She nodded at Gull Beak, and the woman removed a packet of caribou leaves from the medicine bag and handed it to K’os. K’os opened the pack, took a leaf, laid it on her arm, rubbed it against her skin. She was a slave, and she was Cousin River. It would take a long time to earn the people’s trust.
“You see?” she said. “It will not hurt her.”
But the girl’s father looked at Gull Beak and asked, “It is caribou leaf as she said?”
“It is caribou leaf. I was with her when she gathered it,” Gull Beak answered.
“Her shoulder will hurt, but in a day or two she should begin to move her arm,” said K’os, as though the girl’s father had not expressed his doubt, as though Gull Beak were not even in the lodge. “Use the caribou leaves and give her willow tea. Make her wear the band and sling for a few days.”
“Blue Flower told me that there are songs that should be sung,” Red Leggings said.
K’os shrugged. “Tell Blue Flower to come and sing, but for the rest of today, keep the girl quiet and let her sleep.”
As she and Gull Beak left the lodge, K’os said, “So what will you ask them in exchange for our medicine?”
“You think a caribou hide is too much?”
“She is their only daughter. Ask for a hide, and also for that string of seal teeth I saw hanging on a lodge pole. That will be mine, if you can get it. If not, I will take half the hide.”
She glanced from the sides of her eyes to see if Gull Beak would protest, but she did not. After all, the woman’s lodge was already full of good things that K’os’s skills had brought her: beads and hides and pelts, baskets and even a stone lamp that burned grease, something brought into the village by a trader.
Gull Beak lifted her chin toward the center of the village. “Take a turn at the hearths. If someone needs us, I will come for you. I have beads to sew on the winter boots I am making my husband.”
K’os did as Gull Beak told her. Better to take a turn at the hearths than to be put to work in the river gaffing fish or scraping the moose hide Fox Barking had managed to cheat away from some hunter.
The wind was sharp. It cut through the village from the north and carried the smell of winter. The balsam poplar were turning yellow, leaves dropping to color the earth and make a bed for the snow. Two groups from the village had already left to hunt caribou, but Fox Barking stayed. He said he was fasting so he could hear the caribou more clearly. But so far his hunger had not called them into his dreams. Strange how in the lodge of a man who was fasting the stew bags—left full each night—were almost empty by morning.
Fasting or not, Fox Barking must soon decide where they would hunt. Otherwise the caribou would be past them, secure in their winter grounds.
He planned to take K’os and Dii, leave Gull Beak here in the winter village. There was so much to do in preparation for the hunt that K’os had not yet had the opportunity to finish her special gift for Fox Barking. She had to work when Gull Beak was busy somewhere else and would not walk in on her. Could K’os risk Gull Beak’s seeing the strips of flycatcher skin, the kingfisher feathers, the fox eye? What about the gull feathers or the bits of grebe neck skin? If a wife could bless a man with her sewing skills, why couldn’t a slave curse him with hers?
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
Night Man raised his left arm and, gritting his teeth, slowly straightened it. Five times he moved it up from his side, splayed his fingers, then lowered it and tightened his hand into a fist.
“Something good has happened here,” he finally said.
“As my child grows, so you gain strength,” Star replied, and laid her hand on the small mound of her belly.
Aqamdax bent her head over her sewing and pretended not to hear them. She could feel no joy for her husband’s returning strength. Perhaps his spirit realized that if Night Man became sick again, Aqamdax would not work for his healing. And what chance would he have with only Star and Long Eyes to care for him?
“Perhaps Aqamdax’s son took the pain with him when he died,” Star said.
Aqamdax sucked in her breath. Was there no end to Star’s foolishness? She stood up, left her sewing in the middle of the floor. It was a boot for Night Man. Let his sister finish it. Aqamdax pulled on her winter parka. It was cold outside, and the ground grew harder with each night’s freeze. Two days before, it had snowed, though the sun had melted the snow by noon. She left the lodge without saying where she was going or when she would return. How could she tell them when she did not know herself?
She started toward Ligige’’s lodge, but instead walked to the spruce woods. The trees took the brunt of the wind, and Aqamdax pushed back her parka hood so the ruff just covered her ears. There was a large black boulder midway through the woods, and she walked until she came to it. The rock seemed to have no special powers, nothing to give but also no need to take, especially from someone like Aqamdax, whose sorrow had made her weak.
She squatted on her haunches, facing the path that led back to the village. When had she left the First Men Village? she asked herself. Only two years ago?
What a fool she had been to abandon the old woman Qung and her comfortable ulax. There Aqamdax had learned to be a storyteller, was finally held in honor by the people who had despised her for so long. Surely, if she had been patient, one of the men would have taken her as wife. Surely a First Men husband would not have killed his own son.
Aqamdax’s throat ached with unshed tears.
Other women have lost babies, she told herself. Yellow Bird, Ligige’ and Twisted Stalk had all come to her, whispered their sorrow, told of babies who had died long ago. Those women now treated her as one of them, bonded through pain as sisters—at least one solace in the midst of her agony.
“It has been long enough,” Bird Caller told her only the day before. “Go back to your husband’s bed, get the hope of another child.”
Bird Caller had missed her last moon blood time, and Aqamdax could see the joy of hope the woman carried within her. But Bird Caller’s husband had not killed her first child.
How could Aqamdax go to Night Man’s bed? How could she bear to have his hands on her? She lowered her head to her arms and allowed herself to cry. Sometimes the tears helped, though she hid from Star and Night Man. Why show them her weakness? Suddenly there was a strong hand on her shoulder. She gasped and jumped, then saw it was Chakliux.
She blinked away her tears.
“You are all right?” he asked.
She cleared her throat, nodded.
“It’s snowing again,” he said.
She looked up at the sky, watched the large flakes drop slowly to the ground.
“Night Man sent you to find me?” she asked.
“No. I came here to get away from the village, to have time for my own thoughts.”
He squatted beside her, crossed his arms over his upraised knees. He lifted his chin at her parka and said, “Perhaps you could make me one like that.”
Aqamdax had cut her parka in the manner of the First Men’s bird-skin sax, so it was wide enough to pull over her legs when she squatted on her haunches. She pulled it down now, tucked it around her feet.
“It would get in your way when you are hunting,” she said, then saw that she had hurt him. “But if you want one…”
“If you have time to make it,” he said.
“I have time,” Aqamdax said. Then, covering her embarrassment with words, she added, “Soon you will leave for the caribou hunt. Night Man has said he will not go. You will hunt with Sok?”
“Perhaps.”
He placed an arm around her shoulders, and lifted her left hand, pushed back the sleeve of her parka so he could see the bracelet she wore. It was a sinew bracelet with knots made to look like the face of an otter. He had brought it back from the Walrus People and given it to her the night he came to warn the Cousin People of the Near River attack.
“You still wear it,” he said.
She smiled. Her face felt stiff from her tears, but it was good to smile. She tipped her chin toward his side where the whale tooth carved into the whorls of a shell hung from his belt. She had given him the tooth. It had been passed down in the First Men Village, storyteller to storyteller, from a time so ancient even Qung did not know why it was carved in such a way.
He looked into her eyes, and she was suddenly uncomfortable. She began to speak about the snow and the trees. She told Chakliux about the first time she had come through these woods, she and her little brother Ghaden with the trader Cen and Night Man’s brother, Tikaani. She told Chakliux about her father and mother, about games she had played as a child.
Even as she spoke some inner voice chided her, saying she had become too much River, trying to fill the world with her words. Had she forgotten the rudeness of interrupting a person’s thoughts with needless chatter?
Finally Chakliux said, “Hush, Aqamdax. You do not need to hide your sorrow when you are with me. Sometimes tears are the best thing.”
Then she turned her head into his shoulder, and he held her as she wept.
Chapter Eleven
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
T
HE DOGS WERE BARKING,
but dogs often barked. Surely most of the people had left the village to hunt caribou. Snow was falling hard. It covered Red Leaf’s tracks, and that was a good thing, but she felt its chill through her parka. Her daughter moved against her chest, and Red Leaf held her breath in fear the baby would begin to cry. She waited, but the child only settled herself more deeply into sleep.
In the gray light of dusk, Red Leaf studied the caches, each a roofed square of logs set high on four legs. She chose the nearest one, lifted the ladder and set it into place. The dogs raised their barking into high-pitched yips. Someone might come out to check, but perhaps they would think it was only a fox, and what could a fox do with all the cache ladders propped against lodges and woodpiles?
She climbed the ladder, unlatched the cache door and looked inside. There were several caribou hide packs stuffed full. Choose well, she told herself, and selected the largest one. She took it, crept down the ladder and hurried away. If the snow did not get too deep, she might be able to reach her lean-to before morning.
She had pitched the lean-to at the base of a fallen spruce. The roots had taken a large round of sod from the earth, and she used it as a wall against the north wind, overlapping spruce branches and draping a caribou hide to make a shelter. For a time, she was able to trap hares and ptarmigan, but during the last handful of days, her snares had stayed empty, and she had run out of the dried fish she brought with her from the Cousin River Village.
Ah, she had told herself after she finished eating the last piece, it is good the fish is gone. The less I have from that place, the better. But with nothing to put in her belly except a weak tea made of willow, the bark bitter now that winter was so close, she began to dream of going back.
Of course, Sok would kill her if she did. What choice did he have? No matter that she had killed his grandfather to give Sok the honored place of chief hunter in the Near River Village. No matter that she had given him two fine sons. She would die. She felt a brief stirring of anger but pushed it down, pretended it was not there. What else could Sok do? He had to avenge his grandfather’s death.
Her daughter moved again, so with each step Red Leaf made small jostling movements. At least she was far enough from any village that if the baby cried no one would hear her. Except the wolves that sometimes followed when she left her shelter. She stopped, strapped the caribou pack to her back, and to keep the baby quiet began to sing a lullaby she had learned from Aqamdax when that Sea Hunter woman had been her sister-wife. At least Sok had had the sense to throw Aqamdax away. She was not a terrible woman, but who could say what curses she brought, coming from the Sea Hunter Village? They did not follow sacred ways.
The wind was increasing, and the snow fell so hard that it hindered Red Leaf’s walking. She wished she had brought snowshoes with her when she left the Cousin River Village, but in her hurry, she had forgotten many things. Besides, who would have believed a winter storm would come so early?
At least when she reached the spruce woods, the trees would break the wind. She continued to walk. With the caribou pack strapped to her back and the weight of the baby against her chest, she bent closer to the ground with each step. In time, the wind shifted and blew from the north, and Red Leaf lifted one arm to shield her face. Night had fallen, and she could see nothing.
Suddenly she ran into something, hitting her arm hard enough to draw a quick cry of protest from her lips, then a breath of gratitude.
It was a tree, she was sure. She had reached the spruce woods. In spite of the storm, the snow, the load she was carrying, she had reached the forest. She straightened, felt her daughter lose her grip on her nipple and waited to see if the child would cry. She did not. Perhaps she was asleep.
Red Leaf was a large woman with heavy breasts, even when she was not feeding a baby. Even during these starving days, she had had plenty of milk for her daughter. She was strong, but in the storm, the caribou pack was heavy on her back, and she would be glad to set it down.
Her shelter was not far from the edge of the forest, though she knew she was not on the animal path she had followed from the trees to the village. Still, she would stay just inside the windbreak of alder and willow that grew between spruce and tundra. She would walk to the stream that wandered among the trees, follow it to the bend not far from where the fallen spruce lay.
Red Leaf reached out toward the tree she had run into. Strange that she had missed the underbrush of edge growth, though perhaps the weight of the wet snow had bent the branches low enough for her to walk over them. She shuffled ahead a few steps until she came to the next tree, then suddenly she knew where she was. The knowledge was like a weight that knocked her from her feet, and she sat down in the snow, leaned against the pack on her back.
She had made a large circle in her walking and returned to the Four Rivers food caches.