The Storyteller Trilogy (104 page)

“The river took her?” Aqamdax asked.

“No, she had already crossed and was climbing the steep bank. It’s gravel and slippery, and at the top are balsam poplars. Twisted Stalk said the trees were insulted by Star’s rudeness because she pushed ahead of the elders, but Hollow Cup says the river wants her spirit in exchange for Ghaden, since he did not drown at the caribou camp.”

“She fell?” Aqamdax asked, shaking her head against Yaa’s many words, her foolish explanations.

“A limb from the trees fell.” Yaa raised one hand, tapped the back of her head. “Hit her here. She slid into the river, but Chakliux pulled her out. Someone said she was dead.”

Aqamdax unstrapped her pack, but Awl grabbed the back of her parka. “You cannot go,” she said. “There are enough curses at work here without the power of our moon blood to add problems. Wait and see if Night Man calls you.”

Aqamdax could not stop the trembling in her hands. She squatted on her haunches beside Biter and buried her face in the thick fur of his neck. She began a soft song for Star, for Chakliux’s baby that grew in Star’s belly.

THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE

The men shouted out greetings as they came into the village, and Cen was glad he had chosen to hunt caribou this fall rather than make a trading trip. What hunter risked trading meat or fish left from summer until he knew how many caribou he would bring in for his family? And during the fall hunts who was in the winter villages? Only the old women. Who was in the fish camps? No one. It was good, then, to hunt, and to return with full packs to a warm lodge and a strong wife.

The women met them with trilled songs of celebration, and Cen’s eyes scanned the faces, hidden by parka hoods and a gentle fall of snow. Finally he saw Gheli, the bulge in her parka that was their daughter.

He wanted to hold her, strong and large, in his arms. He looked forward to a winter in their lodge. Perhaps he would take a dog or two downriver to the Cousin Village with the hope of finding Ghaden, see if they would trade a small boy for the meat that might allow them to live until spring.

He should have gone before now, but he knew the Cousin men would resent him since he had chosen not to fight against the Near Rivers. In truth, what else could he have done? The first Near River man they had killed—even before the attack—was the shaman. How could Cen have stayed to fight after they cursed themselves like that?

They would forgive him when he brought them meat in the starving moons of winter. Until then Cen would spend warm nights with his wife, play silly games with the little daughter he had claimed as his own.

He waited with the hunters until the women finished their songs, then he went to Gheli, saw the smile on her face. The Four River men were more open with their wives than the hunters in many villages, and so Cen pulled her into an embrace.

She pushed back her parka hood, and he saw his daughter’s round face, dark like her mother’s. She frowned at him, but when he tickled her cheek, she smiled, crinkling her eyes into little half-moons.

“Cen, it is good you are back.”

The voice, a woman’s voice, did not belong to Gheli, and Cen felt the chill of it in his bones. K’os.

She stood beside Gheli, a hand on Gheli’s shoulder. She had pushed her parka hood back to her ears, and her face was as perfect and beautiful as he remembered it, her hair glistening with flakes of new snow.

He stared and could not look away, saw her as she was when she visited his dreams, warm and lithe under his hands. Then he remembered her also with Sky Watcher and with Tikaani, with all the other men she had pleasured, even when she was wife to Ground Beater. Better to be content with a good wife than always worried over a woman like K’os.

He glanced at Gheli, thought to see anger or jealousy, but she was smiling.

“You know K’os?” he asked her.

“We are friends,” Gheli told him.

“Friends?” he said, surprised that anyone would consider K’os a friend.

“I thought you were dead,” K’os said. “All of us in the Cousin Village thought so, even your little son, Ghaden.”

Cen’s heart squeezed in his chest at the mention of Ghaden’s name. “He is safe, my son?” he asked, and saw the gleam of triumph in K’os’s eyes. She was a trader, better than men who had spent their lives trading.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“You have come to this village with your husband?” he asked, turning the conversation away from his son.

“She needs a husband,” Gheli said. “She is content to be second wife if the man is a good hunter.”

It was a conversation that should not be spoken in the middle of a village, amidst shouts and songs of celebration, but Cen saw the earnestness in Gheli’s eyes and knew that in some way K’os had managed to win her loyalty.

He put his arm around his wife’s waist, pressed his lips to her ear, whispered, “I am ready to spend time in my wife’s lodge.”

He looked at K’os, then said, “You see that man over there?” He lifted his chin toward a young man, tall and thin. “He is Eagle Catcher. He needs a wife.”

Then, before K’os could answer, Cen pulled Gheli through the crowd of people and took her to their lodge, left K’os standing in the snow.

THE COUSIN RIVER PEOPLE

When Chakliux first reached Star, he thought she was dead. She was face down, her upper body in the river. His otter foot slipped on the gravel bank, and he slid until his feet were in the water and he was sitting beside her. He caught hold of her shoulders, pulled her to his lap. First Eagle and Man Laughing picked her up and carried her to the top of the bank. Chakliux followed them, and when they set her down, he knelt beside her, pressed his fingers against her neck. He felt no pulse. Her skin was cold, her lips blue.

“Star!” he called to her. “Star! If you die, your baby also dies.” He looked up as he said the words, as though to convince her spirit to return to her body.

She lay still, and he could see no sign that she breathed. He pressed an ear against her breast, listened for a heartbeat, but the noise of the river was too loud. He looked at the faces around him, gestured toward Twisted Stalk, heard her murmur about the greed of the river, taking a soul in exchange for caribou.

Perhaps she was right, but what good was the woman if her words only added to the river’s power? Who else in the camp knew anything about medicines? They had no shaman to call back Star’s spirit.

Again he leaned over his wife, whispered about their baby, and prayed that his words would draw her back. Suddenly she coughed, her body jerking in spasms.

“Her spirit, it tries to return,” Twisted Stalk said.

Star coughed again, and Chakliux thought he could hear the noise of the river in her lungs. Perhaps if they could get that water out, her spirit would have the space it needed and would go back into her body.

“You know some medicine to clear her lungs?” he asked Twisted Stalk.

The old woman shook her head.

Then Chakliux saw Yaa, her small face pinched and white. “Get Aqamdax,” he said. “She worked with K’os. Perhaps she knows some of the medicines K’os used.”

He sent First Eagle and Night Man to help their wives with the dogs, then he waited, wondering if he wanted Aqamdax for the medicine she might have or for the comfort she would bring him.

“Chakliux wants you to come!” Yaa yelled at Aqamdax.

“Star is alive?” Awl asked.

“I think so. They need medicine. You’re supposed to cross the river. I’ve crossed it twice. It’s not deep, but the current is strong.”

First Eagle and Night Man unhitched their dogs and carried each travois across. The dogs followed, all but Biter. He ran up and down the riverbank, then sat, whining. Aqamdax urged him to cross with them, but though the dog waded in a short distance, he turned back and sat on the bank, lifted his nose into the air and howled.

“Leave him. He will come,” Night Man shouted to them. “He’s crossed rivers before. Wider than this one.”

His words nearly made Aqamdax turn back, but then First Eagle said, “Chakliux wants you to help Star.”

She clasped Awl’s arm, grabbed Yaa’s shoulder, and together they crossed over, holding on to one another as the current swept up over their boots to their knees. Aqamdax’s legs grew numb, but she kept her eyes on the river, as though somehow by merely looking she could tame its current.

The day was nearing its end, the sun just below the horizon, and Aqamdax pushed her hood back from her face, opened her eyes wide to let in as much light as she could, but still the river was dark, as though her feet were sinking into black stone. With each step Awl gasped, so that Aqamdax’s heart sped in quick bursts like birds’ wings fluttering in her chest.

Finally women were reaching for them, and also Chakliux, his hands firm on Aqamdax’s arms. Aqamdax looked back, saw Biter still on the other side. She called to him, but Chakliux pulled her away, the people clearing a path.

Then she was beside Star, the woman breathing in slow, shallow breaths, her eyes closed, lips blue.

Twisted Stalk and several others were kneeling beside her. “We have done what we could,” Twisted Stalk said. “You lived with K’os. Do you remember any medicine that clears the lungs?”

“Marsh marigold,” Aqamdax said quietly. “But I do not have any.”

Twisted Stalk stood, called out to Yaa. “Daughter, do you know the plant marsh marigold?” Yaa, her eyes fixed on Star, did not speak until Twisted Stalk asked the question again. “Daughter, you did not hear me?”

“I know marsh marigold,” she said. “But I don’t know where to find it except when we’re at the winter village.”

“In wet places. It always grows in wet places,” Twisted Stalk said. “There hasn’t been enough snow to kill it yet. You might be able to find some near the river.”

“Get Sok to go with you,” Chakliux told Yaa. “The sun has set. You shouldn’t be away from the camp alone.”

Aqamdax lay her hand against Star’s belly, hoping to feel the baby move. Chakliux set his hand beside hers.

“The baby sleeps,” Aqamdax told him. “Only that. He sleeps.”

THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE

D
II SET HER PACK
on the ground, shuddered as she heard Anaay bellow at her. “You think I want my tent there? It is wet. Find a better place! I did not bring you to make my life more difficult.”

She carried a heavier load now that K’os was no longer with them, nearly twice as much as she had carried before, and that day Anaay had given her another of his own packs as well as a caribou hide. She had tied the hide on one of the dogs’ travois, but the added weight pressed the travois down into the tundra, miring it in any wet spot that the snow and cold had not yet hardened.

By midday her back and shoulders were stiff with pain, but she had kept her thoughts away from the agony. She had been so tired by the time they stopped to make camp that she had unstrapped the heaviest of her packs and let it fall where she stood.

“Where do you want the tent?” she asked Anaay.

He lifted a hand toward her, and she crouched, prepared for his blow, but then he looked at the men and women who were watching. “Go with Blue Flower,” he told her. “She has a little wisdom. Put my tent beside hers.”

Blue Flower lifted her chin toward the east side of the camp, and Dii grabbed her pack, urged the dogs forward and followed the woman. Blue Flower bent to whisper to her nephew who walked beside her, and he ran back to help Dii drag the pack.

“Wife, you shame me,” Anaay called to her, “allowing a boy to do your work.”

But Blue Flower turned around, thrust back her parka hood and with all the camp listening said, “You should be the one ashamed, Anaay. It is a husband’s work my nephew is doing. Are you so blind that you do not see your wife carries more than any of us and also watches three dogs?”

Blue Flower’s words seemed to lend strength to Dii’s arms, but she knew Anaay would not forget the humiliation, nor would he allow her to forget.

THE COUSIN RIVER PEOPLE

Yaa searched through the camp for Sok, but though she asked many, poked her head into the open sides of lean-tos, no one knew where he was.

Marsh marigold grew near rivers. She knew the plant well but had never seen it used for medicine. The round ruffled leaves grew on stems no more than a hand’s length from the earth. They fanned out in a circle, and each spring the plant bloomed with bright yellow flowers. She knew she could find it herself, especially this close to a river, except for the snow.

She was glad Sok and not Twisted Stalk was the one who was supposed to go with her. Ever since K’os had been with them that one day, Yaa had been thinking of someone among the Cousin People who might have killed Cries-loud’s mother Day Woman. She had considered each of the Cousin River men, but Yaa had heard the old women whispering about the tangle of furs and mats that had been Day Woman’s bed. There had been too much of a struggle for the killer to be a man. A man would have easily overpowered Day Woman. So if not a man, then who?

Twisted Stalk was a woman of sharp words and strong temper. Yaa had seen her screaming in anger over small things that most women would allow to pass with only a scowl. Yaa could believe Twisted Stalk might take out her anger about the Cousin defeat on Day Woman. Day Woman was Near River.

She and Ghaden and Cries-loud had all been born in the Near River Village. What if Twisted Stalk were the killer? What if in her anger she decided to kill another Near River person? Once again Yaa wished for a long-bladed knife.

“What are you doing?”

Yaa jumped, then flicked her fingers in annoyance when she saw Ghaden.

“Chakliux told me to find some marsh marigold. Have you seen any growing here?”

“No. What’s it look like?”

“Never mind. Why are you here?”

“Trying to get Biter to cross the river.”

“Keep calling. He’ll come. But leave me alone. I have to find…”

“I know.”

Ghaden lifted his voice, called to the dog, and Yaa walked away from him. The snow was no deeper than a hand’s length, but still it hid most plants. Too bad marigolds didn’t grow taller, Yaa thought. Of course, their closeness to the earth gave the plants their power.