Song of the River (10 page)

Red Leaf’s lips tightened.

Chakliux set the bowl on the scraped caribou hides that covered the floor. “I will hunt today,” he said, but did not look at the woman. What was wrong with her? This was not a celebration. Daes was dead; her child was badly hurt, perhaps dying. Worst of all, someone had done the killing.

In his own village, Chakliux had been taught the stories of his people, stories to pass down so certain things would not be forgotten. In several of those stories, people had killed others, but that had been long ago, when animals and men could talk to one another. This killing was now.

Chakliux took his weapons and hunter’s bag. He pulled his parka hood snug around his face and left the lodge. When he reached the edge of the village, he heard the sudden noise of raised voices, the mourning cries of women. Their songs were like ice against his teeth. The child has died, he thought, and felt his anger rise against the one who had done such a thing.

He peered between the lodges. A crowd had gathered on the far side of the village. They had captured the trader. Chakliux walked quickly toward the river. Sok was right. He did not need to be here. When he got back to the village that night, if he heard any whispers of anger toward him, he would return to his own people. What hope did he have to bring peace to this village if they thought he would kill a woman and a child?

Once he was back at the Cousin River Village, he would listen carefully, watch carefully, and if he discovered the killings were something planned there, he would see that life was given in exchange for life.

When Happy Mouth came for Ligige’, she first asked about Ghaden.

“Not dead,” Ligige’ replied. She had cleaned the wound often, singing when she removed the poultice so spirits would not enter the boy’s body through the knife hole.

Ghaden whimpered and Ligige’ held up the boy’s hands to show Happy Mouth that his fingertips were pink with only a few small patches of frostbite. She smoothed back the dark hair from his forehead. The skin on his face was also healthy, and only two narrow lines of dried blood marked his lips, split from the cold. Daes had been a good mother. Even in death she had fought to keep her son warm through the long night.

“His feet?” Happy Mouth asked.

Ligige’ peeled back the blankets. Ghaden’s feet, too, were pink, no white blotches or blackening of toes.

“They say you should come now,” Happy Mouth said. Her lips worked in a strange way, as though she fought to keep from crying.

Yes, Ligige’ thought. The boy was worth a woman’s tears. Now that Daes was dead, Happy Mouth would most likely raise Ghaden as her own.

“I can stay here,” Ligige’ said. “I have no one in my lodge to feed. My brother has his own wife now.”

“Ligige’ …” Happy Mouth said softly.

Ligige’ looked up into the woman’s face and realized the pain there was not for Ghaden but for her. Ligige’’s heart squeezed itself small as though trying to hide within her chest. “Who?” she asked.

“Your brother,” Happy Mouth said. Again her lips worked to hold in tears. “He is dead.”

Ligige’ bent to adjust the blankets around Ghaden, then she lifted her head, took a long breath. “He was an old man,” she said, though in her thoughts he had never been old.

Happy Mouth shook her head. “Dead by the same knife,” she said, her voice a whisper.

At first Ligige’ did not understand the words. Surely her brother had been called by one of those spirits that brings death to elders—one that stops the heart or slows the breathing, steals speech or reason. But a knife? The same knife that killed Daes?

“Someone killed …” Her voice cracked on the words. “Why?”

Happy Mouth did not answer. She helped Ligige’ to her feet, guided her from the lodge. Ligige’ barely heard Happy Mouth call her daughter, Yaa, scarcely understood her as she told Yaa to stay with Ghaden, to come for her or Brown Water if the boy awoke or if he turned suddenly hot or cold.

Ligige’ lifted her eyes into the brightness of the morning. Her brother’s spirit was there, watching, she was sure. She saw his face, gentle with a smile, teasing her, laughing with her, sharing stories.

“I am oldest,” she whispered, and looked up so her brother would hear.

Cen stared into the faces of the men who held him. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and his head seemed to pound with each beat of his heart. He was sure they had broken his nose, several of his ribs, and perhaps his left wrist.

During the years he had been a trader, he had often faced death. Once his iqyax was destroyed in the surf. Another time he had fallen into a sinkhole while walking overland between villages. He had often been caught in winter storms.

He had managed to drift ashore in the wreckage of his iqyax, though the cold of the waves nearly killed him. In the sinkhole, he had spoken to the grasses around him, asked them to lend him their strength, and so clawed out by pulling and clinging. He had lived through the storms in snow caves he carved with his own hands. But this was different. With winds and water a trader had a chance if he stayed respectful. With men …

They dragged him to the center of the village. There they stood him up, naked in the cold wind except for his breechcloth. The hunters and the women shouted at him, threw rocks, hit him with sticks.

The image of Daes came into his mind. She stood before him in her new parka, the one he had brought her from the Walrus Hunters. She opened her mouth. Instead of words, blood flowed, and so he knew she was dead. The knowledge was ice in his heart, and suddenly he did not care if the River People killed him. He and Daes would be together. Away from this village, away from these people. But if Ghaden were alive, could Cen allow himself the joy of Daes? Who would protect their son? Who would care whether or not he grew up to be a good and strong man?

Cen gathered his strength, held himself as straight as he was able.

“Tell me,” he called out. “Tell me. Is my son still alive?” His question was met with anger, with men lifting fists and spear shafts against him until he had to curl himself down into a ball, his face tucked between his knees, his arms crossed over the back of his neck.

Finally one of the men pulled him to his feet. The man was large, his head broad and scarred, the left side of his face puckered as though he had once been burned from forehead to mouth. “You ask about the boy,” he said. “Why?”

“I did not kill him,” Cen answered through lips cut by broken teeth. “Why would I kill my own son? Would any of you kill your sons? Then why think I would? Do I look like one of those Not-People who live at the edge of the Far Mountains?” He paused to take a breath, and the pain was like a spear piercing his chest. He spat out blood and hoped it was only from the cuts in his mouth. “I did not kill my son,” he said.

The shouting dimmed and the men circled him. Cen felt their eyes on his face. Encouraged by their attention, he said, “Most of you know that when I brought the Sea Hunter woman here, she carried my son in her belly. But how can a trader have a wife? I could not hunt for her, could not train a son to hunt. So I brought them here to this good village. Each year I came back, to trade with you, and to see my son. Someday I hope he will come with me, also be a trader.”

A tall thin man called out at this, assured the trader he would not live to see his son grown.

“He is alive then,” Cen said, and a woman, hidden from his view by the men around him, hissed at the one who had spoken.

“He is alive,” Cen repeated.

“He is,” the scarred man finally said. A young man pushed his way to Cen’s side. Cen had seen him before. Yes. He called himself Sok, and had traded yesterday for several things.

“The boy is alive,” said Sok, “but his mother’s spirit calls him, as does the spirit of my grandfather, who was also killed.”

The trader stared at the man. Was he saying someone else had died? Three had been attacked?

“Dead by a knife we saw in your hands yesterday.”

“You have the knife?” Cen asked.

“Yes.”

“Many of you traded for knives yesterday,” Cen said. “Do you think if I had some reason to kill the woman and my son and an old man I do not know, I would be fool enough to use my own knife? To leave it?”

There was silence broken only by the moaning of several women, by the mumbling of the men. A wave of pain washed over Cen but he fought it down. “Bring the knife here,” he said. “Let me see it. I might remember who bought it in trade.” He looked at the men surrounding him. Was there fear in any of the faces?

“Bring the knife,” Sok said. “I need revenge on the one who killed my grandfather.”

Chakliux walked the river. It was still frozen, some of the ice swept bare, some covered with snow hardened by wind. In one moon, perhaps two, the ice would weaken, and a rush of water, ice and earth from far upriver would roar down to the sea. Even now, Chakliux could see scars from previous breakups, places where whole trees had been uprooted and large portions of the bank swept away.

If he had not seen it happen before, it would be difficult to imagine. The river under ice and snow seemed so quiet, as though it would never be anything but a white path for Chakliux’s feet.

Chakliux missed his own village, his own people. He missed telling stories, but at least this village had a river. For as long as he remembered, Chakliux had loved the water. As a child at fish camp, he was told many times to stay away from the river, but still he played and paddled in the shallows. Eventually, he had learned to swim, even though the cold of the water made his bones ache.

He was an otter, the shaman finally decided. Who could deny that? Who could not see his otter feet? Had he not been an animal-gift baby, sprung somehow from a clot of animal blood? Besides, everyone knew people did not swim.

After that, K’os did not try to keep him from the water. His skills were useful in building and repairing the village fish traps, in recovering lost hooks and handlines. He had a place in his village and was honored for his difference.

He was not otter enough to swim in the sea, but once or twice he had seen traders using boats built by the Sea Hunters. Iqyan, they were called, those boats, as sleek as an otter and sheathed with sea lion skins or split walrus hide. How different they were from the clumsy rafts and poles The People used to ferry themselves across the river in summer.

Those Sea Hunters, a trader had once told him, considered themselves brother to the sea otter. Once one of their hunters had come to the fish camp to trade. He was shorter and darker-skinned than The People, with long arms and wide, strong shoulders. Chakliux had seen him roll the iqyax and come up from the river, water dripping over his wide smiling mouth. He wore a birdskin parka, so that some of the women said he was not man but seabird and fought among themselves to decide who would invite him to her bed in hopes of bearing a magic seabird child.

Chakliux and the men had been more interested in the skin coat he wore over the birdskin parka. It was made, the Sea Hunter said, from seal intestines, each intestine split and flattened, then scraped so thin you could see light through it. The strips were sewn together so the seams did not leak water. When the man rolled his iqyax, the intestine parka protected him so the sea could not seep through his clothing and stop his heart with its cold.

Someday, Chakliux had decided, he would have his own iqyax. He did not want to be a trader. It was not a comfortable thing to meet new people when you were different, when you saw questions and worry in the eyes of all who looked at you. He was happy being a hunter. If he learned to hunt from an iqyax, his family would not have to live on fish only, on caribou or even bear. They would also have the fat and oil of sea mammals—seals and sea lions; and walruses, for he would take his iqyax downriver to the North Sea and hunt.

Yes, he was a hunter. He found joy when an animal chose to give itself so The People could live, but it was difficult to keep up with the other hunters, to carry his share, to hold his balance on trails over muskeg and through river brush. His legs were made for water, not land.

Once, according to the old storytellers of his village, the Sea Hunters had even hunted whales. As Dzuuggi he was entrusted with secrets—stories seldom told around winter fires, but which must be remembered, at least by a few. These stories said there was an island, almost at the far edge of the world, where men still hunted whales. The Sea Hunter told them those whale hunters had died long ago when a mountain in anger destroyed them for some reason no one could remember.

Since meeting the Sea Hunter, Chakliux had dreamed of trading for an iqyax of his own, perhaps even learning to build one. Now, looking at the river, he thought for the first time of seeking those ancient whale hunter people himself. Were they still there, on that far island? Would it take a lifetime of summers to find the edge of the world?

The Near River People considered him cursed. The woman who gave him birth had told him he had been set out to die. Perhaps even now, in his own village, the people had heard the story and would no longer want him as Dzuuggi, the one who remembered their past. If that were true, then why stay? He could not bring peace if no one in either village respected him.

Chakliux shielded his eyes from the brightness of the midday sun. The snow was melting. He had trade goods—the bride price of furs and hides rejected by Wolf-and-Raven—perhaps enough to trade for an iqyax. Then what would stop him from finding those whale hunters, brothers of the otter?

The pain was almost too much to ignore, but Cen fought it. “I told you,” he said again, “go get the knife.”

The large man left the group, and when he returned he carried the knife, still crusted with blood. Cen pressed his lips together in a tight line and tried not to show his disappointment. There were several knives he remembered well—distinctive for the length of a blade, the shape or color of a handle. But this knife was one from a Caribou hunter he had met on the trail last summer. His knives were all alike, with variations so small a man could scarcely tell one from another. Cen had traded nearly two handfuls of those Caribou knives to the people of this village.