Call Down the Stars (8 page)

“It will hurt, Daughter,” he told her.

“My,” she said again.

“Sleep first,” he said, thinking that it would be easier for him to cut if she were asleep, and perhaps her pain would be blunted.

He tried to sing, but his parched throat broke around the song, scattering the words into shards of nonsense. But finally as the sea swells rocked the boat, she slept, and then with tears nearly blocking his sight, Water Gourd raised his knife and took off Daughter’s smallest toe.

At the pain, her eyes flew open. He looked into their brown depths and saw only understanding. She cried when he pinched the wound to stop the flow of blood, but she clung hard to him, and when he tied the toe on the stone barb of his hook, she raised her tiny chin and said, “My.”

A fish bit nearly as soon as he lowered the bait into the sea, and Water Gourd jerked the hook, felt it lodge solidly into flesh. He played it for a time, allowed the fish to exhaust itself against the line, then he pulled it to the edge of the boat. The fish flipped once and was still. It was a hake, black and silver, as long and big around as his forearm. Water Gourd lowered a shaking hand into the water, the breath tight in his chest until he was able to hook his fingers into the gills.

“Now,” he whispered, and tried to heave the fish into the boat. But it was heavy and beyond his strength.

“My,” Daughter said in a quiet voice, looking over the edge of the boat at the fish. She patted her little foot, bound in bloody rags.

Water Gourd drew in another breath, pulled again, and this time was able to lift the hake, though not high enough to bring it over the edge. Then Daughter’s small hands were at the bend of his elbow, her fingers splayed out over the sleeve of his coat.

“Now!” he said again. They pulled, and the fish fell into the boat at their feet.

“Yours,” Water Gourd told her, and in the foolishness of his old age, he began to weep.

W
ATER GOURD USED THE
hake’s innards to catch more fish, and after a few days of eating, he and Daughter both regained their strength. The currents still moved them north, and each night the water at the bottom of their boat turned into slush.

Water Gourd began to wonder if perhaps the sea was carrying them to that land where it was always winter. He had heard stories about such a place. Traders claimed it lay north of the Bear-god islands, but others said it did not exist. How could anything live where it was always winter?

The icy chill of the air seemed to live in fog, and Water Gourd could seldom see much beyond the bow of the boat. The fog not only battened his eyes, but also seemed to press against his ears, and sometimes he thought he could not bear another moment without sun and sky and sound. But one night the fog lifted, the clouds parted, and Water Gourd was able to see the stars. They looked nearly the same as they had from his village, and that comforted him, but there was some difference in their placement—more than just the turning that comes with the seasons.

They had several days where the sun shone, and he began to hope that the sea had not carried them to the far shores of the winter land, and that summer had actually come. Though Water Gourd and Daughter had to huddle together for warmth during the nights, the sun, even on overcast days, warmed their bones back to living, and the morning frosts were so thin that he could scarcely add to their supply of water.

He watched for land, and the watching made his head ache, his eyes burn. The pain of his toes had nearly gone, and Daughter’s small wound had healed well, but Water Gourd’s eyes grew steadily worse. He carved a chunk of wood from the inside of the boat, whittled himself a pair of slitted goggles to combat the glare of sun on water, and often, if he was not fishing, he sat with his eyes closed, droning out stories that for a few moments carried him and Daughter back to their own village.

Daughter, too, was changing. Her delicate baby skin turned dark, and her legs grew thin. Her straight black hair, though tangled and knotted by the wind, now hung nearly to her shoulders. She had learned more words, and sometime during their days together, she had begun to call him Grandfather. He liked the sound of that in her mouth, her little girl voice crowing out when she saw something of interest, or slurring into baby words when she was tired and needed to sleep.

Though he longed for his village, for old friends and even the sweet-water spring, he could no longer imagine himself without Daughter: her face tipped up to his, her lisping words and bubbling laughter filling his days.

Sometimes in dreams he saw himself cut and mutilated beyond recognition as he pared himself away into bait. Toes, fingers, nose, and tongue, long slices of flesh all gone, eaten by fish too greedy and selfish to be caught.

Then he would wake, in gratitude stretch his fingers before him, bent and gnarled, but whole, his feet missing just the smallest toes, his nose and tongue still a part of him, and his body scarred only from the mishaps of a long life. And Daughter, too, was whole, save for that one small toe.

The morning they woke to see their boat flanked on all sides by sea otters, Water Gourd began to hope that they were near land. They had only three gourds of water left. How many days could they survive once that was gone?

The otters spread away from their boat in the fog like a brown sea, some jumping and playing, others lying on their backs, babies nursing. One otter, gray of face, swam very near their boat, a rock balanced on its chest, a mussel clamped tightly in its webbed fingers. The otter smacked the mussel against the rock until the shell cracked, then picked out the flesh, ate it in noisy slurps.

Daughter held one hand out to the otter, said, “My.”

The animal flipped and slid quickly under the surface, and several otters nearest him did the same. Daughter looked up at Water Gourd, and he laid a finger against his lips to shush her.

Carefully, slowly, he began moving toward the remaining Bear-god spear that lay in the bottom of the boat. If he could affix his hand line to the spear, perhaps he could use it as a harpoon and kill an otter. He and Daughter were no longer starving, but an otter would have a lot of meat, not to speak of blood they could drink. And then there was the fur. Surely he could scrape a pelt clean enough to use for a blanket at night. There would be sinew also, to make fish line, and bones and teeth to carve into hooks.

Finally he managed to draw both hand line and spear to his lap, and again, motioning for Daughter to be quiet, knotted the line around the butt end of the spear shaft. It was a thrusting spear and not balanced to throw, but Water Gourd had cast enough spears during his life to compensate for the clumsiness, and if he missed, he would draw the spear back to himself with the line.

The gray-faced otter again surfaced beside their boat, another mussel clutched in his paws. Daughter was on her knees at the side of the boat, looking over the edge.

“My,” she whispered and reached toward the mussel.

Like a child, the otter turned away, hugging the mussel to his side. Moving slowly, Water Gourd set a hand on Daughter’s shoulder, tried to pull her back to sit in the center of the boat, but she jerked away and would not look at him. He saw that she had a section of fish in her hand, and she held it out, offering the fish to the otter. The otter lifted his head, and suddenly Water Gourd was afraid the animal would bite her. Water Gourd lunged forward, but before he could reach her, the otter had taken the piece of fish, and somehow Daughter had the mussel, dark and wet, clutched in her hand.

“My!” she cried, as the otter dove beneath the surface and swam away. She held the mussel up so Water Gourd could see it.

He closed his eyes in relief. “Yours,” he conceded.

As the day waned, Water Gourd watched the otters, waited in hopes that one would again come close enough for him to spear. As he watched, he found himself wondering whether he could use an otter’s shoulder blade as a paddle. The remaining Bear-god spear could be the shaft. Though it was too short and thin for heavy seas, perhaps it would allow him to follow the otters back to land.

Several times since he and Daughter had begun their strange journey, he had tried to carve a slice of wood from the inside of the boat and make a paddle blade, but the cedar had grown soft and punky in the salt water, and no piece came away large enough.

Then he had another thought. Perhaps if he harpooned an otter, a strong animal that wouldn’t die from one wound, it would flee toward the safety of land. And as it swam, still tied to them with Water Gourd’s line, its fear would give it the strength to tow their boat.

Water Gourd watched and waited until the sun, a circle of yellow above the haze, had begun to set. No otters came near, and he had decided to put away his harpoon, pray that the animals would still be with them in the morning. But then a large otter swam close. It was strong and healthy-looking, nearly as long as a man is tall. The animal slipped down into the sea, and Water Gourd watched, leaning over the edge of the boat, finally losing the otter in the depths. But then, suddenly, it emerged, fur streaming, on the other side of the outrigger. It flipped to its back and swam slowly toward the bow.

Water Gourd bound the harpoon line to his wrist and hefted the spear, ground his teeth at the poor balance of the thing. He needed a stone counterweight for the spearhead. But why wish for what he did not have? He rubbed the hunting amulet he had worn at his neck since he was a boy.

As he was ready to throw, Daughter lay a hand on his leg, looked up at him. He thought he saw fear in her eyes, but what did a little girl know about hunting? He shook his head at her, upset that she had broken his concentration. No animal would give itself to a man who did not have respect enough to keep his thoughts on the hunt.

In his mind, he began a chant, a slow rhythm to help still his heart as he waited for the moment of throwing. He shut out Daughter and the boat, all things but harpoon and otter.

He threw.

The spear hit and the otter dove.

The line grew taut, and Water Gourd gripped his right wrist with his left hand, braced his feet, and felt the boat begin to move. The other otters began to dive until the sea was empty.

Daughter stabbed a finger into the air. “My! My! My!” she shouted and pursed her lips into a pout.

Water Gourd found the hand grip from his fishing line and managed to twist the line around it once, relieving some of the pressure from his wrist.

“A foolish thing to do, tying the line to your wrist,” the pestering voice in his head told him. “You should have tied it to the outrigger poles. Now you will lose both spear and fishing line, and maybe your hand. Then what will you do?”

The line suddenly grew slack and Water Gourd again twisted it around the hand grip. Then the line was taut again, this time pulled straight down from the side of the boat. Water Gourd leaned over the edge. He could see the otter, large and dark, distorted in the depths. Suddenly it sped up through the water, moved so quickly that Water Gourd’s only reaction was to raise his hands and cover his face. The otter reached the surface, flat nose bubbling out spent air, dark lips drawn back from yellow teeth. The animal leaped at him, and Water Gourd, without thought or reason, clenched his hands into the otter’s thick pelt. The otter, twisting and snarling, drew in great breaths of air and curled to snap at the bloody spear protruding from its side.

Daughter began to scream, and Water Gourd felt the pain of the otter’s teeth as it bit his arm, once and again, then too many times to count. Water Gourd tried to drop the animal into the sea, but it embedded its teeth into his forearm, locked them there, and would not release its grip. Dark clots of blood gouted from the otter’s wound, and finally Water Gourd was able to reach his knife.

He plunged it into the otter’s throat, but it took the animal a long time to die. Finally, as the otter’s blood ebbed, so did its strength, and Water Gourd was able to use the blade to pry the jaws from his arm. He dropped the otter into the bottom of the boat where it lay with jaws clenched, feet scrabbling, gouging out wet splinters of cedar with its claws.

“Stay away,” Water Gourd shouted to Daughter, and she kept her distance, staring with rounded eyes, one finger plugging the circle of her mouth. When the animal’s death throes ended and it was still, she pointed at Water Gourd’s arm, at the shredded skin that hung like a fringe from a wound that gaped from elbow to wrist.

“He eat you,” she said.

Water Gourd’s legs gave way, and he slumped to the bottom of the boat. A wound that horrible would attract spirits of illness. Fever would take him, and he would die. But he looked at Daughter and said in a loud voice, “No, he did not eat me. We will eat him.”

W
ATER GOURD’S RUSH FIBER
coat was beyond repair. Seams, stressed by days in salt spray and nights without a woman’s needle, had frayed and split. The otter’s teeth had shredded the sleeve into tatters so fine that they were good for nothing but hook streamers—false promises of minnows swimming. Water Gourd bound the coat around him as best as he could using strips of fish skin.

Worse, far worse, his arm was nearly as shredded as his jacket, the muscle bared and bloody.

He washed his wounds in sea water, grinding his teeth closed over the scream that rose into his throat at the bite of the salt. What skin he could salvage he stretched over the wound; the rest—chewed into frothy strands—he pared away with his knife and added to his bait pile.

The deeper toothmarks and gouges still bled, and when Water Gourd had done all he could to clean them, he sat for a moment to calm his breathing, mindlessly watching the swirl of patterns made by blood in the water at the bottom of the boat.

Most of it was otter blood, he assured himself. He stretched his good hand toward the mess and spoke those words to Daughter.

She nodded her head, said, “Otter, him blood,” in a soothing voice, as though she understood Water Gourd’s need to believe what he told her.

He sat until his heart had slowed, until he felt a sleepiness begin to steal over him. His thoughts descended into a comfortable haze, then, for a moment, cleared, and he realized the trap of that sleepiness, brought on by shock and loss of blood. He forced himself to once again use his knife, this time on the dead otter.