The Storyteller Trilogy (163 page)

“You can come with me if you want,” Seal said, a puzzled look on his face, as though she had just told him one of her riddles. “I know you will be lonely without Uutuk.”

“We’re going with her, nae’?” K’os asked, and in her distress, did not realize that she had spoken in the River tongue. Seal made a rude noise, and insulted her with fingers flapping—sign of the gull, a bird so lazy that it steals food.

She ignored the insult and repeated her words in the First Men language.

“How can we go with her?” Seal asked. “We have to return to our own village. Our chief hunter and my uncle gave me sealskins, fur seal pelts, and oil to trade. If I do not return, they will think I have cheated them.”

“Or they will think we are dead, swallowed by the sea,” K’os said. “Who could be angry about that? Then when we do return, they will be glad. You told me once that you had hoped to trade with River People. Why lose your chance? Now you have a son-by-marriage who can help you make those trades.”

“I am wise enough to make my own trades.”

“Of course,” K’os said, and shrugged her shoulders. “You are right. You do not need him, but I do not want to see my daughter go off with a River husband by herself. What if the people in his village hate her? She is a First Men woman, and not only First Men but also Boat People. What hope does she have to be accepted as one of them?”

“You told me that Ghaden himself is part First Men. He lives among them without problems.”

“Who would risk angering a young man who can kill a brown bear?”

Seal stroked the claw at his neck and raised his eyes to the ulax roof as though he would find wise answers there among the rafters and grass mats.

Finally he said, “You have trained Uutuk in plant medicines. All people are glad to have a healer.”

“She knows First Men medicines.”

“She can learn River.”

“If she finds someone to teach her.”

Seal narrowed his eyes. “You want to go with her so you can teach her.”

“No one knows more about plant medicines than I do,” K’os said. “In one year, summer to summer, I can teach her what would take a lifetime to learn without help.”

Seal stood and reached up for a water bladder. He drank and offered it to K’os. She was not thirsty, but it was always wise to accept Seal’s gifts, even those as small as a sip of water. She took the bladder, drank, and thanked him.

He returned it to the peg and said, “So you think I could make good trades?”

She smiled. “You always make good trades. I think you would have opportunity to barter for things we cannot get even here, perhaps something from the North Tundra People or the Caribou Hunters who live far to the east.”

“It might not be terrible to spend a year with the River People,” Seal said. “I will speak to Ghaden about it.”

K’os tilted her head and ran her tongue over her lips, making promises without words. “I was wrong,” she told him. “You made a good decision in giving Uutuk to Ghaden.”

Seal shrugged. “Wives are not expected to have much wisdom in choosing husbands for their daughters. But if we are to go with Ghaden and Uutuk, think about this. I will need a good parka.”

Seal approached his daughter as she was digging bitterroot in the meadow on the mountain side of the village. She was carrying a net gathering bag, and it was nearly full.

“Bitterroot,” she said, holding the bag up for him to see. Bitterroot, boiled and mixed with seal oil, was one of his favorite foods.

“It is early for bitterroot,” he said.

“Here the summer is warmer and all plants are ahead of themselves.”

As she spoke her eyes moved nervously, and he knew that she was deciding which way to run if he tried to touch her. The thought made him angry. He had never touched her more than any father touches a daughter. There were taboos. Of course, she was not daughter by blood, and bedding a woman like Uutuk would be worth a small curse. He lifted his hand to the bear claw, felt power course into his fingers, and he reminded himself that for now, at least, Uutuk would serve him better as daughter than as bedmate.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

She was using a piece of driftwood as a digging stick, and she lifted it from the ground, held the end high enough so that he could see she had sharpened it into a point. She raised her chin in the direction of the beach.

“The iqyax racks cut the wind,” she said.

“There are too many people on the beach,” he told her.

She set her mouth into a firm line and squatted on her haunches, laying the digging stick across her knees.

“Talk,” she told him.

“I have accepted a brideprice for you.”

She grimaced but said nothing, and her silence added to his anger.

“You are old enough to be a wife—beyond the age of becoming a wife,” he told her. “You should have babies by now. Instead I have to feed you.”

“Who?” Uutuk asked, ignoring his insults. “River or First Men?”

“River,” Seal said harshly. He clasped the bear claw that hung from his neck, and he saw her eyes widen in understanding. “Be glad. I could have gotten more for you from some old man who would not even be able to fill your belly with children.”

He did not wait to hear her protests. As he strode away from her, back toward the village, he passed two old women with gathering nets. They gave a greeting, but he snarled at them, pounding his feet into the ground as he walked so no one would doubt that he was a man who understood the powers of the earth and used them well.

Q
UNG WAS NAPPING AS
she often did during the middle of the day. When else could a storyteller sleep? Most people wanted to hear tales during the long twilight of summer nights. Daughter sat near Qung’s oil lamp, crimping seal flipper boot soles with her teeth and thinking about being wife to a River man. When her fears seemed too large, she pulled Ghaden’s face into her mind, his smile, and then the tight ache in her belly eased.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a voice calling from the top of the ulax. It was K’os. Daughter set down the boot sole and climbed partway up the log, whispered to her mother that Qung was asleep.

“I have fireweed leaves made into tea. Would you like some?” Daughter asked.

K’os waved a hand in refusal and said, “I have something to tell you.”

Even after many years away from her own people, K’os was much more River than First Men, direct in her way of saying things, without the quiet joy of shared food or tea.

K’os climbed into the ulax, and Daughter put away the boot sole, squatted beside the oil lamp, and waited as her mother took off her parka and sat down.

“Your father has accepted a brideprice for you,” K’os said, and she did not seem concerned about what Daughter thought or how she felt. “The man is Ghaden, and he is a hunter.”

“So I have heard,” said Daughter, leaving her mother to guess whether she meant she had heard about Ghaden’s hunting or about Seal’s choice. “I will miss you.”

“You think I would let you go by yourself and live as wife to a man I do not even know?” K’os asked. “I am a better mother than that.”

Daughter’s relief was so great that she had to close her eyes against the burn of tears.

“And Seal?” she asked. “What does he say?”

“He is a good father,” said K’os, but she looked away, as though she were embarrassed at making the claim. “He promised that we would spend a year with you. That way he will have opportunity to trade with the River People and perhaps the Caribou. While he trades, I will teach you River medicine so that you will not only be wife among the River People but also healer.”

Questions filled Daughter’s mind, but her throat was so thick with gratitude that she had to drink from her cup of fireweed tea before she could find her voice. “After that year you will return to our island?” she finally asked.

“Most likely,” K’os said, “but a year is a long time, so we will wait and see what happens.”

Daughter wanted to ask if she might return with them, but why request a promise that her mother might not be able to keep? Instead she thought of all the good things that come to a woman when she is a wife—her own ulax, children, and a man to share her bed. She thought of Ghaden’s smile and the kindness that shone from his face. Then, to hold in her tears, she fixed her eyes on the flames that danced in the stone lamp and listened as K’os told her how to give joy to her husband during that first night they would spend together in Daughter’s bed.

That evening in the chief hunter’s ulax, K’os helped Daughter wash her hair, first with urine to strip out the old oil, then with three bladders of fresh water to rinse away the urine. They rubbed the hair dry with lemming skins, then K’os used an ivory comb—a marriage gift from the chief hunter’s wives—to smooth out the tangles.

Daughter’s hair hung to her waist, and was so dark that sometimes in the sunlight it seemed to shine blue. K’os combed fresh seal oil through the strands, then also oiled Daughter’s face and arms and breasts. She stepped back and smiled, but when Daughter returned the smile, K’os face changed—a quick tightening of the jaw, a clenching of teeth, a look too fleeting for Daughter to name.

“You are beautiful,” K’os said, “and perhaps it is good that you do not have the First Men’s tattoos, since you will be River.”

“Even many of the Traders’ Beach women do not mark their faces,” Daughter told her, something she had noticed when they first came to the village.

K’os nodded and squinted her eyes, tipped her head to study Daughter’s hair.

“A braid might be good, Uutuk,” she finally said, “since you are marrying River. To let your husband know that you respect his people.”

Daughter made a face. She liked the First Men custom of a bride going to her husband with her hair loose, then the next day binding it in a bun at the nape of her neck, a proud sign that she had been accepted as wife.

“A small braid,” K’os told her, and knelt beside Daughter, used her fingers to divide a section of hair at the left side of Daughter’s face.

When she had finished, she tied it with a bit of sinew thread, then lifted Daughter’s hand to the braid. “Here, see?”

Daughter smiled. It was no bigger around than her smallest finger, but as K’os said, it would show respect for Ghaden’s customs, even though most of her hair still fell loose over her shoulders, as a woman’s hair should.

“You are beautiful,” K’os said again, “and if you remember all the things I taught you about the ways a wife can please …”

She was interrupted by a voice crowing from the top of the ulax, one of the chief hunter’s young sons. He hopped to the floor from the middle of the climbing log, carrying a pack nearly as large as he was. He thrust it at Daughter.

“Here, for you, from that River man. The one who is not a trader.”

The pack was square and cut from hardened caribou hide, laced with babiche at each seam, much like a storage pack K’os had used during Daughter’s childhood until the damp, foggy air of their island had rotted it. Daughter untied the cover flap and reached inside, gasped when she pulled out the white caribou parka.

“For you! For you!” the chief’s son shouted, his thin arms jerking as he danced in a little circle, scuffing up the grass and heather on the hard dirt floor. “Leggings, too. Look inside.”

Daughter took out the leggings. They were made of many small pelts, reddish in color. She stood and held up the parka and leggings so her mother could see.

“The parka is caribou,” Daughter said, “but what are the leggings?”

“Red squirrel,” her mother told her. “They will be warm and light and should last you for more than one winter.”

The chief’s third wife, a woman much given to necklaces and fancy clothing, came out of her sleeping place, and, seeing the parka, exclaimed her envy. She began to finger the fur ruff and count the flicker beaks. Daughter’s joy bubbled into laughter.

“You are First Men, and used to your sax,” K’os told Uutuk, “but you need to wear his gifts.”

Daughter set a hand on her puffin skin sax. She had mended and cleaned it for this night, and it was a reminder of her island, but she knew K’os was right. She had to learn River ways.

She had not worn leggings since she was a little girl, and she soon had the chief’s wife and son laughing as she tried to keep her balance, standing on one leg, then the other to pull on the garment. K’os helped her with the parka, then took a necklace she had been wearing and draped it over Daughter’s head.

“Your father wants you to have this,” she said.

Daughter thanked K’os, but the necklace seemed dark and old against the white of the parka, as if her father’s hands once again lingered too close.

Qung’s teeth were so worn with age that when she smiled, her mouth seemed like a wide, empty cave. Her laughter came from deep in her throat, and her happiness drew wrinkles in her cheeks.

“A wife!” she said to Ghaden. “Will you know what to do with her?” She made a series of coarse jokes, and it seemed so strange to hear them come from an old woman that Ghaden could not help but laugh.

“I have food enough for everyone,” Qung said. “Or will you spend the night in the chief hunter’s ulax? You and your bride are welcome here, you know.”

Ghaden could see the hope in her eyes, and he made a joke of his own, saying, “There are more people than sleeping places in that ulax. Do you think my new wife would like to share our first bed with the chief hunter?”

Qung laughed. She crawled over to the floor cache that held her storage bags of dried meat and fish. She began pulling them out one by one, pawing through them and piling fish and caribou meat on the mats beside her oil lamp.

“You might go and see if anyone has sea urchins to trade,” she told him as she arranged peeled stalks of fresh iitikaalux beside the meat.

He would rather have waited in the ulax for Seal to bring Uutuk, but Ghaden did as she asked. Thoughts of bedding Uutuk drove away his need for food, but he was sure that Seal would want to eat.

At least they were not in a River village. There the marriage would be celebrated with a feast and a long night of dances and songs and riddles. The First Men were more wise about taking wives and did little to celebrate other than the exchange of a brideprice.