Call Down the Stars (37 page)

Even as she walked, she found herself pondering the pain that enveloped her. She had been wife only a short time, yet it seemed that a strong tether already bound her to him, her agony a reflection of Ghaden’s own. Why else would she mourn a trader she hardly knew?

Then Ghaden saw her and pushed his way through the wailing women, past the men who called out questions, the children who danced and chanted, because they understood only the excitement and not the cause. Among the First Men, husbands, when they were with others, did not often show their affection for their wives with touching and holding, but Daughter decided that River People must be different. For Ghaden grabbed her and pulled her into a rough embrace. He still wore his chigdax, and the garment was wet to her touch, cold, even through the feathers of her sax.

“Did you find anything?” Daughter asked.

Ghaden tried to speak, but his voice cracked and broke. He coughed and began again. “Only Dog Feet’s body,” he said. “Not He-points-the-way, but we found pieces of his iqyax, and we found my father’s paddles.”

She felt him shiver, his arms trembling even as he held her. “Ghaden, my husband, I am so sorry,” Daughter whispered.

His arms tightened around her so that she could scarcely bring in a breath. “All this day, as we traveled, some spirit taunted me with the thought that I had lost you as well, that I would return to this beach and find you gone.”

Daughter pulled away from him, looked into his eyes, saw the weariness there and the pain. Her throat tightened with tears, but she said, “You think that I would leave you so easily? I promised to be your wife. You think I would forget that promise?” She forced a smile. “I remember when my grandfather died how I was afraid of losing others, my friends and my mother.”

Daughter felt someone stroke her head, and at first thought it was Ghaden, but then knew the hand belonged to K’os, the fingers stiff and knotted. She turned in her husband’s arms to see her mother standing behind her.

“Come with me,” she said to Ghaden and Daughter. “Seal will take care of your iqyax.” Her eyes were hard and dry, and she asked no questions, as though she had known long before the men returned that Cen was dead.

Ghaden trudged behind her up the beach, an arm around Daughter’s shoulders. He leaned on her so hard that Daughter was afraid the journey and his mourning had taken all his strength, but when they came to Qung’s ulax, he was the first to climb up, and he reached down to help each of the women, pulling Daughter up so effortlessly that her feet barely touched the sod.

“Are you hungry, husband?” she asked.

Before Ghaden could answer, K’os said, “Of course he is hungry. Go down into the ulax and help Qung with the food. Seal will be here soon, and probably others.”

Daughter wanted to stay close to Ghaden, but he said, “I am hungry, wife. We did not eat this morning.”

She started down the climbing log, but even when Qung began to ask questions, she remained for a time standing just below the roof hole, listening to what K’os was saying. She asked about Cen, and Ghaden told her what he had said to Daughter about the paddles, about finding Dog Feet’s body and pieces of broken iqyan.

Qung came to the bottom of the climbing log, started shouting her questions, as though Daughter had not answered because she could not hear. Daughter clasped Qung’s arm and walked her to the oil lamp, told her what Ghaden had said.

“I thought I heard mourning cries.” Qung twisted her hands together until Daughter heard the joints groan and pop.

“Ghaden is outside, and he needs to eat.”

Qung’s face cleared, and she gave a quick, short nod. “Then why do we stand here doing nothing?” she asked, and pointed a crooked finger at one of the food caches. “Bring me oil and fish, and be quick.”

Daughter hurried to the floor cache, set aside the wood cover, and knelt to reach inside.

“Is Seal coming?” Qung asked.

“Seal and probably others as well.”

Qung clicked her tongue. “It is sad that they cannot leave Ghaden alone to grieve. But no, everyone has questions. Everyone wants to know what happened. And then everyone wants to tell him how they were such good friends to the dead one.” Qung flung her hands up in a gesture of helplessness. “All people are the same. They never change. There is no hope for it. He will have to listen and pretend that what everyone says is important to him.”

“Perhaps it will be important,” Daughter said. “When my grandfather died, one of the old women in the village had just the right words for me.”

Qung shrugged. “Some people do. Other people say all the wrong things.” She sighed, then pointed with her chin at the food caches, and Daughter set out bellies of oil and fish, a packet of dried caribou meat.

Qung hobbled over to stand beside Daughter, then her old face crinkled in on itself, and she said in broken words, “He gave me that caribou meat. He did not need to do that. I was glad to offer my hospitality. Who could guess that I would be feeding it to those who mourn him?”

Still on her knees, Daughter pulled the old woman into her arms, patted the hard lumpy bones of her back.

“Aaa, we do not have time for this!” Qung said, and brushed at her eyes so fiercely that she raised welts on her cheeks. “Stop crying and get the food ready. You think you will help your husband with your tears?”

Daughter raised her fingertips to her eyes, found that she had been crying, the tears seeping, her face wet.

When K’os and Ghaden entered the ulax, Daughter glanced up from the food she was arranging on mats and wooden dishes. Ghaden’s face was drawn and gray, his weariness even more pronounced. Had K’os said something to add to his sorrow? Or had Daughter’s first joy in seeing him dimmed her eyes so that she had not fully realized how much his pain had marked him?

He came to her, stood close, as though to draw strength. She tucked an arm around his waist and ignored K’os’s raised brows. What did it matter with only K’os and Qung to see? If her touch could help, then she would forget the normal ways of politeness. He raised a finger to stroke the thin braid that Daughter had tucked into the bun at the back of her head, and she wished that she had braided her hair like River women. Such a small thing to please a husband.

Then voices came to them, some loud, some lifted in mourning songs. Ghaden squatted on his haunches, and K’os moved to help with the food, pulling down water bladders, hissing when she noticed how many needed to be refilled. She handed the empty bladders to Daughter, gestured with her eyes to the ulax roof.

As wife of the one who had lost his father, it was not Daughter’s place to fill water bladders. K’os was playing the wife’s part. When the chief hunter and the elders came inside, K’os directed them toward Ghaden and even accepted condolences from them, allowing herself to cry when their wives hugged her.

Daughter glanced at Qung and saw the angry set of the old woman’s mouth, but Daughter merely closed her eyes in embarrassment and hoped Ghaden would not be dishonored by K’os’s actions. She was used to K’os’s need to center people’s attention on herself.

Daughter bent close to whisper into Ghaden’s ear, told him she needed to go for water. He stood and, taking some of the bladders from her hands, went with her. Daughter saw the wide eyes of those in the ulax, the surprise of the men and women still on the roof.

“We need water,” Ghaden said, and held up the flattened bladders he had clenched in his hands.

Several women came forward, took the bladders, then Ghaden climbed back into the ulax, waited at the bottom of the log for Daughter, led her to that place where he had been sitting.

“Sit beside me,” he said, his voice low and soft.

“Qung needs help, husband,” Daughter told him.

“There are other women here. She will have enough help.”

Then he called K’os. She came over, frowned for a moment at Daughter, mouthed, “Water?”

“Several of the village women are bringing water,” Daughter said.

Ghaden pressed Daughter’s hand so she knew he wanted her to be quiet. “I need my wife with me,” he said in a firm voice. “But Qung is an old woman and she needs help.”

K’os held out her hands as though to remind Ghaden that her fingers were crippled, but he kept his eyes on her face. “You are not the wife,” he said.

Daughter held her breath. K’os tipped her head and made a smile over clenched teeth. “You are right. Your wife should be here with you. I will help Qung.”

Ghaden squeezed Daughter’s hands, then turned to accept the sympathy of those who had come into the ulax. But Daughter’s breath came with such difficulty that it seemed as though someone had laid rocks against her chest. Yes, K’os would help Qung, and she would work hard, but Ghaden would live to see her anger, and K’os would strike at a time when neither Daughter nor Ghaden expected it. That was her way.

You have lived through her vengeance before, Daughter reminded herself. Be concerned for your husband. There is nothing more important than that.

She set her teeth in fierceness and drew into her mind the remembrance of that long-ago time when she and the grandfather had been adrift on the sea. He had been too sick to help her, and though she was only a child she had been the one who told their boat which way to travel. She had pointed out the mountain that marked the First Men’s island. She had been the strong one.

T
HE SEAL HIDE IQYAX
cover was too close over Daughter’s face, and a storage pack pinched her feet, but since K’os lay in Seal’s iqyax without complaint, could Daughter do less? Besides, she had been the one who had asked to travel in her husband’s iqyax rather than with her father, and because Ghaden also wanted that, Seal had exchanged his larger boat for an iqyax of his own.

Uutuk had always been the one whose wishes were ignored, and what woman expects anything different? After all, she was only a daughter, not a son who would become a hunter. So now, when one softly spoken wish had caused so many changes, she would die before voicing a complaint.

They spent the first night on a wide, gray sand beach. It curled back so far into the foothills that it was nearly an inlet, a beautiful place with many birds and high drifts of wood brought in by the sea.

“Why does no one live here?” K’os had asked.

“Too far for water,” Ghaden told her, and raised a hand toward the hills. “Half a day’s walk. But it is a good first night’s camp when a man still has full water bladders from the Traders’ village. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you will even see a few caribou here.”

Daughter began gathering enough driftwood to keep their fire strong throughout the night, for if there were caribou, there might also be wolves, or so it seemed in those stories K’os had told her. She had always been glad to be First Men rather than River, for the River People had so many animals they must worry about. Wolves and wolverines, lynx and foxes, moose and caribou, each able to do some kind of harm, large or small. And now, here she was wife to a River man and traveling with him to his village.

After Ghaden’s return to the Traders’ village, they stayed to keep the second mourning. Ghaden had considered continuing that mourning into forty days as First Men often do, but K’os had convinced him that it would be better to go to the Four Rivers village where Cen’s wife lived, tell her what had happened, and stay with her for those forty days.

“Until then, mourn him in your heart, as we all do,” K’os had said, and how could Ghaden disagree with wisdom like that?

Daughter had hoped to spend the whole forty days at the Traders’ Beach. She had learned to love the old woman Qung and had wanted to hear more of her stories and enjoy Qung’s wisdom. But K’os was right. The weather would soon turn toward fall, and then the seas were less predictable. If a summer storm could kill someone like Cen who had traveled for many years, what hope would Ghaden and Seal have, cursed with wives in their iqyan?

She dropped the last armful of driftwood near the blaze that Seal had started. He had a scowl on his face, and he was watching Ghaden and K’os. Suddenly Daughter realized that since they had beached the iqyan, they had been speaking the River language, which Seal did not understand.

“He explains why there is no village on this cove,” Daughter said to Seal. “He uses the River language because it is easier for him than First Men, and also because he knows that you, being both hunter and trader, would need no explanation, that any man could see why there is no village, though the beach is good and driftwood is abundant, and even the trees that top the hills are straight and tall.”

Seal puffed out his chest. “Yes, a man would see such a thing,” he said. He pointed his chin toward the trees and laughed. “But you think those are tall? Wait until we get into the River People’s country. Then you will see trees so tall that they block the sky. Is that not so, Ghaden?”

Ghaden squatted beside Seal and, speaking in the First Men language, said, “It is true, wife. Those trees are so tall, their shadows blanket the earth. Under their branches, it almost seems like night even during the brightest day.”

Daughter shook her head in disbelief. “I know what you say is true, but it is difficult for me to imagine it.”

K’os had knelt beside one of the iqyan, was struggling to pull a pack of dried fish from the stern. When she finally managed to free it, she turned and said, “There are treasures in those forests. A healer can find many things to help others. I will teach you, Uutuk, and then the River People will be glad that Ghaden brought you, even if you are First Men.”

Daughter knew K’os’s words were meant to encourage her, but they put a chill of fear into her bones, so that even her fingers and feet began to ache with dread. Later, after they had eaten and the darkness of night had cloaked their beach, she and Ghaden curled up together under their sleeping robes, and the touch of his hands soothed her, so she slept well with good dreams and no fear.

Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

602 B.C.

“Enough of these stories about women!”