Little boy, I have had nearly every man in this lodge, K’os thought. But she smiled at him and let him believe in his own importance.
Dii came back with a boiling bag of hare meat and ptarmigan. Gull Wing took the bag from her as she crawled into the lodge, but few hunters asked for more food. Most were intent on what Anaay was saying. Bowls, some still partially full, lay forgotten on the floor.
Anaay chanted a song that his dreams had brought him, and the words came to Dii in the rhythm of caribou hooves. Then he was suddenly quiet, and everyone in the lodge waited, hands still, eyes watching.
Finally he said, “This I have heard in my caribou dreams. Three days we travel north, then two days toward the east.”
The men let out their breath, and the noise was like a sigh, the sound of water rushing over sand. The old hunters began to sing, and the young hunters joined them.
Anaay lifted his eyes to his wives and K’os, at the back of the lodge. He frowned and motioned for them to leave. There were plans and chants a woman should not hear.
When they went outside, Dii stood in the lee of her lodge, watched Gull Beak and K’os walk away. Gull Beak was a thin, awkward woman. Her bones seemed too large for her skin, but K’os walked gracefully, her furred parka moving with her as though she were an animal in its own pelt.
Dii wanted to stay close to the lodge, to see if Anaay’s voice carried through the caribou hide walls, but what wife would risk cursing her husband in such a way? Instead, she walked to a rock she had found at the river side of the village. It was a sheltered place, open to sun but shut away from the wind by trees that grew on either side. She climbed to the top, drew her knees up under her chin.
Three days north, her husband had said, and two days toward the sun. She had felt the hooves of the caribou. She had even heard the clicking of their joints—a sacred rhythm The People had learned and imitated with their hoof rattlers and drums. And by morning, she had known the sound came from the west, and it was close, not nearly a five-day walk.
She held her mind still for a time, scarcely taking a breath, waiting to see if she would hear them again, those caribou. But her head was filled with the sounds of the village, women’s voices, children playing, and the noise of the Near River as it flowed between its banks.
But, of course, Anaay was right. How foolish to think she would hear the caribou. She was a woman, and not even from this village. No wonder she had heard all things wrong.
THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE
“If the day is good,” Chakliux said, “we will go tomorrow.”
Aqamdax shivered when she heard the words, though she had known as much before he spoke.
She and Chakliux were sitting together at the place they had come to call Black Rock. Almost every day they found time to meet there. Sometimes they discussed the problems of their village; sometimes they followed the First Men custom and sat in silence.
“How many will go?” Aqamdax asked.
“Those of us who are hunters: Sok and I, Sky Watcher, Take More and Man Laughing. Sok will bring Cries-loud and Snow-in-her-hair. Sky Watcher will bring Bird Caller. Star has said she does not want to go, so Ligige’ will come.”
“It will be a hard trip for Ligige’.”
“She is strong, and she has a good dog.”
“Night Man says we will stay.”
“I know. I asked him if I might take you, since Star does not want to leave her mother.”
Aqamdax caught her breath. “You asked if you could take me?”
Chakliux lowered his head, combed his fingers through the fur ruff at the bottom of his parka. “I told him I would not expect the rights of hunting partner.”
Aqamdax felt her cheeks burn. Hunting partners sometimes shared wives, especially on long trips when one wife went along to help butcher and the other stayed behind to watch over children too young or elders too weak to go.
Aqamdax waited to see if Chakliux would say anything else, but he did not. She closed her eyes and let herself imagine what it would be like to follow Chakliux to the caribou. She had never been on a caribou hunt, but when she had lived in the Near River Village, the women had told her of the long days of walking, of building rock and brush fences to direct the animals to an enclosure where the men would kill them with strong birch-shafted spears. Then the butchering would begin, and the packing of meat.
Sometimes, if they were far from the village and the weather was warm so fresh meat would not freeze, they would stay where they were. The men would make racks, and the women would slice the meat thin to dry, but usually nights were cold enough to freeze the meat, and they would return to the village, laden with heavy packs.
Each hunter owned a caribou hide lean-to. Aqamdax thought of herself sleeping in such a shelter with Chakliux, a fire at the open side to hold in their warmth. She imagined him next to her in the night, and felt the dangerous need that had driven her to many men’s beds when she had lived in the First Men Village.
That was after her father drowned and her mother ran away with the River trader Cen. Aqamdax had had no one, and only when she was warm and close in a hunter’s arms could she feel safe.
After Qung took her in, taught her to tell stories, the emptiness left her, had not returned even when Sok tried to trade her to the Walrus shaman, even when he threw her away. During all the moons she had lived among the Cousin River People, first as a slave, then as a wife, the emptiness had not returned. But now, with her baby dead and her hatred for Night Man growing, she felt as though her heart had become small, leaving a great empty space in her chest.
Suddenly she was afraid to be alone with Chakliux. “I am going now,” she told him, but then leaned close to whisper. “I wish I could go with you. I wish you were Night Man’s hunting partner.”
THE NEAR RIVER VILLAGE
That night the hunters woke with pains that twisted from belly to anus. They called first for Blue Flower, who sang her songs. When her singing did not stop their pain, they asked for Gull Beak and K’os, who gave them teas of salmonberry root. But Dii slept without knowing what had happened.
Anaay, anxious to tell the men of his dreams, had eaten after everyone left, and by then only the hare and ptarmigan stew from the village hearths remained. He grumbled some, scolded Dii for not saving a portion of the moose meat for him. Didn’t she remember that moose stew was his favorite? What kind of wife was she to forget such a thing?
In the morning, Dii went early to the cooking hearths. She hoped other women would be there, would tell of the hunting plans their men had made. She thought she would probably go with Anaay, but he was old, and as leader of the elders, he was sure to receive a share of the meat. Perhaps he would stay in the winter village and let others do his hunting for him.
To her surprise, the hearths were deserted, the coals still banked from the night before. Were all the wives helping their husbands pack food and supplies? Would they leave even yet this day?
Dii gathered armfuls of wood, then carefully pushed back the ashes of the eastern hearth. With one of the willow tongs, she exposed the coals, then sprinkled on handfuls of clubgrass fluff, encouraged the flames with her breath. One by one, she started each of the five hearth fires, and hung several of the empty cooking bags she had brought from her lodge on the tripods.
“Those are not from last night?”
Dii looked up. It was Gull Beak. Her eyes were circled with dark rings, and her hair hung in strands that had loosened from her braids.
“Yes,” Dii said.
“You ate from it?”
“Only the ptarmigan and hare stew,” she answered.
“Were you sick?”
“No. Were you?”
“I did not eat until I was back in my own lodge, but all the men who ate at your lodge were sick. K’os and I and Blue Flower were awake all night giving teas to soothe bellies. You did not know?”
“I slept.”
“Anaay was not sick?” Gull Beak asked.
“He ate only ptarmigan and hare,” Dii told her, “though he was angry all the moose meat was gone.”
Gull Beak shook her head. “He should be grateful,” she said. “I’m going to bed. If Anaay wants me, tell him I am busy. Scrape out the cooking bags and rinse them before putting more meat in.”
After Gull Beak left, several other women came to the hearths, one of them—mother to the young man called River Ice Dancer—called to her.
“So you, too, were awake all night with a sick husband?” she asked.
“Anaay was not sick,” Dii said.
The woman frowned. “Perhaps he is used to your poor cooking. I have heard that Cousin women are worthless in preparing food.”
Though usually Dii said nothing when the Near River women taunted her, this time she did not ignore the insult. “The food came from Gull Beak’s lodge,” she told them.
But as she walked away, she wondered what had brought the sickness. Perhaps in taking the moose, the Near River hunters had broken some taboo. Or maybe it was in punishment for what the Near Rivers had done to the Cousin River Village. No, she decided. How could such a small punishment be given for burning an entire village?
Chapter Fourteen
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
R
ED LEAF HAD EXPECTED
a trader’s lean-to, so when Cen tied Tracker outside the large, well-made lodge, questions bubbled from her mouth.
“You live here?” she asked.
When he did not answer, she decided he had only borrowed Tracker to help him find the caribou hide, and now he was returning the dog to its owner.
“So Tracker is not your dog,” she said.
Again he did not answer, and so she began to speak of what had occupied her mind during the walk to the village. “You said you needed a woman. What happened to your wife?”
Finally, when he had the dog tied and fed, Cen turned to Red Leaf and said, “Gheli, you are a woman of too much mouth. Be quiet. If you watch and listen you will learn all you need to know, and because of your silence, people will think you are wise.”
He turned his back on her and walked toward the food caches. Did he expect her to follow? How should she know what he wanted her to do when he would not answer her questions? Suddenly, she was angry. He had asked her to come with him. She could have walked to her own shelter. By night, she would have been there, but here she was in this strange village with a man who would kill her when he heard her true name.
Cen stopped, looked back at her, then lifted his chin toward the lodge. “Go inside,” he told her.
She crawled into the entrance tunnel, stopped to scratch at the inner doorflap. There was no answer, so she went inside. The lodge was large, beautifully made. The caribou hide lining stretched up almost to the smoke hole and was decorated with dark and light circles of caribou hide in a pattern that reminded Red Leaf of clouds. The floor was covered with grass mats, woven much like those Aqamdax made. At the center of the lodge, the floor had been dug down more than a hand’s length into the bare earth and lined with rock and sand for a hearth.
Red Leaf stirred the ashes, but there was no spark of life. She debated with herself whether or not to start a fire. What if this was not Cen’s lodge? What would the woman who owned it think if she came in to find a stranger had begun a fire in her hearth?
Perhaps she would be glad for a warm lodge, Red Leaf told herself, and reached into her parka for the cilt’ogho that held the coal she had brought from her own shelter.
She thought it might be dead, she had been away so long, though she had fed it another knot of wood. She dumped the coal and ashes into the hearth, smiled to see the faint spark of red at the center of one of the knots. She coaxed the fire with clubgrass fluff and curls of birchbark until she had flames, then she added wood.
When the fire was strong, Red Leaf pulled her daughter from the warmth of her parka. The child wailed in the sudden chill of the lodge.
“Hush, be still,” Red Leaf crooned to her.
She threw the baby’s moss swaddling into the fire and wiped her clean, then padded her ground squirrel wrappings with fresh moss from a small bag of supplies tied to the belt that held up Red Leaf’s leggings. She placed the baby again under her parka, fastened the binding that held her secure under Red Leaf’s breasts.
When the child began nursing, Red Leaf went outside, filled a boiling bag with clean snow. In the lodge, she hung the bag from a tripod set over the firepit. She found several empty water bladders and softened them by rolling each between her palms so they would be ready to fill when the snow melted.
Finally she heard someone in the entrance tunnel, and she stood, her mouth full of words in explanation of why she was here and what she was doing.
It was Cen. He nodded at the fire and handed her a fishskin bag filled with smoked salmon. The smell of it made Red Leaf’s stomach roll.
“Eat,” he said, then held out his hand.
She gave him a piece of fish and took one for herself, then ate so quickly that her belly still felt empty when she was done. She checked the snow in the boiling bag. It had melted. She filled a water bladder, gave it to Cen, then went out for more snow. When she returned he was leaning against a woven willow backrest.
“The stream on the north side of the village is a good place to get water,” he told her. “The women keep it open most of the winter. It empties into a small lake not far from here.”
“The women will not care if I get water there?”
He shrugged. “I am not a woman. What can I tell you? Let me see your daughter.”
Red Leaf was surprised at his interest, but she pulled the baby from her breast, slipped the child from under her parka and held her so Cen could see. The child’s eyes were closed, but her mouth was pursed and moved as though she still nursed.
“You have named her?”
“No.”
“I should name her now that I am her father,” Cen said.
Red Leaf tried not to show her surprise. Already he considered himself father? “She needs a name,” Red Leaf agreed.
“There was a woman I once knew, a good woman,” Cen told her. “Her name needs to be remembered.” He looked at the child, narrowed his eyes as if to judge how well that name would fit her. “Yes,” he finally said. “She is Daes.”