The Storyteller Trilogy (94 page)

Cries-loud looked much like her, large and strong. Red Leaf could do hides more quickly than anyone in the village, but though Yaa could remember good things about the woman, she felt no compassion for her. Two good people were dead because of Red Leaf’s selfishness.

And perhaps Day Woman. Though Cries-loud had said…

Then Yaa caught her breath, shivered though she was not cold. If Red Leaf did not kill Day Woman, who did?

A
LL DAY THE COUSIN
men stayed at the river, watching. They kept the women and boys away, did not tell them what they had found. They had argued over the first caribou. The Near Rivers had killed it. Should they give it to their women to butcher? Would that break some taboo?

“They took our meat, raided our caches,” Night Man said, narrowing his eyes at Sok, spitting out his words in anger. “Why should we be concerned about taking their meat?”

When the other men agreed, Chakliux put aside his uneasiness, helped carry the animal to the women, but that had been before they found the Near River body, a hunter Sok and Chakliux knew as Muskrat Singer. During the rest of that day, the river brought them seven caribou, two hunters and a young woman, all dead.

That night, they told their women, and at the beginning of the next day, even before sunrise, Chakliux and Sok, Sky Watcher and Take More loaded the bodies on a travois, took turns pulling it upriver to find the Near River camp. Each of the men carried weapons, but Chakliux expected no fight.

When they approached the camp, they were almost ignored. Most of the people were gathered around the injured or the dead. One old woman tended a boiling bag, but Chakliux saw no other food being prepared. One tent was still standing; the others were only trampled mounds of hides and broken sticks.

Fox Barking came to them. His parka was stained with blood, his face and hands smeared with dirt. He lifted a walking stick toward the clear sky of the east, toward the round ball of the sun, and said, “You have come to see our defeat? Look, even the sun pulls away the clouds and watches us.”

“We have come to offer help,” Take More said. “We have food, if you need it, and we have brought these bodies with us.”

Fox Barking stepped past them, lifted the blankets that covered the bodies on the travois. Then he called out, “No Teeth, your son is dead. Black Mouth, here is your wife.”

Mourning cries pierced the air, and Near River women gathered around the travois. Fox Barking began a chant, something Chakliux had once heard his grandfather Tsaani sing. In disgust, he turned toward the river. The earth was wet, and mud swirled into the water from the softened banks.

“And you also have our caribou, the ones we killed?” Fox Barking called after him, the harsh words interrupting his chants. “You brought us our dead, but not our meat. You intend to keep that?”

“Come and get it yourselves. We will not haul it for you,” Sok said.

Fox Barking lifted his lip in a sneer. “So you both decided to live with the Cousin People, or what is left of them,” he said to Sok and Chakliux. He smiled at Sok. “It does not surprise me that Chakliux would choose to do so, but you have known a better way. The stink of their camp does not bother you?”

Sok turned his back on the man, as though he did not hear his taunts.

“And your wife, Red Leaf? Did you let her live or did you kill her? And the child, was it boy or girl? Or did you wait to find out?”

Sok turned, and as he turned he brought his arm up, slapped Fox Barking hard across the face. Fox Barking lifted his walking stick, but Sok grabbed it and broke it across his knee. He stalked away, called back to Chakliux, “You deal with him. I will see you in camp.”

“Go with Sok,” Chakliux said quietly to Sky Watcher and Take More.

Take More made a vulgar gesture at Fox Barking, then hurried to catch up to Sok, but Sky Watcher shook his head. “I will stay. You do not need to be alone here with these people.”

“Your brother is a fool,” Fox Barking said, rubbing the side of his jaw. “But I do not have to tell you that.”

“We have your meat,” said Chakliux. “If you need it, send some of your women to get it. Do not come yourself and do not send your men.”

THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE

They spent four days in mourning. Most of the men had wanted to return to the winter village and from there go out in twos and threes to hunt what caribou or moose they could find. Anaay insisted that they stay where they were, and most stayed, but Black Mouth took his dead wife and left, though Anaay told him the wolves would smell death, steal the body before Black Mouth could get back to the village.

Later, in the privacy of his tent, Dii saw her husband dance a curse against Black Mouth, and she shuddered to think what would happen to the man, alone with his dead wife on that long trail to the winter village.

Others wanted to go. Dii could see the wanting in their eyes. Several families—those who had not lost anyone—stayed two days into the mourning, then they also left. Anaay was right about the wolves, many said. It was best to burn the dead bodies after the mourning. Was that not a custom that their grandfathers’ grandfathers had followed? Then bones could be cleaned and taken with them to the winter village. At least they could do that.

Dii was one of the women chosen to stay awake the night of the burning, to guard the bones and ashes from wolves and ravens, from spirits who would smell the smoke and think there was a gift for them in the people’s fires. She trembled when she thought ahead to that night, and she protected herself with amulets and every chant and prayer she knew. She did not eat anything the day before—none of the fish the men were catching from the river, none of the ptarmigan K’os took in her traps. Why flavor her breath with the taste of meat? Spirits drawn by the smell of burning flesh did not need to be reminded that they could no longer eat.

She wished Blue Flower’s husband, the Near River shaman, had not been killed in the fighting. If they had a shaman, he would probably be the one to guard those burning bodies, and she could stay safe in the camp.

Anaay had lit the fire when it was still light, but by night, he and the hunters with him had gathered on the farthest side of the camp, a good way upriver from the byre. Anaay sent her with a curt nod of his head and only one word, “Go,” as though even in speaking to her, he took risk. Six women were chosen. All but one were Cousin, and the truth of that smoldered in Dii’s breast.

“We are wives now, not slaves,” Green Bird said as their husbands sent them off. “Wives have the same value whether Cousin or Near River.”

But the other women laughed at her. Light Hair, the one Near River wife, laughed the hardest.

“Even if you give your husband two handfuls of children, all strong sons, you will not have the value of a Near River wife,” she said. Then, though she, too, had been condemned to watch the bone fire, she held her head high and looked at them from haughty eyes.

Two women had babies under their parkas, but the children belonged to their Cousin husbands. The other three, Dii among them, had no children, and Dii had had her moon blood time during their journey to the Caribou River, and so knew she had not conceived during those nights of caribou singing.

They walked in the darkness, stumbling over tussocks and uneven ground. The men had given them torches, but said not to light them until they reached the fire. Too much light might give spirits a path back to the camp.

Dii had pulled the hood of her parka tight around her face, kept her mouth closed, pinched her nose shut, releasing her nostrils only when she had to breathe. Why give those spirits that live in the night more ways to enter her body?

One of the other women, Owl Catcher, leaned close to Dii, asked, “What about K’os? Why didn’t Anaay send her instead of you?”

Dii had wondered the same thing, had felt the hurt of her husband’s choice, but she only said, “Who can trust K’os? Would you want her here with us?”

Owl Catcher did not answer, so Dii knew she had given the right response to a question asked spitefully. At the fire, though repulsed by the sound and smell of burning bodies, Dii felt her empty belly twist at the reminder of fat and meat. Then suddenly she had to turn from the heat and light of the flames, stumble into the darkness to retch.

She rejoined the others, trembled at the change the fire had made in their faces; brows, noses and cheeks threw shadows that distorted eyes and mouths, as though the passage through darkness had been a birthing into some other world.

Dii looked away, then went to the brush pile the men had heaped some distance from the fire. She brought back branches, began to feed them into the flames. Then one by one the others did the same, until finally Light Hair called out that two should go together, one holding a lit torch to keep spirits and animals away. Dii trembled again, realizing her foolishness in going alone into the darkness, her eyes dimmed by looking into the light of the flames.

When each woman had brought back wood, they sat in silence. Dii, Light Hair and Owl Catcher were on the far side of the fire. The other three women—Cut Ear, her cousin Green Bird and Willow Leaf—huddled together on the camp side.

Earlier that day, Dii had overheard Anaay tell the men how the fire should be made, that each body should be placed on a separate layer of branches one on top of the other. But Sun Caller, a man who usually agreed with all Anaay suggested, had told them in a stuttering speech that there were too many bodies for that. The fire would burn away the bottom branches and the top layers would topple.

“Have you forgotten how many died?” he had asked them, then answered his own question. “Two handfuls in all, not counting Two Fist, taken by her husband.

“And what about the women? Can they be burned with the men?”

Dii was not sure what had been decided, but the fire looked wide enough for three bodies to lie side by side, and she had felt some comfort in knowing someone besides Anaay was making choices for the camp.

If she and the other women kept the fire going all night, then by tomorrow they could dig out the bones and perhaps start back to the winter village. Though they were camped here on Cousin hunting grounds, it no longer seemed Cousin. At this river her people had always known more joy than sadness. Now she would remember only the terror, the stink of burning bodies, the sorrow and the mourning songs.

Above the snapping of the fire, one of the women on the other side of the flames began to speak. The voice was different, as though it belonged to none of them, but the words were familiar, and it seemed the woman spoke Dii’s own thoughts.

“We could leave and go to the Cousin camp. We could be there before the Near River men know we are gone.”

The words swirled up with the flames, became the smoke, and it seemed that Dii breathed them into her chest. They shimmered there like sun on water, cutting the darkness.

Back with her own people. Back in her own winter village.

Her mother and father and brothers would not be there, but Sky Watcher had been one of those who brought the dead to Anaay. Perhaps he would take her as second wife. She would even be wife to old Take More, though his first wife was a woman of sharp tongue and harsh ways.

From the corners of her eyes, Dii glanced at Light Hair. The Near River woman’s face was harsh in the firelight, her mouth pulled down in a frown. But she was the first to answer.

“If I were you,” she said, “I would go. This is not good, this hunting camp, and the winter will be long.”

Her words were no surprise. If some of the Cousin River wives left, there would be more food for those who remained. What had they taken, five, six caribou? That was hardly enough to feed the hunting camp during the journey back to the winter village. They would bring nothing for the caches except the hides, and what were six caribou hides among so many?

“How will we know the way?” one of the other women asked.

“They are camped on this river,” said Owl Catcher. “All we have to do is follow it to their tents.”

“What if they do not want us?” asked Cut Ear.

“That is foolish. We are their daughters. Their sisters. Would you turn them away if they had been taken?”

“What if they have already left for the winter village?”

“We know the way to the Cousin River Village. That is not so difficult.”

“I will go,” Cut Ear said.

“I also,” said Green Bird.

“Dii?” Owl Catcher asked.

Dii’s heart leapt in hope. But how could she leave Anaay? “What about our husbands?” she asked.

“Throw them away,” Owl Catcher said. “They do not care much for us if they sent us to watch these bones burning.”

“Awl is here with her husband, and she is hurt. I should not leave her.”

“Do what you want,” Owl Catcher said. “I am going.” She dipped her torch into the fire to renew its flame, then she, Green Bird, Cut Ear and Willow Leaf left, walked away from the death fire.

Dii stood and watched them until the light of Owl Catcher’s torch was only a tiny star in the darkness. When she sat down again, she felt an emptiness in her chest, as though a part of her had gone with them and she carried only half her soul.

THE COUSIN RIVER CAMP

C
HAKLIUX SAW THE WOMEN
come out of the brush at the east side of the camp. It was just past midday, and at first he thought nothing of their appearance. They were Cut Ear and Willow Leaf, Green Bird. He had grown up with them.

But then Chakliux realized that the three had been among the group of women and girls K’os took with her to the Near River Village. Following the three younger women was Owl Catcher, one of the women taken as a slave during the revenge raid.

Others in the camp looked up, for a moment continued their work, then screamed out their joy. They left boiling bags and drying racks, ran to the four women, opened arms to welcome them.

But Chakliux and Sok went for weapons and stood ready. These four were slaves or perhaps Near River wives. Who could tell where their loyalties would lie?