Song of the River (3 page)

For a long time Day Woman was silent, and Ligige’ saw that her face was the face of a person deciding. Finally Day Woman lifted the strains of her mourning song. She wrapped her arms over her swollen breasts and lay forward to press her face against the packed dirt floor. Ligige’ set aside her birchbark container and fumbled through the fish-skin basket she carried with her when she went to birthing lodges. She took out a comb carved from birch wood and began to pull it gently through Day Woman’s hair. As she combed, she, too, sang, mumbling the words of the song The People used to guide new babies to the spirit world.

THE GRANDFATHER LAKE

The lichen on the rock pricked the child’s bare skin, and he arched his back. Though the days were drawing toward winter, the sun was bright, hot. The baby squeezed his eyes tight and flailed out with his arms, but there was no closeness of body or wrap, and he startled, reacting as though he fell. Suddenly, a soft robe was thrown over him, blocking out the light and folding the heat down into his face. The blanket settled against his mouth, and he stopped crying. He moved his head and lips, searching for his mother’s breast. He caught a bit of the robe and sucked, but there was no milk. In his hunger, the child clamped his gums together against the skin, then sucked hard, drawing a bit of loose fur down his throat. He choked, turning his head to fight for breath. His face darkened; his lips turned blue.

Finally he coughed and dislodged the fur from his throat to his mouth. He pushed it out with his tongue, then gulped in air and began to cry.

The old man walked away; the cries followed him. He lifted his hands to his ears and prayed for protection from the child’s spirit.

It was afternoon when K’os reached the Grandfather Lake. She had not wanted to come, but her mother had made her. She hoped she could find the basket quickly.

She searched first at the water’s edge. Perhaps during the struggle, the basket had fallen there.

She found phalarope feathers, bear tracks, nothing more. For a moment she squatted on her haunches and allowed herself to rest. She had bled for four days, then stopped, but her belly still ached. She looked out over the lake. The water was still; only the ripples of fish jumping moved the surface.

She kept her back to the hill where the Grandfather Rock lived. Even from this far, she could feel the rock pull her, and it seemed she could hear her own cries, could feel the pain of the men’s hands at her wrists and ankles, between her legs.

It will not always be this way, she promised herself. Already she could think of Gull Wing and rejoice. She would kill the others, too. Some way, though she was a woman, she would kill them. If she was strong enough to do that, she was strong enough to face the Grandfather Rock—and Gull Wing’s body, rotting beside it.

She turned and walked up the hill, but still kept her eyes away from the rock, instead scanning the ground as she walked, looking for the basket. It was a salmonskin basket, made of six fish skins split at the belly, flayed out and sewn, tail down, to form a narrow base. Each skin was scraped so thin you could see light through it. Her mother had cut off the fish heads, and the curves of the gill slits at the top edge of the basket were like a line of waves, one following the other.

K’os settled her mouth into a frown and lifted her head to see the rock. Grasses hid most of it, and somewhere nearby lay what was left of Gull Wing’s body. Memories pressed in, squeezed against her flesh until there was room for nothing but her anger and her pain.

She cried out to the Grandfather Rock. “Give me a long life. Let my hatred grow as strong and dark as a spruce tree. Let it last through all my years.”

She repeated the words until they became a song, and she sang until her throat was raw. She crested the hill, then stopped.

There was a woven hare fur robe, pure white, draped over the rock. Who would leave such a beautiful blanket? At the first rain, it would begin to rot. She walked slowly, carefully, watching for Gull Wing’s bones. But there was nothing, no bones, no flesh. Of course, a bear might have dragged him away. Or wolves. She thought she could see a swath through the grasses, a flattening, but she was not sure. A hunter would know, a man used to tracking animals.

Perhaps Gull Wing’s friends had come back for him, or moved him to the rock and placed the blanket over his body.

She wanted to lift that blanket, to see how the man had rotted, to laugh at the skin and muscles pulling away from the bones, the eyes torn out by ravens, the flesh eaten by foxes. But a part of her hesitated. Who could be sure what was under the blanket? Who could tell what curse might await her?

Better to find her mother’s basket and leave.

She walked down the north slope of the hill, then turned toward the black, wet soil where the spruce were thick and tall. She kept her eyes on the ground and finally saw the basket, lying on its side. Her mother would be angry if it was damaged. She picked it up. It was whole; but now she must fill it with spruce roots.

She stooped, ignoring the spikes of pain that cut in from her lower back, and began to thrust her digging stick into the ground. When she felt the stick catch, she pushed it in sideways and lifted until she brought a root to the surface. Using the stick and her hands, she pulled until she had two armlengths of root above ground, then she cut it off and followed it away from the tree, coiling as she walked, pulling, until the root was thin enough to snap. She moved to another tree, took another root, then a third root. She worked until the coils filled the basket.

She knew she should leave an offering for the trees. Her mother had insisted she bring dried caribou leaves with her, but she left the leaves in the pouch tied at her waist. The trees had watched the men come, had seen them take her to the Grandfather Rock, but had done nothing to help her. Why should she leave anything for them?

She started back toward the village, but then decided to return to the Grandfather Rock. She
would
look under the blanket, and sing songs of praise to the animals that had eaten Gull Wing’s flesh. Halfway up the hill, she smelled the reek of rotting meat. The smell did not come from the rock. She turned off the path and found the heap of bones, the bits of flesh, that had been Gull Wing.

She stood and laughed, called out to him, lifted her parka, told him to take her body if he thought it was so fine, then still laughing, she continued up toward the Grandfather Rock. If Gull Wing was not under the blanket, she would be foolish to leave it. Why not add it to the blankets she had already set aside for the day she would become wife and have a lodge of her own?

She set the fishskin basket on the ground beside the rock, and for a moment studied the blanket. It was woven from winter hare furs, each pure white, and it lay in a mound, as though it covered something. She lifted one corner. There was a noise, like a bird chirping. She dropped the blanket, backed away.

It is nothing but a bird, she told herself in disgust. You can kill it with your digging stick and take it home for the boiling bag. She lifted the stick, ready to strike, then threw back the robe.

On the rock lay a baby.

K’os closed her eyes quickly, afraid to see some great deformity in the child. Why else were children left?

The baby began to cry. K’os wanted to see it, to know what was wrong with it. She opened her eyes only a crack and looked out through the fringe of her lashes.

The child was whole and plump, a boy, his body long and perfect. K’os squatted beside the rock. Where had he come from? No one she knew had had a baby for at least two moons, and this child was only a day or two old. The scab-like stump of the birth cord still protruded from his belly. Perhaps he was from the Near River People, or one of the bands of Caribou People who traveled, following the herds. She reached down slowly and touched his cheek. He turned his head toward her fingers.

She remembered Gguzaakk when she was small doing the same, looking for her mother’s milk-filled breast. Too bad K’os’s aunt was not there. She could feed him.

The baby’s lips were cracked and dry-looking. He needed milk. K’os dropped her stick, spat into the palm of her hand, and rubbed the spittle on his lips. He tried to suck her fingers, but she pulled them away.

She shook her head. It was too bad someone else had not found him. There were many women who would welcome a son. She did not. Would not. She pressed her hand against her belly. Tomorrow she would go to Old Sister and tell her she had done something foolish. She had slept with one of her mother’s sister’s sons and did not want her father to know. Did Old Sister have something K’os could take? Surely there were medicines …She looked at the baby. He was shivering. His arms and legs jerked in spasms. Yes, too bad.

She closed her eyes and remembered Gull Wing’s heart, lying in the center of that rock, exactly where the baby lay now.

Suddenly K’os was very still. She had left the heart as a gift. What if the Grandfather Rock had given her a gift in exchange? There was no sign of that heart, yet here was this child. She bent over him, studied his face. There was something about him that reminded her of Gull Wing. The eyes, the brows? No, that was foolish. Look at the child’s long fingers. Gull Wing’s had been short, thick. The baby’s toes, also, were long and … again, K’os stopped. They were webbed; each of the last three toes was joined to the next.

Then she knew.

He was an animal-gift child. Like in the stories. Were not the greatest hunters, the most renowned shamans among her people those who were animal-gift, somehow grown from a clot of blood or a bit of flesh?

This child was one of them. The Grandfather Rock had shaped a child, perhaps from Gull Wing’s blood, but more likely from animal blood. Now the rock offered the child to her as a gift, to give her power. To bring back her luck.

She picked up her mother’s root basket, then lifted the baby. She wrapped him in the hare fur blanket and spat into his mouth. She had no milk in her breasts, but she could keep him alive until they got to the village, then her mother could find a woman to nurse him.

K’os felt her power grow with each step. She could not keep her laughter in her throat. It spilled out of her mouth and danced ahead of them as she carried the animal-gift baby to the village.

PART ONE

TWENTY YEARS LATER

WINTER, 6460 B.C.

L
OOK! WHAT DO I
see? Bones cut their feet.

I spoke this riddle to The People before I left my village. I said these words and told them many stories. I spoke long into the night, and The People heard what I said, but I have little hope that they understood.

The bones are those of First Salmon, Caribou Walking, Mother Bear, and all animals who return to give themselves year after year so The People might live. The feet belong to people who no longer show the respect those animals deserve.

The elders whispered among themselves, and I heard their words.

“See what disrespect has cost us,” they said. “See what happens when people no longer follow ancient ways. The salmon leave our streams. The young men thirst for war.”

So now I, Chakliux, must turn my thoughts to battle, not a battle of knives and spears, but a battle of the spirit. I go to fight for peace. Why else was I trained as storyteller? Why else was I given to The People as animal-gift?

Chapter One

THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE

CHAKLIUX’S THOUGHTS WERE LIKE
the bitter taste of willow bark tea, and he shook his head, suddenly impatient with his self-pity. At least she was beautiful. He could console himself with that. If he did not look into her eyes and see the emptiness there. If he did not let himself hear her foolish giggle, her petty complaints.

What was more important? His happiness or the safety of the people in this village and his own?

He had seen the storm coming, watched when it was only a shifting of stars, a wisp of cloud, but with each incident—the robbing of a snare trap, the refusal of a bride price—the thunderheads built until now it would take only one small thing to set the hunters at each others’ throats.

How better to bind the villages than through marriage? What stronger marriage than one between a son set apart as Dzuuggi and the daughter of the Near River shaman?

The older hunters in his village had envied him. He had smiled at their jokes, at the longing in their voices when they spoke of her, this beautiful Near River woman. But Chakliux did not want her. How could she compare to his Gguzaakk?

Gguzaakk had carried her soul in her eyes. Even now, he felt her spirit hovering near him. He was not afraid of her, that she might try to call him into the world of the dead, to follow her and their tiny son. Gguzaakk understood what he had to do, and he could feel her sorrow.

He reminded himself that Snow-in-her-hair was young. Gguzaakk had had more than four handfuls of summers when she died. Wisdom comes with age. Snow-in-her-hair would grow in wisdom as the years passed.

Chakliux watched her as she spoke to her mother, as she laughed and flashed her eyes at the young warriors who made one excuse or another to be near her. She wore a hooded parka of white weasel fur, each slender skin sewn so its black-tipped tail hung free. The parka was something to draw away the breath, and Chakliux comforted himself with the hope that Snow-in-her-hair had sewn it herself. He smiled as he remembered how clumsy Gguzaakk had been with awl and needle. But what had it mattered? Gguzaakk understood things of the spirit. She could look into a person’s eyes and know what should be said.

But, Chakliux told himself, it would be good to have a wife who could sew. How better can a woman honor animals than by creating beauty from their furs and hides?

Chakliux also wore a special parka. It was made of sea otter skins—bought in trade from the Walrus Hunters—to remind the Near River People of his powers. His mother had made it. She was a woman gifted with a needle and with quickness of fingers. He wore caribou skin leggings but nothing on his feet. He had known the people would want to see his webbed toes, his foot turned on edge, that sign of his otter blood. Who could doubt he was otter when they saw that foot always ready to paddle?