Harvest Moon (3 page)

Bearclaw released a short bark of laughter. “If I knew you were this hungry, I would have gotten us deer.”

She stopped eating, horrified at her display. Dancing Cat couldn’t put her chewed wing back, but she couldn’t keep eating, either. So she just sat there, staring at him, pleading with her eyes.

“For the Creator’s sake, don’t look at me like that. Brave up, Dancing Cat, or that name of yours will turn you into a woman.” He motioned at her food. “I got the grouse for you. Eat it all, if you need it. When was the last time you had a nicely roasted bird like this?”

“Over two years,” she mumbled between bites.

He opened his mouth but shut it before words came out. She averted her eyes, worried that he’d ask her more questions. All she wanted was to eat. She wondered if Bearclaw sensed her resistance to speak about her own life.

He silently offered her the deer bladder of water. Several moments passed before he spoke. “You asked why I am out there. I’m on a spirit quest for answers. There are questions that I have, and I don’t want to return home until I know what path I should take.” He shrugged, nonchalantly; the way her brother always did when he tried to cover up his true feelings. “Perhaps helping you is a part of that. I’m happy to do it.”

Dancing Cat struggled not to give him a beaming smile. While she didn’t know much about men, she knew they didn’t beam at each other. But, being there with him, sitting on a clean blanket, eating hot food gave her a tiny morsel of dignity. And it made her heart ache all the more because she knew it would be snatched away from her soon enough.

Regardless that she said she’d never honour her ancestors again, she looked away long enough to mouth, “Thank you, Small Tree, for this undeserved kindness.”

* * * *

Dancing Cat carefully placed one foot in front of the other, grasping bushes and trees for support. A rain of orange and red leaves fell upon her. Irritated birds squawked as they flew off to find new perches. She had spent half a moon cycle successfully dealing with nature’s call without Bearclaw seeing her. It had not been easy, that’s for certain. The man was silent like the sunlight and could appear just about anywhere. She found it hard enough to pee without blushing. She wouldn’t have been able to handle someone else seeing her naked with that thing dangling between her legs.

She stumbled and a squeal escaped her lips. The pain, though less than before, still fogged her vision. Branches snapped and crashed as Bearclaw rushed through the sparsely wooded area to reach her.

“I’ve told you not to wander around without helping. You’re still unbalanced,” Bearclaw jumped over a fallen tree and grabbed her arm. Dancing Cat stiffened when Bearclaw’s hand slipped around her waist, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or, at least, didn’t seem to care. “You’re as stubborn as my father.”

“Nature called rather strongly,” she said sheepishly.

He frowned. “I could have helped you. It’s not like you have parts I’ve never seen before.”

A nervous giggle escaped her. The exasperated expression on his face only served to heat her cheeks. Bearclaw shook his head. “A warrior giggling and blushing. No wonder they made you a messenger instead of a hunter.”

Though she’d refuse to admit it out loud, she appreciated his help. Perhaps too much. His calloused hands felt too good against her skin, even if it wasn’t as smooth as her former skin. She didn’t know how to control her mounting attachment to him, but she knew that it had to end.

First and foremost, she was cursed. The ancestors would find a way to twist this into some miserable punishment. Of that she was certain. Second, if by some fate they decided to leave her be, she could not develop an attachment to a man…while looking like a man herself! There wasn’t even a word for that.

Sullen, she let Bearclaw ease her back to the fur blanket. She reached out and touched the beaded sacred bundle, still next to her. She had not opened it since that day by the stream. Once was enough. No magic pulsed from it; not since the day Small Tree appeared to her.

Bearclaw’s horse whinnied and trotted up to her, nuzzling her chin. She reached up and stroked his face. Sadness crept over her. Her love of riding had helped to bring the curse upon her. While her time with Bearclaw had been comforting, it was not real. It would end. She would be alone.

“Roasted onions?”

She waved off the man’s offering. Her appetite was gone. His shoulders dropped and, for the briefest of moments, she thought he was disappointed. Sighing, she motioned for them.

“If you don’t like onions…”

Dancing Cat shook her head, stuffing a layer of sweet and pungent onion into her mouth. “I love them. I’m merely feeling…” She struggled to find the word.

“Low in spirit, perhaps?”

She stopped sucking on her sticky fingers and stared at him. He shrugged his shoulders and Dancing Cat’s heart plummeted. While not ready to talk about her life, she was equally not ready to disappoint him.

Bearclaw fiddled with the seam of his trousers. The weather had turned and, with it, brought the need for more clothing. He had come prepared, at least. “I won’t ask what you’ve been through, but I can see that it’s given you great pain. I have asked my ancestors many times to soothe whatever hurt possesses you.”

“Thank…” Her voice died. “Thank you.”

He turned to face the crackling fire and leaned against a fallen log. Taking her cue, she leaned against her tree trunk. There, they sat in silence for the evening. Dancing Cat couldn’t remember the last time she was so content, with or without her old body.

Beaver Moon

A full moon cycle had passed with her recovery progressing at a good pace. It still hurt to sneeze, cough, roll over at night, but at least pain no longer blinded her when she shivered from the cold. She thought of her tribe, her family, who would be trapping beavers for winter pelts.

Dancing Cat didn’t know what she would do once the snow came, but she tried not to think about the future. Curiosity about the future had not brought her good fortune.

Dancing Cat stared at her shirtless reflection dancing in the stream. Soon, the snow would stay, and with it, the waterways would freeze. Six moons would pass before the spring thaw, relieving her of seeing her masculine features. Nevertheless, for a man, she fancied herself rather handsome. She was never very pretty as a girl, but at least she turned out to be a fine man, almost as fine as Bearclaw.

She gulped at that thought and sighed. She picked up the deer bladder she had come to fill and headed back towards their camp at the edge of the frost-covered thicket. Bearclaw had been acting strangely the last handful of days. Up until then, he had been increasingly attentive.

Dancing Cat wondered if this was where the happiness would end once again.

Bearclaw was pacing between their blankets and the fire pit where they cooked, crushing the frozen grass beneath his feet. He did it often enough that it didn’t seem strange to her. She offered him a smile, which faded at his grim, almost angry face.

“Dancing Cat, the entire point of a spirit quest is to be alone with the spirits. It’s been difficult doing that when you’re around all of the time. Why are you still with me?” he shouted, his breath visible in the cool, morning air.

The startled look on his face said that he had not meant to shout. However, he did not apologize for it, so to her, it was even worse than meaning to. She blinked, surprised by the question. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Bearclaw clenched his fists. “You argue like a woman.”

“That’s because I am a wom—” she caught the words, but too many had already tumbled out.

He stepped towards her, forcing her to stumble backwards. “What did you say?”

A mixture of anger and fear flared inside her. She stormed over to the fur blanket and grabbed the sacred bundle, ignoring the stabbing pain in her side. Turning on her heel, she started walking in the opposite direction from the man who had saved her life, the frozen ground crunched under her moccasins. She’d rather leave him now than have him reject her once he discovered her lies.

“Dancing Cat, stop!” Bearclaw growled.

She kept walking, refusing to look back at him. Her heart tore into pieces but she pushed on. Behind her, she could hear his approaching footsteps, gaining in speed, so she tried to run. Tears burned in her eyes from the pain, but she pushed herself, pressing the bundle against her ribs for support.

His hand grabbed her bicep so forcefully that it spun her around to face him. “What is wrong with you?”

Her chin trembled as she held back the stinging tears. She looked away. “Let me go.”

“No. You’re keeping something from me. What is it?” He glared at her, his large fingers digging into her skin. She wriggled against him, squealing for him to let go of her.

He released her, eyes wide. He stepped back, jaw slack. “You’re a woman.”

Fear struck her. He had agreed not to kill her because he thought she was a man. What would he do to an aberration? She swallowed hard against the tears. Warriors rarely cried. She would not cry now.

“I am not,” she said, her voice shaking.

He crossed his arms. “Prove it.”

Words failed her. She could not think of a way to convince him until the most obvious difference between genders came to her mind. No longer able to hold back the tears and her insides churning from embarrassment, she tugged at her trouser straps to show him the dangling member between her legs.

Bearclaw pressed his hand against her arm. “Stop.” He wasn’t shouting now. In fact, he looked as if he pitied her. That was even worse. His expression morphed from anger into kindness. In a soft voice she had never heard before, he said, “I want the truth.”

She had never meant to tell him, but the words had already slipped out in the heat of his anger. No magic could put them back. Bearclaw had been her friend. He had saved her life. She decided she owed him the truth, no matter his reaction.

“I was a woman,” Dancing Cat managed to whisper. Anything louder and she knew she’d sob. “Until my ancestor changed me into a man and dumped me in your lap.”

He stared at her for a long time. His gaze flipped between the bundle she clasped against her body and her face. Dancing Cat looked into his black eyes, unable to read them. “Please don’t hurt me.”

Bearclaw reached out a large hand and she recoiled. A gentle, comforting smile stretched across his face. He wrapped his firm arms around her and stroked her hair. “It will be all right.”

She had not been held in years. Not since her husband had died. She had stood in grief by his bloodied body, and no one had touched her. Now, a man who should be an enemy held her as if she was a person, not a thing. Hiccupping sobs escaped her throat, and he shushed away her fears of crying in front of him.

As he stroked her hair and whispered supporting words, it struck her how comfortable he seemed. She pulled back enough to look at him through her misty eyes. “You don’t seem bothered holding a man.”

He gave an awkward grin. “Perhaps this is not my first time.”

Her first thought was that he meant his brothers or perhaps his father. The flush that spread across his face told her a different story. She cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

He touched her face and smiled. “We both have secrets.”

Wanting to move away from her tears, she asked, “What is yours?”

He stared at her, as though he argued within himself. “Come sit beside me.” He took her hand and helped her sit back down on the blanket. “Some tribes follow the way of the two-spirits. My tribe does not.”

Shaking her head, she said, “I’ve never heard of that. What is it?”

He chuckled. “It’s not something women are generally told about. There are those of us blessed, or cursed depending on your opinion, with having both the spirits of our female and male ancestors within them. When that happens, the man is pulled between the desires of the female heart and that of the male.”

She stared at him, confused.

He sighed. “It means I look at men in the same way that I look at women.”

“Oh.”

She felt stupid for not knowing what to say. She had heard of people who did this but thought it had been a part of rituals. At least, that’s what she had been told; now listening to his story, she wondered how much had been kept from her.

“All you can say is ‘oh?’ I thought you women had no end of things to say any topic,” he snapped and jumped to his feet, keeping his back to her.

She pushed herself up, gritting her teeth against the ache in her ribs. “Why are you yelling at me? You tell me that you enjoy the company of men and that, once again, I’ve been lied to because I am a woman. It’s bad enough I am blamed for the deaths of both of my husbands, and now I discover that part of the world is hidden from me because I pee differently.”

Bearclaw took a deep breath and she cringed, waiting for the unleashing of his anger. But then he looked at her, and the steam from his eyes evaporated. A soft, kind chuckle escaped him. He grew serious and approached her. “Your people have hurt you.”

She looked away, crossing her arms over her chest, both for comfort and warmth. “Nothing more than I deserve.”

He touched her hand, one still foreign to her with its wideness and short fingers. He didn’t speak. It made her want to tell him about the curse all the more.

“The Wise Woman of my tribe, my grandmother, said I was cursed by the Creator. They changed my name to Cursed One about two years ago. I’ve not been considered a human since.” A shiver grabbed her spine. “I forgot what it was like to be shown compassion.”

He smiled. “What did they accuse you of?”

Dancing Cat shrugged. “I was never accused of doing anything.” At his confusion, she said, “At seventeen, I married a young man in our band. A buffalo killed him on a hunt during the second day of our union.”

He touched her face. “I am sorry for your loss. May his spirit ride the hunt in the next life.”

A chill surged through her spine. She wasn’t certain whether it was from the autumn breeze or from the cold memories of her past. “They were very kind to me. Soon after, the chief forced me to marry a young man from another band as a hunting settlement. He died in his sleep two days after our union. I became the Cursed One.” She blew out a breath of air, the weight of the words bearing down on her, and, yet, she also felt the release from telling the story. Speaking the words aloud helped it fly away.