Call Down the Stars (52 page)

The rain had moved north, the edge of the clouds revealing clear skies south and west, but it was nearly night, so he knew the clearing would not bring him the heat of the sun, but the cold of the stars. He glanced toward the east and realized that he was seeing more than just the normal darkness at the end of a day. Even with his poor eyes, he could make out the jagged tops of mountains some distance from the shore. He lowered a strand of babiche into the sea, watched as it floated out behind him. The current was much swifter, more than just a river within the sea, but now also the force of waves driving themselves toward land.

For a moment another spasm grasped him, and he tensed against it, but he then realized it was only nervousness, a man considering an unknown shore without a strong paddle, with injuries and weak vision. What chance was there that the waves would bring him to a gentle cove? He had found a river within the sea, but it would approach land with the strength that any river holds. More than likely, he would make landfall at night, blinded by darkness. Low tide or high?

With a stronger paddle, he could have moved himself parallel to the shore until morning, but with what he had, and with most of his strength gone, he knew he could not escape the sea-river’s current and the power of the breakers that would drive him ashore. He moaned, and a voice came into his head, something old from long ago.

“So you are complaining again?”

His father’s voice? No, stronger than that.

“I need a good paddle,” Cen answered, speaking aloud.

“You’re worried about your paddle?”

“Of course. Look at it. It’s just a branch, a piece of driftwood.”

“Worry is just another form of complaint. Look at all the good things you have. You needed water, and it rained. You needed to see, and your eyes have cleared.”

“But my ears …”

“You needed to hear, and you can hear me.”

Cen grew angry, began to shout. “You speak to my spirit. That’s not hearing! If I could hear, I would know how the currents run against the beach, how the waves break.”

He shouted until his throat grew so raw that his words were no more than the movement of his lips. Then he no longer heard the voice. The clouds covered the eastern sky throughout the night, darkened land and sea into blackness. Cen sat, eyes and ears straining, ready any moment for the crush of waves breaking.

When morning first grayed the edges of the sky, he realized that somehow the current had slowed. He could see sea birds wheeling and turning, but there was still some distance to the shore.

He made a prayer of gratitude, one he had learned as a child. Though the simple words did not seem enough for a man, he could think of nothing else.

The sea grew choppy, and the iqyax bounced on the water. Cen untied his paddle and used it to keep the bow into the waves. As he neared the shore, he floated over a bed of kelp, and found that he could direct himself by grabbing the stipes of the plants, pulling until he could grab another. In that way, he moved past a cliff that dropped sheer into the water.

His hands and fingers grew numb, and he could hardly make them grab the kelp, could scarcely let go when it was time for another handhold. He had seen men drown this close to land. He had been little more than a boy when he went out with a group of hunters after harbor seals. A current had pulled them all into rocks, and several of the iqyan covers were sliced open. One of the men managed to crawl across the bow of his hunting partner’s iqyax, but the others, three in all, had held to their own crafts, which had sunk as water filled the hulls. The sea had been so cold that soon their muscles cramped, arms and legs clenched so they could no longer flail to keep themselves afloat.

In trying to save the man closest to him, Cen had driven his iqyax into the rocks and sliced its cover as well, but the worst of the cut had been above the waterline. He had not been able to reach the hunter before the man drowned, and by the time Cen managed to get ashore, his iqyax was full of water, the craft riding so low that even the smallest waves broke over the deck.

Now he forced his hands to grasp the shaft of his cedar branch paddle. Pain pierced each of his fingers, sent sharp messages up his arms.

“Be grateful,” he heard the voice say, and in anger Cen ground his teeth.

He lifted tortured hands, plunged the paddle into the sea, and willed the kelp to ignore the wide and awkward blade, but it wrapped itself over the paddle, bound it tight.

Cen pulled, but the waves worked with the kelp, jerked his iqyax toward an outcropping of rocks. Cen pulled harder, and his ribs seemed to rip from his spine. He screamed and lifted the paddle, twisted it, heard the snap of the wood, not with his ears but with the bones of his hands. Then the kelp swallowed the blade and half the shaft.

“Be grateful,” the voice whispered.

Cen’s scream needed no words, and he began to jab the stick into the sea. Again and again he plunged the broken end into the water, screaming until a layer of the skin in his throat peeled away, until he could no longer draw breath through the blood that filled his mouth.

Then he was still, exhausted, cradling the remains of the paddle in his arms, spitting up blood, crying.

But finally, when his throat had stopped bleeding and he was again able to draw air, he whispered, “I am grateful.”

He bound the remains of his paddle to the deck. With fumbling hands, fingers like stone, he managed to pull the stout end of the cedar branch from where he had stored it inside the iqyax. He tied it to the deck with a harpoon line, so that if the waves pulled it from his grasp, he would be able to bring it back to himself.

Then he lifted his hands toward the sky and shouted, “I am grateful!”

Without the stick, he could never have brought his iqyax safely to shore. Rocks lurked under the surface, hidden until Cen was nearly upon them. Then he would push off, shove himself away before the rock could tear through the thin iqyax cover. Once he cracked the keelson hard on the seaward edge of a reef, but the iqyax was well made, and though the keelson stove in for a moment, it popped back out when Cen pushed away.

He followed the edge of the reef until it opened. The split was narrow, hardly the width of his iqyax, and the current was strong, a river flowing between the two sides of the gravel reef, but he managed to aim the boat well, and the current carried him through. Once past the reef, he was in a deep pool of calm water. Cen laid the stick over the bow and studied the shore.

He was close enough now that there was little danger. Even if he destroyed his iqyax on rocks, most likely he could escape. The cliffs had given way to a rolling beach, duned with large hills of gray and golden sand, striated as though fingers had pulled the colors together, drawing them into one another. But the land came up quickly from the water in a rise that was as tall as a man—not an easy place to bring in an iqyax, especially for someone as battered and weak as Cen.

He poled himself along the beach until it widened, the dunes receded, and the land grew flat. He had not realized how afraid he had been until his fear seeped away, leaving him empty, tired. Perhaps fear was the only thing that kept him trying. Now he just wanted to sleep. But he forced himself to consider the land, to set his mind on the problems that would face him there, dangers different from what he had faced on the sea.

He had few weapons, the knives the storm had left him, and his stout cedar stick, but little else. What good would those things do against wolves or bear? He had nothing left that anyone would take in trade save a bundle of shell necklaces and his iqyax. The iqyax needed a new cover, but the frame still seemed strong.

He glanced at the beach he was passing, saw the mouth of a small river, and grimaced. Most likely the outflow of the river would have carved itself a path through the reef, and he did not want to get caught in a current that might carry him back out to sea. It was time to put his iqyax ashore.

Dread caught at him, pushed fingers into his throat and crept down to squeeze his heart.

Fool, he told himself. You have wanted nothing more than this since the wave took you. Here you are on a good beach, in a place where it will be easy to land, and you are suddenly afraid!

He shifted his knees and legs, dug his pole in at the seaward side of the iqyax, and turned it toward the beach. Waves took him, sped him toward shore, and he wished he could backpaddle to slow himself.

“This is nothing,” he said aloud to the iqyax, hoping to lend it courage.

He was right; the land rose gradually under the water, so that when the waves finally drove him ashore, there was no more than a small jolt, a scraping of gravel against the hull.

Cen lifted his voice in a cry of thanksgiving. “Be grateful,” he shouted. “Be grateful!”

He thrust the stick under the paddle bindings that crossed the top of the iqyax, then braced his hands on either side of the coaming. Usually he jumped out with legs spread, one on either side of the iqyax, but this time, when he landed his legs did not hold him, and he found himself sitting awkwardly in the coaming, a leg on each side. He started to laugh, rolled himself off the iqyax and onto the wet sand. A wave dashed in and slapped over his chest, up into his mouth. He pushed himself up with his arms and again tried to stand, but his legs were weak, and all he could do was crawl. He thrust a hand into the paddle ties of the iqyax and managed to drag it with him up the rise of the beach and finally out of the reach of waves. Then he collapsed. He lay there breathing hard, and the ground moved in undulations as though the sea still held him.

C
EN DRANK HIS FILL
from the river, and he managed to catch a few fish by constructing a makeshift weir with driftwood and scrub willow. He wasn’t sure where the sea had left him, but during low tide the sand and silt flats that extended past the shore reminded him of land near the Walrus Hunters village.

For three days, he rested. He repaired his weapons and clothing the best he could with what the sea had left him. Then he decided he was strong enough, his hearing and vision improved enough, to set out for the Walrus Hunters village. He walked the shore at the mark of high tide, his iqyax on his back, the curl of the bow high over his head. He had considered stripping the craft of its covering, rotted and leaking as it was, but then decided that it gave him some shelter in the night from wind and rain, and so he put up with the extra weight, took more rests, stopped earlier in the day.

Two days’ walking brought him to a large river, and he chortled when he saw it. He was less than a day away from the Walrus village. Thoughts of warm lodges and fresh meat, of hearthfires and fur sleeping mats, warmed him even in the gray mist.

The third day, he came to the village, heard the dogs barking, saw the light haze of hearthfire smoke rising into the darkening sky.

“I am grateful,” he murmured under his breath, and set his feet more firmly against the earth, tightened his grip on the iqyax.

He thought children would come to meet him. Unlike the River People, the Walrus did not go after caribou, but should at this time of year be in their winter villages. If the caribou came to them, as they did some years—walking the beaches as though they sought some way to cross the North Sea—then the Walrus hunted them, but did so in foolish ways, driving the animals into the sea, taking them with harpoons as if the caribou were seal or sea lion.

When no children came out, in spite of the dogs’ barking, then Cen himself raised his voice, shouted greetings. When he came to the first lodge, he set down his iqyax, well away from any tethered dogs, and scratched at the hide doorflap.

Walrus lodges seemed to be a mix of the First Men ulax and River lodges. The men dug them partly into the earth, then built stone and sod walls. The women covered the roof poles with split walrus hide or sea lion skins and, like the River, made tunnels as entry-ways. But inside, except for the light that came in through the hide roof, their lodges seemed more First Men, with stone oil lamps for cooking and heating, and the walls and floors covered with woven grass mats.

Finally a woman flung open the doorflap. By watching her lips and listening hard to hear over the roar in his ears, Cen realized that she was scolding him, asking why he had waited for someone to come and let him in. Didn’t he know that everyone was welcome in her lodge? Why force her to leave a warm place beside the oil lamp?

When she finally looked at his face, she clamped a hand over her mouth and began a high-pitched wail. Then another woman came into the entrance tunnel. She made signs of protection and waved her hands as though to push him away.

“I am Cen,” he said, and her wailing grew louder.

Suddenly he understood. Someone, perhaps Ghaden himself, or a visitor from Chakliux’s village, had told these Walrus people that he had drowned. Now here he was, clothes rotting on his body, his face marked by the battering he had taken. Worse, his tattered iqyax lay behind him on the ground.

“No,” he said, speaking in the Walrus tongue. “I am not dead. You heard I was dead, but I am not.”

The two began a chant, something to appease spirits, and Cen shook his head at their foolishness. The women jerked down the doorflap, held it in place when Cen gently tried to pull it from their hands. He let go, stepped back in frustration. His belly churned, and he realized that he could smell meat cooking, seal meat, rich and fat.

For a moment his head seemed so light that he was dizzy, but he closed his eyes to steady himself, then picked up his iqyax and walked to Yehl’s lodge at the center of the village.

He had known Yehl for a long time, since the man’s father had been the village shaman. Yehl was not as wise or as gifted as his father had been, but he knew how to make people afraid of his powers, of his chants, and so he was the leader of the village. Gradually some of the Walrus Hunters had left, two families one year, another the next, each year more until the village itself was only half the size it had been when Yehl’s father was alive, but the people who remained were a good people, generous with what they had. It was a fine place to trade.