A Hero's Tale (2 page)

Maara shook her head. "We lived in a village. We were farmers."

"You speak the same language."

"Similar, but not the same."

"But you understood Aamah, and you made yourself understood."

"Yes." She smiled. "I don't know how I remembered so much of the old speech. I haven't spoken it or heard it spoken since I was a child."

"You speak it to me sometimes," I told her.

"I do?"

I nodded.

"I don't remember."

"You speak it when you're troubled," I said. "And when we make love."

The memory struck us both at once. When our eyes met, I forgot all about the forest people. My body longed for her so intensely that I feared I might burst out of my own skin without her arms around me.

I held out my hand to her. "Come lie with me," I said.

She didn't hesitate. We lay down and let our bodies entwine themselves together. I closed my eyes and felt myself slip back into the darkness where I had found her the night before. Now if I opened my eyes there would be daylight and firelight. I had seen her so clearly in the dark. Would the light reveal or hide her? I opened my eyes.

I had forgotten how beautiful she was. My gaze fell first on her cheek, covered with the softest down. Her lips were slightly parted, as if they were waiting for a kiss. At the base of her throat, the blood beat beneath the tender skin.

The curve of her breast seduced my eyes. I laid my cheek against it. Its roundness fit perfectly against the palm of my hand. To my tongue her skin tasted sweet and salt together. I heard my kiss release her breath.

"Show me what pleases you," I whispered.

"Your touch pleases me," she said.

It was sweet to hear.

I leaned up on one elbow and smiled down at her. I couldn't resist teasing her a little. "You leave me no choice but to discover the answer for myself."

Maara tried not to smile. "Do you intend to spend all day in bed?"

"Is there anything we need to do today?"

"I suppose not," she said. "Nothing that won't wait."

"Is there something else you would prefer to do?"

A little color came into her cheek. "No," she said.

I could have spent half the day just looking at her. I was not unfamiliar with her body. I had so often bathed her, dressed her and undressed her. We had swum together in the river and sunbathed on the riverbank. While I had always thought her beautiful, I had never seen her quite like this. Before we were intimate with each other, her nakedness had been clothed in a veil of courtesy. Now my eyes had permission to enjoy her beauty. Not my eyes only, but my hands and my mouth admired her.

Her body was no longer shy with me. She welcomed each new touch. When her muscles tightened, they did so, not to protect her, but to express her pleasure. I still found a few tender places. I didn't avoid them. I touched them with tenderness and with great care, to teach them not to be afraid.

I took my time with her, both for her pleasure and for my own. I delighted in discovering how best to please her. Sometimes I caught her watching me, smiling a mysterious smile, as if she had a secret she was about to share.

As her desire grew, she closed her eyes. When she raised one knee, I took it as a sign that she wanted a more intimate touch, but when my fingers lightly brushed the curls between her legs and caressed the inside of her thigh, I felt the first hint of resistance in her.

"What shall I do?" I whispered.

With a touch of her fingertips, she turned my face to hers. Her mouth invited my kiss. We kissed until my own desire almost overcame my resolve to wait for her. At last she turned me so that I lay beside her.

"Touch me," she said.

As our knowledge of the world comes through the body, so too does the evidence of love. My heart's longing flowed from my lips in words and kisses, flowed through my body as I held her and through my fingers as they caressed her. Her body accepted the pleasure I gave her, and it was pleasure that opened the way for love to enter.

She put her hand over mine, to hold me still.

"I don't want this to end," she said.

"It never will," I told her.

And she slipped easily over the edge.

I woke late in the afternoon. Maara lay beside me sound asleep, one arm across my body, her breath warming my shoulder. The fire was almost out. Even under my heavy cloak, I was not quite warm enough, but I didn't feel like moving. My body was peaceful with satisfied desire, and the gentle glow of joy filled my heart.

Twilight drifted in through the smoky air. While I waited for Maara to wake, I amused myself by looking for meaning in the patterns of light and shadow overhead, as one might look for meaning in the shapes of clouds. Fantastic figures emerged from the texture of the wood -- here a goblin face, there the furry body of an animal.

The more I looked, the more I saw, and as I watched, the figures seemed to move, tumbling over and around each other, until they became one living tapestry. I saw, not whole figures, but bits and pieces, resolve themselves, then disappear -- the clawed foot of a hunting cat, a fin, a fish's scales, leaf shapes and flowers, a bird's wing, squirrels' tails. The tree itself was telling me a story, was telling me that everything that lives arises only for a moment out of a great sea of life before falling back into it again.

"Hush," said Maara.

I opened my eyes.

Maara brushed the tears from my cheeks. "You were dreaming."

The memory of my dream was still vivid, and as I told it to her, Maara grew thoughtful.

"Did the dream frighten you?" she asked.

"No," I told her. "It was beautiful."

She smiled at me. "I think you must be one of us at heart."

Before I could ask her what she meant, she looked up at the fading light and said, "We need to collect firewood before night falls."

When I got up, I saw a large bundle, tied with a rope of twisted vines, set just inside the fissure in the tree trunk. The knot looked so complicated that I would have cut it, but Maara pulled at one loose strand and it came undone. She unfolded the entire hide of an elk, with the elk's thick winter coat still on it. It was lined with soft deerskin, and another deerskin fell out of the bundle.

"The forest people have given us a proper bed," said Maara.

She handed me our cloaks, laid the deerskin down in place of them, and spread the elk hide over it. Then I noticed a covered basket in the shadows by the doorway. When I took the cover off, I saw that it was filled with something that resembled coarsely ground grain. I handed it to Maara, and she tasted it.

"Acorn meal," she said.

She held the basket out to me. I took a pinch of the meal and tried it. It was bland, with a faint nutty aftertaste.

"It makes a good mush," said Maara. "Bread too. My mother used to make a dough of it, roll it into balls, and bake them in the ashes of the fire."

"The forest people brought us gifts?"

Maara nodded. "When we make our visit, we'll take them something."

We had so little, I couldn't think of anything we had that we could spare, but Maara seemed confident that we would find something worthy of the wealth they'd given us.

By the time we had gathered enough firewood for the night, it was almost dark. For supper we made a stew of venison and wild onions. Maara tried her hand at making acorn bread. She kneaded the dough and shaped the loaves as if she had done it all her life, and the bread turned out very well. We dipped it into the broth of the stew to soften the crust. It was delicious.

After supper Maara set me the task of braiding creepers into a stout cord for making snares, while she wove a fish trap out of hazel wands. As we worked, I thought about the forest people and wondered what they thought of us inhabiting their sacred tree. I hoped they didn't see us as intruders.

"Do you think we're really welcome here?" I asked Maara.

"Yes," she replied. "I didn't expect we would ever see the forest people. That they have befriended us is more than I could have hoped for."

I remembered my anxiety for Maara and my fear that we would be discovered, and I surprised myself by questioning the forest people's good intentions. Although I didn't like to doubt them, I had to ask, "They won't betray us, will they?"

"Betray us?"

"To Elen's house."

Maara shook her head. "The people of Elen's house see the forest people so seldom that many doubt their existence, and Elen's house has nothing they want. The forest people want only to be left alone, and the less Elen's people are aware of them, the better."

I was reassured, but her reply piqued my curiosity. "If they wouldn't show themselves to Elen's people, why did they show themselves to us?"

Maara gazed at me as if I should have understood.

"They showed themselves to you," I said, "because you're like them."

With a slight nod of her head, she agreed with me. She continued to gaze at me in a way that made me uncomfortable. As I looked at her, her face changed, just a little, but enough to make me feel that I was looking at a stranger. For the first time she was not just Maara, not the unique person I knew, the person who was like no one else. She was of another tribe, another people, whose ways I didn't know, who spoke a tongue I didn't understand. I was the stranger here.

"What if they don't accept me?"

"They will."

Suddenly I felt very much alone, and my imagination began to run away with me. Was there a Vintel among the forest people?

Maara took my hand. "They will accept you now because you belong to me," she said, "and soon enough they'll accept you for yourself."

Because we had slept so long that day, we sat up late. When we tired of our chores, we huddled close to the fire and talked a little. For Maara the smell of acorn bread must have opened a door into memory, because she began to tell me little things about her childhood home -- about round houses with the fire in the center, bitter berries that left an aftertaste of honey, a man who used to play with her by hiding so that she could find him.

As I listened, I found it impossible to shake off the lonely feeling that came over me when I realized Maara had people here, while I had none. When there were just the two of us, I hadn't felt lonely at all. Now, for no reason I understood, the presence of other people had put a distance between me and Maara. Maara felt it too.

"What's wrong?" she asked me.

I shook my head. I couldn't put my feelings into words.

"Are you afraid?"

"A little," I admitted.

"Of the forest people?"

In a way I was, but not in the way she was thinking of. "I'm afraid you'll belong more to them than to me."

Maara smiled. "Don't be silly."

Her teasing only made me feel worse. A tear trickled down my cheek.

"You're homesick," she said.

She offered me no easy promises that I would see my home again or that I would someday feel at home in this strange place. She put her arms around me and let me weep against her shoulder for a while. Then, with a mother's tenderness, she undressed me and put me into bed, where we lay awake for hours, sharing our memories of childhood.

The next day we returned the visit of the forest people. We had stayed up so late the night before that we overslept a bit. While I made breakfast, Maara washed our dirty shirts, then hung them near the fire to dry. I knew without her saying so that they would be our gift to Aamah.

We followed the brook to the bathing rock and continued up the steep hillside. The forest canopy was thinner here, and a dense growth of holly and brambles grew beneath it. The only way through the tangle was a deer path that wound around the hilltop.

Maara, who was always so quiet, now began to make a great deal of noise. She scuffed her way through piles of brittle leaves and spoke to me out loud, careless of being overheard. Suddenly she stopped and spoke a word of greeting in the language of the forest people. I couldn't imagine who she was speaking to. The woman's clothing blended so perfectly into the colors of the forest that I didn't see her until she moved. When she approached us, I recognized her as one of the women who had been our guest the day before.

The woman smiled and spoke a few words of welcome, then led us up the path a short distance before ducking through a curtain of vines into what appeared to be an impenetrable thicket. We would never have found our way through it without a guide. The faintest of paths led us over obstacles of deadfall and through briars that tugged at our clothing, until we arrived at a bramble wall so tangled that we could go no farther. Our guide grasped one of the stout canes and pulled, and the bramble wall began to move. The gate had been so cleverly concealed that I thought for a moment I was a witness to magic. We stepped through the gate into the winter encampment of the forest people.

The camp lay inside a large enclosure. On three sides we were surrounded by the bramble wall. On the fourth, the rocky hillside loomed over us, too steep to climb. All around us was evidence of much activity. A deer carcass hung from a scaffold, ready for butchering. Inside a long shed, built against the bramble wall and open on three sides, people were busy at their chores. In the center of the enclosure, several people were gathered around a fire pit. No one seemed surprised to see us.

Our guide led us to the fire and invited us to sit down. Someone offered Maara a tightly woven basket, black with soot. Maara dipped her fingers into it and drew out a sticky glob of porridge, which she ate with appropriate noises of appreciation. When they offered the basket to me, I did likewise.

We began to draw a crowd. Soon a score of women and men had joined us around the fire. Half a dozen children peered out at us from behind their elders, who were just as curious but less inclined to show it, although their quick glances took us in from head to toe. Maara greeted the forest people in their own language and repeated our names several times. Hers gave them no trouble, but their tongues tripped over mine until they settled on something that sounded like Tamara.