Song of the River (54 page)

She concentrated on her feet, moved one then the other. Surely she was past the village by now. There were ways to build caves in the snow, to make a shelter. Chakliux had told her a story about a snow cave….

Her mind worked so slowly that her thoughts seemed as thin and foolish as dreams. They dig, they stop and dig and … But they have dogs in the stories. Don’t they have dogs? To help dig? No, perhaps not. Wolves? Bears? Fool, who would share a den with a bear?

Suddenly the wind and snow were dark, as solid as the earth. She hit hard against that blackness, then slid down, forcing splinters from the branches through her mitten and into the palm of her hand. Then she was in the snow, buried by it, the softness folding over her head like water, cutting away the wind but also taking her breath. She drew in a mouthful, felt it burn her lungs. She battled to her feet and realized that she had run into a lodge.

She began to laugh, high foolish laughter. Then there were people around her. She looked into the faces of Cousin Village hunters. Tikaani and Black Caribou, Runner and Speaks First. She had found the hunters’ lodge.

“You are not hurt?” Tikaani asked, bending over her.

Then Aqamdax’s thoughts were clear, as though she had not made the hard journey for wood, as though it was a day without winds or snow or deep, harsh cold.

She tilted her head toward the tree top she had dragged from the forest. “I thought of you,” she said to the men. “I know you must spend much time hunting. I thought I should bring you wood.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

“Y
OU KNOW STAR DOES
not take care of Night Man, and my mother …” Tikaani lifted his hands. Why say anything more? His mother had lost too much, too quickly.

“Aqamdax is a slave. She has no lodge, nothing. Where will they live?” Black Caribou asked.

“With my mother and Star.”

“Who will hunt for them? Night Man barely has the strength to walk across the village. Is it not enough that you must bring meat for your mother and Star and those children Star decided she must have?”

“I feed Aqamdax already,” Tikaani said, and after a moment Black Caribou nodded, though he said nothing about K’os and the fact that Tikaani also supplied much of the meat that went to that woman’s lodge.

“Then if you think you can get her, do what is best. She is a hard worker. I still do not know how she managed to bring that wood to the hunters’ lodge. Do you know that she came back later to cut and stack it?”

“Night Man told me.”

Black Caribou narrowed his eyes as though he had just thought of something. “Does Night Man want a wife?” he asked.

“What man does not want a wife?” Tikaani replied. He did not mention the argument he and Night Man had had about K’os’s slave woman. When Night Man was strong enough to hunt again, then he could throw her away and take another woman, or if she had pleased him, keep her and take a second wife. Night Man had finally agreed, but was still worried that a Sea Hunter woman would change his luck.

A foolish thing to worry about! It would be a good thing if she did. Their family had had nothing but bad luck since Chakliux had convinced Cloud Finder to give the Near Rivers some of his golden-eyed dogs.

Tikaani and Black Caribou left the hunters’ lodge, walked together to Black Caribou’s lodge.

The storm had lasted for three days, but now the sky was the clear high blue that sometimes comes in mid-winter, a cold day when breathing curls the inside of the nose and makes the lungs ache.

“You will go to K’os now?” Black Caribou asked as he ducked into the entrance tunnel.

“Yes.”

Black Caribou shook his head, chuckled deep in his throat.

Tikaani said nothing, but he understood what the man meant. Asking K’os would be the most difficult part. More difficult because he had not visited her for many days. He was too busy, had too many people to hunt for, too many worries. Besides, he had filled her cache that fall, even before he filled his share of the hunters’ cache, before he gave meat to his mother and sister. Why should K’os complain when he had given her so much? But he wondered what it would cost him to win his brother a wife.

K’os threw the scrap of caribou hide at Aqamdax and screamed out her frustration. Her hands ached so badly she could not even grip the needle. Worse, her fingers had begun to turn in on themselves, and now she could not straighten them. They looked like claws, hooked and deformed. She had tried all the medicines she knew, but winter limited her. There were roots and leaves that were best used fresh, and she would not be able to find those until spring.

K’os had thought it would be a good winter. With her husband, Ground Beater, dead, she thought other hunters would be more likely to visit her, but those hunters had not come, not even Tikaani, though he had brought meat. The few men who did visit usually asked for Aqamdax. And if they pretended to want K’os, their eyes still strayed to the Sea Hunter woman. Were they fools? Aqamdax had no power to give them. She was only Sea Hunter, only a slave.

Someone scratched outside the lodge. K’os heard a hunter’s voice. Tikaani. She hid her hands under a hare fur robe, then invited him inside.

He stood before her, and she lowered her eyelids, met his eyes, then looked away quickly, an insult most women learned when they were still young. What else should he expect? He had not come to visit her for a moon of days or longer. She lifted her chin and looked at him, but did not get up to give him food or water, did not offer a place by the hearth fire.

She knew Aqamdax was watching her, saw the indecision in the woman’s eyes. Should she be the one to offer food? Should she fetch water?

“I have come to speak to you about something important, K’os,” Tikaani finally said.

K’os held a smile in her cheek, hid it well behind her teeth. She had forced him to speak first, to break silence rudely and thus give her the advantage of his disrespect.

She sat quietly for a time, enjoyed the discomfort she saw in Tikaani’s eyes, the confusion she felt coming from her slave as Aqamdax waited for K’os’s orders. Finally K’os nodded her head toward the caribou boiling bag where a thick soup of meat, broth and dried berries simmered.

K’os and Tikaani ate in silence, Aqamdax standing behind them. K’os knew the woman would jump at the snap of her fingers, bring water or more food, even hurry outside to fetch firewood. K’os had learned how to control her. Anger and blows did not work with this one, and it had taken a few days of frustration for K’os to finally understand what would, but since then, all things had been easy. Very easy.

“So what is it you want to tell me?” K’os finally said, making sure she asked the question just as Tikaani had lifted the bowl to his lips and filled his mouth.

Again, she held a smile behind her teeth as she watched Tikaani struggle to swallow quickly, then nearly choke on his meat.

“I have come to find my brother Night Man a wife.”

“You think I will marry a cripple, someone who cannot hunt, who cannot even fish in the summer with the old men?”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, K’os realized that Tikaani had not meant her but the slave Aqamdax. In horror she saw the corners of his mouth curl, saw his shoulders shake with silent laughter. When was the last time anyone had laughed at her? Not since she was a girl. Was Tikaani such a fool that he did not know her power? Had he forgotten the sacred weapon she had stolen from old Blue Jay? Had he forgotten the price she had been willing to pay for that?

“You have taught me too well, K’os,” Tikaani said to her. “There is not a man in this village who would dare ask you to be wife.” His words were as smooth as oil.

K’os narrowed her eyes, trying to see through those words, to discern other meanings under what he said.

“Not even you?” she asked him.

“What do I have to offer? I have a sister and mother, two children and a brother to hunt for. Perhaps I will also have to provide for my brother’s wife. How can I ask for a woman like you when I have so little to give?”

K’os pressed her lips together. It would be good to believe him. Perhaps she did believe him, but it would be best if he did not know it.

She crossed her arms over her chest, hid her hands under her sleeves and laughed. Then, still smiling, she said, “The woman has already gathered enough wood for me to last the winter, and I am tired of feeding her. What do you offer me in exchange?”

“What do you want?”

“What I truly want cannot happen until spring. I assume your brother wants the woman before that.”

“Yes.”

“Ah, then,” she said, and looked at Aqamdax, did not miss the shine that had come into the woman’s eyes, “there are several things. Have her make me three more baskets. You have seen her grass baskets?”

“I have seen them.”

“Three of those—large ones. I want wolf pelts. Two. Well-scraped. And you will fill my cache this spring, when the caribou pass through again.”

Tikaani nodded, looked at Aqamdax. “You will make the baskets?” he asked.

“Yes, I will make them.”

“Soon,” K’os said.

“Soon,” Aqamdax repeated.

“I will fill the cache this spring. I have one of the wolf skins. A black one. I will get another.”

“Black is good,” K’os said.

“If I bring it to you now, may I take her?”

K’os turned and looked at Aqamdax, let her eyes linger long on the woman’s face. She was a good slave, a hard worker, but K’os did not like her. She did what she was told, took the men K’os sent her into her bed, had even braved a storm to bring back wood.

She was a beautiful woman, too, although her beauty was almost too strange to appreciate. When the eyes grew accustomed, then it was apparent.

But her spirit was not the spirit of a slave. That was the worst thing, and nothing K’os had done to her had yet changed that. Perhaps it would be best to let her have a sickly husband. Allow her to discover how difficult it was to care for someone who could never hunt or protect her, who could not give status by his deeds.

Of course, there was one thing yet K’os could do, only a small thing really, not close to the threats she had made against those River children, Yaa and Ghaden.

“Well then, if she will go, you can have her.” K’os stood up and turned to face Aqamdax. “You have seen Night Man,” K’os said to her.

“Yes,” Aqamdax said softly, but the flashing in her eyes belied the quietness of her answer.

“He has not recovered from an injury to his shoulder—something my own son did to him, something that lies like stone against my heart. Perhaps by offering you I will repay in part what my son has done. But like all women, you have a choice. Stay here with me if you wish or go if you wish. Either way, I am happy.”

Aqamdax waited before giving her answer. She had lived with K’os long enough to know that the woman did not offer good things without reason, and most often that reason was to rejoice in the disappointment when that gift was taken away. Be wife? Yes, to get out of this lodge, she would be wife to any man, old or young, sick or healthy. From what Tikaani had said, by becoming Night Man’s wife she would live in the same lodge as Ghaden and Yaa. Surely, K’os could see the wanting in her eyes, the hope there. And what gave K’os more pleasure than destroying hope?

Finally she said, “I will be wife to Night Man,” and the image of the man’s thin, white face came to her mind.

For some reason, at the same time, she also saw Chakliux’s face, but she forced that image away. If the man had cared about her, he would have come for her—long before this.

“When do you want me?”

“Take her now,” K’os said, cutting off whatever answer Tikaani would have given. “Do you think I want to feed her longer than I must?”

“I can take you now,” Tikaani said, but Aqamdax could see by the look on his face that he had not intended for her to come with him at that time, and she wondered if he had spoken yet to Night Man. “Come to the hunters’ lodge when you are ready, but do not go inside. Call and I will come out to you.”

Tikaani had already ducked his head into the tunnel when K’os cleared her throat and said, “There is one more thing I would ask.” She paused and smiled at Aqamdax. “There is a dog that comes some nights to my lodge. I believe he even sleeps in my entrance tunnel. I do not want him there. Bring him to me for my cooking bag. I will add his meat to my caribou stew.”

Aqamdax opened her mouth but could find no words. What good would words do anyway? she asked herself. What K’os said was true. The dog slept in the entrance tunnel—something dogs were not supposed to do.

“Do you know who owns him?” Tikaani asked.

“He came with that girl from the Near Rivers.”

“Ah, Ghaden’s dog,” Tikaani said. “He will not want the dog to be killed. It has been trained to protect him. You are sure it is that one? He is a dog who obeys commands. It seems that if Ghaden wanted him to stay home, he …” Tikaani’s words trailed into silence, and he looked at Aqamdax. “So this dog protects others besides Ghaden,” he said.

Aqamdax tried to think of some way to save Biter. Perhaps the only thing she could do was refuse to go as bride. No, K’os would use Aqamdax’s refusal against her, just as she was now using her acceptance. Either way, something would happen to the dog or—perhaps worse—to Ghaden or Yaa.

“Bring me the dog and the first of the wolf pelts, and she is yours … or your brother’s,” K’os said.

“I will be back tonight with both,” Tikaani told her, but Aqamdax stepped forward, held a hand out toward the man, careful not to touch him.

“Not tonight,” she said quietly. “When you came to this lodge, I was just about to tell K’os that I must go to the moon blood lodge.”

K’os hissed. “You might have cursed him had he brought a weapon. How could you be so careless?”

“Among my people, we do not separate ourselves except in first bleeding.”

“Leave us then,” K’os said, flicking her fingers toward Aqamdax.

Aqamdax slipped on her parka and picked up the grass basket she had been working on. The days in the women’s lodge would give her uninterrupted time to finish it.