After the Evening Bells

7

The moment she saw Haman standing by the shed, the Captain's story vanished from her mind. All the anger she'd held for her beloved melted away. She ran to him and kissed him. "I've missed you so much," she said.

They walked out to the field outside of town. When they arrived at their spot and Kellah started taking off her dress Haman held her wrist.

"What's wrong?" she said.

"Maybe not today," he said. "Maybe we can just talk."

"We can talk too." She started again to pull her dress over her head.

"No." He grew angry. "Is that the only thing we can do anymore?"

She was confused; she thought they did this for him. "Do you not find me beautiful?" she said. Megah's sister had warned that once a man gets in between your legs he would lose interest. Could that have happened already? She thought of Melandrah.

"Of course, I find you beautiful... It's just--"

"Then please."

Some strong emotion filled his eyes, although she was unsure if it was anger or sadness or something else. He roughly pulled her dress over her head and threw it in the grass. Instead of lying down, he got on top of her, held her down hard by her wrists. The grass was scratchy, uncomfortable, against her back.

"What are you doing? Why are you being like this?"

"Isn't this what you wanted?"

She didn't respond. It was and it wasn't. She felt hurt, upset—but also strangely aroused, more than on the previous occasions.

After a time, she felt a rising sensation, and she held in her mind the image of a bucket filling up in a heavy downpour; eventually it had to overflow. The feeling wasn't completely unlike the one she could elicit in herself when she was alone at home or off sitting in the fields on one of the walks she went on. But it was different. Stronger. And for those few moments she forgot about her sadness and her confusion and Melandrah and Joram and even Haman.

She hardly realized how much noise she was making until she felt him place his hand over her mouth. "Shh," he said with anger in his voice. "Someone will hear."

As they dressed Haman averted her gaze. Perhaps he was upset about the noises she'd made, but she was too embarrassed to ask him about it.