Daughter of the Sun

Chapter 1 The runner sprinted down the paved road, his heart pounding with fear. Although his feet were bleeding, he dared not stop. He looked back. His eyes widened in terror. He stumbled, fought for balance, and pushed on. He had to warn the clan. A Dark Lord was coming. Ahote could not help his forbidden thoughts. There sat beautiful Hoshi'tiwa, just a hundred paces from where he stood at the Memory Wall, radiant in the sunshine as she spun cotton ribbons for her bridal costume. She looked so happy in front of her small adobe house shaded by cottonwood trees, with the fresh stream trickling nearby. All she had been able to talk about was the coming wedding day. But all Ahote could think about was the wedding night. His father pinched him. Under the elder's tutelage, eighteen-year-old Ahote was reciting the clan history, using the pictographs painted on the wall as a guide. Each symbol represented a major event in the past. And as there were too many events recorded on the Memory Wallsymbolized by spirals, animals, people, lightning strikesfor the clan to remember, it was the job of one man, He Who Links People. This was the sacred calling to which young Ahote was apprenticed and upon which he must concentrate. But his mind was wandering. His father scowled. Takei did not understand the boy's lovesick state. When Takei had wed, years ago, a girl chosen by his parents, he had done his duty, begetting many children on her. He had never wasted his time in moony-eyed daydreaming and sexual fantasies. Sex was for creating children, not for idle amusement. If Takei had ever taken pleasure in the intimate act, he could not recall it. He glowered at his son. Lovesickness was exactly thata sickness, and Ahote's mind was so infected with it, he could not concentrate on his recitations. If only the wedding day could be brought forward, Takei thought, tomorrow perhaps, so the boy could flush the lust out of his system. But the shamans had cast the fortunes of all involved and had declared that the soonest good-luck day was yet three months away! Takei experienced a ripple of fear. Lust and love seduced a man's mind from his holy works. Was the boy in danger of weakening before the wedding, risking a spiritual pollution that would profane his sacred task? A dour, unhappy man who believed the gods had singled him out for a life of bad luck, Takei wished now he had not given in to Ahote's pleas to marry Hoshi'tiwa, wished he had had a matchmaker find a girl in another settlement, one not as pretty and clever as Sihu'mana's daughter. Takei's only hope was that this was just a phase, a matter of Ahote wanting something he couldn't have. Some men were like that, hungering for the out-of-reach, like desiring a married woman. Hoshi'tiwa was forbidden to Ahote right now, and that fired the blood. But once he could have the girl anytime he wanted, day or night, the fever would leave him. Or so Takei prayed. As Ahote's hungry gaze strayed again to the lovely Hoshi'tiwa sitting in the sunshine, her poppy-red tunic a bright warm beacon, his boy's body stirring with a man's desires as he thought of his coming nights as a husband, another sharp pinch on his arm brought him back to the lesson, and he recited: "And then the people knew the Spring of Abundant Hunting, when elk came down from the plateau to offer themselves as food." The symbol painted on the wall waWood, Barbara is the author of 'Daughter of the Sun ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780312363680 and ISBN 0312363680.