Beneath The Stars Ch 02

Looks Far awoke first. The fire was out and a chill had settled in the air, causing Woman Beneath the Stars to turn and tuck her shivering body against his own, her cold nose pressing into his chest.

He gazed at her face in the faint morning light which streamed through the top of the lodge. Her skin glowed and her eyelashes lay heavy and dark on her cheeks. Then he registered the hard points of her nipples pressing against his ribs. Against his will he felt his cock twitch to life in response. Enveloping her more fully in his arms, he pressed himself against her to relieve the ache, tucked her face against his shoulder so that her might forget her beauty, ignore the whiteness of her skin. But then she moaned and burrowed her smooth thigh between his own, pressing her moist sex to his flesh and causing a fresh wave of desire to wash over him. He slid up slightly to align himself with her and cursed his own weakness as he slipped the head of his penis between her folds, nudging her clitoris to life.

Half-rousing, Elaine adjusted herself to allow him entry. When at last he was inside her warm, snug passage, he lay perfectly still and breathed in the smell of her skin at the base of her throat. He could feel the blood pulsing in her body around the throbbing of his own. They seemed in time, in harmony. He had never felt such closeness with another human being.

With small rotations of his hips, he began a dance far removed from the one shared hours before. Slow and deep he luxuriated in the feel of her. Awakening further but still caught in the reverie of dreaming, Elaine held tight to Looks Far and pressed her lips along his cheek. Her breath chuffed his ear and he increased the force of his movements. Now she was fully awake and her mossy green eyes met his fathomless black depths.

This time he did not look away. He watched as her desire rose and lips parted in a sharp intake of breath. Impulsively he caught them in his own and held them softly. It was not a custom among the people, no, but she had sought it the night before and now he was curious to know this pleasure he had seen the wasicu engage in. At this unexpected surprise, Elaine pressed her mouth more fully to his own and lightly traced her tongue along his bottom lip. Looks Far would have been disgusted at the thought of anyone else doing such a thing, but with Woman Beneath the Stars, he found himself wanting more and bringing his tongue to meet her own.

Just then Elaine broke the kiss and gasped as he touched a place deep within her. Looks Far softly chuckled.

"Does this please you, woman?"

She was beginning to pant and speaking was a challenge, "Han, this is a very hehanni waste (good morning)"

At that she clenched her walls around him and pulled him ever closer, her hands clasping at his muscular buttocks as they tensed and relaxed with his efforts. Looks Far could not suppress his low groan of pleasure as she pulled him impossibly deep inside her. Their bodies were becoming sweat-slick and their breath fogged in the cool air of the lodge.

Elaine watched as his hairless brow -- for he plucked it clean like all plains men of the time -- knit in concentration. She sensed his peak was drawing near and withdrew him quickly with her hand, holding him close as he bucked and came against the softness of her stomach, breathlessly murmuring unfamiliar words in Lakota as the orgasm swept over him.

For a moment they lay in the sticky, sweet afterglow, simply gazing at the others' face in silence. Looks Far slightly squinted his eyes, as if trying to see back into her own. Elaine averted hers at this unexpected scrutiny and instead followed the contours of his cheekbones and lips, overcome with how unusually beautiful and almost alien he appeared with those slightly tilted eyes and that browless, smooth-skinned countenance. It was a face she would not mind waking up next to for the rest of her days. Why couldn't she have met such a man in her own time? Surely this could not last, surely she would not be here forever, but as long as she was here, she would revel in having found someone with whom she could connect.

Without warning, Looks Far withdrew himself and started the lodge fire anew, drawing the now-dry buffalo robe around his shoulders.

"You should return to Calls to Them, she would wish to know where you have been."

He sounded morose and withdrawn. There was no time to tarry and ask questions, he was right, she needed to return. Throwing her dress back over her head and pulling on her tall moccasins, Elaine made her way to the door, turning back to look at Tehanl Wanyanke as he crouched, staring in to the fire.

"I am glad to know you," she said. And like that, she was gone.

Once she departed, Looks Far cast his eyes over to a neatly folded bundle tucked under his clothing and accoutrements. He had carried it all these years but never opened it lest it bring back painful reminders of a life he had never asked for. Now, he wondered if it might hold something new for him. He willed his shaking hands still as he untied the sinew binding.

Inside were three books, one of his dusty old ledger books, a collection of poetry with lines from Blake to Byron, and finally, The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

He began to thumb through them. Inside the ledger book were writing lessons and drawings he had made while at the mission school. Within he had attempted to capture all he could recall of his life before he was taken, everything except the one event which had so cruelly snatched him from his world. In between these illustrations, in steady cursive hand, he had written the wasicu alphabet, Biblical proverbs, simple sentences, and lessons in grammar. He traced the lines with his fingers, remembering how strange and pointless it felt to be forced to perform such exercises.

Next he came to the book of poems, riddles which, once he could understand them, had swept Looks Far away with the power of their words. The book fell open to a poem by Lord Byron:

"She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies..."

He thought on Woman Beneath the Stars, for the lines seemed to have been written just for her. Impulsively he tore the page free then folded and tucked it beneath the robe where she had laid not long before.

Finally he reached the book of Shakespeare. Inside were tales of valor and betrayal, not so unlike those told by the elders which had captivated Looks Far as a child. He opened the tome to "Romeo and Juliet," the one story that held little meaning to him but which as a boy he had been forced to memorize passages to recite before his classmates. Now the story seemed of greater interest. Scanning the pages, his eyes fell to a line which chilled him:

"These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder..."

It was Friar Laurence's warning to Romeo for having fallen so quickly for Juliet, his sworn enemy. Pushing these thoughts aside, Looks Far continued to thumb through the book until he arrived as the final page. There, tucked within a slit he had made in the leather binding was a tattered and bloodied bit of white cotton fabric. Taking it in his hands, he began to weep as a long-faded memory came into clear focus.

It had been a warm morning in the season of the Tall Grass. Few had risen in the camp, but Looks Far, then a child of 10 winters known as Sparrow, lay awake, excited and eager for his father to take him on his first hunt as had been promised. Outside, he could hear the dogs barking and beyond that, the sound of some strange music growing nearer and louder by the moment. Sparrow went and shook his father awake and asked if he, too, could hear the sound. The man's eyes flashed with alarm and he quickly tied on his clout, waking and urging his wife to do the same. As they dressed, a rising din of screams, shouts and gunfire began to erupt outside. The family had yet to put on their moccasins when the wasicu men in blue coats burst into their lodge.

When he saw them enter with guns drawn, Sparrow's father unfurled the small white flag of peace in his hands and threw himself before his wife and son as the soldiers came upon them with their bayonets. Sparrow had no time to act, he was afraid and disoriented and could only watch helplessly as the soldiers ran his mother and father through with their long knives so many times and with such force that the spray of blood filled the air within the lodge like a fine mist, raining down upon them. A trumpet call sounded from outside and as the soldiers turned to retreat, Sparrow pulled the skinning knife from his mother's belt and made a leap onto the back of one of the men, driving the blade with full force into the man's shoulder. But Sparrow was small for his age and the man, even in his pain, easily flipped the boy from his back onto the ground and pressed his glossy black boot into the child's chest.

With his hobnailed sole pinning Sparrow down, the blue coat bent and retrieved the white flag from where it lay, wet with the blood of his parents. He laughed cruelly, crouching low and dangling the flag before the boy's eyes. The man's pained and labored breathing came hard against Sparrow's face as he began to speak. Sparrow didn't understand the meaning of the soldier's words then, but the man he had become, Looks Far, did.

"Listen boy and remember: There is no peace for your kind, only death. Embrace it."

He withdrew his boot and dropped the bloodied flag to the child's chest before he and the others exited the lodge, leaving Sparrow to stare heavenwards in shock as the sun came high through the smoke hatch and cast its radiant light upon the abattoir. The world seemed to have fallen silent when mere moments before he could hear little over the deafening cries of the people, the claps of gunfire, and the shrieks of panicked horses. The silence was broken by a low rumble follow by the sounds of popping and crackling. Still he lay, unmoving within the circle of the lodge. Soon, the walls around him began to blacken and curl as smoke filled his lungs and clouded his sight. Clutching the flag to his chest, Sparrow sprung up and dashed through the doorway just as the long lodge poles began to collapse over the bodies of his parents. Turning back, his eyes filled with fire as all he had known burned before him. He stood, mesmerized by the sight and motionless until he was pulled up from the earth by a force he had neither seen nor heard. He did not fight back.

Wiping the tears from his eyes, Looks Far gently folded the last reminder of his parents and pressed it between his palms. He had kept their ghosts too long, they deserved release. With a murmured prayer, Looks Far cast the flag into the fire. It quickly turned to ash before his eyes, drifting up on the grey plumes to meet the late morning sun.

Elaine was becoming increasingly fond of Calls to Them. When she slipped back into the tent that morning, Calls to Them chose not to berate her for her absence but instead looked upon Elaine with relief and pulled the younger woman close in an embrace as she said in Lakota, "I've missed you, daughter."

Calls to Them was kind and considerate, ever fretful over the welfare of children who tested their swimming skills too far out in the river or whose fathers could not provide well for them. In that embrace, Elaine could sense how alone Calls to Them must have felt and so she decided to invite her to come and share their work under the shade of the cottonwoods. A smile illuminated Calls to Them's weathered face and together they made their way to the stand of trees by the river.

As they worked, Calls to Them asked in simple Lakota "Daughter, do you have a husband? From home?"

"No, Mother," Elaine replied in Lakota, groping for the words. "I am alone. I lived alone."

Calls to them frowned and clucked her tongue. "Do you wish for a husband? You are not yet too old and even with so much white skin, you are attractive; you could have many to choose from."

Elaine shook her head. "No Lakota would marry a wasicu, I would make trouble for him."

Calls to Them laughed at her words, thinking them ridiculous. Woman Beneath the Stars was the first wasicu Calls to Them had ever seen, and she was not so troublesome. Surely, the wasicu were a strange people from what she had heard, but this woman chose to live as a Lakota and so she would become as one. Her origin would not matter so much in time.

"Why do you laugh?" Elaine asked, exasperated at her own inability to understand the humor in what she had just shared.

"It is maybe because you already have a suitor," the older woman said, brows raised as she looked up from her work sewing doeskins.

Elaine was suddenly unnerved by the idea that a stranger might have come to call. How would she navigate fending off unwanted advances without creating anger or strife?

"Who?" she dared ask, prepared for the worst.

"Tehanl Wanyanke, he watches you," she said. "Others say they saw you together last night under the courting robe. Is this true?"

Elaine blushed deeply at hearing his name and knowing they were being gossiped about. She felt ashamed and immodest in the eyes of the woman who had taken her in. But the feelings were short-lived as Calls to Them laughed heartily once more.

"Daughter," she continued. "Maybe he is a good match. Like you, he is strange to us. He is a courageous warrior and good hunter, he is honorable, but he has never taken a wife. He is quiet. He does not laugh."

Elaine smiled for she knew this wasn't true, for the evening before they had shared laughter together. Calls to Them caught the smile and cast a knowing look at Elaine.

"You have come to know him then?" she asked, but it sounded more like a statement, Elaine couldn't be certain.

"Han, yes, I have."

"You will make him your husband, then," Calls to Them said, curtly.

Before Elaine could reply, the older woman got up, gathered her things and strode away. Elaine stared after her and, as though sensing this, Calls to Them turned around and cast her a look not of anger or reproach, but of mischief. The woman was up to something, though God or Wakan Tanka only knew what.

Elaine watched as her adoptive mother vanished into the village. She could hear children laughing and screaming. She saw women at work, gossiping and arguing. Saw the young men tend their ponies in the river. No one here could imagine spending their lives glued to screens, villages where they didn't know their neighbors names and where children grew ill because they exercised only their fingers at video game controllers. And though Elaine missed that realm, she also longed for this one where people lived connected and engaged with each other and the world around them. It wasn't always pretty, it certainly wasn't easy, but it was fully human. Even if she were to be swept back today, Elaine knew there would always be a part of her that would long for this and mourn more than ever before its cruel end. And then there was Tehanl Wanyanke.

Imagining his loss caused a creeping hollow in her gut, so the swallowed the feeling and turned back to the mindless task of sewing water bladders.

In the nights that followed, sleep brought no respite to Elaine. She tossed and turned fitfully, plagued with violent dreams which grew ever more detailed by the night. The scenes played across her subconscious like flashes punctuated by gunfire. The furious pounding of hooves. The smell of black powder. And bodies that lay like a blanket across the prairie. In her dreams she was alone, the sole survivor, searching along them. Each body she turned bore his face. Snapping awake in terror, Elaine was met only with the soft snoring of Calls to Them from across the lodge.

Restless and in need of air, Elaine dressed and stepped outside to wander the village and calm her mind. Before she knew it, her feet had carried her all the way to Tehanl Wanyanke's lodge. For the better part of a week he had once more been conspicuously absent and it worried her, though whether it was concern for his welfare or concern that his interest in her had waned, she could not be certain. She dared not indicate her presence, but the horror of her most recent dream compelled her to try and take a peek within, if only to ensure he was safely asleep.

She lay on her belly along the ground and peered through the narrow slit where the lodgeskins met the earth. Inside it was dark save for the faint glow of the fire which only served to completely obscure whatever lay on the other side of it. It was useless, she couldn't make out a thing.

"It is not wise for an unrelated woman to be seen so near to a man's lodge unchaperoned."

His voice gave her such a start that she nearly screamed, but thought better of it in a split-second. Embarrassed, Elaine scrambled to her feet and turned to face Tehanl Wanyanke, casting her eyes down in a show of modesty and respect. Then she felt the tips of his fingers graze her chin. The contact lasted only a split second, but it provoked her to cast her eyes up to his face as a ripple of pleasure ran through her.

"I'm sorry, I know," she said, quietly. "But I had a terrible vision in the night, and I needed to see you were safe."

Looks Far smiled tenderly at her, for he could hear the concern in her words. He looked upon her hands, once so soft now grown calloused with skinning and mending. Her dark hair lightly greased and gathered in two braids. The tiny shell earrings she wore. Less and less he saw a wasicu, but rather someone who, like him, had been thrust into an alien world far from all she knew but who had labored hard to adapt with grace and courage. Someone like him who was at once part of a community and yet, in many ways, alone within it. He saw a woman -- beautiful, desirable and worried for him. And it was this which quieted his rising impulse to invite her beneath his robes once more. She was worthy of more respect than he had at first shown.

At last, Looks Far replied to her:

"Woman Beneath the Stars, as you can see, I am well. Do not fret." Gently laying his hand to her shoulder he added: "Return to your mother and be patient. I will seek you out."

The horizon was turning a brilliant red and the birds began to call in the grass. The smooth planes of his face seemed to glow in the breaking dawn. He was a vision to behold. She thought for a moment to ask what exactly he meant, then she thought better of it. For the Lakota felt it rude to press. Information should be freely given.

"Now go, quickly," he urged, squeezing the shoulder her held for emphasis. "Your mother awakes soon and I will not hear of you creating worry for her again!"

As always, Tehanl Wanyanke had a point. As she hurried back across camp, his words "I will seek you out," echoed in her mind, making her giddy as a pubescent girl. When Elaine arrived back at Calls to Them's lodge, she was surprised to find the old woman awake and waiting for her. On her lap she held a bundle of pristine white elk skin. It was intricately quilled and beaded, and upon closer inspection, Elaine saw it was a dress.

Her glance shot up to meet Calls to Them, who smiled so broadly her eyes nearly shut.

"Daughter," she began, her voice mirthful. "This is the dress my mother-in-law, Owl Woman, made for me. Red Grouse is a widow now and you will have no mother-in-law to create a dress for you in our way. This is my gift for you, for your marriage to Tehanl Wanyanke."

Elaine sat back for a moment, stunned and piecing together what had been said with the command of Lakota she had thus far acquired. Marriage? To Tehanl Wanyanke?