by Vella Munn
“I know.” Looking at him, she believed that with all her heart. Thinking to remind him of the snake’s promise of a long life, she again reached for him, but before she could say anything, an undeniable fact struck her. He had already lived longer than any other human being.
“Loka, I don’t want anything to happen to you. The thought of you being hurt or killed…” Forcing her fear into submission, she went on. “Things can’t go on the way they are. More and more people suspect you exist. And now that you’ve shown yourself to Black, he’ll no longer have any doubt. Fenton told him who I am. He believes that my presence here woke you. Do you understand? He believes the same as you do, that something in my genes or blood, or something, reached you. Loka, why did you let him see you?”
“I do not know.”
“I think you do. No matter what you say, no matter how he dresses and talks, he’s a Modoc.”
The muscles in Loka’s shoulders contracted, making her aware all over again of his strength. She’d bumped over a barely used road to get here. Because there was a fair amount of earth in with the lava in this particular place, the shrubbery was tall enough that it hid them from anyone who didn’t know how to get back in here. Earlier today she’d told Black what it had been like that first day when she felt as if she’d stepped back in time. Except for the heavy metal grate over the cave opening, civilization hadn’t made an impact. Not sure what to do with herself, she stepped back from Loka’s impact. Her gaze fell on what she could see of Fern Cave beneath the grate.
“How did you get down there?” she asked. “You don’t have a key.”
“No.”
“Then how?”
He gifted her with one of his rare smiles, then sobered. “It is not a thing for the enemy to know.”
“The enemy? Is that what you’re saying I am?”
“I do not know.”
“Don’t you?” She felt like screaming, like beating her fists against his chest until he understood, until he admitted that something rare existed between them. “We made love. We wouldn’t have if we didn’t trust each other.”
“Trust?”
“Yes,” she insisted. “If I believed you were a savage, I would have never gone up Spirit Mountain with you. Never spent the night with you.” She said the last without any hint of embarrassment. “But I did because…” Because what? If she told him she’d been ruled by nothing more than a physical need for him, that would be a lie, but could she tell him she’d fallen in love with him? Had she?
“Loka, I’ve tried to talk to you about this before. I know how you feel about entrusting your knowledge of your people’s tradition to someone. I understand. If I was in your place, I wouldn’t want anything to do with those responsible for changing my world. But, Loka…” She couldn’t stay where she was, not with him looking at her that way. Still, erasing the distance separating them took even more courage than it had the first time. She stood within reach and waited for his reaction. When he didn’t move so much as a muscle, she went on.
“I want to know everything about who and what you are. For myself, not because I’m an anthropologist.”
“For yourself?”
“Yes. Loka, something is happening between us.”
That made him nod. After a moment he unfolded his arms, a thumb briefly grazing his knife before sliding toward her. When he took her hand in his, she thought she sensed a struggle within him and could only wonder at its cause. His hand slid up to cup her chin. He tilted her head so she was ready to receive his kiss. Their lips met, gentle as a butterfly’s touch. She clung to the sensation, thinking of nothing except being with him, tasting the promise of more, living in the moment.
“I do not understand,” he whispered with his lips still on hers. “When I think of you, I do not know who I am.”
That’s love, she wanted to tell him, but the emotion felt too new and fragile for her to risk more. “I can’t make myself leave,” she told him. “I have a job. I should already be there. But I can’t walk away from you.”
“What you feel, does it make you strong?”
“Strong? No. Anything but.”
He groaned and then kissed her again, the coming together more challenging than before. She should be used to his economy of words, but she needed more from him.
Or did she?
His body spoke of a man who was learning things about himself he’d never expected. He might not yet be able to make sense of it, but he was willing to risk the journey, and she was part of that journey—maybe all of it.
She understood because the same thing was happening to her.
Trusting Loka’s keen hearing to warn them of anyone coming, she lost herself in him inch by inch. She’d always been proud of her brain, her intellect, but today those things meant nothing. Sensuality was everything. That and energy and a need as strong as it had been the first time they’d made love. She couldn’t stop her exploration of his body and felt as if she might explode each time his fingers touched some new spot. She sensed his urgency and matched it with a like response. Although she was still dressed, he seemed capable of reaching beyond fabric for flesh that couldn’t get enough of him. Moving, always moving, they danced discovery’s dance until she felt as if she were on fire.
A word, a touch, that’s all it would take and she would give him everything. Telegraphing her need, she ran a hand down the inside of his thigh. Sweat slicked the sides of her neck and throat, and she couldn’t breathe deeply enough. His breathing was just as ragged, his body just as hungry and yet—
And yet he didn’t make love to her, held her apart from him, his eyes smoky. “I do not trust myself.”
“Don’t trust?”
“I stand at the edge of a cliff. A single step and I might step off it. You are that cliff.”
She didn’t understand and yet she did because she felt the same way. Although her body continued to quiver and burn, she didn’t attempt to get close to him again. After taking in several great gulps of air, she felt calm enough to speak. “I know so little about you. I don’t know where you live, whether you’ve kept anything of your former life with you.” She nearly bolstered her comment by telling him that he knew everything about her, but that wasn’t the truth and they both knew it.
By the way he held himself, she sensed he was struggling with the question of whether he wanted—dared—fulfill her request. She could tell him she might not be here tomorrow, that this wonderful and unexplainable thing between them would soon end, but this had to be his decision.
“You will tell no one what you see?”
“I—”
“Whatever you answer, I will believe you speak the truth.”
He trusted her when hard lessons had taught him otherwise.
Feeling both blessed and trapped, she nodded. “You know what you’re asking, don’t you?” she said. “If I see something that no one else knows about, I’m going to want the world to know.”
“If that happens, maybe they will destroy it. Tory, this is for you alone.”
He turned and took a step back the way he’d come, then looked at her over his shoulder. Every line of his body gave out a single and unescapable message. Her next move would determine the life or death of their relationship.
Leading the way, Loka headed toward where he’d stood the day he first saw her. The lonely land called to him to return to the isolation and safety he knew, but with Tory behind him, the entreaty was a faint whisper.
He’d told her only a little about his dream of Grizzly, not because it mattered to him whether she believed him or not, but because the dream still clung to him with sharp claws.
Grizzly had been massive, its great teeth exposed as it emerged from the trees. A fawn had fled; a rabbit had frozen in fear. Ignoring the lesser creatures, the bear had lumbered toward him. Although he’d been awed by Grizzly’s magnificence, he hadn’t feared the beast because he’d known Grizzly had come to warn of danger, wasn’t the danger itself.
Owl,
Coyote and now Grizzly, all sending messages that made him clutch his knife with taut fingers.
His heart’s cadence put him in mind of a drum being beaten by a powerful man. He didn’t look back at Tory, told himself he would not allow the sight of her to distract him from questions asked and answers sought, but it was already too late. She’d weakened him as a warrior, crawled under his skin and into his thoughts until he couldn’t remember the solitary man he’d once been.
He’d approached her this morning because, he’d told himself, he’d wanted to study her eyes and body to see if she spoke the truth. Only then would he know whether she was the enemy Grizzly had warned him of.
But then she’d asked him to show her his world, and he’d been unable to refuse. Had wanted to give her this gift as he’d once brought a fox kit to his son.
She turned him around, took him far from the only truth he’d ever known, left him incapable of thinking about anything except her.
If she was a lie, if he learned that she was using her woman’s power to weaken him, he would kill her.
“Here.”
Tory looked where Loka pointed. At first she saw nothing different from what she’d been looking at all day. Then she realized that what she’d thought was a dead bush was instead a pile of dry branches. Obviously, it had been put there to hide whatever was under it.
“That’s where you live? Down there?”
“Not there, but this is how I reach Wa’hash.”
“Wa’hash?”
“The sacred place. My home.”
She couldn’t imagine anyone willingly going down there, let alone making that their home, but Loka’s people had lived like that when they were hiding from the soldiers. Even now, long after the war, he believed no one should know of his existence. Wa’hash was sacred, a link with his time and people.
“Will you show me?” she asked.
He hesitated, but then, she’d expected him to. She could only wait him out, wondering whether he’d changed his mind about trusting her. If he had…
Instead of answering, he moved the brush aside and lowered himself into the hole he’d uncovered. When he disappeared, she looked down and discovered a pole-and-rope ladder. He stood at the bottom of the ladder looking up at her. Despite her apprehension at going into such a small, dark place, she planted her feet on the top rung and began a slow descent. When she felt his hands on her ankles, she let him guide her the rest of the way. Stepping away from the ladder, she looked around. It was cool but not cold down here. The air lacked freshness, but it didn’t bother her that much. After a few moments, her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and she realized she was in the middle of a tunnel. When he reached down, picked up a flashlight and handed it to her, she didn’t ask where he’d gotten it. She turned it on.
Loka pointed. “This way leads to Fern Cave.”
Remembering that she’d seen him in the cave when it should have been impossible, she took a few steps in that direction. Then she turned back around. Loka hadn’t moved. He pointed down the other corridor. “Wa’hash,” he said.
Wa’hash. A place of mystery and wonder, of proof that Loka had created a home for himself. Thinking about that, it was easier to tell him she first wanted to see how he’d gotten into Fern Cave. If he trusted her with that, it might make the rest easier—for both of them. Trying to keep her tone calm, she told him she wanted to experience Fern Cave through his eyes. Nodding, he slipped around her in the narrow space. As he did, their bodies brushed. Much as she wanted to feel his arms around her, her sense of urgency was stronger. Their moments together were so precious, so limited. She had to have everything she could of him.
The tunnel wandered in one direction and then another. A few times she had to crouch low to keep from hitting her head, but most of the time the opening was high enough that even Loka could stand upright. Occasionally she held her arms in front of her to keep from scraping them on the sides. Twice the tunnel widened out so that it was almost like being in a room. She’d studied the map the park personnel had done of every known cave and tunnel at the lava beds. This one hadn’t been discovered. Considering that there was only that small access hole out in the middle of nowhere and that Loka had concealed it, she wasn’t surprised.
When Loka stopped, she saw he’d reached a large boulder, which blocked their way. He placed his hands on it, muttered something which made no sense to her, then pushed it effortlessly forward and to the side. Her flashlight revealed the far reaches of Fern Cave.
“That—that’s how you—but…” She set her shoulder against the boulder and shoved, but it refused to move a fraction of an inch. “Loka, what—”
“Cho-ocks.”
“Cho-ocks?”
“When the army men came, the shaman placed the rock here so the enemy would not know that this tunnel leads to Wa’hash.”
“Placed it here?” Again she tried to move it. Her second attempt was no more successful than the first. “Loka, that’s impossible.”
“I told you, Cho-ocks’s medicine was strong. He blessed the rock so that only a Maklaks can move it.”
Cho-ocks was the shaman who’d given Loka the sleeping medicine. Knowing he could keep life suspended, why couldn’t she believe that he could render a mass of granite weightless, at least to a Modoc? Unnerved by the realization of how little her generation would ever know about an Indian medicine man’s power, she peered at Fern Cave. It was open to exploration only once a week and under strictly controlled conditions. That would change if Fenton had his way, but for now, it remained serene and yet haunted.
Haunted? Would Modoc spirits leave this special place if too many of the enemy invaded it? Not wanting to disturb essences she’d come to believe in, she backed away. “I’ve seen enough,” she explained in response to Loka’s puzzled look.
He again placed his hands on the rock, his chant echoing against the rock walls and sides. Then, while she watched in disbelief and shock, he clutched a couple of projections on the boulder and pulled it back into place.
Chapter 16
They were back at the cave opening before Tory could bring herself to speak. Down here, with him, she felt cut off from the rest of the world. She’d had the same reaction while they were on Spirit Mountain, but up there she’d been aware of sights and sounds, vast space. Being in the dark was a form of sensory deprivation with the result that her entire being was forced to focus on the only other living creature within reach.
Loka wasn’t just a man. Knowing who and what he was, she couldn’t put such a simple label on him. Watching him move a boulder had brought that fact home to her. It was so simple. He believed in his shaman’s magic. Because he did, he was capable of rendering tons of rock weightless.
“Wa’hash,” she whispered.
“Wa’hash.” He stood with his hand on the ladder, his attention on the small amount of sky they could see. His body language gave away everything of his struggle. It had been hard enough for him to show her the Modoc entrance to Fern Cave, but the enemy had long invaded that place and it was no longer wholly his. Wa’hash was different. Whatever it was, it belonged to him alone—unless he shared it with her.
Unless he trusted her enough.
Pulling his hand off the ladder, she spread it over her throat. “You hold the power of life and death over me,” she told him. “If you think I can’t be trusted, you know how to keep me silent.”
She prayed he would draw away. Instead, his touch remained until she felt completely under his power. “You do not fear death?”
Didn’t she? She couldn’t put her mind to the question. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“Maybe you should be.”
Maybe, but with him towering over her and his world surrounding her, those things were her only reality.
Eagle. Hear me. Answer. Did you send Grizzly to warn me of her?
Stopping, Loka strained to hear. Eagle would never come down here, because his great wings were made for flying, but if he’d heard his
prayer, maybe the sound of his fierce scream would penetrate. There was only silence.
Tory waited behind him, but he couldn’t tell her he was asking his spirit if he’d jeopardized everything by heeding her plea instead of the warning that had come to him in the night.
Eagle. She tempts my body. Makes me forget my vow to safeguard my heritage. She lives; everything else is dead. Tell me, can I trust her? Can I walk in today?
Silence pressed around him. It was broken by his heart’s beating, nothing else. He tried to imagine what Eagle’s heart sounded like, but how could he when Tory stood so near?
Eagle. Do not desert me.
“Loka? What is it?”
He ignored her, but her question was enough of a distraction that he could no longer bury himself in prayer. Making his way instinctively, he thought about the world above him. Rabbits and deer, lizards and birds, maybe even a lone coyote would be about. Even if the enemy ventured close, the creatures who belonged here would simply wait until the intruders had left. He had tried to use their wisdom for himself, but because he was a man, he knew anger—anger at those who had destroyed everything.
Anger, he’d learned during the lonely months of his new life, ate at his soul, but he was only one man. He could not chase the intruders from where they didn’t belong. All he could do was protect and shelter all that was left of the Maklaks, ask himself if past and present could ever unite.
Today he was bringing one of the enemy to what was most sacred.
Eagle! Who was Grizzly warning me of? My heart will not believe she is evil. My body needs to join with hers. My head—my head is silent.
Unable to deny the truth, he closed his ears to the sound his heart made and again took his thoughts to the land above him. In his mind he saw the endless sky, but no matter how intently he swept his eyes over the horizon, he found no sign of Eagle. Heard no cry. When, exhausted by the effort, he returned to where he walked, he became aware, not of his heart again, but of the essence of the woman behind him.
