by Jenna Kernan
She burst into tears. Sky braced, trying to comprehend the lightning-like transition from fury to tears. Was she sad now or was this still the anger? He started to back away, as he would have done had he startled a skunk on the way to the outhouse, but something stopped him. He did not know if it was the rounding of her shoulders that made her look defeated, or the trembling of her body, but he could not abandon her. He hesitated a moment longer trying to decide how to bring her comfort. It was an area he had no experience with. And then he remembered when he was a very little boy, how his mother, Many Flowers, would gather him up in her lap and stroke his head or rub his back until he felt at ease again. The unexpected longing for that comfort combined with Lucie’s pain and he felt his own throat close. Oh, no, he’d sooner run off into the brush than let her see his tears.
But she was still crying, head down, shoulders jumping. He reached out and clasped her upper arms. She bit back a sob and glanced up at him as he drew her into his arms. She stiffened for a moment and then seemed to melt into him, pressing her wet cheek to his bare chest.
He enfolded her in his arms, rocking like a willow in a summer breeze, gently to and fro. Gradually she reached around his middle and clasped her hands behind the small of his back. He stroked her head, cascading down her tangled hair to the middle of her back and then repeating the tender touch, while wishing he could see her face. Were her eyes closed? Did she know that by allowing him to comfort her, she was also comforting him?
How many nights had he lain awake with longing, wishing simply for a woman to hold him like this, in an easy, gentle embrace that told him he was no longer alone? He had found women to relieve his sexual needs. Those kinds of females were in every town and camp. But to find a woman who smelled of springtime and who would allow him to press his nose into the fragrance of her hair, take in the soft wonder of her skin; this was something rare—something to be savored. Her grief had lowered her defenses enough for her to allow him to give her something so simple, so complex and connect them for a few precious moments.
Her slick, wet cheek warmed his skin and her scent filled his nostrils like all the blossoms of spring, coming to him at once. Her fragrance was delicate as wild cherry and earthy as the bark of the white birch.
As she wept out her frustration and her disappointment, he let his eyes drift shut, wishing he could hold her like this forever. But already her trembling had ceased and her breathing grew less halting.
“You were right about everything. It is a war—a war against children.” She pressed her nose into the juncture between his shoulder and his chest as if trying to hide her face in shame at ever having been a part of such a place. She had changed, because of what he had said and what she had seen. She could no longer defend the school or its subtle brand of extermination. Kill the Indian, save the man, as if one and the other were somehow not two parts of the same whole.
At last she cried herself out and eased away. The internal battle to keep her lasted less than an instant, for he knew already that Lucie hated to be held captive. He forced a blank expression, shielding himself so she would not see the need she had awakened. Would she ever let him hold her like this again?
“My mother was right. It was a mistake, another mistake.”
He spoke in the low rhythmic waves that Many Flowers often used, as soothing as water flowing over rocks, but instead of offering empty words, he offered a tiny piece of his soul. “It is not a mistake to go and see for yourself how things are.”
“I wish I’d never accepted that position.”
He nodded. “I have ridden far with such regret. It is a hard companion.”
She lifted her head to stare up at him with speculation. “Regret? Do you mean at leaving the People?”
Lucie gazed at him with hope in her eyes, wanting more than he had already given. He paused, assessing the risk. He did not speak of his regrets to anyone. They were too big, too dangerous. He feared that if he did not keep them down, they might burst from him like maggots from a rotting corpse. Could she understand what he could not? He nearly dared tell her of his friend.
Then he realized that she only thought she wanted to know. Already she was reconsidering her question. He could tell by the way she pulled back, releasing him and stepping clear. What had she glimpsed in his face that had sent her fleeing? The connection between them slipped away like minnows through the shallow water.
“The Mormons taught me of penitence, or at least they gave it a name. Sin, repentance, damnation, all the things I could not name before I came to the Wasicu. When I had walked the earth seventeen winters, I left the Mormon and his skinny wife and headed for Texas. I was good on a horse and driving cattle was easy, boring work. I tried to befriend the other cowpokes, but they made fun of my accent and my poor English. They called me the ‘chief.’”
Stray tears still slipped down her cheeks.
“They were fools.”
“Just boys mostly. We ran into trouble, rustlers. They pinned us down and stole the cattle. I was the only one who didn’t fire his weapon.”
She leaned back to look at him. Was she trying to judge why he did not defend himself?
“Because the others were cruel to you?” she guessed.
“No, it was just the day I learned that I would die myself before I would kill. It means that I will never become a war chief. For a time in my youth that was all I wanted. But after I left the People, I wanted to die.” Death seemed easier than walking with the burden he carried.
Lucie turned a critical eye on him, judging…what?
“When I was a new captive, one of the other girls said she would die before she would let one of the men have her. It was the only way to keep her honor, but it is also a mortal sin. She did end her own life, while I…” Lucie bit her lip and Sky wondered if she also struggled to release what was trapped in her heart. At last she drew a heavy breath and continued. “I knew it was expected of me, the brave thing, but I was too much of a coward.”
“Dying’s not hard.”
She smiled. “No? I found it so, but it also seemed a kind of escape, a peace of sorts. But then I had to consider the damnation.”
He didn’t believe the Wasicu’s version of the afterlife, all damnation and retribution and flying corpses with wings. She met his steady gaze and he felt the link again, even without touching her. She was sharing a hidden part of herself. And his need to keep this feeling made him try to do the same.
“It wasn’t until I started catching horses that I found any peace.”
She gazed up at him and nodded. “I hoped that teaching would be like that. Maybe it could be, but not there.” She set her jaw in a look of stubborn determination that he knew was only the merest indication of the wellspring of strength that had sustained her during her captivity. Gradually her gaze drifted away. He wondered what she was seeing, for it was clearly not their surroundings.
“I’d like to watch you with those wild horses,” she said.
He was about to deny the fancy. He worked alone, or he always had worked alone. Now he allowed himself to entertain the possibility of a different way of being, a way that included Lucie. He could picture her there, on the prairie, beside him as he rode toward a herd of wild mustangs. She had a wildness in her, too. He felt it as clearly as he felt the air change before a rain.
Something rustled in the underbrush. Sky recognized the sound instantly, but Lucie clearly did not, for she inched closer to him. He chuckled and then gave a low whistle. Ceta nickered in reply. Sky lifted his brow at her and she let her shoulders sag in relief.
“Falcon?” she asked.
“You aren’t the only one with a broken heart, Lucie. Mine broke the day I ran.”
Questions alighted in her mind like butterflies on a honeysuckle. She knew he wasn’t rescued or released. They had told her that he had run away. But why would a boy run from the family he loved? She waited, sensing he was struggling to reveal something important and fearing if she pressed him, he would
shut down once more.
“Did you know Joy Cat’s son?” he asked at last.
The fact that he did not speak the name of the boy aloud made Lucie wonder. It was the People’s way not to speak the names of the departed. Was Sacred Cloud dead?
“He was one of the boys you rode with—the son of the head man.” Lucie avoided saying Sacred Cloud, though she recalled the boy distinctly.
“Yes. I wouldn’t speak to you for fear of what he and the others might say. It was wrong and I am sorry.”
“You were trying to make them forget you were white.”
“Yes. But I tried too hard.”
His face brightened in shame and she knew something terrible had happened.
She took his hand. “Sky?”
He drew a long breath and then spoke. “We were hunting a black-tailed deer in a thicket. I went one way and my friend the other. We planned to flush it out and…I saw it, moving in the brush.” Sky shielded his eyes from her. When he began again, his voice was gravel. “I shot and he fell. But it wasn’t the deer. It my friend. I put the shaft right into his chest because I wanted to plant the first arrow in the kill.”
It was Lucie’s turn to clasp him. She drew him down so his head rested on her bosom. “Oh, Sky. How terrible.”
“He died there in the thicket, before I could even reach him. He was my best friend and I killed him.”
He was silent a long time, but his body shook with emotion. Finally, he pushed away and stared at her with haunted eyes.
“Eagle Dancer heard me crying and came. He said that Joy Cat might forget that I was an Indian when he saw what I had done. He took me near the fort and told me to run. He saved my life, but made me a coward. I never faced them, never accepted the punishment that was mine to bear. So, you see, I’m still a coward, because I haven’t been able to kill anyone since that day—not the rustlers and not Carr when he was abusing that boy.”
Lucie recalled what Sky had told her and then something else. Mrs. Fetterer’s dislike for the truant officer. Her reason raised suspicion. Did she know? Was it why she had spoken to Father Dumax? Lucie tried to recall her words. The Father had dismissed her concerns and later, when she heard about Carr’s death, Lucie had been surprised that she had said that the officer had forgotten that boys have parents. Now she understood. The matron must have known or suspected. Lucie was certain. She had gone to the head of the school, who had done…nothing. Lucie’s heart clenched with her jaw. What would she have done, if it had been her brother Carr had molested? She didn’t blame Sioux for using him as a pincushion.
Sky continued his tale of self-loathing. “I didn’t even draw my gun when you screamed.”
“That doesn’t make you a coward.”
Sky shot to his feet as if she’s slapped him. He stalked away from the fire and stood with his hands on his hips.
“What does it make me, then?”
Lucie thought for a moment. “Perhaps a holy man.”
Sky turned, looking absolutely stunned. “Holy?”
“Yes. A man that chooses not to kill and spends his days rescuing the four-legged ones. It seems a holy path to me, a true journey on the Red Road. That’s what the People would say, I think.”
He returned to her, dropping to his knees. “Could that be possible?”
She wanted to take his hand. Instead she smiled. He did not.
Hers faded as she looked into his troubled eyes.
“Sky? I’m sorry for what happened to your friend. It was an accident.”
“No. I notched the bow. I aimed and shot.”
“But you never meant to hurt your friend.”
“Still, he is dead now.”
“Yes,” she said. Her words were small comfort in deed.
They stared at each other.
She wanted to tell him it would be all right, that she understood. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t understand his pain and loss any more than he could understand hers. But she wanted to.
At last she spoke. “Thank you for telling me this. Your burden must be heavy to carry.”
He lifted his brows and his expression seemed to change from sorrow to astonishment. Had he expected her to diminish what he felt or to tell him all would be well? She had walked with regret too long to believe such fairy tales.
“Yes,” he said. “Heavy.”
He nodded. “We should go.”
He repacked his saddlebag and threw it over the horse’s haunches, tying it to the rings behind the cantle. Then he mounted and offered his hand.
Lucie lifted one foot to his, already resting in the stirrup, and accepted his help. Together they swung her up behind him. She slipped easily into the back of the wide seat, pressed between the molded leather and his body. Sky spun Ceta away. They cleared the cover of the spring, heading out over the prairie once more. As they rode Lucie felt a new understanding for him. His avoidance of others and his sullen expression suddenly made perfect sense. Why hadn’t she recognized a man who had lost everything? It was like looking in a mirror.
They rode through the morning and into the hot afternoon. Lucie found herself dwelling in the past on what Sky had told her about the Mormon. She had been rescued, returned to her family. While he had lost his family when he returned to a people he did not know or understand. How ironic; her race could not accept her and he could not accept them.
And all this time he had mourned the boy he had killed, punished himself for the life he had taken.
Sky’s voice called her back to the moment. “I would like to ask you of your abduction.”
How odd, she had been wondering about him, as he was wondering about her. He had touched on a topic she rarely spoke of and when she did, it was only with her family. She had learned early that others liked to exploit the details of her capture and captivity. She would not have her pain used as another’s entertainment. Her silence did not keep men from writing the story. But Sky was different. He had been where she had been, walked a similar path. She braced herself to speak of that terrible day but Sky’s next words brought her to an abrupt halt.
“How did your parents steal you from him?” asked Sky, his voice reflecting utter astonishment that such a thing could occur.
She frowned. By abduction, did he mean her rescue? After all she had told him did he still see her amnesty as merely another successful raid by the enemy? She was so rattled it took a moment to switch her mind to that bitter-cold day when her parents had come for her.
“Well, they tried to negotiate my release and failed. But Eagle Dancer’s mother hated me so much she helped my mother.”
“Ah. I never met her. Eagle Dancer mentioned his mother’s betrayal, but I did not understand.”
“Did he? The last time I saw him he was telling me to stay in his tipi and posting two warriors at the entrance. These guards saw two women enter and two leave. They did not notice that my mother had taken my place. Once we had been escorted out of the village, the guards were removed and Yellow Bird led my mother out of the village. But she gave my mother no horse and she nearly froze in the blizzard. My father didn’t know what my mother had done. I didn’t either until my father noticed me riding where she should have been. She never spoke to me, never looked at me—I never knew.” Lucie was glad Sky could not see the tears wet her cheeks again. Telling this brought all the emotions up like rocks heaving to the surface of a pasture after the freeze. “He went back for her in that storm. The blizzard that nearly killed them also prevented Eagle Dancer from catching us.”
“Your mother has a warrior’s heart. Just like her daughter.”
What did he mean, like her mother? She was nothing like Sarah West. Her mother was a fighter, while Lucie had survived by doing as she was told and not making trouble. Why would Sky think she was brave when all she had done was run from her marriage and from her parents and now from the school? He thought he lacked courage for leaving the People, while she was certain she did. She had never stood and fought. And that was exactly why s
he made no objection now at his words, avoiding the conflict of an argument as any proper coward would do.
He glanced back at her. “Were you glad to leave him?”
It was a hard question to answer. “I was happy to be reunited with my mother. I didn’t realize then that so many people would hate me for what had happened. My mother knew and so she defended me the only way she could, by keeping me safe at home, until that became a kind of imprisonment. It was so gradual that I didn’t understand, at first, that my life would never be as it had been.”
“In that we are alike. Nothing is the same now. What did you do there, in your mother’s home?”
“I attended school. The other children were not kind, especially the boys.” She held down a shiver at the memories. “Names, pranks—I told myself that this was nothing compared to the life I had lived before I came under Eagle Dancer’s protection.”
“But it wasn’t easy.”
“No.”
“You never loved him?”
She did not pretend to misunderstand and spoke in a clear, certain tone so that he would not misunderstand, either. “Never.”
“Yet here we are, riding to his rescue.”
Lucie thought Sky’s voice held a note of resentment. She recalled that look of possession he’d cast her last night. Did he battle with his desires for her, just as she had been fighting hers? That thought gave her a little thrill, caused her heart to quicken.
“Yes. It is an obligation, a debt I must pay and then I will speak the words before a witness. Perhaps I then…” Her words trailed off. She drew a breath and tried again. “Perhaps then, I can think of him without remorse.”
She wondered what would have happened if last night, instead of drawing away, she had kissed him. She recalled those hungry eyes again gobbling her up. The initial thrill died as she cautioned herself. Despite her attraction, this was not the time and this was not the man for her to become infatuated with. Sky was reckless, wild and completely unmanageable. He had told her he preferred his own company and kept himself apart from everyone. Yet, as he had said, here they were—together, alone, both battling a secret desire. He couldn’t kiss her, of course, not without betraying a man he respected. But perhaps he was trying to share a different kind of intimacy.
