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Both of these gifts were then taken outside and placed with the food that was being prepared beside the large communal fire, where many pots simmered over the flames.
Lauralee felt giddy with happiness as Dancing Cloud took her hands and gazed down at her with his midnight-dark eyes. She felt the intense hush behind her as the people awaited the exchange of vows between their chief and this white woman who they had finally accepted into their hearts.
Lauralee had proven time and again that she was a woman worthy of walking among them as though one with them. She had relentlessly cared for Soft Wind day and night, trying to save one of their very own women. She had taken into her heart and life two Cherokee children, to raise as her own.
Today she would bond with their chief, forever—totally, heart and soul, as if she were born Cherokee, herself.
And the people were glad. Each and everyone had given Lauralee and Dancing Cloud their blessings.
Dancing Cloud drew Lauralee close. He held her hands and gazed down at her as he began to sing. She melted inside, touched deeply by his song as she listened intently to the words.
“Ku! Listen! You gre
at earth woman,” Dancing Cloud sang. “No one when with you is ever lonely. You are most beautiful. Ha! The clan to which I belong is the one alone allotted for you. Woman, with me no one is ever lonely. Put your soul into the very center of my soul, woman, never to turn away. Your soul has come into the center of my soul, woman, never to go away. Sge!”
Tears pooled in Lauralee’s eyes. She whispered a soft thank you up at Dancing Cloud.
Then, knowing that what she had planned to say could never compare to that which had just been said to her, she hesitated.
She also briefly thought about whether or not this ceremony made her truly married in the eyes of her God. When she had worried about this to Dancing Cloud and had said that she wished to at least have a Bible to cling to during her exchange of vows with Dancing Cloud, he had said that the white man’s Bible seemed to be a good book, but strange that the white people were not better after having it so long.
She had said no more to him about the Bible, or her concerns over not having a preacher present.
It was enough that she was marrying Dancing Cloud, no matter in which way the ceremony would be performed. She felt at peace with herself; God had indeed reached down from the heavens and touched her very soul with his blessings.
Dancing Cloud’s fingers lightly squeezed hers, bringing Lauralee’s thoughts back to the present. She did not sing. She just spoke gently and lovingly as she said her piece, glad that what she said pleased Dancing Cloud.
“My sweet Cherokee,” she murmured. “I give to you today my love, my devotion, my very soul. I will never turn away from you. My heart is yours. My every thought and desire is yours. Oh, my sweet Cherokee, I give my all to you. Our love will be like the stars, undying and forever. I come to you today with my gift of corn as a promise to you that I will be as you want me to be, not only for you, my beloved, but also for our darling children. Take me, my sweet Cherokee, mold me as you wish me to be, for I wish to please you, forevermore.”
Her words warmed Dancing Cloud’s insides. “You please me as you are,” he said thickly. “My woman, my wife.”
Realizing that those exchanged words had made them man and wife, Lauralee drifted into his arms. He placed a finger to her chin and tilted her lips to his. Before his people he claimed Lauralee with a tender kiss.
They responded with loud chanting and songs, the drum and rattles now beating out a rhythm that brought dancers to their feet, the flute eerie and magical in its sound.
Dancing Cloud took Lauralee’s hand and swung her around to the platform. He made sure that she was comfortable on the plush pelts, then sat down beside her. He reached for her hand and held it on his lap as dancers began to perform, while people clapped, chanted, and sang in time with the beat of the musical instruments.
Both men and women were dancing, each dressed in their finest clothing. Some of the women wore intricately beaded and fringed dresses of fine white buckskin, while others wore gathered skirts and jackets gaily decorated with ribbon. With their bracelets and strings of beads, they made a festive sight.
But the men were not to be outdone. They, too, wore silver bracelets and wampum, but they also sported feathers in their hair and tortoise shell rattles on their legs.
Facing Dancing Cloud and Lauralee and the musicians, the women stood hand in hand in a semicircle before the sacred fire. They began moving slowly round and round in time with the music, the men joining them.
The dance proceeded beautifully and mystically while Lauralee watched, entranced by the grandeur of it all.
After closely studying the dancers for a while, Lauralee felt some unseen force drawing her to her feet. The dancers stepped aside and made room for her when she began dancing, the rhythm of her footsteps seeming to be a separate song over the drumbeat. She sometimes felt as though one foot was suspended, gliding back and forth, the other pulsing up and down, alternating, a most subtle syncopation.
Dancing Cloud’s heart raced as he watched his woman, the exquisite grace in every movement of her lithe, slender body, of the look of wild abandon on her angelic face. He watched the rise and fall of her breasts as they pressed against the inside of her feather dress. He watched her tapered ankles.
His gaze followed her superb arm gestures, her right hand upraised majestically, then swooping down like a rush of rain, and then pulling up again, like growing corn.
Male dancers who wore buffalo head masks soon joined Lauralee. Dancing Cloud rose to his feet, his spine stiff as he watched as the male dancers diagonaled away from his wife, circled back, their horned-beaded masks leaning close to her, following her smooth, dreamy movements.
Dancing Cloud entered the circle of dancers. The masked dancers fell back into the crowd. Everyone was quiet, the instruments mute as their chief picked his wife up into his arms and carried her away.
Lauralee clung around Dancing Cloud’s neck as he took her from the Wolf Clan Town House, past the fires where the wondrous aromas of cornmeal dumplings, hominy, beans, and chestnut bread were being kept warm by the hot coals, and into Dancing Cloud’s cabin, which by marriage, was now also Lauralee’s.
Dancing Cloud kicked the door closed with a heel and did not take the time to carry his bride up the ladder to their loft bedroom. He set her down before the fireplace on a thick pallet of furs.
