by Sharon Sala
All of a sudden he caught a glimpse of three young warriors running through the camp. When he sensed their intent he knew it was them, which meant Suwanee had to be close.
Anxious to find her before they caught up, he backtracked through five campsites to get ahead of them and then darted out from between two tipis just as Suwanee ran past. Seeing her still on the move was a relief. He wasn’t sure that she’d seen him until he saw her look back, then stumble and fall.
Seconds later the trio ran out from behind a lodge at full speed. Evan stepped out in front of them and held up his spear.
“You stop now!” he shouted.
Suwanee gasped as she scrambled to her feet. Evan had come to save her.
Walks Tall was furious and pulled his knife, ready to do battle for the girl. He charged toward Evan just as Tyhen and Yuma landed beside him.
“Stop!” Tyhen shouted, and pushed Evan aside.
Walks Tall’s arm was on a downward arc, the knife held tight in his fist, but Yuma saw the knife and was already moving. Just as it would have pierced Tyhen’s stomach, he jumped in front of her, intent on blocking the thrust with his spear.
Instead, the knife pierced Yuma’s chest.
The spear fell from his hand as he staggered, then stared down in disbelief. With a tragic expression of apology on his face, he was reaching for Tyhen when he collapsed.
Tyhen saw what happened through a red haze of rage. The scream that came out of her mouth echoed through the entire campsite, bringing everyone to a halt. With one wave of her hand, the men flew backward into the tipi behind them and were still trying to get back to their feet when she spoke. The tone of her voice was as cold as the day.
“Get back to your people. If he dies I will kill you myself.”
They turned and ran as she knelt beside Yuma. Evan was on his knees beside him, trying to stop the bleeding.
“Help me,” she said.
Evan quickly pulled Yuma upright, watching with tears in his eyes as Tyhen stepped behind Yuma, wrapped her arms around his waist, and went straight up into the air.
Suwanee was horrified. This happened because of her.
“I am so sorry. I did not mean for -”
Evan raised his hand, stopping her apology before she said anything more.
“You were not at fault. It was not your knife that went into my brother’s chest. Come with me. I need to get you back to your father.”
When he turned, she grabbed onto the back of his clothing and held on as if her life depended on it.
The moment Evan felt her touch he understood why Yuma had done what he’d just done. There was no explanation for what the heart wants and he was through denying it. If he and Adam had not been at odds about her, none of this would have happened. He didn’t understand destiny, but he believed in it, else he and Adam would have died with everyone else when Firewalker burned up the earth. He wasn’t sure how their relationship would play out, but he knew she was part of his future.
“Is the Eagle going to die?” Suwanee whispered.
Evan sighed.
“Not if Tyhen can help it,” he said, and then took her by the hand.
Chapter Twelve
Tyhen flew over the campground in a rage. She saw the New Ones watching the sky. They knew something was wrong because they’d heard her scream, but she wasn’t stopping to explain. She had no time to waste.
Yuma was limp in her arms, his eyes closed. If it wasn’t for the blood flow still coming from his chest, it would feel like the flight she’d made to the far mountains with Stanley Blue Jacket’s body. This was her waking nightmare.
She flew over the ridge where they’d first seen the Gathering, following the river until she saw a flat ledge of table rock beside the river and landed, easing Yuma down on his back as she did. Once before she’d saved his life as he lay dying from a curse, and she’d do it again or quit this place and leave everyone there to live or die on their own.
She wrapped her fingers around the knife in his chest and took a deep breath. Once she pulled it out, the blood was going to flow faster. It was a serious risk, but she had no other options. She looked at his face—so familiar and so beloved, eyeing the arc of dark eyebrows, the strong jut of his jaw, and the sensuous curve of his lips. Then she leaned over and whispered in his ear.
“Yuma, my Yuma, hear my voice. Once again I am giving you life. Take it and come back to me.”
Quickly, she shed her coat, grabbed the knife with both hands and pulled straight up. Blood gushed as the weapon came free. Without wasted motion she pushed up the sleeve of her shift and cut a long, deep gash down the length of her left arm. Her hands were shaking as she angled the blood flow onto his chest and into his wound, only his blood was coming out as fast as hers went in, negating any good it might have done.
It felt like forever but it had only been a few moments when she began searching for his heartbeat. When she realized it was growing fainter, she panicked. Frantic, she moved her arm to let more blood flow into the wound.
“Please, Yuma, please. My blood is your blood. Take it and you will be healed.”
Her chest hurt in the way it had when she’d bid her mother and Cayetano goodbye. The fear within her was overwhelming. She could not lose Yuma. She waited and waited for the magic to happen, but felt nothing but the blood between her fingers. When she could no longer feel a heartbeat, she grabbed him by both shoulders and began to shake him, her voice thick with unshed tears.
“No! No! You do not leave me! You said I would love you forever, and our forever does not end here. You come back to me! Come back to me!”
He was still—too still—but she wasn’t ready to turn him loose. She grabbed the knife and slashed her other arm almost to the bone, letting the fresh flow of her blood run into his mouth only to watch in painful dismay as it oozed back out and down the sides of his neck.
He was no longer breathing.
Nearly blind with tears and fear of what was happening, she kept rubbing her hands all over his chest, as if trying to put all the blood that he’d shed back inside his body.
“Yuma! Please don’t leave me! Swallow what is in your mouth,” but he wasn’t moving.
Now she was covered in both his blood and her own, sobbing uncontrollably and begging the Old Ones to give him back. Unable to face the truth of what was before her she stood up, threw back her head and screamed. The sound sliced through the air on one note and didn’t stop. When the New Ones heard they answered with a wail of despair that echoed across the encampment. There could only be one reason for Tyhen’s pain. They fell into each other’s arms in grief, crying and praying.
Tyhen was in shock and in so much despair she didn’t think about what she was going to do. She just slid her arms beneath his body, pulled him into her arms, and shot straight up into the air with him clutched against her chest, only this time the wind around them was not spinning. It was a straight blast of air fueled by her rage that was pushing them up into the sky, like the fire that spewed from the mountain above Naaki Chava.
Up, up, up, she went with Yuma clutched against her chest until the Gathering was but a small brown dot upon the earth. Even as it disappeared from sight she was not looking down, but staring into Yuma’s face, waiting for him to open his eyes and see her, but it did not happen.
When they were so high that the blood had frozen on his face and the tube of wind in which they were riding was turning to ice, Tyhen began to cry out.
“Old Ones! Hear me! See me! See my Yuma! He is not breathing. I want him back. You have to give him back. Hear me! You cannot have him! He is my heart!”
Tears were frozen on her lashes and her skin was so cold she could not feel her hands, but she didn’t waver as she continued to press her case.
“You took my free will without asking my permission. You gave me to our people to save our future and
took me away my home and my family. You owe me this! Give him back! You have to give him back!”
The drums were faint but she began to have hope. She knew that she’d been heard, and so she waited—and then waited some more until all hope was gone. She looked down at the man in her arms, watching his skin turning gray because there was no more blood inside him to feed his heart. Fear shot through her in waves as she began shouting again, talking louder and louder until every word was a gut-wrenching roar of rage.
“Give him back! Do you hear me? Give him back or I am done. I will quit this earth and let the People’s future end in the flames of Firewalker’s descent! I will not do this without him!”
The drums were louder but so was she. She spun out of the icy tube of wind and flew across the heavens with Yuma’s bloody body in her arms, wanting them to see, to understand. Then she heard words in her head that made her blood run cold.
You cannot quit. You carry his child. You carry the next Windwalker who will lead the people as you have done.
She was shocked to hear she was with child, but her rage and indignation were for Yuma.
“You give him back to me or I will die with this child inside me.”
Windwalkers do not die.
She was sobbing so hard she had blinded herself with tears. Yuma was a dead weight in her arms and she wanted to die with him.
“It would be a gift to my child if she never breathed on this earth. My soul may never die, but I will not give another moment of time to people who do not value life. You give him back to me! I cannot… I will not… do this without him!”
The drums were beating, and then suddenly they went silent.
She looked down at Yuma’s lifeless body in despair and then buried her face against his neck.
“Yuma, my Yuma, I cannot bear this. You cannot leave me behind.”
She began moving higher and higher into the heavens where there was no oxygen and no gravity and no life between heaven and earth, save for the spirit walkers who passed through on their way to somewhere else. Her arms were shaking from exhaustion. Either she would drop him and fly upward until she ceased to exist, or they would plummet back to the earth together and be no more. Time became a commodity she no longer needed. He was gone and she wasn’t going back alone. So they were done and so it would be.
They were still moving into infinity when she felt movement against her cheek. She thought she heard him groan, and then she felt his chest move as he took a deep breath. Before she could cry aloud the joy that was in her heart, there was a huge shift of air within the silence of space and then the deafening sound of thunder.
She raised her head and looked up.
They were surrounded by eagles—massive birds unlike anything she’d seen on earth.
It was the Old Ones.
They flew around her and then below her and when she understood what they intended, she waited until one soared beneath her and landed on a great outstretched wing with Yuma still in her arms.
The eagles’ cries were a shriek upon the wind as they circled the heavens, and then all of a sudden they began plummeting toward earth en masse in a downward dive.
She felt the eagles’ heartbeats beating in rhythm with Yuma’s pulse.
She heard the message It is done, and knew they’d granted her request.
Yuma lay in her arms as if asleep, unaware of the bed of eagle feathers or that his protection from the cold was the woman who held his heart.
As for Tyhen, all she could see was a cold, gray blur.
The wind in her ears was a high-pitched shriek.
The drumbeat was so loud that it rattled her soul, but it didn’t matter. The Old Ones had given him back to her and they were taking them home.
***
Word was spreading throughout the Gathering about what had happened. The people were afraid, uncertain what it meant for them? Had they ruined their chance to undo great wrong? Had they come all this way at great hardship and then sealed their fate by old behaviors just as they’d been on the verge of great discovery?
Walks Tall, Broken Wing, and Little Raven were brought before their chief, Counts Coup, in dismal shame.
Counts Coup was furious. They had not only angered the Dove, but by all accounts they had killed the Eagle who protected her. He watched them enter his tipi and stand with their heads down, unable to meet his gaze.
“You have brought shame upon our people. What have you to say for yourself?” he asked.
“We did not mean to harm,” Walks Tall said.
Counts Coup’s frown darkened.
“Were you not present in our village when the medicine man told of his visions?”
“We heard,” Little Raven said.
“Then you heard him say we no longer wage war upon other tribes. You heard him say we do not steal women and children and keep them with us against their will!”
“We heard,” Walks Tall said, but he was beginning to shake. He wanted to stay strong, but the truth was he was afraid for his life.
Counts Coup was furious. “You heard, and yet the same day the Dove comes into our midst and saves us from strangers and their disease, you chose to take a girl against her will.”
Walks Tall looked up. “I didn’t intend to -”
“Do not lie to me!” Counts Coup shouted. “All of you chased her through two camps. I have been told this, is it true?”
Walks Tall lifted his head and then straightened his shoulders. If he was going to die, he would die like a warrior.
“Yes, it is true.”
Counts Coup grabbed Walks Tall’s weapons and threw them in the fire.
“You are stupid! You do not learn!”
Walks Tall stifled a groan as he watched his wooden spear catching fire and his knife disappearing in the flames and ashes.
Counts Coup waved his hand at all three of them.
“I have decided! You will all pack up your things and leave this place. You will return to our homeland on your own and if you are still alive when we return, you will be prepared to accept the changes we bring with us.”
Walks Tall gave his burning weapons one last glance and followed his friends out of the tipi.
They were gone within the hour and the people in their tribe expressed their shame by turning their backs as they walked away.
***
When the New Ones saw the blast of air and light go straight up from beyond the ridge, they knew it was Tyhen. They didn’t know where she’d gone or if she’d ever come back, but they knew Yuma was dead.
They were mourning not only the loss of two friends, but the loss of hope that the Windwalker’s daughter had represented. They’d come such a long way, sacrificed so much only to have it end because three warriors who barely qualified as civilized couldn’t control their urges? It was not to be born.
The women began grieving in their way by marking their faces with ashes, while Montford and Johnston Nantay began looking for Adam and Evan for guidance in what to do next.
Dakotah paced the camp with tears drying on his face. He could not believe that this was happening. It was nothing like what he’d been shown in his dreams.
Unaware that the New Ones were looking for him and his brother, Evan was in the camp of the Lakota, returning Suwanee to her father’s lodge. When she would have disappeared inside without a word, he stopped her with a look, then cupped her face with his hands.
“Do you believe in destiny?” he asked.
“I believe,” she said.
“We are strangers,” he reminded her.
She laid a hand on his chest.
“Our spirits are not,” she said softly.
Evan’s pulse kicked. She was referring to what had happened in their dreams.
“When we leave here, I will go with Tyhen. Will you come with me?” he asked.
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Suwanee shivered. She was afraid to go, but more afraid to be left behind.
“I will go,” she whispered.
He searched her face and saw their future. It was a good one. It was all that mattered.
“Tell your father I would talk with him soon.”
“What about your brother? What will he say?”
Evan wouldn’t let himself go there.
“I don’t know, but it is what it is between us and fate has spoken.”
She shivered again and he frowned.
“You need warmer clothing.”
She shrugged. “We have none. It was lost crossing a river to come here.”
He frowned, took off the jaguar coat that had been made for him back in Boomerang and put it around her shoulders.
She gasped. The gift was a statement on its own.
“But then you will be cold,” she whispered, even as she was pulling the fur up around her chin.
“I have another,” he said, and then rubbed his thumb across the bottom of her lip and sighed. “I will return,” he said, watching the flush rise beneath her skin and the smile come and go on her lips.
It was not a time for joy, and yet there was a part of him that felt like he was walking on air as she slipped into the lodge and out of sight.
Evan’s steps were slow as he walked away. He’d set a future in motion without thinking of Adam, and was too distraught about Yuma to think of a future without him in it. He went back to where he’d left his backpack, but instead of setting up camp, he sat down beneath the cedar tree and buried his face in his hands.
Adam found him like that, and without saying a word sat down beside him and slid his arm across Evan’s shoulder.
Evan felt his brother’s regret. Today’s events had ended the antagonism between them, but their reconciliation had come at a terrible loss.
“Did you see?” Adam asked, meaning had Evan ‘seen’ Tyhen trying to save Yuma’s life?
Evan nodded.
