“That’s really wretched-smelling. Why don’t we dump it all out so no one feels like throwing up?”
“Glad you like it,” she replied, using a piece of water-worn wood to stir the contents. Then she settled back, wrestling with the dilemma inside her. Her glance drifted to Trout, where he lay sound asleep in his blankets.
“I hate going down trails,” Green Spider mumbled as he flopped beside her. “So many forks and branches … and all of them go someplace. Isn’t that interesting? It doesn’t matter which trail you take, you always end up somewhere.”
Pearl nodded. “Yes, and when you get there, you’ll usually find another bunch of trails to choose from.”
“I never choose. I just sit down and cry.”
Pearl gazed out over the pale blue water, nodding absently.
“Green Spider? You know, don’t you? I mean … that Trout wants me to stay here, with him. I—I said I’d decide by morning.-I guess it’s morning faster than I want it to be.”
“As the moments pass, it gets lighter and lighter, and ever harder to see.” Green Spider wiggled around and found a wooden bowl. He dipped up the hot stew and blew noisily across the steaming surface. “Did you ever notice that steam always goes up? Why doesn’t it ever go sideways?”
“Trout would make a very good husband. He’s a reliable man, a good provider, and he’d let me fish and hunt with him.
It would be like it was at home. No clan obligations.”
“Are you steam?”
She stared at the patterns she’d drawn in the sand. “Am I what?”
“Steam. That, or you can be stew. But it’s one or the other.
Steam always has to get out of the bowl; so it twists and turns and dances, until it escapes. In the end, it vanishes, but you remember the glorious patterns. Stew sits in the bowl, absolutely contented. But someone always seems to eat it, so I guess it vanishes, too. The difference is that people remember what steam looked like—and with stew, people may or may not remember the taste.”
Pear) brushed a long strand of wind-teased hair behind her right ear. “Just once, would you say what you mean?”
Green Spider frowned at his bowl. “People tell me that more and more. You’d think that after this long, they’d learn to hear things right.”
Pearl leaned her head back, letting her tangled wealth of jet black hair tumble down her back. “I’d have a home again.
Think of that. A roof to sit under when it rained and snowed.
Four solid walls.”
“Just like stew,” Green Spider asserted. “Of course, it’s easier to keep track of children that way. You can imprison them inside those solid walls.”
Children? Once she settled down and put on a little weight, she’d probably catch. Once again she glanced at Trout, the clean lines of his face visible now. Yes, he’d be a good father, warm and caring. Unlike Anhinga men, he would help raise them. A father, not an uncle.
And for her: a partner, not a husband. Partner. She liked the sound of that.
So why had she held back? Last night, with his arms around her, she’d wanted to savor that feeling of companionship and warmth. He’d led her to a high dune crest, and there, holding each other in the stark light of the moon, they’d talked about so many things.
She poked angrily at the fire with her stick, remembering the warm tingle as he caressed her and nuzzled his face into the hollow of her neck. His hot breath had sent shivers through her, and she’d trembled when his gentle hand cupped her breast.
She’d felt the insistent pressure against her hip of his erection as it strained at his breechcloth. In the end, however, she’d stopped herself on the brink—not out of fear, but from a last instant of confusion, not knowing what she really wanted.
And Trout, his blood literally aboil and his flesh aching for her, had acquiesced at a word. To douse the flames, both had charged into the cold waters and swum themselves into acceptance.
He’d been perfect as they played tag in the water. She’d delighted at her ability to swim circles around him, and he’d taken it all in good humor.
Later, they’d walked back to camp hand in hand, she to consider her answer, he to sleep.
“What am I going to do, Green Spider?”
Green Spider shrugged and continued eating. The Contrary was on his third bowl of stew by the time Black Skull sat up, yawning and rubbing his broken face. The warrior rolled up his blankets, grabbed his club, and vanished over the grassy dune for his morning duties.
Thin Belt coughed and groaned himself awake, blinking owlishly at the dawn as he clambered to his feet and tottered off for his own morning chores.