Nakoa's Woman

by Gayle Rogers

  “You have made a fool of me. You pledged yourself to me!”

  “I unpledge myself now!”

  He stepped away from her, and Maria looked up into his face. In a different vision Siksikai’s face became a mask of death. A coldness crept into her limbs, paralyzing her, as if she were slowly dying from the bite of a venomous snake.

  “You will keep your promise,” he said.

  In the black depths of his eyes she saw herself extinguished. “You are a monster!” she whispered.

  “Whom you have invited to enter you,” he replied, and walked swiftly away.

  Maria caught her breath. It seemed that in her terror she had ceased to breathe altogether. Never had she felt so frightened, so alone. She thought of Nakoa and knew that she would die before she would ever feel the caress of his love. This warm flesh that ached for him at night would be cold prey for the worms because of her foolishness at the Kissing Dance. She stood still in the warm sunshine of that afternoon with the coldness deep in her heart. Slowly she walked to the river. It was all now past her reach. The shadows that dappled the ground had moved beyond her; the birds were calling happily from another world.

  Women were working around her getting fresh water and scrub wood. Their soft chattering and happy laughter were alien to her. They filled their water vessels and left. She was as alone as she would be when Siksikai killed her. In her rage, she had chosen oblivion instead of love. The pattern was set; the clay molded.

  Grieving at what she knew was to be, she sat down by the river. The moss near her was cool and pungent. Weeping in loneliness, she put her head near the water that moved swiftly by, not pausing to give her the sustenance she had to have. She saw her own reflection swimming in its dark depths. Her long hair and pale face peered up at her.

  The shadowed eyes continued to watch her. This was the harlot that had pledged her to Siksikai! This was the whore who would take Siksikai to get Nakoa’s attention!

  The woman below her moved seductively. “Go away!” Maria said. “Go away!”

  “It is you who will be gone!” the woman in the waters whispered.

  “I am real, and you are the reflection! You are hiding my view of the drifting clouds, of the sun! Who are you to cast me in shadow?”

  Furiously, Maria struck at the waters and her image shattered in a flurry of bright bubbles, only to return again when the water calmed. She wanted Nakoa but she had seen the disapproving look on Ana’s face when he had first kissed her with love, and she had slapped him. In her dream, she had seen Meg try to seduce him and she had run away from them both in terror. Yet she had to have him. Her body and soul craved union with his. When she had run away from him and their marriage, all of the beautiful and fragrant white flowers of the prairie had died. Every sensual sound in the moonlight had become silent. Then she would marry him to the tolling of funeral bells! Before her father and before God she would accept him! She eagerly bent over her image again. “You are wrong,” she said. “I am the one who lives!”

  A water ouzel skimmed merrily over the water and began to sing from the shadowed bank. A gust of wind shook the cottonwoods and the woman at her feet. When the wind quieted they looked at one another, each lost in the lonely expanse of the sky. “Nakoa,” Maria called and filling the water paunches turned to go. A shadow lay immovable in her path. She looked up and saw that she was standing face to face with Nakoa.

  “You were calling for me,” he said, his voice soft.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Why?”

  “Because I am alone.” From the river came the sound of soft mocking. “Dear God,” she said bitterly, “she is back!”

  “Who is back?”

  “The whore! The harlot! The other part of myself that you all want me to be!” More tears slid down her cheeks.

  He took her trembling hands and held them strongly in his own. “Where is this woman?” he asked her gently.

  Maria went to the river, and pointed down at her reflection. “There!” she said in agony.

  He came and stood by her side. “I have a reflection too,” he said.

  “Mine isn’t just in the water!”

  “We all carry many reflections of ourselves, Maria.”

  “But mine is real!”

  “Why not? You are real!”

  “You don’t understand!” Maria sobbed, hiding her face from the woman at her feet. “She is a whore like Atsitsi, and I hate her!”

  “How could you hate such a beautiful woman?” he asked. “Look at her again, Maria!”

  She sat upon the bank, looking fearfully down at her image. Its long dark hair seemed to caress the pale face tenderly, its eyes were again mysteriously shadowed. “I don’t know her,” Maria said, recoiling.

  “Yet you call her a whore.”

  “Look at her wiggle, and move her breasts for you! Look at her beg-”

  “It is the effect of the wind. The man beside her stirs too. Do you think that in the touch of the wind any woman would remain untouched?”

  “I am clean. I am not like her!”

  “How can water remain always clean? Does it not absorb the earth?”

  Maria pressed her hands to her face. “I am a virgin,” she said stubbornly. “That bitch in there would accept anything!”

  “That bitch in there accepts the universe.”

  “I am good,” Maria wailed. “I am untouched!”

  “To be untouched is to be unborn! This is not the woman who tried to ride back to the Snakes to save the girl with yellow hair. Did you think then of remaining untouched?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Do you think of remaining untouched by me?”

  “No,” she whispered, feeling her face flush.

  “Then do not think being untouched is being good! You are a woman of blood and warmth,” he said. “Drain them away—give them to the woman at your feet—and what you will not know will rise and destroy you!”

  He took her within his arms and kissed her. Then passion grew until she did not know that he had taken off her dress. When she felt his lips against her bare flesh she reached for her clothing.

  “I want to kiss you, not your dress,” he whispered.

  “Someone will see us,” she gasped. He smiled and moved her to thick ferns, and when they lay in shadow all modesty left her. She kissed his lips wildly, covered his face with kisses, his cheeks, forehead, and closed lashes. She closed her own eyes, blind to everything, for here was feeling beyond what she could bear. She would be gentle; she would be wild; in every way that she could, she begged him, begged to be close to him in all of the time there was on earth.

  She was beautiful, beautiful. She had been created for him. Her breasts were soft and white for his touch. The roundness of her hips, the tapering of her legs, the full lips, the dark eyes so thickly lashed, the long dark hair, the white flesh, all were treasure for him—for this moment when the craving emptiness within herself would be filled. She moaned almost in agony.

  He drew slightly away from her. “Where is the woman who wants me inside of her?” he said softly.

  She fiercely pulled his lips back to hers.

  He drew away from her again, finally. “Where is this woman, Maria?”

  “Here! Here!”

  “She is not a whore? A harlot?”

  “No! No! No!” Maria sobbed, waiting for his penetration. “She is a woman—deeply blessed—in loving you!”

  Their lips sought each other’s again, and in their long embrace each could feel the violent emotion that shook the other. But Nakoa stopped the tide that swept them to total consummation. “Maria, Maria!” he said in pain, and wrenched himself free of her. “The agony of the Sun Dance I could bear,” he choked. “I could do that—to become a warrior. Now I can keep myself from you—to keep you clean.”

  “I don’t want to be clean,” Maria cried. “I want you!” She reached for him, pulled him back within her embrace. “Nakoa, I love you. I love you!”

 
He kissed her lips, his touch more tender than it had ever been.

  “Nakoa,” she pleaded. “Love me!”

  He kissed her still turgid breasts. He put his hand to her racing heart. “Culentet,” he said. “The little heart beats so swiftly for me, blessing me with its life. I love you in my heart, and in my flesh I will love you too. But I will not make you unclean. Among my people, who are now your people, an unclean woman has no voice to the sun. An unclean woman can bring no children that stay with their father. An unclean woman has no lodge, no husband, and goes to the couch of any man who is willing to pay the price. Maria, do not beg me again. What I love so in my heart, I will not destroy with my flesh!”

  Overcome, Maria bowed her head, feeling her long hair shielding part of her breasts.

  “You have the most beautiful breasts I have ever seen,” he said.

  She turned away, flushing. Under his careful gaze she had begun to feel unclean again. He sensed this and gently kissed the side of her face. Her shame vanished, but with her quick response and the sight of her pink-tipped breasts so close to him a renewed passion shook him and he felt that he could no longer resist her. “Put on your dress,” he said gruffly, and then watched her with agony as she covered her nakedness. He was ashamed. His strength might well have left him; he might have succumbed to his lust.

  She walked back to him and kneeled over him, her face radiant. Her eyes shone with love. She kissed his lips tenderly. “Thank you,” she whispered. He did not meet her smile, beginning to feel pain for having resisted her.

  “Nakoa,” she said softly, “I am a woman of heat and blood. I apologize now to that poor creature in the river—let her have the sky and clouds—let her have the universe—I have you!”

  “Maria,” he said seriously. “You will walk in my way?”

  “Yes, yes!” she breathed, kissing him ecstatically. They lay in the lacy ferns, apart, so they could look at each other in wonder. “Before every sun in the sky, and every seed of the earth,” she said soberly, “I love you.”

  “And before everything that I am, or ever hope to be, I love you,” he answered.

  They absorbed each other in long silence. Finally she whispered: “Has any woman upon this earth ever loved like this?”

  “Has any man upon earth ever loved before?” he answered.

  “How could there have been any time before now?” Maria asked.

  The ferns rustled gently above them, and still feeling pain, he put her head upon his shoulder. “Maria, Maria, Maria, a white woman.” He was testing her name, as if by saying it, he had magically made her appear.

  “Nakoa,” she said. “Nakoa.”

  “Maria, did you know that we met ten years ago?” he asked. She studied his face and his expression was solemn.

  “When?” she asked, believing that they had always been close.

  “When I was seeking my Nitsokan, my vision, or my medicine and sign from our Father. I was slow in finding it. I fought and gained coups without protection and with only luck. But upon my last fast a woman came to me, a woman shrouded in the morning mists that were thick in the forest where I had starved for five days. I could see her hair, it was dark but carried flashes of light, like yours. I could see a part of her beautiful breasts, and I went to her and although she did not touch me, from her breasts I drank—life.

  “Is this the sign upon your lodge? The woman of the west wind?”

  He turned her face to his and looked at her with all of the love of his soul. “Maria, I dreamed of you. You are my Nitsokan. You are my sign from the Great Spirit.”

  Maria felt tears come to her eyes.

  “You are my touch with the sun,” Nakoa whispered, and in spite of themselves they kissed, and while both wanted passion to remain dormant, it leaped to life in each of them, compelling them to break apart, shaken before its power. He rose for them to leave, and before she got up, she bent over her image in the water. Her reflection rose toward her eagerly, and Maria blew the shadowed woman a warm kiss. “Good-bye,” she said tenderly.

  “Where will she go?” Nakoa asked Maria, smiling.

  “I want her to go to the villages where there is life and talk and the smell of cooking food. I want her to go where another Maria can meet her lover, and then let her sleep, and dream beautiful dreams.”

  “Sleep is not for such a woman!” Nakoa exclaimed, his image joining hers. “Do not sleep and remain in darkness,” he said to the woman in the water. “You are the carrier of life, the reflector of the sun. You bring nourishment to the earth and to the man.”

  The two images in the water clung to each other in a long embrace and then with a sudden shaking in the river’s depths, they seemed to be flung violently apart, and when the river calmed again, they were both gone, and only the blue sky with its drifting clouds shone upon its serene surface.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nakoa came to Maria that night in great agitation. “You were seen talking to Siksikai!” he said.

  “Yes,” Maria answered. “I did talk to him.”

  “Why, Maria? Why?” he asked angrily.

  She and Atsitsi were sitting by their outside fire, and Maria felt the old woman watching her closely. Embarrassed at Nakoa’s anger with her, she began to feel anger of her own. “Why?” she repeated after him. “Well, why not?”

  “Big Maria full of self again,” Atsitsi growled.

  Nakoa knelt swiftly at Maria’s side. “I told you not to speak to him! That is why not!” His black eyes snapped in fury; how different he was now from how he had been at the river!

  “Siksikai was in my path. I could do nothing but speak to him.”

  “If a mad dog blocked your path, would you stop and speak to it?”

  “Siksikai is a mad dog?”

  “Do not mock my words. Siksikai is a man, and a man can be more dangerous than a dog.”

  “I told him that I acted without thought at the Kissing Dance! I told him that I was yours and had no right to choose him!”

  “What?” Nakoa asked her, his face incredulous. “What your words said is that you have to go to me! They said that you still want him!”

  “They did not!” Maria answered hotly. “I called him a monster.”

  Nakoa turned to the old woman. “Go and help Sikapischis,” he said to her.

  “Now why old woman always have to leave lodge?” Atsitsi whined. “Sikapischis young and have fun fixing cows!”

  “Leave, Atsitsi,” Nakoa said firmly.

  Atsitsi spat her food out, narrowly missing Maria’s face. “Ha! See if you can fill sweet titty with milk!” she snapped, and lumbered away.

  “Maria, Maria, when will you think?” Nakoa said despairingly.

  “I talked to Siksikai that way because I am afraid of him!”

  “Maria, if there had been no talk between you, he would not know your fear! Fear begs for more fear, and now he will seek you again! Napi—if I just could kill him now!”

  “Nakoa, do not talk of killing!”

  “I kill only with reason.”

  “Do not destroy Siksikai because of me! I will not talk to him any more!”

  “Maria, do not go to the river alone again. Here, Sikapischis will go with you, and when we return to the circle camp, you can get water and wood with Anatsa.”

  “Anatsa?” Maria smiled. “I don’t think Anatsa will have time to be walking with me. She and Apikunni are getting married.”

  “Apikunni is marrying Anatsa?” Nakoa looked surprised. “I didn’t know they had even spoken!”

  “Yes, they spoke coming back from the river one day. He even carried the scrub wood for her. It created much talk!”

  Nakoa laughed.

  “Then they rode together to the mountains to find otsqueeina for Apeecheken. The next night they rode around the village in courtship.”

  “I am glad,” Nakoa said. “Apikunni is as close to me as blood brother. I am proud that he could see the beauty in Anatsa.”

  Maria smiled shyl
y. “Why didn’t you love her?” she asked.

  He met her eyes directly. “I had already been touched by you,” he said.

  “Nakoa,” she said, “would you like to see the white man’s land?”

  “No,” he answered.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I am Indian, and I live my life here.”

  “But when we marry.”

  “You walk in my path.”

  She felt almost overwhelmed with love. “It will be my pride and my pleasure,” she answered softly.

  He stirred the fire, and studied her face in that careful way of his. “Maria,” he said finally, “talk to me of the white man.”

  “What shall I say?”

  “Tell me of his power.”

  “The white man rules the world.”

  “No man can rule the great oceans.”

  “He rules all of the seas, and all of the land across them.”

  “All of the land?”

  “All.”

  “No man can rule the land. No people can claim all of the earth.”

  “The white man does. He fights great wars and then the land is his.”

  “If he believes this, then the land owns him. He owns nothing.”

  “Your people fight for land, Nakoa.”

  “The Indian does not fight great wars. He fights to keep the enemy from his village and from taking all of the buffalo herd. We live upon Mother, the earth, but we do not own what has been given in grace. I walk this part of the earth now, and I feel the sun here in my youth and in my strength, but I cannot claim the spring or the winter of tomorrow. We cannot hold the sun, and we can hold no part of the earth it warms. It is like saying that wherever a shadow falls, the land will be mine and my children’s children. But every man knows the pattern of the shadow changes with the movement of the sun.”

  “The white man keeps the land he takes.”

  “A people own nothing. A person owns nothing. At the end of his path, a man has only himself.”

  “You call this Blackfoot land.”

  “We live upon it now. But we cannot claim it in the years ahead when our hands have turned to dust. We cannot take what is greater than ourselves. Let your white man be the conqueror. Let him gorge upon what belongs only to the Great Spirit. Let him grow fat and sluggish, and sick on his own waste. Then slow and helpless, he will be devoured by the lean and the hungry. It is always the conqueror who becomes the slave.”