Excerpt from City of Dreams by Beverly Swerling, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

A moment later she'd laced her bodice and adjusted her skirts. Marit patted her hair into place and went out into the front room. Lucas heard her discussing the relative merits of pork and venison and soon after, the sound of her cleaver hacking apart the meat the customer had chosen.

From his corner of the storeroom Lucas could see a side of beef hanging from a hook in the wall, still dripping blood onto the sawdust. A pig's head hung from a second hook, a large and formless drape of cow's intestines from a third. Lucas had mentioned that he'd like to try making ligatures from that rather than the intestines of a sheep. There were a couple of pig bladders as well. They were probably also for him. Lucas could never have too many pig bladders.

"Lucas, come out front now. He's gone."

Marit was standing in the storeroom of the doorway, beckoning to him. Lucas went to her, but he drew her to his side of the curtain. "Marit, we must stop this. It is insane. What if you were to find yourself with child? Or -- "

"In seven years of marriage, Lucas, I have not conceived. But if I were with child, people would assume it was my husband's."

He felt the rush of blood to his head, knew his face was dark with anger. "I cannot bear the thought of that pig touching -- "

"Ssh, calm yourself. He almost never does. Ankel prefers drink to me."

He took her face between his hands, began kissing her cheeks and her nose and her forehead. "Ah, Marit, Marit...We are mad. This is incredibly dangerous. The consequences are -- "

"I want to go to the woods with you." It was as if she hadn't heard him. "I have been thinking of it for days and days. I want to take off all my clothes and all your clothes, and lie down on the clean earth and have you lie atop me."

"Marit, we can't. What if -- "

She lifted his hands to her lips and began kissing them, sucking his fingers. Drawing each deep between her pursed lips, keeping her gaze locked on his all the while. "You would not believe the things I want to do to you, Lucas, to have you do to me. I do not believe them. They come into my head and I do not know from where. Think of a way, my darling. It will have to be a Sunday when the shop is closed. Ankel sleeps all Sunday afternoon. You live far from the town. Find a place we can meet and tell me how to get there."


Sally also had secrets. Hers, too, involved women. Indian women.

The contact began the first autumn, when they had been only a few months in Nieuw Amsterdam. Sally came across a little Indian girl gathering rose hips in the woods near the cabin. The child ran as soon as she saw the white woman standing nearby, but apparently the bushes near the Turner homestead were specially prized, because she kept returning. There was another accidental meeting, and soon a third. Each time the girl and the woman came a little nearer to trust.

Finally the moment came when the youngster stood still long enough for Sally to point to the rose hips she was collecting and to simulate a loud sneeze.

The child giggled. Then she also pretended to sneeze. Next she, too, pointed to the contents of her basket and made an exaggerated wiping motion across her face.

"Yes, exactly," Sally said, "rose hips ease the winter sickness. And do you, I wonder, make them into a tisane as I would?" She made the motions of pouring water from a jug to a pot and placing it over a fire. The little girl nodded furiously in agreement, an enormous smile on her face. "Ah, so you do! How I wish you could tell me what else you gather from these woods and how you use it."

The child looked puzzled and shook her head.

"No, of course you don't understand a word I'm saying. But perhaps...Sally." Sally pointed to herself. "I am Sal-lee."

The child smiled. "Tamaka," she said. "Ta-ma-ka." Then she grabbed her basket and ran.

Copyright © 2001 by MichaelA, Ltd.