He put his left hand between her legs and drew spirals along her skin, pressing lightly when he reached her lap, but despite the gentleness of his touch, he frightened her with the heat radiating from his palm. He withdrew his hand and began another story, and after they had eaten, he bade her lie near the fire while he retreated to the opposite side for the sake of modesty. As they rested beside it, the fire gave up its spirit and breathed its last as embers. But S’ee could not sleep.
Darkness weighed more heavily amid the tall trees. No starlight, the moon missing from the sky, and the firs pressed all around, their branches palpable against her skin when a breeze chanced by. The typical sounds of home were absent. No gulls crying out in their dreams. No ocean sighing upon the shore. No sisters tossing in their beds. She heard the man rise, creep across the needled ground, the heat of him preceding his body’s arrival. Clamping shut her eyes, she could tell he was directly above her, waiting. She willed him closer. Shivered when his hand touched her hair, then her face, but she waited, wanting and dreading the moment, and only when he said her name did S’ee open her eyes and rise to his embrace.
Her first cognition of the act had come from watching the village dogs casually mounting one another out in the plaza, but still she did not understand its purpose and only thought they were at play. Once walking home with her mother, she spied a bull moose fresh from his rutting, and when she asked her about the huge erection between his legs, S’ee’s mother could only laugh. “Reminds me of your father,” she said and steered her away. Her older sisters talked about sex in general terms, as some abstraction to keep men happy. In reality, she had no idea of what was about to occur.
S’ee pulled her shift over her head and was naked, and the man felt the softness of her skin, his hands in arcs and circles, kneading flesh, and turning from him, she slid and knelt, squaring her shoulders, her hands firmly on the ground. He whispered her name again and drew close behind her, stroking her legs and back, his nails tracing the contours of her body. He kissed the small of her back, ran his mouth along her spine, and licked the sharp blades of her shoulders. One hand snaked between her legs, stroking, and with two fingers he parted her labia, and then he began to kill her. Or so she thought, he was stabbing at her, forcing a blunt club into her vagina. With each thrust, she cried out and clenched her muscles, slowly realizing that this weapon was a part of him. He called to her from far above, singing her name, then began grunting in rhythm. S’ee craned her neck but she could only make out his shadowy bulk in the pitch. He pressed against her head, and she thought she felt his mouth draw wide and full of sharp teeth. No longer able to hold up her own weight under his, S’ee folded her arms and crumpled facedown to the ground, and he covered her with his body, warm as a thick blanket against her back. With a shudder and a growling roar, he came inside her, a liquid heat that filled the void, as viscous as menses. In her shock, she felt nothing more than the pressure to pee and lifted herself at once so that he would move his dead weight off her. He kissed her again between the shoulders and withdrew.
Scrambling away to a respectable distance, she squatted on the bare earth for a long time. When her muscles finally relaxed, she felt a burning sensation and caught the foulsweet smell of him streaming in her own water. The darkness pushed against her skin, chilling her. She felt her way back, desperate to find the man.
“Where are you?” she whispered.
A huff of air escaped his mouth as if he was snorting in his sleep. She followed the strange sound, her hands searching the darkness till she brushed against his hair. Thinking she had accidentally bumped his head, she mumbled an apology and when she touched what she thought was his chest or shoulder, he seemed extremely hairy, as if he had donned a fur coat.
He drew her into his arms, and she curled her back against bare skin. The puzzle over the difference between the hirsute and smooth man kept her awake well into the night. Toward dawn, he woke, aroused. Knowing what was to happen, S’ee could relax the second time and was almost enjoying herself when he climaxed and quickly rolled off her back. They spooned together in the gathering light, and she began to think of the beautiful man as hers.
Over the next two days, they traveled deeper into the forest as it rose toward far-off mountains. Each hour, the climb became more difficult, the spruce and cedar taller and thick with crepey moss, the air dense with moisture. She had never seen the inside of the rain forest or heard the riot of so many songbirds when the sun drilled a hole through the canopy. Rustling in the underbrush or the fleeting shift of shadows worried her to his side, and when a creek crossed their trail or a fallen cedar blocked the passage, he took her hand in his and led her safely. They passed the time by telling each other stories, and when she recounted the legend of her father, Yeikoo.shk’, and the death by salmon, he hung his head.
“Sister salmon,” he said, “was upset. Take the eggs and leave the fish is not only wasteful but shows a lack of respect. What kind of man was this?”
“A proud man. A foolish man.”