A String of Beads (Jane Whitefield, #8)(55)

She shrugged and took a sip of her cognac. “It would be kind of silly to hide anything from you, Dr. McKinnon. There’s nothing new to see, but I know how much you like to verify that for yourself.”

“Yes, you’re a very practical girl,” he said. He set his glass on the dresser, scooped Jane up, carried her to the bed. The cover had been pulled back, and he set her gently on the sheets. In a few seconds he was undressed too, and they were together on the bed. It felt wrong.

Their talk had been false, a way to gloss over the distance that had grown between them, and they both knew it. Their movements were awkward. Too much time had passed while Jane was away and they were resenting each other, so they both felt clumsy and uncertain, as though they were strangers.

Jane sat up and held Carey’s face in her hands so they had to look into each other’s eyes. “I love you,” she said. “I’m not going to let things turn sad because we can’t put our problems out of our minds for a while. We’re going to fight some more about this another time. Not tonight. And we’ll still love each other just as much at the end of that fight too. Right now, be with me.”

“I am,” he said. “I love you.” He put his arms around her and held her.

They caressed each other slowly and gently, a lavish, leisurely expenditure of time, savoring the fact that she was at home with him tonight and not somewhere else that neither of them wanted to think about. They didn’t speak, only touched and kissed, feeling the understanding that they loved each other deeply and permanently—that for him, she was the one woman who would stand in his life for all women, and in her life, he would stand for all men.

They were grateful to and for each other, and as their pulses and breathing sped up and their skin temperatures rose with the excitement, each of them tried to give the other more pleasure, to cause it and feel it and observe it at the same time. They began to express their own love and receive the other’s love at the same instant, and to increase the pleasure and increase it until the strain of containing it overwhelmed them.

They lay motionless on the bed for a few seconds, and then Jane got up and turned off the big light on the ceiling, so there was only the moonlight through the window. “I’m not in the mood for the glare anymore.”

“If I can’t see you I’ll find you by touch.”

“Or I’ll find you.” Jane leaned over him and kissed him softly, her lips lingering on his, barely touching. They lay close for a time, not talking or needing to talk.

Then they touched again, neither of them really knowing who had moved a hand first and initiated the touch, but both knowing instantly that this touch was different, and responding to it before it was over, prolonging and intensifying the touch. They were more uninhibited this time, less aware of themselves and their own bodies but more aware of each other, and when it ended it left them tired and at peace. Carey got up and opened the window, and they lay back together on the bed, feeling the cool, soothing air of the night drifting over their bodies. And then Jane fell asleep.

She was still lying on the bed beside Carey and she knew they had both been sleeping, and that she was still asleep, when she heard the faint sound of a person climbing the stairs to the second floor. The feet were silent, but a few of the steps of the staircase creaked faintly when a person stepped on them. She had trained herself to hear the sounds. In the silence that followed, Jane could feel someone coming along the hallway toward her.

The woman appeared in the doorway, and Jane sat up on the bed to look at her. The woman wore a deerskin dress with leggings and moccasins. Her shining black hair was long, combed and straight, and Jane could see that its weight made it swing a little each time she moved her head. As the woman stepped into the bedroom, the silver-blue light from the moon shone on her and Jane could see that her dress, leggings, and moccasins were decorated with dyed porcupine quills sewn like embroidery in the shapes of wildflowers. Jane knew she was from the old time.

The woman spoke in Seneca. “Owandah. Or maybe I should call you Onyo:ah.” This was Jane’s secret name, a nickname her father had given her when she was little.

Jane pulled the bed sheet up to her neck.

“Don’t bother hiding yourself,” said the woman. “You’ve been doing what you should be doing.” She looked at Carey. “Your husband is good and he’s strong. You’re a good match.”

“You know the name my father gave me.” Onyo:ah was a call used in the peach-pit game. It meant that five of the six peach pits in a player’s throw had landed with the black, burned side up, and only one was on the unburned side—literally “one white.” If all six had been black, the player would have been allowed to take five score counters. With one white, he could take only one counter. Her father had explained to her that Onyo:ah meant the player was winning, but by slow, gradual steps, the way people did in life.

The game was played at Midwinter and Green Corn to celebrate the triumph of life over winter. But it was first played just after the beginning of time by Hawenneyu the Creator and Hanegoategah the Destroyer, the twin gods who transformed the dirt on the great turtle’s back into a world. The twins’ grandmother proposed that she and the destroyer play the game against Hawenneyu the Creator to decide who would have dominion over the earth. When she rolled the pits from the bowl, she got no points. When Hawenneyu cast the pits, he won.