Cry of the Wind (61 page)

FIRST MEN’S VILLAGE, YUNASKA ISLAND

Elders:

Water Gourd (Taadzi), adoptive grandfather to Uutuk (Daughter)

Men:

Chiton

Seal, husband of K’os and Eye-Taker, adoptive father of Uutuk (Daughter)

White Salmon

Women:

Eye-Taker, sister-wife of K’os, first wife of Seal

Green Twig

K’os, second wife of Seal, adoptive mother of Uutuk (Daughter)

Uutuk (Day Soon, Daughter), adopted granddaughter of Water Gourd, adoptive daughter of K’os and Seal

FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE

Elders:

Blue Lance, chief-hunter, father of Bird Hand and Moon Slayer

Ptarmigan (male)

Near Mouse (female)

Two-heeled Fish (female)

Men:

Bird Hand, son of Blue Lance, brother of Moon Slayer

Cen, husband of Gheli, father of Ghaden and Duckling, stepfather of Daes

Long Wolf

Moon Slayer, son of Blue Lance, brother of Bird Hand

Women:

Crane

Daes, daughter of Gheli and stepdaughter of Cen

Gheli (Red Leaf), wife of Cen, mother of Daes and Duckling Lake Woman, deceased wife of Bird Hand

Wing, third wife of Blue Lance, mother of Bird Hand

Children:

Duckling, daughter of Cen and Gheli, sister of Daes

PROLOGUE

Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

602
B.C.

T
HE OLD WOMAN’S BONES
protested against the tight space where she lay. She shivered and looked up at the oiled sea lion skins stretched taut little more than a handbreadth above her nose. She worked her way farther into the bow, shifting her hips, scooting with hands and heels.

The traders had not allowed her to use hare fur blankets as padding, but rather had given her fur seal. Fur seal was thicker and warmer, they had told her, and she knew they were right, but it was foreign to her nose, and she longed for the good earth smell of hare pelts.

You think you would be able to stand the cold if the traders had given in to your wishes, old woman? she asked herself. And she was disgusted at her own childishness, allowing her wants to blur her reason.

She wrapped her arms over her chest and braced herself as Yikaas climbed into the iqyax, thrusting strong legs on either side of her. She heard his paddle as he pushed it against the shore, the grating of gravel on the bottom of the iqyax, and the sudden sway of the craft as the land released them.

Her stomach twisted, and she held her eyes wide, as though by stretching her lids open, she could see the sky through the yellow wall of skin that covered the iqyax’s red-dyed wooden frame. Though Yikaas’s body gave off heat, the cold stole in from the sea, and her ankles began to ache, crossed as they were to fit at the point of the bow.

She thought back to the last time she had traveled in such a way, like ballast rock, dead weight in a man’s iqyax. Then her husband had been alive, and she was young, though she had felt old, her womb empty for some seven winters, her oldest child grown and a hunter, her youngest certainly able to live a summer without her. Her husband had decided to take her to the Traders’ Beach so she could visit with other storytellers, some from villages as far away as the Whale Hunters’ islands.

She had been shy, saying little, listening much, but their stories had stretched her mind and sent her on journeys of words that made the world she had known seem small.

Over the past few winters, she had watched as Yikaas became a man. His shoulders grew wide, and even his otter foot took on strength. Young women honored him with coy glances, lured him with boldness, and he wore his pleasures as proudly as a warrior bears the scars of his battles.

He was Dzuuggi, already knew the secrets of the River People, but like many young men, he had become too full of himself. She had no choice but to show him how large were the boundaries of the earth, how small his understanding.

He had seen the journey as an adventure, come willingly, and now they had traveled for more days than she could count. Each morning they joined traders from the River villages, and these past few days even a few Sea Hunters had traveled with them. Each morning she berated herself for her foolishness in choosing to come with Yikaas. After all, he was young and strong. He could have made the journey alone.

She had been teaching the boy the few words of the Sea Hunter language that she knew, and now she brought those words into her mouth, held them there, thick in her throat, as an amulet against the power of the sea. Each day on this journey she had told herself Sea Hunter stories of Chagak and Shuganan, Kiin and Samiq, called those ancient people to dance above her, silhouetted against the sea lion skins like shadows cast in a caribou hide lodge by those who live within. Today, though, to help her forget her fear and discomfort, she would rely on the tales of Chakliux, that great storyteller, and his wife, Aqamdax.

The old woman, Kuy’aa, spoke softly, filled the inside of Yikaas’s iqyax with whispered words, and by midday, the movement of the paddle, the comfort of the stories allowed her to sleep. She fell into dreams, and her mother’s voice came to her. For a little while, she became an infant, new in the world to which she had been born, bound in a cradleboard, knowing the rhythm of her mother’s body.

Suddenly the iqyax lurched, and her belly knotted in fear. She was old again, her hands reaching in reflex to scrabble at the iqyax’s carved ribs. She felt the bump of something beneath them. Animal, she thought, and could not remember whether she had checked her feet for stray bits of grass before they started out that morning. Sea Hunters said that a bit of grass caught between the toes was all sea animals needed to take offense. Then they would come from the depths in anger to bite holes in iqyax walls.

Her toes were numb, cold and stiff as wood, but she thought she could feel long strands of grass between them, tickling the bottoms of her feet, prickling her ankles.

Another bump, this one so strong that the iqyax frame bent and groaned; the knotted joints moved and heaved like the bones of a skeleton. The old woman cried out, and when she did, the Sea Hunter words she had been holding as amulet in her throat escaped into the iqyax, and the air around her was suddenly so thick with them that she could scarcely breathe.

Then she heard Yikaas’s voice, like a parent calming a child. “We are here, Aunt,” he said. “At the Traders’ Beach. It’s low tide, and we’ve found a few rocks. If it’s too rough for you, I’ll wait in the bay until the sea rises.”

The old woman lifted her fingers to her lips, pushed a path through the Sea Hunter words, and said, “Go in now, if you are able.”

She pulled the fur seal blanket like a caul over her face, wrapped her arms around herself, and tried to become small, so Yikaas could guide the iqyax, not only with his paddle but with the shifting of legs and buttocks.

Finally the hull ground into sand, and Yikaas untied his hatch skirting. A rush of cold air slid into the iqyax, released the stories, the words, her fear. Then his strong hands were under her arms, drawing her out, peeling away the layers of the fur seal blanket. He helped her stand, and she spread her feet wide on the earth to keep her balance.

“You have brought your grandmother?” someone asked. He spoke in the River language, but his voice carried the accent of a Sea Hunter.

“Her name is Kuy’aa,” Yikaas said. “It was
she
who brought
me
. We are storytellers, and we have come to learn.”

It was an answer he might have given when he was a child, and it pleased Kuy’aa to hear the humility in his words. What space is left for stories if a man fills his mind and heart with thoughts of his own importance? Soon those people he speaks about meld into himself, and he is no longer storyteller, but braggart.

“We are always in need of storytellers,” the Sea Hunter said. “Tonight we will hear tales from a woman who has come to us from the Whale Hunter Islands.”

Aaa, thought Kuy’aa, there are two of us then, foolish in our old age, grandmothers who would dare a death at sea to have one last chance to tell and hear stories at the Traders’ Beach.

Lost in her thoughts, she did not realize that Yikaas was speaking until it was too late to stop him.

“I had hoped to tell my own stories tonight,” he was saying, and the old woman flushed in embarrassment at his boldness.

The trader smiled and said, “We will be glad to hear you, but first you should rest. Tonight, you must listen.”

Kuy’aa lifted her chin at the trader, gave a nod, and knew that the man understood her gratitude.

He clapped Yikaas on the shoulder and laughed loud and long, reminding the old woman of the joy with which Sea Hunters live their lives. “There is much to trade for here,” the man said. “See that you trade well and wisely.” He lifted his chin toward the rise of the beach, toward iqyax racks and the path that led to the Sea Hunter village.

The old woman helped unload the iqyax, then carried a heavy pack of food and trade goods up the slope of the beach. The promise of stories was a balm that soothed the horror of the days spent in the iqyax and held at bay the fear that Yikaas, her chosen Dzuuggi, was less than her hopes.

The Dzuuggi pushed his way into the circle of people nearest the center of the lodge. The Sea Hunters called a lodge an ulax, Kuy’aa had told him. Each ulax was like a mound, built partially underground, raftered with driftwood, roofed with woven mats, sod, and grass thatching. The thick earthen walls seemed to press down on him, and he had to fight the urge to hunch his shoulders against their darkness.

It was not difficult to tell the Sea Hunters from the River People. Those hunters of sea mammals squatted on their haunches, arms around upraised knees. Yikaas snorted in derision and sat down in the way of men. But as he waited for the stories to begin, moisture seeped from the packed earth floor into his caribou hide pants, and he suddenly understood one reason they sat as they did. With his left foot turned on edge as it was—an otter foot, Kuy’aa called it, with webbed toes—he decided he would be more comfortable as he was rather than trying to balance himself crouched on his feet. So he remained sitting, but he decided to bring the fur seal pad from his iqyax for the next storytelling so he could stay dry.

He was tired, but his excitement at being with the storytellers was enough to keep him awake. When Yikaas’s eyes adjusted to the dim light of the seal oil lamps, he turned his head to search for Kuy’aa and finally saw her sitting with several old women at the back of the lodge. He could tell that she struggled to hold her eyes open, her head bobbing now and again as she drifted toward sleep. She had told him that the storytelling might last the night, people going and coming, listening for a while, then leaving to return later.

Among the River People, when a group of storytellers gathered, one story seemed to spawn the next. A person would give one version, then another told the same story in a different way. The older the story, the more variations. Most people claimed the old stories were best, but Yikaas thought that new stories were better. They seemed to stay in his mind long after the storytelling was over, as clear to his eyes as if he had lived them.

Soon the lodge was full of people. Women passed seal bladders of water and heaps of sea urchins, a rare delicacy for River People. Yikaas took two handfuls of the prickly shells and heaped them between his crossed legs. He used the flat of his stone knife to crack one open, then with his thumbnail dug out an egg-filled orange ovary and sucked it into his mouth. He closed his eyes at the richness of the taste, fat and salty.

Finally there was a whispering among the storytellers, and Kuy’aa stood up and tottered over to sit beside him. She poked him with one crooked finger, pointed with her chin at a man standing in the center of the lodge. He was so bent and wrinkled, so thin, that Yikaas was surprised he could stand. The old one began to speak, and Yikaas realized that though the years had melted away the old man’s flesh, they had not taken his voice. His language was Sea Hunter, but different in accent and rhythm, his words rising and falling like waves, loud and soft, harsh and calm.

“Whale Hunter,” Kuy’aa leaned over to whisper.

The young Dzuuggi looked at her with wise eyes and nodded as though he had known. He listened carefully to the old man, caught the word
woman,
and some reference to the sea, then found himself wondering if all the stories would be told in Sea Hunter languages. If so, he had made a useless journey. What good would it do him to sit forever listening to stories he could not understand? But then a young woman also stood. Daughter to the old man? Granddaughter?

She was wearing Sea Hunter clothing, a loose hoodless parka, her dark hair tucked into its collar rim. The parka hung nearly to her ankles, and the sleeves were long enough to cover her hands. It was black, decorated with shell bangles and sewn in squares of what looked like cormorant feathers. Her hair was cut short over her forehead in a fringe that hung to her eyebrows, and a thin needle of ivory pierced the septum of her nose. Her face was delicate, her cheekbones high under slanted eyes, her mouth small. He found that in watching her, he was holding his breath. She would visit him in his dreams, without doubt, that one.

She helped the old man sit down, then leaned over to hand him a water bladder, and with her woman’s knife cracked open an urchin shell. Wife, was she? Yikaas was disappointed. But if the old man were important enough—a Dzuuggi among Sea Hunters—then he had earned the right to a young and beautiful wife.

She began to talk to the people, first in the Sea Hunter language, then in the River tongue. Yikaas smiled. She was a translator, not wife, and best of all she spoke the River language well, with only the trace of an accent.