The Storyteller Trilogy (91 page)

Then the hunters were running, each of them grabbing spears and lances and heading upriver, telling the women to gather at that place downriver where the water was shallow and the river wide, the current slow.

The women also were running, slinging ropes over their shoulders and grabbing packs filled with butchering knives and burins.

In the moonlight, Chakliux could see the caribou were a mixed herd led by a large cow, a calf at her side. They swam with heads and chests high in the water, their short tails held straight up. That first cow and her calf were allowed to go through, to feel no spear. For if they killed the leader, how would the caribou know where to come the next year? Who would take them to the Cousin People’s camp?

But other cows followed her, then the bulls. The hunters stood on the banks, a few venturing into shallow water. Chakliux’s first animal was a cow. She was old, with one broken antler. Chakliux’s spear—thrust at her exposed back—severed her spine, and her hollow-haired hide kept her afloat as the current took her downriver to where the women waited.

The caribou that gained the opposite shore did not look back, but scrambled up the bank and went on, as though nothing were happening, as though this river were like every other river they crossed.

Chakliux’s second caribou was a young bull, good for meat and hide. The animal, in avoiding one of the other hunters, struck out swimming toward Chakliux. Chakliux stood still, held his spear ready to thrust. When the bull saw him, its eyes rolled white and it began to turn, offering Chakliux an easy strike to the spine at the base of the neck. The hit was solid, but Chakliux’s spear point wedged between two vertebrae. He pulled hard against the birch shaft, lost his balance and slipped into the river. The current pushed him into the caribou carcasses that were now floating downstream, but then his otter foot found a submerged log, caught and held until Chakliux could regain his footing. He waded into the shallows, pulled another spear from those he had slung on his back, and waited to make another kill.

During the crossing he took three handfuls of cows, several calves and two young bulls before the large bulls passed him. Their hides, scarred from years of fighting, were good mostly for tents and lodge skins. They were close to the rut, and their need for cows would sour their meat. Chakliux killed only two, then the herd was past. It had been a good hunt, with no one hurt and many caribou taken.

Then suddenly Sok was laughing, clapping his hands to his knees, then the others, too, laughed, and though Chakliux knew their laughter showed their joy, as Dzuuggi, he realized that they must also show their gratitude. He lifted his voice in an ancient song of praise known to men in both Cousin and Near River Villages.

The hunters joined him: Sky Watcher, whose spear hand was wrapped and dripped blood; Cries-loud, now after this hunt a man rather than boy. Sok, Night Man, Take More and Man Laughing, each hunter with his own story to tell.

Sky Watcher had dragged the first cow taken ashore, and now they beckoned Chakliux forward. He praised the caribou for its meat, then helped Take More remove the heart and liver, give out equal portions.

As the hunters ate, their boasting words left them, and they gave honor in silence. Chakliux took his share, and as the blood soaked into his hands, the meat, warm in his mouth, lifted the cold and weariness of the hunt from his body.

Aqamdax waited with the women, downriver from the crossing and the camp. They had chosen a wide section of sandbars where the current slowed, women standing on each bank. She stayed close to Star, so she could be sure the woman did not do anything foolish. Yaa had not yet joined them, and Aqamdax knew Sok had told her to remain in the watcher’s tree until the caribou had passed. It was good she was taking so long, Aqamdax thought. That meant a large herd, not just a few animals straggling at the edge of a group passing a half day’s walk to the east or west.

“The best thing about caribou is they float,” Twisted Stalk explained to Aqamdax, the old woman chewing at her words as though she were eating while she talked. “That is something to think about since this is your first hunt.”

Twisted Stalk took a scrap of haired caribou hide to the edge of the river and threw it out into the current. It bobbed along at the surface until the water swept it out of their sight.

“They are land animals, you see,” Twisted Stalk said. “When they are in the river, the water spirits want them out. They bring too much smell of grass and earth with them, so the river floats them up and keeps them high. That way they can see their way to land.”

Then several women called out. Aqamdax saw what they saw, the carcasses of caribou floating down to them, their blood coloring the water. Most of the animals were cows. Aqamdax watched as Hollow Cup and Twisted Stalk waded out into the waist-deep river, wrapped a rope around a cow’s spindly antlers, then pulled her to land. Then other women on that side of the river helped them until they had heaved the carcass away from the grip of the water.

Star grabbed Aqamdax’s arm, and Aqamdax saw a caribou coming toward them. They each caught an antler and between them pulled the animal to shore. Aqamdax heard Twisted Stalk call to her. Another caribou was floating down their side of the river, and one after that. Aqamdax took the first, and she felt the river lift her from her feet as she caught the animal. It was a large bull, full-necked, the dark portions of its fur nearly black in the moonlight. As she dragged it toward the shore, she saw that other women were wading into the water, then she looked back to see that the river was full of caribou, floating like a raft that stretched bank to bank.

Already she was tired, cold from the river, but still her heart lifted, and she felt like singing. With so much meat, they would have an easier winter. What had Chakliux told her? Fifty caribou for each hunter during a year, some taken in spring hunts, others in the fall, in order to have enough for food and lodges, clothing and oil.

She dragged her caribou ashore and went out for another, choosing to go to the middle of the river, since she was young and strong. And with each caribou she caught, the song of thanksgiving grew in her heart. And with that another song: Wife to Chakliux! Wife to Chakliux!

Yaa watched until the last of the caribou had passed the ridge, then she waited a little while longer. She did not want to curse anyone’s hunting luck or drive the caribou back the way they had come, but finally she untied herself from the tree and took one last look.

It was dawn now, the sun working its way up the sky. Yaa grasped the limb she was sitting on and hoisted herself down, then she saw something move out on the tundra. She sighed. Probably a few more caribou straggling in the wake of the main herd. She boosted herself back to her perch. She was tired of the tree and wanted to be a part of the excitement of the butchering, but if more caribou were coming, she would wait as Sok had told her.

She lifted a hand to shield her eyes, squinted, then realized they were not caribou but hunters. A group of three coming from the northwest. Near River? What was he doing out there? Once the Cousin People had killed the caribou did the Near Rivers plan to come in and steal the meat?

That would not be good. The Near Rivers knew this place was claimed by the Cousin People. Forever the caribou had crossed this river, sometimes in large herds, sometimes only a few, but they had always crossed, and the Cousin People had always hunted them here. At least that was what Star had told her. Would there be more fighting?

She pressed her cheek against the tree trunk. The cool pungent smell of black spruce calmed her, but she could still hear her own breath, harsh in her throat, as if she had been running. Finally she heard faint cries and she could see that the hunters had raised their spears toward the ridge, toward the tall trees at the center of that ridge. Did they know she was here? How could they?

Then Yaa realized that they were too small to be River hunters. They were boys, and the middle one walked with a limp. Hadn’t Squirrel twisted his ankle only a few days before they left camp? And there was his brother Black Stick beside him.

Because she was a girl, Sok had not been able to tell her the signals watchers used. But she had listened back in the camp, though she pretended to be busy with women things, each time he taught Ghaden.

She closed her eyes and thought for a moment, trying to remember the sign for caribou. A stick or spear raised to the sky three times. Yes. She watched, and her eyes ached with the intensity of trying to see something so distant.

Then she was sure she saw the sign, sure each boy was waving a stick, slinging it three times toward the sky. But what should she do? There was no one with her to carry the news, and the boys were still a long way off. Besides, when they came to camp they would find it empty, and how would they know which way the people had gone?

She climbed down the tree and ran toward the river.

Star, the only woman not bent over a caribou carcass, was the first to see Yaa. Star lifted her voice in a wail so much like a mourning cry that it startled the others.

“What?” Aqamdax said, and Star pointed toward Yaa.

“Yaa! You are all right?” Aqamdax yelled.

“The boys!” Yaa called. “The boys! Squirrel! Black Stick! Caribou Tail!” Her words were broken by her breathlessness, and Aqamdax could tell she had run a long way.

Aqamdax went out to meet her, clasped her shoulders and said, “Don’t try to talk. Take a long breath. Take another. There. Now what has happened?”

“I was…I was in the tree…waiting like Chakliux told me to…then I saw Squirrel and Black Stick and Caribou Tail…. They gave the signal for caribou. They were so far away and Cries-loud had already left to help the men, so I came myself and…”

“Caribou? She said caribou are coming?
More
caribou?” It was Twisted Stalk, and soon the other women were also crowded close.

“We need to tell Chakliux,” Star said, and for once Aqamdax agreed with her.

“Should Yaa go?” Bird Caller asked.

“She is the only one among us who is old enough to go alone and yet has not known moon blood.”

“There will be a curse,” Star cried.

“Do not speak of curses,” Twisted Stalk said. She looked at the other women, then back at the dead caribou they had taken from the river. “Does anyone have a hide off yet?”

“We do,” said Hollow Cup.

“Bring it.”

She and her sister Yellow Bird brought the hide, folded flesh side in.

“Open it,” Twisted Stalk told them. “Now wrap it around her.”

Yaa shuddered as the women laid the hide over her shoulders. It had not yet been scraped even the first time, and was thick with fat and severed blood vessels.

“There. Now the river will think she is caribou, and she will not curse anything,” Twisted Stalk said.

“We should make a chant,” Star suggested, and the women looked at one another, unsure of what to sing.

“Aqamdax,” Twisted Stalk said. “You are storyteller. Make a chant.”

The first songs that came to her mind were those she had learned in her own village, but would words used by the First Men be good for caribou? Probably not. Then she remembered something Chakliux had taught her, a thanksgiving chant River People used.

It was only a child’s song, but she sang it anyway, and soon the other women joined her. What is better than thankfulness? What carries more power than praise?

As she sang, Aqamdax noticed that Yaa was shaking. Not with cold, no, the caribou hide would quickly pull away the chill of Yaa’s river crossing. Most likely in nervousness, that she must travel alone to the men’s killing grounds.

So when the chant was finished and Yaa started out, walking and running, going as quickly as she could with the heavy caribou hide weighing her down, Aqamdax began another chant, one that she sang only in her mind, a song of strength and courage for her small sister as she carried the good news of caribou.

Y
AA TREMBLED UNDER THE
weight of the caribou hide, but she made herself run. What was a pounding heart and tired legs compared to a winter belly full of caribou meat? She pushed her way through the brushy banks, once nearly lost the caribou hide when greedy willow branches reached out to grab it from her, but she clasped the hide, twisted her body and got away.

She remembered a story she once heard Chakliux tell, about a man who had been able to become a tree. She wondered if that willow was the man, and she wondered if he would curse her for her selfishness in keeping the hide.

“It is not mine to give you,” she whispered, and hoped the wind would take her words back to where that tree-man stood, his feet woven into the soil.

Finally she came to a place where the river bent and flowed from the north, then turned back again to flow from east to west. The willows and alder were flattened, each branch showing the white of fresh breaks. Caribou tracks scarred the earth. As the river straightened, the brush thinned and she saw the men, heard their voices, their laughter.

There was smoke. She could smell it, and the aroma of cooking meat. Then she heard the exclamation of a high-pitched boy’s voice. Ghaden, she was sure. She stopped where she was and waited. Let the men come to her, but she lowered the hide so they could see her face.

Ghaden yelled her name and screamed out some foolishness about a caribou eating her. Then Night Man, Chakliux and Sok were beside her, all asking questions. Yaa was not sure whom to answer first, so she waited until Chakliux held up one hand, and the men were silent.

“Why did you come?” he asked, and his voice was hard, angry, so that Yaa knew she had risked much in coming to this sacred place.

“The women sent me,” she said.

“Why?” Night Man asked, and his voice was even more terrible than Chakliux’s.

Suddenly the weight of the caribou hide, the heat and smell of it were like rocks set on her shoulders, and her legs collapsed under her. Then Sok’s hands were standing her up again, but no one took the hide, and she had to concentrate so hard not to fall that she barely had strength to speak.