And her father certainly seemed to understand that. He watched with approval as Frog did his chores, few of which required skill. Frog considered most of them to be tests more for his back than his mind.
Frog was happy to note that his body was beginning to develop, that Father Mountain had seen fit to bless him with muscles that day by day grew harder and larger.
Long Arrow was as skilled with that hunting tool as his name suggested. He tested Frog at every occasion, perhaps satisfying himself that his future grandchildren’s father would be a good provider.
At first, Frog was embarrassed: he had always been better with the spear. But in time, Long Arrow ceased chiding him, and showed Frog little adjustments of stance and choice of gut that made his bowplay far more respectable. In time Frog’s accuracy of aim seemed to be improving, so that he felt that on a good day he could have rivaled Fire Ant, an impressive feat indeed.
On one occasion Frog staggered back to the boma, bent under a heavy stack of sticks, while Glimmer’s father hardened his spear over hot coals, being careful not to burn or scorch the wood. Beside himself, Smoke Leaf watched Frog struggle with the branches, a bundle that might have tested a hunt chief. “You are strong,” Long Arrow grunted. The man himself was small, but his back was as broad as a hut.
As Frog tripped, caught himself, and struggled erect again, Long Arrow nodded approval. “Boy! You are to be my son. You will work hard to earn my daughter.”
To this, Frog recited the ritual response. “She is a flower worth the wait,” he said.
Long Arrow nodded his gruff acknowledgement. “Do you take me as a father?” he asked.
“Second only to he who hunted for my family.”
“Do you take me as your mother?” Smoke Leaf spoke up. She had asked on numerous occasions, always seeming to forget that she had asked the question before.
“Second only to she who birthed me.”
Smoke Leaf nodded, then gave him a mischievous grin. “If I had borne you, it would be a sin for you to be with my daughter. But as a son of the shadow, you and my daughter can make strong children, who will protect the tribe. I accept you as my son.”
Sore from an impossibly long day of hunting and hauling, Frog crawled into his small and solitary hut. The sky had barely darkened, but he was already completely exhausted, rolling over onto his back to prepare for sleep.
Frog lay there staring up at the ceiling, mind roving over his body, seeking a muscle or tendon that did not ache, and failing to find one. Leaf and Arrow had sorely tested him, but had confidence that things would be easier after the moon was full again. After all, they didn’t want to work the father of their future grandchildren to death!
There came a sudden, sharp rustling from outside the hut. A shadow grew darker, and then broke away from the door, coming close. It was Glimmer. Even in the darkness, her smell and heat dizzied him. She gazed down at him. Her eyes seemed to have absorbed what little light there was to be had, reflecting it back like twin moons in a cloudy sky. They both knew that she was not supposed to be there, that it was a taboo. Never had they been alone together, and her body radiated heat like a hearthstone.
She sniffed at him, not exploring, more as if trying to remember something. Her nearness triggered a response from his body more powerful than anything he had ever known, even when actually playing sex with Fawn. His dimmed vision swam, and he felt feverish and swollen-headed.
He started to speak, but she silenced him with her fingers against his lips. Their eyes met, and he felt he was falling into their depths, as if Glimmer was the gateway to mysteries undreamt.
And then, without touching him, she left.
He thought that he would never get to sleep, so engorged was he. He spit in his palm and began to pleasure himself, stroking until the heat he felt through all his body began to concentrate itself in his root and he finally burst. Frog wiped himself clean with grass, then rolled over thinking about Glimmer, until sleep took him.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Boar Tracks had two tens of springs, was the fastest runner among the hunt chiefs and was the best wrestler among the young ones. His laughter rang from the rocks, and he could throw a spear to pierce a butterfly’s wings at three tens of paces.
T’Cori knew that she should be happy when he appeared at the door of the little hut she had spent almost a month building. He was tall and triple-scarred on each lean cheek, lean-bodied and silent in motion.
“Tomorrow is full moon,” he said, his eyes lingering upon her. “I return to Great Sky.” She noticed that his usual casual manner was somehow off-kilter, like a rock balanced on its edge. She could not read his fire, and felt a desperation. Would her sight never return? Or was that what the Mk*tk had torn away from her? Better they had plucked out her face-eyes.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked.
He seemed uneasy. “The mountain,” he said. “We feel it rumble beneath our feet, and Father Mountain talks to us. I do not know what he says.”
“Travel safely, hunter.”
“Tonight,” he said, “Stillshadow says I am to stay with you.”
Always, she had known this time would come. Without hesitation she gave him the ritual response. “You are welcome at my fire, and beneath my roof.” Was it possible that Stillshadow knew what she was doing? If Boar Tracks lay with her, might her magic return?
Boar entered her hut. He was a strong, fine hunter. The other girls winked knowingly.
“Bring me meat,” he said.
She served him. As she bent over, from behind her he ran his fingertips up the inside of her right leg, his touch like a trickle of warm, soothing water. She gasped as a wave of fire blazed up almost to her navel. Yes! This was the feeling she had waited for. This was the way it should always have felt. His touch shifted her num. Perhaps…perhaps…
“Is it good?” she asked as he ate his meal.
“Very good,” he said. “Now come to me, woman of the mountain.”
“Great Mother smiles on us,” she said.
There were two ways that sex-play usually occurred among the Ibandi: the rear entry, and a woman lowering herself upon a man. Boar Tracks made his own preference swiftly known, turning her around and bending her forward.
She held her breath and then released it, relaxing the muscles of her sex, and then tightening again as he slid inside her, squeezing rhythmically as they moved together.
They breathed together for a time, but then his breath quickened and he made his seed. She knew that some of the girls learned to move in rhythm with the men, so that their fires caught at the same time. This joining had been too swift, too fast.
But in a short time his root regained its firmness and he reached for her once again. This time he took longer. Not long enough for her own fire to ignite, but it was better, sweet enough so that she never once thought of the Mk*tk during their union.
Then with a grunt of satisfaction he slapped her rump with the flat of his hand, rolled over and slept.
Her eyes wide, T’Cori lay staring at the wall. Was that all? True, it had not been painful, as sex with the Mk*tk had been, but neither had there been fire. She rolled over and looked at the man whose body had so recently been joined to hers. Could she see so little, even under such ideal conditions?
If she squinted, T’Cori could see the very slightest trace of fire flaring around him. Not much more than she might have seen around a rock, if she had squeezed her eyes in a similar fashion.
Her gift was gone.
The moon was high when T’Cori climbed out of her hut, gazing across the plain at Father Mountain’s mist-enshrouded majesty. There was something about the mountain that roused her curiosity. The clouds up around its peak seemed to be somehow…changed. They glowed differently in the pale light, and seemed almost to be oozing from the mountain itself. Strange. Did this have anything to do with the voice of the mountain, the shaking in the ground? The words whispered by Father Mountain?
As far as
T’Cori knew, of all the Ibandi, only she was awake. “Great Mother,” she whispered, “I do not wish to sin. I know that this fine hunter is filled with Your spirit. I could give him my sex, but not my heart, which is too heavy for me to lift. My heart is still out on the savannah. It has not healed, and I cannot give what I do not have. Please forgive me.”
For a moon after T’Cori’s return, the women of Great Earth had wailed and torn their hair and asked Great Mother why their daughters had been taken. And then their lives went on.
The girls worked and studied and played. T’Cori remained a bit separate from the others, living deep within herself, in the secure and sacred space she had discovered while with the Mk*tk, a place the outer world rarely touched.
She awakened and made her toilet in the place out beyond the huts, where it would not poison the water, the place where the dung beetles swarmed. She stamped her small foot upon the ground. “Good morning, Great Earth!” she cried, and then spit toward the north. “Great Mother, Father Mountain,” she called. “Good morning!”
From time to time she watched the odd clouds around the peak of Great Sky. It made sense that Father Mountain could make clouds, but why had she never seen it before?
She cocked her head to the side, listening. She wondered if she would be able to hear Father Mountain’s voice, as Boar Tracks claimed he had done. “And what would you have me learn today?” she asked.
“What did the mountain say?” Raven said, coming up from behind, sounding both curious and irritated.
“Can’t you hear Him?” The earth beneath her bare feet rumbled. T’Cori could feel the slight tingling, a pleasant sensation against her toes.
Raven grimaced and shook her head. “Stillshadow protects you. She’s a sweet old woman, but one day she will be gone, and then you will deal with me. With this world.”
“It is not Stillshadow who protects me,” T’Cori said, and spread her arms as if she had never heard the threat at all. “It is Great Mother who protects us all.”
“Great Mother sees me,” Raven said. “I am the one. I see the way you are. What you try to do.” She paused. “I will strangle you before I let you take the boma, as you tried to take my mother’s love.”
T’Cori remained calm, although Raven was almost a head taller. “I take nothing that is not given.”
“Use all your eyes,” Raven said. Before the moment could grow dangerous, Stillshadow approached, and the larger girl retreated.
“Wise mother,” T’Cori said.
“Do not call me that,” Stillshadow said, but she laughed.
“But you are.”
“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But do not let Raven hear you. She hates.”
“Because she fears,” T’Cori said.
Stillshadow regarded her with curiosity. “You no longer see the fire, but still see many things,” she said. “I am not certain you see your own danger.”
“I see.” Mother, she added silently.
Stillshadow wagged her head as if she had heard the unspoken word. “Once, she was jealous of your vision. Now, of your strength.”
“My vision is gone,” T’Cori said. “Why does she hate me still?”
Stillshadow placed her hands on T’Cori’s shoulders and then gathered her for an embrace. “I wish I had more to give you. But all I have is all the world.”
Despite her distress, T’Cori managed a smile. “Then I suppose that will have to be enough,” she said.
With that Stillshadow left, leaving T’Cori to begin the first task of the day: preparing a new gnu hide for tanning. But as she scraped, and later prepared the tanning herbs, she found that she was humming a little herb song to herself. The corners of her mouth were turned up in a smile and she felt well pleased.
Chapter Thirty-nine
After eight more moons passed, Glimmer’s mother, Smoke Leaf, came to Frog’s hut, crying, holding a bit of bloodstained grass in her fingers.
She held her face calm, but he could tell that there was sadness and loss there, as well as acceptance. “The child is a woman,” the big woman said. “The child is a woman, and must sleep in her husband’s hut.”
Glimmer’s father, Long Arrow, came to Frog’s hut, carrying a gutted white-tail antelope. Glimmer walked three paces behind him, her face painted white, eyes down.
As the entire boma watched, Glimmer and Frog made a roasting pit together, fed the fire, tended the coals, spitted the antelope and cooked it. Each member of the boma brought food—roots, fish, greens, spices—and there was a noisy, joyful time as all shared the meal together. When the meal was finished, her mother and sisters cleared the preparations away. Then, without another backward glance, her family returned to their huts.
This was their first night together, the first time when it was permissible for them to be alone. Glimmer sat cross-legged on the straw mat, eyes cast down. “Please,” she said. “Please, husband, be kind. I am afraid.” He almost laughed, certain that Glimmer actually felt excitement, not fear. This was all part of the ritual.
He did not approach or move closer to her, although he felt his body burn. This is what a man is, he thought. He knows what he wants, what he is entitled to, but he is not an animal. He can wait.
“You need not fear me,” Frog said, and laid his spear down on the mat between them. “I will not cross the spear.”
So he lay on his side, and she on hers. Although he could hear and feel her breathing on the other side, and could hear when it slowed and became warm, and knew that she was deciding whether or not to let him have her, this was her choice to make: he would not cross the spear.
And she decided to let the sweet torture continue another night.
The second and third evenings passed the same way: they slept side by side without touching. Finally, one night, that patience was rewarded. The scent of fresh fruit and sweet grass wafted from Glimmer’s skin, and he knew that sometime during the day she had decided. She pulled the spear from between them, and cuddled closer to him in their hut. He waited breathlessly to see what she would say, what she might do. “My husband,” Glimmer murmured at last.
“My wife,” he replied.
She nestled herself against him, and he knew that their time had come. “What happens now?”
“Now you open yourself to me,” he said. “And our lives begin.”
“I could wait no longer,” she whispered.
Her words and actions were as one. She reached for him, stroking between his legs until his root grew as rigid as a raw potato. He pulled himself to a seated position, copying her own pose. She mounted his lap, then gasped as she lowered herself onto his root, having to push and sigh and wince, as if he was too large or she too small. Their kisses were first dry, clumsy, then with licking and tasting each other’s sweat, a mutual exploration as the energy built between them. He could feel her passions rising but could not control his own, exploding before Glimmer remotely neared her own climax.
“I…” she whispered.
He traced her face with his hands wonderingly. She shuddered.
“What is it, wife?” he asked. “Did it hurt? You cry.”
“It hurt,” she said, “but there was more than pain. There was something else.”
“What?”
“I do not know. Like a small fire in the darkness, perhaps. I want more.” She managed to smile.
“You will have more,” he promised.
“When?”
He grinned, feeling the blood already returning to his root. She had, indeed, been worth the wait. “Now.”
She lowered herself onto his lap, and then rolled him atop her, so that her legs were locked together around his waist. When they were well joined and moving slowly together, there were shared breaths and gentle lickings, their hot-eyed wonder illuminating the darkness. Virgin she had been, but Glimmer grasped the way of it swiftly. “I will give you the food you need,” she whispered, lips brushing his ear.
His hips rose and fell with hers like some warm, gen
tle wind. “We make children now. Our children.”
“Our children,” she repeated. “You are my man.”
There were no more words. This time, she controlled the depth and angle of the thrust. She found her way to a time of gasping and shaking, clutching, crying out, and they held each other through it all.
They lay on their sides afterward, touching in wonderment, the air heavy with their mingled scent. Then, not long after, the rhythm began anew, as if it was something that had lived before them and would survive their deaths, something with its own will that carried men and women like feathers in a whirlwind to some unknown and unknowable place of peace and fire.
Chapter Forty
Frog’s year passed with aching slowness, then suddenly was over too soon. Frog bid goodbye to Glimmer’s mother and father and returned home as a man of his tribe, a two-scarred man-killer escorting a beautiful mate to Fire boma. Although he had walked through the thorn walls more times than any man could count, it seemed now that he passed the threshold with new eyes, a new man.
His cousins welcomed him with smiles, cries and little dances. Uncle Snake and Gazelle Tears met them at the gate, warned by boma runners. His mother smiled, lowering her eyes in ritual acknowledgment of her son’s manhood. His uncle clapped his shoulder. “You bring a fine daughter to our home.”
Gazelle Tears said, “I would warm myself at your hearth.”
Glimmer said in ritual response, “I would gather beside you and have you teach me the ways of Fire.”
“Welcome, my daughter,” Gazelle said. “Come, work.” She led her toward the place where the other women busied themselves, and sang and cared for one another’s children.
Glimmer’s round lovely face shone at Frog, seeking swiftly granted permission. Once she went on her way, Snake came to him. “Come, work.”
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