Call Down the Stars (22 page)

Ghaden turned his head and saw through the ruff of his parka that the bear was still battling the pack. If he had any chance to save himself, he must do it now. He no longer had his bow, and his arrows lay scattered in the snow. Even if he managed to bury both his knives deep in the bear’s neck, slice the huge vessels that fed blood to the head, the animal would take too long to die.

With the bear weak from blood loss, perhaps Ghaden would have a chance if he ran. The animal had its back to him, but was so close that Ghaden could hear the grumble that came from its throat as it ravaged the pack. Ghaden, jumped up and began running through the snow. The ice crust caught at his snowshoes with each step, clutching as though to hold him back. With every breath he gasped in a mouthful of cold air until his lungs burned.

He saw the river through the trees and began to hope. Then, suddenly, a rip of heat, pain. The bear’s claws gouged into his side. Ghaden turned, felt the teeth again, this time in his left arm. He plunged his hunting knife into the animal’s throat, bore down on the haft, cutting a bloody trench into the animal’s neck.

The bear slammed a paw against Ghaden’s shoulder, and Ghaden was suddenly flying through the air. He landed against a large spruce, heard the pop of his ribs, felt pain like a blade slice into his side.

Ghaden reached for the tree’s lowest branches and clamped his legs around the bole, his snowshoes scraping and clattering against the rough bark. The animal’s breath was on the back of his neck, but Ghaden could not pull himself up. He braced for the death blow, then heard the tortured cry of a dog.

Though he should have been trying to climb, Ghaden could not help but look, and he opened his mouth in disbelief when he saw Biter standing behind the bear. Flesh torn from the top of Biter’s head hung in a bloody flap over his left ear, leaving his skull bare.

The dog’s shrieks were terrible, and even the bear stopped, stared, but then it dropped to all fours and attacked, flipping Biter to his back, raking claws into Biter’s side. Biter whipped his head to find purchase on the bear’s throat. The bear reared, and Biter hung on, rending the flesh as the bear tried to shake him loose.

Blood poured over Biter’s fur, and the bear’s roars rebounded from the trees, so it sounded as though many animals fought. Ghaden saw his bow in the snow and, dropping from the tree, scuttled over to it. He nocked an arrow and took aim, screamed at the pain when he drew back the bowstring.

The arrow lodged in the bear’s left eye. The animal opened its mouth and a flow of blood gouted out, slicked Biter’s fur. The dog released his grip and fell to the ground. The bear cocked its head and batted at something Ghaden could not see, then it slowly toppled, crushing Biter into the earth.

Ghaden waited for the bear to shake itself back to life, but it remained where it was, and finally Ghaden took another arrow, released it into the animal’s neck. The bear didn’t move. Ghaden walked close, prodded it with the end of his bow. The bear was dead.

Ghaden’s ribs pained him with each breath, and his left arm dripped blood, but he set his right shoulder against the carcass, took in as much air as he was able, and heaved the animal to its side, enough so he could get Biter out from under it.

Biter’s eyes were open, and Ghaden knelt beside him, lifted a hand to push the dog’s scalp back over the dome of his skull. Ghaden stroked his muzzle and began a quiet song of praise, something sung to honor warriors. For one quick moment the dog’s spirit rested in those open eyes, looked out at Ghaden. Love there. Love.

Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

602 B.C.

“A
SAD STORY,” QUMALIX SAID,
but she laid a hand against her belly as if she had just eaten her fill of a good meal.

Yikaas shrugged. “What better way for a brave dog to die? Besides, he was old.”

“What happened to Ghaden?”

“According to most storytellers, he had broken ribs, and he carried the scars of the bear’s claws and teeth all his life. He must have been a man who understood how to show respect. A bear that powerful would have cursed him had he not followed all the taboos.”

“Taboos? What taboos?”

Yikaas was surprised by her question. Anyone who did not respect a brown bear was a fool. “The same that all people follow,” he said. “A hunter can scarcely say the animal’s name, and as a woman, even though you are a storyteller, you dare not. Only an old woman is allowed to eat bear meat, and then just certain parts. The hide must be scraped out by a man, and left to hang for a summer or two before it can be used. Some people cut it into little pieces and bury it. That’s how much life is in the animal. Even the hairs can curse you. The First Men do not know these taboos?”

“On the island where I live there are no …” Qumalix paused. “Large animals,” she finally said. “Perhaps the hunters who live on the Traders’ Beach know about taboos. I have heard them say there are such animals in the mountains here, and some that even live beside the streams.”

“You have no bears on your island?”

“None.”

“Caribou?”

“No.”

“What do your men hunt?”

As soon as he asked the question, Yikaas realized it was a foolish one. The First Men were sea hunters. They took seals and sea lions and walrus and sometimes even whales.

“Our hunters take sea mammals.”

There was no hint of derision in her words, and he appreciated the gentleness of her answer.

“But tell me more about Ghaden,” she said. “What happened to him after the fight?”

“Ghaden’s sister scraped out the dog’s skin, and for the rest of his life, he wore Biter’s fur as trim for his parka hood. The old ones say that the dog continued to protect him, for Ghaden lived long and became chief hunter for his people.”

Qumalix stood up and shook the sand from her sax. “That’s a good ending. Too many stories end with sadness.”

Yikaas shrugged. “Any story can end with happiness or sadness, depending on where the storyteller chooses to stop.”

She smiled. “I see why they chose you as Dzuuggi,” she told him. “You should tell Ghaden’s story tonight. The men will like it.”

“And not the women?”

“The women, too, but men are more difficult to please.”

She spoke a few words in the First Men tongue, then switched to the River language to say, “Those are the First Men’s words of leaving. I said, ‘I am going now.’”

Yikaas repeated the phrase, purposely twisted some of the sounds. Qumalix cocked her head and said the words again. Yikaas hid a smile in his cheek at her patience, for she corrected him until he had them right.

As the next long day colored toward night and its promise of brief darkness, the people left their fishing, and those hunters who were not out in iqyan joined the women and children in the storyteller lodge. This time a hunter from another First Men village spoke first. He wore a whaling hat, brightly painted in reds and blues, with eyes drawn on each side and a long prow that extended beyond his forehead like the snout of an animal.

He did not have the River tongue, so Qumalix translated his words. Yikaas felt like a young man sharing his wife for the first time, and his skin prickled at the thought of the hunter’s words flowing from Qumalix’s mouth. Finally he could no longer watch, but had to close his eyes and only listen.

The stories were about hunting, and Yikaas waited in hope for the man to boast of his own success, but he seemed to have no faults, telling only the stories of others and telling them with great respect.

Some of the stories were funny and made the people laugh; others brought tears. If Qumalix paused in translating, Yikaas found himself holding his breath until he heard what was going to happen next. But even so, the Sea Hunter’s success with his stories grated as harshly as lava rock against Yikaas’s spirit.

Between stories, he thought back over all the tales he himself told. Most were about people who lived in ancient times. Sometimes those stories were not much to hear, but what Dzuuggi could allow that knowledge to die? None of his stories were funny, but it would be good to have tales that brought laughter rather than only solemn agreement or careful thought. Kuy’aa should have told him such stories; surely funny things had happened to River People, too.

At least the Sea Hunter man spoke only in his own voice, did not send his words to the top of the lodge to echo from the smokehole, did not speak harshly to mimic a hunter or raise his voice to show he spoke for a woman. These were all things that Yikaas did and did well. And there were no riddles. Of course only River People made riddles, but these Sea Hunters might enjoy them, too. They were thinkers. Their silence proved them so, and often they said something very wise, words that Yikaas took into his heart to remember.

Finally the Sea Hunter’s stories ended, but before he left the center of the ulax, he reached into a pouch that hung at his waist and pulled out a necklace of bird bone beads, handed it to Qumalix. Yikaas had to turn his eyes away from her joy. He wondered if such giving was customary among the Sea Hunters. If so, his rudeness was already noticed. It would do little good to give her something now. Better to wait until all the storytelling was over, then give her a large gift, something a woman would value. He could ask Kuy’aa what that might be. Perhaps Qumalix would like one of the parkas he had brought to trade.

Kuy’aa was sitting beside him, and she bumped his arm to call him from his thoughts, then pointed with her chin toward Qumalix. Qumalix gestured for Yikaas to join her, and he made his way to the center of the ulax, took his place beside her. She spoke for a moment to the people in the lodge, then leaned close to whisper that she had explained about Ghaden’s story, and they were ready to learn about this man and his brave dog Biter.

Yikaas used his voices to tell the story, and though he had no jokes, the people laughed when the dog’s barks came from the ulax roof. Even Qumalix laughed, hard enough that she had to stop in her translating, and Yikaas thought that she might be showing a little more joy in his stories than she had with the Sea Hunter’s tales.

He wondered for a moment what it would be like to have Qumalix as wife. She was good to look at, and they could share one another’s stories, but he reminded himself that most Sea Hunter women would rather be wife to a First Men hunter than a River man. River People and First Men looked at life so differently. Then he remembered the stories of Aqamdax and Chakliux. What man and woman had ever been happier together? And Aqamdax had been Sea Hunter, Chakliux River. Perhaps their differences had not mattered so much because they had both been storytellers.

The thought lifted his heart, until some commotion at the back of the ulax interrupted Qumalix’s translations. She stopped, and the grandfather who had come with her stood and began to scold a man and woman for their rudeness. Qumalix leaned toward Yikaas and told him that they were husband and wife, known for their squabbles.

The husband stomped up the climbing log, hissing insults as he left. Then Yikaas asked himself why he should even consider taking a wife. He was young yet and had many years before he had to make such a difficult decision, choosing one woman above all others. What if he and Qumalix turned out to be like that man and woman—a joke in their own village? Why not just see if she was willing to come to his bed? He was Dzuuggi. Women never refused him.

Suddenly he realized that he had paused in his storytelling. Qumalix was looking at him with questions in her eyes. He made an apology and continued, living the story again as the words passed from his mouth. When he told of the bear’s attack, the people were so quiet, he could hear their breathing. When Biter died, some of the women wept, and men cleared their throats, made remarks about bears in gruff voices, low and soft.

Then the Sea Hunter storyteller rose from his seat and asked if he could tell another story. Yikaas wanted to hear one of Qumalix’s stories, and several of the people in the lodge seemed to feel the same way, for two of the women nodded their heads toward her. But in politeness, Qumalix gave her place to the Sea Hunter storyteller and again translated his words so the River People could understand.

Yikaas sat down in disgust. The man had had his turn. Qumalix deserved her chance. Yikaas’s anger grew as he listened, but dissipated when the Sea Hunter tried to lift his voice to the top of the ulax as Yikaas had, tried to speak in various voices and so become animal, woman, or man. He was not good at it, and some of the people in the back of the ulax began to grumble. Others left, but Yikaas sat very still, listened very hard, and learned how not to tell a story.

Finally the man was done, and the people, as though speaking in one voice, asked for Qumalix. Yikaas saw the disappointment on the Sea Hunter’s face, and he wondered if he had looked the same way when the people were dissatisfied with him. It was not a good thing for a storyteller to act like a child, pouting over criticism. How better to learn?

Kuy’aa leaned against him, and he thought perhaps that she was weary and wanted to leave. He felt his heart drop in disappointment, but he smiled gently at her and said, “Aunt, are you tired? I will take you to the lodge where you are staying.”

“No, no,” she said impatiently, as though he were a troublesome child. “What storyteller gets tired listening to others’ tales?” Then she added, “You did a good job. I was proud of you. You see that Sea Hunter storyteller?” She tilted her head toward the man and lowered her voice to whisper, “He’s jealous. He knows your story was better than his.”

“His hunting stories were good,” Yikaas said.

“Of course they were. When he told them, he was thinking more about the stories than himself. The second time he spoke, he was thinking about himself, and about you and about who was best.

“When a storyteller pushes himself forward like that, above what he is saying, then the story no longer lives. It is only told.”

It was wise advice, as was nearly everything Kuy’aa told him, and Yikaas opened his mouth to thank her, but she lifted fingers to her lips and nodded toward Qumalix.