Pure Blossom paled and grabbed at her throat, her eyes wild and wide. “Adam . . . is . . . dead?” she gasped. “And you say . . . this . . . child is his?”
Runner began explaining gently what he could about what had happened to Adam, and how the child happened to be involved.
He then turned to Gray Moon and gave him a silent look, and then turned back to his sister. “I have told you much today,” he said. “Now, my sister, do you not think that it is time for you to tell Gray Moon what he does not yet know?”
Pure Blossom raised a hand to her eyes and smoothed tears from their corners. She looked sheepishly over at Gray Moon. He had been far too quiet while Runner had been talking about Adam and the child. He had grown even more quiet when he had seen her reaction to everything that Runner had told her. This man who was so gentle and caring was soon to know the truth that might send him away from Pure Blossom, yet she knew that it was only fair to him that he knew.
She realized that he should have known even before now. If he could not accept the child she was carrying, it would be harder now for him to forget this camaraderie—this bond—that had been magically spinning between them since Gray Moon had saved her life and had revealed his hidden feelings for her.
Looking lovingly at him, Pure Blossom reached for one of Gray Moon’s hands and placed it on her abdomen.
“Gray Moon, beneath your hand grows a child within my womb,” Pure Blossom said, her voice soft and guarded. “The father was Adam. The man who died today. The man who planted his seed in another woman’s belly, whose child is even now held within Stephanie’s arms. I was foolish in who I shared my love with. But now my love is not foolish. I love you. Can you still love me even though I carry another man’s child within my womb?”
There was a strained, hushed silence as everyone waited for Gray Moon’s response.
Tears came to Stephanie’s eyes when Gray Moon finally gave his answer. He took Pure Blossom into his arms and held her close, his one hand caressing her stomach.
“My love for you is not that easily destroyed,” he said thickly. “When I fell in love with you, it was not measured in who you loved before me, or who you might have slept with. Not even the child makes any difference. My love for you is sincere and deep enough to include the child. We will be married soon.”
Stephanie and Runner rose quietly to their feet and crept to the door and left.
“And all is blessed today,” Runner said, smiling down at Stephanie.
She smiled up at him and nodded. “It does seem so,” she murmured.
Chapter 34
And on that long-remembered morning
When first I lost this heart of mine,
Fame, all I’d hoped for,
And love and hope lived wholly thine.
—JOHN CLARE
Several days later
It was now the fourth day of the “Chant Way Ceremony.” This ceremony had involved the creation of several sand paintings selected from the dozens used in the Chant Ways.
These paintings had been made primarily of colored sandstone ground into a fine powder. The “singer” and his assistants had trickled the pigments onto a bed of fresh sand on the floor of Runner’s hogan. Since Runner had asked for the ceremony, he had sat on the paintings, bearing a gift of cornmeal, facing east, the direction from which all Navaho blessings came.
Attracted by the ceremony, supernatural powers had entered the paintings and had made it their home, blessing Runner and his people for a long and happy life.
The “Blessingway” had been used to bless two new marriages—Runner and Stephanie’s, and Gray Moon and Pure Blossom’s. In these sand paintings, the Holy People had been painted in pairs, standing on rainbows, their means of transportation.
The delicate balance between the good and evil powers in the Navaho universe having been restored, the celebration drawn to a close, Stephanie and Runner lay naked in front of the fireplace on the exact spot where the sand paintings had been drawn and eventually taken away.
“The last several days were exhausting, but lovely,” Stephanie said, molding her body against Runner’s. The fire before them had burned low and sent off a pleasant glow into the hogan. The blankets and sheepskins were warm beneath them. “My happiness is shameful, my darling.”
“Our happiness has only just begun,” Runner said. He smoothed a fallen lock of hair back from Stephanie’s brow and bent to kiss her cheek.
Runner rolled Stephanie beneath him and enfolded her within his solid strength. A delicious shiver of wild desire quavered across Stephanie’s flesh as he reverently breathed her name against her lips in a soft whisper, then his mouth seized hers in an all-consuming kiss.
Her breath quickened when she felt him enter her with one quick thrust, magnificently filling her, his hands moving wildly over her slim, sensuous body.
Runner’s thrusts stoked fires within her that were spreading. When his hands moved to her breasts and began making maddeningly designed circles around her nipples, she moaned, the curl of heat growing in her lower body.