He laughed, and said, “You’re with me.”
And so they left their hiding place and walked slowly out to the herd, first stopping at the stallion for him and Walks-With-Spirits to renew their acquaintance. After that, they wandered at will among the wild horses, talking to them, even petting them, and none spooked, none ran away, none even tensed a muscle in fear—except for the babies, who frolicked away into the trees again when Cotannah slowly started toward them.
“This amazes me in one way and then, in another, it doesn’t surprise me at all,” she told Walks-With-Spirits. “Why should it? Any man who has a mountain lion and a coyote for traveling companions ought to be able to talk to wild horses.”
Everything they did that day amazed her, as did the next and the next. They explored the hills in the four directions from their camp, they saw deer and rabbits, squirrels and possums, every kind of wildlife that lived in the Nation, and they lay on their backs at night looking up at the sky while Walks-With-Spirits told her legends about stars that danced and boys who were sent from earth to visit the sun and moon.
Walks-With-Spirits came to dread the coming of darkness, though, and he began to pray for clouds or fog because no matter how many stories he told her or how many lessons she learned, they were never enough to distract Cotannah from her obsession. The special, brilliant star that she called “our star” remained fixed in the place where they’d first seen it, high in the sky to the southeast of their camp. One night after another, every night, they looked up and it was there.
“It’s going to give us a revelation,” she would tell him, turning to him with her face alight from within. “I tell you, Walks-With-Spirits, it’s going to show us how to save you.”
But no revelation came.
So he would take her in his arms and they would share the miracle of making the growing love between them a physical thing, a passionate thrill and a splendid comfort. And a triumphant victory.
Surely she was right, he would think, afterward, when he lay sated and exhausted, with her in his arms, with her sweet, sweaty cheek resting on his. This celebration of life had to be a victory over death.
Then he would realize that he was only repeating her thoughts and her worries in his mind, that he was forgetting that the bullets of the Lighthorse would not be killing him, but sending his spirit from this world into the next. It seemed like death, though, thinking that he’d be leaving Cotannah behind.
She was enchanting him, mesmerizing him, fascinating him, and it was all he could do to keep his mind on what he should teach her.
So, one afternoon in the middle of the week, while they were making their daily exploration of the river with its quiet pools and rocky waterfalls, he determined to fix both their minds on her lessons, on preparing her to live the rest of her life in this world without him. She was becoming far too accustomed to being with him, just as he was to being with her.
“Why do you think that we come to the water to say incantations?” he asked her.
He was stepping from rock to rock out in the middle of the river, where he could see through the clear water to watch the fish swimming by.
“For the same reason we come to the water to get a drink,” she said, very sure of herself, looking up at him from where she was wading at the edge of the river with her thin, soft breeches rolled up above her knees. “Because water is life.”
The afternoon sun fell across her face in streaks of light and shade, the red and yellow leaves behind her shone like ripe fruit on the trees. Her eyes gleamed huge and dark in her perfect face, her loose mass of black hair framed it like a picture. She had tucked an old shirt into the waistband of the breeches, explaining that both had belonged to her brother Cade when he was growing up, and she looked infinitely more appealing than ever. The sunshine outlined her lush breasts straining against the pale blue cotton, their fullness contrasting with her tiny waist.
His hands hurt, ached, to trace that sensuous curve.
A twisting torment of desire burned through him, fast and hot as a lightning strike. She saw it.
“I dare you,” she drawled, smiling at him across the chattering, rushing water of the river.
He smiled back at her. How could he not let her distract him from the lesson? A man would have to be carved of wood to resist her for a minute.
“To do what?”
She lifted her hands to the waistband of her breeches and slowly, slowly, began to unbutton them.
“Go swimming,” she said huskily. “Isn’t this a hot day?”
He began moving toward her, not even glancing down to see his stepping-stones, just feeling for them while his eyes feasted on her. She finished with the buttons and peeled the cloth down and down … she wore nothing beneath.
“You have no mercy,” he said, and he hardly recognized his own voice it was so gruff from wanting her.
But the wanting would wait. It would grow, no matter what either of them did or said. And the day was hot and tart and lighthearted and there wouldn’t be many more like it.
He held out his hand and she took it.
“You have no mercy,” he said, again. “And neither do I!”
He pulled her to him and jumped from the rock into the rushing middle of the river, laughing as she screamed and clasped him around the neck hard enough to strangle him, gathering her safe into his arms as they went under, her hair swirling upward in the water. When his toes hit bottom he pushed against it and sent them back up to break the surface.
“It’s too cold!” she cried, as soon as she could speak, beating her small fists on his shoulders, his back, any part of him that she could reach. “The water’s too cold!”
He was numb. Absolutely numb and desperate to get out of the wet clothing weighing him down. He was freezing, and he’d nearly frozen her. Whatever had possessed him?
“You wanted to go swimming,” he said, trying uselessly to keep his teeth from chattering as he lunged toward the bank and water shallow enough to keep his head above. “Didn’t … you?”
That made her attack him with even more energy and try to kick him with her legs locked around his waist. She had glued herself to him, it was a wonder he could even move.
But he forced his unfeeling feet over the rough bed of the river, began dragging them up and onto the next pile of rocks and gravel, heading toward the bank that now seemed miles away. Cotannah gasped some more air into her lungs and began pummeling him again.
“You knew how cold it was out there in the middle,” she yelled, but now she was laughing, too. “You knew it, and now you can know that I’m going to get you for this!”
Cold as he was, he was already beginning to feel heat from just holding her.
“O-oh, I never knew you were so mean,” she said, renewing her grip around his neck. “I never would have come out here with you if I’d known you were so mean.”
His feet stepped on more rocks, then on blessed ground. He held her tighter and began to run up the bank.
“Yes, you would,” he said. “You would have come with me no matter what, wouldn’t you now?”
They had reached the trees and the piles of leaves and needles beneath the limbs, leaves and needles heated all afternoon by the sun. He fell forward into a patch of full sunlight, rolling with her safe in his arms.
“Quick,” she said, the moment she’d landed on the dry earth, “off. Off with these clothes!”
He tore at the buttons of her shirt while she pulled at the tails of his, trying to get it away from his skin long enough to take it off over his head.
“Good thing you aren’t wearing skins,” she said, still gasping for each breath. “I’d never get them off you.”
“Yes,” he said, breathing hard, “yes.”
He tried, but he couldn’t say any more. She jerked his shirt off, and the sun hit his back.
“Hurry,” he said, giving up on trying to fumble the small buttons through the wet cloth of the buttonholes.
She wore nothing beneath
the shirt, either, and her breasts brushing against his fingers made them shake so he couldn’t make progress. Damn the thing! He grew hard wanting to cup them in Ms hands and suckle their hard tips even through the cloth, but she was shivering harder now as the wind hit her clothes.
He reached for the top of her breeches, still halfway down onto her hips where she’d rolled them when he pulled her into the river, and used both hands to peel them off her, down and down her long legs while he caressed her trembling body with his eyes.
“Now you,” she said, and flung her shirt off her arms and away. In the same motion she reached for his own soaking breeches.
“Yes,” he said again.
At last, his came off, too, with both of them working at them, and the sun bathed them in heat and she pressed her naked, trembling body to his once again and there was no more need for words anymore. The sun was nothing compared to the burning she created in him, even with her flesh still chilled from the river.
She wrapped her legs around his and her arms around his neck, burrowed into him as if she wanted to share his very skin. He stroked her back, her limbs, rubbed them with his hands until her skin felt warm again. Then he held her tighter, closer, and kissed her wet hair until she finally lifted her head and gave him her mouth.
Chapter 17
He fell on it as a starving man would fall on a meal, greedily and with no conscious thought, tasting her desperately, pulling the essence of her being into his own self like a life-giving drink. Then she was kissing him back, frantic herself, giving him her tongue and then demanding his, twining them together while her hands began stroking his skin.
Her hands were smooth, as he knew them to be, but this time they tore at his heart and ripped it apart, left it lying in two separate halves like an opened shell. But he couldn’t stop to consider. Not now.
Now, he had to have her, now all he could do was love her. He cupped her bottom in his hands, lifted her away from him and laid her down, hovered over her for just long enough to look into her eyes, into the beautiful brown depths of her eyes and see the love that was vibrating through him reflected there. He came into her with a keening cry meant to be the sound of her name. She took him in, closed around him hot and wet, clasped him in her arms and pulled him gloriously close.
Into a raging storm. Her spirit was hot and wild, her body was all curves and delicate bones beneath silk skin, his hands too slow, too few, to take it all in. Such hunger! How could he have such hunger and the feast of her mouth at the very same time, how could he have such wanting when she was giving him so much?
She was so slim, so supple, so lovely and she was his, only his.
His to learn, his to meld with and explore. His to move with to a drumbeat that only the two of them could hear, his to sing with to a heartsong that only the two of them would ever know.
Then she arched beneath him and trembled like a bowstring he had plucked. It aroused him beyond measure and he plunged into her harder, deeper. The storm came back on him, full force, a storm of crashing thunder and searing lightning, a lightning that lanced through his flesh and bones to reach his heart and leave a jagged trail across its charred and molten parts. Yet the last of the unbalance she had brought to his peace burned to ashes. His spirit melded with hers as his seed flowed into her body. He called out her name, a gladsome cry that echoed from the mountains.
For the longest time they lay in each other’s arms, sated, dazzled by love, dazed by its magic and the heat of the sun. The wind stirred near the earth and then lifted into the trees, swirled backward to caress their sweat-sheened skins and whisper legends of love in their ears.
“This is what the old men said when I was a boy,” Walks-With-Spirits said, repeating its message to Cotannah, “the Ancient One does not fail to make it known when a man should say to a woman, ‘You must think of me from your very soul as I think of you: truly you and I are set apart.’”
The moment the words left his lips he wished he could call them back.
Not because they weren’t true—never had he spoken a deeper truth—but because he couldn’t bear to see the fires of new hope that they would set to burning in her unguarded eyes. Which they did.
But she spoke with uncharacteristic quietness.
“We are,” she said, lifting her hand to touch his cheek, “set apart and bound together. Will you go away with me?”
“We are,” he mimicked gently, touching her face in return, “put on this earth to accomplish certain tasks. The Ancient One has brought us together so we can help each other know what our tasks are and do them.”
She only looked at him for a long, long time, with her fingertip tracing the shape of his face, looked at him with those great, dark eyes that were seeing all the way through him, now. But the passion to save his life was seething in her blood again, now that their time was growing so short. He could feel it running high and hard beneath her skin.
She must have been up long before him the next morning for when he woke, she had set coffee to brewing over the fire and she was creating a second invitingly delectable smell that was floating through the little valley. It drew him out of his sleeping bag although he wanted to lie there forever and watch her while she thought he still slept.
“Good morning, Cotannah,” he said, when he had pulled on his breeches. “What are you making?”
Her face lit like a lantern when she turned to him, smiling. His heart nearly stopped, then started up again with hard, pounding beats. He, himself, only himself—the sound and the sight of him—had put that light in her eyes!
“Good morning to you, Sleepy Shadow,” she said, teasing him with the huskiness in her voice. “I’m making chocolate fritters for your breakfast, so hurry and get washed up.”
He grabbed his shirt and headed straight for the river because he didn’t trust himself to go any closer, much less to touch her. If he did, they would never get to breakfast before noon and she seemed very serious about her creation. Chocolate fritters! Whoever heard of such a thing?
And that was exactly why, although it was only one of a thousand reasons why, he could not bear to think about leaving her. She was an elemental force, like the land and the always-shifting, sometimes violent weather here in the New Nation: he never knew what she would do, and so he was fascinated with her all the time.
He did allow himself one quick kiss when he returned to the fire and she returned it enthusiastically but she was most involved with her cooking for him.
“Now, sit right here and let me serve you your surprise,” she said. “I made this recipe up all by myself.”
“I didn’t know you could cook … at least, not original concoctions.”
He kept a solemn face and put sufficient wonder in his voice but he didn’t get a rise from her—she knew he was teasing her, she knew him too well by now.
“No need to insult my past efforts,” she said, with a grin. “In fact, you’d better not because this is so delicious you’ll be begging for more, and if my feelings are hurt too much I can’t make them.”
Obediently, he sat down opposite her, crossed his legs, and accepted the plate she gave him. It held long pieces of thin, rolled up dough, crisp around the edges, sprinkled with chocolate and sugar.
“Hold it still,” she said, and held a tin dipper over the plate to drizzle a thick chocolate sauce, which gave off more of that heavenly smell, onto his fritters.
“It’s butter and chocolate and sugar filling the dough and chocolate and butter and my own secret spices in the sauce,” she said. “You gave me the spirit gift of talking with the horses, so this is an earthiness gift from me to you. I want to show you how to please the body in other ways beyond making love.”
He pretended great surprise, then hung his head in an extremely exaggerated mock disappointment.
“We’ve moved beyond making love! Surely not, why I … I don’t know if even chocolate can compensate me for that …”
Then he seemed to recover, gave her a big smile.
“Yet, on second thought, I think it can,” he said. “That smells absolutely delicious.”
“Don’t ever say that,” she warned, “or I’ll take your plate back and you’ll never know how wonderful it tastes!”
They laughed together, then, and she fixed a plate for herself, and they ate, groaning and exclaiming with pleasure, until the fritters were all gone and the only sauce left was what was left in the dipper. She scraped some out with her finger and held it out to him.
He kissed her fingertip and then closed his lips around it, holding her eyes with his while he sucked the last of the delicious, thick chocolate onto his tongue. She held still for one moment longer than necessary, then brought it to her own mouth.
“The taste of you is like the chocolate,” she said, “a burning, bitter sweetness that permeates my soul.”
“Ah, Cotannah …”
And so he had to make love to her again, there in the glittering wind of the autumn morning, because he could not contain his joy.
The bright star shone steady in its place again that night. Cotannah touched his arm and motioned for him to look as soon as the dark came deep enough to see it.
“This is what the old women said when I was a girl,” she said, “ ‘Truth is a bright star.’”
“I believe that,” he told her, assuringly. “It is our star. And it is truth. But maybe it is telling us that we’re together just for here, just for this time. I will love you with all my heart, forever. But every day, everything around us changes, even stars, my holitopa.”
She looked down and picked at the bedroll they sat on, cross-legged.
“I know,” she said, and the soft sadness in her came to lodge in a hard lump beneath his breastbone, “and this time together with you, here, has changed me. It’ll sustain me. It’s more than most people have in a whole lifetime, and if I have no choice, I’ll make it be enough.”
Cotannah couldn’t believe she’d said that and meant it at the time. A heartbeat later, she was wild to wrap him into her arms and hold on to him forever, screaming that she could never let him go. But yet she could, that peace really was there, like a rock to cling to deep inside, the peace that being alone here with him had brought her. The focus on what was really important, what would last a person for a whole, long life. That was the real spirit gift he had given her.
After the Thunder Page 28