Call Down the Stars (51 page)

“Remember this, for what she did to my mother, I owe K’os revenge.” He met Ghaden’s eyes. “Perhaps for the sake of your wife, you will decide to leave things as they are. No killing.

“Put away the knife and we will leave now—my mother, Daes, and I. I’ll take them to another village, and you can tell K’os that they’re dead, killed by wolves.

“When I return from taking them to that new village, I will say the same thing. Agreed?”

“Not for the sake of Red Leaf,” Ghaden said. He paused, then added in a soft voice, “but I would for Uutuk. And for my sisters Daes and Duckling and Yaa.”

He set down his pack, then, matching Cries-loud move for move, he slipped his knife into its sheath.

Herendeen Bay, Alaska Peninsula

602 B.C.

Y
IKAAS OFTEN SPOKE WITH
his eyes closed, but this time he watched the people, and he noticed they were shifting and sighing, moving to stretch arms or legs.

The storytelling had lasted long enough. It was time to do other things. He ended his story and waited for Qumalix to make the final translation.

There was a murmur from the people, a polite thanking in soft, tired words. Yikaas lingered as everyone left, men first, then the women with their children. He helped Kuy’aa to her feet. She looped an arm through his, and he walked her to the sleeping place she had claimed as her own.

“An old woman cannot tell as many stories as she used to without wearing out her tongue,” she said, and wrinkled her nose as though she were a child who did not like what she was tasting.

“And some storytellers are lucky,” he told her. “They never, ever get old, no matter how many years they live.”

She laughed at that and batted his arm as though he had told a joke, then he pulled aside the grass curtain and helped her into her bed, unrolled a furred sealskin over her. She closed her eyes and within only a short time was breathing like one asleep. He allowed the curtain to fall, then heard her say, “Be ready for tomorrow night. I want you to tell the story of Cen.”

“I’ll be ready, Aunt,” he said, and turned to find Qumalix waiting for him.

“She’s asleep?” Qumalix asked.

“Almost.”

“Are you very tired?”

“I could sleep.”

“Do you have time to talk for a little while? There’s something I want to ask you.”

“Ask,” he said.

She shook her head and gestured toward the climbing log. “Outside, where we can see the sky.”

“It’s raining.”

“No.”

He followed her outside and was surprised to see that she was right. The rain had stopped, and stars had begun to find their way through the clouds. She squatted at the top of the ulax, and he did the same, trying to sit in the manner of the First Men so he did not get his rump wet, but even though he rested his haunches on the backs of his heels, he felt the damp cold of the sod roof seep through his caribou hide leggings.

“Ask,” he said again.

His tiredness made him feel irritated. The First Men did not know a lot about comfort, he thought, and he wondered how they could crouch on their heels for so long. His ankles already ached.

Qumalix did not look at him as she spoke, but sent her words out over the village, speaking so softly that he had to lean toward her to hear.

“Sky Catcher says you have a wife back at your own village. A River woman. He also says that you’ve asked for those two sisters …”

“No!” he said, so loudly that he felt her jump. He placed a hand on her arm and repeated, “No, I have no wife, and I don’t want those sisters.” He thought she might say something else, but she did not. Finally he added, “Sometimes men are foolish. We take what we don’t want because we think we can’t have what we do want.”

She was very still then, and when she spoke it was in a whisper. “A man like that might be difficult to have as husband.”

Her words made him ashamed, and then angry. “A man like that would be a good husband. He’s already made his mistakes.”

She stood up and he stood also, staggering a little as his calves cramped.

“How do you sit like that?” he asked.

She laughed but had no answer. Instead she said, “So what has happened to Cen while Ghaden and Cries-loud have been solving their problems?”

“You don’t know?”

“Everyone tells the story a little differently. I’d like to hear your way. Will you tell more stories tomorrow?”

“So Kuy’aa says.”

“About Cen?”

“If you want.”

“I want,” she said.

Then she went down into the ulax, but Yikaas stayed for a time on the roof. He knelt on the wet sod and looked up at the clearing sky. He wondered what exactly she had meant in speaking about husbands and the taking of wives. Aaa! Some man would have his hands full when he married that woman. Yikaas laughed and tried to picture Sky Catcher and Qumalix as mates, Qumalix’s voice raised high and shrill as she yelled at him for one thing or another. But for some reason as he thought of that, he became angry, and so instead he began to whisper his story of Cen to the stars, a good way to practice what he would say when all the village had gathered to listen.

As he spoke it seemed that the stars grew larger, came closer, as though they, too, wanted to hear the story. The familiar words made him bold. He tipped his face toward the sky and raised his voice. He did not see Qumalix as she squatted at the top of the climbing log, her chin cupped in one hand, her eyes also lifted to the stars as she listened to Cen’s story.

The Bering Sea

6435 B.C.

Each day the swelling around Cen’s eyes lessened, and he was able to see a little more. Finally, even the roaring in his ears began to dim, so he could hear himself shout, and once thought he heard gulls crying.

At first he had been afraid. Each wave that rocked his boat, each swell that lifted it, brought his breath in gasps from his throat, and lifted his belly in nausea. What else did he have that the sea could want? His iqyax, his sax, his water bladders? His rotting fish? Perhaps it coveted those lashings that had once held paddles and harpoons. There was still a small bundle of trade goods in the bow, sodden and battling for space with his legs. If the sea wanted those things, he would gladly give all. If it chose to pluck him from the iqyax, he only asked that it be quick about it, play no games. He had heard too many storytellers speak of hunters who lived for days in the cold depths without wind to breathe or sax to warm.

His prayer had become the prayer of an old man:

“Let it come quickly. Let it come quickly.”

But as his vision returned, so did his courage. His right eye saw light, then shapes. He had heard elders speak of seeing in such a way, as though somehow fog had dimmed their sight. And to Cen, it seemed that even the sun had aged, cauled white like an old man’s eye. But each day his vision became clearer, and finally even his left eye began to see, though through a thin haze of brown-red light, something that gathered and flowed like a strange sea within the eye itself.

His eyeballs ached; pain pierced from brow to neck. But what was pain when each day brought him closer to seeing? He tried not to think that each day also meant he had less water, less food.

He could paddle for only a short time before he had to stop in his desperate need to breathe. His strokes were weak, his cedar branch paddle cumbersome. His helplessness made him angry.

Sometimes he sang death songs to honor his life, but he sang them defiantly like a warrior who prepares himself for battle. Most days, the sea remained calm, so Cen had no one to fight except himself. And how does a man battle such an enemy? Does he raise his knife against his own flesh?

He often brought Gheli into his thoughts, their daughters, and his son Ghaden. Then he would remind himself that he was a trader, and who more than a trader better knew the sea? It was not some bowl of water that sloshed side to side within its basin, but rather rivers and lakes all thrown together, currents acting and reacting. Surely, in his paddling he would find a sea-river that led him to land, a current that pulled him to a shore where he could find fresh water.

At first he had counted the days, but as he used up his water, he stopped keeping track. There was too much discouragement in knowing that soon he would have nothing to drink. Where was the rain? He had never seen the sky go so long without weeping. Did it rejoice with dry eyes over his agony?

The evening he used the last of his water, he fell into a light sleep. He dreamed of a feast, and of his wife holding a water bladder where he couldn’t quite reach it. He became angry. Why didn’t she come closer?

Then the iqyax lurched, and he was awake. He saw that it was night, the stars hidden by a cover of clouds. At first he did not know what had taken him from his dreams, but then he felt it again, a sudden movement as if someone were pushing his iqyax from behind, shoving it through the water.

He dipped a hand into the sea, even stopped his breathing, so he would feel nothing but the water. Yes, it was a current, running in a direction different than he had been traveling. Was the current running toward land, or should he paddle his way out of it? Had his iqyax turned while he was asleep? He needed the stars!

Best to stay with the current, he decided. He would have more difficulty finding it again than getting away from it. He sat awake through the night, impatient for the darkness to pass.

Dawn light came gray, with fog and clouds so heavy he could not see beyond the bow of his iqyax. He groaned in frustration, shouted curses with raw throat and angry words.

In spite of his disrespect, by midday the clouds had begun to lift. Then he noticed that his left eye was much clearer than it had been, the brown-red now covering only half his vision, as though someone had drawn a curtain back from the inside corner of the eye.

In all directions he saw nothing except the sea, but by the placement of the sun he could tell that the current flowed toward the northeast. Though his throat was parched for need of water, his tongue swollen so that he could not even sing, hope slaked his thirst.

By night he thought he saw a darkness in the east, something more than the line of the horizon dividing the sea from the sky. He slept fitfully, waking often in his need for morning. At daybreak, clouds again lay over the sea, but the sun had pushed in close to the earth, and its warmth burned off the haze until Cen was able to see clear sky, as warm as midsummer, blue from horizon to horizon.

He squinted, shielded his eyes, and watched until he knew that he was seeing land. When he shouted out his joy, he broke open the dry skin of his throat, tasted his own blood.

The sea-river he had come upon was lazy, and all that day he paddled beyond his strength. By night, the only way he could tell the land was any closer was by the shallow cuts he had made on the side of his thumb as he held it up to measure the height of that bit of land against the far edge of the sky.

He continued to paddle, even in the night, but the effort made him light-headed. Finally, he decided that he would have to eat, even if just a little. He still had a few dried fish, but they were softened by the sea and beginning to stink. He choked one down, its soft flesh slimy and rank. It made his stomach ache, but his head felt better. He started to paddle again, and his belly began to churn.

He fastened his paddle to the deck and lay back against the coaming, but his stomach only grew worse, until finally he vomited up all that he had eaten, gagging and choking until he was bringing up yellow bile. When the spasms finally stopped, he slid down as far as he could in his iqyax and lay very still. The water rocked him, and he was able to sleep.

It was still night when he awoke, the sky darkest in the east, the water black. Once again, he had dreamed of being caught in the wave. It had slammed him against the iqyax coaming, shattered his ribs, ripped open his stomach. The dream was so real that Cen had to shake it out of his head, but the pain in his belly did not subside. Instead, the spasms moved into his bowels.

He moaned. The fish had poisoned him. He unlashed his waterproof dripskirt and jerked his sax and chigdax up around his waist so that he was naked from hips to boots. He untied one of the empty water bladders, cut off the top, and raised himself up to crouch on his haunches. He opened the bladder and set it under his rump, then allowed the release from his bowels. The pain clenched him from waist to anus, twisted, pulled, as if dogs fought over the poor scraps of his gut. Well into morning his body continued to empty itself, until he felt hollow except for the air he breathed. But the pain had become a bearable ache.

When he was sure the spasms had stopped, he cleaned himself with sea water, threw out the bladder, and readjusted his clothing. His thirst was no longer something only of his mouth or throat. It had spread even to the ends of his fingers, the edges of his feet, so that he felt thin and brittle, as if a touch would crumble him. But finally he was able to sleep, and his dreams were of freshwater lakes, clear foaming streams.

C
EN WOKE TO RAIN,
steady and cold. He opened his mouth to the sky, let the water wet his tongue, fill his throat. Then he took off his chigdax, knotted the sleeves at the wrists, and held them open to catch the rain. The sleeves were nearly a quarter full before the rain turned into the spit of drizzle. He clenched one of the sleeves above the tie, undid the knot, and folded the wristband into the narrow neck of his water bladder. He lifted the chigdax, and the water flowed into the bladder. Then he did the same with the other sleeve.

He stoppered the bladder, then wrung the water from his hair into the palms of his hands, drank what he managed to claim, sucked the wet from the feathers of his sax. He scooped a handful of water from the bottom of the boat and drank it. But it tasted of salt, spoiled fish, and his own waste. Afraid it would make him sick again, he bailed it from the iqyax.

He was still weak from the vomiting and diarrhea, but his cleverness at catching the rain made him happy with himself. His sax was wet, the wind cold, so that his shivering became trembling. Suddenly he was afraid again. Cold could kill him more quickly than thirst. He slipped the chigdax on over the sax, felt some relief as it cut the wind and allowed the poor heat of his body to warm the sax, wet as it was. He pulled his arms in from the sleeves and crossed them over his chest, wincing at the pain in his ribs. He looked up at the sky, hoping to see a break in the clouds, and sent up a song asking for heat from the sun.