The Storyteller Trilogy (73 page)
Read The Storyteller Trilogy Online
Authors: Sue Harrison
The Storyteller Trilogy
Sue Harrison
ContentsGlossary of Native American Words
610
B.C.
T
HE OLD WOMAN LOOKED
down at the child. The boy’s eyes were shining, alert. She was tired, but how often did a storyteller have the pleasure of passing her tales to a child like this? How often was a Dzuuggi, a child destined to be a storyteller, born to the People? And this one was surely Dzuuggi. She had heard his voice in her dreams even when his mother carried him in her womb.
The old woman had also been chosen Dzuuggi, taught as a child the histories of the River People, but now that knowledge was a burden—so many words to be remembered. Each day as she told the stories to the boy, she felt their weight lift from her, and each day she felt lighter and stronger as though her old bones would straighten, and she would walk once more with firm steps.
She cupped a wooden bowl of willow bark tea in her hands. She raised the tea to her mouth and sipped. The bowl had darkened with age, the wood rich from the many teas it had held, the many stories it had heard.
Be like this bowl, small Dzuuggi, the old woman thought, and she closed her eyes, lifted her head so those thoughts would climb like a prayer. Be like this cup. Hold much, give much, and become rich with what is within you.
“So then, child,” she began, “you remember those two storytellers, Aqamdax and Chakliux?”
The boy nodded, whispered the names.
“You do not hear many stories about storytellers; their voices you hear, but only that. So this is something unusual.” The old woman paused and stared into the smoke of the hearth fire at the center of her lodge. The wood was still peaked high, a feast for the burning mouth that would finally consume what she had offered. She reached into the smoke, brought a cupped hand to her face as though to pull words from the flames.
“And you remember that Chakliux was from the River People, just like we are?” she asked. “You remember that he was also chosen as Dzuuggi like you?” Though her words were questions, she did not give him time to answer; instead she went on: “And the woman Aqamdax, she was what?”
“Sea Hunter, First Men,” the boy said.
The old woman nodded.
“Not River,” said the boy.
“Not River, but not so different from us. We share their blood, at least some of us do.” She lifted one finger, pressed it to the wrinkles that spread like a fan between her eyes. “You remember Chakliux had a little Sea Hunter blood, though he was River. I told you about his foot.”
She pulled off one of her furred lodge boots. The leather sole, softened by wear, dark from hearth fire smoke, had worn thin under her toes. She used one hand to press the side of her foot to the floor.
“Curled on edge, it was,” she said, “like an otter’s foot when he paddles in the water and his toes were webbed on both feet. Like otter toes.” She rubbed her bare foot, rubbed and hummed a tuneless song, then pulled on her boot.
“So now perhaps I will listen,” she said, “and you will tell me a little about Chakliux the Dzuuggi.”
The boy straightened his shoulders and began to speak in a small, soft voice. The old woman interrupted him. “You think anyone will listen to you if you speak like that?” She pressed her hands into the arch under her rib cage. “From here, your words must come from here.” She puffed out her chest with air, and the boy did the same. “Now,” she said, and he spoke again, this time much louder.
“Good,” said the old woman. “Now I can tell that the words come from your heart.”
“When he was a baby,” said the boy, “Chakliux was left on the Grandfather Rock to die.”
“’Ih?” the old woman said, as if she were listening to an actual storytelling, and the Dzuuggi’s words had surprised her. “A Dzuuggi left to die?”
“It is true,” the boy said. “His grandfather left him, because of the foot. He did not see it as otter, but only as a curse, and he left Chakliux. But Chakliux did not die. The woman K’os came and found him there. She took him home, and he became her son. But she hated him. She hated everyone else, too, after men took her by force on the Grandfather Rock and killed the spirits of her unborn children. She thought Chakliux was a gift to make up for what had happened.
“When Chakliux grew up, she was jealous of him because he was wise, and because he was chosen to be Dzuuggi. She even killed his wife and baby.”
“They must have driven her from the village after she did that,” the old woman said.
The boy leaned toward the old woman and lowered his voice to a whisper. “No, she did it secretly with poison, and so everyone thought they died from sickness.”
“You know that she was the one who started the war between the Near River and Cousin River Villages,” the old woman said. “Of all the things I have taught you, there is nothing more important than the remembrance of that war. Though it was long ago, much changed because of the fighting. So many of the River People died, and villages that had been strong grew weak.”
Her throat sounded full, as if she would cry, but when the boy looked into her eyes, he saw that they were hard and dry. She shook her fist at the hearth fire, and he wondered if the smoke could carry her anger back through the years to those foolish people.
“The Near River and Cousin People fought against each other,” she said. “They were related—cousins, the men and women in those two villages—but still they fought.”
“Why?” the boy asked.
“No good reason,” the old woman told him. “Most fighting starts for no good reason. That is why we have Dzuuggi’s—to remind us of our foolishness, so we will not do the same things again.”
“Chakliux tried to stop the fighting.”
“Yes, he did, but they fought anyway.”
“And the Near River People won,” the boy said.
“Think about that for a moment,” said the old woman. “Did anyone truly win? Remember all the lives lost, and the hard winters both villages suffered because so many of their men had died.” The old woman sighed and shook her head. She looked at the boy and said, “Tell me about K’os.”
“She lived in the Cousin River Village and she tricked the people there,” he said. “When she realized that her people were too weak to win the war, she helped the Near River men kill the boys and the strongest women, then she surrendered the rest. But the Near Rivers didn’t trust her, so she was made a slave.”
“Aaa,” said the old woman. “I understand.” She sat quietly for a time, then said, “I told you about Aqamdax, how she left her people and came to the River People as wife of the hunter Sok, Chakliux’s brother. Sok did not want her and threw her away.”
She lifted her finger again and shook it as if in warning. “I will tell you this, child. Sometime you may hear people say since Aqamdax was Sea Hunter, what she did is not important to us. But anyone who tells you that is a fool. You see, each story is like a small fire, giving light and warmth. Why do you think every village has more than one hearth?”
The boy lifted his hands, fingers spread. “With only one,” he said, “there would be too much darkness.”
“For a child, you are very wise,” the old woman told him. “So tell me a little about Aqamdax.”
“Chakliux and Aqamdax shared a great love. Chakliux wanted to marry her, but she was sold as a slave to K’os. Later the hunter Night Man bought her to be his wife. Chakliux found out where she was, and when the fighting was over, he went to live with the Cousin River People so he could be near Aqamdax. He married Night Man’s sister to be as close to her as possible.”
The old woman smiled. “You remember well,” she told the boy. She drank a large swallow of her willow tea, then nodded at the water bladder that hung from the lodge poles over their heads. The boy stood and untied the bladder. He handed it to her, and she squeezed water into her cup. She dipped her fingers into the water and sprinkled a few drops over the fire. She drank again, and said, “I think you are ready to learn what happened next. Listen:”
LATE SUMMER 6458
B.C.
TWISTED STALK, WIDOW OF THE COUSIN RIVER PEOPLE:
Sometimes when I wake in the morning, I do not know where I am. How could this place be our village? Where are our hunters, our young women?
The children cry in hunger; the old women no longer greet the day in gladness. Mourning songs fill the air until it is as dark as soot. At night when I close my eyes to sleep, I see our lodges burning. I see the bones of my sons and grandsons dishonored by our enemies.
I remember those days when the Near River and Cousin River Peoples were one, when together we celebrated the great hunters who are grandfathers to both villages.
How did anger make us forget that bond? How did hatred steal into our hearts and capture our souls?
I am afraid for those not yet born. What is our gift to them? The pride of who we are, the joy and beauty of this earth? No, not when we pass down our enmity as heritage, mother to daughter, father to son.
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
T
HE OLD WOMEN PREPARED
a separate boiling bag of meat and broth for those three wives in the village who were pregnant: Aqamdax, Star and Red Leaf. Parts of the caribou were taboo for them. The flesh and bones of the neck would cause clumsiness in their unborn children, and the front legs and the meat of the lower jaw and lips must be saved for the old men.
Aqamdax knew her baby was a boy. She hid her laughter when other women told her, since she carried the child low, it was a girl. Did she not hear his whispers, the songs he sang into her dreams? Of course it was a boy. She had known since her fourth moon of pregnancy, when he had first begun moving within her belly.
During the past spring, with only six hunters left in their village after the fighting, the men had been unable to take all the caribou they needed, but at least they had killed enough to stave off their hunger. The women had dried the meat, did not allow one scrap to go to waste. The hides, riddled by the breathing holes of warble fly larvae, were useless for clothing and nearly impossible to scrape, but with their lodges burned and their caches looted, how could the women throw those hides away?
Now at the end of summer, Chakliux and his older brother Sok had taken a fine, fat caribou bull. For one night, the people pushed away their anger, their helplessness, and celebrated with a feast.
As Aqamdax ate, she hummed songs to her baby, told him to grow strong like the caribou. Some of her singing was in the River tradition of her husband’s people. But she had learned most of her songs from her own people, the First Men who lived beside the great North Sea.