Nakoa's Woman (11 page)

“He should set her free!”

“How? Where would he take her?”

“To the Nez Perces! They trade with the white man.”

“But they are our enemies!”

“It makes no difference.”

She walked indignantly ahead of him, her head held high. Grinning to himself, he followed her all of the way through the village, from the outer tipis to the inner circle of the high chiefs, and everywhere they walked, women stopped working and stared in astonishment at a brave carrying a woman’s wood. They came finally to Apeecheken who stood wordlessly at the door of her lodge. Never had she seen her little sister so haughty. When Apikunni handed Anatsa the wood, she refused to touch it, dropping it disdainfully at his feet. She then went inside, and Apikunni looked after her, still smiling. “The little flower has thorns,” he said, and rode his horse away.

Apeecheken angrily flung open the doorflap. “Now what is this? Is this what the Mutsik is to do for us now—carry a woman’s wood? What would he have done if he had met Crow, defended you with a serviceberry twig?”

The next morning Apeecheken became violently ill. She began to vomit and did not stop. She grew so weak that she could not leave the tipi. Isokinuhkin was sent for and said that she would lose her baby. Onesta would not leave his lodge, but sat outside of it, his face drawn and suffering. “I am afraid she will die,” he told Anatsa. “If she can not eat, the baby will die, and when a woman’s baby dies within her she dies too.”

Anatsa stirred food she was cooking for Onesta and Mikapi.

“She has to have food,” Onesta said despairingly.

“I have boiled her beard tongue, and gray leaves and apoksikim. The only thing left that could make her eat is otsqueeina. The berries are ripe now, but they are in the mountains.”

“Does not Isokinuhkin have the berries?”

“No. I have asked him. No woman in the village has any either.”

“Do you know where they are in the mountains?”

“Yes. I have gathered them with the women.”

“Then you will ride to the mountains today. One of the Mutsik can go with you. I will go to tell Natosin.” Onesta left, and Anatsa and Mikapi ate hurriedly and in silence. From the inside of the lodge came the sound of Apeecheken’s vomiting.

“Anatsa.” Apeecheken called weakly, and Anatsa went to her.

“I would like water,” Apeecheken said, wiping her face. Anatsa held her head and helped her drink. She heard Onesta’s voice, and the sound of the Mutsik who was already waiting for her.

“I am going to the mountains to get you otsqueeina,” she said to her sister. “You will eat by tomorrow.”

Apeecheken lay back on her couch exhausted. The Mutsik was talking to Onesta now, his voice clear to Anatsa’s ears. It was Apikunni! She stood still, and then with shaking hands hastily changed into another dress.

Apeecheken began to watch her with interest. Anatsa had selected a dress she had never worn before, and around her neck, hidden in the dress, she wore two little bags of meadow rue berries. She combed and braided her hair carefully, and then brushed it with the oil of sweet pine.

Apeecheken sighed. “You tremble, and your face glows, and you wear meadow rue berries and scent your hair with pine—all so you can be like this!”

Anatsa was silent, and Apeecheken looked at her tenderly. “Do not look so stricken, Anatsa. You are no different from the rest of us.”

Anatsa clutched at the meadow rue berries, her eyes filling with tears. “Oh, if only I truly was not different,” she said softly, and went outside.

Apikunni smiled at her, his face warm. He held a horse for her, a light-footed mare, already blanketed and bridled. Anatsa smiled shyly back at him, and mounted the mare. Apikunni gestured to Onesta and then led Anatsa from the inner circle of high chiefs.

They rode without words through all of the outer tipis. Anatsa hung her head, and clutched her hands. Why hadn’t she spoken to him? Would all of the long day find her tongue dumb?

The smoke from the cooking fires rose in a haze over all of the tipis. The smell of burning wood and cooking meat was all around them, and curious eyes followed them from sight. Why would Apikunni be with her? the eyes would say, and then the voices would speak and the tongues move and say, “Anatsa is a cripple! Anatsa is a cripple!” Maria said that I am not my leg, Anatsa thought fiercely to herself.

They rode out of the village, and on the prairie the horses pranced spiritedly through the tall bunch grass. They passed the lake, calm and unruffled with no bathers or swimmers. In the shadow of the mountains they rode into carpets of pink loco weed, blue and white phacelia, and meadows colored with bluebells and Indian paintbrush. Their trail suddenly became steep and unmarked. Anatsa had given Apikunni the general direction they were to follow, but he picked their trail himself, avoiding both hilltops and ravines. He looked back at her when they entered the forest and smiled. “Your eyes do not flash fire this morning,” he said briefly, and said no more, because talk on the trail could be dangerous.

Anatsa watched him as he rode ahead. She knew that he studied every clump of trees, every group of tall ferns for any movement, any flashing of color. The mountains near the village were searched constantly by the Mutsik; she knew this and told herself that patrols were near the trail that Apikunni chose, but still she watched his exposed back and began to feel anxiety. She shivered. The sky seemed to her to have suddenly changed color, to be blue no longer. Yellow light gleamed evilly through the forest; she sensed that death followed them with pale eyes, like a killer cat. If only she were riding behind him on his horse and could protect his back with her body! Her hands grew numb, and when from the trees about them came the two toned cry of the curlew and then the soft notes of the myrtle warbler, she became convulsed in terror.

Apikunni turned and saw her face. He stopped his horse, and in silence they both sat among the thick trees, listening. Slowly Apikunni’s glance traveled all around them. Gradually the yellow light lifted; evil slipped into the shadow, and the sun came and made the sky above them blue again. He saw the change in Anatsa’s face, the fear and the terror were receding. Looking at her curiously, he prodded his horse onward once more.

They came to the higher reaches of the mountains, the region of pine and spruce. Their path hit shale, white and barren, burning now in the hot sun. They reached a shadowed stream, the horses walking up against its current, fetlock deep in its rushing waters. It was this stream that led to the meadow they sought.

“Here is your meadow,” Apikunni said, and Anatsa dismounted and started to gather the otsqueeina. Anatsa looked back at Apikunni. He had set the horse grazing on the summer thistle of which they were so fond, and was studying the grasses all around them. A black-tailed deer moved suddenly across the meadow; except for it, there was no sign of animal or man. Hastily, Anatsa filled her parfleche bag with cool, moist berries. It was a beautiful day. She looked at the shining green of the meadow, at the deep sky and softly moving clouds. She would never forget this day—the day she spent alone with Apikunni.

When he saw that she had filled her bag, he led the horses to where she stood and silently helped her mount. With Indian caution he chose a different route down the mountain, and soon they followed the course of another stream. Branches slapped ruthlessly at them; the horses slipped and stumbled on rocks and pebbles, brushing them sharply against the banks, and they rode on and on in the ribboned sunlight with not a word between them. They were nearing the foothills, for Anatsa recognized the vicinity of her glen. She began to feel some of its power, and wondering at herself, Anatsa signaled Apikunni to leave the stream and follow her. He looked amused, and motioned her ahead, for now they were close to the prairie and the Blackfoot camp. Smiling, she set the trail, and for a while they traveled in the hot sunlight, and the horses began to sweat. Ahead of them two mountain slopes came together and here was her glen. Here was a smaller stream, gently moving; for a while the water was caught in a pool, a shadow of refuge in the summer heat. By it, Anatsa halted her horse, dismounting and looking up at Apikunni with shining eyes. “This is my place,” she said softly.

He slid from his horse. “It is beautiful,” he said, captured by her eyes. He sat with her at the edge of the pool. The stream had been caught in a beaver dam and as it moved away, ripples pushed out at its mossy banks.

Her luminous eyes held him enchanted. They held deeper serenity than the water. Outside their refuge the forest hummed with life and heat. He felt a hunger he had never known. He studied her face soberly, and when she shyly turned away, he reached for her thin shoulders and brought her lips to his. At the feel of her frailty he burned to take more of her and was torn between the desire to seize her entirely and the need to shield her innocence. The confusion of his emotions made him dizzy. When he looked at her again, she was stretched out upon her stomach, lying upon the soft moss.

“Why is this—your place?” he asked her, his heart still pounding enough to keep him aware of its agitation.

“This glen nourishes me,” she said, smiling up at him. A bed of wild strawberries lay near them, and she plucked a berry, putting it into her mouth, making a wry face.

“I hope it feeds you better than that,” he answered with a boyish grin.

“Oh, it does,” she answered quickly. “Here, I could even accept your kiss.”

“Was that so hard for you to do?”

“Yes.”

He looked deeply hurt. “You do have a lover! I could not believe it; I could not believe that you have accepted a man!”

“I have!” she flashed angrily, thinking he mocked her leg. “I have met him here, I have met him here many times!”

Now he looked away from her, deeply depressed. “Do not speak to me of it.”

“I will. I lie here with him, and upon this moss we sleep through many afternoons together. He kisses me and I kiss him.”

“Stop your words. They are not for me.”

“And here I also have the forest people that I have created, that live in those great ferns, and when I come here, they sing happily, and talk lovingly and tell me that I am—I am.” She stopped, tears rushing down her cheeks. “Apikunni, it is all created by me. The people, the songs—and you as my lover! That is why it was so hard for me to accept your embrace.”

“Why?”

“Because it is wrong for me to love you! I am crippled, and I cannot even crawl like a baby! This is my secret place just for dreams. I have no right to bring you into them.”

Trembling within himself, he covered her shaking hands with his own.

“Do not pity me,” she whispered.

He gently wiped away the tears that were still falling from her closed lashes. He took her in his arms and kissed her again, warming her whole body with his. He kept embracing her until she relaxed. He kissed her until she forgot about herself and knew only his rising passion. He kissed her until she met him with a passion equal to his own. Finally, in exquisite tenderness they separated, and looked into each other’s eyes. He then picked some swamp laurel that bloomed near them, and handed her the pink flowers. She smelled them, and with her large eyes luminous with feeling, held them to her lips. She was the most beautiful of women.

Outside of the glen, the touch of the sun was warm and untroubled. A wisp of cloud moved against the blue sky. High above them she could see a curlew circling, and then its shadow skimmed the earth near them and it landed in the next valley glade, calling back to them sweetly.

He touched her face with his hands, loving the look of the pink flowers against her vivid coloring. “Anatsa!” he said wondrously. “Anatsa!”

Suddenly the curlew flew from its shelter in alarm, circling in great sweeping strokes and refusing to land. Anatsa looked up at it and saw the color of the sky change to the waxen look of flesh after life has left it. She felt the coldness of the Wolf Trail that stretches across the night sky.

“What is it?” Apikunni whispered, dropping her hands. He looked around them.

The forest had become deadly still. More birds had flown away. Apikunni crouched and drew his knife. A gentle wind came for a while to the pines and then fell to silence. Their horses turned toward the opposite bank, their ears cocked.

“Sahpos!” Apikunni hissed, and using the bank as shelter, rapidly crossed the pond and disappeared in the direction in which the horses were looking.

There wasn’t a sound. Anatsa clutched at the moss in agony. Napi, let your power be within him!

The little pool lapped at her legs. With her heart in her throat she watched its widening ripples, like an eye that widened to vanish, so swiftly, so silently. What did it see? What, besides the face of the deer, the elk, the mountain goat, or the white wolf? Did it see those who came for its sustenance? Did it know her ugliness—her weakness? So swiftly the little images came and disappeared, what mattered was that the eye was unchanging. You could agitate the waters, but not the final image. Reality ultimately reflected itself in its own mirror of perfection, so she would never feel imperfect again. Her glen had sustained her, and this magical eye of the mountain had made her see beyond her frail flesh. When Apikunni returned, he returned to her, and she caressed his face with a wild abandon that even their caressing before had not aroused.