Song of the River (40 page)

Her heart beat so rapidly it made her hands and arms shake. She took a long breath, tried to see beyond the hunter to find Chakliux or even Sok, but she saw only the Walrus women, crowded together in a close circle.

She thought back to her own father’s death, remembered how another person’s smile would make her lash out in anger. How could anyone smile when her father was dead? Did they not feel the sorrow that had burned her heart until it was nothing more than a hard, dark cinder?

So if these Walrus were mourning, perhaps they would lose some of their anger when she shared their pain.

Then, in spite of the spear at her throat, in spite of the old women who leaned in to spit at her, Aqamdax lifted her voice into the ululation that was the First Men’s mourning song.

By the time she saw Chakliux, the spear had been withdrawn and the women had joined her mourning cries.

Aqamdax sat between them without speaking, without looking at either of them. Chakliux could feel her anger, and Sok’s. Old Tusk was chosen to watch them. He had taken them to an open stretch of beach a short distance from the Walrus Hunter Village. He had threatened to tie their wrists and ankles, but had left the leather thongs lying at his feet. Though he did not bind them, he thrust his spear toward them in quick jabs if they tried to speak.

Old Tusk did not look at Chakliux, but now and again made quiet comments about wind and tides, as if they were hunters sitting together to watch the sea.

For a time Chakliux listened to him, but finally he asked, “Who died?”

Old Tusk raised his spear, hissed, but said, “Who do you think? That one she was to marry.”

“The shaman?” Sok asked.

Old Tusk lowered the point of his spear so it was only a hands-breadth from Sok’s throat. “You are not allowed to talk,” Old Tusk said. His eyes shifted to Chakliux. “They think the woman killed him.”

“How could she do such a thing? She was in a lodge all night,” Chakliux said.

Old Tusk lowered his spear. “Some say she is a shaman. Others think she holds evil spirits.”

“The shaman was old. He just died,” Sok said.

Old Tusk shrugged his shoulders. “Some say that is true.”

“So the elders will decide whether or not she killed him?” Chakliux asked.

“They will decide.”

“Then what will happen?”

“They might let you leave. They might kill you. Perhaps they will kill only the woman.”

“There is nothing you can do?”

“How can I let you go if you killed our shaman?”

“We killed no one!” Sok said, his words almost a shout.

Old Tusk lowered his spear once more to Sok’s neck. “Be quiet. You cannot talk,” Old Tusk told him. And again he was guard, not friend, watching them carefully, shifting his spear to point at one, then another, and lifting his eyes on occasion toward the edge of the village where the elders had gathered to make their decision.

Aqamdax was thirsty; the wind had dried her throat, even her eyes. It would be good to have some water before she died.

That morning, before they had come for her, she had been hungry, but now she did not think she could eat.

She should not have lifted her voice in mourning. She should have been glad to let the Walrus man kill her. There were worse ways to die than by the quick thrust of a spear.

How foolish she had been to leave her village. Even the years she had spent in He Sings’s ulax had been better than her life since she had left.

Who was a better teacher than Qung? Who had more patience? If the Walrus killed Aqamdax, all that learning would be lost. Qung was old. Would she live long enough to train another storyteller? Perhaps thinking Aqamdax had a long life yet to live, Qung would be in no hurry to teach someone else. Perhaps she would wait too long, and many of their people’s stories would be lost.

Aqamdax looked up at the Walrus man who guarded them. He was a young man, his face made dark with a line of tattoos across his nose and cheeks. He had pushed back the hood of his parka, and Aqamdax could see that his hair was greased and pulled into a tight braid on either side of his head.

She began to speak, knowing her words might bring the spear, but perhaps they would also float to her village, so Qung would understand she must teach another to be storyteller.

“I am here, Qung,” Aqamdax said, speaking in the First Men tongue. “It might soon be said that the Walrus killed me. It might soon be told in ulas that I am dead.”

The Walrus Hunter growled out in anger, but Aqamdax spoke more loudly, and when she had finished her message to Qung, she began to tell stories. If she must die, then why not die as storyteller?

From the edge of her eye, she saw the Walrus Hunter move his spear close to her face, but she did not stop speaking. Her words were in her own voice, then in the voice of sea otters and of the wind, in the voice of children and hunters. She closed her eyes so she would not see the spear, closed her eyes so she would not stop speaking when the clamshell cut into her throat, so her words would flow even as her blood spilled.

PART THREE

I
LISTEN TO SOK,
this man I must again call husband. His face is layered with a thick coat of grease. He hates the gnats, he says, though there are not that many of them. A person can scoop a hand before the eyes and clear a path for seeing. Who needs more than that?

Gnats stick to his face like knots of black hair, and I hate to hear him call me to his bed.

I try to see him as he was in my village, his hair smooth and shining, his arms sleek with muscle, legs as thick and strong as the driftwood climbing log that leads from Qung’s ulax.

On the journey to the Walrus village, we slept under his iqyax, its curved back like the shell of a clam, shiny and wet from the tide flats.

But now I see myself as clam, dug up and waiting. His hands seek their way through the feathers and skins of my sax, under careful seams and small stitches to my bare legs. He enters me, devours me, then he sleeps, head resting on my head, his grease-killed gnats pressed into my hair.

Chapter Twenty-nine

THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE

CHAKLIUX HAD TAKEN HIS
iqyax up the Near River, waited two handfuls of days for Sok and Aqamdax, who had walked with the dogs from the Walrus Hunter Village. They had camped with him last night. This morning, after Chakliux had hidden the iqyax high in the sheltering branches of a black spruce and covered it with bark, they started out together to the Near River Village. They had less than a day’s walk, most of it along a trail the Near River People had made through the brush that grew beside the river.

Sok told him that Aqamdax had been no trouble, that though at first she was afraid of the dogs, she soon learned to secure their packs and to tie them so they wouldn’t gnaw away their ropes, how much to feed them so they wouldn’t be lazy the next day. Already, she knew the River words all dogs understood. But though Sok spoke of his wife with praise, Chakliux did not have to look hard to see the anger in Aqamdax’s eyes, the disdain. When she accepted something from Sok’s hands, or followed him meekly to his sleeping blankets, he saw that she mocked him with curled lips and slitted eyes.

What else should Sok expect? Chakliux asked himself. Aqamdax had been tricked into becoming wife, had been given to a people who almost killed her, and even then, Sok had done nothing to save her.

Though her mockery displeased Chakliux, he, too, found reason to praise her. How many women—how many hunters—would have thought to join the mourners’ song when their lives were threatened? When she was accused of causing the death of that old one they called shaman, she had not denied it, but used her storytelling voices to show the people her powers.

How could the Walrus Hunters risk killing her when she might be able to seek revenge? Without their shaman to guide them, how could they protect themselves?

Chakliux had seen the dead man. He had been curled like a child, hands clutched over his chest. There was no mark of fire or knife, no fear caught in the open eyes. He had been an old man. Old men die. Why think Aqamdax did it? He had said as much to Sok when Sok did not want to take Aqamdax with them, had reminded Sok that if the woman truly did have powers, most likely she would have killed them rather than the shaman. So to save her life, and perhaps theirs as well, they agreed to leave, agreed to take back all their trade goods, even Snow Hawk and Gray, the dogs they had brought from the Near River Village.

Old Tusk told Chakliux that they would place the shaman’s body in the lodge where Aqamdax had stayed, then would burn the place over him when the days of mourning had ended. If a woman could kill a shaman, what hope did anyone have of standing against her powers? Had she not walked across the floor of that lodge, her power seeping out at each step? Better to send that power away in smoke so it would settle far from the Walrus Hunters, who always tried to live lives of respect.

Yaa was the first in the village to see them. She was checking her mother’s trapline, the one she set for hares near the riverbank. Ghaden trailed behind her, Biter at his side. The boy was as quiet as a shadow, crowding close each time she stopped and staying three steps back when she walked. She had just found the second hare, the animal strangled in the trap’s clever sinew loop, when she heard the sound of brush snapping. Her first thought was of bears, so she pulled Ghaden close to her, crouched down, gripped the scruff of Biter’s neck and clamped his muzzle closed with one hand.

Then the leaves parted and she recognized Sok. The Cousin River man, Chakliux, walked with him, and behind them was a woman, tall and dark-skinned, who wore a strange feathered garment. Almost, Yaa called out to them; almost, she spoke a welcome, but then did not. She did not know the woman. With her dark-feathered parka, she might be some relative of Raven. Why draw the attention of one so powerful as that? Yaa let them pass.

Once they were gone, Yaa wanted to run and tell everyone in the village what she had seen, but she knew Brown Water would scold her for leaving without checking and resetting the traps. Even her mother would be angry with her. There were only three more. She looked back to be sure Ghaden was following her. He walked with one hand entwined in Biter’s fur, the other rubbing his eyes. She stopped, knelt down in front of him.

“Ghaden, are you hurt?”

He looked down, shook his head.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he murmured. He took a long shuddering breath.

She knew him well enough to guess that more questions would do no good. What boy ever admitted he was crying? She reached for his hands, turned them over, pushed his hair off his forehead, then ran her fingers down his leggings to his feet. No blood. Probably a bruised foot from a stick or rock hidden in the riverbank sod. She slowed her pace but went on to the next trap. At the last trap, they would rest, but even a little boy had to learn to finish his work. If hunters stayed home each time they got hurt, who would feed the people?

Aqamdax was glad when the path led out into an open space of grasses. The trees were taller here than where her people lived. Though their branches were high over her head, it seemed as though they pressed against her shoulders with whatever thoughts and powers trees had. Some were so large that they blocked out the sky. When she looked up at them, she felt as though they pulled her spirit out through her eyes and into the hidden places of their dark boughs.

The open grasses were better. Though there was little wind and a river instead of a sea, it seemed more like her home. How could a person know what was happening in the world if the sky was covered by trees? How could anyone know of storms coming or rain? Snow or sun?

The men had stopped, and Aqamdax, seeing them, stopped also. She lay a hand on each of the dogs’ backs to be sure they did not run on ahead. They had learned to obey her, these dogs, but sometimes they seemed to turn wild, even snarling at Sok’s commands. She could not blame them. There were times when she, too, wanted to run, to leave the packs she was carrying, to forget the many River taboos Chakliux had taught her.

First Men taboos made sense, but the taboos she must follow now that she had a River husband—ways of cutting meat, words that must be said when she took water or something from the earth—were foolish. Would not her own words be better? Now that she was River wife, now that she was here in the place where River People lived, did that mean the First Men taboos, First Men wisdom, should no longer be followed? Finally, she had decided to follow both ways. She spoke First Men chants and River chants, followed First Men taboos and River taboos, but their weight was like the heaviness of the tree branches, and she found herself watching the birds, following their flight, and wishing she, too, could soar above trees and earth, taking nothing with her but a cloak of feathers and the wind.

“Aqamdax! Come.” It was Sok. He gestured for her to join them, and so she walked to his side. He held out one arm, fingers splayed, and she saw that he was pointing toward a village, the ulas crowded close in a valley that was shaped like a bowl.

Aqamdax could not hide her curiosity. Who could believe how many different ways people made ulas?

“Listen, you can hear the dogs,” Sok said.

Aqamdax nodded. Looking back at Snow Hawk and Gray, she saw their ears were pricked forward, bodies stiff.

“This is your village?” Aqamdax asked, then realized she had spoken in the First Men tongue. She searched for River words, lifted her chin toward the village, then pressed fingertips against Sok’s arm and asked, “Your?”

“Yes,” he answered.

Chakliux stepped forward, told her the River word for “village,” and corrected her pronunciation when she repeated it.

They started again, Sok walking so quickly that Aqamdax saw Chakliux had difficulty keeping up. Finally Chakliux dropped back to walk beside her, and she slowed her pace. What did it matter if Sok arrived first? She had many days to live here in this village, time to learn their language and then to find her mother, a long time to devise a way to return to her own people. She thought of Tut, who had grown into an old woman before she got back to the First Men, and wondered if she, too, would be old before she found her way home.