the trees, the wind and cold made tent poles splinter.

Aqamdax dug a cave in the snow, and the ice-hardened crust cut its way through her caribou hide mittens to score her hands. When she reached bare ground, she made a flooring of haired caribou hides, warming the hides with her breath and hands, then unfolding them slowly so they did not crack in the cold. She unharnessed Night Man’s dogs, set the packs around the snow cave like a wall, then she and Star, Night Man, Ghaden and Yaa huddled together, sharing each other’s warmth. Her thoughts carried her back to Sok and Chakliux, alone with Snow-in-her-hair, and she prayed for their safety.

Chakliux’s dreams seemed to come to him from the snow, and they filled his mind with fear. He watched as though he were an eagle, seeing all things from the sky. He saw himself walking with Sok, and together they dragged a travois. It was filled with packs, and also a body wrapped in the way of the dead, knees drawn up to the chin, arms crossed and tucked close to the chest. The head was covered with a caribou hide, and as they walked, the wind lifted the hide. Then Chakliux saw that the dead one was not Snow-in-her-hair but Aqamdax.

He woke to his own cries and was afraid to return to sleep. How could he risk that his dreams would again find Aqamdax and steal away her spirit?

THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE

The men had cut her lodge poles, and K’os paid them well for their work. They showed her the sunken ground, dug out long ago by the first one to put a lodge there. Even stones and sand were still in place for the hearth. She had scraped the hides River Ice Dancer gave her, added them to her own, and sewed them into a lodge cover. It was a small lodge, but K’os’s stitches were even and tight; the sinew she had borrowed from Sand Fly was well twisted and strong.