September 16, 1754
It is not yet dawn. I am not certain what time it is, or if it is even the next day. I do know that I must relate what has happened to me this night for fear of going mad.
I was so soothed by Kaukesha's hands in my hair after they had left, I barely managed to get the nanny into the lean to beside the cabin before I laid my head down on the table - thinking to rest for only a moment before I had my supper and closed the cabin for the night.
I was awoke from my slumber by my rumbling stomach sometime in the night, to find that the fire had gone out beneath my stew pot.
Frustrated and unable to see to stoke what embers might still be burning, I managed to shut and secure the cabin door. Stomach loudly protesting, I felt the heavy lump of the root in my apron, and pulling it out, I brushed it free of the bits of lint which might have stuck to it, and took a bite to ease the growling in my belly.
The root explodes in a sweet taste in my mouth as I grind my teeth down on it. The texture is similar to the finest pastry I ever had, and I am ashamed to admit I gobbled the rest of it down greedily.
It filled my belly and because of that, I once more grew sleepy, so sleepy I barely made it to my low trundle bed in the corner of the cabin. I dreamed of strange things when I slept. I dreamt of Monsieur Lerreaux, the wealthy planter who had all his wife's shoes made by my father. How he had asked my father for my hand in marriage after his wife had died.
I dreamed of Oconowoc's father Nawkaw, how he had found me gathering berries in the further end of the forest earlier in the summer. I remember the look in his eyes when he saw me on the edge of the clearing, how he had pulled my bonnet off of my head, his eyes growing darker when he saw my hair.
The color of the berries as they rolled free of the basket, the sounds of my frightened cries when he dragged me up against his body and smashed his mouth on mine. His kiss tasting of wild strawberries. His deft fingers, slipping under my skirts and poking me between the thighs. The feel of the calluses on the tips of his fingers before he dragged me to the darker shadows of the forest.
The feel of his hands, rough and excited as he lifted my skirts, brought my knee up to his narrow waist and pinned me against the tree. The feel of his member as it slapped eagerly against my thigh before he maneuvered his hips and stabbed it deep inside me, his mouth eating my cry of pain before he began to move against me, gobbling up my whimpers even as the pain changed to passion, the feel of his manhood deep inside me, stretching me to accommodate him.
In my dreams, I understood the words he muttered into the bend of my neck as he pushed me against the trunk of one of the pines. He called me his wife. He said I was his mate, and that through our union the tribe would be given gifts from the Mother, and then he took my maidenhead - he had taken what Monsieur Lerreaux had wanted.
I understood that it was the spirit of the forest which drove him to do this deed, that the spirit was excited by my hair, by my skin. I was unlike anything it had seen - and it had waited long to be joined to me.
I remembered my tears as they stained the dry earth beneath the dried pine needles. I dreamed of the forest watching us as he shouted out in pleasure, the red of my maidenhead mingling with his seed and dripping down my leg to the soft earth below us.
I dreamed of the culmination of our joining and how he had stumbled away from me, shaking his head as if to clear it while I dropped to my knees and buried my face in my hands in shame. The feel of my shoulders as they shook with sobs and Nawkaw's anguished voice when he realized what he had done - what he would be driven to do again.
I woke slowly, feeling the phantom fingers of my memory pressing in to my thighs, the memory of the pine branches far above my head mixing in with the reality of my chemise being pulled up my body as fingers tightened their hold on my thighs and spread me wide.
To my shame, I felt the cool air of the evening that slipped past the oiled hide on my moist nether lips before the warmth of a breath touched them. I shuddered a sigh as my body relaxed, lost in the memory of Nawkaw's rough lovemaking as he took me again and again in the woods until night fell and the sun rose once more.
I felt lips scented with strawberries touch mine, hands stroking my breasts as insistent as the ones which now stroked my wet flower. I felt myself lifted, arms hanging loosely to the sides and outward as my shift was ripped down the center by those hands, exposing my body to the darkness of the cabin.
My wife. My mate.
It was whispered within my head and without, the deep throbbing bass of the voices making my skin prickle in pleasure as it washed over and through me.
Suspended above my meager cot, I opened my eyes to the low ceiling of the cabin, finding myself so close to it that I could reach out and touch it, smell the pine shingles and the drops of sap that had frozen in place like icicles.
Slowly, I felt the hands squeeze my breasts even as the ones beneath me held me aloft, legs and arms spread wide like a sacrifice on an altar. Mouths replaced the hands on my breasts, one latching on to each nipple, suckling them insistently until they rose into hard peaks and made me cry out in pleasure, my eyes flying open in surprise as I felt my womb deep within me tighten and clench.
Awake and heavy with spent passion, I rolled my head to the side, my hair weighing my head backward so my neck was a long line. I needed to see my lover's face - to see the man that wrought such pleasure upon me, to beg him to fill me once more.
Suspended above my bed in the moonlight which lighted the oiled hide to a strange yellow glow, I saw the long rough wood table in the center of the room, my father's large bed against the far wall, the neatly folded stack of laundry beside it in a basket, my stew pot hanging above the hearth - a myriad of the items which consisted of my life here in the wilderness, but no other being present.
Disbelief coursed through me, and I felt my stomach grow tight at the thought of a ghost assaulting me in such an intimate manner, and I began to struggle against the hands that held me aloft, against the mouths that were wreaking such havoc on my breasts. The phantom hands tightened their hold on me, pushed my thighs apart even as I sought to close them.
My wife. My mate.
The words echoed in my head as a mouth latched onto the bud of my womanhood, suckling it as insistently as the mouths on my nipples. I gave a cry of pleasure mingled with horror and lifted my head to look down my pale body in the moonlight.
My nipples were pronounced, puckered and excited. Even though there were no mouths to be seen, they stretched and narrowed, as if someone were indeed kneading them with their lips, eliciting my body's response. Dimples were in the soft skin of my sides, along my ribs, as if the hands that clenched and lifted me were truly present, though I could not see them. The hair on my mound parted and shifted by an unseen mouth as it suckled my bud of pleasure, and even as I watched, I felt hands behind my slender thighs, pushing them upward until my knees scraped the ceiling.
Eyes wide in fright at what was happening to me, I watched as the tender insides of my thighs dimpled, showing four distinct prints as the hands locked me in place so a long tongue could jab into the center of me.
