Shaman, Robert Shea [new ebook reader .txt] 📗

BOOK 3
1832

Moon of Strawberries
June

[339]

Redbird thought, Our land by the Rock River was so good to us, and now see what we have come to.

Only starving people tried to make food from cattail seeds and the inner bark of slippery elm and willow trees.

With a small steel knife Redbird cut cattails, dropping them into a basket she carried over her arm. It would take thousands of the tiny seeds, painstakingly picked from the white fuzz and then ground into meal, to make a little bread that must be shared among five people.

Redbird moved slowly, pushing her swollen belly before her. As much as her back and her feet hurt, she was determined to spend every day out foraging until the baby was born. For the baby's sake she had to eat as much as she could, but she did not want to take that extra portion from the rest of her family without contributing as much as she could to the common supply.

She sang as she walked along, asking the Trembling Lands to yield fruits and berries. She found no fruits or berries, but singing kept her spirits up, and she thought it helped the others too. Yellow Hair smiled and nodded to her to show that she liked the song.

Sweat trickled down her back and inside her doeskin dress. Gray clouds lay heavily over the Trembling Lands, and the air was warm and wet. Even though the water of the lake was dark and muddy, Redbird was looking forward to bathing in it.

And she was looking forward to a private talk with Yellow Hair. Yellow Hair had been with them for many days and nights. It was time she went to bed with White Bear.[340]

Yellow Hair walked beside her around the edge of the lake. Ahead of them ran Eagle Feather with a captive pale eyes boy named Woodrow. Iron Knife had brought Woodrow back from a raid, and White Bear had taken him under his protection too.

Woodrow, a few years older than Eagle Feather, was darting this way and that, uprooting plants and throwing them down, tasting berries and spitting them out. Redbird watched him with amusement. She had already grown fond of him.

Woodrow said something to Yellow Hair, who smiled and turned to Redbird.

Speaking the pale eyes' tongue slowly, adding the few Sauk words she knew and using gestures, Yellow Hair managed to explain to Redbird that Woodrow was unhappy because he did not know what to pick.

"If look good, pick," Redbird said, using the little English White Bear had taught her. "Not eat. If I say good, then eat."

Woodrow grinned and nodded to Redbird to show he understood. He ran off after Eagle Feather, who was looking for birds and squirrels to shoot with his small bow and arrow. Woodrow had been a captive only half as long as Yellow Hair, but unlike her, he seemed happy with his lot.

Redbird doubted that Eagle Feather and Woodrow would find any squirrels or birds. Very little that was edible, plant or animal, lived in this marsh, and over a thousand people had been foraging in the area for more than a moon. The last time the British Band had eaten well was when Wolf Paw brought the cattle. And among so many people, those cattle had not lasted long. Many people were digging in the ground for worms and grubs, roasting them and eating them in handfuls. Some people were even secretly killing and eating horses, though Black Hawk had decreed death for anyone caught doing that.

As for Redbird herself, she felt an emptiness in her belly from the time she woke till the time she went to sleep, and she found herself wanting to sleep longer and longer as her strength ebbed away. She worried constantly that the baby inside her was not getting enough nourishment and would die or be stunted. The people around her were starting to look like walking skeletons.

They came to a point of land covered with pale green shrubs thrusting out into the lake. Redbird called Eagle Feather.[341]

"Go for a swim around the other side of this point and take the pale eyes boy with you."

Eagle Feather's blue eyes glowed. "Maybe I can shoot a frog."

Once the boys were gone, she said to Yellow Hair, "We take bath." Yellow Hair smiled gratefully.

As they waded naked into the greenish, murky water, Redbird eyed Yellow Hair's body, so different from a Sauk woman's. She remembered how hungrily the braves had stared at Yellow Hair when Wolf Paw's wife stripped her before the tribe.

Yet it was easy to imagine that such pale skin was a sign of sickness. Yellow Hair's face and hands were somewhat tan, but every other part of her was white as milk. Her ribs were showing, a sign of the hunger they were all suffering. Still, her breasts were round, with pretty pink nipples. Her legs were long, and her buttocks curved out sharply; those of Sauk women were flatter. Even though the hair under her arms and between her legs was light in color, she had an abundance of it, much more than the fine tufts of black hair Redbird had in those places. She had undone her braids, and her hair fell like a golden curtain down her back halfway to her waist.

What a beautiful creature she is!

What an evil, stupid thing it would have been if Running Deer and the others had been allowed to cut her to bits and burn her.

A man might find Yellow Hair's differences from Sauk women attractive. A man such as White Bear.

She felt no fear that the pale eyes woman would take White Bear away from her. He showed many times every day, with his looks, with his movements, with his words, that Redbird, and not Yellow Hair, was first in his heart.

Redbird waded into the lake until the water was up to her breasts and her feet were sinking in the ooze. Then she pushed herself forward and dog-paddled through the reeds. It was wonderful to let the water take the weight of her belly off her hips and legs, a welcome relief to feel so cool.

In the night in the wickiup she often heard Yellow Hair moving or weeping softly. And that meant that Yellow Hair must have heard White Bear and Redbird loving each other in bed. This was only to be expected. When families slept all together in lodges and wickiups, the children early came to know how their parents took pleasure[342] together during the night, and were unembarrassed when they grew up and their turn came. But how did the sounds of White Bear and Redbird together make Yellow Hair feel?

White Bear had said that Yellow Hair had wanted him when he lived among the pale eyes. And lately Redbird and White Bear had been sleeping apart on their separate pallets more often, because Redbird, in the discomfort of the final moon of carrying this baby, rarely wanted White Bear inside her.

And so Redbird had searched her heart and knew that she was willing to share her husband with Yellow Hair.

White Bear and Yellow Hair could go to bed with each other.

And should.

It would be good for Yellow Hair if her yearning for White Bear could be satisfied, at least for a time. The pleasure of mating was a healing thing. It restored the ill to health, and it made the well strong and happy.

Redbird could see in Yellow Hair's eyes—such a bright blue—how much she longed for White Bear. Being close to him, Redbird thought, helped Yellow Hair forget she was a captive.

Some days ago, not long after White Bear had taken in Woodrow, Redbird had told White Bear she would not mind if he took Yellow Hair into his bed. He had laughed and patted her belly and insisted he could wait until she wanted him again.

Why should he have to wait, when a woman who desired him was right there in his wickiup?

It was good that she had spoken to him, even though he claimed he did not want Yellow Hair. At least he knew that if Yellow Hair did come to him in the night, they both had Redbird's blessing. But she doubted that Yellow Hair would ever approach White Bear that way. Not without encouragement.

She stopped swimming, and let her feet down into the mud so that she stood beside Yellow Hair. Here the water of the lake almost came up to Redbird's shoulders, but Yellow Hair's breasts were well above it. They smiled at each other.

Yellow Hair crouched down in the water till it was up to her neck. She dipped her hair into the water, then lifted her head and squeezed the water out of her hair with her hands.

The water was good and cool, she said, but she wished she had some soap.

White Bear had explained what soap was, and Redbird smiled[343] and shook her head. If water would not wash dirt away, a Sauk scrubbed with sand. As for hair, Redbird left hers braided. Once at the beginning of summer and once at the end, she felt, was often enough to let water touch her unbound hair.

Now that she had decided to talk to Yellow Hair, Redbird felt a tightness in her throat. What if the idea of sharing White Bear made Yellow Hair angry? Sharing a mate was not, Redbird knew, according to pale eyes custom.

There was only one way: to begin in spite of her fear.

She said, "You know about woman and man? What they do?" She signed with her fingers to make her meaning plain, and saw that she had succeeded when the pale eyes woman's face turned a deep red. Redbird wished Yellow Hair were standing up in the water, so she could see whether the rest of her body turned red too.

Yellow Hair said she knew a little about what men and women did, but her mother had died a long time ago and her father never spoke of such things.

"You want me teach?" Redbird asked.

Yellow Hair turned red again, looked down at the water and nodded.

So, as they waded back to the shore of the lake, Redbird tried with many gestures and a few words to teach Yellow Hair, as Sun Woman many summers ago had taught her. When they were out of the water, Redbird picked up a stick and drew a little picture on the mudbank. When she was finished, she giggled. Yellow Hair took a good look and turned red again, all the way down to her waist, Redbird noticed. She turned away, but Redbird saw to her relief that she was laughing. Redbird scratched out the picture.

They sat on the bank where they had left their clothing, letting the air dry their bodies. From a pouch she had brought with her Redbird took a wood-stoppered gourd containing musk oil. She and Yellow Hair rubbed the oil on their bodies to keep mosquitoes off.

Yellow Hair wanted to know if the first time with a man hurt very much.

"Some women hurt much. Other women little."

She patted Yellow Hair's wrist to reassure her. "I think you hurt little. After that, feel very, very good." She patted herself between her legs to make plain what she was talking about, and Yellow Hair blushed again.

"Best feeling," Redbird added, smiling. It was surprising, Redbird[344] thought, that Yellow Hair could become a fully grown woman and yet still have her first time with a man to look forward to.

They sat in silence for a time, Redbird afraid again because now she had to take the next step.

But before she could speak, tears began to trickle down Yellow Hair's cheeks. She spoke brokenly, and it