Centuries of June Read Online Free Page B

afraid.” He smiled and shook his head. “You’ve got to admire her chutzpah.”
    E very step of the way, he hummed or sang to her, keeping two paces ahead through the dense woods and walking shoulder to shoulder as they crossed open land. The sun blazed in front of them as they began their journey, hung above their heads at their midday repast, and followed their backs as they climbed into higher country, the cedars tall and so thick that S’ee no longer smelled the salt water. She had never known the air without the sea, and its sweetness among the pines frightened her, but she marched on, enchanted by the man’s songs. They made camp when the sun dipped below the timberline, and while S’ee gathered dry sticks for the fire, the man disappeared into the brush. As she warmed her hands over the new blaze, she was startled by his return. He held up a rabbit by the hind legs and grinned at his own prowess. While the dinner cooked, he told her stories, starting with the traditional tales of how the Tlingit came into the world, but stranger stories, too: “The Man Who Killed His Sleep” and “The Salmon People” and, strangest of all, “The Woman Who Married an Octopus.”
    “And it was the eight arms that convinced her to live under the sea and marry the octopus. Two arms to hold her feet, two to hold her hands.”
    He circled her wrists with his fingers and then let her go.
    “One arm to stroke her hair.”
    She felt his hands comb her hair but averted her eyes from his.
    “Two arms to hold her breasts.”
    With the lightest touch, he cupped her breasts and smiled when she did not flinch. The crust of the rabbit skin blistered over the crackling fire. S’ee looked at his eyes. “And where went the eighth arm?”
    He put his left hand between her legs and drew spirals along herskin, 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 thecontours of her body. He kissed the small of her back, ran his mouth along her