Read Online The Guardian by Elizabeth Lane - Free Book Online Page B

the world, and the contractions were good because they meant the baby was coming. Surely it was. She could not—would not—be dying.
    The tears she’d been holding back all night overflowed and spilled down her cheeks. She began to cry, quietly at first, then in big, gulping sobs that shook her whole body. All she wanted was to have this baby, and she was trying so hard, so hard…
    Through her tears, she saw that Black Sun had risen to his feet and was looming above her. Gently but firmly, he uncurled her fingers from around the stick and enfolded them in his big hands. She gripped his warm, solid flesh as her tears continued. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, ashamed of her own weakness. “Making such a fuss. I’ve read that when it comes to having babies, the women of your people are strong and brave, not like…like this. ”
    â€œYour tears are tears of courage, Charity Bennett.” His voice was rough with weariness. “Hold my hands when the pains come, and I will tell you the story ofthis canyon where we have come for refuge. It is, as you say, a story for grown-ups.”
    â€œThank you.” Charity rested her forehead against the back of his hand, feeling the pressure of cords and tendons against her skin. How good it would feel to stop and rest for a while, to lie on the buffalo robe, protected by the circle of his arms, and to drift off to a place where there was no fear. But she knew better than to wish such a thing. No part of that wish could possibly come true.
    Steeling herself against the pain, she waited for the story to begin.

CHAPTER FIVE
    â€œI T HAPPENED a long time ago.” Black Sun’s voice drifted over and through her like smoke from a glowing campfire, and Charity realized she was listening to a gifted storyteller. “The great Thunderbird who rules the sky decided he would take the form of a man and walk on the earth for the space of a moon. This canyon is where he made his camp.”
    â€œHere?” She looked up at him, astonished and delighted in spite of her tortured body.
    â€œYou’re kneeling on sacred ground right now,” Black Sun said. “The whole canyon is sacred ground.”
    â€œThen…we really shouldn’t be here, should we?”
    His gaze flickered away for an instant. “We had no choice,” he said. “I have asked forgiveness, but what is done can’t be undone.”
    â€œI see.” A contraction twisted through her body. If she and the baby lived, she would know that forgiveness had been granted, she told herself. If not… But what would forgiveness matter then? What would anything matter?
    â€œTell me what happened here,” she gasped, clutching his hands as if they were her only anchor to life. “I want to hear the rest of the…story.”
    â€œThe Thunderbird had planned to walk out over the land to see how men and women lived and how they treated each other. But on his very first day in the canyon, those plans changed.”
    â€œChanged how?” Charity kept her gaze locked with his.
    â€œA beautiful woman came up the canyon, looking for roots to dig. Thunderbird saw her, and because the desires of a man had become part of him when he changed his body, he wanted her.”
    â€œAnd the woman?”
    â€œShe saw that he was kind and handsome, and she wanted him, too. He took her to a cave, high in the canyon. She became his wife, and in her arms Thunderbird learned everything he had ever wanted to know about men and women. The two of them were so happy together they didn’t come out of the cave until it was time for Thunderbird to change his form and go back to the sky.”
    â€œSo, did he leave her there and become a bird again?” Charity’s pain had eased. She felt wrung out and exhausted, but the story had pulled her in. She knelt on the ground, her hands lying limp across her knees, her eyes gazing up at