Centuries of June Read Online Free PDF

their intimacies, crawling to his place when the embers ashed over, kissing his face and chest until he could no longer resist, and they would roll over and he would cover her back, huffing and panting, and she, her pleasure growing, would wait for that final exclamation, a roar of release that filled her with the sense that they were to be together this way for the rest of their lives. And as he lay beside her, S’ee pictured taking him home to meet her mother and sisters, her cousins, the whole clan and moiety. She could envision their faces, filled with wonder and jealousy over how she could have landed such a king salmon, for he was nothing short of a marvel, strong, handsome, a powerful spirit.
    He led her through a gap between two mountains and stopped at the apex of a descending trail, shielding his eyes against the sun as he scanned the horizon. She leaned her head against his shoulder and could feel the excitement pulse through his skin. “There,” he said, pointing to a distant meadow carved in two by a winding river. “There is my clan.” Perhaps the sun blinded her or perhaps she knew not what to expect, but S’ee could make out nothing more than brown specks shuffling along the shores. But for his sake, she feigned excitement. It took all day to traverse the valley, and when they arrived under darkness, she could see no more than a few feet in front of her hands in the rising river mist. As they crept among what seemed like logs, she could hear their heaving snores and was careful not to disturb their sleep.
    When they had found a place to be alone, he held her in his arms and said, “Don’t look up in the morning. At dawn, if you rise first, don’t look up among the people.”
    I wonder why he says this to me, she thought, but after he made love with her, S’ee forgot, and lost in her dreams, she fell asleep and did not remember his warning. When she woke with the sun, she reached behind her for the man and her fingers touched fur. She rolled over to face him, but he looked just like a human being. Propping herself by theelbows, she rose to a sitting position and sought out the other people sleeping on the ground, but all around them were brown bears, dozing in the sunrise. She stood and pivoted on her toes, finding bears in every direction she looked. The man, when he put his hand on her shoulder, frightened her, but he was still a human being in her eyes.
    “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “These are my brothers and sisters. They won’t hurt you. And even though you insulted me—and all bears—back in the woods with your sister, no harm will come to you. Despite your curses, I have fallen in love with you. I want you as my wife.”
    “Gunalche’esh hó hó,” she said. Thank you very much . “Ax téix’katix’áayi i jeewu.” You have the key to my heart .
    N ext to me, the old man cleared his throat to commence another observation, but I hushed him with a curt gesture and a doleful glare.
    T hey were in every other respect honeymooners. He did not wish for her to see him as a bear and only appeared that way under cover of darkness—when he climbed upon her back, he was as he was. At all other times, he seemed a beautiful man to her. She loved the basso trill in his voice, the black depths of his eyes, the way he stretched his spine when he stood to smell the wind. He brought her squirrel and ptarmigans and wild berries, salmon fat with eggs, and fixed a home away from the other bears in a den dug into the southern face of a hill. Her back and shoulders were hatched by his nails. His loins ached with the frequency of their wild couplings. That first winter, as he hibernated, she lived on teas sweetened with sap and the moles and mice that blundered into their cave, and she did her best to fend off boredom by imagining his dreams. Her compensation was that he held the warmth of theworld in his chest, and from the time of the first frost to the thaw, she hunkered through the winter beneath