The First Jumper (first draft version)

The First Jumper 31: Secrets

Little Bear was shocked.  Why had no one told him?  Then he realized that the adults must all know, but none had said anything to him about it.  As young men, he and his friends had dreamed about growing up and becoming warriors.  They had talked about having many women as a sign of prestige, but since every girl became married to an older male essentially the very day she became old enough to bear children, there were no unmarried boys or girls who were not virgins.  There were no stories to ignite the imagination of younger minds.  Married people didn’t talk about it, and unmarried people didn’t know about it.  His friends had not known, just as he had not.

Sex was no physical mystery.  Living in the close confines that safety from animals and enemies required, every child knew the mechanics of sex from an early age.  But it had never seemed to be anything but one of the many strange things adults did.  This experience had not been merely physical.

His Tarshen side was even more overwhelmed.  The giving of an egg, or the nurturing of it, was an intensely emotional experience for the Tarshen, but it contained nothing of the powerful movement to join hearts together that accompanied the physical act for humans.  One had intense emotion in the giving of the egg, and the other had intense emotion in the receiving, the fertilizing, and the bonding with that egg, but the male-female bond as humans knew it was entirely alien to them.

Not being pair-bonded like humans, Little Bear’s Tarshen side had both pitied the humans and condescended to them, for the sublime mother-daughter union was something the humans could never know.  

Protected against opening himself up to Apple’s spirit the way he had with the rabbit, Little Bear found the emotional conflict intense enough that he was surprised to be alive.  He found himself yearning to merge his spirit with Apple, yet she was an infinite distance away, her skin touching his, her body relaxed in his arms.

His experiences, both human and Tarshen, had held no concept of the incredible draw another person could create.  Without experiencing it first-hand, Gerleesh would never have believed it possible.  Little Bear was not shared in mind with Apple, as Gerleesh had been with her mother.  They were separated by skin, and yet they experienced an emotional bond that was even more intense than Gerleesh had known with her mother, as if their hearts had sought to merge despite the barrier.  It was beyond comprehension.

In wonder, he reached up to stroke the side of Apple’s face, in the darkness.  He was surprised to find his hand becoming wet.

Apple was crying?

“For the magic to work,” Apple said softly against his side, “We have to come back and do this every day, until the skin is ready.”  

He could hear the emotion in her voice.  

As his breath recovered, Little Bear realized Apple had maneuvered him here for precisely this reason.  He did not think it had anything to do with preparing the skin, and he didn’t think coming back every day had anything to do with it, either.  Yet it had perhaps affected her as much as it had affected him, he thought.

But it had been so amazing that he would go along with almost anything to have another chance at it.

“If you say so,” he said.  

I have to tell Willow about this, he thought.  Then he frowned, as he imagined Willow’s face.  The face he imagined wasn’t happy, and he wondered why.

“We can’t tell anyone about this?” he said.

“NO!”  Apple spoke it quietly, but urgently.  “Don’t ever tell anyone about this, Little Bear.”

“Not even Willow?”

“Not even Willow.  Once her time comes and she becomes your woman, you can do this with her, but you can’t tell her, even then.  It would break the magic.”

Little Bear didn’t like the idea of not being able to tell Willow something.  

Then he sat up suddenly, as he realized Willow wasn’t the one he should be worried about.  He had been young at the time, but he remembered Cave Bear killing one of the men in the tribe, because that man had done something very bad.  Little Bear hadn’t known what it was, but it had to do with one of Cave Bear’s wives.  Looking back on it, Little Bear wondered if it might have been what he had just done with Apple.  He didn't recall who the woman had been, but Cave Bear had . . .

“Shhhh,” Apple said, pulling him back down to the fur.  “It’s magic, remember?  And you promised not to tell anyone about it.”

She got even closer, and said, “This will help you, Little Bear.  I know you don’t understand, yet, but it will.  Stay away from Tiger, and you’ll be fine.  Now, come here.”

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