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His long hair flowed down his back, and Joylynn’s was loose today as well. As he carried her, her hair swung down across his arms in rhythm with the swaying fringes of her own snow-white doeskin attire. The coral-colored beads adorning her dress flashed beneath the lowering sun.
“You have waited long for this day, so I wanted to be certain it was one that would live in your memory forever,” High Hawk said, still running along the stream, which was widening now into a river.
“How could I ever forget this day?” Joylynn murmured. “And your mother was so sweet and kind to me. I shall never forget when she gave me her gift. It is such a beautiful sewing kit that she made especially for me.”
“It is the custom of our people that no woman should be married without owning her own sewing kit,” High Hawk said. “Ina wanted to be the one to give you yours.”
“I shall learn to sew, honest I will,” Joylynn said, smiling up at him. “If a sewing kit is so important, the new wife using it must not disappoint her husband. High Hawk, I have never seen such beautiful awls, sinew threads dyed so many beautiful colors, and paints, beads and porcupine quills already dyed different colors and ready to be applied to the dresses and moccasins I will learn to make.”
“As well as clothes for your husband,” High Hawk said, giving her a teasing smile. “It will be a life far different from what you are used to.”
“Ho, quite different,” Joylynn said, nodding. “While I lived with my parents, I ignored my mama’s teachings, but instead listened to my father’s. I so loved the outdoors. I thought sewing and cooking were tedious.”
“But now?” High Hawk said, still trotting alongside the river. “You will not mind caring for a husband, doing all the things women do for them?”
“I cherish every moment now of being able to make you happy,” Joylynn said. “Even cooking. Your mother told me today how your favorite dish is prepared. The flesh of a calf is boiled with pomme-blanche roots in a broth made of water and marrow from the bones of cows. Lungs of the buffalo are added after being dried and roasted on coals, along with corn.”
“My mother is an excellent teacher, and obviously you are an astute student,” High Hawk said. He slowed his pace, then stopped in a curve of the hauntingly beautiful river. He nodded and gazed toward the clear water.
Joylynn followed the path of his eyes, then gasped in awe. “A canoe?” she said. “I have never seen you or any of your people in canoes.”
“Last night several of my warriors left the village and made this canoe especially for our wedding day,” High Hawk said. “It is not as large as most, but large enough for what we will do with it.”
“We’re going to go for a ride in this canoe?” Joylynn asked excitedly.
“Ho,” he said, stepping up to the canoe with her.
When Joylynn could get a better look at the canoe, her eyes widened. “Rose petals?” she gasped as she gazed in wonder at the wild bright red rose petals spread along the bottom of the canoe.
Lying on each side of the canoe were two paddles.
“Especially for you,” High Hawk said, easing her down into the canoe.
The rose petals were cool and soft against Joylynn’s flesh as she ran her fingers through them, and the smell was so heavenly, surely no expensive French perfume could smell more wonderful.
“This is so beautiful,” Joylynn murmured as she gazed up into High Hawk’s eyes. “Rose petals. And so many. You have made this a day I shall think back on forever and smile.”
High Hawk smiled and shoved the canoe into deeper water, then waded out and climbed inside. “My people are not canoe people, but there are times when we have needed them, and we have mastered the art of making them,” he said, settling down on his knees behind her. “This canoe is smaller than most, so we must position ourselves on our knees before paddling. Stay where you are and I will kneel behind you. From where you are, your view will be unobstructed. Today we will both see the marvels of this land yet unseen by any other man or woman.”
“I . . . have . . . never been in a canoe. I don’t know how to paddle one,” Joylynn said, suddenly nervous. Thus far she had impressed him by being able to do things that most women could not.
“Watch me for a moment. Lift the paddle and place it in the water,” High Hawk said. “Begin pulling it through the water as I am pulling mine. You must get into the same rhythm as I. Do not use the muscles in your arms, but let the rotation of your torso move your paddle through the water.”
Joylynn did as he said, smiling when she discovered how effortless it was, especially with him using his paddle in t
he same rhythm as her own.
“My people mainly travel by horse, but when I am in a canoe, I cannot help thinking that, besides making love, this is what the body is made for,” he said softly. “Canoeing is one of the gentlest, least disturbing and most graceful ways of moving through physical space.”
Joylynn gazed over her shoulder at him and saw a look of joy on his face. There was something almost rapturous about being out there on the river, only the two of them, moving so easily through the pristine water.
She knew they were experiencing something together that would be with them always . . . a landscape of wildness and purity, so vast and ancient, that the distinction between individual existence and nothingness was almost meaningless.
She turned her eyes away from him and enjoyed the experience to the fullest. On her knees, she focused on the way the paddle made a little swirling whirlpool as it bit into the water, and how it cast off two more little whirlpools when she took it out at the end of the stroke. She found that a slight twist of her wrist turned the blade vertical and made it easier to take it out of the water.
For long stretches, the only sounds were the drops of water falling from the paddle as she brought it forward and bit into the water again, and the little straining sound, like a trickling rivulet, that the bow of the canoe made as it parted the water.
She was stunned to see that the river was filled with fish in pulsating abundance, streaking away from the bow of the canoe as it made its way through the water.
