Story Hunger

To my daughter, Nikka

I. At the Salmon Stream

I'm at the tribal house, near the salmon stream, hungry for stories. I've come home. I've been away for two years. My daughter greets me with stories. I see the storyteller, my youngest daughter, who’s named for Pink Salmon, transform into a boy on the beach snaring seagulls. The boy is hungry and yells back to his mother, “Mother, give me a piece of salmon.” His mother gives him dried salmon, the bony shoulder-piece. When the boy sees the piece that he's offered, he complains, then flings the piece of salmon out into the stream. As soon as the boy does this disrespectful act, a seagull caught in his snare pulls him out into the water until he disappears beneath the waves.

II. Traveling

The storyteller forms her hands into fins and swims with an army of silver men. The storyteller moves with the story, traveling through the Salmon People’s new and strange world. I'm caught in the tide-stream, the current rushing around—migrating from stage to stream, human to fish. Salmon Boy leaps out of the water along with the other salmon who are returning to their stream-home. Salmon Boy, exhausted from his swim, reaches the edge of the riverbank. He sees his mother.

III. Recognition

I watch the storyteller at the bottom of the stream-bed. She turns her head, looking up at the riverbank. I can sense Salmon Boy’s longing to find his mother among those at the fish camp. I want the mother to notice her son swimming in the eddy. I want her to see the sliver flash of scales and say, "There's my child." But she doesn't. The storyteller’s body sways in the river as Aak’wtaatseen, Salmon Boy. He swims towards a woman and man on the bank of the stream. Salmon Boy fights as the man gaffs him and lifts him up onto the cutting board. His mother is standing ready with her filet knife. She brings her knife to his slick skin—I gasp—the mother is about to cut her son’s throat.

IV. Shape-shifting

The storyteller lays on the stage-floor holding her throat; Salmon Boy wheezes for air. The woman on the riverbank stops suddenly and looks down at the fish. With the tip of her knife, she lifts a wood bead tied on a string around the salmon's neck. It's the same necklace her son once wore. The father gently wraps the fish in a mat and sets the fish on a board, placing the board on the roof of their house. The night air sets in—something begins to happen. A raven caws—Salmon Boy begins to vibrate: he hums, he hums, he hummms. He's transformed; I'm transformed. Salmon Boy is human again: a man, not a boy. His father renames him Aak’wtaatseen and he's forever known by this name; because he's the boy who was captured by the Salmon People for insulting the food of the ‘People-Who-Travel-Along-the-Tidal-Waters.’

V. Homecoming

She's the storyteller, a shape-shifter comfortable in many skins. Daughter. Mother-of-Humpy-Tail. She swishes her eggs past her thighs. I hug her. I'm home. Daughter. I'm home. The scent of her returns to me, a hunger for thick slices of red meat, herring eggs blanched on hemlock branches, the tang of berries; and the way she jumps and flips across the stream, laughing.

The Salmon Boy story is a popular Northwest Coast story. In SE Alaska it is recognized as a Kiks.adí story.

Vivian Faith Prescott