His smile faded. “I lost you.”
“Okay. Here it is. The Cherokee believe that when you are a cougar, you are climbing to a higher place in your life. You are changing, becoming stronger in your heart.”
He didn’t speak for a moment, letting her words stew a bit before he tasted them. They felt eerily real.
For so many years, Jesse had cried in his sleep, cowered in panic, hid from his father’s wrath. He’d been so young, for God’s sake. He hadn’t understood. He’d witnessed his father’s crimes, and he’d known Thomas was a very bad man. But no one else appeared to see Thomas in that light. They all looked up to him, vied for his attention, did his bidding without question.
Despite Thomas’s apparent intentions, Jesse had grown into a man. And while he didn’t try to kid himself into thinking he was a particularly good man, he felt pretty confident that he was a better one than Thomas. He took his beatings when he had no other choice, but he also challenged his father on occasion. He even led a separate life by going to visit Doc. He learned about the world, and he learned about himself. He’d grown from being a helpless victim of his father’s madness to being an independent man who knew right from wrong.
Changing? Growing stronger in his heart? Yeah. That was safe to say. Kind of an interesting coincidence, that cougar connection.
She had stopped talking and now watched her fingers as they drew circles on her skirt. She looked anxious, as if she was unsure if she should have said anything. She was a nervous little filly, half-broke, needing a gentle hand.
“And what kind of animal are you?” he asked.
She blushed, still looking down. “I don’t know.”
“I kind of see you as a mouse.”
She glanced at him, her expression torn between amusement and disappointment. “A mouse? Why, no one likes mice.”
“Oh, that’s not what I meant. Do folks like cougars? No. I was only saying you’re small and timid. Kind of nervous.”
That seemed to reassure her. She nodded a little. “I guess so. I’d rather not be a mouse, though.”
“You’d like to be a cougar?”
“No, not quite.” She sighed. “I know I deserve to be called a mouse, but if I could change, it would be something a little braver. Maybe that’ll come with time.”
“What’s got you so scared, little mouse?” he asked, then bit his tongue. He should have kept his big mouth shut, waited a little longer, because those pale blue eyes stopped twinkling, stopped smiling. It was as if a door slammed shut in her mind.
I’d like to kill the son of a bitch that hurt her.
She looked away. “It’s nothing. I’ve always been that way. My sister’s the brave one.” Her gaze dropped back to her hands, clasped on her lap, and she looked very young indeed. “But I need to get stronger. I will. I can’t hide behind other people my whole life.”
He couldn’t stop his hand from reaching over and settling on top of hers. It just seemed so natural. “You don’t have to be scared. I’m here.”
She froze at his touch, but he was encouraged when she didn’t pull away. Very gently, he squeezed her hand, then pulled his own away again. He suddenly wanted very badly to know her better, to be there for her. He’d meant what he said. He’d watch out for her as long as he was there. He’d take care of her. She didn’t move, but some of the colour had started to flow back into her cheeks, the brightness into her eyes. It was like watching spring come into bloom, and something about that made his breath hitch in his chest. He wanted to lean over, touch that angelic face, kiss her. But he fought the urge. What was he thinking? This wasn’t the time to fall for a girl. Besides, how would the Cherokee react to his taking an interest in one of their own—even if she was white?
Then again, like she’d said, the cougar in him was always up for a challenge. When she finally looked fully at him and shyly smiled, he stopped worrying. He reckoned he was more than ready to stand up for Adelaide.
CHAPTER 17
The Hunt
Time changed Jesse. Life changed him. Forced to spend the past few months with his sworn enemy, learning their ways, following their rules. That had been interesting, to say the least. He had fought it with everything he had in the beginning, refused to give their ideas even a ghost of a chance in his mind. He still hated that he had no choice. That he was stuck in this in-between life of prisoner and adopted brother. But he’d found less resistance in his soul as he went along, saw glimmers of insight that made him reconsider not them, but himself.
Adelaide had started that, pointing out that his arguments were ridiculous, based on nothing but old stories told to him by an ignorant man. Thomas would have been livid, hearing himself described that way. What right did this insignificant woman have to judge him? Jesse’d felt that way in the beginning, then realized with a start that she had every right. She’d lived both sides. She’d probably fought the same changes he was fighting, though maybe with a little less fire.
Over time, Jesse began to listen, to learn, to appreciate the way the Cherokee lived. All his life, he’d been taught that he and the Indians were completely separate creatures. He was on the good side; they were unquestionably and infinitely bad. At first he’d stared at them from the edge of the circle, dumbstruck at their craziness. Their wailing, shrieking songs made his head ache, and when they stomped around fires, waving their sticks and stones, beating drums until it made a man want to run, well, he just didn’t understand it.
But after a while, after he’d accepted that he was going to have to put up with it, he’d taken a deep breath and stepped inside that circle. He’d learned the tales their dances told, studied the passion that consumed their painted faces as they spun and thumped worn moccasins on the dirt. He managed to loosen the knots that tied his tongue when he tried to speak their language. And on the night that he rose with Soquili and joined the dance, letting colours and emotions swirl through his mind and body, his life changed.
At first, he was self-conscious, painfully aware of how fluidly they moved and how his jerky, amateur attempts to move made him look like a wooden soldier. Then he looked around and realized no one was watching him. He closed his eyes like Adelaide had advised, stood still in the middle of them all, and let their wildness sweep through him. He began to sway, to shuffle his feet, and when the hair rose on the back of his neck, he didn’t fight the sensation. As he sweated alongside the shining, copper-skinned men, following their lead, letting the noise wash through him, something—some energy, some strength, some spirit, call it what you want—rose from within the flames. It plunged deep within him, grasped the pain he’d carried for so long, and yanked it loose. The flames of the huge fire around which they all danced reflected the rage as it took ahold of him, and he let his body express the hatred, the grief, the loss he’d never truly acknowledged before. He lost track of where he was, what he was doing. It was Soquili who led him from the circle and left him in a quiet place where he could weep with bewildered relief.
All the wrongs he’d seen and done seemed suddenly forgiven. These people had brought him into their family despite his stubborn refusals. They’d shown him he was accepted. More than that, though, they’d shown him he was wanted. These people he’d hated with everything he had became his family, and he decided to stay.
Soquili came for him the next morning, ready for the hunt. They gathered with the half dozen others who were all talking loudly, gesturing, clearly excited to be on their way. Jesse’s first impulse was always to shout back, to answer their unintelligible yammering with a sharp retort of his own language, but after the first time, he realized doing that wasn’t going to get him much more than another fat lip. His Cherokee was nowhere near good, but Adelaide was teaching him. Trying to, anyway. They made understanding it easier through their constant hand movements, gestures that spoke almost as clearly as words. It was easier speaking than listening, but he was working on that. He ha
d to. He couldn’t stand not knowing what people were saying around him. The fact that they might be—and probably were—discussing him and his shortcomings frustrated him to the point where he’d decided he should at least try to learn the savage tongue. When the Cherokee spoke slowly, he could take the words apart in his head, see them one at a time. When he got lucky, he could stick them back together so they made sense. That meant that every time they said anything, there was a pause before he answered, but at least he got it right some of the time. And he seemed to have made enough friends that by now they only teased him for making mistakes, didn’t beat him over the head with something for doing it.
It was humid and hot as hell in the forest. The leaves practically dripped with sweat. Jesse felt it trickle down his back and wondered how close they were to the river. He sure would appreciate a sloshing of cold water on his face and a drink to soothe the aching in his throat. They’d followed a game trail deep into the forest, then stopped close enough to the water that the animals would have to come this way sooner or later.
When they reached their first hunting spot in the woods, he squatted beside Soquili, daydreaming about the river while the others muttered in quick Cherokee. He didn’t bother trying to interpret when they did that; they knew they could say just about anything around him if they said it quickly. He didn’t care. As long as they weren’t plotting to kill him, he was all right with missing some of their jokes—even if those jokes were about him, which he was sure most of them were. Now they were laughing in that way they had, low and strange, like they didn’t want the creatures of the forest to know what the sound was.
These boys were all right, but he wouldn’t have chosen them as friends, let alone brothers. Unpredictable sons of bitches. Your best buddies one minute, knife in your gut the next. Jesse was not looking forward to the day when they asked him to come on a raid with them.
It didn’t take the snap of a branch underfoot to alert them to their prey. Something in the air must have told them, because the Cherokee stiffened around Jesse before he even heard a sound, then they kind of melted. Like snow on spring grass, only faster. That’s how he saw it, anyway. Like their bones and muscles and skin took on the shape and feel of the forest around them. He had to admire that in them. That and the fact that they had an uncanny ability to always be downwind. They belonged here in the trees. Jesse was trying to learn those skills, but he still felt . . . white. He knew his blond hair was a giveaway, but when Adelaide had braided one dark feather into it the other day, he tried to convince himself he blended a little better.
Adelaide. That was the closest they’d gotten so far, her doing that with his hair. He found himself always trying to make her smile these days, wanting to explore the warm currents flowing beneath her icy façade. Sometimes those blue eyes flickered and he saw the life within, and he thought—or maybe only hoped—that was happening more often lately. But when she was lost in sadness, when her memories took her away from him, those eyes were almost translucent, a blue colder than any winter sky.
Soquili shifted beside him, a subtle, sliding turn of his broad chest toward the hidden path. Jesse peered into the dark, knowing what he was looking for, waiting for the shadow of something that hadn’t been there a moment before. Something that belonged, but didn’t. Kind of like these Indians. He frowned, staring harder. Then Soquili’s breath came out in a long, nearly silent whistle, and Jesse saw the deer. A large buck, judging from the flicker of an ear by the ground. Jesse narrowed his eyes and watched the animal mouth at the grass with soft black lips, then jerk his head up at a suggestion of danger.
The Cherokee didn’t move. Jesse didn’t even breathe. The buck stepped onto the path, long legs at once tentative but strong. Yes, he was big. Older, too, with faded scars cutting across one side of his face. Probably about ten years old. His fur didn’t look too shiny, but that could have just been shadows camouflaging his tawny coat. A second leg followed, then he moved with more confidence, encouraged by the familiar sight of the trail to the river he’d undoubtedly followed for every one of those years.
Jesse’s eyes slid toward the river, and he noticed the Cherokee had all adapted, their forms moulded to the curved veins of leaves, to the indifferent bark of the trees. And their arrows had been silently nocked.
The buck was downed with one shot. The turkey-feathered arrow protruded from just behind the foreleg in what was, as usual, a clean heart shot. Jesse knew the importance of that shot. If it wasn’t a mortal shot, the animal could run, bleeding out slowly, leading his trackers for miles. Because of their skill, the Cherokee rarely had to go far.
Jesse had tried to contest the fact that these men were superior hunters to him but had eventually, grudgingly, given up. They’d taught him how to work a blowgun for hunting small game like rabbits and quail, and though the crowd had enjoyed a few guffaws at his expense, Jesse had declared the lessons worthwhile. He’d seen the craftsmen in the village making the weapons: drying river cane for the darts, then holding it over an open fire so it would bend and straighten over their knees. They smoothed the joints inside the cane with a piece of rough metal attached to a stick, then cut the tube into eight-foot lengths. They seemed ridiculously long and awkward, and Jesse had doubted, at first, he’d be able to master the strange weapon. The men laughed and shook their heads when he toppled over from dizziness after trying to blow the foot-long dart through the tube. But when he struck his first rabbit, he didn’t bother to contain a hoot of victory.
Hunting with the Cherokee was quite an ordeal. The first time he’d witnessed the preparations, Jesse had stared, openmouthed, as the warriors went through the routine. It was even more extreme when they were hunting for a major festival, which Jesse assumed this was. The whole process began about seven days before they even headed into the forest, and included a whole bunch of fasting, sitting in the sweating tent, and throwing up, before they finally bathed in the river and headed out with the garbling priest’s blessing. One thing about the whole ordeal really bothered Jesse. It was what they did to the first deer they shot. After gathering around the carcass and singing some thank-yous to the gods, they skinned the animal, cut it up, then laid the meat over a fire . . . and burned it. Just burned it. No eating, just burning and watching. They stared at the meat, watching when the fat popped. If it popped to the east, that meant the hunting would go well. If it popped to the west, there was a unanimous sigh of disappointment.
Just plain old strange was what that was. Jesse’d tried to point out that if the hunt didn’t go well, at least they’d still have the one deer if they didn’t just go burning it, but the hunters paid no attention to the raving white man. After all the preceding fasting, Jesse’s stomach could be heard over the fire, and he fairly drooled, smelling that meat crackling over the fire. But he could do nothing about it.
Fortunately, this wasn’t the only kill of the day, and the first poor buck had popped to the east. So everyone was feeling confident. Jesse thanked his lucky stars. At least they’d eat that night.
Hunts went on for days, with a lot of wandering through the woods, then trooping through long stretches of grassy areas. It was easy going on the way there, but a long, thirsty route when they returned, carrying the village’s meals on their shoulders.
When they finally returned to the village, they were met by a greeting like nothing Jesse’d ever experienced before. The women and children flocked to the hunters, jumping around them, laughing and embracing them. Naked children bounced around them like nymphs in Doc’s mythology books, relieving the hunters of quail, rabbits, squirrels, whatever their little hands could hold. The men puffed their chests and held in their smiles, trying not to let the women see how pleased they were to receive such a welcome.
Jesse watched one woman reach her husband, convince him to set his prize aside and instead gather her into his exhausted arms. She brought her round, beaming face to his and said something through quick-moving lip
s—something Jesse had a feeling he could never interpret, and figured he’d be embarrassed if he tried. It felt intrusive to even look. The hunter didn’t see anything but her. When they kissed, Jesse looked away.
He was surprised to meet the quiet eyes of another female when he turned his head. Adelaide’s blue gaze was such a contrast to the black-brown eyes with which he’d spent the last week that it took him back a moment. She stood quietly a few feet away, watching him, so he seized the moment and walked right to her. Why put things off when they could be done right then?
His mind still on the reunion he’d just witnessed, Jesse threw caution to the wind. He dropped the deer from his shoulders and seized the solid curve of Adelaide’s waist in his hands, loving the way her eyes flew open at the contact. She was apparently too surprised to react, so he bent to her level and kissed her lips. So soft. Jesse had dreamed about those lips, knew they’d be soft, but had no idea just how soft.
But those lips stiffened, and she twisted her beautiful body out of his grasp, just as slippery as that damn cat of his. Then she slapped his cheek. Hard. That was one reaction he hadn’t foreseen, though he probably should have. This was the first time Jesse had ever been slapped by a girl. Being the handsome golden boy he knew himself to be, he had always known the right moment to approach a woman and get exactly what he wanted. Up until now, anyway. Maybe he was out of practice. Maybe if he just tried again . . .
He reached for her, but stopped, seeing tears crest. Her fingers came to her lips like a shield, and she shook. She actually shook.
“Hey,” he tried, stretching out a hand to help. She shook her head, her chin trembling, and took a couple of steps backward. Then she turned and ran, leaving him alone with the dead deer.
Another slap, this time much heavier, landed on his shoulder as Soquili came up beside him. The man wore a strange expression of amusement and sympathy.
Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) Page 11