“No.”
“Why are you so patient with me?” No one could be that patient. But he was. His patience was as permanent as Mystery Mountain, as dependable as the sunrise each morning.
“I wait. One day you will see. Great Spirit brought you here, brought you here to me, for a purpose hidden from you, from me. Like mariposa lily hidden beneath the soil until time is right. Until heart is right.”
She stood up and hurled the strawberry into the brook. It skipped once. Brendon should throw so well. Damned Indians and their sense of inevitability!
“Where now?”
“Up there,” he said and headed off to get their mounts.
“Don’t you ever get cranky?” she called.
No reply.
Did he even desire her anymore, now that he had had her? She could read a male better than a book, but she couldn’t read this shaman. Her body clamored for his touch, and she was tempted to throw herself at him again, but she was finished with making a fool of herself. If he still desired her, he would have to come to her this time.
Leaving the glade, the horses moved along a trail beveled into the mountainside. Shadowy forests fell behind. Off to her left, infinity loomed. One false step . . . . She held her breath, as if the very act of expanding her rib cage could displace the piebald’s sure-footed gait. Up, up, ever upwards toward a crest wreathed in clouds. Here, the sunlight hung pure white, shining so strangely.
She arched her back to shift the pain that was settling into her inner thighs, but that merely ground her weight onto her tender pubic mound, arousing pleasurably sensual feelings. Unbidden, she recalled the pleasurable pain Man had inflicted on her body that night she had submitted her will to his. She shifted her weight from her exquisitely pulsating bud at the apex of her folds back onto her painfully raw buttocks.
By late afternoon, the horses crested the sheer granite face they had been crisscrossing. High above the world, she looked out upon wave after wave of blue shadowed mountains and occasional troughs of pale sage desert. The view was exhilarating. Soul inspiring. Lightness expanded every atom of her being.
“Come,” Man ordered, as if impatient to reach the mountain summit, to discharge his duty.
He continued along a trail bordered with sweet-scented ferns. It dipped, rose again, and dipped once more to come out at last onto a ledge affording a view of a small, but deep lake below. Reflecting the turquoise hue of the sky at 13,000 feet, Blue Lake nestled in a bowl rimmed with slopes of dark purple forests. The glass-like water mirrored the towering pine spirals and cotton candy clouds.
“My people’s church,” he said softly.
Looking down at the pristine, oval-shaped lake made her dizzy. Not from the height but rather from the way the translucent water glistened and wavered, despite its apparent utter stillness. All around her, she could feel the dance of unseen currents. The very air moved in and out of her lungs, electrified. Her breath became short and shallow.
It’s a mirage.
No, a living power was emanating from that site.
She listened to the strong pulse of the mountains . . . as strong as Man’s drum, which beat so insistently the night of her illness that she became conscious of nothing else. Neither her physical suffering nor her heart’s anguish. She listened now to the pulse of her own blood. It was beating in syncopation with the mountain’s pulse.
“Tonight, we sleep . . . there.” Man pointed at a clearing nestled among the pines, about a hundred yards from the shore.
Sleep? She hadn’t come prepared to camp out. Oh, what the hell!
By the time, they descended to the clearing, dusk’s half-light set everything to glowing and quieted the forest creatures for those last serendipitous moments. She slid from her horse in exhaustion. “Ohh,” she groaned, rubbing her buttocks. “The government must see about getting you Indians automobiles.”
He watched her pained, tottery steps and grinned. “Come here.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Now what?”
He rolled his eyes. “When will you learn to obey me?” He crossed to her, and swung her up in his arms.
“What are you doing?” She drew back to burn him with her most ferocious glare, the same one she used on Jeremy when he pushed her too far. It didn’t work on Man either.
He carried her down the steep pine-clad slope to the magic lake, where its waters flowed out into that endless stream tumbling down the mountain, through his village, and on to the Rio Grande to supply other Indians tribes.
There, at the lake’s outlet, where the water tumbled fiercely and the loamy, fecund smells of the surrounding forest penetrated her senses, he set her on her feet and shrugged out of his cream-colored blanket, passing it to her. “Wait.”
The withdrawal of his arms was like the withdrawal of a life-sustaining narcotic. She swayed, lost without him.
He waded in knee deep, unknotted the blanket from his waist and dampened one end in the water. Returning, he lowered on his haunches before her and slid the blanket’s wet end beneath her dress and up her thigh. She gasped. The cooling cotton eased the rawness of her inner thighs but set to torch sudden demanding hunger for him inside her. She almost sagged, and her hand gripped his massive shoulder. He seemed not to notice. Tenderly he continued to lathe her tender flesh. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, her lips parted at the powerfully sensuousness of his gesture. Her breathing accelerated.
Higher, higher.
“Here,” he said, thrusting the blanket into her hand. His lids dropped to half mast but not soon enough to conceal the impassioned heat glazing his eyes.
Gaping, she stared as he rose and returned to wade back into the water. She felt adrift, abandoned, bereft. Abruptly, he lunged. His hand sliced the water smoothly, cleanly, and came up with a fish, a slippery, wriggling fish. When he had one in each hand, he sloshed toward her, a boyish grin lighting his face. But his loose white trousers plastered over his muscled thighs, revealed all too well the man in him, and an excited tremor keyboarded her spine.
A solicitous smile tipped his angular cheekbones. “You like trucha?”
“Trout? If it were lizard, I wouldn’t care. I’m hungry enough to eat one of those, bones and all.” And she realized she was indeed ravenous. As if she had just spent the entire afternoon in furious, passionate sex. Alas, that obviously wasn’t the case. She sighed and consigned herself to celibacy.
After he had an aromatic fire going in the clearing, he rose to drape her discarded jacket around her. She sat on a lightning-struck log, burnt and disfigured. “Cold this high at night.” He then retreated to his side of the fire to focus on preparing the fish.
That single kindness threatened to overwhelm her. She watched his hands, their sensitive fingers and beautifully formed nail beds. They deftly wielded his knife to slice off the trout head and filet Brother Fish . . . all done with a reverence and contemplative mindfulness that he gave to every deed, to everything he touched or watched. Father and grandfather of the very trout he prepared had swum in the Rio Pueblo and had fed his father and grandfather.
And she watched his lips. Sensuous, full, alive with life, with all its tartness and sweetness, with its beauty and fierceness, and, yes, pain even. For how could she know the spiraling pleasure he bestowed without the stabbing pain his withheld presence incurred? Kiss me. Kiss me.
“I never asked what your Indian name is,” she said, “but I guess you don’t care. You rarely use my given name. Why not?”
His white teeth gleamed in the darkness. “Funny name you have been given. Burro name. Al-ass-and-ra.”
She loved the way he emphasized the syllables. “And you can do better?”
His hand canted. From beneath his deep lids, his dark eyes sent her a playful glance. “White Woman Waddling.”
Grinning, she chucked a pine cone at him. The sizzling fish, the waning twilight, its deep silence enveloping the forest, Man’s sculpted face, thrown into red relief by the firelight . . . she never felt more as if she
belonged somewhere than right there, right then.
With a soft sigh, she said, “The doe this afternoon . . . you said that she spellbinds the wild beasts with female magic. I don’t think I really understood what you were trying to tell me. Do you mean I have this magic, too?”
He looked across at her. “No. You gave yours away.”
His reply startled her. “Believe me, if I ever had magic, I would remember . . . and I don’t.”
His passed her a grilled fish, served on a flat rock. “You gave it away long ago, before memory.”
“Oh? To whom did I give my magic?” She peeled the flaky meat from its bones. Eyes closed, she savored the tender, succulent fish. Oh God, nothing ever tasted this good.
“Your husband and father. You let them steal your magic.”
Her lids snapped open. He watched her. Somewhere in that primal forest, an owl hooted. “To lose your magic . . . this soul loss. This cause illness . . . and death.”
She stared into the depths of those mystic eyes and asked the question whose answer she suspected she always had known. “Then my death is near?”
“Always near. But your spirit’s choice. Now . . . or later.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said firmly and then shrugged.
He sat very still, legs crossed, studying her. Below those heavy lids, his eyes seemed to search every recess, every crevice of her body and mind. Transfixed by this mysterious process, she remained passive, unresisting, opening herself to his examination yet totally intimidated by the sheer power emanating off him, surrounding her, isolating her.
At last, he nodded, as if satisfied with an answer he had found, and rose to leave the clearing.
What if he doesn’t return? She felt like a good squaw, sitting, waiting.
When he did return, he hunkered before her and held forth a cedar branch. As always, her blood tsunamied through her veins, the affect at her extremities almost painful. “Much honor, sacred tree has. She doesn’t rot. No weather can destroy her. Older she grows, more beautiful she is.”
“Oh, I like the way you put that,” she murmured, savoring the analogy. How wonderful to be among people who felt that to age was to become more beautiful.
He leaned to his left and poked the branch into the fireplace’s hot coals. The branch took light and began to smoke. Still kneeling before her, he waved the cedar’s perfumed smoke around her, enveloping her. She inhaled deeply, partaking of his ritual of sanctification, for that was what it seemed to her . . . as though she were being purified.
For what? For death? For rebirth?
He sat back on his heels, his head thrown back and observed her through slitted eyes. His gaze grew intense, piercingly sweet. His hand reached out and touched her, just above her left breast.
Without warning, she trembled violently. Her eyes closed in the rapture.
“Heart is open now. It can love again.”
Next he touched the area just below her right breast, and an uncontrollable moan skimmed the back of her throat. “Then lungs. They breathe again. Forever easy.”
Her lids drifted open, questioning what next.
“Stay,” he ordered.”
With that, he left once more. Forever the phantom. Forever the Coyote.
She did not move, but sat on the log, eyes closed once again, absorbing the sounds of the night. The coyote’s lonesome call, the crickets’ clicking, the smell of the pungent smoke surrounding her. And a humming . . . not of a human, not even of an insect or any living thing. A high-pitched, continuous humming, nonetheless. It made her feel lightheaded.
Finally, she heard Man’s voice, coming like a medieval monk’s chant from somewhere beyond the clearing. The pressure in the air around her changed, shifted, eased. As if background to Man’s chant, the humming amplified until it finally overpowered then drowned out his voice and became a great whir, fanning her face. Then it rose above her, circled the clearing and passed from hearing. Profound silence presided.
When next she opened her lids, he was there, sitting before her. She had not heard his returning footsteps. “I am well?” she asked but believed she already knew the answer.
“You are well. It is for you now to choose to take back your magic.”
Feeling strangely happy, she smiled and stretched her slumberous body, flinging wide her arms, her fingertips reaching for the brilliant stars in the black sky. Life bubbled in her like champagne. “Oh, Man . . . I want . . . I want to go swimming. Tonight. Now.”
He canted his head and eyed her oddly.
“Oh, no,” she countered, “not this time, you don’t. Enough mind reading for now.” She grabbed his fingers, delighting in their substantial thickness. “Come on. This moment may not happen again. Let’s enjoy it.”
She tugged him down the slope. Glancing over her shoulder, she caught him watching her with amusement as he would a child.
Moonlight silvered the water. Unabashed, she doffed her clothing. Her jacket and house dress and moccasins fell in a heap on the shoreline. Although with Brendon she had usually undressed out of his sight in her sacrosanct bathroom, she felt no embarrassment before Man. He had seen her naked and clothed, at her worst and her best – and through it all he remained dedicated to her well-being.
Head tilted back, she flung open her arms in delight. The night’s cold air goose bumped her skin and peaked her nipples. Above her upturned face, the blue-white-hot stars glittered so much brighter than she’d ever seen them.
“The Night People twinkle happy,” Man murmured, following her gaze, but his appreciative stare returned to her nymphet nakedness.
Wading into the cold water, she gasped. Before she could lose her courage, she plunged beneath its surface then emerged sputtering. Both hands swept back the hair plastered to her cheeks and neck and back. She grinned at Man. “Well, are you coming in or not?”
Until that moment, she hadn’t considered the double entendre laced in her question.
He stood on the shore, legs spread wide, arms akimbo. “Do you know what you want now?” he demanded warily. “Is it sex with me? I can give you that. I can give you of me. Do you want us to live together as Peg and Tony do? That I cannot do.”
She hesitated, fighting for clarity in an unreal time and place. The water eddied coldly around her thighs. “Since the moment I saw you leaning against Peg’s mantle, I’ve wanted you. Heart and soul. Flesh and spirit.” She shrugged. “Fate? Destiny? Merely coincidence our paths colliding? I don’t know. I know only I want you. Want you. Want you. All the time. It’s a gnawing, relentless addiction, this want of you.”
The silence seemed an eternity. Then, reluctantly, as if the words dragged from him were a death sentence, “I knew you were coming before you got here. I waited. For you.”
He dropped his loose white pants and shrugged out of his shirt. He glowed copper in the moonlight. His manhood thick and proud and strong revealed his intention. She swallowed back her fear of its pain-pleasure gift. Slowly, still facing her, he unbraided his hair until it cascaded in a black waterfall over his shoulders and chest. Dark eyes focused on her, he waded into the moon-slivered lake.
Can’t you see I have fallen in love with you? Can’t you tell by the look in my eyes, I’m under your dominance, that I was yours from the very moment we met? Don’t you know every beat of my heart keeps drumming out its want of you, its need of you?
She watched the water rise up his muscular thighs toward the jutting of his dusky-flesh. In the moonlight reflecting off the water, it seemed to throb with magical powers. A swelling, swaying, shaft. Then the water engulfed it, his wash-board waist, and his head as he submerged himself. The blue-black surface hid him completely. Her gaze searched the lake’s surface anxiously. When he emerged, only feet behind her, he took her by surprise.
She whirled toward him. Feeling her feminine power surge through loins no longer sore and into the core of her femininity, she waded the few steps to him, halting so closely that her nipples brushed his lower rib ca
ge. She peered up at his mahogany face through her eyelashes. “I want you between my thighs,” she said in a husky voice she didn’t recognize.
His eyes flared. His breath drew in sharply. His steady, glowing eyes took her in, held her. She saw a mysterious glint in those night-darkened eyes. He made a motion that quickly enveloped her face.
Oh sweet Jesus, is he at last going to kiss me?!
One gesture with both his hands . . . or was it her imagination, because they were at his sides again. “I do not have your magic. You must take it back from elsewhere. Once you have it, then I know you come to me freely. And I to you.”
Disappointment scoured her raw emotions like hot liquid lye soap. What else could she do but dress? She was cold now, shivering, and certainly didn’t want to remain alone in the eerie lake, even if a petulant part of her argued for it.
Sapped of her strength, head drooping, she collected her clothing then followed his large shadow up the slope to the clearing. Red embers still sparkled among the remnants of the fire ashes. His stoic face evidencing nothing of the passion-stirring moment in the lake, he spread his blanket, indicating she was to lie upon it, and retrieved two more blankets from the horse packs.
Too tired to make any response, she simply dropped to her knees and slid onto her side, her head on her crooked arm.
Again he draped her jacket over her, then surprised her by laying down behind her, encircling her waist with his arm and cupping her small frame against his bear-like bulk. “Wind Old Woman blows cold tonight.”
The sky had been so clear, she felt sure he was wrong. Held so safely against his enveloping body’s contours, she did not care. When the wind did whistle, he drew the remaining half of his blanket over them. She turned to face him, snuggling even closer, seeking his warmth. Her cheek pressed against his smooth chest. She deeply inhaled his clean, male scent. Man and his land were one and the same. She wanted to be a part of them and never return to her feted East. She would find a way bring Jeremy back. And to establish her own art gallery here. She belonged somewhere now. Maybe, just maybe, Man would want her enough to forsake the community living of the Taos pueblo . . . and his pledge of marriage to Mud Woman.
Indian Affairs (historical romance) Page 17