Cry of the Wind (50 page)

Outside, he was surprised to see that the sun had risen, a pale yellow disk barely above the horizon, the sky dark toward north and west. New snow had come during the night. Less than a hand’s breadth had fallen, but it had drifted over Sok’s trail so that Chakliux found nothing but the first few steps Sok had taken, heading west.

Why would Sok go in that direction? Their village was south and east. Then Chakliux knew Sok was following his dead wife, walking west toward the land of the spirits.

Aaa, Sok, Chakliux thought, after all this have I lost you?

Everything seemed the same, each ridge, each frozen stream like the one he had just crossed. Once a white fox trotted past him, once ravens circled, but otherwise, the earth and sky were empty. Sok sang his sons’ names under his breath, a rhythm for his feet, a reminder of the direction he should travel and why. He pitched his parka hood back, allowed the air to cool his head so he would not sweat, and when his ears began to ache from the cold, he drew the hood forward again. As the sun moved in its shallow arc, he fought against sleep, walking with his head down, his eyes closed.

Sleep was escape, a place without decisions, without pain. There he would not have to tell Aqamdax that her husband was dead, killed by Snow-in-her-hair. He would not have to face each empty day without the wife he needed, without the brother he had learned to love. But he made himself walk, and he breathed his sons’ names, with each step spoke them into his thoughts until their faces danced before him, until their voices were louder than Snow’s as she called to him from the wind.

THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE

Brown Foot scratched at the side of K’os’s lodge. He was mumbling small curses against an old wife too lazy to get up in the morning to feed her husband, and against River Ice Dancer’s dogs, the animals barking as he waited.

“What?” he finally shouted out. “Are all women lazy this morning? Is everyone still asleep? Look!” He raised his walking stick toward the southeast. “There is the sun.” He blew through his lips, a sound of rudeness, and pulled aside the outer doorflap. He went into the entrance tunnel and did not pause to call again before stepping inside the lodge.

When he saw K’os was not there, he stopped his flow of curses. Then, glimpsing the thatch of River Ice Dancer’s dark hair above his sleeping robes, Brown Foot slapped his walking stick against the floor and shouted, “What hunter sleeps away a good day?”

When the man did not answer, Brown Foot stepped closer and prodded him with his stick. “Where is your wife?” he asked. “Your hearth is cold.” He squatted on his haunches and muttered, “She’s a foolish woman, going out to the food cache before starting your morning fire. You might decide to get another. I have a granddaughter, you know….”

He pushed a hand under River Ice Dancer’s blankets, then his mouth fell open. He stared at his fingers. They were sticky with clotted blood.

“How is your wife?” Near Mouse whispered, standing on tiptoe to peer over Cen’s shoulder into the lodge. Sand Fly scuttled past him, set the baby’s cradleboard on the floor. She unlaced the bindings and stripped out the moss padding, full of the baby’s wastes, then threw the moss into the hearth fire.

The two old women had entered as if the lodge belonged to them, and Cen clenched his fists to keep his impatience from becoming anger. He was tired, awakened in the night by Gheli’s vomiting. She had quieted and then he had slept, but that sleep had been cursed with strange dreams and half-formed thoughts.

At dawn, K’os had given Gheli more medicine, tea made with a pale green powder.

“It is the strongest medicine I have,” she had told Cen. “It should drive away her pain, loosen her bowels and force the evil from her body. But if those pain spirits are too great…” She shook her head. “It is the best I can do for her,” she had said softly. “Perhaps you should ask one of the elders to come and make prayers.”

Now, as Cen answered Near Mouse’s question, he found his eyes tearing and had to look away. “Gheli is still sick,” he said. “Is there anyone in the village who might know prayers?”

“Our shaman died two…no…three summers ago. He was old, and my husband told us—”

“I know,” Cen said, interrupting her. Near Mouse was a woman of too many words, and he did not have time for her foolishness. “Is there anyone else?”

“Perhaps old Brown Foot.”

Cen shook his head.

Near Mouse pursed her lips into a frown. “He is always after more than his share of food, that is true,” she replied, “but he knows many prayers. He was brother to our shaman.”

Cen glanced at Sand Fly; the woman was nursing his daughter. “He knows prayers,” she said without looking up from the baby.

“I will ask him to come,” Cen said, and pulled aside the doorflap, then stepped back in surprise as Brown Foot burst into the lodge.

He was babbling, his eyes wide, his words so scrambled that Cen could make out only K’os’s name.

“What? What has happened?” K’os cried out. She grasped his shoulders, shook him until he said, “Your husband, that young man from the Near Rivers, someone has killed him. He is dead. There is blood all over. Blood on his bed…on the floor…”

He continued to babble, even as he followed Cen and K’os when they ran from the lodge.

Near Mouse crept close to Sand Fly. “He said K’os’s husband is dead?” she whispered. She glanced up as Red Leaf moaned, leaned from her bed to retch, dry heaves that brought up nothing.

“And this one…” Sand Fly nodded toward Red Leaf. “You think she will live?”

Near Mouse shrugged her shoulders.

“It is strange,” Sand Fly finally said, using a finger to break the baby’s suction on her breast. She ignored the child’s quick squeak of protest, lifted her to a shoulder and patted her back until she burped, then nestled her at the other breast. “Before Red Leaf was sick, she came to our lodge and spoke to my husband and me. She seemed afraid of K’os, but we did not think much of it. After all, she is a trader’s wife, and claims her father was a trader, too. How can you know if a woman raised like that tells the truth? She said that K’os wanted Cen to be her husband.”

“Why would K’os want Cen with a fine young hunter like—” Near Mouse stopped before saying the dead man’s name.

For a time neither woman spoke, the silence between them broken only by the soft throat sounds of the baby’s nursing, then Sand Fly said, “Before that Near River hunter came to our village, when K’os lived in my lodge, she had eyes for any man, even my husband.” She raised a hand to cover her smile.

“Did she ever say anything about Cen?” Near Mouse asked.

“Yes, sometimes, and she watched him. I remember that she did….”

“But she would not kill…why would any woman—”

Near Mouse’s words were interrupted by a cry from Red Leaf. Even the baby jerked away from Sand Fly’s breast.

“Who is dead?” Red Leaf cried. “Who has died? Tell me!”

Near Mouse glanced at Sand Fly, then hobbled to Red Leaf’s bed. “Gheli, you are sick,” she whispered. “You are sick. You cannot worry about what has happened. There will be time to think about that when you are well.”

“River Ice Dancer?” Red Leaf whispered, her eyes stretched wide.

“Hush, child,” Near Mouse said, and pressed a hand to Red Leaf’s mouth. “Hush, now, do not say his name.”

Red Leaf twisted away from Near Mouse’s hand. “No!” she screamed. “No! She told me she would do it. She told me that if I did not give her Cen…if I did not give her my baby…”

“Be still, Daughter,” said Near Mouse, and pushed Red Leaf back into her bed. “Be still, be still.”

Red Leaf took a long shuddering breath, closed her eyes. “K’os has killed us both,” she said. “Now she has killed us both.”

Chapter Fifty-eight

THE COUSIN RIVER VILLAGE

“Y
OUR NEAR RIVER HUSBAND,
you left him?” Night Man asked.

Dii pulled the hare fur blanket more tightly around her shoulders. He had come to her during the night. In silence he had mounted her and taken her as wife. Now, this morning, even before she had left her bed, he was full of questions.

Be fair, she told herself. What husband would not ask a new wife the same thing? You have been away from this village too long. Have you forgotten that his mother, Long Eyes, cried each time her husband left to hunt? The people in Night Man’s family care much for those who belong to them. His questions mean nothing more than that. Would you rather have another husband like Anaay?

But how much should she tell Night Man? Why take the blame for Anaay’s death when K’os had been the one to make the poison? And why admit to hiding his body?

“Yes, I left him,” she said. Not a lie. She had left him—at least his body—and she hoped she had not led his spirit to this village.

“Why?”

“He did not need me,” she said softly. “He had another wife.”

“What?” Night Man asked. “Why do women always mumble? How can I hear you when you whisper your words?”

Dii lifted her chin, turned her face toward him. “I left him,” she said again. “He was not a good husband to me.”

Night Man shrugged.

A foolish reason, no doubt, Dii thought. Remember what Twisted Stalk told you about Night Man and Aqamdax. You think he will have sympathy for your problems with Anaay?

“You blame
him
for your decision to leave?” Night Man asked, his question edged with bitterness.

Be wise, she told herself. Consider your words before you say them.

“You, Husband,” she said, “could you stay with a wife who had killed your brothers or your father?”

“Your Near River husband was the one who killed your father and your brothers?”

“I do not know, but someone in his village did. I could no longer live among them.”

“Ah,” he said. His cold eyes skipped over her face and down to where her hands were crossed over her breasts. “Perhaps then this time I have chosen a good wife.”

She opened her blanket to him, but though he raised his eyebrows in approval, he flicked his fingers at her and lifted his chin toward the hearth. Dii dressed and rekindled the fire, then went out to the cache. The first night was past—surely the worst of any she would face as Night Man’s wife. She sighed her relief and watched the cloud of her breath rise into the shadowed blue light of the morning.

THE FOUR RIVERS VILLAGE

“You have forgotten that I did not want K’os to stay,” Sand Fly said, standing up from her place among the women to point one bent finger at her husband, Tree Climber. “You were the fool who thought she would come into your bed.”

A rift of laughter passed through the people who had gathered in the chief hunter’s lodge, and two dark spots of red burned in Tree Climber’s pale cheeks. “I heard no complaints when she gave you medicine for your joints,” he said to her.

“It does not matter why she is here or who helped her when she came,” Cen told them. “I knew her from another village, and still did not think she would kill her own husband. But now we must decide what to do with her. We cannot keep a woman like K’os in this village.”

“She claims she did not kill her husband,” Brown Foot said.

“Jumps-too-far found her knife under her dead husband’s body,” said Sand Fly. “I know it is K’os’s knife. She had it when she came to us.”

“Send her away,” said Brown Foot. “It is winter. She will not live long without dogs or food.”

“No,” Cen replied. “If K’os killed her husband, she has no right to live. Is there some man here who will kill her? I will make it worthwhile for him. I have trade goods and meat.”

“Always in this village,” Tree Climber said, “when someone has killed or broken our strongest taboos, we send them away. It is best, especially with a woman. You do not know our ways, Trader.” Tree Climber nodded at the chief hunter, a middle-aged man, short and broad, his eyes squinted as though he always looked toward far places. “First Spear, what is your choice?”

“Long ago, when I was a child, this woman’s brother lived in our village,” First Spear said. “He was a good man, married to my sister. He gave me my first knife.”

K’os’s knife lay at the edge of the hearth, bloodstains on the caribou hide that wrapped the handle. First Spear pointed with his chin at the weapon. “The knife found under the body looks like one K’os’s brother made me,” he said. “You know this brother of hers died long ago. Perhaps this is some vengeance K’os’s dead brother planned. Perhaps he directed her to our village.”

“This brother of hers,” one of the oldest men said, “I remember him. He made that blade. See how it is knapped. Do any of you know a man in this village who makes blades in such a way?”

First Spear nodded at Cen. “Do you have any idea where the knife came from?” he asked.

“As I told you before, I knew K’os when she lived in the Cousin River Village. She had the knife then. It is almost like an amulet to her.”

“Did she ever tell you where she got it?”

Cen pressed his lips into a tight line. “One of her brothers gave it to her,” he said.

A soft hiss of breath went out from the people.

“So then,” First Spear said. “There are things here not easily understood.” He looked over the heads of the men to the women, who sat near the lodge walls. “Sand Fly, you said K’os gave you medicine. Did it help?”

“A little.”

“And she gave medicine to Cen’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“The medicine helped?”

Sand Fly shrugged. “Gheli is no worse.”

“What does that have to do with the killing?” Cen asked.

“How could a woman who heals also kill?”

“But what if she did?” said Cen. “You would let her stay here in this village, take the chance that she would kill again?”

One of the hunters stood up. “If she stays, my wife and I, my father and his wife, we will leave,” he said.

Several others nodded their agreement.

“Send her away,” said Brown Foot. “If she did the killing, her husband’s spirit will take revenge. If she did not, then he will protect her, and she will find another village where she can live.”

First Spear nodded, and the men, old and young, called out their agreement. Cen heard the women, their voices like a soft wind at the edges of the lodge as they talked among themselves. Finally Sand Fly stood and said, “Brown Foot is right. Why chance doing harm to someone innocent?”