Chakliux took the knife, pushed up his parka sleeve and slashed his forearm, once, twice. He stood and allowed the blood to drip into the fire, to rise with the smoke in honor of Snow-in-her-hair. He gave the knife to Sok, watched as Sok slashed his arm four times. Then Chakliux began the mourning chants.
A storm found the Cousin People during their second day of walking. By midmorning, the wind whipped the snow until it blasted their faces like sand. The dogs fought their harnesses, and women fell under loads made heavier by the weight of ice.
At noon they found a strand of black spruce to shelter them. The men helped the women set up their lean-tos, but even in the lee of the trees, the wind and cold made tent poles splinter.
Aqamdax dug a cave in the snow, and the ice-hardened crust cut its way through her caribou hide mittens to score her hands. When she reached bare ground, she made a flooring of haired caribou hides, warming the hides with her breath and hands, then unfolding them slowly so they did not crack in the cold. She unharnessed Night Man’s dogs, set the packs around the snow cave like a wall, then she and Star, Night Man, Ghaden and Yaa huddled together, sharing each other’s warmth. Her thoughts carried her back to Sok and Chakliux, alone with Snow-in-her-hair, and she prayed for their safety.
Chakliux’s dreams seemed to come to him from the snow, and they filled his mind with fear. He watched as though he were an eagle, seeing all things from the sky. He saw himself walking with Sok, and together they dragged a travois. It was filled with packs, and also a body wrapped in the way of the dead, knees drawn up to the chin, arms crossed and tucked close to the chest. The head was covered with a caribou hide, and as they walked, the wind lifted the hide. Then Chakliux saw that the dead one was not Snow-in-her-hair but Aqamdax.
He woke to his own cries and was afraid to return to sleep. How could he risk that his dreams would again find Aqamdax and steal away her spirit?
THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE
The men had cut her lodge poles, and K’os paid them well for their work. They showed her the sunken ground, dug out long ago by the first one to put a lodge there. Even stones and sand were still in place for the hearth. She had scraped the hides River Ice Dancer gave her, added them to her own, and sewed them into a lodge cover. It was a small lodge, but K’os’s stitches were even and tight; the sinew she had borrowed from Sand Fly was well twisted and strong.
She moved into the lodge the day the storm began. She stayed there alone, fighting to keep the snow from finding its way down the smoke hole and in through the entrance tunnel. Usually she did not like storms. What could anyone do to stop them? But this storm, she decided, might be a good one. She doubted that River Ice Dancer would survive it. On the third day of the storm, she heard a scratching at her lodge wall. First she thought it was only the wind, but then someone called her name. She crawled into the entrance tunnel, pulled aside the flap. The one who stood there was so caked with snow and ice that she did not recognize him until she had brushed the snow from his parka.
River Ice Dancer. He smiled at her, and in spite of her disappointment, she returned that smile. Most likely he had not brought back the meat he had promised Tree Climber. How could he? He had been gone scarcely more than two handfuls of days.
“My dogs are outside,” he said to her without any greeting of polite words, but in such a storm K’os did not expect politeness.
“They can stay in the tunnel,” she told him. “But only until this storm has passed. I do not need their fleas in my lodge.”
He went out, heaved several large packs in through the door, and she pulled them into the lodge. Finally, he brought the dogs into the tunnel. He cracked the balls of ice and snow from their feet, rubbed his hands over their eyes and noses, the tips of their ears.
K’os went into the lodge, brought out water, dried fish. She had not yet convinced one of the village hunters to make her a cache, so she kept her meat and fish with her in the lodge. Why chance leaving them in Sand Fly’s cache? No doubt the old woman would use them up before she touched her own meat, and K’os did not have enough to get through the winter as it was.
She gave fish and water to the dogs, then motioned for River Ice Dancer to join her in the lodge. He waited as she hung his parka on a lodge pole, then helped him out of his leggings and inner parka. The inner parka was wet with sweat, rimed with ice, and so she knew he had walked too hard, too far, had taken a terrible chance in trying to get back to her.
She gave him a hare fur blanket, and he wrapped himself in it, groaned as he finally sat down beside the fire. “I thought I would not get here,” he told her. “Even when I came to the village, I thought I might not have the strength to make it to your lodge.”
“How did you know which lodge was mine?” K’os asked.
“I saw this lodge, new, sitting where there had been no lodge, and I hoped it was yours.”
She gave him a bowl of food, watched as he curled his fingers around its warmth. His mouth was bloodied from splits in his lips, and his nose and cheeks were spotted with frostbite. She went to her medicine bag, took out powdered plantain leaves and mixed the powder into goose grease. She tilted back his head, and though he tried to turn away, she smoothed the grease on his face.
“Be still,” she told him. “It will help pull the cold from your skin.”
When she had finished, he held out his food bowl.
She filled it again and watched him eat.
“I have enough for a bride price,” he said, his mouth full.
She raised her chin, looked at him through slitted eyes. Perhaps he was lying, but she did not think so. It was too easy for her to check his packs.
He was a boy, yes, but tall and big, perhaps more handsome than she had thought. She had first seen him when she and her husband Ground Beater traveled to the Near River Village. River Ice Dancer had been a leader then among the children. She smiled as she remembered. He had refused to tell her his name. Wise even then. Why give a stranger the power of knowing your name?
Perhaps he would be a good husband. “River Ice Dancer,” she said, holding out her hand to him, “you are cold, and my bed is very warm.”
Chapter Forty-two
D
II WALKED FOR NEARLY
two days before leaving Anaay’s body. She found a clearing inside a stand of alders, the snow in sharp-ridged drifts where the trees had stolen it from the wind. What was more fitting than alders, with their weak branches and poisonous leaves? Dii asked herself.
She rolled his body from the travois, set his weapons beside him, then sang a mourning chant. She sang loudly, hoping to appease his spirit so he would not follow her and take revenge, but when the words came from her mouth, they seemed to fly into the grass mats that wrapped Anaay’s body, and were sucked away so quickly that she did not hear them as song.
During her walking, she often spoke to his body on the travois. She explained that she had made him the tea only so she could bear him a child. K’os had tricked them both, giving poison rather than medicine. But Dii doubted that her explanations would be enough to turn away her husband’s anger. When had Anaay ever given in to reason?
Dii used her woman’s knife to cut the dried grass that stuck up through the snow, and she laid it on Anaay’s body to hide him from anyone who might pass near the alders. Over the grass, she piled spruce branches she had brought from the Near River camp. The grass and the spruce were too light to hold down Anaay’s spirit if he decided to follow her, but perhaps the bindings she had put at each of his joints would delay him until she was far enough away that he could not find her.
She repacked the travois, fed the dogs, all the while remembering her life with Anaay. She saw him in the fine parkas his first wife, Gull Beak, had made him, saw him as he stood in front of the hunters in the village, explaining his visions.
Then it seemed as if Dii’s eyes cleared, and she remembered her husband in another way—as a man who did all things for himself and nothing for others. Perhaps he is not strong enough to take revenge, she thought.
She had not walked far after leaving Anaay when snow began to fall. She lifted her head to welcome it. What better way to bury her husband’s body? But soon the snow was so heavy she could not see beyond the step she was taking. She stopped and made a shelter, setting the travois so they would block the wind. Why continue to walk when she could not see? She would probably only wander in circles.
She fed the dogs dried fish, hoped full bellies would help them sleep through the storm, then she curled under her tent covering, ate and tried to sleep. But the wind sang sharp, bitter songs, and scared away the comfort of dreams, so that Dii began to wonder if Anaay had sent the storm to kill her. How better to take her with him, still wife, still slave?
Chakliux guided Sok as though the man were a child, held on to his parka for fear of losing him in the storm. They had made a death platform and put it high in a spruce tree. He had promised Sok they would return the next summer and take Snow’s bones to a sacred place, perhaps the Grandfather Lake, where Sok could visit them if he wished.
After four days of mourning, they had begun their journey to the Cousin River Village in spite of storm winds. The first night Chakliux had dug out a shelter where they planned to stay until the storm ended, but the next morning the winds were not as fierce, so they started out again. They fought the snow with each step, felt it weigh them down as it gathered on their parkas, stiffened their leggings, blinded their eyes.
Sok kept trying to sit down, mumbling explanations Chakliux could not hear above the wind. Finally Chakliux stopped and made a camp, allowed Sok to sit alone while he dug a shelter in the snow, lining it with spruce branches and caribou hides. He set his packs as a wind block at the opening and called for Sok to do the same. Sok did not answer, and with sudden fear, Chakliux realized that in the snow and darkening twilight he could not see his brother.
As he circled the shelter, the falling snow gave life to the closest trees, so that each seemed to jump out at him when he neared it. Then suddenly, within the curtain of snow, he saw Sok standing, one hand lifted to shade his eyes as if he were trying to see in bright sun.
“I heard Snow-in-her-hair,” he told Chakliux.
Sok’s words were like ice on Chakliux’s spine, but he guided his brother to their shelter. A drift had already formed across the narrow opening Chakliux had left between the packs, but he broke it away with his foot and pulled Sok inside. He wrapped his brother in a hare fur blanket and gave him some of the dried salmon he carried in a pouch at his waist. Then Chakliux made chants, those few that were most powerful, and he hoped they were strong enough to keep Snow-in-her-hair from finding their small shelter.
Through five days of storm, Chakliux and Sok huddled together in their lean-to. They kept a warming fire alive until it had eaten all their wood. Then they borrowed warmth from one another, lying together under the howling voice of the wind.
It seemed to Chakliux as though they fought more than a storm. Could the wind truly be Snow-in-her-hair screaming for Sok to join her? Could a dead wife use a storm to pull away her husband’s spirit?
A man could fight wind and snow, but what weapon could stand against a spirit? Knives? Spears? Chakliux had used all his chants…. But perhaps whatever power he had held within his own spirit was gone. He had broken the taboos of The People, taken another man’s wife without thought for anything but his own pleasure. Was there no punishment for such a thing?
Had his weakness cost Snow-in-her-hair her life? Did it threaten Sok’s spirit? And what about the rest of the Cousin People? With the storm raging, had they managed to get to the winter village? Could a curse grow like the branches of a tree, reaching out to others who had done nothing to deserve hurt?
Once a taboo was broken, what did a man do to protect himself? More important, how did he protect those closest to him?
Chakliux’s thoughts swirled as though driven by the same wind that had brought the storm. He steadied his mind with the stories and riddles he had been taught as a child. At first he did not realize he was telling those stories aloud, that his voice had risen above the storm noise, but then he saw Sok push back his hood and bend his head to listen. So Chakliux spoke into the darkness of their shelter, hearing the words that came from his own mouth as though for the first time, hoping to find some story that told how to earn forgiveness.
THE COUSIN WINTER VILLAGE
Ligige’ pushed herself from her bed. Had someone scratched at her lodge door or had the sound been something from a dream? She stirred the hearth coals and looked over at Long Eyes. Chakliux would be surprised when he returned. Some days Long Eyes was almost normal—eating, working, even speaking.
She heard the scratching again, picked up her walking stick and thrust it into the entrance tunnel. Some animal perhaps, she thought. This time of year they were all seeking winter dens. Perhaps a fox or wolverine had decided on her lodge. She felt nothing with her stick, heard no growls or hisses, so she crawled into the entrance and called out a welcome.
“Twisted Stalk?”
“You are Twisted Stalk?” Ligige’ cried, and in gladness thrust open the doorflap, but caught her breath when she saw the shadowed face of a young woman.
“You’re not Twisted Stalk,” the girl said. “Is this the Cousin People’s winter village?”
“Yes,” Ligige’ told her. “You are alone?”
“I have dogs,” she said, and stepped aside so Ligige’ could see the three dogs behind her.
“I thought I knew all the people in the Cousin River Village,” Dii said softly, more to herself than to the old woman who welcomed her.
Then suddenly she was afraid. Was the woman lying, claiming that this was the Cousin Village when it was not? Had Dii, in her desire to get away from Anaay, gone to a different village, one not her own? No, how could she? She had known this place since she was a child, had traveled to it many times from fish camps and hunting sites.