The Storyteller Trilogy by Sue Harrison

Author:Sue Harrison [Harrison, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781480411944
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

K’OS WAITED UNTIL THE darkest part of the night. She knew the cycle of the moon, that it would hide its face until nearly dawn. She would have to walk carefully in the darkness, but with the dog it would not be difficult. She had worked the day before, as Chakliux had ordered her, at first in anger but then in glee, as she realized the women were so busy they would not notice the meat she stole.

With the many caribou they had killed, the Cousin River People would live through this winter. But there would come a year when the caribou were not so plentiful, and then what would they do, with so few men to hunt and so many women to feed?

Of course, some of the old ones would die this winter. They always did. And there were always other deaths, unexpected.

When she was a slave in the Near River Village, K’os had asked about Gull Beak’s sister-wife, Day Woman. Where was she? Had she died?

Gull Beak had said Day Woman decided to leave the village with her sons Sok and Chakliux. It was best. The woman was a problem, Gull Beak told her. Always crying, always worrying. K’os had expected to see Day Woman here. She was old, but not too old to help with a caribou hunt.

K’os had whispered her questions to Aqamdax, had claimed concern for Day Woman out of friendship, but Aqamdax knew her too well, smiled in scorn and told K’os not to mention the woman’s name. She was dead.

“Sickness or accident?” K’os had asked.

“Sickness,” Aqamdax had finally answered, but her hesitation told K’os there was something Aqamdax had chosen not to tell.

“Long Eyes?” K’os had asked.

“Back in the winter village with Ligige’,” Aqamdax replied.

“Ligige’?”

“Aunt to Sok and Chakliux,” Aqamdax said. “From the Near River Village.”

“So, she, too, came with my son?”

“Yes.”

K’os had nodded toward Snow-in-her-hair. “That one also.”

“Yes, as Sok’s wife.”

“He had another wife, as I recall, though I have forgotten her name,” K’os said.

“Let it stay forgotten,” said Aqamdax. “She is dead.”

“Accident or sickness?” K’os again asked.

This time without hesitation, Aqamdax answered, “Sickness.”

In the darkness, K’os crept from the storage lean-to, her pack in her hands. She took the hare fur blanket Star had loaned her for the night. She had laughed to discover that Chakliux had taken Star as wife, offered sympathy for Aqamdax’s dead baby, but held a spiteful joy in her heart when Star told her what Night Man had done.

“Young babies often die,” K’os had told Star, and looked down at Star’s belly.

Star had crossed her hands over her stomach and hurried away. K’os would have liked to stay, to see the child that Star would give Chakliux. This one she would most likely allow to live, even if it was a boy. Chakliux might find more anguish in watching his son raised by a woman like Star than in losing the boy as an infant.

K’os went to the makeshift storage caches, to those that held the best meat, and filled her packs.

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