Call Down the Stars (56 page)

“Yes,” he finally said. “This time, when I return to Chakliux’s village, I’ll find a young woman to be my wife. You’re right. I need a son or daughter to take care of me when I’m old.”

Then, though the sky still held a little edge of the day’s light, he wrapped himself in his bedding furs and escaped into sleep.

Each day as they walked, Red Leaf talked about Cries-loud’s childhood and all the joys she could remember from that time. Each night as they sat near their small fire, she studied his face as though to help herself remember him.

The walking took longer than they had thought, nearly three handfuls of days, but finally they saw the smoke from the village, rising above the tag alders that bordered the trail they followed.

Then Red Leaf told him, “I had a dream in the night, and it said that I should go into the village alone, that a woman will be welcomed with less suspicion than a man and woman together.”

He began to protest, but she laid a hand across his mouth.

“This is what I want.”

Her stubbornness reminded Cries-loud of Yaa, so he knew there was little chance she would change her mind.

“Let me stay here at least for the day,” he said. “Then if they won’t take you in, you can come back to me, and we’ll go somewhere else, to another village, until we find a place for you.”

She considered what he said, finally agreed. “That’s good. Do that. If I’m not back by tomorrow morning, then return without me to the Four Rivers village, and be sure that Cen has told the people I’m dead.” She clasped her hands into fists, clenched and unclenched her fingers.

“They will mourn you,” Cries-loud said, “and I will join that mourning.” He looked away when Red Leaf’s eyes filled with tears.

“Someday, bring Duckling and Daes to see me.”

Cries-loud thought of the many days walking, too much of a summer lost in traveling, but he said, “I’ll bring them. Watch for us.”

Then Red Leaf smiled, looked into his eyes one last time, and left him.

By the time Cen, Daes, and Ghaden returned to the village, three more people had died, but no one else had become sick. The rest had recovered and were weak, but it seemed that they would live. Ghaden found his wife in Two-heeled Fish’s lodge, grinding boneset root for medicine.

“Did you find Cen’s wife?” she asked.

“It’s not good what we found,” Ghaden told her, then, noticing that Two-heeled Fish was listening, he said, “Cen’s wife is dead.”

“From the sickness?” Uutuk asked.

“No, wolves,” Ghaden told her.

The old woman began to croon something that he assumed was a death song. He pulled Uutuk to her feet and made excuses to Two-heeled Fish, led Uutuk from the lodge.

“You know the scars I carry on my back,” he said to her, his voice low so anyone passing could not hear what he said.

“I know.”

She ran quick fingers over his shoulder, and the heat of her hand made him realize how much he needed her. But first he wanted to tell her what had happened. They found a place near the river, in the lee of trees that cut the wind. There he told her about Red Leaf. As he spoke, she covered her mouth with both hands and made small cries of sadness.

“Uutuk,” Ghaden said quietly, “you know that Chakliux stayed here because he thinks your mother did this to the village. Red Leaf also told us that K’os tried to poison her.”

“Do you believe my mother would do that?”

“Did she say anything to you about eating the food here in this village?”

Uutuk’s eyes grew wide.

“She told me that the taboos of the Four Rivers village were very different. That women here eat things that might make my children sick or cursed. We’ve eaten only from our own boiling bag since we came.”

Ghaden moved to kneel in front of her. “Don’t you see, Uutuk?”

Then Uutuk leaned forward to put her arms around his neck, and she wept.

“I have this question, Brother,” Uutuk said. She and Chakliux were just outside Cen’s lodge, the two of them. K’os was inside, where she had stayed since Chakliux had come to the village. He did not even allow her to go to the women’s place to relieve herself. Instead she used a watertight salmon skin basket, and complained of Chakliux’s foolishness.

“Ask,” Chakliux told Uutuk.

“Why is she still alive? If she has done all the things you say, or even some of them, why have you not killed her?”

“I owed her a life,” he said.

“You paid that when she killed your son.” Uutuk’s words were loud, but she spoke in the First Men language, which they both understood, though the people of the Four Rivers village did not.

He shook his head. “Each time I decided that she should die, something happened to change my decision.”

“You are afraid of her,” Uutuk told him. “She is a woman who curses everyone she knows. If she has this much power in life, think what she would be able to do in death, especially to the family of the one who kills her. But we could cut her bones apart, like men do when they take a powerful animal. That will keep her from coming after us.”

Her words shocked Chakliux, and he had no answer for her.

“Do the River People not also believe that the cutting of joints protects the killer?”

“Sometimes we do that, but the best protection comes through prayers and chants and amulets.”

“Then we will do both.”

“You hate her so much?”

Her eyes overflowed, and she turned away from him. “She has always treated me well,” she said in a small voice. “But when so many people tell me what she has done, how can I trust her not to hurt my husband or the children we might have?”

“Uutuk, we have no spirit powers, and the shaman of this village is old and weak. Even with our prayers and chants and the cutting of the body, how can we be sure we do not bring her anger again to us and to our families? Ghaden has told you how much she hates my wife, Aqamdax.”

“I will take the chance, Brother,” Uutuk said. “And now is the time to do it, when your wife is not here in the village, so if K’os’s spirit has a moment between death and my cutting, at least she will not be able to reach Aqamdax or your children.”

Chakliux crouched on his haunches, his back to the lodge. “We have to wait until her forty days of mourning have ended,” he said. “Even if she does not truly grieve over Seal, I would not want to bring the curse of a widow’s taboos on either of us.”

“We are stronger than you think, my brother,” Uutuk said. She sat on the ground, crossed her legs like the River People do, and unlaced her caribou hide boots. “I have heard the stories of your otter foot, and the power in it.” She smiled. “Has no one told you the stories about my feet?”

“You have otter feet, too?” he asked, the doubt clear on his face.

“Not otter,” she said. “Look.”

She pulled off her boots and flickered the grass that lined them from her feet, then pointed to the place where her small toes should be.

“What happened?”

“This toe I cut off in mourning for my grandfather,” she said, lifting her right foot. “The other toe my grandfather cut off when I was very small. They say a child does not remember when they have only three summers, but I remember.”

“It is good that the man is dead,” Chakliux said.

“Oh no, Chakliux. Let me tell you what happened. I told you how my grandfather and I took a boat from our island to the islands of the First Men.”

“Yes.”

“It was not an easy journey, and we did not do it willingly, but a storm had taken our paddle, so we could not return to our own people. We were caught in a current that carried us north. During that time we ate all our food. My grandfather cut off his own toes to use as bait for fish, but he caught nothing. We were starving, so I asked him to use my toe, and finally he did.” She smiled at Chakliux, showing her white and even teeth. “Then he caught many fish, and so we had food enough to live until K’os found us.”

“So that toe saved your life and your grandfather’s life.”

“Yes.”

“A strange family we have, you and I, that both of us have our power in our feet!”

They laughed together, then Chakliux said, “It is not much, that kind of power.”

“So far, it’s been enough, nae’?” she said to him in the River tongue, then switched again to the First Men language. She pulled on her boots, straightened, and said, “I told you my story so you would understand that as a little child, I was willing to give much to protect my grandfather. I am willing to do even more for my husband and any children we might have.”

She lay a hand over her belly, and Chakliux, having seen his own wife do the same, asked, “Already?”

Her answer was shy. “I think so,” she said, “though my husband does not yet know. Please do not tell him until we decide what to do with K’os.”

“We will give her nothing beyond her mourning,” Chakliux said. “We cannot allow her to take more lives.”

The Wilderness Northwest of the Fish Camp

Cries-loud spent the day hunting, and brought two fat hares and a brace of ptarmigan back to his campfire. He cleaned them and cooked them on spits, ate as much as he wanted, and wrapped the remainder in grass to save for the next day.

As the night darkened, he heard the noise of someone walking. He jumped to his feet, had knife and lance in hand before he even thought, but then his mother called out, and he ran to her. She was smiling.

Before he could ask questions, she said, “I couldn’t let you leave without seeing you one more time.”

Though she still smiled, he could see that tears brightened her eyes. “They didn’t have a place for you?” he asked.

“They do. They know Cen and somehow had heard that he’s dead. I didn’t tell them any differently. There’s an old man who will take me as wife.”

“If he’s old, how will he feed you?”

“He’s not too old to hunt, and he has three sons who live in the village. We won’t starve, and when we finally hear the truth about Cen, I’ll tell him that even though Cen is alive, I want to stay with him, that I’m weary of being a trader’s wife. By that time, my parkas and my trapping will have made him happy, and maybe I can even give him a son or daughter.”

Cries-loud beckoned her toward the fire, invited her to eat.

“Just a little,” she told him. “I must return, and I don’t want to get lost in the dark. I just wanted you to know …”

“I’m glad you’ve found a place, Mother.”

“Perhaps you can visit me someday,” she said, “you and your wives and those children you will get.”

She was eating quickly, as though she had had nothing all day, but he told himself that she was not that hungry, just that she wanted to leave and return to the old man.

She ate a ptarmigan and then wiped her fingers on her pants and stood. For a moment, Cries-loud once more became a little boy, and tucked himself into her arms. She was the first to break away, and she turned quickly and said in a voice heavy with tears, “Watch over my daughters.”

Then she was gone, and Cries-loud heaped branches on his camp-fire until the flames leaped, making light to fill some of the emptiness.

The Four Rivers Village

K’os leaned close to the side of the lodge, tried to hear what her children were saying, but the double caribou hide cover and the rocks and sod of the walls swallowed their words. Somehow Chakliux had managed to turn Uutuk against her, and all this had happened because of the woman Red Leaf. If Cen and Ghaden had not gone after Red Leaf, then Chakliux would not have had so much time alone to talk Uutuk into hating her.

Still, the girl should know better! Had K’os been anything but a good mother to her? Aaa! What made children so selfish? Chakliux kept her in this lodge, did not allow her to see the sun. How could she store up heat in her bones against the coming winter?

“Don’t allow your anger to eat your own flesh,” she told herself. “How will you fight if you are weak?”

She settled her mind on the people of the Four Rivers village. How many had died? Three tens, she thought. Six handfuls! Yes, but many of the hunters had already left for the caribou hunts, so those she had killed were mostly children and old ones, a few of the wives who had stayed behind. Then, too, the young, strong ones had grown sick from her poison, but it hadn’t killed them. She had not only used the purple-flowered plant from the First Men, but also baneberry. The First Men’s poison was better. When she used it on the first few who died—all elders—it had caused no great alarm. They seemed to have died in their sleep, though one had stumbled from her daughter’s lodge, clutching her throat and gasping for each breath.

Then K’os had decided to kill great numbers all at once by poisoning the hearth boiling bags. But Seal, greedy for more than her own cooking, had eaten from those bags. Stupid man! She had fed him more than enough here in Cen’s lodge.

No one had suspected her of using poison. Why would she want to kill her own husband? But then Chakliux came, and Cen with him. Who could believe that Cen was alive? Who could believe that Chakliux would come to this village and accuse her of killing the people? And now he had turned Uutuk against her. K’os would have to make her plans much more carefully now that she did not have Uutuk or Seal to help her.

She heard voices in the entrance tunnel, Uutuk, yes, and perhaps Chakliux. She pulled a thumbnail against the whites of her eyes and turned to face them with tears on her cheeks.

The hardness on Uutuk’s face melted away, and she held a hand out toward K’os, but then quickly drew it back. K’os said nothing, but she saw the furtive glance Uutuk gave Chakliux. His mouth was set, his eyes cold. He leaned over and whispered to Uutuk. Uutuk frowned, and, though she also whispered, it seemed that she was arguing with him. Finally he shrugged and spoke to K’os.

“My sister thinks that you should be allowed to attend the mourning ceremonies.”

Each day the people made more ceremonies, trying to appease the dead. For more nights than K’os could count, the death drums had broken into her sleep.

She wiped her nose against the sleeve of her parka and said, “What, and have the villagers kill me? Surely by now you two have told them that I caused these deaths. Surely by now you’ve laid the blame for this curse on me, even though my own husband is among the dead.”