by Vella Munn
What brought the eagle back to mind she couldn’t say. Maybe because on a subconscious level she’d been asking herself how far the Modocs had come from their prehistoric beliefs. Surely they’d no longer perceived eagles and other creatures as gods.
There was, she admitted, a fine line to be walked between giving primitive people’s beliefs the respect they deserved and not laughing over the notion of coyotes who told tall tales, snakes that were thought to be immortal because they shed their skins, warning children not to harm a frog for fear of causing the closest stream to dry up. Despite six years of studying and working with Dr. Grossnickle, she’d been unable to determine to her satisfaction what had given birth to such legends. Certainly she understood early people’s need to make order out of the uncertainties of their lives, but talking animals or the belief that the Modoc creator went around disguised as an old crone… Well, to each his own. She’d talk the talk; she knew she had to do that if she intended to keep her job. But beyond that…well, let’s get real.
Still, she admitted as she moved on to the next marker, there was something about standing on the actual land in question that made logic and professional dispassion a little hard to hold on to. Thinking of everything the Modocs had lost, she stared at the magnificent nothingness of land that stretched out around her. Except for the trail and occasional markings, the stronghold hadn’t changed.
That’s why she’d come out here before visitors started arriving, so she could more easily capture the essence of that earlier time. She began walking again, a slow gait that hopefully diminished the likelihood of losing her footing. Although it took some doing, she managed to read a little more from the brochure. She was surprised to learn that the naturally fortified stronghold itself was little more than a half mile in diameter. The land for as far as she could see was so awesomely vast and rugged that where the Modocs had entrenched themselves seemed larger than it really was. Back then, Tule Lake had dominated the area to the north while most of the south was barren volcanic rock. The chance of sneaking up on the Modocs—
A sound overhead caused her to again stare at the sky. She spotted what she thought must be the same eagle silhouetted against the blueing sky, but this time it was far enough away that she didn’t feel uneasy. “What do you see up there?” she asked. “Are your eyes keen enough that you can spot the Golden Gate Bridge?”
Looking as if it weighed no more than a feather, the great bird dipped one wing. Sunlight caught the tip and gave her an impression of glistening black. “Forget the Golden Gate. You don’t want to get any closer to civilization than this. And if you stay up there, the two of us are going to get along just fine.”
As if taking her suggestion to heart, the bird floated away. When she looked around, thinking to reorient herself, the stronghold seemed to have lost a little of its definition. It was, she thought, as if night had decided to return. After blinking a few times, she dispelled that possibility, but the wind had picked up and the sound it made coated her thoughts, allowed her to dismiss everything she’d experienced in her life before this moment.
Not only that, she could almost swear she was no longer alone.
There was such a thing as too much solitude, Tory told herself a half hour later. You’d think that a person who could see so far that she was aware of the earth’s curve wouldn’t be looking over her shoulder.
Only, it wasn’t just the aloneness, and she knew it, damn it. Something—someone—was watching her. It could be the eagle, a rabbit, maybe even one of the antelope she understood made their home in the park.
“Say,” she whispered because she didn’t want to disturb the lizard staring at her from a rock. “Whoever you are, I don’t suppose you brought some coffee with you, did you?”
Silence, but then she didn’t really expect any different.
According to the pamphlet, she should be approaching one of the dance rings the Modocs had used during their shamanistic rituals, but because she’d veered off the trail while seeking the best vantage point to study Captain Jack’s wide, shallow cave, it took a little while to orient herself. She’d been right; it was going to be a clean day. Clean and clear and utterly beautiful in the way of a sky unspoiled by pollution. Just the same, she couldn’t help but be a little uneasy.
Grass grew between the large rocks that had been placed in a crude circle over a hundred and twenty years ago. She tried to imagine what the spot looked and sounded like back when the shaman—Curly Headed Doctor, the pamphlet said—strung red rope around the stronghold and then sang and danced through the night to ensure that his magic remain powerful.
A red rope to hold back an army. How simplistic. She’d seen a picture of the shaman and had been surprised by how young and untested he appeared, but apparently most, if not all, of the tribe had believed in him—at least they had until the army trampled his rope.
She sat on one of the rocks and faced into the center. If there’d been someone beside her, their shoulders would have touched, and she didn’t see how there would have been enough room for dancing in the middle if every rock had had an occupant. An incredible bond must have been forged here. All right, there’d been political squabbling, conflicts between Captain Jack and some of the more militant rebels, but on a cold yet peaceful night, surely the leaders had come here with a singleness of thought, a shared dream for freedom.
She rocked forward and rested her elbows on her knees, eyes closed to slits that blurred her vision and freed her from the question of who or what shared this place with her. To belong, to be part of a large clan, to put aside petty differences in order to survive, to have learned the necessity of depending on one another…
How long she’d been sitting here she couldn’t say. She didn’t think it had been more than a couple of minutes, and yet she was surprised by how quickly she’d gone from wondering if she should have brought along a can of Mace to losing herself in sensation.
She was suddenly restless, so uneasy with herself that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to conquer the emotion. It came at her more and more often these days—quiet and yet, rough questions about where her life was heading. She’d felt like that sometimes back in high school when warm spring nights and loud music and a grin from a boy sent her heart spinning out of control. She’d weathered those adolescent emotions, smothered them under work goals and ambition and the excitement of knowing that she and Dr. Grossnickle and the university that employed them were on the brink of the anthropological find of three decades. Colleagues, the press, even the bureaucrats and legal types she’d been butting heads with over excavation rights assumed she spent every waking moment immersed in exploring this primitive civilization.
What they didn’t know about was the search, a goal—or something—she couldn’t define.
She needed hard-driving music, to be behind the wheel of a speeding convertible with the wind screaming through her hair. She needed—all right, she needed a man to quiet her body.
After sucking one lungful of air after another into her, she managed to conquer the worst of her energy, but she knew it would only erupt again unless she started moving. Standing, she reached for the brochure, thinking to continue the history lesson. Then she froze.
There was someone out there—a man. Naked but for a loincloth. He clutched a gleaming black knife in strong fingers, and yet she couldn’t make herself concentrate on the weapon.
A savage. Savage.
The word slid inside her, solid and yet misty like a vivid dream that fades upon awakening. But this was no dream.
She stepped over the rock, freeing herself from the dance ring’s confinement, not so she could run, but because—
Because her legs had decided to walk toward him.
He didn’t move; she would swear to that. And yet he kept changing. It was, she finally decided, the way the sun greeted him, lent light to his dark flesh and made his ebony hair glisten. She couldn’t say how old he was; he stood too far away for her to make out his features. Still, if the
truth was in his broad shoulders, the flat plane of his belly, the proud way he held his head, he was a man in his prime.
Prime. Savage. Warrior.
There wasn’t enough air at The Land Of Burned Out Fires. If he’d stolen it, she would soon have to demand he return it to her, but maybe—probably—the fault lay in her.
This wonderfully lonely land had remained locked in the past. She didn’t care why that was, didn’t care whether she ever left it. Somehow—although it was impossible—she’d found a primitive brave, and he was staring at her, and the space between them had become charged.
She moved closer, a skill so complex that it should have been beyond her, because her need to touch him, to look into his eyes, to feel his hands on her, was like an explosion inside her. She should say something, ask him to explain the impossible, but if she spoke, he might evaporate, and she needed to stretch out this moment, enlarge it until it became enough to last a lifetime.
One step, two, three, and still he remained. She could now see that he had a small scar over his right shoulder blade and the fine hairs on his arms and legs were as dark as the back of Captain Jack’s cave. His thighs—the loincloth exposed every inch of them—looked as strong and durable as the lava that dominated the land. Those legs could, she knew, lock a woman between them.
They could take her places only imagined before, awaken a gnawing beast of hunger that could only be filled by passion—raw and unadorned passion.
The air was gone again. She had to fight to breathe. The effort did something to her, snapped something deep inside and reminded her of who and where she was.
This man couldn’t be. He couldn’t!
Chapter 2
Eyes narrowed against the sun, the warrior watched the woman race for her wagon, her car. The urge to bury the ancient knife in her and avenge what she’d done to him was powerful, and yet, now that he’d seen her up close, looked into her eyes, anger and rage had to share space with another emotion.
She’d returned. He wanted to grab her and insist she tell him why. Most of all he’d demand to know whether her presence was what had awakened him.
Belly empty, he cast around for a rabbit or other small animal, but even as he thought he detected a furtive movement, his attention returned to the woman. She’d reached her car, and although she was too far away for him to see anything of her expression, her body language told him a great deal.
She was afraid of him. Even though he was no longer near her, she continued to carry herself as if fear rode deep and full and low inside her. She might call others of her kind to her. If she did, they’d hunt him with powerful weapons and his blood would join that of his ancestors who’d died here. But he didn’t see that as something to avoid. Death, maybe, would bring him the peace he’d known as a small child.
Once again he tried to put his thoughts to finding something to eat before the strangers started swarming over what had once had been his land, but she hadn’t yet left in the fast, loud wagon he’d heard her kind call a car. Until she had, all he could do was watch. She’d stopped running, but probably only because she’d become winded. She now walked as fast as she could, an awkward and jerky movement that used much more energy than it would have if she moved with her hips.
What did he care! Let her break her leg on the ungiving rocks. If she did, the green-clad men and women who were today’s soldiers would come and bear her away. Except then she’d tell them what had made her run, and his uneasy peace would be shattered.
She’d reached her car. It took her a long time to open the door, and he guessed her fingers shook so that the task was nearly impossible. It was too late to bury his knife in her back and silence her. She’d gotten away!
A sound like a bear’s deep growl escaped his throat. Turning his back on her, he stepped around the dance ring and stood where she’d been just before she ran. What fools the strangers were! Those who didn’t laugh and whoop like stupid children, walked slowly, reverently around it. At first he’d been mystified by their actions but finally he’d decided that they must think this weed-clogged circle of rocks was something to be revered. It had been, once. But the enemy had defiled it with their presence and Cho-ocks’s magic had long ago left.
Left like everything of his time except for him.
Another growl threatened to break free, but knowing it would only tear through him like what he’d felt at his son’s death, he stifled the sound. Looking down, he imagined the exact spot where the woman had placed her boots.
She was responsible! She had brought him to this time he didn’t want, where he didn’t belong! Thinking to grind her prints into nothing, he lifted his foot, but before he could lower it, something on a nearby bush caught his attention. It was a single hair, long and rich, the dark color of a wolf in his prime. Freeing it from the bush, he held it between thumb and forefinger. Despite his roughened fingertips, what he felt reminded him of goose down. The hair belonged to the enemy-woman. In the hands of a powerful shaman, it could be used to bring sickness and maybe death to whoever it belonged to.
He’d been wrong to do nothing but follow a warrior’s way. Cho-ocks had been willing to teach him his shaman’s magic. He should have stilled his impatience and anger against the enemy and listened and learned. If he had, he could…
Soft. Soft as the down on a newborn chick. Touched with light from the sun. He brought the hair close to his nose and inhaled, but couldn’t smell anything. His need to understand what had happened to his world had brought him close to a number of women, always without their knowledge. He hated the way they smelled, their scents so strong that they overpowered the sage even. But this woman hadn’t covered her body with anything that assaulted his nostrils, and he liked that.
Enemy-woman.
She had a name. And she would tell him what spell she’d cast over him. Once he understood, he would…
Eyes big and dark. A soft and gentle mouth. Long, strong arms and legs. Slender waist and hips that flared to accommodate a child placed within her. Hips and breasts made to taunt a man. To remind him of how long he’d slept alone.
Breathing more rapidly than she should have a need to, Tory sped around yet another turn. The landscape whipped behind her on both sides, but although she’d come out here for the express purpose of observing the land before she had to share it with other visitors, she couldn’t put her mind to concentrating on it.
She’d seen—what? A Modoc warrior? She’d been asking herself the same stupid question for the past fifteen minutes until she was sick to death of it. Unfortunately, she still hadn’t come up with an answer. At least now that she was no longer staring into eyes as dark as night, the stark and unreasoning fear that had sent her running had begun to fade.
It must be some kind of joke.
Slamming her fist into the steering wheel, she again ordered the stupid words to stop ramming around inside her. Hand stinging, she again tried to find a logical explanation. Unfortunately, as before, her mind didn’t want anything to do with logic.
He’d looked so innately primitive, not at all like those so-called savages Hollywood slapped makeup on. She’d never been able to watch Westerns because the Indians looked so phony. Yes, she supposed that a lot of them actually were Native Americans, but they hadn’t belonged in the wilderness they’d been thrust into for the sake of the movie. Despite war paint and bows and arrows and little more than loincloths, there’d been something self-conscious about the way they presented themselves.
This man, this warrior, was as natural a part of his rugged environment as the eagle had been. That was what she couldn’t forget. That, and something in those ebony eyes that had found and ignited a part of her she hadn’t known existed.
A park-service vehicle coming from the opposite direction shocked her back to the here and now and away from absolutely insane images of herself willingly following the Indian back to wherever he’d come from. She thought about trying to flag the park employee down, but what would she say? That she�
�d had a hallucination about a nearly naked, absolute hunk of a man and wanted to know if it was a common occurrence around here?
There must be some kind of an explanation, logical and practical, so clear-cut that she’d be embarrassed for not having thought of it before.
Yeah, right.
After traveling another ten miles, she reached park headquarters, only then realizing what she’d done. She’d intended to spend the day poking around the lava beds. Instead, tail tucked between her legs, she’d hightailed it for civilization. Angry with herself and yet unable to come up with the fortitude necessary for turning around and going back the way she’d come, she eased her vehicle into one of the parking slots. The rustic cabin she’d rented was not quite a mile away, isolated but accessible via a well-maintained footpath. It came equipped with a two-way radio to be used in case of an emergency.
Some of the park personnel lived here year-round. While wandering around at dusk last night, she’d happened upon the paved road leading from headquarters to the small collection of houses within shouting distance of where she now sat. Although she hadn’t stayed around the residential area because she didn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy, she remembered seeing a couple of satellite dishes. Two girls riding bikes had waved at her, and when she’d asked them, they explained that they went to school in the town of Tulelake, which was “only” thirty miles away. They were on their way to the nearby campground to see if there were any kids their age staying there tonight. The girls were friendly and eager to talk; they’d argued with each other over whether they’d want to stay at the campground or where she was. One had always wanted to spend a night at the cabin. The other wasn’t interested because it didn’t have a TV or electricity and what would she do once it got dark.
Tory hadn’t bothered to tell them that once she got to the Oregon coast, she expected to spend months camping out without electricity. Because it hadn’t been the first time, she hadn’t had any trouble falling asleep last night with nothing except coyotes and owls to keep her company. Tonight, however—