No longer fear among the dark trees; but a peace I had not known since we were children. Here the only shadows were delicate as the small, singing leaves of the white birches, and instead of the slow glisten of blood there was the clean ripple of water over stones. Piyanah the Brave belonged to the land of shadows: I was Raki’s squaw, and we were free in love.
I watched him soak in the stream the bandage I had used to bind my breasts, and it reminded me that my shoulder was throbbing where the teeth of the Black Feather had torn it to the bone. I wondered how we got here. …Raki had carried me and then we had walked uphill along the bed of a stream. I was naked and my body was clean, so he must have washed off the blood.
The water cooled the heat in my shoulder, and Raki’s hands were sure and gentle as he held open the edges of the wound to let the coolness drip into it.
“Did you take his scalp, Raki?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I hated him…a scarlet hatred strong as fire. I had never felt that before, Piyanah; it’s rich meat, for it made me grow up in a night. We’re both grown up, Piyanah. I am a man and you are my woman…and this knowledge is stronger than any other law, for it is the great law of the Hunters.”
“But will Father recognize it when we go back to the tribe?”
“We’re not going back—yet. The Brave is allowed to take his squaw into the woods. Do you mind being my squaw, Piyanah?”
I laughed up at him. “Have I ever wanted anything except to be with you, my Raki? We have both killed an enemy and taken his scalp, so we are both Young Braves…a double right to be together, for Piyanah the Brave takes Raki for his squaw.”
“That pretence belongs to the tribe, not to us. You are my woman, Piyanah, do you understand? My woman!”
He was so solemn that I wanted to tease him a little. “May I speak the name of the man who honours me with his attention, or should I keep silent and follow five paces behind you as a dutiful squaw must?”
“You need be obedient only if I think you are running into danger. If the Black Feathers come back, you will stay with the squaws. You would have been killed if I hadn’t found you in time.”
“But Braves have to risk being killed.”
“I might let you fight beside me, because I promised that neither would keep the other waiting in our little valley…but I’m not going to leave you in danger again. You need never obey anyone but me, Piyanah, and I won’t order you to do things unless I see that courage has deafened you to discretion.”
Dear Raki! I had never heard him talk like this, and I found it enormously enjoyable. “What will you do if I am not obedient?”
“You will have to be,” said Raki.
“You mean because you are stronger, that in a wrestling you would win? I have learned two new holds that I haven’t shown you yet.”
“It is not because I am stronger: it’s because I am a man, your man.”
Why did I love Raki more than ever before? The skin of his back was smooth as birch-bark and the muscles rippled like water. There was a frown between his eyebrows, and he was staring at a tree on the far side of the glade because he didn’t want to look at me. A pulse beat in his temple as though he had been running, but he hadn’t moved since he came up from the stream.
“I’m glad it was you and not Gorgi who found me,” I said. “I’d much rather be here with you than with him.”
“So should Gorgi be glad…if he values his scalp!”
“How rude of you, Raki,” I said, trying to keep my voice serious. “Just because I’ve scalped a Black Feather it doesn’t mean I’m going to start scalping my friends.”
“You wouldn’t have had the chance: I should have taken Gorgi’s scalp if he dared to bring you up here!”
“But I have often been in the woods with Gorgi.”
“Well, you’re not going to do it again. Do you understand? That’s an order, Piyanah.”
“What a pity I’m so bad at being obedient!”
Raki was no longer staring at the birch tree: he was looking at me and the expression in his eyes was different from any I had seen before, hot, and fierce, and rather bewildered at the same time.
He caught hold of me. “You’re going to learn to be obedient, now…and you’d better learn fast if you don’t want your friends to be killed. You are my woman?”
My arms were round his neck, and under my hands the smooth skin of his back was vivid and exciting. … “I have always been your woman.”
My heart was thudding as though I had been racing uphill, but above it I could hear his heart.
“We needn’t wait to share a star before we become one person,” he said softly. Then my body and his weren’t separate any more; the joy of them burst into warm, brilliant flame, and we were part of this new flame. In its light we could see each other closer and more clearly than ever before, and the joy was so sharp that we cried out, and let it lap over us in waves of warm light, warmer than the sun, softer than the depth of beaver pelts.
Then there was a peace, and a belonging that was the end of loneliness.
The dread of going back to the tribe kept on trying to creep into the glade, and in silence we fought it off. Neither of us wanted to kill anything, so Raki went to collect some fungus, the kind that can be eaten raw. When he came back he was whistling, and carried a bundle tied up in an old tunic.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
“Gorgi brought it.”
“Gorgi…but how did he find us?”
“He tracked us here, and when he saw you were wounded he went to tell Dorrok, who said that we needn’t go back for three days and told Gorgi to bring us some food.”
“That was nice of Gorgi,” I said warmly.
“Yes, and clever of him to follow our tracks…especially as he can only see out of one eye.”
“Was he hurt in the battle? He was all right when I left them.”
“But not when I did! I hit him…hard. I tried to stay with the squaws, but I couldn’t when I saw the fires and knew the Black Feathers had come. I only reached the encampment when they had fled. …I couldn’t find you and thought you had been killed. I was searching among the dead when Gorgi told me you had gone into the woods. He didn’t believe you meant to try for another scalp; that’s why they let you go alone. I told him—with my fist—that he was a fool. He followed as soon as he could, to help look for you.”
“Which was nice of him, Raki, and nicer still to make things all right for us with Dorrok.”
“Yes, I suppose it was,” admitted Raki grudgingly, “though he deserves a lot more than a swollen eye for letting you go alone.”
“Is his eye very bad?”
“Not nearly bad enough,” he said unfeelingly; “in a few days it will hardly show at all.”
“Perhaps he didn’t follow me because he was afraid of losing his scalp…to you.”
Instead of being angry Raki only chuckled, “Even Gorgi isn’t that much of a fool!”
On the last evening before we must go back to the tribe, we were lying in the tall grass beside the stream. The trunks of the white birches were warm with sunset, and even the birds sounded drowsy, as though they had been practising our new magic.
“Do you think the Before People knew about it too, Raki?”
“I expect so: Mother said they knew all the secrets of happiness, so they must have known about this.”
“It’s terrible to think of generations and generations of people being content to live apart, just because they had forgotten something so beautifully simple.”
“They can’t have forgotten all about it, or there wouldn’t still be a legend about two people becoming one star.”
“But it would have been such a waste of time to wait until after we’re dead.”
“Do you think our people will understand when we tell them, or will it be difficult to explain?” said Raki.
“I hadn’t thought about that. Perhaps it will be difficult…it sounds almost silly if you try to say it in words.”
“Being a star sounds silly if you don’t understand what it feels like.”
“Yes, I suppose it does…sitting up in the sky, twinkling or getting yourself wrapped in clouds.”
Two chipmunks were chasing each other along a branch. Suddenly I noticed that Raki was watching them intently. “Piyanah,” he said slowly, “those chipmunks…and us…and the Before People. Do you think it could all be the same magic?”
I thought for a moment and then said emphatically, “I don’t think so: anyway I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the squaws going into the woods…for if it was, they wouldn’t be glad to come back.”
“You must be right,” agreed Raki, “for if they had found our magic the men would never let them go back to the Squaws’ Tepees.”
“But we’ve got to go back. …”
“Yes,” he said, “we’ve got to go back. I thought last night of Rokeena and Gorgi and the others. …The Before People have given us a secret we’ve got to share, for it’s terribly important to have a secret from which a real tribe will be born.”
“Shall we be able to use our magic again before we become Brown Feathers?”
“I don’t think so. But we’ve got two heavens to remember now, this birch grove and our little valley. We can’t live here and in our ordinary days at the same time. …I couldn’t bear to stay with the squaws if I let myself remember this magic, and I couldn’t bear you being with Gorgi and Tekeeni unless you forgot it too, until we can be together all the time.”
I tried to comfort him. “It will be only another year, now that we have become Young Braves so early.”
“Do you remember how you felt when I said, ‘Only seven years’?”
“I know, Raki, but if I didn’t say ‘only’ I might cry…and that would spoil our last night together…and it ought to be easier now that we’ve got so much more to remember, and so much more to look forward to.”
Yet a year seemed longer than all the rivers of Earth, when, soon after dawn next morning, we came in sight of the encampment: Raki the squaw, and Piyanah the Young Brave, each with a scalp of a Black Feather knotted to his belt.