by Karen Kay
She gasped, suppressing a giggle. “Soaring Eagle,” she said, determined that she would not laugh. “This is outrageous. I am without clothing.”
He surfaced once more, beaming at her. “As I am too.”
That was a bit more information than she required at the moment.
She gave him a small splash, one that wouldn’t do too much damage. She said, “Go away and let me bathe in peace.”
“Oh”—he feigned a look of great hurt—“and here I was, hoping to wash your back for you.”
“You were? You mean like a back rub?” Goodness, but the suggestion held great appeal…much too much appeal. Courage, she cautioned herself. She was supposed to be angry with him. She said, “I couldn’t, really.”
“You are sure?”
She winced. He must have heard the wistfulness in her tone. “Just my back?” she asked. “You won’t seduce me again if I give you permission, will you?”
He smiled. “I will not seduce you, even if you attempt to lure me to do so.”
“I did not—”
He held up his hand. “We have already had this argument.”
She blew out her breath. “Fine,” she said once, then again, more harshly, “fine.”
Nevertheless, she turned around, holding her arms over her breasts, even though the water hid them from his view, or at least she hoped so. From over her shoulder, she said, “Very well. You may rub my back.”
She knew the words sounded more like command than capitulation, but if she were lucky, he wouldn’t take offense.
And apparently he hadn’t. He had picked up some sand and was proceeding to rub her with it. It felt marvelous, absolutely wonderful, and she sighed.
After a moment, she asked, “Why are you here? I thought you were going to see if you could get someone to help me with my clothes.”
“It is being done,” he said, his voice a little too close for her comfort.
“Oh.” While staying within arm’s reach, she took a couple of steps forward, saying, “Didn’t you say you were going to set up my tripod?”
“Also done.” He must have moved with her, for again he sounded too close.
She paced forward another few steps. “You left me without a towel and without any clothes too.” She pouted. “What if I had wanted to get out of the water while you were away? I would have been forced to sit on the bank, naked and cold.”
“It was unthinking of me,” he said, his hands coming up to rub her neck. She closed her eyes in acquiescence. “Please accept my apology. I have brought some cloth that you may use for a towel. It is there on the bank. There is also a change of clothes for you.”
“Really?”
“Aa.”
This time his voice was right by her ear, so near that she could feel his warm breath upon her, and she tread forward once more. Only this time, there was nothing beneath her footfalls. She plopped into the water…and came up spluttering.
He was laughing.
“You…you knew that was there, didn’t you?”
He leaned forward and leered. “I have bathed here often.”
“Oh, you!” she uttered, splashing him with a full frontal assault. “You should not be here. It is indecent.”
“Is it? And yet in my experience, a man and wife sometimes bathe together.”
“They do not. And besides, we are not married and well you know it.”
“I know nothing of the kind. I think that we are. And married couples often do.”
“They do not. Now listen, Soaring Eagle, it was a dream. An illusion. Nothing more.”
“Kali,” he said, shaking his head, “my sweet, dear Kali, we were married by the spirits. There is no other way for them to unite us easily—often they must use some intermediate force. But this time, they chose to do it themselves. I do not know why. But I swear to you that we are tied together in marriage. Indeed, there is no more binding tie.”
“I don’t believe you, and I refuse to accept it.” She had been treading water, but now she swam away from him. “Was there a church?” she yelled back to him. “Was there a minister? Because if they were present, I surely missed them.”
“There is no better church than the earth below your feet and the sky above you.” He gestured toward the heavens. “And as for a minister, I think there is none better than the one that we had, for he was the image of Sun.”
He swam toward her.
The image of Sun? How had he known that? Unless… Was it possible that they had not only dreamed of the same occurrence, but had populated the illusion with the same people?
Impossible. She said, “No, I refuse to believe any of this…you,” and she swam even farther away from him in the fastest breast stroke she could manage. But she called over her shoulder, “I reserve the right to decide upon these things myself. And you, sir, are swimming in the women’s quarters of the river.”
“Oh, am I? According to whom?”
“According to me.” She turned suddenly and added a splash for good measure. And then, heaven help her, she grinned.
And he reacted as though she had invited him to a picnic—she being the main feast. He lunged at her, catching her easily around the waist while both of them tread water.
Their legs tangled; she struggled to get free until, as if by accident, their bodies touched full-length. At the contact, liquid fire swept through her, making her wonder if the inner workings of her body might be volcanic in origin. Rocking back, she tried to obtain some distance, but only managed to accomplish the exact opposite. He held her to him, and smoldering sensation erupted through her, so much so it came as a surprise not to see the water around them boiling.
She shut her eyes as a realization took hold of her. The tempest that had started with this man’s kiss earlier in the day—which should have ended in the dream and a most physical romp—had not abated. Not in the least. In truth, it was worse now than it had been before. At present, whether she admitted it or not, she knew what pleasure this man held for her. For, illusion or not, in her own mind, she had experienced it. And she hungered for it. Again…
How was she supposed to cope with this? Nothing in her life had prepared her for any of this.
And so perhaps more in self-defense than anything else, she said the only thing she could think of to say: the truth. “Soaring Eagle,” she began, “you confuse me. I don’t know whether to hate you for last night, or surrender and make love to you for how you make me feel. What’s wrong with me?”
She had stopped treading water to lean against him, letting him do all the work. He didn’t object, merely wrapped her legs around his waist, pulling her chest in toward him.
At her words, he nodded, his lips seeking out the pulse at her neck. “I must confess that you confuse me also.”
The touch of his lips wreaked havoc within her. But she couldn’t very well tell him that, not when she herself was uncertain of what all this meant. And so she said, “It’s wrong to be here with you like this, isn’t it? It must be. All my life, it is what I have been led to believe A godly woman is not supposed to feel such…passion…for anything. And yet…”
“That is silly,” he said, still easily treading water.
“What is?”
“A good woman is not supposed to feel passion? Who told you this?”
“My nannies. My governess.”
He sneered. “Do you not feel passionate about your work? Have you not been willing to give up most anything to have that work? Is that wrong?”
“It is true that many women who do this are frowned upon.”
“How foolish,” he jeered. “What sort of society is it that does not educate their women into the ways of men; that does not acknowledge that a woman experiences the same emotions as a man? It is not as though a woman is a different species, separate from man.”
She knew that. All her friends and associates knew that. He simply didn’t understand the finer points of the Anglo-American culture. That was all. She said, “Aren’t you
being a little hypocritical? Indeed, it’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s a well-known fact that the Blackfeet are a patriarchal society, in that the male is dominant in the government and the family. And if that is true…”
He slanted her a frown. “While it is correct that my people trace their ancestry on their father’s side of the family, that doesn’t mean that one should get silly about it. I know my mother would be shocked to learn that, simply because she is female, she is not supposed to feel emotion.” Gathering Kali into his arms, he set out for the shoreline with a firm stroke, saying, “Come, let’s talk about this some more.”
She glided along with him, in no particular hurry to disentangle herself. She said, “But your men look down on a woman, don’t they? Treating her as though she might be inferior? A mere slave?”
“Who has told you this?”
“Well, I…” Kali thought for a moment. Where had she gleaned that particular information? “I guess these are things I have read from people who were here and lived amongst the Indians.”
He snorted. “Then what you read is what that person himself thought, for it is not true of my people. It is a fact that a woman has a different physical makeup than a man and that she might emphasize different aspects of camp life because of it. But that doesn’t mean she is not the same sort of being as a man, or that her work is less important or less valuable than a man’s. It is simply different.”
“But I thought—”
“Without woman, our tribe would cease to exist. Without a woman’s touch, a man would have little reason to go on living. The Blackfeet have a saying, ‘Mat’-ah-kwi tam-ap-i-ni-po-ke-mi-o-sin. Not found is happiness without woman’.”
“Oh.”
“She is the heart of our tribe and she is our voice. Her arguments are always listened to by he who would be wise.”
“Oh, I see. I didn’t know that. I guess there has been a great deal that I didn’t know about you, about your people.”
“And now you do. Perhaps you can put this into your books.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I can. I will.”
“Know that I do not tell you these things so that I might convince you to make love with me again, or to influence you to feel passionate with me,” he added as they floated together, back toward the bank. “I tell you this because I believe these things are true.” Reaching a shallower section of the river, he stood, but kept her legs anchored around his waist. Taking her hand in his, he placed her palm over his chest. “Do you feel the beat of my heart?”
She nodded.
“Know that in my heart, I desire you. Not because you are beautiful; not because you are wise; not because you are my wife. But because you are who you are. Know that a man feels the matters of his heart deeply. And it is a wise man who follows these longings. For the mind, like the body, can be a weak thing. But never the heart.”
The heart? She bit her bottom lip, as though the action might hold back a floodgate of emotion. For her own heart suddenly ached. She drew back from him, if only slightly, in order to gaze upon his countenance. “Then you trust your basic urges?”
“I trust my heart, not urges. There is a difference.”
She said, “Is there? I have been taught, and I do believe, that one should use one’s head, and think through matters of the heart. After all, what if one’s deepest longing is bad? What if one’s passions lead him to commit crimes against others? There are, after all, evil things that happen in the world—usually because someone desires something another might have.”
He shook his head. “Then that person has not been taught the difference between greed and an urge to succeed. You are confusing the two. They are only similar in that they can both be passionate. But they are not the same thing.”
Not the same thing?
“A man who is ambitious only goes bad when he does not realize that there is also life around him. Greed takes without giving, without allowing another to live also. But a tribe would be nothing if not for men of ambition. It is they who care for others, who ensure there is food for all, who hunt for all, ensure happiness for all. And so a woman, too, might be ambitious and might rise above those around her. But not by taking does she live well. Only by giving. So my people believe.”
Kali paused. It wasn’t what he’d said. It wasn’t whether or not the things he spoke of were true or false. The fact was, what he had related to her, and the way in which he’d spoken, were beautiful.
She uttered, “I didn’t know.” Raising her hand, she ran her fingertips gently over his cheek, delighting in the smooth texture of his skin beneath her touch. She continued, “I didn’t realize there was such compassion in your culture. The West, the Indian tribes, are not at all as I had expected. In truth, I had been led to believe that Indians were fierce and cruel, with little heart or human decency.”
“You have thought this?” He sounded incredulous. “You, who once told me that a person should not generalize about an entire people?”
“True. How true.”
“Perhaps, in my own defense, I might add that an Indian might show cruelty, as any man might.” He caught hold of her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing first her fingers, then her palm. “If you were fighting for your own, your family’s and your tribe’s way of life, so you, too, might be fierce.”
“Yes,” she said. “I might be.”
“Humph,” was all he said, his attention clearly not on their conversation but upon her, as his lips made a path to the pulse at her wrist.
“Where did you learn these things?” she asked, melting against him. “For you speak like a man who has lived to old age. And yet you are quite young.”
“My father is a very wise man.”
“Ah, yes, your father.” The man she had seen in vision. “Still,” she continued, “I can’t quite abolish the idea that a woman of quality should not be sensual, nor should she experience the more erotic side of life.”
“I would agree with you somewhat, for a woman’s reputation is easier to blemish than a man’s. But her reputation is not in danger when she is with her husband. After all, the pleasure between a man and a woman is not a bad thing.”
“Yet I have been led to believe that a marriage bed is not supposed to be a source of pleasure…not for a woman of quality.”
“Nonsense. Are you telling me that only a man is supposed to have fun?”
She laughed, the reaction one of pure instinct.
“No, sweet Kali. What we are doing is right. From the top of my head to the tip of my feet, I feel it is right. We are meant for each other.”
Meant for each other. Ah, she liked the sound of that.
“And this is, after all, our wedding night,” he said, bringing her hand to his chest and wrapping his fingers through her hair until he could position her face up close to his. “And, my dearest wife, you are my love.”
His love. She breathed out deeply.
“Can you say it back to me?”
“What?”
“Do you love me, too?”
A simple question; one that should have a simple answer. Yet it was far from elementary. At the suggestion, a thousand pulsating explosions swept through her. Did she love him?
Oddly, until this moment, the thought had not occurred to her, not in its entirety. Yes, she thought him handsome, wonderful and intriguing. But love?
“I… I…” She didn’t know what to say. “I barely know you.”
“And yet you know me well enough to stand here before me like this.”
“Yes, I do. I am, although perhaps I shouldn’t be,” she said, pressing her hands to his chest, trying to shove against him. The only thing she accomplished, however, was being pulled in closer. Continuing in the same vein, she said, “But I am only here with you like this because you have tricked me into going swimming with you.”
“Is that the only reason, my wife?”
Of course it wasn’t the only reason, but he assumed too much, asked too much of her too soon, and her barriers were still firmly in place.
“Stop calling me your wife,” she reprimanded softly, even though she had curled herself into his arms. “You know I don’t know whether to believe the things you tell me or not. A part of me wants to hold on to everything you’ve said and keep it dear to my heart. But another, more logical part begs me to remember that our dreams were a coincidence. That this was all it was. A mere coincidence.”
He shrugged. “Believe what you will. You are my wife.” As he held her there, he spread kisses along the length of her neck. “Do you feel it? There is something that binds us together, something spiritual.”
“Spiritual? Binding? What do you mean?”
“When we are like this, it is as though your presence adds to mine, gives me more. It is hard for me to tell you in words, for it is a feeling of space. It is even a little difficult for me to understand. For my wife, you do not take away from that which I am. I become more.”
Kali gulped. She might have said something, too, but she couldn’t. Her breath had caught; her throat constricted.
“And, my sweet, sweet Kali, I want you as a husband wants the one he loves. I promise you that I will give you all there is of me to give, if you will only take what I am offering.”
“I—I…” What did a woman say to a man like this? What did she say and still retain her own sense of identity? For she longed to take him in her arms, hold him, comfort him, unite with him.
She inhaled deeply, shutting her eyes. “I—I…”
Again she couldn’t voice a single word. It was impossible; the moment was too exquisite, too precious, too rare. And she forgot to think.
She breathed out slowly. What was happening to her? Where were all her well-thought-out plans? Because right now, there was nothing in her world, nothing in the whole scheme of things more important than Soaring Eagle, his love for her, her love for him.
Ah, yes, there it was at last. She loved him. Why had it taken her so long to realize it?
She opened her mouth as though she might voice the idea aloud, but the words never left her lips. Bending, he kissed her.