Free Witch Dance by Peggy Webb Page A

beyond time and light and knowledge.
    All she knew was the sound of hoofbeats on the hard prairie floor and the swaying motion of the horse that rocked her in Eagle’s arms.
     o0o
    Hal waited until the house was quiet then climbed out the window. The minute his feet hit the ground he began to run. There was no need to look back. Nobody would pursue him. His father had been snoring like a downed buffalo when he left, and Deborah was out with one of her many boyfriends.
    He’d be back long before she was, tucked safely in bed when she checked, as innocent as a newborn babe. Hal tipped back his head and laughed. A coyote in the hills answered him.
    Hal wasn’t scared. Nothing scared him. He had the power of the wolf.
    His feet were swift and sure as he ran. He could outrun anybody in the Chickasaw Nation. Someday he would be a famous runner, earning lots of money, so everybody in Witch Dance would look at him driving by in his red Corvette and say, “There goes the luckiest man alive” instead of “Poor Hal.”
    He was sick of being Poor Hal, the boy whose mama got herself shot and whose daddy barely even knew he was alive.
    Or maybe he’d prefer a black Corvette.
    Wolf Man, he would call himself when he got famous. It would be a tribute to the great man who had shown him the future.
    The Great One was waiting for him inside a small hut tucked in the foothills of the Arbuckle Mountains.
    “You came.” The man sitting on the dirt floor of the hut with his legs crossed nodded wisely. “It is good.”
    “Eagle is looking for you,” Hal said, sitting opposite him and imitating the older man’s posture.
    “How long?”
    “Four days now.”
    “The others?”
    “They keep silent.”
    “Good. We will let the white medicine woman think peace has come to her clinic, then . . .” He made a slicing motion with his hands.
    “I understand.”
    In the dim lights of the hut, the older man looked like a god as he reached into his pouch.
    “To reward you for destroying the witch woman’s work,” he said, handing Hal a tiny packet.
    Hal’s palms dampened as he stuffed it into his pocket. He would save it for a time when he was alone in his room with no one to come and bother him.
    “I have to go now.”
    “You will remember?” The older man made the slicing motion with his hands once more.
    “I will remember.”
    He raced into the night, dreaming of fame and the kaleidoscopic journey he would take with the peyote.
     o0o
    They came suddenly upon his campsite. A blanket woven of all the colors of the sea lay upon the ground beside blackened embers from a recent fire, and the whisper of the river sang through the valley.
    Eagle dismounted, taking Kate with him, and when he spread her upon the sea-colored blanket, she knew she would remember the moment always, the song of the river and the brightness of his eyes as he undressed himself, then her. It was a slow unveiling, surprising considering the sexual frenzy that had brought them there.
    Bending low, he touched her—touched her breasts, the soft down of her abdomen, the tiny indentation of her navel, the blue-veined skin inside her thighs. And all the while he chanted the strange beautiful words of his people.
    He didn’t have to speak English for her to understand. Eagle was speaking the language of love.
    Breathless, she watched him. Every inch of her skin trembled under his inspection.
    Levering himself over her, he gazed deep into her eyes.
    “Say you want me, Kate.”
    “I want you, Eagle.”
    “Say you want me as I want you.”
    “I’m shameless. I would ride through an inferno to feel your arms around me. I would storm the very gates of hell to have you inside me, there” —she touched herself— “where I burn.”
    “ Waka ahina uno, iskunosi Wictonaye. Waka. ”
    “Yes. Teach me, Eagle.” She cupped his face. “Teach me to fly.”
    “Come.” Taking her by the hands, he lifted her up so that they were facing each other, kneeling. “In the