Aqamdax looked quickly at Red Leaf, but the woman did not seem to notice, her eyes totally on her husband, her lips moving as though she counted his steps in an effort to help him keep the rhythm. Aqamdax felt an uneasiness, a sudden weight of apprehension, then scolded herself for her foolishness. What man did not want to impress young women, especially someone as pretty as Snow-in-her-hair? But Sok had two wives. He was not a chief hunter to take three or four like He Sings, and among the River People, most men had one wife.
Finally, another masked hunter entered the dance circle. This one also wore a bear mask, though it covered only his face and was painted with bright colors. The dancer was barefoot, so it was not difficult to tell he was Chakliux. He moved gracefully, as if he had the normal feet of a man, and Aqamdax’s thoughts were so filled with his dancing that at first she did not hear the thin keening that rose from beside her. When the keening turned into a wail, she realized it was the child Ghaden. He was staring at the dancers, mouth open, eyes wide.
Aqamdax scooped him into her arms, and he looked up at her, then began to scream, “The ghost! The ghost! She is here! Yaa, don’t let her get me!”
Yaa took the sobbing child from Aqamdax, soothed him with quiet humming. Yaa’s mother and Brown Water came, moved the two children away from the dance circle and toward the comfort of Brown Water’s lodge.
Aqamdax watched them until they disappeared into the darkness, then she squatted on her haunches, gathered the boy’s blankets so she could return them when the dance was finished. For a time, the women around her whispered among themselves, but Aqamdax turned her thoughts back to Sok and Chakliux. Almost, she missed that one word, the name, spoken quietly, then hushed with a hiss of fear, covered with a charm of words and a flurry of hands to prevent a curse.
Suddenly many things became clear. Suddenly she did not feel like a daughter betrayed but like one who was loved. Then she watched her husband not in pride but in anger, saw his brother not with fondness but in loathing, and only because she did not want to disgrace Red Leaf did she stay until their dance was finished. Then she stood, and before the women could nod their heads in acknowledgment of her place as second wife, as sister-in-law, before Sok or Chakliux could look toward her expecting praise, she left, and carrying the bundle of Ghaden’s blankets, she walked to Brown Water’s lodge.
She heard Yaa’s singing through the walls of the lodge and scratched against the caribou hide covering until Brown Water called for her to come in. She crawled through the entrance tunnel.
Yaa’s eyes widened when she saw her, and she pulled her brother close, turning his head against her breast.
Choosing her words slowly, carefully, Aqamdax said to Brown Water, “I am not of your people. I do not know all taboos, but I must ask something.”
“Come with me then,” Brown Water said, and Aqamdax followed her from the lodge.
Aqamdax knew Brown Water must be a strong woman. She had kept her place of respect even after the death of her husband and now lived alone, as widow, she and her sister-wife and the two children. Strange, the ways of these River People. Among the First Men, once the mourning was complete, each woman would have gone to another hunter, at worst to a brother, to his ulax. How did they live, these women, without a hunter in their lodge?
Brown Water walked a short way from the lodge, then turned and said to Aqamdax, “What is it you want to know?”
“This sister-wife of yours, Ghaden’s mother,” Aqamdax said, “how did she die?”
Brown Water wrapped her arms around herself. “It is not a good thing to talk about,” she said.
“It breaks taboos?”
The woman would not look at Aqamdax, and instead moved her eyes to the lodge, then to the ground and up to the sky. “No one knows,” she finally said.
“She was of the First Men—the Sea Hunters,” said Aqamdax.
“Yes. You knew her?”
Aqamdax sighed. “I knew her. Someone told me there was a knife.”
Brown Water nodded. “There was a knife,” she said. “But Wolf-and-Raven says a spirit killed her.”
“With a knife?”
“Who knows what a spirit might do? Who knows what spirits she might have offended? She should not have been here.” Brown Water fastened her eyes on Aqamdax, but Aqamdax did not look away. Brown Water raised one hand, rudely pointed with one thick finger at Aqamdax’s chest. “You should not be here. It is one thing for your people to come to trade, but when hunters take wives, too many things can happen.”
“This woman had enemies?”
“I did not like her,” Brown Water said. “I did not want her in my lodge. If she had an enemy, I was that one, but I would not dishonor my husband. I did not kill her. She was killed by a spirit. It was what she deserved.”
Aqamdax looked at the woman for a long time, clasped her amulet, then fingered the whorls of the whale tooth shell she wore at her waist. She believed Brown Water, but there was some evil here she did not understand.
“You think the boy, Ghaden, is safe?”
“As safe as Wolf-and-Raven can make him. As safe as I can make him. Why?”
“Tell him I am not the ghost of his mother,” Aqamdax said softly. “Tell him I look like that dead one because she was also my mother.”
Chapter Thirty-two
C
EN SLIPPED THE PARKA
hood back from his face. The fur blended with the grays and yellows of the autumn grasses, but he was too hot. Tikaani had insisted they wear hare fur parkas, but except at night, when the warmth was welcome, they made Cen sweat. Better to have worn ground squirrel, he thought, warm but not hot, and lightweight. But perhaps Tikaani’s suggestion was a good one, he told himself. Each morning small puddles of water had thin crusts of ice at the corners. There might be a day when he was glad for the warmth of hare fur. They had come without dogs, and through some magic that still made Cen cringe when he saw his face reflected in calm water, K’os had made a salve to darken and wrinkle the men’s faces. With her clever needle, she had sewn white tufts of caribou hair into their braids so they looked like old men, not hunters, not warriors. She had shown them how to wad grass in the bottoms of their boots, so they walked like old men, though they had not used the grass until they were within a half day of the Near River Village. She had also given them something to drink that scalded their throats and left them hoarse and soft-voiced.
She had turned them old and assured them she had the power to make them young again. Cen did not doubt that she had the power. Whether she would choose to make them young again, that was his concern. And what price would she ask in exchange?
Now they hid in the dark woods at the edge of the village under branches of black spruce. With leaves stuck into their clothing, they lay at the rim of the earthen bowl which cradled the Near River Village. They watched as women and children passed, and they counted warriors as K’os had told them to do. During the night they had scaled each food cache to see how much fish the people had for winter, but they took nothing, did nothing to let anyone know they watched.
During the next two days, Aqamdax did not speak to Sok, avoided Chakliux. In that time, she won Ghaden as brother, gave careful explanation to Brown Water, Happy Mouth and Yaa, and tried to keep from accusing her husband of deception. After all, perhaps she had not told him her mother’s name, though she thought she had.
In the five years since Daes had left the First Men Village, Aqamdax had held much anger against her mother. The woman had left her, forced her to live with those who did not want her. Now, at least, Aqamdax understood what had happened.
The First Men mourned their dead four tens of days, and after that a widow was expected to stay away from other men, to show her respect to her husband, for four moons. The traders had come about two moons after Aqamdax’s father’s death, and her mother, like Aqamdax, had not been able to bear the emptiness of nights alone. She had given herself to a trader, become pregnant, then left with him to protect the village against the curse of broken taboos. To protect Aqamdax.
“She spoke of you often,” Happy Mouth said. “She wanted to go back to you and her people.”
Aqamdax glanced at Brown Water, saw the surprise in the woman’s face, though she tried to cover it with narrowed eyes and nodding head. Yes, Aqamdax thought, she, too, would confide in Happy Mouth, but never in Brown Water. Who could trust the woman’s thin, harsh mouth, her angry words?
The day that Aqamdax told Ghaden she was his sister, he only looked at her from the safety of Yaa’s lap, but gradually he began to watch her without fear. This morning, three days later, when she came into the lodge, he ran to her, showed her a ball Yaa had made him of rawhide strips wound together to the size of his fist.
“Biter, get!” he cried, and threw the ball, sending the dog in a scramble to the pile of baskets where the ball landed.
“Better to play outside,” Yaa warned, and flashed her eyes to where Brown Water usually sat.
Aqamdax praised both dog and ball, then took Ghaden and Biter to the edge of the village, where they played together until Yaa came and got Ghaden to help her carry wood. Then Aqamdax went to Red Leaf’s lodge. She had practiced her words and built her courage to the point of speaking to Sok, and she planned to do so before another day passed. She found Sok still wrapped in his sleeping blankets, the lodge empty except for him.
“Red Leaf is at the cooking hearths,” he told her, mumbling the words with closed eyes.
“I came to see you and your brother,” she said.
“Three, four days we will leave for the caribou hunt. You cannot let me sleep knowing I will get little rest during this next moon?”
As though he had said nothing to her, Aqamdax asked, “Why did you let me think I would find my mother if I came with you?”
Slowly, Sok opened his eyes.
“You and Chakliux knew my mother was dead.”
He sat up. “Who told you she was dead?” he asked.
“My brother, Ghaden.”
He grunted, stood, kicked his sleeping furs over toward the neat rolls piled at the back of the lodge.
“I cannot talk to you now,” he said.
“Where is Chakliux?”
“He did not know,” Sok said. “At least I never spoke to him about your mother. Did you?”
“No.”
“Then keep your anger for me, not him.”
For some reason, his words calmed her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Would you have come with me if you knew your mother was dead?”
“Perhaps not. But if I knew I had a brother …”
Sok shrugged. “Sometimes brothers are good things; sometimes they are not. How could I know how you would feel about him? He is only a child.”
“Surely you knew I would discover my mother was dead once I got here.”
“I did not intend to bring you here. I brought you to the Walrus shaman.”
“I did not kill him,” Aqamdax said.
“Do you think I would take you as one of my wives if I believed you did?”
“So then, what did that shaman offer to make you travel to my village? Why did he want me?”
“Do not pretend you are ignorant of your powers. What better wife for a shaman than a storyteller?”
“Perhaps,” she said softly.
Again Sok shrugged. “He wanted you, and he offered me something useful.”
“What?”
“Many things. Many trade goods.”
“And for that you would chance the seas, a man who had little experience in an iqyax?”
“I do well enough in an iqyax.”
She snorted. “For one who hunts caribou.”
“You do not want to be my wife?” he asked.
She took a long breath. “No.”
“What if another man offered for you?”
“Who?”
“Someone honored in this village. Someone whose powers are as great, perhaps greater than yours.”
She held her breath. Almost, she spoke his brother’s name. Almost, she said her hope out loud, but too many times she had seen hopes vanish. It was always easier to lose a dream when no one else knew.
“Who?” she asked again.
“The shaman, Wolf-and-Raven.”
Suddenly she understood. Snow-in-her-hair. Why else would Sok risk his life for trade goods? He needed a bride price.
“So now, with the Walrus shaman dead, I am to be bride price for Snow-in-her-hair.”
“You do not want to be a shaman’s wife?”
“I am not one to want power or to think power over spirits is a desirable thing. It is too often misused.”
“Wolf-and-Raven is not like that. He is a respectable man.”
“Strong? A good hunter?”
“Good enough.”
“If he is a man of so much power, why would he be interested in my poor storytelling? I am not one of your people. Why would a shaman want a wife who is not quite human?”
Sok began to pace in quick hard steps from one side of the lodge to the other so that Aqamdax wondered whether he had yet spoken to Wolf-and-Raven, if he had made any offer to the man.
“Among my people,” Aqamdax said, “a woman chooses the man she will have as husband. A father or uncle might promise her, but if she does not want to go, no one forces her. And a woman whose husband is not good to her or to her children, she can leave him and choose another.”
“I would expect such a thing among people who are not quite human,” Sok told her, and stopped pacing long enough to look into her face. “You are not among your people. You are here. You are my wife. You will do as I say.”
“If you must give me to another, give me to your brother.” She spoke the words quickly, before she lost the courage to say them.
“Chakliux?”
“Yes.”
Sok threw back his head and laughed. “He does not want you. Besides, he has nothing to give as bride price.”
“He has dogs and his iqyax.”
“You are fool enough to think he will give those things for you!”
The words stung, and Aqamdax cursed herself for her foolishness. Once a person knows what you care about, he also knows how to hurt you.
“You are like your mother, without respect, without honor. She dishonored her husband and went to the trader Cen. What did he give in return? A knife, death. If you are not careful, you will earn the same.”