She applauded briefly, then proceeded to cut the skin of the chestnut she was holding, crosswise, so it wouldn’t burst in the fire.
“I haven’t heard that one,” she said. “Tell me the words.”
“Oh.” He didn’t blush easily, but the skin of his throat darkened a little. “It’s … it’s no the Gaelic, that one. It’s the Kahnyen’kehaka.”
Her brows went up, as much at the easy sound of the word on his tongue as at what he’d said.
“Do you ever think in Mohawk, Ian?” she asked curiously.
He shot her a glance of surprise, almost, she thought, of fright.
“No,” he said tersely, and rose off his heels. “I’ll fetch a bit of wood.”
“I have some,” she said, holding him with a stare. She reached behind her and thrust a fallen pine bough into the kindling fire. The dry needles burst in a puff of sparks and were gone, but the ragged bark began to catch and burn at the edges.
“What is it?” she said. “What I said, about thinking in Mohawk?”
His lips pressed tight together, not wanting to answer.
“You asked me to come,” she said, not sharp with him, but firm.
“So I did.” He took a deep breath, then looked down at the yams he was burying in the heating ashes to bake.
She worked on the nuts slowly, watching him make up his mind. Loud chewing sounds and intermittent puffs of blue-gray feathers drifted out from under Rollo’s bush, behind him.
“Did ye dream last night, Brianna?” he asked suddenly, his eyes still on what he was doing.
She wished he had brought something coffeelike to boil, but still, she was sufficiently awake by now as to be able to think and respond coherently.
“Yes,” she said. “I dream a lot.”
“Aye, I ken that. Roger Mac told me ye write them down sometimes.”
“He did?” That was a jolt, and one bigger than a cup of coffee. She’d never hidden her dreambook from Roger, but they didn’t really discuss it, either. How much of it had he read?
“He didna tell me anything about them,” Ian assured her, catching the tone of her voice. “Only that ye wrote things down, sometimes. So I thought, maybe, those would be important.”
“Only to me,” she said, but cautiously. “Why …?”
“Well, d’ye see—the Kahnyen’kehaka set great store by dreams. More even than Highlanders.” He glanced up with a brief smile, then back at the ashes where he had buried the yams. “What did ye dream of last night, then?”
“Birds,” she said, trying to recall. “Lots of birds.” Reasonable enough, she thought. The forest around her had been live with birdsong since well before dawn; of course it would seep into her dreams.
“Aye?” Ian seemed interested. “Were the birds alive, then?”
“Yes,” she said, puzzled. “Why?”
He nodded, and picked up a chestnut to help her.
“That’s good, to dream of live birds, especially if they sing. Dead birds are a bad thing, in a dream.”
“They were definitely alive, and singing,” she assured him, with a glance up at the branch above him, where some bird with a bright yellow breast and black wings had lighted, viewing their breakfast preparations with interest.
“Did any of them talk to ye?”
She stared at him, but he was clearly serious. And after all, she thought, why wouldn’t a bird talk to you, in a dream?
She shook her head, though.
“No. They were—oh.” She laughed, unexpectedly recalling. “They were building a nest out of toilet paper. I dream about toilet paper all the time. That’s a thin, soft kind of paper that you use to wipe your, er, behind with,” she explained, seeing his incomprehension.
“Ye wipe your arse with paper?” He stared at her, jaw dropped in horror. “Jesus God, Brianna!”
“Well.” She rubbed a hand under her nose, trying not to laugh at his expression. He might well be horrified; there were no paper mills in the Colonies, and aside from tiny amounts of handmade paper such as she made herself, every sheet had to be imported from England. Paper was hoarded and treasured; her father, who wrote frequently to his sister in Scotland, would write a letter in the normal fashion—but then would turn the paper sideways, and write additional lines perpendicularly, to save space. Little wonder that Ian was shocked!
“It’s very cheap then,” she assured him. “Really.”
“Not as cheap as a cob o’ maize, I’ll warrant,” he said, narrow-eyed with suspicion.
“Believe it or not, most people then won’t have cornfields to hand,” she said, still amused. “And I tell you what, Ian—toilet paper is much nicer than a dry corncob.”
“ ‘Nicer,’ ” he muttered, obviously still shaken to the core. “Nicer. Jesus, Mary, and Bride!”
“You were asking me about dreams,” she reminded him. “Did you dream last night?”
“Oh. Ah … no.” He turned his attention from the scandalous notion of toilet paper with some difficulty. “Or at least if I did, I dinna recall it.”
It came to her suddenly, looking at his hollowed face, that one reason for his sleeplessness might be that he was afraid of what dreams might come to him.
In fact, he seemed afraid now that she might press him on the subject. Not meeting her eye, he picked up the empty beer jug and clicked his tongue for Rollo, who followed him, blue-gray feathers sticking to his jaws.
She had cut the last of the chestnut skins and buried the gleaming marrons in the ashes to bake with the yams, by the time he came back.
“Just in time,” she called, seeing him. “The yams are ready.”
“Just in time, forbye,” he answered, smiling. “See what I’ve got?”
What he had was a chunk of honeycomb, thieved from a bee tree and still chilled enough that the honey ran slow and thick, drizzled over the hot yams in glorious blobs of gold sweetness. Garnished with roasted, peeled, sweet chestnuts and washed down with cold creek water, she thought it was possibly the best breakfast she’d eaten since leaving her own time.
She said as much, and Ian lifted one feathery brow in derision.
“Oh, aye? And what would ye eat then that’s better?”
“Oooh … chocolate donuts, maybe. Or hot chocolate, with marshmallows in it. I really miss chocolate.” Though it was hard to miss it much at the moment, licking honey off her fingers.
“Och, get on wi’ ye! I’ve had chocolate.” He squinched his eyes and pinched his lips in exaggerated distaste. “Bitter, nasty stuff. Though they did charge a terrible lot of money just for a wee cup of it, in Edinburgh,” he added practically, unsquinching.
She laughed.
“They put sugar in it, where I come from,” she assured him. “It’s sweet.”
“Sugar in your chocolate? That’s the most decadent thing I’ve ever heard of,” he said severely. “Even worse than the arse-wiping paper, aye?” She saw the teasing glint in his eye, though, and merely snorted, nibbling the last shreds of orange yam flesh from the blackened skin.
“Someday I’ll get hold of some chocolate, Ian,” she said, discarding the limp peel and licking her fingers like a cat. “I’ll put sugar in it and feed it to you, and see what you think then!”
It was his turn to snort, good-naturedly, but he made no further remarks, concentrating instead on licking his own hands clean.
Rollo had appropriated the remnants of honeycomb, and was noisily gnawing and slurping at the wax, with complete enjoyment.
“That dog must have the digestion of a crocodile,” Brianna said, shaking her head. “Is there anything he won’t eat?”
“Well, I’ve no tried him on nails, yet.” Ian smiled briefly, but didn’t take up the conversation. The unease that had lain upon him when he talked of dreams had disappeared over breakfast, but seemed now to have returned. The sun was well up, but he made no move to rise. He merely sat, arms wrapped about his knees, gazing thoughtfully into the fire as the rising sun stole the light from the flames.<
br />
In no great hurry to start moving herself, Brianna waited patiently, eyes fixed on him.
“And what would you eat for breakfast when you lived with the Mohawk, Ian?”
He looked at her then, and his mouth tucked in at one corner. Not a smile, but a wry acknowledgment. He sighed, and laid his head on his knees, face hidden. He sat slumped that way for a bit, then slowly straightened up.
“Well,” he said, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “It was to do wi’ my brother-in-law. At least to start.”
Ian Murray thought that before too long, he would be obliged to do something about his brother-in-law. Not that “brother-in-law” was precisely the word for it. Still, Sun Elk was the husband of Looking at the Sky, who was in turn the sister of his own wife. By the notions of the Kahnyen’kehaka this implied no relation between the men beyond that of clansmen, but Ian still thought of Sun Elk with the white part of his mind.
That was the secret part. His wife had English, but they did not speak it, even when most private. He spoke no word of Scots or English aloud, had heard not a syllable of either tongue in the year since he had chosen to stay, to become Kahnyen’kehaka. It was assumed he had forgotten what he had been. But each day he found some moment to himself, and, lest he lose the words, would silently name the objects around him, hearing their English names echo in the hidden white part of his mind.
Pot, he thought to himself, squinting at the blackened earthenware warming in the ashes. In fact he was not alone at the moment. He was, however, feeling distinctly alien.
Corn, he thought, leaning back against the polished tree trunk that formed one upright of the longhouse. Several clusters of dried maize hung above him, festively colored by comparison with the sacks of grain sold in Edinburgh—and yet corn nonetheless. Onions, he thought, eyes passing down the braided chain of yellow globes. Bed. Furs. Fire.
His wife leaned toward him, smiling, and the words ran suddenly together in his mind. BlackravenblackhairshiningbreastbudsthighssoroundohyesohyesohEmily …
She set a warm bowl in his hand, and the rich aroma of rabbit and corn and onion rose up into his nose. Stew, he thought, the slippery flow of words coming to a sudden halt as his mind focused on food. He smiled at her, and laid his hand over hers, holding it for a moment, small and sturdy under his, curved around the wooden bowl. Her smile deepened; then she pulled away, rising up to go and fetch more food.
He watched her go, appreciating the sway of her walk. Then his eye caught Sun Elk—watching, too, from the doorway of his own apartment.
Bastard, Ian thought, very clearly.
“See, we got on well enough to start,” Ian explained. “He’s a bonny man, for the most part, Sun Elk.”
“For the most part,” Brianna echoed. She sat still, watching him. “And which part was that?”
Ian rubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand up like the bushy quills on a porcupine.
“Well … the friend part. We were friends, to begin with, aye? Brothers, in fact; we were of the same clan.”
“And you stopped being friends because of—of your wife?”
Ian sighed deeply.
“Well, ye see … the Kahnyen’kehaka, they’ve a notion of marriage that—it’s like what ye see in the Highlands, often enough. That is, the parents have a good deal to do wi’ arranging it. Often enough, they’ve watched the weans as they grew, and seen if maybe there was a lad and a lassie that seemed well-matched. And if they were—and if they came from the proper clans—now, that bit’s different, see?” he added, breaking off.
“The clans?”
“Aye. In the Highlands, ye’d mostly marry within your own clan, save it was to make an alliance wi’ another. Among the Iroquois nations, though, ye canna ever marry someone from your own clan, and ye can only marry someone from particular clans, not just any other.”
“Mama said the Iroquois reminded her a lot of Highlanders,” Brianna said, mildly amused. “Ruthless, but entertaining, was how she put it, I think. Bar some of the torturing, maybe, and the burning your enemies alive.”
“Your mother’s no heard some of Uncle Jamie’s stories about his grandsire, then,” he replied with a wry smile.
“What, Lord Lovat?”
“No, the other—Seaumais Ruaidh—Red Jacob, him Uncle Jamie’s named for. A wicked auld bugger, my Mam always said; he’d put any Iroquois to shame for pure cruelty, from all I’ve heard of him.” He dismissed this tangent with a wave of the hand, though, returning to his explanation.
“Well, so, when the Kahnyen’kehaka took me, and named me, I was adopted to the Wolf clan, aye?” he said, with an explanatory nod at Rollo, who had consumed the honeycomb, dead bees and all, and was now meditatively licking his paws.
“Very appropriate,” she murmured. “What clan was Sun Elk?”
“Wolf, of course. And Emily’s mother and grandmother and sisters were Turtle. But what I was saying—if a lad and lassie from properly different clans seemed maybe suited to each other, then the mothers would speak—they call all the aunties ‘mother,’ too,” he added. “So there might be a good many mothers involved in the matter. But if all the mothers and grandmothers and aunties were to agree that it would be a good match …” He shrugged. “They’d marry.”
Brianna rocked back a little, arms around her knees.
“But you didn’t have a mother to speak for you.”
“Well, I did wonder what my Mam would ha’ said, if she’d been there,” he said, and smiled, despite his seriousness.
Brianna, having met Ian’s mother, laughed at the thought.
“Aunt Jenny would be a match for any Mohawk, male or female,” she assured him. “But what happened, then?”
“I loved Emily,” he said very simply. “And she loved me.”
This state of affairs, which rapidly became apparent to everyone in the village, caused considerable public comment. Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa, Works with Her Hands, the girl Ian called Emily, had been widely expected to marry Sun Elk, who had been a visitor to her family’s hearth since childhood.
“But there it was.” Ian spread his hands and shrugged. “She loved me, and she said so.”
When Ian had been taken into the Wolf clan, he had been given to foster parents, as well—the parents of the dead man in whose stead he had been adopted. His foster mother had been somewhat taken aback by the situation, but after discussing the matter with the other women of the Wolf clan, had gone to speak formally with Tewaktenyonh, Emily’s grandmother—and the most influential woman in the village.
“And so we married.” Dressed in their best, and accompanied by their parents, the two young people had sat together on a bench before the assembled people of the village, and exchanged baskets—his containing the furs of sable and beaver, and a good knife, symbolizing his willingness to hunt for her and protect her; hers filled with grain and fruit and vegetables, symbolizing her willingness to plant, gather, and provide for him.
“And four moons later,” Ian added, “Sun Elk wed Looking at the Sky, Emily’s sister.”
Brianna raised one eyebrow.
“But …?”
“Aye, but.”
Ian had the gun Jamie had left with him, a rare and valued item among the Indians, and he knew how to use it. He also knew how to track, to lie in ambush, to think like an animal—other things of value that Uncle Jamie had left with him.
In consequence, he was a good hunter, and rapidly gained respect for his ability to bring in meat. Sun Elk was a decent hunter—not the best, but capable. Many of the young men would joke and make remarks, denigrating each other’s skills and making fun; he did it himself. Still, there was a tone to Sun Elk’s jests to Ian that now and then made one of the other men glance sharply at him, then away with the faintest of shrugs.
He had been inclined to ignore the man. Then he had seen Sun Elk look at Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa, and everything became at once clear to him.
She had been going to the
forest with some other girls, one day in late summer. They carried baskets for gathering; Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa had an ax through her belt. One of the other girls had asked her whether she meant to find wood for another bowl like the one she had made for her mother; Works With Her Hands had said—with a quick, warm look toward Ian, who lounged nearby with the other young men—that no, she wished to find a good red cedar, for wood to make a cradleboard.
The girls had giggled and embraced Wakyo’teyehsnonhsa; the young men had grinned and prodded Ian knowingly in the ribs. And Ian had caught a glimpse of Sun Elk’s face, hot eyes fixed on Emily’s straight back as she walked away.
Within one moon, Sun Elk had moved into the longhouse, husband to his wife’s sister, Looking at the Sky. The sisters’ compartments were across from each other; they shared a hearth. Ian had seldom seen Sun Elk look at Emily again—but he had seen him look carefully away, too many times.
“There is a person who desires you,” he said to Emily one night. It was long past the hour of the wolf, deep night, and the longhouse slept around them. The child she carried obliged her to rise and make water; she had come back to their furs skin-chilled and with the fresh smell of pines in her hair.
“Oh? Well, why not? Everyone else is asleep.” She had stretched luxuriously and kissed him, the small bulge of her belly smooth and hard against his.
“Not me. I mean—of course this person desires you, too!” he’d said hastily, as she drew back a bit, offended. He wrapped his arms about her in quick illustration. “I mean—there is someone else.”
“Hmf.” Her voice was muffled, her breath warm against his chest. “There are many who desire me. I am very, very good with my hands.” She gave him a brief demonstration, and he gasped, causing her to chuckle with satisfaction.
Rollo, who had accompanied her outside, crawled under the bed platform and curled up in his accustomed spot, chewing noisily at an itching spot near his tail.
A little later, they lay with the furs thrown back. The hide that hung over their doorway was pulled back, so the heat of the fire could come in, and he could see the shine of light on the moist gold skin of her shoulder, where she lay turned away from him. She reached back and put one of her clever hands on his, took his palm, and pressed it against her belly. The child inside had begun to stir; he felt a soft, sudden push against his palm, and his breath stilled in his throat.
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 693
