Firebrand's Woman

by Vanessa Royall

  For long moments Gyva could hear no words clearly. Accusations were apparently made, and denied; there was much shouting. She thought she heard Teva’s voice a time or two, the old woman’s attempt to regain order. Curious, and a little worried, Gyva peeked around the edge of the wigwam.

  Even as she moved, Long Eel spotted her; and, springing up, he seized her before she could get to her feet. With a great cry, as surely befitted an old warrior with not one kill-cut in fifty circlings of the sun, he dragged her around Teva’s lodging and thrust her before everybody.

  “An eavesdropper,” he grunted, proud of himself. “Huddling behind the wigwam.”

  “I was only collecting firewood,” said Gyva defiantly, using the story she had contrived.

  “Children collect firewood!”

  All eyes were upon her now, and no one spoke.

  “They are busy today,” Gyva persisted, “and many must do work that is not their usual…”

  Her voice trailed off. She could not bear to meet the eyes of Torch.

  “Oh, Gyva,” said the seeress, sadly.

  Hawk stepped forward. “I think this woman is a spy,” he proclaimed, laying his hand rudely upon her shoulder.

  She pushed it off in anger, in rage, and was shaken to hear not one protest in her behalf.

  “Now I know!” cried Hawk, remembering. “I was myself on guard one night and spied this maiden running beneath the moon. Even then she sought knowledge as to the number and location of our nighttime sentinels.” He paused, that all might give him complete attention. “I believe it is she who conspired with the Choctaw to kill our sentinels so that we would be left without warning.”

  An angry mutter from the crowd. Gyva could not meet Torch’s eyes, but she felt his upon her.

  “It is not true!” she cried.

  “A mixed-blood, too,” he said, in a tone that signified “that is all I need to say. And what pure maiden runs beneath the moon, naked beneath a blanket?”

  “Do you speak the truth?” cried the bold braves.

  “Could it be?”

  “Naked? And only a blanket?”

  It was too much to bear. Gyva lifted her head, and looked at all of them, all these braves who just moments before had been fighting among themselves. Then she looked Hawk straight in the eye. “I am the daughter of a noble Chickasaw and a brave woman who died at Chula Harjo’s hands,” she said, “as well you know. I am no spy, I who killed a Choctaw brave—”

  “But hesitated to take his scalp!”

  “I was savoring the moment!” she retorted.

  The braves gave a low hum of approval. Most of them had felt just such an ecstasy. Except for the ridiculous Long Eel, of course, who stood there now not looking so triumphant. His abjection, and the reaction to her retort, nerved her further.

  “On the night of which you speak,” she went on, again to Hawk, “I was rushing toward the dwelling of Teva. I told you as much, if you remember. I had had a dream that had to be deciphered before I could sleep again.”

  Everyone turned to the old woman, who had been watching with an expression of rue that Gyva could understand, although she thought it deeper than even this unfortunate situation warranted.

  “Is it true?” inquired Torch coldly, his eyes moving from Gyva to the soothsayer.

  “It is true,” answered Teva boldly, immediately, but without spirit. “The maiden did indeed have a dream.”

  “And what was this dream?” asked Hawk, trying once again to stir the antipathy that had been his to mold just moments ago.

  Teva looked at him. “There are tribal dreams, and there are personal dreams. The former are the possession of all; the latter have meaning but to the dreamer. This you should know.”

  “But a mixed-blood…” Hawk tried, “and the dead sentinels…”

  “It is over,” said Torch, in a voice Gyva had never heard him use, but that clearly meant—to Hawk and to anyone else—// you do not think it is over, take the knife from your belt.

  Teva ushered Gyva into the wigwam, while outside the men settled upon the time for the beginning of the manhood ritual, days hence, and then dispersed. Trembling with anger and humiliation, Gyva sought to calm herself by examining the strange artifacts spread about Teva’s wigwam. There were ragged beads sewn onto the hides of animals, making strange patterns, and misshapen arrowheads, and unusual, asymmetric lances of various designs. Teva slept on a wolf skin, she noted, and a large pipe rested in a bowl beside her sleeping place.

  When the old woman entered, Gyva apologized. “You had to lie for me. I am sorry. How may I make recompense?”

  Teva grimaced. “I did not lie. You had a dream, though not one for telling. But you cannot make recompense for your act of folly today. It may cost you much, very much. What possessed you to eavesdrop?”

  “I wished to know what was being said.”

  “You would have been told.”

  “But I did not wish to wait.”

  “That is your error, and because you did not wish to, now you may have to wait a long, long time—perhaps forever.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Teva looked at her coldly. “You are not much thicker than a mountain rock, are you?”

  Gyva felt herself blush. The dream to which the witch-woman referred, of course, was Torch. But by stealing upon the council here today, Gyva had compromised herself before everyone. Evil charges had been hurled by Hawk, yet just because few had taken them seriously did not mean they would not be bruited about. The granddaughter of Four Bears had eavesdropped on the council and been caught, thus making herself doubly the fool! Memories are long, and among a people who feel themselves persecuted, long memories are like black soil in which flowers of malice might spring up overnight.

  “Have I lost him?” Gyva asked after a while.

  “Who is to say?” Teva said. “You must return now to your work, lest neglect of that, too, be held against you.”

  At the entrance of the wigwam Gyva turned. “But what am I to do now?” she asked, almost pleading.

  The old woman was not helpful.

  “You must live,” was all she said.

  Chapter III

  Rabbit is not panther. The softness is true of the rabbit, but it is a softness of spirit as well as fur. Gyva felt the difference, and dearly felt the loss by fire of her panther skins. Now she lay upon a blanket of rabbit fur, looking up at the stars that she could see between open spaces in the makeshift wigwam’s haphazard roof.

  She looked up at the sky, with Torch on her mind. Today she had erred grievously by attempting to hear what the braves were discussing. But, however much she had violated tradition, the consequences seemed minor when compared to what Torch must think of her now. True, his willingness to fight Hawk for her sake had saved her from further interrogation and ridicule. But that he had had to make a show of force at all, when there was already great tension in the tribe, could not have pleased him.

  That is his burden, she thought, trying to make herself think harshly of him.

  The alien thought brought no more comfort than she had expected. And rabbit fur was really too thick, too warm, so late in the spring.

  She tossed and turned in her sleeping place, trying to make it cooler, and accidentally rolled upon her leather pouch. Picking it up to move it, she remembered that the bear-claw necklace was still inside. Just moments before, she had been nearly immobilized, unable to decide upon a course of action. Now ideas fairly leapt to her head. At the scalping last evening Torch had helped her; his eyes had been full of sympathy. And men were known to try the charms of many a maiden, if they could. Perhaps she ought not to have blamed him at all; surely the fault lay with Little Swallow. And she really ought to apologize to him for this afternoon, and thank him. Maybe he had summoned her tonight, and she had failed to locate the diagram. It could have happened. Certainly it could have.

  As often occurs when one wants to believe, doubt wavered into conviction, which progressed to strong conv
iction, and onward to absolute certainty. When Gyva touched in her pouch the tiny white pebbles Torch had used to send for her the very first time, she knew without doubt that he was waiting for her now. She would return the necklace to him, and return herself to him as well.

  Outside it was cool, and the night was lovely. Dew wet her bare feet and the hem of her buckskin skirt as she crossed the grass. Carefully she watched for sentinels, holding the necklace tightly, so that the claws would not clack against one another. Soon she could see the white pebbles glowing in starshine, and the white bubbling of rapids downriver. The willows swooped in the distance, ready to take her into their embrace, and Torch’s, too…

  Gyva stopped, dead still.

  Close, very close to her, she had heard someone moan.

  She swept the area with her eyes and heard another cry, off to her left, then almost cried out herself. Oblivious to her, yet only scant yards away, a brave and a maiden were making love. Gyva saw Little Swallow’s face, rapt with ecstasy, and the strong back of her lover. She assumed it was Torch.

  Heartsick, Gyva sank down quietly into the grass. She had not been sent for because he had someone else. Over the bent, dew-heavy grass Gyva saw what she did not want to see or even dream. Little Swallow lay upon her back, her clothing spread out on the grass beneath her, her arms wrapped about her lover’s wide back, legs drawn far up along his sides to allow him the full depth of her delight. Little Swallow’s eyes were closed, and on her face was a twisted aspect, almost of pain; but it was not pain that she was feeling. Her lover buried his face in the tender place, lined with fine hair, at which Swallow’s neck and shoulder met, and rocked upon her, slowly, slowly as time, again and again. He and Little Swallow had learned one another well, Gyva could see; they knew, without words, how to prolong pleasure and how to enhance it.

  Gyva would have wept, but she was stricken beyond tears, beyond any reaction. She could not flee; she could not even bear to turn her eyes away. That heaven must look upon this thing! That stars should shine down upon it! Then Little Swallow—now she smiled, the vixen!—reached beneath to pleasure the man even more, and when he cried out and bucked urgently upon her, she matched his pace and crossed her slender legs upon his pulsing back. Exactly as Gyva had done for him, so Swallow was now doing!

  Gyva could bear it not a moment more. There in the grass she stood up and hurled the bear-claw necklace at the pounding lovers.

  It struck Hawk a glancing blow on the shoulder. With a strangled cry of rage and surprise he pulled himself from Little Swallow, and was on his feet in the manner of one set to wrestle or fight with a knife. The instrument of his manhood, exposed to the night, began slowly to recede. Little Swallow, astounded, lay open upon the earth.

  “Gyva!” Hawk exclaimed. His eyes were hard on her.

  She raised her hand halfway into the air, an abortive gesture whose meaning she could not guess. The glorious knowledge that it had not been Torch making love to Little Swallow was greatly mitigated by the demonic anger that gleamed in Hawk’s eyes. On the ground Little Swallow hurriedly drew her garment around her naked body.

  “Go,” Hawk told Swallow, and as quickly as he spoke he was upon Gyva, holding her fast by the shoulders.

  “How long have you been here?” he demanded, as Little Swallow, half-dressed, still pulling on her dew-laden attire, fled into the night.

  “And what are you doing here?” he asked, before she could respond to his first question.

  The afternoon’s incident occurred to him. “This time I know fully and truly that you are a spy.”

  The word spy angered her, in spite of her embarrassment and confusion.

  “And you are a liar,” she said. “You would provoke our people, but you shall not provoke me.”

  “Ah!” he said, grinning, as if he had thought of yet another thing. “How come you to speak of provocation?”

  “Do not taunt me,” Gyva said, drawing herself up straight, so that the top of her head reached his jaw. “I shall tell all what I have seen here this night.”

  “And what will they say? They will ask, ‘Gyva, what affair were you about, so late in the night?’“

  True, she realized. That was exactly what people would say.

  “I know,” he was saying, “that you yourself have trysted in the evening time, and I know with whom. Your eyes tell it. That I have not discovered your rendezvous is but an oversight. Now it would seem to be somewhere hard by the river.”

  His big hands still gripped her tightly, but he began to move them up and down her arms and shoulders, like a rude caress.

  “You did interrupt something of which I had great need,” he said, in a different tone, which she understood with alarm at precisely the moment she felt him swelling upon her.

  “No!” Gyva cried, struggling to get free of him.

  His teeth were large and white as he gave her a knowing grin.

  “Once, I told you that I would take you whenever I pleased,” he gloated, sure of himself now, “and the Great Spirit seems to have provided me the opportunity.”

  She started to cry out, but he clamped a hand over her mouth.

  “Fight? Ah, I like that. It will make everything better for the both of us.” With his great strength it was all too easy to force her down upon the wet grass, to rip away her buckskins. She felt the cold grass against her skin, and then the hot naked weight of him upon her, fumbling for that which she had given Torch alone.

  “And now you shall have your first chieftain,” he laughed, and she felt him poised horribly above her, poised terribly for the plunging by which he would take her. His hand was over her face; she could not scream, and barely breathe. The weight of his body forced air from her lungs, which could not be replenished. Somewhere in the great vastness stars flickered, as mute and powerless in their beauty as she was helpless in her own. He held her wrists pinioned to the ground, and his mighty thighs had pushed her legs up in such a way that she was simultaneously open and helpless. She was lost now; all was over.

  “Now it is our wedding night, maiden child,” snickered Hawk, quivering to ram her with himself.

  Suddenly she was free. Air rushed in at her, and she gasped for it. Against the stars loomed two men. Hawk, who had been ripped from her, whirled to face the other, Torch. But in his hand Torch held a hunting knife, blade gleaming dully in the night. Hawk had only his twice-disappointed instrument, which now failed him utterly.

  But his will did not falter. “Use the knife, then, Torch.”

  Torch was calm. “I would not pierce a fellow Chickasaw, save I were first attacked.”

  “You would not pierce one with a knife, that is,” Hawk sneered, lewdly now, knowing he would not be killed, naked and weaponless.

  Gyva arranged her clothing, stood up, and stepped back a few paces. The men faced each other: Hawk naked, crouching as if to leap forward, Torch standing a bit more erect, knife poised in the event of attack.

  “You have your victory, if victory you seek,” Hawk offered.

  “If we say there is no battle,” Torch rejoined, “there is neither victor nor vanquished. I but aided the maiden, having observed that she did not seem to wish your favors. We need not fight upon this battleground. There is another, greater one which we approach.”

  Hawk dropped his hands, and Torch slipped the knife into his scabbard. “Go now,” he said. “We will not speak of this.”

  “Wise of you, as ever,” replied Hawk in a mocking tone, before he found his breechcloth in the grass and departed.

  Torch and Gyva stood there in the matted grass, regarding each other. She felt confused and angry and embarrassed and crazily weak with love for him.

  “Why…why did you not kill him?” she faltered.

  His laugh was grim. “That all should know what has happened here? Of what good would that be? I am sure you know that he is not the first to meet a maiden by night.”

  “But he… he tried to…”

  “And that I will settle with hi
m at another time-that and many things. But in such a way that it does not further disquiet our people. A furor now over secret matters of love and lust would distract everyone, exactly as Hawk and Little Swallow conspired to distract me from the coming ritual.”

  “What do you mean?” Gyva asked, remembering the two huddled together, whispering, on the night of the raid.

  He moved toward her, as if to speak more quietly, and she came to him, and suddenly they were in each other’s arms, embracing not with passion this time—although there was that, too—but with relief, as people embrace after a battle, or after surviving some great ordeal.

  “On the day you found me with Swallow,” he asked, drawing away slightly, “how did you chance to come down to the river?”

  “Because…because I heard you calling me from outside the wall of my dwelling! Who else would summon me to our special place? It was by accident I chanced to walk as far as the honeysuckle.”

  “Now it is clear,” he said, frowning. “I myself found, scratched into pine bark, a message of great urgency that I assumed had come from you. And on my way to the willows, Little Swallow stepped forward, and bared her breasts, and took me into her embrace. You see, they must know we have been meeting by the river, but they are not sure precisely where. In any event, they wished to stir animosity between us, and would go to any lengths in order to do so.”

  “But why? If you do not love Little Swallow, and Hawk does not love me…” Swallow, she thought, lied about making love to Torch.

  “Gyva, they wish to distract me, to sully my concentration, and thus to lessen my strength for the manhood ritual.”

  “But it was you who left the necklace in my sleeping place?”

  “Yes. I wanted to see you, to explain how it was that I had come to be in Swallow’s embrace. I did not wish you to grieve. But you did not appear. I was waiting by the willows when the Choctaw attacked.”

  She believed him, every word. Never had she loved him so much, possessed such faith in him. She offered her mouth to be kissed, and pressed her body against him, to do with whatever he willed, and anytime, and forever.