People of the Weeping Eye(48)
She lay on her belly, propped up on her elbows, the nipples of her pointed breasts hard as they rubbed the soft cougar fur. Her long black hair fell around her shoulders in a tangle and spilled down her back almost to the twin moons of her buttocks. She kept raising one sleek calf before letting it fall rhythmically back to the bedding.
A fire crackled and spit, occasional sparks rising toward the soot-blackened roof. Outside the rain had turned to sleet.
Swimmer lay at the door, occasional drafts of cold air ruffling his long black fur. Beside him, safe and warm as Trader himself, the packs were stacked.
“You say he’s supposed to be a demon dog?” Fox Squirrel asked in her thickly accented voice. Over the years she’d become quite fluent in Trade Tongue, but the accent would always be there.
Trader laughed. “You know how some of these backwoods farmers are.”
“Dumb like Traders. Huh, don’t I know?”
“I think he’s just a dog. Smart, too. I just have to tell him things once. I think he’d do anything, so long as I keep his belly full.”
She glanced sidelong at him. “You, Trader, are demon, too.”
He cracked another nut, handed her the meat, and tossed the collection of shells into the fire. “How is that?”
“I know you for what? Four summers? You young. Always travel alone. Always have that look in your eyes.”
“What look is that?”
“Haunted.”
He snorted derisively.
“True,” she insisted. “You always apart. Even when around other Traders. Everyone talks of home. Of wives and children. Of where they grow up. But not you. Always it is about Trade, about where you go, where you been. Never about home.” She gave him a sidelong look with knowing brown eyes. “So, tell me about home.”
“It’s long gone. Far away from here.” He reached another nut from the sack. “It doesn’t exist anymore.”
“People talk about you.”
“I’m sure.”
“One of stories is that you did something terrible. Maybe pee on sacred fire?”
He gave an amused smile. “I never had that urge.”
“Some say you stole something from the temple.”
“Believe me, if I wanted something from the temple, someone would have given it to me. No, I’ve never been a thief.”
“Some say it was woman.”
He gritted his teeth, then muttered, “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Another say it was forbidden love. A mother-in-law.”
“No.”
“A sister.”
His laughter was like a harsh bark. “I never had a sister.”
“What then?”
He shook his head. “That life doesn’t exist.”
She reached out. “What about in here? You keep memories, no?”
As her finger touched the side of his head, he recalled the smells of hominy cooking in the morning. He could hear the ritual singing as the Hopaye greeted the morning, calling on the gods and Spirits to bless the day. He could feel the soft red leather of his long-gone quiver, its outside decorated with white shell beads.
As quickly, the memory changed to the tight grip on his war club, the anger that broke loose inside him as he stepped into the Men’s House doorway. The charge in his muscles had been like lightning broken loose in his body as he drew back with his war club. He could remember the club’s impact; it had run from the handle, through his hands, up his arms, and shocked his very souls.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “The most terrible nightmares are the ones you lived before they came to stalk you in the night.”
“So why you run away from home?”
“What about you? Are you ever going back to your people?”
Straight white teeth backlit her smile. “Why should I? Leave this?” She indicated the piles of wealth surrounding her. “And go back to blowing snow and drafty tent? Just to feel back pain as I flesh hide after hide? Why would I want to lay with smelly hunter who wears same parka all winter? Then pack meat, and pop one child after another from my sheath?” She shook her head.
“Some Traders are smelly, too.”
“But I can say no. Or tell them to take bath.” She shrugged. “Tell me, does my sheath care if it takes the same man’s shaft over and over, or different shafts each time? What happens in the end is always pretty much same, no?”
“But what if someone plants a child in you?”
“Here, I have ways. Medicines. Back home, no way.”
“I see.”
She gave him an impish smile. “Now, enough eating nuts. Talking of sheaths makes me want to use mine.” She pulled him on top of her as she rolled over and wrapped her brown legs around his thighs. “Time to make this shaft hard. Not take long.”