Song of the River (12 page)

She lay her hand against her belly. Old Qung sometimes told stories of women who, in punishment for a taboo broken, were denied children. Perhaps Aqamdax should treat the chief’s wives with more respect.

She sighed. It would not be easy; each of them had such a contrary spirit, but if she started with a gift they might believe she intended to change. She looked out over the beach. There was little chance to find something with the bay still frozen. Even the village hunters were home with their wives.

Of course, there was always driftwood, if she was willing to work hard enough to get it. A large chunk of wood, as long as her arm, as thick as a hunter’s thigh, had been frozen into the shore ice since the second winter storm. After the storm, several women had worked at getting it loose but had finally given up. Aqamdax could take it back to Grass Eyes. Perhaps the woman would accept it as an offering for peace and forget that she had found Salmon and Aqamdax together.

Aqamdax went back to the ulax and got her seal flipper boots. Grass Eyes’s two young daughters were sitting beside their mother, each whining as Grass Eyes tried to teach them to weave baskets.

“I will soon be back to help you,” Aqamdax said.

The woman looked at her but said nothing.

Aqamdax pulled on her boots and went back outside. She climbed over the beach ice until she got to the driftwood. About half of the wood was frozen in the ice, but Aqamdax thought she might be able to get it out. She walked up the beach to a scattering of fist-sized round stones, worn smooth over the years by water and wind. She kicked one free and carried it back to the driftwood. She lifted the rock in both hands and brought it down hard against the ice that held the wood.

Again and again, she smashed rock against ice, until her hands ached and her fingers bled. Finally, by leaning her full weight against it, she was able to move the driftwood, less than a finger’s width, but still, it moved. She tucked her hands into her sleeves to warm her fingers. They were numb, and, as feeling returned, they hurt enough to force tears from her eyes. She wiped her face on her sleeve and threw herself against the wood until it was loose enough to pull free.

She picked it up, heaved it to one shoulder and worked her way back over the shore ice, past the frozen clumps of grass that marked the line of high tide, up toward the village.

There were three tens of ulas in the village, each warm and strong enough to stand against the assault of the fierce winds that blew in from the sea. Most housed large families: hunters and wives, children, sometimes grandparents, aunts, uncles. The ulas were dug into the earth, roofed with driftwood or whale jaw rafters, then covered with grass mats, thatching and layers of sod.

Inside, one or two large lamps—boulders with tops chipped out to hold oil, or smaller stone lamps, each ringed with moss wicks and filled with seal oil—were kept burning. Their heat was enough to warm the ulax, even in winter.

The chief hunter’s ulax was larger than most. It had seven sleeping places, each large enough for two or three people, each padded with sea otter furs and fox pelts, then curtained off from the main room with woven grass panels. Food caches, storage for seal skins of oil and sea lion bellies of dried seal meat, dried fish, whelks and chiton, were also dug into the walls. Caribou bellies and bladders, fitted with carved ivory plugs and bulging with water, hung from the ulax rafters.

The village was a good place to live. Hunters were almost always successful; the children were well-fed and healthy. Even in winter there was enough to eat. Those hunters who were not killed by sudden storms or angry sea animals, those women who lived through childbirth, could look forward to many years as elders, respected, cared for, fed.

Traders came often to the beach. The First Men hunters always had meat, oil. Who made better baskets, finer birdskin parkas than the women of this First Men village?

The wind pushed against Aqamdax as she walked. She turned a shoulder into it, tucked her head down, so she did not see the old woman until she almost ran into her. Suddenly the dark cormorant feathers of the woman’s sax were before her, and Aqamdax stopped so quickly that the driftwood slipped from her shoulder, striking her ankle before hitting the ground.

Angry words came to Aqamdax’s mouth, but she held them in. The old woman was Qung, the village storyteller, respected by everyone.

Of those who spoke against Aqamdax, the oldest women were often the worst, but in the years since Aqamdax had first welcomed men to her bed, she had never heard Qung lift one word against her.

The thought brought a sudden surge of gratitude. She bent down and leaned forward to look into the old woman’s eyes, for the stiffening disease had truly cursed her, bending her until the hump of her back was as high as her head.

“I am sorry, Aunt,” said Aqamdax, addressing the old woman in politeness.

“Ah, my eyes are not good, child,” Qung answered. She turned her head sideways and up, squinting as she peered into Aqamdax’s face. “Aqamdax, is it?” she asked. “Daes’s daughter?”

“Yes, Aunt.”

Qung patted Aqamdax’s hand. “Poor child.”

Her words surprised Aqamdax. It was Qung, old and bent, walking with slow steps, who should be pitied.

“You dropped something,” Qung said.

“Driftwood,” Aqamdax told her. Then, anxious to show Qung that she could easily give things away and should not be pitied, Aqamdax said, “I do not need it. Would you like to have it?”

She waited as the old woman bent even closer to the ground, extended a gnarled hand to stroke the wood. The North Sea had taken its bark, leaving it smooth to the touch but rough to the eye. It was dense-grained, frozen, but not water-rotted.

Trees grew near the First Men’s village, mostly stunted willow and wind-sculpted black spruce, but if the storytellers were right, the First Men came from islands with no trees, where any wood they needed for iqyan or ulax rafters had to be scoured from beaches, a gift of the sea. Even yet, it was easier to bring wood from the beaches than to travel inland and cut the living trees.

“You think He Sings does not need it?” Qung asked.

“No.”

“Then I would be grateful for it,” she said.

She smiled at Aqamdax, and Aqamdax saw that her teeth were worn almost to the gumline. An old one, this woman. No wonder she knew so many stories.

Aqamdax picked up the wood, carried it to Qung’s ulax. It was the smallest ulax in the village, a new one, made for the old woman by her daughters, so when Qung told stories the village people could go there, sit and listen, spend long days, long evenings, without interrupting the lives of Qung’s children. She lived alone there, though her daughters visited often.

Aqamdax herself sometimes went to the ulax to listen. She thought it would be wonderful to have her own ulax, a place with no wives to scold her, but she had no husband or sisters to help her build such a thing, and how could a woman alone do it? She might be able to dig a place for it in the hills above the beach, gather rock to strengthen walls, but she was not strong enough to raise the rafters.

Even if she were, the village elders would not allow her, a young woman, to have her own ulax.

Aqamdax carried the wood to the roof, then went back to help Qung up. Qung invited her to come inside, promised food and a story.

Aqamdax went gladly. How could Grass Eyes be angry when Aqamdax told her she had spent the day with Qung, that she had given the old woman a gift of driftwood?

The ulax was warm. Moss lamp wicks sent up thin streams of white smoke, and the walls were smooth and dry, well-covered with woven mats. Yes, it would be a good place to live.

Qung brought out food and water, then, taking a piece of dried fish, settled herself on her haunches beside Aqamdax and began telling stories. She started with tales of the ancient grandfather Shuganan, then told of a woman and her brother who became sea otters.

The stories were good. Aqamdax lost herself in them, found herself wishing she had the strength of those ancient people—the man with one hand; the woman who saved her sons from the trickster Raven.

Aqamdax stayed as long as she dared, until the light faded into night, then she crept back through the village to the chief hunter’s ulax, to his screaming wives and their noisy children.

She returned to angry words, to accusations by Grass Eyes and her small daughters, the sullen silence of the sister-wives.

“You spend all day away from work that must be done,” Grass Eyes said. “You leave the seal skins that should be softened, the baskets that must be woven, the food to be prepared. Yet you bring us back nothing from the beach.”

Usually, Aqamdax would have screamed back, would have reminded Grass Eyes who did the most work in the ulax, asked her what anyone brought back from the beach during winter. But this time Aqamdax only smiled.

That night Aqamdax did not allow herself to sleep. Instead, she waited until everyone had left the main ulax room, even Fish Taker, who often waited up in the night to catch some hunter who might come to visit Aqamdax. When everyone was asleep, Aqamdax pushed aside a corner of her curtain, lifted her voice into a high, singing wail and watched, waiting for the wives to come from their sleeping places.

Fish Taker was the first one out, then Spotted Leaf. When Grass Eyes appeared, Aqamdax also came from her sleeping place, her arms lifted to the rafters, her eyes closed. She told the Shuganan story, speaking in a voice soft and singing.

The wives began to argue, each suggesting that one of the others woke her, but Aqamdax ignored them, continued her story, found joy in their confusion. She broke off suddenly, stopped in the middle of a word, opened her eyes and looked around the ulax as though she were surprised.

The wives were huddled together, each clasping the others; the lamp left burning for the night threw their shadows, long and dark, against the wall. Aqamdax glanced toward Turn Around’s sleeping place. She and He Sings had the curtain pushed aside. Both peered out at her.

“Oh!” Aqamdax exclaimed. “I am here. Where is Qung?”

“Qung?” the chief hunter asked. “How should we know?”

“I thought she was here with me, teaching me. I thought I was a storyteller.”

Turn Around began to laugh, but Grass Eyes straightened and nodded, then went back to her sleeping place. Spotted Leaf and Fish Taker did the same.

Later that night, Grass Eyes, Fish Taker and Spotted Leaf all had the same dream. In the morning, after Turn Around thought about it for a while, she remembered she had also dreamed.

Four sister-wives given the same dream on the same night. Who could deny the sacredness of that? Surely, Aqamdax should go to Qung. She must live in Qung’s ulax and learn the ancient stories of the First Men.

They sent their husband out into a day of storm winds and snow to tell Qung.

Chapter Seven

THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE

THE EVENING HEARTH FIRES
glowed golden through the lodge walls, and the sky was the deep blue that comes just at sunset. Chakliux had caught two hares in his snare traps. He carried them into Red Leaf’s lodge and laid them just inside the door. Red Leaf would skin them and add the meat and bones to the simmering stew in the boiling bag.

The lodge was empty. It was not unusual for Sok to be somewhere else, but where were Red Leaf and her sons, Carries Much and Cries-loud?

Chakliux stripped off his parka, boots and leggings. He shook the snow from the fur before it melted in the warmth of the lodge, then slipped into a soft caribou hide shirt. Most of the men in the Near River Village wore such shirts when they were in their lodges. The hunters of Chakliux’s village did not, preferring their inner parkas on the coldest days, otherwise wearing only their breechcloths. Chakliux was still not comfortable in the shirt, but Red Leaf had been kind enough to make it for him, so he wore it.

A thin cry, a mourning cry, pierced the lodge walls. The boy, Chakliux thought, and sighed. He could still feel the weight of the child in his arms as he carried him to the shaman’s lodge. At least he would be mourned. Old Summer Face had claimed him as son, so the boy had a father, sisters, aunts and uncles. For Daes, only the necessary preparations would be made. She had no one except an old husband who would soon join her in death. Next year, when her bones were taken from the raised death platforms, when they were bundled and buried, who would even remember her?

Chakliux got his bowl and, using a dipper made from a caribou scapula, filled it with warm stew. A noise in the entrance tunnel made him turn his head. Sok came in, stood for a moment without speaking.

“The boy?” Chakliux asked. “I hear the mourning cries.”

But as Sok moved into the light given off by the hearth fire, Chakliux saw that the man had cut his hair in rough hanks over his ears and that his face was marked with ashes.

“Who?” Chakliux asked. The word scraped his throat like a blade.

“Our grandfather,” Sok said softly.

“Our grandfather?” Chakliux repeated, the words a question, as though his doubt would change what Sok had said.

“With the same knife.”

The sound of Sok’s voice rushed in against Chakliux’s ears and the light and smells of the lodge suddenly roared in his head. A weight settled into his chest so that his breathing came hard, like that of a man who has run too far, too long.

“Why?” Chakliux finally asked. “Who would want him dead? Who would want to kill the woman and the boy?”

“The boy is still alive,” Sok said, but at first Chakliux heard without understanding, and then with a dullness that allowed him no gladness, no relief.

Chakliux handed Sok his bowl of food. “Eat it,” he said. “I cannot.”

Sok took the bowl.

“Does anyone know who did it?” Chakliux asked.

“Some say the trader, others say someone from another village.” He did not mention the Cousin River Village, but Chakliux saw the accusation in his eyes.

“The Cousin River Village?” Chakliux asked.

Sok lowered his head over the bowl of food and answered with his mouth full. “Some say so.”