Water.”
Moonfeather raised a finger to her lips and glanced toward her chubby three-year-old son sitting cross-legged on a wolfskin. His round little face was only a shade darker than her own, and his glossy, chin-length hair was as black as a crow’s wing. “Not in front of Kitate,” she cautioned. She smiled at the boy, and he grinned back at her with an impish giggle that never failed to touch her heart.
Her aunt grunted her disapproval, and Moonfeather looked away to hide the amusement in her eyes. She’d expected her aunt’s tirade, even looked forward to it in a perverse way. She’s saying everything I should have said to myself before I claimed the sky-eyed stranger.
Her mother’s younger sister, Amookas, had given her a home when Moonfeather’s mother died in childbirth. Among the Shawnee, blood ties were strongest with the mother’s people; clan and tribal status came from the female line. Duty would have forced Amookas to adopt Moonfeather, but her aunt had always given more than what was required. She had been teacher and friend, instructing Moonfeather in the proper behavior for the only daughter of a deceased Shawnee peace woman. Amookas had loved the grieving, half-white child with a fierce passion, defending Moonfeather’s actions to the other women no matter how outlandish her behavior might sometimes seem.
A warm rush of emotion brought moisture to Moonfeather’s eyes. Dear Amookas, I do love her. She’s always opened her arms wide for me to run to, and this will be no exception. No matter how she fusses, she’ll stand with me. She always has.
Smiling, Moonfeather glanced around her aunt’s spacious wigwam. Baskets of dried fish, bags of pemmican, and bundles of herbs hung from the roof poles. Fur robes were neatly rolled and stacked on the sleeping platforms, and her aunt’s grinding stone and pestle were in their accustomed niche. Some wigwams seemed cluttered when the family gathered around the fire pit, but never her aunt’s home. Everything here was clean and orderly. Moonfeather inhaled deeply, savoring the sweet smells of wild mint and drying tobacco. My mother’s wigwam was the same, she remembered fondly. I’ll never smell drying mint without thinking of home.
“How do you expect to hide what you’ve done from him?” her aunt continued. “Is the boy deaf and blind that he does not hear what everyone is saying? You’ve insulted the war chief Matiassu and taken an enemy—perhaps even the slayer of your own husband—to bed.” Amookas Equiwa, Butterfly Woman, blew on her fingers and added a choice piece of meat to Alex’s portion. Usually the family ate outside the wigwam in summer, but today everyone had taken shelter from the rain.
“Don’t you agree with me, husband?” Amookas urged. Her tone softened as she handed Alex the heaped-up bowl and several corncakes.
Moonfeather shrugged. “Anyone who believes that is a fool. Kitate’s father has been dead for two winters. The scalp of the man who shot him is stretched on a Delaware hoop.” She nibbled at a sweetened corncake. “And I do have respect for Matiassu—he’s a brave man and an able leader. I just don’t want him as my husband. I have the right to choose a husband. Any Shawnee woman does.”
Alexander Mackenzie accepted the bowl from his grumbling wife and settled against the elkbone backrest, stretching his single leg out before him. His green belted kilt was faded and much mended, but the good wool of the great plaid covered his shrunken thigh to the knee. “Let there be an end tae bickerin’ in this house. Are we nay kin? I say the lassie be of age. Let her do a’ she wishes—she weel anyway.” He ignored Amookas’s frown and began to spoon the delicious stew into his mouth, taking care not to spill any on his full red beard.
“I’m only thinking of the child,” Amookas fussed in her native tongue. “It is not safe for him around such a barbarian.”
“The English are barely