He floated in a nebulous state between sleep and wakefulness. Clouded by dreams, a vague perception flirted with his consciousness. At first it was nothing but a breath, a gossamer wind enveloping him in warmth. And then he was child in his trundle bed, his mother leaning over him, folding him in blankets against the cold. She spoke, her voice soft as a breeze, and he opened his eyes to the dim firelight flickering in pitch blackness.
The outline of Zara’s shape, dark against the glow, jostled his senses with a rush of awareness. The cave! His burning cabin, the men in the woods!
Before he could gather his wits to speak, she lightly touched his mouth with her fingertips. “Is cold,” she whispered. “I make you warm.” She knelt over him and finished arranging the blanket.
The fire flared behind her, flickering high across the cave walls with a rush of light. Its radiance revealed in startling detail the contour of her naked breasts, and silken texture of her skin.
He didn’t dare trust his eyes. He had to be dreaming. He closed his eyes. But a flood of hot longing pulsed through his vitals.
Dreams and his aching desire commingled in a haze. He floated in a fantasy, reveling in the feel of her, rejoicing in the anticipation of her touch.
He felt her settle down at his side and nestle close under the blanket. Through the coarse linen of his shirt, the heat of her body penetrated him to the bone.
“What are you doing?” He shivered, a quaking shudder that dashed the sluggishness from his brain.
“Much warmer like this.”
He turned his head to her. Her eyes sparkled in the wavering firelight.
“Even so, I think you’d best—”
She skimmed the backs of her trembling fingers over his cheek, her voice a breathless whisper, “I wish to lie with you.”
She could not possibly know what she said!
Ethan stiffened as her fingers explored his face and neck, fumbled with the fastenings on his shirt. He sighed and closed his eyes at the feel of her, her silken hair against his cheek, the delicate touch of her hand on his chest. Like an elixir, her warm, sweet scent worked on his senses. An unbearable urge seized him to take her then and there to relieve the throbbing that rose in response to her closeness. Fighting back the impulse, he opened his eyes and sat up. He gulped down a breath of air, and cupped his hand under her chin, titling her face to the light.
“You’ve no idea what you’re doing!” he said, his voice grating harshly.
She raised herself to her knees before him. “Agataskaneh gaw, Ethancaine.”
Her words were foreign, but he could not mistake their meaning. They worked like strong liquor, ravaging his self-control. Her tremulous smile, filled with a yearning uncertainty, overwhelmed him. Her eyes, half-closed and undeniably provocative, and the sultry tone of her whispered words sharpened his desire.
He sucked in another breath and withdrew his hand.
Just as Zara had perceived the hesitation in his hands as he applied the soothing balm to her back, so too she sensed his ambivalence now. It dashed her like a chilling gust. Her face burned with chagrin. “You…do not want me?”
“Oh, Zara…”
The breath caught in his throat. His gaze swept over the length of her naked body in the flush of firelight, stirring a deep aching between her thighs. Her pulse raced. A hot tremor fluttered over her skin as he reached a faltering hand toward her face. She closed her eyes to savour the tenderness of his touch and the flashes of warmth that rippled through her breasts.
She caught his hand and pressed its palm to her lips, her cheek, surprising herself as she slid it down over her breast. “Can you feel my heart, Ethancaine? It beats for you.”
“Zara…” He rose to his knees, so close his heat caressed her, and his pounding heart thrummed on the silence in time to her own. “Please. Don’t.”
Shaking back the hair from her face, she reached up and laced her fingers through his tangled curls. With a gentle pressure, she drew his face to hers. His two-days’ growth of beard disconcerted her, and she paused to skim his cheek with her fingertips.
But his mouth was soft. His lips brushed hers with the force of air, then steadily, eagerly, hard and hot, exciting her with the fervor of his abandon.
He groaned and pressed her hard to him, his mouth drinking of hers, tasting, probing, igniting. And she responded with a hunger she had never known, a hunger that both startled and aroused her. Nothing in her past had prepared her for the fire that coursed through her veins in response to his touch, or the great swirling emptiness swelling inside her. She needed him to fill the emptiness.
Hot and wet, his mouth found her throat, his tongue delineating a line to her earlobe with a slow, steady progress. Holding her with one arm, his free hand at her breast, he teased the tip stiff and hard before taking it lightly between his teeth. She gasped, tossing back her head as his hands skimmed her sides, easing her down onto the fragrant bed.
Bending over her in the quivering firelight, he brushed her face with his fingertips. His hands were rough and hard, yet his touch was as delicate as a whisper, his long fingers gliding with a feather touch down over her breasts, her stomach and her hips, sending shivers of delight tingling over her skin and deep pangs of longing pulsing in her secret place. He stopped, raising his eyes to meet hers, then he touched her there.
She was damp as a spring morning. He sighed and probed her more deeply until she moaned and grasped his hand by the wrist and pulled it away. “Take off your clothes,” she breathed.
He struggled in his haste to remove his breeches. In a moment, she was on her knees before him, tugging up his shirt, her mouth at his chest, her lips warm and moist against his flesh, her tongue fluttering like butterfly wings around his nipples, her silken hair spilling over his arms, over her face, her hands stroking, goading, searching, consuming him with a desperate need.
Catching her hands, he found her breast with his mouth, his tongue flicking tiny circles around the stiffened tip before he took it fully. She arched, emitting a shuddering sigh, and he lowered her gently into the leaves.
“I want you now,” he whispered tightly into her hair.
“Oneh!” she breathed, lacing her fingers behind his neck. “Now.”
His mouth once more found hers. He stroked her between her thighs, his fingers dipping and probing, and, gasping madly for breath, she opened to him.
He entered her slowly, settling into her with luxurious ease, savouring every measure of her dewy, tight warmth, moaning as she stirred her hips, impatient to receive the full length of him. Burying himself into the depths of her, he thrilled at the low, deep groan of delight that escaped her throat and the feel of her hands tightening on his shoulders, her breasts heaving against his chest. He drove himself deeper, thrusting to an exquisitely slow rhythm that he felt echoing through her entire being as she moved in response, her mouth at his throat, until he feared he would explode before she was ready.
Dear God, she was beautiful! Everything he had wished for, dreamed for. The feel of her trembling all around him, the fit of their bodies together, the way she accepted him totally, completely. It was more than he had hoped for.
She tossed back her head, her fingers meshed in his hair as she quickened the pace, driving him to a frenzied pitch, her hands slipping down his back, caressing his buttocks, pressing him deeper inside. And then convulsions seized her. Unrestrained release swept over her with a wild abandon, her cries muffled against his neck, as he reached his own completion.
In the abatement of their passion in the wavering glow of firelight, he clung to her as she clung to him, each filled with a previously unknown serenity.
* * *
In the fading firelight, he watched the shadows dance across her face. Her head rested in the crook of his arm, face tilted up at him, her hair like a spill of honeyed silk under his cheek. Caressing the fine hairs on his chest, she smiled like a child with a new plaything.
“Is soft,” she said, a low sound of surprise.
Ethan smiled his amusement. “Do you like it?”
As she continued to graze him with her fingertips, she laughed quietly, and nuzzled him with her cheek. “Always I think white men hairy like bears. Ethancaine soft, like a young kasoyawaneh…a swan.” And she added more softly, closing her eyes as she spoke, “Jeetheoh gehent.”
“What does that mean?”
Even in the dim light, he detected the flush of colour rising in her face before she averted her eyes. “I cannot say.”
“Is it something bad?”
“Oh, neh…no, is not bad.”
“Is it good, then?”
She turned her eyes up at him and smiled coyly. “I should not have said it.”
“That’s not right!” He teased her. “You have an unfair advantage over me.”
Zara raised herself on her elbows. “Ad-van-tage? What means this word?”
He caressed her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “To have an advantage is to have an edge. When you speak to me in words I don’t understand, you have the advantage of knowing what I do not.”
Her expression grew pensive in the wavering light. “I do not wish this. Not wish to have such advantage.” She sighed, flopping back into the leaves. “So much I need to know…to remember. So much I wish you teach me. In this world, the advantage is yours, Ethancaine.”
In more ways than one, he said to himself, and he, too, turned onto his back to gaze at the intermingling of light and shadow on the ceiling. A long moment passed before he turned back to her and spoke again. “Tell me, Zara, what do you remember of your past?”
In the ensuing silence, her body tensed. Immediately, he wished he had not asked. In spite of a deep need to know everything about her, he feared the answer to his question would be difficult to face. Already, shadowy images of the past began to take shape before his mind’s eye. If he did not take care, the past would descend like a wall between them.
“You needn’t tell me, if you don’t want to.”
“Neh,” she whispered, turning quickly to him, her eyes shimmering damp in the glow. “I tell Ethancaine. I tell all I remember.”
“Is it painful for you?”
She sighed again and closed her eyes. Her words were disjointed, as if it were difficult to speak. “Is like a dream…a dream that curls in and out of dark clouds. Sometimes is not real to me. Sometimes I am frightened…by things that touch me. Sometimes, when I remember, is not me I see. Is someone else.”
She paused, her face calm in the glow.
“Sometimes I see a little girl. I see her from a far place. She is alone. At play alone in tall grasses. Always she is alone. She is not happy, this little girl. But I do not know why. This little girl I see…she has a mother who is kind, and a father…. There are other children, but I do not see them so good.
“One day, this little girl, she see hoskehehketha. Many painted warriors. They hide in the tall grass. Shawanoe and Shakane. They do not see the little girl. They attack the house. There are many shouts. Many screams. Gunfire, like thunder, echoes across the sky. But soon is done. The mother and the father…and the children…. All are dead. The hoskehehketha, they take scalps. They chase away the horses and the cattle. They make a great fire of the house and the barn. The little girl…she try to run. They take her.
“She is very frightened, but the hoskehehketha, they are kind to her. Give her moccasins. They take her far, across many lakes and rivers. They take her to the Onatowagah…The People…you call Seneca. The People, they make her one with them. But the little girl, she miss her mother. She cry at night for her mother. But soon she is happy. Never was she so happy. Soon she forget…”
Ethan shivered as he waited, but Zara had finished speaking. Eyes closed, she remained still and silent, while the fire faded and the stillness swallowed the last of her words.
But there was more he needed to know. So much, but he dared not ask.
Not now, while images of his own past flashed in his mind. A house—her family’s house, perhaps?—reduced to smoldering embers. Bodies charred beyond recognition. The grim silence of the men, as they contemplated the scene of devastation. And it didn’t end with that one. There would be more horrors that day. His feelings of outrage and revulsion. The tightening in his stomach. Fear for the ones who had been taken. The taste of bile rising in his throat. The knowledge that a little girl remained alive. A little girl and a handful of other captives, whose lives hung by a thread.
So too, there remained much that was unfathomable—of her acceptance and assimilation, her ability to forgive and forget. Why had she not hated them, those people who had killed her family and uprooted her life? What else did she know? What else did she remember? Could she have known? Was she aware of the attempts made to secure her rescue, and the sacrifices made in blood and lives? His father. His own shame. The years of living with the pain and the guilt.
As if she had heard his unvoiced concerns, she gently touched his shoulder—a consoling gesture. And when he turned to her, she smiled sadly. “I am not that little girl, Ethancaine. She is no more. Let there be no sorrow in your heart for her.”
He tried to shake away the visions. “Then why did you leave them? Why did you come back?”
She lowered her eyes. And then she resumed lightly stroking his chest. “You must not ask that of me. Another time, maybe I tell you.”
A long silence settled over them, a silence filled with uneasiness for Ethan. Her words had faded into the silence, but an echo remained, intensifying the train of shadowy images from the past.
“Tell me about Ethancaine.”
Her soft voice barely penetrated his thoughts. “What’s that?”
“I wish now to hear about you.”
He shook himself. “What do want to know?”
“Why are you a lonely man?”
Unable to respond, he stared back at her. He swallowed hard, and forced himself to speak, aware of the strained tone of his voice and the false smile that betrayed him. “I’m not lonely.”
“You live alone.”
“By my own choosing.”
“I do not understand this.”
“It’s too complicated to explain.”
“You have no family? No woman?”
He laughed softly, but made no reply.
“There is much pain in your heart, Ethancaine.”
With that, he turned to her fully. He could not help himself. Neither could he reply.
She raised her hand to his face, brushing his lips with her fingertips, a worried look passing over her face. “Is because your house burn?”
All at once, the vision of her fixated stare as she watched the flames consume his cabin swept over him like a cold blast, chasing away his demons. What horrid memories the sight of that blaze must have kindled inside her! He took her hand and pressed it. “That must have been terrifying for you!”
“Sad for you. Hard for you to do. You do this for me. Is this why you are troubled?”
“No.”
“Is because you think about what those men say…about my uncle’s murder?”
“No. Not because of you or anything they said.” Then he added as an afterthought, “And I’m not sad or troubled.”
She smiled, as if relieved by his confession, and nestled close to his side, her hand resting lightly on his chest. She yawned. “To hear you say this makes my heart happy.” Closing her eyes, she murmured, “No need be lonely, Ethancaine. We are kanawhkwah now.”
He gently smoothed her hair, brushing it back away from her face. And he watched her drift off peacefully into sleep.
Hours passed, and still Zara’s voice echoed in the silence of the night, in the chaos of his thoughts. No need to be lonely….
Quietly, so as not to disturb her, Ethan rose, slipped into his clothes, and tended the fading fire.
No need to be lonely! As if his loneliness were a thing to be wiped out merely by willing it. As if it were so simple a thing as choosing, to decide in an instant to put an end to the emptiness that marked his days and nights. Indeed, he had grown to cherish his solitude. One who lived alone was not, necessarily, a lonely man.
But the guilt. How much of it was truly his own? How much had he taken on as a means of redressing the acts of others who were equally to blame?
Or had he truly been a coward that night in the burning village on the Oaks Creek?
Over the years he had relived the incident too many times to sort out what was real from what he chose to remember. In his mind, what he had done was right, even if it meant wearing the brand of coward. Even if it meant living alone.
But going off to live by himself had proved to be a selfish act. He had not considered the consequences then. He had thought only of himself, of his shame and confusion. He could not have known how his actions might have been perceived by others, how they affected those closest to him. Katherine…. With the passing of the years, it became more and more difficult to go back.
And his sister…. He could not remember how long it had been since he last saw Ellen. Five years? Eight years? Ten? Amid the bitter memories and the hurt, time seemed inconsequential. All he remembered was the look of pain on her face. He had failed her, and in so doing, he had failed himself and their father’s memory.
Could Ellen ever forgive him? Was it possible to forget? And how would she view Zara in light of the past? How would she regard the little girl, now grown, who had inadvertently changed the course of so many lives and cost their father his life?
* * *
He opened his eyes when she kissed his forehead. He had not felt her slip out from under the blanket, and only now did he sense the cold that had crept over him in her absence. A murky dawn had begun to infiltrate the darkness, highlighting her form in shadow.
Noting the coat wrapped around her, he sat up suddenly, a jolt of apprehension prickling over his skin. “Where are you going?”
“Shhhh…I not be long.” She bent over and kissed his mouth.
The feel and taste of her lips triggered off a spiraling ache of longing. Responding to her kiss, he pulled her down on top of him and searched among the folds of the voluminous coat for her breast.
“Neh, Ethancaine!” She restrained his hands, but laughter crept into her voice. Even as she disengaged herself, her mouth remained locked with his. Gradually she pulled away and stood fully, swaying slightly, and shook back her hair. She started to speak, then with a hand to her mouth, she turned, and raced from the cave.
Ethan lay on his back as the morning brightened by degree, bringing with it a pressing reminder of the need to move on. He rose quickly and tended the fire.
She had left something resembling firecake for him on the flat rock. Tea from the tender tips of hemlock needles steamed invitingly in the birch bark pot. He helped himself to both. The cakes were sweet and filling, the tea warmed him. Licking the last of the crumbs from his fingers, he went out to see what was taking her so long.
From the ledge above the riverbank, he caught sight of her almost immediately. His breath stopped.
She stood on the rocks overlooking the water. Save for her moccasins, she was stark naked in the chill of the misty morning. Head raised, hands extended palms up toward the eastern sky, she remained perfectly still, not a hint of a movement echoing though her slender frame. Not so much as a shiver in response to the damp and the cold. Only her hair, rustled by the gentle breeze, fluttered like tawny waves over her back. And her voice, clear as sunlight, rose in song above the sounds of the breaking day.
Both the sight of her and the sound of her morning song held him entranced, stirring his blood without arousing his passion. While the sight of her nakedness sparked reminders of her body and the pleasures they had shared, he might have been observing a saint at devotions. For she appeared more spiritual than physical, her entire being concentrated in the act of venerating her Creator. No Sunday parishioner feigning devoutness could have affected him more than this simple but heartfelt display.
As if he had barged into a room unannounced, or overheard a conversation not intended for his ears, he backed away and returned to the cave.
* * *
Breathing deeply of the cold morning air, Zara wrapped the coat tight around herself and turned to climb back up the hill to the cave. Despite the biting chill and the brisk, tingling dampness on her skin, a comfortable warmth glowed inside her.
Often, in the not so distant past, she had returned from her predawn devotions, similarly vitalized and purified, to the lodge where Nichus slept on their pallet of furs. Before the morning fires were started, before the others awoke to greet the day, she often curled up beside him for warmth, and watched him emerge from his journey through the shadowy land of dreams. Many times he took her then, his particular hunger sharpened by sleep, his hands and his body craving her with an urgency that precluded tenderness. Afterwards, his kisses and caresses soothed away the pain of his harsh lovemaking, and in the quiet of the morning, warm and close beneath the furs, she reveled in the aftermath of their joining. She delighted in the pleasure of having satisfied him, basked in the comfort of being wanted.
Never had she questioned her part in their coupling. Never did she so much as expect that Nichus might pleasure her in return—or, indeed, that she was even capable of such enjoyment. Not that he was ever callous or unfeeling. Quite the contrary. He was always polite and considerate, thoughtful, and kind. Always he brought her the fattest deer, the plumpest rabbits, the softest skins and furs. And she was thankful and grateful that her mother had arranged such a match. For so long as he remained in their lodge as her husband, she and her family would never suffer want.
Never had she dreamed that her spirit might soar with the clouds, or her body burn with desire.
Stepping lightly, soundlessly over rocks and leaves along the bank and up the steep slope, Zara steadied herself against the dizzying effects of a sudden and unexpected heat quivering in her veins. The merest thought of Ethancaine sent an aching pang throbbing through the depths of her, weakening her legs, muddling her brain. At the slightest recollection of his hands skimming her sides, her breasts tingled, and the coarse wool of the coat chafed at her nipples. It was all she could do to resist the temptation to tear off the coat and run naked the rest of the way.
She had hoped to find him lazing on the bed of hemlock boughs, awaiting her return. In her mind she saw him—his eyes glazed with sleep yet burning with anticipation as she slipped from the coat and into his arms. His sleepy warmth would envelop her, like liquid sunlight, soothing and exciting at the same time. The heady scent of him would overpower her senses. He would want her as much as she wanted him, and she would give herself completely, all of herself in a union of hearts, souls, and bodies. Already her heart raced with expectancy. Already, she ached for his touch.
Breathless, she entered the cave.
Kneeling, with his back to the entry, he did not react to her approach. She paused by the dying fire, and observed him as he prepared for their removal from the cave. His movements were slow and listless. He paused from assembling their few belongings on the blanket. Then he sat back on his heels as if something disagreeable had crept over his thoughts.
“Ska noh, Ethancaine,” she whispered, unable to raise her voice over the hammering in her chest.
He turned abruptly, as if startled, and her cheeks burned from the uneasy look with which he greeted her. The air prickled with an uncomfortable chill before his features softened, and the barest trace of a smile crept over his mouth. But it was a troubled smile.
“It’s getting late,” he said after a moment, and returned to his work. “We need to be on our way.” Having finished securing the bundle, he began gathering up what remained of the hemlock bed. “Have you eaten?”
She shook her head, but with his back to her, he did not see. She sensed that it pained him to look at her. “I will eat later.”
“We have a long way to travel before nightfall,” he continued in the same restrained voice. “Just the other side of Fort Hunter…my family’s house. We’ll stay the night, get some food, blankets, maybe a horse. We’ll need a horse if we mean to make Albany in good time.”
He stood with an unwieldy armload of boughs, dropping a number in his haste. As he knelt to recover them, she hurried to his side and inadvertently brushed his arm.
At the touch, slight as it was, he tensed, then relaxed. Casting her a quick, uncertain glance, he appeared confused, anxious, his eyes clouded with faraway thoughts. He returned his attention to the boughs, but did not object when she silently assisted him.
“You think about last night?” she began, straining to overcome her own uncertainty. “You are sorry?” Even as she spoke, her hope sank at the realization. Still, she forced herself to continue gathering up the leaves and boughs, though her hands had begun to tremble and a sudden mist dimmed her vision.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw his look of distraction when he glanced up in surprise. This time his gaze lingered on her face. She could not stop herself from turning to meet that look. Slowly the reserve dissolved from his eyes, replaced by an expression of sorrow and regret. He set down the boughs and leaves he had collected. He raised his hand and tentatively laid his palm against her cheek. It took all of her will to resist the urge to yield to his touch.
“Zara…” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper, and yet the underlying sense in his one word utterance resounded in her ears with the terrible roar of thunder.
She closed her eyes against a rush of tears that never came, tears that lodged in her throat with an acrid sting, a tightness in her chest. She wanted to turn away, to escape his touch and his warmth and his scent. But she could not will herself to move. In spite of his tacit denial, his hand—so gentle, so still on her cheek—expressed a far different sentiment. Or perhaps she merely wished it.
“I’m not sorry about last night,” he said, his voice low and soft, but strangely toneless. “That’s the trouble. I wanted you then. I want you now…more than I can say.” With his thumb, he gently traced the line of her lower lip. “Just touching you, I…” He slowly withdrew his hand and expelled a deep sigh. “But it’s not right. It’s wrong for me to want you like this. There are too many things that I…”
His half-spoken thought, arrested abruptly in midsentence, wrenched her heart. She looked up into his face. Something akin to fear glazed his eyes as they met hers, yet appeared not to see her at all. She sensed a stirring inside him, inciting a power of emotion that even he could not acknowledge or speak of fully. It quivered over her skin as eloquently as his touch.
Mustering the will to speak, she looked down at her own hands, clenched around a knot of small branches, her knuckles white with tension. “I think you wish you never saw me. I think you wish you leave me in the river to die. You do not hurt me if you say this. I understand.”
“No, it’s not that at all! I would never have forgiven myself.”
She looked up quickly, hot tears welling in her eyes, anger seething where the hurt had been. “And now you suffer for it.” She tapped a hand over her heart. “You make me feel your pain, but you not let me know why you hurt inside! You make me feel shame for all that troubles you.”
A look of distress contorted his face. He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. “Zara, forgive me. The last thing I would ever do is hurt you. You must believe me.”
Holding his gaze with her own, she paused before replying in a quiet but steady voice. “I cannot believe you, Ethancaine. You are not honest with me.”
For a long moment, he returned her look, his face taut, eyes betraying the anguish in his soul. But he would not reply. She knew this. He was not yet ready—or able—to open himself and his pain to her. Perhaps he never would. Perhaps, by virtue of her strangeness and her past, she was responsible for his torment. And by his silence he thought only to protect her from an even deeper blame.
She wondered if she had the strength to bear such a burden. Even as she sought counsel within herself, her heart told her that she had.