Cherokee Storm (29 page)

The trail led uphill and into a tiny hollow tucked between the mountainside and a stand of red oaks. In the center of the clearing stood a low, round hut, smaller than a dwelling, formed of saplings and hides. Smoke came from a hole in the roof. Around the hut, the grass had been flattened down and patterns of white stones formed a labyrinth. More of the village women and teenage girls waited. In all, Shannon counted more than fifty.

Her heart thudded as she followed Egret Hatching down the pathway to the low opening of the hut. The women ahead of her stripped off their clothing to enter naked. Frightened, Shannon glanced at Blue Sky. She smiled and beckoned.

“It is a sweat lodge,” Egret Hatching piped. “No harm will come to you there, daughter of Truth Teller.”

Uncertain of what would come next, Shannon removed her clothing and followed the medicine woman inside. Instantly, a wave of moist heat hit her face. The low structure was larger inside than it had appeared from the clearing, and it seemed to be set down into the earth. Shannon descended two steps and followed Egret Hatching to a seat along the wall.

It was difficult to see because the only light came from a tiny smoke hole in the ceiling. Rocks surrounded the fire pit. A woman that Shannon didn't know poured dippers of water on the rocks, causing clouds of steam. Some women held small bundles of willow switches, and they used them to beat their bare backs. Shannon was relieved that no one offered her any willow switches.

Outside, near the far wall, a drum beat a steady, mesmerizing rhythm. Corn Woman shook a gourd rattle. Blue Sky removed a tiny wooden flute from her thick hair and began to play. Sweat poured off Shannon's skin, as the women around her began to chant. The air smelled strongly of herbs, and the swirling steam distorted Shannon's vision, so that the room seemed larger yet. Around her, it seemed that more and more women pressed close without touching her, singing, rocking back and forth in time to the drum and the flute. In the air, Shannon thought she saw tiny lights, like lightning bugs, flick on and off.

Someone passed her a gourd. “Drink,” the woman said.

“What is it?” Shannon asked.

“Only water.” It was Storm Dancer's mother. “Trust me,” she said. “Only water.”

The water was warm but clean and refreshing. Shannon drank and passed the container back.

“No, to your left,” Firefly instructed.

Shannon did as she was told. The singing stopped. The drum and flute went silent. The women around her clapped, once, twice, a third time, only one clap each time.

And then Corn Woman spoke. “Spirit of Cardinal, tell us true.”

Firefly joined in. “Spirit of the Corn Mask, tell us true.”

Someone threw water on the rocks again. Hissing filled the hut, and for an instant, Shannon thought she saw something blue and shapeless hovering over the fire. Then all the Cherokee women began chanting again.

Shannon wasn't certain if she fell asleep or if a great deal of time had elapsed, but someone tugged on her arm. “Come,” Snowberry urged. “It is over.”

“Over? What's over?”

Snowberry took her hand and led her out into the sunshine. Firefly threw a blanket around Shannon's shoulders. One by one, the others emerged from the sweat lodge. Blue Sky caught Shannon's hand.

“Come,” Woodpecker's mother said. She was smiling. “Come. Now we swim.” She led the way into the tall trees. After only a short distance, they reached a sandy bank. Beyond that was a pool completely surrounded by evergreens. “Come in,” Blue Sky called. She threw off her own wrap and jumped in.

The water was shallow, no more than chest deep, but it felt heavenly to Shannon. All around her, the others were splashing and laughing. Even the elderly matrons seemed to join in the fun. Women retrieved small bowls of paste that made suds when they rubbed it into their hair. Someone passed Shannon a dollop and she washed and scrubbed until her skin tingled.

“Now, we are ready,” Firefly said. She motioned to Shannon. Corn Woman and Snowberry waited beside her. When Shannon climbed out of the water, they dried her body with furs and rubbed sweet-smelling oils into her skin and hair.

Shannon looked into Firefly's face. “What's happening? Am I going to die?”

Firefly laughed. “We will all die someday, but not today, daughter. Not today.”

“Corn Woman is my sister,” Snowberry explained. “She is the mother of Cardinal. She wants to take you as her daughter in Cardinal's place.”

“Adopt you,” Blue Sky explained. “You will be Deer Clan as Cardinal was. You will be the child of Corn Woman and also of Snowberry. Do you agree?”

Shannon looked around at the women. They were all smiling and nodding. “It doesn't mean I have to give up Storm Dancer, does it?” she asked.

Firefly smiled. “No, child. It doesn't. Since Cardinal was the person who testified against you, and she is no longer here, something else had to be done.”

“The trial must be fair,” Egret Hatching said. Her dried-apple face beamed.

“You chose to stay among us when you could have gone back to your own kind,” Yellow Bead said. “You passed the test of truth. Today was only the final step.”

“You are
Tsalagi
now,” Blue Sky exclaimed. “Now you can wed in the
Tsalagi
way.”

Firefly unfolded a white doeskin dress, fringed from the hip to the ankle. “For you, my daughter,” she said, “if you will forgive me and accept this token.”

Shannon nodded, too full of emotion to speak. Storm Dancer's mother lowered the dress over her head, and then other women combed out her hair and settled necklaces of shells and silver beads around her neck. Corn Woman offered a pair of moccasins adorned with tiny silver bells, and Snowberry hung shell earrings in Shannon's ears.

“You are very beautiful,” Blue Sky said. “Even for one with strange colored eyes.”

Children came out of the forest to shower Shannon with wildflowers as she started up the hill toward the village, surrounded by the singing women. The men came out of each house; some beat drums, others pipes or rattles. And when they reached the center of the town, where only weeks ago, Shannon had thought she would lose the man she loved, he was waiting for her.

Storm Dancer was clad as fine as she, with high fringed leggings, a butter-soft vest worked with porcupine quills, armbands of beaten copper, and a fringed loincloth. His hair was combed out long and straight, still damp and gleaming. When he saw her coming, he smiled, held out his hand, and led her into a circle of wildflowers.

Old Yellow Bead came to them and handed Shannon a cake of cornbread. She didn't have to be told what to do. She offered the bread to Storm Dancer. He smiled and whispered, “Together. We bite it together.”

Laughing, they held the cake high and nibbled the edges at the same time. Then Egret Hatching handed Storm Dancer a gourd of water. He lifted the cup first to his bride's lips and then to his own. Next, Firefly approached. In her hands was a cord woven of the horse-hair and decorated with beads. She motioned to her son and he held out his left hand.

Speaking ancient words, handed down for a thousand years from generation to generation, Firefly bound Storm Dancer's wrist to Shannon's. Flint stepped forward and clapped once.

“It is done,” Firefly cried.

Everyone cheered. Young girls rushed toward the bridal couple and tossed dried beans, and the village maidens began a slow circular dance around the square. Drums beat, and men and women came forward to offer gifts and food for the feast.

“Am I truly your wife?” Shannon asked. She was so happy that she wanted to pinch herself to make certain she wasn't dreaming. “Truly?”

“Truly,” he answered.

“You knew, didn't you? You knew what they were going to do, and you didn't tell me?”

He smiled at her. “I couldn't. You had to face the trial alone to prove your innocence.”

“You'll pay for that,” she promised.

He bent and kissed her to the cheers and laughter of the onlookers. “Promises, promises,” he teased.

“I hope we aren't supposed to share our lodge with your parents or all our wedding guests tonight,” she said.

He laughed. “No. We go to a special place in the mountains just for newlyweds, and when we come back, you'll have a new cabin. It will be all yours. I can't even come in unless you invite me.”

“Maybe you'll get lucky.”

He kissed her again. “I love you, Spring Rain.”

She looked up at him, puzzled. “What did you call me?”

“When you became
Tsalagi,
you shed your old name. Now you are Spring Rain, heart of my heart.”

“Spring Rain. I think I like it.”

“The earth would not come to life after winter without the rains of spring. And I was never alive until I found you.”

She leaned her head against his chest and closed her eyes, oblivious to the laughing villagers around them.
I've come home,
she thought.
I've finally come home.

As Storm Dancer had promised, they were able to slip away late on their wedding night. They took the horses to save him from having to walk too far, so that he could save his strength for her, he teased. Storm Dancer rode his black stallion; she was mounted on Badger. And long after they'd ridden down the valley, they could hear the drums and singing rising behind them from the village.

The moon and stars shone brightly, illuminating the forest floor where light pierced the foliage overhead and making the game trail easy for their mounts to follow. Ancient trees stretched their branches overhead, and the air smelled sweet with the odors of rich earth and pine needles. The muted clip-clop of their horses' hooves added to the merry symphony of frogs and crickets chirping in the darkness.

“Will your mother accept me now?” Shannon asked. Her voice echoed through the trees, but it wasn't a lonely sound. Rather, she felt protected by these giants, and by the man she followed.

“She will accept you. She has to.” Storm Dancer reined in his horse so that she could bring the pony up beside him. The black horse pranced and arched his neck.

Badger snorted and bared his teeth at the stallion, clearly unimpressed by the taller animal. She pulled up his head. “Behave yourself,” she chided the pony. “You have the manners of a goat.”

“Don't worry so,” Storm Dancer said. “In the eyes of our people, you have taken Cardinal's place.”

“How could I take her place? Surely, her mother…her aunt…”

He shrugged and reached to lay a warm hand on her arm. “It's difficult to explain. But to my mother, you have become Cardinal. I was supposed to marry her, and in a way, I have.”

“I'm not certain I like that.” The pony snatched a mouthful of grass.

“You are of the Deer Clan,” Storm Dancer said patiently. “You have fulfilled the prophesy by marrying me. Mother will not only accept you, she will love you as the daughter she never had.”

“I'm not certain I want to be married to a prophet. It sounds painful.”

He laughed. “I never said that I was a prophet or a hero. I only said my mother believes it.”

He caught the end of her braid and gave it a playful tug. Blue Sky had helped Shannon to dress for her ride to the honeymoon lodge, and the Indian woman had plaited her hair into one thick braid so that it wouldn't become tangled in the tree branches.

“Somehow I find it hard to imagine your mother loving me.”

“You'd be surprised. She is a woman with the weight of authority on her shoulders. First comes our village, then the Wolf Clan, then her family. She isn't nearly as intimidating as she pretends.”

“So your father comes last? Your parents have a strange marriage.”

“They are devoted to each other.”

“But they don't live together,” she protested. “I wouldn't want to be apart from you—ever. Will you leave me to live in the warrior's lodge as other married men do?” She looked at him, silhouetted in the moonlight, her big, wonderful husband, and thought how lucky she was to have found him in a most unlikely place.

He laughed. “We are different from other couples, you and me. We will make our own customs, some from the
Tsalagi
way of life, some from your Irish.”

She dropped Badger's reins and leaned close to press her palm to his. “Promise me we will,” she said.

“Haven't I married you in your own religion as well as my own?”

She nodded and sighed. “Both weddings were lovely, but I think I like the Cherokee one best. You were much prettier this time.”

He snorted. “Pretty? Me? Storm Dancer, great warrior of the Wolf Clan?”

“Beautiful.” She smiled at him. Strange that most whites believed the Indians to be dour and solemn. Most of the time, someone was joking or playing a prank on someone else, and no one enjoyed a hearty laugh more than her husband.

He pushed his heels into his stallion's sides. “It's not far now,” he said. “I think you'll be pleased.”

“Anywhere that we're together, I'll be happy.” She hesitated, wrinkling her nose. “There's one thing I don't understand. They said I'd be tried for stealing the mask, and no one asked me any questions about it. If Cardinal hadn't been dead already, she would have repeated what she'd said. Won't people think I'm guilty and got away with it?”

He glanced back over his shoulder at her. “No. No one believes now that you stole the mask. They accept your innocence.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“A small friend, who wears woodpecker feathers in his hair, whispered to me that his mother whispered to him that the spirit of the Corn Mask told the council of your innocence.”

“The spirit told them?” She mused for a minute or two on the time she'd spent in the sweat lodge. It had been dark and hard to see, but she was certain that a blue shape had materialized…. No, she wouldn't think of that. It smacked too much of things that go bump in the night. “So who did steal the mask?”

“It never happened.”

“Never happened? I saw it broken. They found it under my bed.”

He urged his horse ahead, and she could hear his amused chuckling. “It didn't happen. Shannon doesn't exist. You are Spring Rain, wife to Storm Dancer, daughter of Corn Woman.”

“But…”

Storm Dancer turned again to fix her with a reassuring gaze. “Never speak of it again. That act is wiped clean. If the spirit of the Corn Mask is pleased with you, then none can speak against you. Accept it, wife.”

“It makes no sense to me.”

“In time it will. In time our customs will seem normal. In faith, all things are not rational. They just are.” He pointed through the trees. “There. There is our honeymoon home.”

She kicked Badger and the pony broke into a trot. As the deer path opened up, she saw a rise with a hut built into the hillside. If he hadn't pointed it out, she never would have seen it. The roof and sides were covered in pine boughs so that the cabin blended into the mountain. The pony quickened his trot. Just ahead, between where she was and the shelter, a tiny stream rushed and gurgled through the clearing. Thick grass reached almost to her ankles.

“It's beautiful,” she said. “A fairy place.”

“Our home,” he said. “For the passing of a moon, four of your weeks. Women have left food and blankets inside. We will have nothing to do but watch the foxes play in the grass, sleep in the sun, and grow fat.”

“And make love?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I will make love to you so often that you will beg me to go hunting, anything, so long as you can sleep.”

“Never!”

He laughed. “We'll see about that, heart of my heart. We'll see.”

 

As Storm Dancer had promised, they were entirely alone here except for the birds and animals that inhabited this mountain. They did not even keep the horses with them. The morning after they arrived, he'd stripped off the bridles and sent them trotting off home.

“Not enough grass in this valley for them,” he'd explained. “When our moon of loving is up, someone will come for us and bring the horses.”

“But they'll be safe? Wolves won't—”

“They are both wise and battle tested. Any wolf that comes head to head with Badger or my black stallion will go home with an empty belly and hoofprints in his side.”

Storm Dancer turned, dropped the bridles, and caught her around the waist and lifted her high in the air. “And now, my yellow-haired woman, I am yours to command. So long as we remain here, my only mission is to do your bidding and bring you joy.”

She raised an eyebrow mischievously. “I may prove a hard taskmistress.”

“Then we'll have to do something about that.” He lowered her to the ground and dropped onto his knees. She threw her arms around his neck, and, laughing, the two of them rolled over and over in the tall grass.

And, as he had promised, they made love. Neither day nor night mattered. They laughed and played together. He caught trout by lying on his stomach and dangling his hand in the cold water until a fish swam by. Then he would snatch it up and toss it into the grass. Later, they would grill them over the fire and take turns popping morsels of food into each other's mouths.

They lived on the food the women had brought them, on dried berries and honey, on fish, on squash and vegetables, and on small game. For the month of their aloneness, he would kill no deer, in honor of her clan. Shannon must do no labor, use a knife, or touch the blood of any animal. In this time, she was to be cherished, protected, and cared for by her new husband.

Once, he took her up the mountain where they could watch a sow bear playing in the hollow with her twin cubs, one black, and one russet brown. He taught her to tell the difference between hawks, to watch the young eagles hunting with their parents, and listen for the wild geese flying north.

Storm Dancer delighted in cooking for Shannon, showing her how to find edible mushrooms and greens, and how to turn leaves and blades of grass into whistles. He gathered wildflowers for her, brushed out her long blond hair, and braided it with blossoms and green leaves as adornment. He rubbed special oils into her feet and massaged her arches, then kissed his way from her toes to the crown of her head. Never, in all her life, had she felt so pampered, so spoiled.

One afternoon, when rain had kept them inside the honeymoon lodge, Storm Dancer amused her by telling her the tale of why the opossum had no fur on its tail, when she remembered something that had troubled her since she'd met him. She listened to the story, laughed in all the right places, and kissed him soundly once he was finished. Then she took his large hands in hers and asked, “Your black stallion, the one you rode here, where did you get him?”

“I raised him from a colt. My father bought a mare from—”

“I wondered,” she said, cutting him off. “When we were on our way west, some white trappers passed through our camp. They had a horse that looked exactly like yours…and like the other animal I saw in the cave.” She looked up into his eyes hopefully, wanting to be told that horses often looked alike, that she must have been mistaken.

“Bearded men,” he answered. Storm Dancer's mouth became a thin, unsmiling line. “Are you certain you want to know?”

A lump rose in her throat. “Yes, I do.”

“The horses were stolen. Not by me, but by the white trappers. They killed two of my friends, one only fifteen years of age. I followed them and took back the horses.”

“And killed them?”

“No man, white or red, comes to
Tsalagi
land and sheds blood without paying the price.” He took hold of her shoulders roughly. “Know that I will never harm a hair on your head, but I protect what is mine. I could not call myself a man if I would not fulfill my duty as a warrior of the Wolf Clan and of my nation.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

He enfolded her in his arms. “Do not let this stand between us, wife. You must take me as I am. I do not take life easily. It brings me no joy to kill even an evil man.”

“All right.” She clung to him. “But you would never kill a good person, would you?”

“The Creator forbids it,” he said. “I have killed only to defend my own life or another's, or to deliver justice to murderers.”

Truth rang in the conviction of his words. Shannon sighed as she pressed her head against his chest and listened to the strong, rhythmic beating of his heart. Storm Dancer readily admitted hunting down the killers of his friends, but he could never have harmed Flynn O'Shea. She had to let that fear dissolve or let doubt destroy her own happiness.

God help me,
she prayed silently.
I know what it means to be falsely accused.
She would accept Storm Dancer's innocence and never consider the alternative again.

 

They slept and ate and made love, and the time slipped away until the night air began to take on a bite and they needed to wrap themselves in furs in the early hours of the dawn. And finally, long before Shannon was ready, Flint, and Firefly, and three young warriors came riding into the clearing leading Badger and the black horse. One brave Shannon recognized as Muskrat, a second, Whistler. The third man, she didn't know by name.

“Greetings,” Storm Dancer called. “What news?”

“The women are beginning to harvest the corn and the pumpkins have turned from green to orange,” his mother answered. “I see neither of you has killed the other yet.”

“She tried,” Storm Dancer teased. “She wore my lance to a short eating knife.”

The young men laughed, and Shannon blushed, but she took it in stride. Much of the Cherokee humor was bawdy, but she'd heard plenty of that at Klank's tavern. She knew the jesting was in good humor.

“Have you made me a grandfather yet?” Flint asked, swinging down off his dappled gray.

“No more of your nonsense,” Firefly said. “They need not worry about babies yet. Let them enjoy each other for a year or two.”

“We're planning a great hunt,” Muskrat said. “All of the men are going. The elk are fat in Beaver Valley this year. Your father wanted to go last week, but we didn't want you to miss out.”

“What do you think?” Storm Dancer asked as he helped his mother down from her brown mare. “Is the time right for hunting elk?”

“Egret Hatching says that two days from now will be the best time. And your father has been scouting the herds. There are fat yearlings ready for good hunters to bring home.”

Firefly handed a covered basket to Shannon. “Leave them to their talk of hunting,” she said. “I've brought fresh baked bread and roast goose. Let us go inside and gather your things. After we eat, we will return to the village together.”

Shannon glanced at Storm Dancer. For the first time in weeks, she wasn't the center of his attention. She sighed. Her mother-in-law was right. It was time to go home, time to help prepare food stores for the coming winter. It was time to leave this special place and return to her new life as Spring Rain.