The Storyteller Trilogy (53 page)

“No, I will not.”

Chakliux laid a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. “Good,” he said. “It is a lesson every man has to learn. There are many River Ice Dancers in the world. At least one for each of us, it seems.” He looked into his nephew’s eyes until the boy finally smiled.

WINTER, 6459 B.C.

S
OMETIMES I DREAM I
am back again with my own people, in our village by the inlet. I hear the gulls and kittiwakes. I see the grasses bend with the wind. When I awake, I lie very still, and though my bed is hard, and I sleep in the cold of the entry tunnel, I can almost believe that I am home, that soon I will hear Qung’s quiet wisdom or the scolding voices of He Sings’s wives.

When I first came to this village, my dreams were always bad, but then Biter led Yaa to us. By the time she reached us, she could walk only by clinging to his fur, but somehow she survived the journey. She and Ghaden were adopted by a young woman. They call her Star and say her mother has lived on the edge of madness since Star’s father died. He was killed, K’os tells me, by her son Chakliux, but I have come to know K’os, slave to master. It is a peculiar kind of knowing, and makes me cautious in what I believe. I do not think Chakliux would have killed the man without good reason.

On cold nights, Yaa sends Biter to sleep with me. His body warms mine, and I am sure his thick fur catches evil dreams, for I have yet to have one when he sleeps beside me.

K’os gives me much work to do, and worst of all, lends me to hunters and traders to warm their beds. At one time, I would have thought nothing of doing such a thing, but it is different to come to men as a slave. For all that is bad, there is also some good. K’os recognizes my worth as storyteller. I have had many times during this long winter to practice my skills, and no shaman in this village cries out to protest when I speak in other voices.

Qung taught me well. There is no way I can repay her, or even tell her of my gratitude. But I owe her for more than stories. During the years Qung lived alone in our village, using her stories as a hunter uses his harpoon, to bring in meat, she learned to live as a hunter lives, earning good fortune with respect, with quietness and with skill.

Now I practice what she taught me: I do not speak of my discontent, I watch, I survive.

THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE

AQAMDAX LIFTED HER HEAD
and looked at K’os.

“Go get wood,” K’os told her. “Not from the piles at the edge of the lodge, but from the woods.” She smiled. “Put it in the entrance tunnel so it will dry.”

Aqamdax kept her face still, her mouth straight. She had discovered that K’os did most things to show her own power, to rejoice in what she could make Aqamdax do, and Aqamdax had scars to remind her of the times she had tried to defy the woman.

The wind found their smoke hole and hurled soot back at them, stirred the ashes in the hearth. A drift of ice crystals slanted in from the entrance tunnel. K’os had allowed her to keep only one of her sleeping furs, a woven hare fur blanket, too old to remember the warmth of the animals it had come from. Cen had one of her blankets, made of sea otter fur, thick and heavy. He used it in his own bed, but on the coldest nights, he would give it back to Aqamdax. She was careful to hide it under her hare fur blanket so K’os did not see.

Aqamdax pulled the hood of her parka tightly around her face and slipped into the boots Cen had given her, good warm boots of caribou and seal skin. K’os had already paid Cen back for giving Aqamdax those boots—a meal that left Cen writhing in agony, clutching his belly for two days. Aqamdax had eaten nothing from K’os’s hands for a long time after Cen’s illness. A slave that ill might be killed. Who had time to care for her?

Aqamdax put on her snowshoes and went out through the entrance tunnel, working her way through the drift that blocked off the door, opening the frozen caribouskin doorflap carefully so it would not crack in the cold. She had made herself mittens from the fur of the ground squirrels she had killed last fall when she was gathering firewood outside the village. She had hidden to eat their meat, had eaten it raw so K’os would not know she had extra food. Their skins made warm mittens with small pouches for her thumbs and high cuffs that nearly reached her elbows.

The wind was so strong and the snow so thick that Aqamdax could not see the next lodge. It would be difficult enough to bring in wood from the piles she had stored around the lodge, let alone to find her way into the forest.

K’os’s request had not surprised her, though. Cen had left several days before on a winter trading trip to the Black River Village, and since he’d left, Tikaani had not come to K’os’s lodge as he usually did when Cen was away. K’os had finally visited Tikaani in the hunters’ lodge, the only woman in the village ever to do such a thing, Aqamdax heard the women at the cooking hearths say.

That day, K’os had returned to her own lodge so full of anger that Aqamdax had quickly made an excuse to leave, telling K’os that one of the elders had requested she bring him some of K’os’s willow bark tea.

K’os had thrown a packet of bark at Aqamdax, and Aqamdax had grabbed her parka and boots, scooted into the entrance tunnel to put them on. She had taken the willow bark to old Twisted Stalk’s lodge, had told the woman K’os had sent her and that the tea would help soothe the ache of her husband’s hips and knees.

In return, Twisted Stalk gave her a bowl of meat and broth, more food than Aqamdax usually had in a day, and when she had eaten, Twisted Stalk gave her a poorly made floor mat to take back to K’os.

Aqamdax had walked the village, hoping to see Ghaden or Yaa before she returned to K’os’s lodge, but though other children were sliding down a snow-covered hill on caribou hides, Ghaden and Yaa were not among them. Aqamdax had watched the children for a while, thinking how smart the Cousin River mothers were to allow their children to do such hard work for them—wearing the hair from the hides by their sliding.

She had finally returned to K’os, to the woman’s anger, her sharp words and slapping fingers. K’os cut Twisted Stalk’s woven mat into strips, then told Aqamdax to feed it to the fire, but Aqamdax saved part of it and hid it in the entrance tunnel, later used it to pad her own bed.

Today, there would be no children outside. Even the dogs were curled close to the lodges, tails covering noses, snow mounding over them. She walked lodge to lodge, remembered the stories some of the women had told her about people lost in snowstorms, some not found until spring. Who in this village would even notice she was gone if such a thing happened to her?

Star did not allow Ghaden and Yaa to be with Aqamdax, shielded their eyes with her hand if they walked past her or met her at the village hearths. They were not even allowed to come when K’os planned a storytelling. Star claimed it was because Aqamdax was slave, but Aqamdax thought it more likely that the woman feared she would steal the children, take them back to the Near River Village.

But why should she return to the Near River Village? No one there wanted her. Not Sok, or Red Leaf; perhaps Chakliux, but if he had cared for her, why hadn’t he come after her?

Aqamdax turned and walked backward into the wind. She ran into the next lodge, tripping over a pile of wood and driving snow up under the back of her parka. It was too cold to do such a foolish thing, she told herself as she got up and brushed out the snow before it could melt. She fought her way through the village and to the tree that stood just beyond the last lodge. She stopped there in hopes that she might find a limb broken off by the wind, but there was nothing, and branches that had once been within her reach had been taken by other hands for other hearth fires.

The path that had been easy to find in the morning was now buried, but even in the snow and wind, Aqamdax thought she could see the dark edge of the forest. She walked toward it, pulling her hood so tightly around her face that only her eyes showed. Her toes were like pieces of wood and her fingers ached with the cold.

As she entered the forest, the wind pulled a strange song from the trees, and Aqamdax wrapped her arms around herself. The First Men were not a people of forests. Who could tell what spirits hid in those gnarled branches? Who could say what amulets and songs would appease them?

Aqamdax opened her mouth and chanted her thanks, a praise song for the trees, something she made up as she sang. Then she heard a cracking above her head, a sound that vibrated through the earth. She pressed herself against a tree trunk, looked up through the branches. The top of the tree tipped and fell, breaking away lower branches, moving slowly as though in a dream, and flinging snow into Aqamdax’s face when it hit the ground.

Biter scratched at the side of the lodge, and Yaa made a face at the dog. He had not been out all day, so she was sure he had to go, but the storm was fierce, and for some reason the wind seemed to scare Ghaden. Star ignored the dog, as she always did, as she had since she and Ghaden had screamed at each other over the dog’s right to stay in the lodge rather than be tied outside like other dogs. Often Yaa felt as if she were mother to both Ghaden and Star, though Star had the face and body of an adult.

There were good days when Star took care of Ghaden, fed him, made clothes for him. She taught Yaa to sew caribou hair into patterns of leaves and flowers on her clothing. Then she would suddenly become as whiny and fretful as a child, arguing over small things and pinching when she couldn’t get her way.

Star’s mother, Long Eyes, was worse than Star. She sat all day, rocking side to side and singing a song with words Yaa could not understand. Long Eyes left the lodge only twice a day to visit the women’s place, and once a month to spend four or five days in the moon blood lodge. Those were the best times, if Star was also good. The worst times were like now, when both women were in the lodge and Star was behaving like a child, screaming out her demands, sometimes even trying to curl herself into her mother’s lap. It was a curse, Trail Climber had told her. Something that happened to the mother when her husband was killed by K’os’s son. That son was gone, had left the village in shame, and everyone was forbidden even to say his name, but the hunters in the village were preparing to seek revenge, were going to attack the village where this son now lived.

They even had new weapons, Trail Climber had told her, but had whispered that Yaa could tell no one, not even Ghaden. She had promised, then had asked Trail Climber if Star had also changed into this strange woman-child at the death of her father. Trail Climber told her that Star had always been that way, spoiled and expecting more than others had, but that she became worse after her father died.

During bad times, Yaa reminded herself of the three handfuls of days it had taken her and Biter to find the Cousin River Village. She remembered the howling of wolves, the bear tracks. She had not known the night sky was so wide, the stars’ light so feeble against the darkness. When they ran out of food, she had eaten berries that made her so sick she could walk only a short way before resting, and when Biter had caught a ptarmigan, she did not even have the strength to make a fire. She and Biter had eaten it raw, slept, then started out again. They came to the Cousin River Village that evening, Yaa so weak that she had to lean on Biter just to walk.

When Yaa remembered that, she was grateful for Star and Long Eyes, for the warm lodge they shared with her and with Ghaden, especially on storm days like this one.

“Star,” Yaa said, seeing that Biter’s scratching was becoming more frantic, “I have to let Biter out.”

Star looked at Yaa with empty eyes, but Ghaden gripped Biter’s fur.

“He cannot go into the bowl like you,” Yaa told him. “If he goes inside maybe Star will get angry and tie him outside.”

She did not want to remind him that the Cousin River People often ate dogs, more than the Near River People did, especially dogs that did not have golden eyes. She saw the knowledge in Ghaden’s face. He released his hold, and Yaa whispered, “Go to Star. Climb into her lap. You might distract her enough for me to let Biter out.”

“He will come back?” Ghaden asked, looking up at the crust of snow that had formed over the smoke hole.

Yaa, too, looked up, told herself she would have to clear the snow away now, and also during the night, if the storm did not stop.

“Biter’s too smart to stay out in this storm,” Yaa told Ghaden, then waited as he climbed into Star’s lap and used his fingers like a comb to stroke Star’s hair. Yaa crept to the entrance tunnel, opened the flap for the dog, crawled after him to the outside doorflap, broke the snow away from the edges and let him out. She waited for a moment, then called him. She peeked outside, could see that he stood with his nose pointed up, as though to smell the wind, then he turned and followed her back inside.

“Stay away from the tunnel. Don’t go out,” Star said when Yaa returned. Ghaden was sitting in front of her and had her hair combed down over her face. Yaa found a shell comb from one of Star’s baskets and crouched beside him. She motioned with her head toward Biter, and Ghaden crawled over to the dog, wiped the snow from the dog’s fur.

Yaa pulled the comb through Star’s long, thick hair. “I’m right here,” she told Star. “Don’t worry. We won’t go outside.”

The men sat together in the hunters’ lodge. Those with wives grumbled of too much time spent listening to children whine and women complain.

Tikaani looked at his brother, Night Man. He seemed to be a little stronger, able to stand now and hobble across the lodge if he braced himself with a walking stick. Though his legs were not injured, the wound in his shoulder had not yet healed, and it had spread its poison through his body, leaving painful lumps at his groin, the backs of his knees and under both arms.

It was a poison that even K’os was not able to stop, and she blamed its power on the Near River People, told the men that they must destroy that village or the poison would spread from Night Man to every Cousin River hunter. In the autumn, with food and wood plentiful, it was something to think about, killing those Near Rivers. The warriors honed their skills with spears and spearthrowers, with knives, and also with the new sacred weapon K’os had won for them through her cunning.