The Storyteller Trilogy (87 page)

“I do not want to go back, I want only to stop. We have walked enough for one day.” She pitched her voice into a high thin wail that seemed to catch in Chakliux’s back teeth and spread pain up into his head.

“Stop if you want to stop, but the rest of us will go on. You have come on a hunt before. You know we do not rest until night.”

Star stomped away from him, then began to complain to the other women. They ignored her. Though Chakliux’s baby was only yet a small mound in her belly, Star had the lightest pack of all. Even the girl Yaa was carrying more.

Chakliux returned to caribou chants, but not before allowing his eyes to fall for a moment on Aqamdax. She was watching him, and smiled when she saw him look at her.

Then he prayed that the caribou would be plentiful, that the hunt would go well and quickly, and soon he could claim Aqamdax as wife.

THE NEAR RIVER PEOPLE

They had walked only four days when they came upon the signs of another camp. K’os sucked in her cheeks to keep from smiling. It was a Cousin River camp. They had made their fire close to the river and held down the edges of their lean-tos with mounds of dirt.

She saw the scowl on Fox Barking’s face, heard him sputter out curses. Had he thought the Cousin People would no longer follow the caribou? Did he assume he could easily claim their hunting territory?

She had wondered when he told the people of dreaming caribou that he did not realize the animals he spoke about, three days north, two east, were those hunted by the Cousin men. Did he think the Near Rivers would be welcome? Did he think the Cousin women who traveled with his hunters as slaves and wives would not long to rejoin their own people? Fool! Perhaps the curse charms she had sewn into his parka were already beginning to work. She had been able to add the last of them the night before they left.

“It is a Cousin camp,” Dii said to her, and K’os was so deep in her thoughts that she jumped at the words.

Dii repeated what she had said, then added, “You think Anaay knows this?”

“He should. What hunter would not?”

“He is Near River. He might not recognize the things we do.”

K’os shrugged. “Have you been on a caribou hunt before?” she asked.

“Twice, with my—” She stopped.

K’os raised her eyebrows to show she understood. It was taboo to mention the dead, and Dii was wise to hold in her words, especially since her husband was so foolish and powerless.

“Then you know the way from here to the caribou crossing.”

Dii nodded. “Should I say something to Anaay?”

“If I were you, I would not,” K’os answered.

“But what if he does not know?”

“Let his slave tell him,” K’os said. “Better that a young wife not lose face.”

She saw the gratitude in Dii’s eyes and allowed herself to smile at the girl. Let her think K’os did this out of kindness. Gratitude was a heavy debt.

Anaay cut into Sun Caller’s words. The man’s stuttering made Anaay’s head ache.

“You think this was a Cousin camp?” Anaay said. “They do not have enough hunters to even leave their village. Do they think the caribou will respect them after what they did this past year, the fighting they began, the defeat they suffered at our hands?”

“I…I d-do not know any-anything ab-b-bout that, only that this camp is C-Cousin.”

“He is right.”

The voice, K’os’s voice, made Anaay jump to his feet. “You think I would take the word of a slave?” he said.

K’os pushed back her parka hood, then squatted on her haunches at the remains of a camp hearth. When she spoke, it was to Sun Caller and to River Ice Dancer and the other men gathered with them.

“Look,” she said. “See how the rocks are piled in a circle here, two hands high. That is something the Cousin People do. And see…” She pointed. “Look at this hole here. They sharpen the ends of their tripod sticks. The Near Rivers do not.”

“So, perhaps they are Four Rivers or Caribou People,” Anaay said.

She smirked, and Anaay reached out to slap her, but she jumped up and away so that he lost his balance and nearly fell into the ashes. Several hunters turned their heads. Anaay did not let himself think of the smiles they were hiding.

“Do what you want,” K’os said. “It means nothing to me, but I would not be surprised if the Cousin hunters, however few of them remain, follow their custom and hunt at the Caribou River.”

“A-a-a river hunt,” Sun Caller explained to the younger hunters. “Wh-when I was a y-young man, we joined them on this hunt for a y-year. Th-there was too much disagreement over the sharing of meat, s-s-so we did not hunt with them again.”

K’os lifted her chin at Anaay. “You think the singing you heard was from the animals that the Cousin hunt each year?” she asked him.

Anaay slitted his eyes, spoke to her through his teeth. “Go back to the women. Even my wife has more sense than to speak when hunters decide what to do. You are slave. Do not forget that.”

“Perhaps it’s time she was sold to another,” River Ice Dancer said, but Anaay ignored his impertinence. He was little more than a boy. Let him try to control a woman like K’os.

She walked away, swinging her hips, and the hunters’ eyes followed her until she was lost in the group of women who huddled near dogs and packs.

“So perhaps Anaay should do more dreaming,” one of the hunters said. “We do not need to spend strength and weapons on Cousin men. Even if there are only a few of them, I do not want to fight. My wife is here, and my oldest son.”

“There are those of us who have Cousin wives,” said First Eagle, one of the youngest hunters. “How do we know they will not join their people and fight against us from within our own camp?”

“You whine so much, I think you are a woman,” Anaay told him, snarling the words. “We usually hunt with fences and a corral to direct the animals to our weapons. The Cousin use water to slow the caribou, and their women stand in the river so the dead animals will float to them. We have not had much experience hunting this way, but perhaps the songs came to me because this year we are supposed to hunt a river crossing. Leave me alone and I will think about this. Make camp here, and give me time to pray.”

He walked away from them all. Left them without looking back. Why listen to their grumbling? Had they heard the singing? Did they know more about caribou than he did?

When he was out of sight of the camp, away from the noise of the women, he removed his weapons from their scabbards and set them on the ground. He squatted beside them, rested his right hand on his throwing board and spear, then closed his eyes and began to sing. It was a song that had once belonged to the old man Tsaani.

Tsaani had given it to his grandson Sok, so it did not belong to Anaay, but Sok no longer lived with the Near River People. He would not know Anaay was using it. And surely Tsaani would not mind. Perhaps he would prefer that Anaay use it. After all, it was Sok’s wife who killed Tsaani, and Anaay had told the people who the killer was. Tsaani owed him for that, at least a song.

Anaay tried to remember back to the night of his caribou dreaming. He had seen the caribou, had heard the clicking of their passage, a sound like stones rattling against stones. He had felt the ground shake, and when he awoke, he had had his face turned to the northeast wall of the lodge. What else did he need besides that? If his dreams had told him to travel north and east, then that is what he must do.

He thought again of what Sun Caller had told him about the river hunt. Sun Caller did not seem to remember that Anaay had broken his arm that autumn and so had not been there.

While the other men were hunting, Anaay had stayed in the village and earned himself Gull Beak as wife. She had been second wife to a man who was away on the caribou hunt, and by the time her husband had returned to the winter village, Anaay was already living in Gull Beak’s lodge. So how could he regret missing that hunt? There were other ways to learn how to kill caribou at river crossings.

Surely K’os had been on river hunts, but he could not let her know that he had never taken caribou in such a way. K’os was a woman who would use such knowledge to get revenge. He could not allow himself to forget that time long ago when she had killed his brother Gull Wing with only a sleeve knife. Of course, Gull Wing deserved the death he got. It had been his idea to rape K’os, though she was just a girl. Anaay and Sleeps Long had only watched at first, and if Gull Wing had not goaded them, they would never have done such a thing.

He closed his eyes for a moment and remembered that day at the Grandfather Rock. He had sunk himself into K’os’s soft flesh, felt her struggle against him as he thrust. What should she expect? She had flirted with the three men when they ate in her mother’s lodge, then followed them from the village. Did she think they were made of stone?

He had believed they killed her, she had lain still for so long, her parka stuffed into her mouth and pulled up over her head. Then, to his horror, she had moved, sliding so quickly from the rock to thrust her knife into Gull Wing’s heart that no one had been able to stop her. It was fitting revenge for Gull Wing’s death that K’os was now Anaay’s slave. But Anaay could not allow himself to forget for even a day what K’os had done.

He started another song, then thought of his new wife, Dii. Perhaps, though she was young, she had traveled with the Cousin People on river crossing hunts.

“He wants you,” K’os told her.

Dii looked into K’os’s face, tried to read her thoughts, but K’os’s eyes were so dark—as though no light came into them—that Dii wondered how K’os could see.

“My husband?” Dii asked.

“Yes, Fox Barking, your husband.”

Dii shuddered at the disrespect in K’os’s words. Of all the people in the Near River Village, K’os was the only one who did not give Anaay the honor of his new name. But had she not always been a woman of disrespect? Dii remembered the Cousin wives whispering about K’os as they tended hearth fires. Even now, though K’os was a slave, the women, both Cousin and Near River, gossiped about her.

She went with men into the forest and returned with gifts a slave could earn only in one way, but that was of no concern to Dii as long as her sister-wife, Gull Beak, and her husband did not care.

Of course, K’os was angry that Anaay kept her as a slave rather than making her a wife. Perhaps she held Anaay responsible for the defeat of the Cousin People, but even then, she should respect the name itself. It alluded to the power of caribou dreaming, and who did not know that every name also had its own spirit, apart from the spirit of the person who used it?

“Where is Anaay?” she asked K’os, saying the name loudly and with a lift of her chin. At least K’os should know that Dii honored her husband.

K’os shrugged, but as she walked away, Dii saw her twist her head only for the blink of an eye toward the river. When K’os was out of sight, Dii stood on tiptoe, scanning the growth of brush that marked the river’s course.

At first she did not see him. He wore his new parka, and the browns and golds of the furs blended into the stones and frost-killed grasses. Then as though her eyes suddenly cleared, she saw the outline of his hair, dark as a shadow. He was sitting on a large rock that was balanced, it seemed, on the rubble of stones and driftwood that spread up from the water. When he saw her, he called out, but she could not hear his words. The river was noisy as it rushed over the gravel of its bed.

She drew close, and he set his feet against the ground, pushed back. The rock he was sitting on moved.

“Look! What do I see?” he said to her, and it was good to hear the beginning of a riddle. The Near Rivers were not riddle tellers like the Cousin People.

“It claims power but has no strength except its size.”

Dii raised her eyebrows at him and smiled. It was a poor riddle, with no difficulty to it. Of course, he meant the rock. It must have been flung to the banks during the spring breakup, but the smaller stones under it kept it away from the strength of the earth. If it could not touch the earth, how could it be strong? But she did not want to insult her husband, so her first guess was the river.

“The river?” he said, and laughed until Dii’s cheeks reddened with embarrassment. “I thought the Cousin People were good at riddles.”

Then Dii allowed her anger to speak for her, and she said, “We are. The answer is the rock you sit on.”

He set his mouth into a pout, studied her for a moment, then without referring to the riddle motioned her to squat beside the rock. There was no firm footing on the rounded stones, and to look at him she had to kink her neck, but she reminded herself that he was her husband, a caribou dreamer, and so she ignored the ache of her feet, curled as they were to help keep her balance, and listened to what he had to say.

He began by talking about the days when he was a boy, and then told her of his first kill. He spoke of the first woman he had taken to his bed. It was not something she particularly wanted to hear, and her thoughts drifted to other things, to the repairs she must do on garments, a seam ripped, a boot sole growing thin. Not for the first time, she wished Gull Beak had come on this hunting trip.

K’os could take their turn at the hearth, and would also do much of the work on the tents and making camp, but she would not sew. When Dii asked her, K’os held out her hands in protest, showing the twisted fingers, the swollen joints that she claimed would not allow her to hold awl or needle. For truly, though K’os had the face and body of a young woman, she had the gnarled, bent hands of an elder.

When they had lived in the Cousin Village, K’os still sewed, and a man who received one of her parkas wore it in pride, for she did work as fine as any—even more beautiful than Gull Beak’s.

Dii had tried to get her to sew Anaay a parka, had even given her furs and strips of caribou intestine hung out in freezing weather so the intestine turned a pure and beautiful white. But though K’os promised to try, so far Dii had seen no results. She hated to ask for the fur and gut back. Why discourage the woman? Better for Dii to be grateful for her own strong hands.

Suddenly, Dii realized that Anaay had stopped talking and was looking at her as though he expected an answer. Her eyes widened in distress, and she blurted out the first thing that came to her: “I really do not know.”