Fire Dancer

by Colleen French

  He squatted and turned the squirrel spit. "You do not think Tapalamawatah brought you here only for me, do you?"

  She nodded. It was that fate thing again. "You think I'm here because I can do something for your people? What could that be?"

  He lifted one shoulder. "This man does not pretend to understand all the Father intends for his children. I only play my part and my part was to bring you here . . . and to love you."

  She smiled bittersweetly. Her father would be shocked by her marriage to Fire Dancer, but she couldn't help thinking he would be happy for her because she was so happy. She wanted to send him a message telling him of the marriage, but she decided not to bring the subject up tonight. Not when they were getting along so well. She didn't want to spoil the tranquillity of their night alone. There would be plenty of time for the argument she knew was coming, when they returned to the village.

  Mackenzie put down her sketching and walked to Fire Dancer who still crouched by the fire. She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned over to kiss his cheek. "How long before supper is ready?"

  "A while longer."

  She smiled mischievously. "Didn't you say that a man and a woman should make love at least three times on their wedding day?"

  He caught her hand in his and kissed each fingertip. "Ah. "

  "Well, we've only done it once," she purred. "And surely you want to rest in between."

  With a chuckle he grabbed her by the shoulders and wrestled her to the ground, rolling on top of her. He tickled her stomach and she squealed with laughter, and purred again as he lowered his face to the valley between her breasts.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mackenzie stirred the venison stew with a bark-stripped stick to prevent it from burning. For a week after she and Fire Dancer returned from their night alone on the river, friends and family members had brought them meals. It was so that they would have more time to spend together in the sleeping mat, Laughing Woman had explained with a twinkle in her eyes.

  Tonight's meal was the first Mackenzie would prepare for her new husband and she was nervous. It wasn't that she didn't know how to cook; she'd been preparing meals for her father's tavern guests since she was old enough to leash the spit dog. But tonight she prepared a meal Shawnee style, over an open firepit, with heated, flat rocks for griddles, sticks for spoons, gourds for ladles, and one battered, tin cooking pot.

  Fire Dancer had offered to take the responsibility, even though it fell to the Shawnee women. After all, he'd explained, he'd been cooking for himself for many years. But Mackenzie wanted to show her commitment to adjusting to his way of life. So far, she was pleased with her efforts.

  She altered a venison stew recipe she'd used at home in the tavern. The Shawnee had no potatoes, but they grew a long tuber very similar to the potato. She'd added fresh peas and several pinches of piquant herbs that hung from the rafters over their sleeping platform. In a clay dish she baked squash, and for dessert she'd made flat corn cakes dimpled with dried wild strawberries.

  Fire Dancer had gone to meet with the men of the war council and a delegation of French soldiers who had arrived in the camp this morning. Apparently, from what Mackenzie could gather, the alliance was to be made.

  Mackenzie stirred the stew again and checked the bucket to be sure there was fresh water to drink. Nervously, she walked around the wigwam, straightening a basket here and there, rearranging the furs on the sleeping platform. At the makeshift easel Fire Dancer built for her, she adjusted the scrap of linen she used for a cover cloth to keep the still wet paint from attracting dust. Not that the painting was anything worth preserving. She was trying her hand at still life. Beneath the linen cloth was a half-completed painting of an ear of corn, a feather, and a quilled moccasin. She had managed a good copy of the articles, but there was no life in them. Of course there wasn't; they were inanimate objects. And life was what she painted. Or at least she used to . . .

  Mackenzie pushed back an unruly hair and refused to feel sorry for herself. She'd made a choice to honor the Shawnee traditions and she would grow from that choice.

  She glanced at the door, wondering for the dozenth time where Fire Dancer was. She'd spent half the day preparing for his return, and not just at the hearth. She'd bathed, washed her hair, and plaited it in a thick braid down her back. She wore a new long-sleeved dress with a rabbit fur stole attached at the shoulders. In her ears, she wore new shell earrings Mary had given her as a wedding gift.

  At the stream Mackenzie had talked with Mary for a long time. Mackenzie was worried about her. She just didn't seem like herself. Although she was genuinely pleased with Mackenzie's marriage to her cousin, all she talked of was returning to a fort, if not a British fort, then a French one. She was quite excited at the prospect of the alliance between the Shawnee and the French because she saw it as an opportunity for her to find a white man to marry. The woman simply no longer wanted to be Shawnee.

  Mackenzie's heart ached for her but she didn't know how to comfort her friend. She hoped she could bring up the subject with Fire Dancer tonight.

  Mackenzie knelt on the grass mat floor to rearrange a bark crate of wooden and hollow gourd cooking utensils and containers—wedding gifts from the Shawnee. So far, her days in the village had been pleasant. She had feared she might become bored with the Shawnee's simple way of life, but that wasn't the case at all.

  The women included her in their everyday tasks, while teaching her their ways. Together, they picked the last of the fall crops, and dried fruits and meats. They packed food in underground storage pits. They sewed winter garments and made toys for their children.

  Again and again, as she performed her daily tasks, her artist's eye saw opportunities to paint the men, women, and children of the village. But of course she couldn't paint them because it was forbidden. She sighed. That left her with nothing but ears of corn and moccasins to paint.

  Mackenzie walked back to the open fire to stir her stew again. As she knelt, something beneath the sleeping platform caught her eye.

  On one knee, she scooped up Laughing Woman's daughter's rag doll. The leather-bodied black horse-hair doll immediately brought a smile to her lips. It was a beautiful doll with a doeskin dress and beaded moccasins. It was a doll that would have been the envy of any little girl on the Chesapeake . . . except that it had no face.

  No face . . .

  Hearing Fire Dancer's voice outside the wigwam, she ran to the door. She'd not seen him all day and had missed him more than she realized. The doll still in her hand, she threw her arms around his neck as he entered the wigwam. "I've been waiting for you."

  "This man is sorry. The day was long." He shrugged off his outer buckskin tunic and hung it on a birch hook suspended from the ceiling. "We still have much to decide. The French want us to send a dozen men. The council disagrees as to whether or not we can send them."

  She caressed his arm, her cheeks growing warm with the nearness of him. "Wait for our meal and we can sit down and you can tell me everything." She glanced at the doll in her hands. "First I have a question."

  He pushed a lock of dark hair from his face and sat cross-legged at their hearth. "Yes, my heart?"

  "Why doesn't this doll have a face?" She held up the toddler's toy. "Does it have something to do with souls, like in my portraits?"

  He stuck his finger in the stew pot and fished out a chunk of venison. "Yes. No images of faces are allowed, not even on toys." He popped the meat into his mouth. "Mmmm, ohwesah . Ex-cel-lent."

  She stared at the doll's face, clinging to a thread of excitement. "Does that mean that I could paint the Shawnee if I don't paint their faces?"

  He glanced up in thought. "This man does not see why not."

  She hugged the doll to her chest, delighted with her idea. "I could paint scenes. Domestic scenes here in the village. I see so many that touch my heart. Snake Man playing in the dirt with his grandson. Mary weaving on her loom. The young boys braiding the ponies' manes." She swung around one o
f the support beams. "I could paint you with your head bowed in prayer as the morning sun rises over the mountain."

  He smiled. "This man told you that you would find a way to use your paints. I am pleased that you are pleased." He snitched another piece of meat. "Did this man tell you Okonsa comes to share our meal?"

  "No. This man did not." She tossed the doll onto the sleeping platform, her good mood slipping away. They'd had had only two disagreements since their marriage over a week ago, and both had concerned his cousin.

  The brave made her uncomfortable, and she didn't know how to explain it to Fire Dancer. He had not threatened her in any way. He barely spoke to her, but he often watched her from a distance with a strange look on his face. No matter where she went, to the river, to the bean field, to the wigwam Mary shared with Laughing Woman, he just happened to be there.

  Earlier in the week Mackenzie had met Okonsa on the path to the stream. She had tried to pass him with a customary Shawnee greeting, but he backed her against a tree and quizzed her on her satisfaction of Fire Dancer's sexual performance as a husband. Mackenzie understood by now that the Shawnee looked differently at human bodies and natural acts than the English, but Okonsa's comments were not casual as Laughing Woman or Red Fox's were. Mackenzie's instincts told her Okonsa was dangerous.

  Mackenzie had tried to talk with Fire Dancer about his cousin, but Fire Dancer didn't really listen to what she was saying. He insisted that his cousin had made some poor choices in the past, but he was honestly trying to change. He said he felt that he had to give him a chance.

  Mackenzie walked to the dish basket and jerked three wooden trenchers out, one at a time. "You know how I feel about Okonsa."

  "You have expressed your feelings, wife. But I do not understand. He has done nothing to harm you. When I brought you unconscious from the fort, he carried one end of the litter. When Snake Man ordered our marriage, only Okonsa spoke for you against it."

  Mackenzie groaned with frustration as she dropped one clattering plate on top of the next. "I know all that, but I still don't trust him. It's something about his eyes."

  "His eyes?" Fire Dancer arched a black brow. "This man does not understand, his eyes . If Okonsa demonstrates that he is trying to become a responsible brave of this village, we must support him. I do not say that he has not made mistakes in the past, wife. Only that if he is trying, we must believe in him."

  Mackenzie should have known better than to broach this subject again. It was as if Fire Dancer thought that if he believed Okonsa was changing, it would make it so. She stared into the reed basket, the trenchers balanced on her knees. "It's our first real meal together. I wanted to be alone with you," she said, trying not to sound too disappointed.

  He walked up behind her and massaged her shoulders. "This man understands, Mack-en-zie, but Okonsa eats alone each night. He is my brother, so he is your brother now. It is only right that we should offer our hearth in hospitality. We've plenty of food to share."

  She brushed past him. "It's not the food, Fire Dancer." She grabbed the pot of baked squash and burned her finger. "Ouch! Damn it."

  He knelt beside her and patiently took the trenchers from her. He clasped her hand and tenderly put her burnt finger in his mouth. The cool, wetness soothed her.

  "This man is sorry that he asked Okonsa to our meal without asking you first. I have never had a wife before, and this man is slow to learn the rules." He looked into her eyes with that black-eyed gaze of his that made her heart melt. "I will not do it again."

  Mackenzie sighed. She loved him so much. How could she argue with him over a silly thing like feeding his cousin a plate of stew? She wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. "It's all right. I've never had a husband, either. It will take time for us to learn how this marriage business works." She kissed his cheek, offering a reticent smile. "I'm sorry I snapped at you. Send your brother home early and I'll make it up to you." She winked.

  His husky laughter filled the cozy wigwam as she returned to the task of preparing supper.

  Mary sat on the edge of her sleeping platform and opened the crude wooden box where she kept her white manake treasures. Laughing Woman had taken the children to have breakfast with her grandfather so Mary had the wigwam they shared all to herself.

  Mary pulled a silver thimble from the box, a red ribbon, a green ribbon, a yellow one. One by one she spread her treasures on the bearskin blanket. She had a silver salt spoon and two shoe buckles she would wear some day on heeled leather shoes. There was a pewter-handled toothbrush, a bone hair pin, and three silver sewing needles. Mary's most prized possessions, her bell earrings given to her by Mackenzie, dangled from her earlobes.

  Laughing Woman said that the Shawnee had agreed to the alliance. Only a few days before the war council, led by Fire Dancer, had made the final pact. There were French soldiers in the village now. It was official and the village would be expected to provide men for scouts. They might even be asked to provide escorts to a fort somewhere. If one of the braves in the village was headed for a French fort, she was going with him.

  With a sigh, Mary returned her treasures to their box. She didn't understand how Mackenzie could be so content here after the exciting life she had led at her father's tavern.

  Mary was bored in the village, bored with her weaving, bored with the talk of illness and child-raising, bored with her clay pots and wooden spoons that still looked like sticks to her. She yearned for the life of the white woman with her starched white mob caps and her heeled, calfskin shoes. She yearned for that life for the child she carried.

  Absently, she ran her hand over her stomach that was beginning to swell. Soon others would realize she was pregnant. She already guessed that Laughing Woman knew. She was just being polite and waiting for Mary to confess.

  It wasn't that Mary feared condemnation from the villagers. Hers would not be the first child born out of wedlock among them. There was no stigma to being born to an unwed mother because there was no illegitimacy among the Shawnee. A child belonged to his or her mother's family, and who the father had been was insignificant. But it mattered to Mary that the child would not have a father and that she would have no husband to help her raise the infant. Mary didn't want her baby to sleep in a cradleboard hanging from a rafter. She wanted him to be in a wooden cradle like the one she'd once seen in a settler's house.

  "Little Weaver?" Okonsa's voice broke the silence of Mary's contemplation.

  "I am here, brother," she said without much encouragement. She wasn't up to visiting with her brother. He was the one person she knew would be angry and unforgiving about the baby, not because she carried it, but because it was half white,.

  Okonsa stepped into the wigwam and let the door flap fall behind him. "This man came to say good-bye. I travel with the French to their fort in the north."

  Mary jumped up, nearly upsetting her treasure box. "You go to a fort? Oh, take me with you!"

  Okonsa frowned and adjusted his testicles beneath his fringed legging. "I will not."

  She clasped her hands together. "Please. This woman begs of you. Allow me to—"

  "Mahtah." He sliced his hand through the air. "This man has decided his sister will no longer associate with white men. It has given you crazy ideas." He spotted the box on her sleeping platform and gave it a shove. "These shiny baubles, they make you crazy."

  Mary's precious keepsakes scattered across the floor.

  "No," she cried, fighting tears. "I want to be with the white men." She dropped on all fours to gather her trinkets. "I want to be one of them. To marry a white man."

  "How dare you say such words!" He shook his fist, but kept his voice quiet so that anyone passing the wigwam would not hear him. "You mock the memory of our mother and father with your words."

  "I do not say I wanted to marry the men who killed our parents, only that I want to live in a pretty house and drink tea from china." Tears streamed down her face. "Is that so wrong?"

  "Y
ou were too young to remember the attack." Okonsa's black eyes glimmered strangely as he stared ahead, his eyes unfocused. "You do not know what they did . . . they did to . . . her . . . to him."

  Mary dropped a handful of ribbons into her box and grabbed up the thimble. "You must forgive or at least forget what happened to our parents. That is done with. You cannot change it and you cannot continue to blame those who are not to blame."

  "I do not have to forgive," he said through clenched teeth. His nose ring glimmered in the sunlight that poured through the hole in the roof. "And you will not wed a white man, if I have to kill you to keep you from him."

  "It is what I want," she shouted, defying him. "It's what I want for my baby."

  "For your what, you say?" Okonsa hissed like one of Snake Man's pets. "Your what?"

  Mary sniffed, wiping her nose with sleeve. "My baby. My baby who will be half-white," she flung.

  Okonsa drew back his foot and kicked her in the abdomen. Mary had no time to react, no time to protect herself as she reeled backward from the blow.

  She clutched her stomach and cried out in pain. How could Okonsa do this to her? Okonsa her brother . . . . Okonsa who loved her?

  Okonsa dropped to his knees beside her in a second. "This man is sorry. So sorry." He grabbed her hands and pulled her upright. He smoothed her hair and wiped at her wet cheeks, tears running down his own face. "This man did not mean to lose his temper. I am so sorry." He peered into her face, looking much like a little boy who had caused mischief. "Are you all right, dear sister?"

  Mary felt numb for a moment. She couldn't catch her breath. "I . . ."

  A contraction gripped her middle and doubled her over. "Oh . . ." she cried. "I think . . ." She saw the blood that pooled beneath her and she cried out again, in fear this time. She felt faint. The wigwam was spinning. Her head was spinning.

  "Little Weaver," Okonsa sobbed. Tears ran down his cheeks as he gripped her hand. "You are all right. Tell this man you are all right."

  "Laughing Woman," Mary whispered, staring at her own bloody hands. Another contraction gripped her and she gritted her teeth to keep from moaning. "Find her. Baby . . . save my baby . . ."