The Wildest Heart

I had to will myself to pull away.

“You can always talk with me. But if you wish to eat…”

“Surely you are not afraid of me?”

Somehow, I found that my back was against the wall, and he, still holding my arm, was leaning far too close.

“Julio.”

“I think it is my turn now. I have seen you with my brother Ramon, and before that, it was Lucas who kept me from you. I saw the way your eyes caught mine that first night, when the warriors brought you into our camp. Yes, and afterwards too, little sister. I know what my mother plans, but she forgets that my father’s name was Kordes too, and that I am her son. You saw how angry she became when I reminded her of this fact? It is not only for the reasons that she and your father thought of that I speak now. I am Apache—the land does matter as much to me as it does to the others, who value this staying in one place. It is you I desire, and I think you already know that too, but like the women of my people, you were modest, and cast your eyes down. And now your eyes look straight into mine.”

All I could think of to say at that instant was, stupidly: “But you are married already! And I like Little Bird. If you think that I am the kind of woman who would…”

He shook my arm exasperatedly. “Did you think I meant anything less than marriage? You are a virgin, and since my grandfather adopted you into our tribe, I would not meddle with you if I had not intended an honorable offer of marriage. If you had lived with us longer, I would have tied the best ponies I had outside the shaman’s lodge as a sign of my intentions. But as it is, I’m left with no other choice but to tell you what is in my mind. I have seen you accept calmly what my mother has told you, and I have seen that you do not love Ramon. So…

I had regained my wits by this time, and although I was not foolish enough to attempt to twist out of his grasp I continued to look boldly into his eyes.

“Your grandfather told me that I would be allowed to make up my own mind, and although I have grown to respect you, I see you only as a brother, who is already married. It is true that I have learned to accept the ways and the wisdom of the Apache, Julio, but I am still a stubborn woman. When I choose a husband I will not be able to share him. I hope you can understand this, for I would not like to lose your friendship.”

I tried to sound reasonable and calm, but I do not think that Julio, at the moment, was capable of either emotion.

I had borrowed some of Luz’s clothes that afternoon—a full, ankle-length skirt and low-cut blouse, and my feet were bare for coolness. His eyes traveled over me.

“I hear your voice speaking to me, nidee, and it says one thing, but your eyes and the fast beating of your heart tell me another story. I think you are afraid of being possessed by a man, and your fear makes you seem cold. But I think that your senses call out for it. It was so with my grandmother, the Spanish woman captive that my grandfather made his third wife. In time…”

“No!” He held me against the wall, and the suddenly open look of desire I saw on his face, usually so expressionless, made me too angry for caution. “I tell you that when the time comes I will know it, and I will make my own choice! And is this how you keep your promise to the shaman of your tribe, to treat me as a sister?”

“It is not as a sister I see you, but as a woman! I wanted you when I first saw you standing there so proudly, with your head thrown back, meeting my eyes without fear, and I would have bought you…”

“But you did not. Your brother did. Have you asked his permission to approach me?”

I saw Julio’s brown eyes, so like Ramon’s, narrow into slits.

“My brother, eh? Perhaps he did more than lie beside you on all those nights! And is your dislike for him merely a pretense, or jealousy?” His laughter sounded harshly in my ears. “If it is Lucas you want, nidee, you will wait a long time—like Luz! Or haven’t you noticed yet how things are with him? To my brother, all women but one are merely instruments of pleasure, to be used and thrown aside. You have sharp eyes, or have you deliberately tried to blind yourself to the truth in this instance? Perhaps you do not want to admit that my brother Lucas is in love with my mother!”

“I don’t think you know what you are saying!” I stared into his dark, angry face, and felt that my lips had suddenly become stiff and cold.

“Do you not? Then I shall say it again, little sister, and try to make my meaning clearer. My brother and my mother are lovers.”

I gasped in shock and Julio smiled cruelly.

“I have shocked you? But there is no need to be too shocked, after all. Lucas is my father’s bastard, so they say. My mother was my father’s wife. Do you see now?”

“But—she is so much older than he is!”

“Older, you say? But you have seen my mother, how beautiful she is, how young she looks. And in his presence she looks even younger, eh? I remember the day they rode into our camp, and we were told, Lucas and I, that our parents had come. Parents! I looked on my grandfather as my father, by then. They had abandoned us, and now at last they came, looking for their sons! I would not go with them. Lucas was older than I, and even more determined to stay, at first. And then he saw her, and she smiled, and her voice was soft and wheedling. I was watching his eyes, and I knew then that he would go, because of her. I saw, and my grandfather saw too, after a while. And there came a time when they could not hide the fact that they were lovers from my father… Do you want to know what happened then?”

Julio’s fingers were still closed painfully around my arms, but I hardly noticed the discomfort any longer. I did not want to hear more, and yet I had to—and I think Julio read all this in my face, for he nodded slowly, as if satisfied.

“So you are curious. I was curious too, when one day Lucas came back to our camp, looking like a man in a daze. I was curious enough to sit outside the shaman’s lodge and listen, while he told our grandfather of the quarrel he had had with his father. ‘I cannot go back,’ he said, and his voice held such anguish that I could hardly recognize it. But later that same night my mother, Elena, came herself; her hair flying behind her in the stormwind, and her face haggard—as haggard as his had been! ‘He is dead!’ How can I forget the way she cried it out? ‘Shannon has killed him,’ she cried, ‘he or his men! And if there is not one who is man enough among you to revenge him, I will do it myself!’” Julio paused meaningfully, as if he expected me to say something, but I could only stare back at him silently. “You know the rest of it, I think,” he said quietly. “He revenged my father’s death, but was it the law of blood for blood or his own guilt that made him risk his life so carelessly?”

I felt a strange feeling of sickness in the pit of my stomach. An entry in my father’s journal—the last one—that I had frowned over and then dismissed to be thought of later, came back to me then.

“I see the story of Oedipus enacted again,” he had written in a scrawling hand that told only too clearly of his condition when he had written it. “And it is too late… too late to change the pattern of tragedy now. Must we forever be haunted by old crimes—old guilts?”

I remember that I wondered if he had been referring to himself. How could I have understood then, knowing nothing of what I knew now?

With an effort I lifted my hands to Julio’s wrists. “You are hurting my arms.”