During the past spring, with only six hunters left in their village after the fighting, the men had been unable to take all the caribou they needed, but at least they had killed enough to stave off their hunger. The women had dried the meat, did not allow one scrap to go to waste. The hides, riddled by the breathing holes of warble fly larvae, were useless for clothing and nearly impossible to scrape, but with their lodges burned and their caches looted, how could the women throw those hides away?
Now at the end of summer, Chakliux and his older brother Sok had taken a fine, fat caribou bull. For one night, the people pushed away their anger, their helplessness, and celebrated with a feast.
As Aqamdax ate, she hummed songs to her baby, told him to grow strong like the caribou. Some of her singing was in the River tradition of her husband’s people. But she had learned most of her songs from her own people, the First Men who lived beside the great North Sea.
The songs kept her mind busy, kept her thoughts on her child and on her husband, away from the hunter Chakliux, honored as Dzuuggi—storyteller—of this village. He was young but wise, given as gift, the people said, from the otters. Who could not see that he carried otter blood, with his left foot bent on edge, his toes webbed?
When everyone had finished eating, and the women had banked the cooking fires into smoke smudges to drive away those night insects that still lingered at the end of summer, then Chakliux and Sok told the story of the hunt.
Aqamdax squatted on her haunches, her legs spread to accommodate her growing belly. She caught sight of her husband, Night Man, watching her, and so was careful not to allow her eyes to linger too long on Chakliux.
Be grateful for Night Man, Aqamdax told herself. Be thankful you are wife and no longer slave. Find joy in the child he has given you, and honor your husband.
She sat with her brother, Ghaden, a boy of five summers, on her right side, Ghaden’s stepsister, Yaa, on her left. Both children had lost their parents and had been adopted by Chakliux’s wife, Star. But Aqamdax was the one who watched over them, made their clothing, prepared their food. Star had taken them on a whim, like a child who chooses to raise a baby fox. Who could trust her to care for two children?
Yaa snuggled close to Aqamdax, but Ghaden was standing, watching with wide eyes as Sok and Chakliux acted out their hunt.
Chakliux’s words carried pictures into her mind, and Aqamdax could see the caribou, the white bands that streaked his sides blending with the lights and shadows of the dwarf birches where he stood; tatters of blood-rich skin hanging from his antlers, the bone-hard tines stained dark as bearberry leaves, autumn red.
Then Star pressed herself between Ghaden and Aqamdax, breaking into that vision of caribou. She tilted her chin up as though to challenge Aqamdax, and pulled Ghaden into her lap.
He struggled against her, and both began to squabble, first in quiet words, then with rising wails. Aqamdax leaned forward, caught her brother’s eye and raised her fingers to her mouth in a sign for silence. Ghaden pursed his lips in anger but turned back to watch the men.
Star gave Aqamdax a smug smile, then leaned close to whisper, “In only a few moons I will have two sons.” She glanced down at Aqamdax’s belly. “At best you will have only one.”
Aqamdax closed her eyes to Star’s foolishness and did not answer. She could only pity Chakliux’s child, asleep in the hard cradle of Star’s bones.
In one evening of feasting, the caribou was gone, save for the broth that could still be boiled from skull and ribs. The words and songs of the hunters’ stories drifted up until the night air thinned them like smoke, and they floated above the sleeping village, until the people called them back through their dreams.
Aqamdax slept, warm in her hare fur blankets on the women’s side of Star’s lodge. Beside her, old Long Eyes slept. Long Eyes was Star and Night Man’s mother, and since her husband’s death seemed more child than woman, as though her spirit had followed her husband into the world of the dead. Often she stayed awake through the night, moaning strange songs, but a full belly had lulled her into sleep. Aqamdax’s thoughts grew into pictures, and she was with her husband, Night Man, when Chakliux and Sok brought their caribou into the village. Night Man was scowling, his useless arm bound to his body with strips of caribou hide.
Aqamdax kept her eyes from Chakliux. Night Man was watching her, as he always did when Chakliux was near. She turned her head to look at her husband, smiled and leaned toward him until her hip touched his. There were many small ways to show a husband respect, ways that would not embarrass him in front of other men.
Aqamdax’s dreams changed to remembrances of her life as a child, when she had lived with the First Men near the great North Sea. Her father was still alive, and he picked her up, his hands around her waist. Suddenly he was squeezing her, and she could not breathe. She cried for him to stop, then looked down and saw that he was dead, his skin dark, his lips as blue as they had been when he had drowned. She heard her mother wail out in a terrible mourning cry, and her voice was so loud that it woke Aqamdax.
Star and Yaa were beside her.
“You screamed,” Yaa said. “What’s the matter?”
Aqamdax shook her head, tried to break the last threads that bound her into sleep. “Just a dream,” she said, then gasped as the pain took her again, circling her hips and pressing into her bones.
Star drew away, her hands over the small mound that was her baby. “Get her out of here,” she told Yaa. “Her child might call mine to come.”
Star backed into the far side of the lodge, paying no heed that she walked over her husband’s bed to get there.
Chakliux raised up on one elbow, looked first at his wife, then at Aqamdax. “What is wrong?” he asked.
Star pointed rudely with her thumbs. “She, her baby. It is wanting to be born.”
Chakliux wrapped a sleeping robe around his shoulders and crept to Night Man. Chakliux shook him until he was awake. “Your wife’s child is trying to be born,” Chakliux said. “I will go get my aunt.”
The pain eased, and Aqamdax was able to speak. “It is early. The baby should not come for more than a moon,” she said.
“Go to your birth lodge. I will bring Ligige’,” said Chakliux.
“I have no birth lodge.”
What woman would prepare her lodge a full moon before delivery? Why tempt a child to come into the world when he is not strong enough to survive?
“Go to Red Leaf’s. Hers is ready, is it not?”
Aqamdax nodded. Another pain took her, and she squeezed her eyes shut until it passed. She did not want to go to Red Leaf’s lodge, but how could she object? She could not stay here, cursing the men and their weapons, and perhaps Star’s unborn baby. Red Leaf had killed Aqamdax’s mother and Chakliux’s grandfather. She had tried to kill Ghaden. How could Aqamdax use a birth lodge made by a woman whose heart was stained with blood?
With Yaa’s help, Aqamdax managed to stumble from the lodge, but just outside the entrance tunnel, she felt the beginning of another pain. She squatted on her haunches, and before the pain tore away her breath, told Yaa to go back and get the cradleboard she had made and the hare furs she had prepared.
Yaa left her, and just as the pain eased, she returned with the cradleboard and furs. She helped Aqamdax to her feet, then they walked to the edge of the village.
When they reached the isolated place where Red Leaf had made her birth lodge, Aqamdax could see it was lit from within. Chakliux must have already brought Ligige’ to the lodge, but how could the old woman have started a fire so quickly?
Someone called. Chakliux, Aqamdax thought, and she was surprised. Most men stayed as far as possible from a woman about to deliver a child. A woman’s power was great at such times, and even though she meant no harm, that power could destroy a man’s hunting luck.
“I cannot find Ligige’,” Chakliux said.
The old woman popped her head out of the birth lodge. “Someone else wants me?” she asked. Then, seeing Aqamdax, she frowned. “You, too?”
A pain took her, so Aqamdax could do no more than crouch and brace herself, but she listened as Yaa and Ligige’ spoke.
“I have Red Leaf here,” Ligige’ said. “It will be some time before her baby is born. When did Aqamdax’s pains begin?”
“Only a little while ago,” Yaa said, “but they are close together, one pain chasing another.”
“That happens sometimes when a baby comes early,” Ligige’ told her. “We cannot have both women in the same lodge. One child’s death could curse the other’s birth.”
Ligige’’s words pierced Aqamdax’s heart. How could the woman speak so lightly of the child Aqamdax had grown to love more than her own life?
“Take her to my lodge,” Ligige’ said. “I will come as soon as I can.” She ducked her head back inside, but then she peeked out again. “On your way, wake Day Woman and tell her to come here. She will not want to, but remind her that Red Leaf’s child also belongs to her son Sok.”
Chakliux saw Yaa leave his mother’s lodge, saw his mother walk the path to the birth hut. Aqamdax stopped once, stooped over in pain, then continued to Ligige’’s lodge and slipped inside. Light from the hearth fire soon glowed through the lodge walls, and Chakliux’s thoughts turned to his first wife, Gguzaakk.
For a long time after her death, Chakliux could find no reason to live save his duties as Dzuuggi and his desire to keep peace between the Cousin and Near River Peoples, but then he had decided to live in the Near River Village and Aqamdax had come into his life.
She was a storyteller, trained in the traditions of the First Men, and Chakliux had grown to love her, had decided to ask her to be his wife. What could be better than two storytellers living together, learning from one another? But the trader Cen had stolen Aqamdax, taken her to the Cousin River Village and sold her as a slave. Before Chakliux could find where Cen had taken her, Night Man bought Aqamdax as wife, and now Aqamdax labored to deliver Night Man’s child.
Chakliux shook his head. Night Man was as foolish as his sister Star. He was worried about whether Aqamdax’s child belonged to him. Aqamdax had been forced into other hunters’ beds while she was a slave. If the baby was born large and strong, it was not Night Man’s, though he would be wise to raise the child as his own. If it was small—a sign it had been born early—it was certainly his child but would probably die.
Chakliux was not wise enough to know which way he should pray—there would be sadness if the child lived or if it died. Instead he prayed for Aqamdax. That she would live. How could he bear to again lose a woman he loved?
Snow-in-her-hair offered Sok a bowl of soup, and he lashed out at her in harsh words. The thin, nearly meatless broth added to his anger. Any wife should be ashamed to offer her husband such poor food. What happened to the caribou belly they had roasted whole, full of the tender summer plants the animal had been eating before Sok and Chakliux had killed it? What happened to the rich broth made from the head? Surely, some of that was left. Who deserved to eat it more than he?
Again he threw harsh words at his wife, but when he saw his son Cries-loud press himself up against the side of the lodge, he was suddenly ashamed of his anger. It was not the broth that tortured his soul but the birth of Red Leaf’s child. He would keep the baby if it was healthy, but what about Red Leaf?
She had cost Sok the leadership of the Near River People. Someday, he would have been their chief hunter, and Chakliux had held an honored place as storyteller. Together they would have guided the people, turned them from war toward ways of respect, but Red Leaf had destroyed any chance of that when she killed his grand-father. Now Sok lived in exile, forced, because of what his wife had done, to leave the village of his birth.
Red Leaf was alive now only because she carried Sok’s baby. She had claimed that she killed out of love for him, to give him the chance to have his grandfather’s place as chief hunter. In that way, perhaps he was nearly as guilty of the killing as Red Leaf. But he would have never wished for his grandfather’s death.
During all the moons awaiting this night of birth, Sok had been unable to decide what he should do. Now, without doubt, in the remnants of the Cousin River Village, he was chief hunter. There was little honor in it, but still the people looked to him to provide food. They faced a harsh winter. Their only hope of survival was a successful fall caribou hunt.
If he killed Red Leaf, would her blood keep the animals from giving themselves to his spear? If he did not kill Red Leaf, would his grandfather’s need for revenge turn the caribou from the Cousin River hunters?
Chapter Two
N
EAR DAWN, AQAMDAX’S PAINS
stopped. Ligige’ had given her tea steeped from balsam poplar root, and the old woman began to hope that the medicine had worked. If Aqamdax could hold the child in her belly for even eight or ten more days, there was a chance that it would live.
After Aqamdax fell asleep, Ligige’ crept back through the village to Star’s lodge and went inside. She woke Star and told her that Aqamdax’s labor had stopped, then saw that both Chakliux and Night Man were awake.
“The child?” Night Man asked.
“The birth pains have stopped.”
“Aqamdax?” asked Chakliux.
His voice was a whisper, and Ligige’ was not sure whether he spoke only to say her name or if he was asking about her.
“She is strong. It is not Aqamdax I worry about.”
Ligige’ went then to Red Leaf’s birth lodge. The day was brightening, the sky clear and without clouds. She did not bother to call out or scratch at the doorflap. She merely pulled it aside and stooped to enter.
Day Woman looked up and smiled, a baby in her arms. “A daughter,” she said. “Fine and strong. She looks like Sok.”
The baby’s mouth was pursed, and she sucked at her fist. Ligige’ squatted on her heels and pulled back the ground squirrel blankets that covered the child. She inspected her arms and legs, hands and feet. She pressed on the baby’s belly, chuckled when the dark eyes opened, the mouth puckered in protest.