Song of the River (58 page)

Night Man called Aqamdax, and she left the warmth of the hearth fire with regret.

“You want food or water?” she asked.

“No food, no water,” he said softly, then held out his good hand. She knelt beside him, and he stroked her cheek.

“Are you cold?” he asked softly, then said, “It is warm here, in this bed.” He lifted the furs that lay over him and held her eyes with his own. She slipped in beside him, felt herself relax as the warmth of his body enveloped her. She lay still, waiting, not sure if he wanted her body or only the comfort of having her beside him.

He turned so he could look at her, and she saw the pain his effort cost him, so she raised herself on one elbow, pressed him back against the bedding furs, and began to stroke his good arm, then his uninjured shoulder, gradually moving her hands down his body. She drew back the blankets, saw that he was ready for her, even before she touched him. She slipped off her shirt and leggings, and he raised his hand to her breasts, trailed his fingers down over her belly.

Their touching became a rhythm, and soon she moved over him, murmuring her delight, praying that somehow the joy of this union would drive away the evil of his sickness.

For two days, she thought it had. For two days, he seemed to grow even stronger, sitting up for most of each day, and once, with Tikaani’s help, walking to the hunters’ lodge.

Aqamdax waited in eagerness for Night Man to invite her back to his bed. She even sat down in his furs, began the first tentative strokes of lovemaking, but he only smiled, made no move to encourage her, and so to hide her embarrassment at his quiet rejection, she had moved behind him, kneaded the muscles of his back and neck, then returned to the women’s side of the lodge.

Six days after their marriage ceremony, she had awakened to find Night Man frantic with strange dreams. His skin burned to the touch and his lips were cracked, scored with dried blood. Star, also awakened by Night Man’s cries, piled furs and stored food, much of what was left after the marriage feast, and over Aqamdax’s protests, took it to K’os’s lodge.

K’os came that night. She brought one of her medicine bags—a river otter skin, the bones of the skull still in the head, the empty eyes refilled with glittering black stones, the belly bulging with packets of roots and dried plants.

“You have been giving him the medicine I sent?” she asked Aqamdax.

Before Aqamdax could answer, Star said, “I have. She was throwing it out. I saw her take it to the midden pile, so I followed and brought the packet back. I made my brother hot teas whenever Aqamdax was outside.”

K’os looked at Aqamdax through half-closed eyes, curled her lips into a smirk. “You do not trust me?” she said. “You know I am a healer. I would not hurt anyone.”

“You have forgotten that I lived with you, K’os,” Aqamdax replied. “You will not touch my husband.”

“Star?” K’os said, holding her hands out, palms up.

“Do not leave. I will get Tikaani.”

Star went to the hunters’ lodge, and while she was gone, Aqamdax stood over Night Man, guarding him. When Tikaani came, he asked K’os to give Night Man medicine. Aqamdax argued, then pleaded, and all the while K’os worked, boiling powders into teas, mixing roots with fat, pulling away the heat of Night Man’s skin with her raven feather fan, directing it to the hearth fire smoke so it rose out of the lodge.

The next day, Night Man seemed stronger, and his fever abated, but he no longer spoke, seldom opened his eyes. Sometimes, seeing him lie so still, Aqamdax bent close until she could feel his breath against her cheek and reassure herself that he was still alive.

THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE

Ligige’ awoke from dreams of dead dogs. With glazed eyes and swollen tongues they performed one of The People’s dances to appease those spirits that steal souls. They did not wear the large wooden masks of death dancers. Instead their dog faces were bare to those who watched, both the living and the dead, and their feet sank into the earth with each step, as they reached down to pull power from the ground.

Ligige’ awoke breathless, and the parody of that dream-dance pulled away the sight of her lodge, its caribouskin walls strong and real.

She shuddered and pushed herself from her bed, hissing when she leaned against the palm of her left hand. She peeled away the strips of caribou skin she had used to cover her wound. A dark scab had already begun to pull the raw edges together, and no red lines told of poison trying to find its way to her heart.

She had to get the dead dog out of her lodge. She had been foolish to allow it to stay for the night. Who could say what spirits it had drawn, lying there in her entrance tunnel? She took a long breath, pushed her fingers into her stomach to see if there were any lumps or pains that had not been there the day before.

She felt nothing, only the ache of hips and hands, knees and neck, pain that comes to everyone with age, pain she had learned to live with long ago. She felt her anger rise at Blue-head Duck. What foolishness to give her the dog.

She pulled on leggings and boots, parka and mittens, then went out into the entrance. She dragged the carcass outside. Let Sleeps Long carry it away. He was strong. She was just an old woman. She returned for the innards.

They were bulky, and when she got outside, she slipped in the snow. She fell heavily on her knees, then pitched forward to her hands. She had closed her eyes when she fell, now opened them and saw that a long strip of what looked like ivory protruded from the dog’s belly.

Ligige’ pulled and it came out easily. It was nearly the length of her forearm, as thin as a fingernail and sharpened on both ends. One end curved up, as though it had been tightly coiled. She crawled back into the lodge, found a long-bladed knife, then came outside, squatted down and cut into the belly.

She found three strips like the first, one still partially coiled in a ball of hardened fat. She took off her mittens, pushed her hands into the belly contents, and pulled out four balls, each no larger around than a child’s fist. She set them in the snow, then called to the first woman who passed by.

“Go get Blue-head Duck. Tell him Ligige’ needs him. Tell him he must come now!”

The dog was not killed by spirits or disease. Did spirits wrap something as wicked as these ivory strips in fat and set them where dogs would swallow them? Did disease do such a thing?

Then Blue-head Duck was there, sputtering his outrage at being called from a warm lodge early in the morning.

“Shut your mouth and look at this,” Ligige’ told him.

Still muttering, he squatted beside her.

“Look. This is what killed the dog.” She held up one of the balls of fat, and he took it from her, turned it in his hands.

“This? Is it poison?”

“Break it open.”

He took off a mitten and stuck his thumbnail into the fat. He jumped as the coiled ivory suddenly straightened, flinging bits of fat and the sour contents of the dog’s stomach into their faces.

“Have you ever seen anything like it?” Ligige’ asked him.

“I have heard of it. North Tundra hunters use them to kill wolves. Wolves eat like dogs. They swallow without chewing. The heat of their bellies melts the fat and releases the strip of ivory. They bleed to death, if they are lucky. Sometimes the wound festers….”

Ligige’ nodded. “So there is no evil spirit killing these dogs,” she said.

Blue-head Duck studied the ivory, plucked at the sharpened point with his thumbnail. “Do I tell the elders?” he finally asked.

“If you tell the elders, then soon whoever did this will know that you know.”

Blue-head Duck nodded. “Perhaps I will wait, though it might cost our village more dogs. Will you keep the ivory for me, and these?” He pointed to the balls of fat that were still intact.

“I will keep them.”

“Someplace cold.”

“I am not a fool.”

“No,” he said. He smiled at her. “You are not a fool.” He stood and poked at the dog with his foot. “I will get my daughter’s husband to take this outside the village … unless you want the meat.”

“No,” Ligige’ said. “I do not want the meat. Tell your daughter she can have it. She is carrying a child. I have only myself to feed.”

When Blue-head Duck left, she placed the ivory strips and balls of fat in an old fishskin basket. She set the basket just inside her entrance tunnel, packed snow around it, then went into her lodge.

Ligige’ was hungry, and her bladder was uncomfortably full, but she sat for a long time beside the hearth fire, staring into the flames.

Chapter Forty-two

THE NORTH SEA

HE HAD LEFT BEFORE
they said he should. The ice in the bay had gone out, driven into the North Sea by high storm winds, but when the hunters took their iqyan beyond the inlet, they said the ice still floated in chunks the size of an ulax roof. They told Chakliux there was a slush between the floes that a man could guide an iqyax through, but wind at the wrong time, in the wrong direction, might drive the floes together, crush an iqyax as if it were no more than a sea urchin shell.

They told him one moon, maybe a little more, then he should go, but Chakliux followed them into the ice, learned how to maneuver his iqyax around the floes.

He wanted to check the beaches and to stop again at the Walrus Hunter Village, to see if Aqamdax had come to them during the winter. Each night, his sleep was disturbed by dreams of her bones lying without honor somewhere between the Near River Village and this village that was her home. How could he wait?

From full moon to new moon—three handfuls of days—he had paddled without problems, a strong south wind driving the ice from the shore. Each night he had found a good beach, had slept under his iqyax, in the lee of its tight skin. But then the wind changed, packing the ice back into the beaches, and freezing the floes into a hard solid sheet, forcing Chakliux to paddle far beyond the shores.

Day turned to night and back to day again. His body ached in weariness, but he was afraid that if he slept the iqyax would turn sideways to the waves and flip him upside down in the sea. Under the guidance of Day Breaker, he had learned to right himself if he flipped, but he was still uneasy in the skill. Better to stay awake. To watch.

The First Men had taught him how to carve a bailing tube, so much easier to handle than the wooden bowl he had once used. The tube was longer than his arm, wrist to elbow, narrow at both ends, flaring out wider in the center. He could lower it into the iqyax, place his mouth over one end and suck, drawing the tube full of water. He had learned to lift the tube by clamping his teeth around it and picking up his head, then blowing the water out. The last few days in the iqyax, water had seeped in almost constantly, and he had been very glad for the bailing tube, and always afraid that a shard of ice would pierce the softening sides of his iqyax.

At the end of the next day the winds calmed, and he found a lead as wide as his iqyax was long. It stretched toward land as far as he could see, and the ice on either side of the open water was thin enough to break with his paddle. He had heard First Men stories of hunters caught in leads, their iqyan crushed when the winds shifted, but he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and started paddling, working as fast as he could to reach land before the calm ended. The lead soon narrowed in thickening ice, so that Chakliux had to use his hand ax to chop space enough for himself to turn around. He paddled back out to sea and in the calm waters paddled east, telling himself he did not need sleep.

Finally, he could no longer lift his arms, and he knew there was no choice but to tie his paddle to the deck of the iqyax and follow the dreams that called him.

THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE

K’os hid herself well so they did not know she watched. Why remind them that she held the power of life and death over every man and woman, every child? Why chance that her power would overshadow their own and consume their ability with this new weapon she had given them?

Already, few of them spoke of where their bows came from. Surely not from her. Had they not made them with their own hands? Carved the wood themselves, strengthened it with strips of caribou hide? Had they not twisted the sinew strings, made the small notched spears that those bows threw so far and so quickly?

Let them pretend. She knew who had brought the bow to their village. Surely that was enough. At least for now. At least until they had accomplished what she wanted.

She watched as the men practiced. Arrow after arrow pierced the center of the padded caribou hide they used as target. She watched and held in her joy. They were ready, and soon she would give them more than caribou hide to shoot at.

Tikaani lowered his bow and nodded his head at Three Furs. The new arrowheads were what they had needed. He felt his chest swell in pride, as though the idea had been his rather than his brother Night Man’s.

Their first points had been of stone. Less than half the size of those they made for throwing spears, they had still weighed down the arrows so they curved too quickly in their flight and fell short of most targets.

Night Man had spent many days during the winter knapping various stones into arrowheads. None were light enough. Finally, he made several of bone. They were light but fragile.

It was not worth worrying about, Tikaani had told him. They could use stone heads for close targets, bone for those farther away and for smaller game, like geese. But Night Man had continued to work, and Tikaani did not discourage him, hoping that the man forgot his pain as he spent the dark winter lost in thoughts of stone and sharpness, bone and blood.

Now Tikaani studied the arrowhead his brother had made and tried not to remember that, during the past moon, Night Man had seemed to lose what little strength he had left. Aqamdax cared for her husband now as though he were a baby: cleaning him, turning him, forcing water down his throat. Almost every day, K’os brought medicine. Sometimes it seemed to help; other times it did not.