The Storyteller Trilogy (8 page)

“I know she will make some man a fine wife,” Tsaani answered.

“Sok wants her,” Fox Barking said, “but her father will not allow her to be second wife.”

“Do you think Sok will throw away Red Leaf?”

“No,” said Fox Barking. “A man might throw away his wife, but two sons and a good lodge? No.”

“Sok does not need another wife,” Tsaani said. “He wants too much. He will break his back carrying all the things he wants. When I die, he will own my dogs. I have already given him many of my hunting songs. If he uses those songs wisely, he will be a powerful man. Perhaps then he will be worthy of two wives.”

Fox Barking rubbed his hands together and leaned down to hold them near the hearth coals.

“It is dark. You should be in your wife’s lodge,” Tsaani said, but Fox Barking made no move to leave. “I am an old man,” said Tsaani. “Stay if you like, but I must sleep.”

He rolled himself in his bedding furs and turned his back on Fox Barking.

The trader’s lodge was merely a summer tent. The caribouskin covering was secured by a circle of rocks, then banked for warmth with spruce boughs and snow. A small fire burned fitfully at the center. Its warmth was swallowed up before it reached the lodge walls, but Daes was not cold. She pressed herself against Cen’s body. She knew his lovemaking would be quick, but it was better than what she endured from the old man, who was slow and sometimes wept when he could not become hard enough to enter her. It did not matter, she told him, and that was true. He was a good man. He had offered her a home when she had nothing but the curse of a child in her womb.

No, it did not matter, not with her old husband, nor with this trader. She had died more than four years ago, when her First Men husband had drowned. Daes raised her head from the furs of the trader’s bed to be sure her son, Ghaden, was still lying in the nest of mats on the other side of the hearth fire. He was awake, his eyes open, but he was quiet, bundled warmly in woven hare fur robes. Daes thought she could hear him hum some quiet River People song. He was a good child, but she did not love him as much as she loved her daughter, Aqamdax. How could she? Ghaden was Cen’s son.

Cen pulled her down beside him. “The boy is fine,” he told her, then looked over at the child as though making sure what he said was true. “He will be a good trader, someday, but before then I will make you my wife. When your old husband dies, I will claim you,” he said, “and someday I will take you back to visit your people.”

“Yes,” Daes whispered. “Yes.” Of course she would be his wife. She would be anyone’s wife if it meant she could get back to the First Men and to Aqamdax. Once she returned to her own village, she would never leave it. Until then she would be whatever Cen wanted her to be.

For a time, Fox Barking spoke of Sok’s greediness, his selfishness, but then the man suddenly seemed to change his mind. He praised Sok’s hunting skills, his dogs and his two young sons. He said Tsaani should pass on his wisdom and his place even before his death; he should give Sok all his bear hunting songs. Who could say, perhaps if Sok was chief bear hunter, then Wolf-and-Raven would beg him to take his daughter.

Though Tsaani lay with his back turned, at first he grunted a few answers. What else could you do with a man who did not understand rudeness? Finally Tsaani was silent, even though Fox Barking began to speak about the village dogs and the curse that had been brought to them all by Chakliux. When Fox Barking still did not stop talking, Tsaani drew his breath in through his nose and made snoring noises. Then he heard Fox Barking get up and leave, but not before he rummaged through Blueberry’s food bags.

At least the man did not leave hungry, Tsaani thought, and tucked his laughter into his cheek as he drifted into dreams.

When their lovemaking was finished, Cen wiped himself on the furs of his sleeping place, adjusted his breechcloth and slipped on his leggings and parka. He watched Daes as she dressed, his eyes dark, soft. She could not look at him. Once, she had believed he could fill the emptiness of her first husband’s loss. She had been foolish, but her pain had been so great she would have done almost anything to escape it. She had given herself to Cen, breaking the taboos of her mourning. In punishment, she had conceived.

She had known she could not stay with her people, so she had left the village. How else could she protect her daughter from spirits angered by what she had done?

Too late, she had discovered the hardships of a trader’s life. How could she stay with him, chance the storms, travel the rivers and tundra, all the while caring for a child? She had asked him to take her to a village where she could deliver their baby, had pleaded that he find her a husband, a hunter, who would care for her.

In sorrow, he did so, and left her, but came back each year, sometimes twice a year. She had told him it was best for their son. Finally this summer, Ghaden was strong enough to make the journey to the First Men Village. This year, Daes would not let Cen leave without her. She laid her hands against his back, stroked his wolf fur parka.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I will be glad to become your wife. Then we will return to my village. I will see my daughter again. You can build a lodge there, and when you are not trading, you will have a warm place to stay, and a wife waiting for you.”

He turned and looked into her eyes. “Tell your husband he must die soon,” Cen said.

“He will not live through another winter,” Daes told him, and felt a sudden sadness, knowing her words were true. “But I will go when you say. If you want me to come now, I will come.”

Cen narrowed his eyes, tipped his head and stared at the caribou hide walls. “From here,” he said, “I go upriver to the Rock Hill Village and beyond. By the time the ice breaks, I will be back. Be ready to go with me then.”

“Go away,” Tsaani called, and in his need for sleep did not regret his rudeness. “I have had enough people in this lodge. Go away, and do not come back until morning.”

Tsaani turned his head toward the doorflap, but the lodge was so dark he could not see. Even the hearth fire, where the edges of old coals should glow red, was dark.

You did not bank the coals, old man, he told himself. But he was sure he remembered doing it—pushing ash over the embers to slow their burning through the night—right after Wolf-and-Raven left. Maybe you dreamed it, he thought.

Blueberry would have to borrow fire from her mother’s lodge in the morning. Ah, well, it would do little harm, since her mother would know it was Tsaani and not Blueberry who let the fire go out.

He looked one last time toward the hearth, then saw an edge of light, and another, then darkness blocked the light again. Tsaani’s heart thudded, moving from the slow pace of sleep to the quickness of fear. There was some spirit in the lodge, something between him and the hearth.

The bear, Tsaani thought. The bear. Had Tsaani showed disrespect? Had he forgotten some song of praise? Had he eaten meat without gratefulness? No. He had done all things in honor. He had cut off paws and head; he had sliced the bear skin in strips so it would be used by animals and birds for food and bedding, and not wasted. All this was done in respect, following the ways of Tsaani’s grandfathers and their grandfathers.

Then he saw that the bear had the head of a person. It had hands and feet, and the dark fur was only a parka.

Tsaani’s heart slowed in relief, and he sagged back against his bedding furs, but then anger came to him and he said, “Why are you here? Why do you come to an old man in the middle of the night? You may not need sleep, but I do!”

The one who stood over him did not speak, and when in the black shadows Tsaani finally saw the knife, it was too late.

Daes crouched outside the entrance tunnel of Brown Water’s lodge. It was the middle of the night. She should not be outside in clothes she wore only on best occasions. Brown Water hated her. She was always telling their husband he should throw her away.

I should have asked for my own lodge, Daes thought. Happy Mouth and her little daughter, Yaa, would have come with me. Let Brown Water do all the work to keep her own lodge.

But it was not an easy thing for a woman to build a lodge when her husband no longer hunted. Where would she get the caribou skins, especially when Brown Water claimed anything of worth that came to their husband? Besides, why do the extra work? In a moon, maybe two, she would leave the River People’s village and return to the First Men.

Daes bent her head to listen. She could hear her husband’s snores, but there was no noise coming from the women’s side of the lodge, and Brown Water usually snored louder than anyone. Brown Water was waiting for her to return. She would accuse Daes of being with Cen. What defense could Daes offer? The best thing to do was wait for Brown Water to fall asleep, then crawl into their husband’s sleeping robes. Daes would claim she had come back early—that Brown Water had been asleep—and if she awoke later to wait for Daes, she was foolish, because Daes had been in their husband’s bed most of the night.

But if Daes was going to wait for Brown Water’s snores, she needed to set Ghaden down. He was heavy, and her arm was numb from his weight. She looked at her son, but in the darkness could not see his eyes. She ran her fingertips lightly against his lids. He blinked. She pressed a finger to his lips and whispered for him to be quiet, then said that she needed him to stand, just for a little while.

As she bent to set him down, she saw something move in the darkness. Someone was walking past the lodge. A spirit. What else could it be? Even the River People knew spirits moved between lodges during the night.

She squirmed back into the entrance tunnel, but Ghaden slipped from her grasp and ran out into the night—into the path of whatever spirit was walking. Daes almost decided to stay hidden, to hope that the spirit, seeing an innocent child, would pass without harming him, but then she felt the aching loss of Aqamdax and realized it would be the same for her if she lost her son. She crawled from the lodge tunnel and stood up.

The stars were close, as they always were on nights the spirits walked. In their light she saw Ghaden, then drew in her breath as she realized he had clasped the spirit around the legs.

“The boy is mine,” she said in a small voice, and fought to keep her words from trembling. Daes reached toward Ghaden, and it seemed that the motion of her arms pulled her body, as though she did not walk but floated over the packed ice path. She grabbed her son and picked him up. She kept her eyes turned down, away from the spirit’s face. In the starlight she saw the spirit’s furred boots, caribou hoof rattlers tied at the ankles.

Then Ghaden placed something long and hard against her chest. It was a knife, and she pulled it from his hands. It smelled of blood.

“Ghaden,” she said, “where …” She lifted her head and saw that the one standing before her was no spirit.

“You killed something?” Daes asked. “You need help?” But as she asked she wondered, Who hunts at night? Only animals. So perhaps this is an owl or wolf, and my eyes deceive me into believing it is someone from this village.

“If you need help,” Daes said quickly, “I and my sister-wife Happy Mouth will come.”

The hunter reached out and took the knife from her hand. Daes gave it easily, as though it were nothing more than a feather lying across her palm. She turned toward Brown Water’s lodge, but though her feet had floated easily when she walked away from it, now she seemed to sink with each step.

First her feet went through the ice, then into the soil. The earth was cold and pressed hard against her flesh as it drew her in. It pulled the heat from her body like marrow sucked from a bone.

Then she felt the knife. There was no pain, only the force of the blade plunging. It pushed her farther and farther into the ground until only her eyes and the top of her head remained above the earth. Then she saw that Ghaden, too, was being sucked in, his feet already buried, his legs pale in the starlight so that he seemed like a birch tree growing. But then the knife came for him. He crumpled to the ground, and the blood that welled from his wound ran into Daes’s eyes, until she could see nothing more.

C
HAKLIUX’S BREATH WAS A
cloud in the cold air. The dark spruce that grew around the village were rimed with frost, but the early morning sky was clear. By midday, the sun would turn the ice paths into mud.

More than once Chakliux had fallen into the black muck of those paths, but though his clubbed foot affected his balance, he limped only when he was tired or when he ran. This morning, he carried a large sael, the birchbark container full of dried fish for his grandfather’s dogs.

Chakliux enjoyed visiting Tsaani. With only a few comments or a simple story, the old man could send Chakliux’s mind on a journey that lasted the whole day.

As he walked past Day Woman’s lodge, Chakliux lowered his head and hoped he would not see her. She carried her heart in her eyes, and he could not look at her without feeling himself drawn back into being her child, the baby she had left to die. Each day that he spent in this village seemed to pull away more of his power. He wished he could return to his own people and learn to be himself again, but he needed to stay at the Near River Village. Both Tsaani and Wolf-and-Raven had begun to trust him, to know that he worked for peace.

The raucous calls of camp jays came to him, breaking the silence of late winter. For a moment he lifted his eyes toward the birds, and so did not see the bundle of fur until he tripped over it. He dropped the sael but caught himself with his fingertips. As he stood, he realized the fur was not some blanket carelessly left outside a lodge, but a young woman. He recognized her—Daes of the Sea Hunters—and knew also that she was dead, her eyes open and staring, her cheeks white with frost. She lay on her stomach with her head turned back, as though trying to look over her shoulder at whatever had caused her death.

A curse, Chakliux thought, and closed his eyes in the sudden knowledge that the Near River People would blame him as they blamed him for the dogs. Even his brother, Sok, though Sok treated Chakliux with respect, could not hide his growing worry as dog after dog died.