Distant Fires Read Free

gleaming bronze chest. His eyes strayed to her and she felt herself flush. She forced herself to concentrate on a conversation with her cousin, Ottanwa, but he seemed to be following her words with a serious and unspoken fascination. Yielding to her first reaction, she smiled, and to her bewilderment and disappointment, he frowned, quickly turning away.     
    What had she done to elicit such open hostility?  Surely she had shown him the value of his friendship in countless little ways. Had she somehow become the focus of his contempt? Careful to hide the extent of her hurt, she resumed chatting, but her mind was distracted, mulling over any action on her part that could give rise to such response.    
    Sometime later, he moved into the gathering, less a participant than casual onlooker, his expression remote, as though wrestling with a problem. Preoccupied with the source of his confusion, she lifted the basket, and with a slip of her hands, sent loose shells flying in all directions. Ordinarily the incident would have served to amuse, but his strange behaviour had so unnerved and hurt, she felt merely foolish. Fighting back tears, she bent to retrieve them, but Salgan’s close proximity as he came to her aid resulted in a further cascade of shells, and she fled from the scene in humiliation.  
    Salgan raced ahead, barring her from entry to the longhouse doorway. Lowering her head to mask her discomfiture, she attempted to walk around him, but he refused to budge.     
    “Ehta, why do you worry about such a small accident? Are you so unhappy?” His concern was genuine, his voice soothing, but she didn’t want his interest if it came from pity. She wanted to ask him why he no longer spent time with her alone, why he watched her but rarely spoke, why he had never again sought the warmth of her body in the darkness to make them truly man and wife. And why did he now wish to be near her when his attitude of late had been anything but warm?  
    “I suppose it is because we do not play together as we used to.”  It was as near to the truth as she could muster.  
    She was at a loss to understand his motivation but sensed an action was at hand. True to her instincts, he smiled and tossed the handful of shells, still held, into the air.  
    She could not help but grin at the silliness of it all, but the instant the spell was broken, his voice, when it came, was again uncharacteristically tentative, even distant:  “The canoe must be tried to see if it has been properly repaired. I had planned to go upriver. Would you like to come along?  
    She was startled by his proposal, questioning his purpose when recent actions indicated feelings of a different sort, but her curiosity was equal to the unexpected thrill of sharing him with no one. To her surprise, she felt a warm, tingling excitement sweep through her body from her toes to her fingers in anticipation. Unable to disseminate the intensity of these unfamiliar feelings, she felt it necessary to hide them.    
    “When?”  She inquired, coolly.  
    “Now. Today.” He responded, his tone anxiously conveying the belief that she would not accept.  
    She looked to the pale blue skies above his head that gave the promise of another day of blistering heat. “Well,” she replied, fighting to remain unmoved, “I must help mother in the fields but...if we return by tomorrow’s sunrise...I will go with you.”    
    An amazed and welcome smile lit his face, but he quickly composed himself, and with a simple nod, went about gathering a few essentials in preparation.              
                
    ……….  
     
    By midday, as promised, with the sun blazing overhead, they cast their canoe into the water and set off upstream. Away from the village clearing, the land took on a different appearance; rockier along the edge, with deeper columns of mixed forest dappled in shadow and light.  
    Late in the afternoon the river began to narrow and