by Jenna Kernan
She drew a heavy sigh. Lucie would remember Samuel’s shirt and her old skirt as well as she. Sarah would give her daughter a piece of her parents she could keep. It would help her recall her father, or the man she believed to be her father. Samuel raised her up with love, but Lucie had heard the rumors. Children could be cruel and they had no qualms about repeating the words of their folks.
Sarah reached into the bag again and Lucie was here with her as well, in the pale green scraps from her Sunday dress, altered and then outgrown, and again in the white of her nightgown and rich purple of her favorite pinafore. Sarah held the fabric to her cheek for a moment, but before the tears could fall she lifted the scissors again.
Snip, snip. The pieces went into a pile, darks on the left, lights on the right. When Lucie came home, this quilt of memories would be waiting.
Chapter Thirteen
The first time Lucie bled she managed to keep it from Yellow Bird. The following month her luck ran out when her nemesis found a bit of stained petticoat Lucie had used as a rag. The folded cloth had shifted as she carried an armful of wood and then fallen from the makeshift sling she’d fashioned.
Quick as a swooping hawk Yellow Bird dove, talons gripping the bloody rag.
“You have broken your link with the moon.” Her voice accused as if this was a dreadful sin.
The wood slipped from Lucie’s arms as she cowered before the woman’s wrath. Yellow Bird grasped a branch, thick as Lucie’s arm, and lifted it high against the blue sky. Lucie covered her head with her arms as the shower of blows rained down upon her.
When Lucie lay motionless in the dust, no longer rolling or scrambling to escape, the beating ceased.
“Get up, you wicked white slug.”
Lucie managed to curl her knees to her chest but could not rise. How long she lay aching and bruised before the teepee she did not know. She had broken her link with the moon and with time. It rolled on without her, minutes or hours—she knew not.
She woke to the ringing shriek of Yellow Bird. In the last month Lucie’s understanding of their language had improved. Like a fog burning off the mountain meadow, the words had become clearer to her.
“Do not touch her. She is dirty!”
Hands pressed to her forehead and arms lifted her. She floated in the warm anchor.
“Papa?” She tried to open her eyes but the swelling kept her blind. She inhaled the scent of sweetgrass and leather. Not her father. She stiffened.
“She is just a child.”
She knew the voice of Eagle Dancer.
“No longer. Now a maiden.”
Lucie heard him gasp. Had Yellow Bird shown him the evidence of her deceit?
“From here forward, only I discipline this one.”
“But you do not discipline her. That is why she is so spoiled.”
Lucie forced an eye open past the unnatural swelling and looked up into his strong hawkish face to see his bronze skin and a narrow mouth. She smiled and watched the corners of his eyes lift.
Yellow Bird squawked from behind them.
“You will need cleansing. She will draw away your power. This girl contaminates you.”
Eagle Dancer ignored his mother as he walked away. He took Lucie to an unfamiliar teepee and left her there.
“This is a place for women. I will send someone to tend you.”
“My thanks.”
He knelt beside her, then stroked her cheek with his thumb.
“You are a woman now,” he said.
Her breathing caught and she found her mouth too dry to swallow. With the beating, she had forgotten. This was why she did not tell Yellow Bird. Eagle Dancer planned to take her when she became a woman. By his judgment she now was.
“Eagle Dancer, I still feel like a girl.”
His gaze traveled slowly over her, making her feel as if his hands already touched her. The hairs lifted on the back of her neck and she sank further into the sleeping skin.
“We will talk soon. Rest.”
He turned and left her. Lucie curled into a ball and closed her eyes. Everything ached now. After some time the tent flap lifted again. Lucie peeked through swollen eyes to see Eagle Dancer’s only sister, Shadow.
“My brother sent me to tend you.”
Judging from her expression, she was not pleased with the added responsibility. She lowered her pack and Lucie saw the round face of her infant daughter, Minnow, tied into a carrying bundle.
“My mother tells me you have broken your link with the moon and did not tell her so. This was foolish. Do you wish to risk my brother’s life?”
“His life?” Lucie stared in astonishment.
“You deserved that beating.”
There was so much she didn’t understand here. Lucie tried to sit up but found her arms too bruised to hold her. “I have done nothing to hurt Eagle Dancer.”
“You are unclean. Everything you touch during these days and nights is dirty. A warrior must not accept anything from your hand until you regain your link with the moon.”
Lucie thought this stuff and nonsense, but she nodded gravely as if they presented her with one of God’s own commandments. She added this new rule to the list with “women eat last” and “women don’t touch a warrior’s weapons.”
“Thank you for explaining this.”
“While you still bleed, you stay in this place.”
“What will happen to Eagle Dancer?”
Shadow scowled. “He must undergo a cleaning ceremony and fasting. Everything you touched must be destroyed.”
Lucie did sit up now. The quilt her mother made, the lovely quilt she watched her stitch as a child, stolen by Eagle Dancer and used by his mother to carry belongings. Lucie always slept with one hand on the precious reminder of her life before. Had Yellow Bird noticed?
Now she understood Yellow Bird’s wild fury. The wood Lucie carried, the hides in which she slept, all would be destroyed. No wonder the woman tried to kill her.
“You are a very foolish girl.” Shadow considered Lucie a moment and then sighed. “Take off your garments.”
Lucie hesitated. “Will you burn them?”
“I will wash them.”
She left Lucie huddling in a tanned elk skin. Alone and naked, Lucie assessed the damage inflicted by Yellow Bird’s club. Her thighs bloomed in blue and purple welts. Her arms had received fewer blows, judging from the bruises. She stretched her back and groaned.
Alone, bruised and bleeding, Lucie rolled onto her side and cried. Her tears had dried upon her face before Shadow returned at midday carrying several bundles. Lucie smelled food and righted herself.
Shadow stared at Lucie’s legs and pointed. Lucie flushed at the sight of blood smeared upon her thighs.
“You must use the water and skins to clean yourself regularly. Discard the bad water over there.”
Shadow showed her how to wash away the blood and sit upon a soft tanned bit of hide.
“While you are here you will pray.”
Shadow washed her hands in clean water scented with sage and then offered Lucie a bowl of stew.
“My brother says you are to have all the meat you can eat. I told him that he spoils you, but he does not listen. So here is your meat.”
Lucie ate the contents quickly before Shadow changed her mind. Over the next four days, Lucie rested, slept and ate. Her strength returned. Her vision cleared and the ringing in her ears abated.
The fresh food and absence of work seemed all her body needed to heal. Now that she was not bone weary, her mind returned to the restless search for ways to escape the Sioux and her upcoming marriage. She thought often of Alice French’s escape.
A chill lifted the hairs on her neck. Perhaps she was only a coward, but unlike Alice, she thought marriage to an Indian preferable to death.
The Indians had little modesty. She saw men couple with their wives across the fire sheathed only in a buffalo robe. It seemed they did not care who watched. The grunting and cries made the act seem pain
ful. But she also heard laughter and that confused her.
On the fifth day, her bleeding ceased and panic bubbled up in her like milk left to boil. Her time in this sanctuary was at an end.
She stretched her legs and groaned. The bruises, now yellow and blue, ached only when she moved. She stood and hobbled about the tent. Soon Shadow would come and see no fresh blood on her pad.
Lucie had an idea. She took a stick from the fire pit and sharpened it to a point. Where could she cut that Shadow would not see? Lucie studied her hand and the spidery blue veins at her wrist, the bottoms of her feet and the inside of her thigh. Still naked, her body shielded only by the hide she wore as a cape, any wound might draw notice.
She pressed the stick against her thigh and found the flesh pliant, seeming to refuse the pressure of her attack. At last she decided on the wrist. Instead of a gentle pressing, she gripped the stick with fingers slippery with sweat and plunged the stick into her flesh.
Her grip slackened and fell away. The stick quivered, still embedded like an arrow. Spots danced before Lucie’s eyes as she reached for the shaft and pulled. Blooded poured from the puncture and down over her knobby knees.
The scream brought Lucie’s head up to see Shadow standing inside the tent with both hands pressed to her mouth.
The pot of food she carried rocked wildly at her feet.
“You stupid, stupid girl,” she shouted.
In an instant she reached Lucie and encircled her wrist in a vicious grip. She turned her head to the tent flap and called for help.
Lucie swayed. The effort of breathing seemed too much for her. She closed her eyes. A stinging slap struck her cheek.
Shadow hissed at her. “You stay awake.”
Lucie nodded and rocked back, kept from falling by Shadow’s strong grip. Faces appeared about her. They swam like reflections in a pond and then, like fireflies, blinked out.
Next she came aware, she lay back in Yellow Bird’s teepee. She glanced about to see Yellow Bird scowl and Eagle Dancer smile.
“You wicked girl,” uttered Yellow Bird. “Because of you I had to burn a sleeping robe and the cloth blanket.”
Lucie glanced about and discovered her mother’s blue Ohio star quilt was gone. Until that moment she had not known how much she would miss it. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Stop that and tell me why you stabbed yourself.”
Lucie glanced at her wrist, noting the leather wrapped securely about her arm. If she told the truth she might anger her only ally. But what reason could she give?
“I tried to puncture the leather to make a cape,” she offered. “My hand slipped.”
Eagle Dancer lifted his brow and stared at his mother.
Yellow Bird shook her head. “She lies.”
Eagle Dancer’s expression grew grim. Then he stood and left the teepee, leaving Lucie at Yellow Bird’s mercy.
Her captor rounded on her the instant the tent flap fell. This time she did not lift a stick of wood, but her hand. She slapped Lucie across the face so hard her teeth sliced into the soft flesh of her cheek. Blood filled her mouth and she spat upon the ground.
“You will not have him,” said Yellow Bird, clouting her with a fist.
Lucie’s ear rang from the blow. She fell to all fours still spouting blood from the gash at her cheek. She choked as blood burned through her nose.
“Get out.”
The kick landed on Lucie’s backside as she scrambled for the door dressed only in the deer hide cloak. She fell out onto the ground and the flap closed behind her. Lucie crawled behind the teepee, huddling there.
That is where Eagle Dancer found her hours later. Again he carried her, but this time to the river. He washed away the blood and left her there, returning later with her torn blue dress and shift.
Lucie’s cheeks burned in shame, but she did not hesitate, throwing off the cloak and sweeping into her shift as quickly as she could manage. He helped her into the dress, managing the buttons when she could not.
“Do not make me go back there,” Lucie said.
Eagle Dancer’s gaze swept over her face. “No.”
Her shoulders dipped in relief.
He lifted her chin with one strong finger and winced at the sight. Lucie could only imagine her appearance. She could see clearly out of her left eye, but the swelling nearly blocked the view from her right.
He swept a hand over her hair in a vain attempt to control the tangled mess. No one had seen to her hair since her arrival here.
“Why do you even want me?” she asked.
He wrapped a coiling strand of hair about his finger. “When I saw you on the wagon, I wanted you. Your hair shines like afternoon sunshine.”
Her hair again. If not for the unusual color, she might be safe with her mother. Another possibility struck. She might also be dead.
“Follow,” he said.
He walked along at a slow pace, allowing her to keep up without running. At last he stopped before an unfamiliar teepee. The flap was lifted open, giving a glimpse of the fire within, so he entered without permission. Lucie ducked inside and recognized Shadow nursing her baby. Shadow’s placid brow wrinkled as she caught sight of Lucie. The two men in the lodge nodded at Eagle Dancer as he took a seat.
Lucie squatted inside the door.
“Our mother beat her again,” said Eagle Dancer without preamble.
The man closest to Shadow lowered the feathers he split into fletching and regarded Lucie.
“She will kill her one day.”
“I think so, too. That is why I ask that she stay here until she can make a lodge.”
Make a lodge? Lucie wondered at this as Shadow threw up her free hand.
“She does not know how to make a lodge.”
The men stared at her in silence.
“I have a babe and a husband to care for. I do not have time to teach her.”
“She will help you with Minnow,” said her husband, Blue Elk.
Shadow eyed Lucie as her grip tightened protectively on her baby. The men continued to stare at Shadow. At last she heaved a great suffering sigh. When she spoke, her words were tight with resentment.
“I will teach her. But you, Brother, must bring the hides.”
Eagle Dancer smiled. “And she will sleep here.”
Shadow opened her mouth to protest but her husband answered.
“We will be happy to help our brother.”
Shadow huffed and turned her back on the man. Lucie recognized the expression of censure from Yellow Bird. The men exchanged commiserating looks.
From that afternoon forward, Lucie stayed in the teepee of Shadow and Blue Elk. Another warrior, called Black Tail, arrived the following day and stayed as the guest of Blue Elk. The warrior stared at Lucie when the others were busy. His feral gaze made Lucie as jumpy as a frog in a heron’s nest.
Black Tail told stories at night of how he tricked the whites at Fort Laramie into thinking he was friendly. They traded with him, not knowing that he had taken three scalps in the last raid. Lucie’s dislike for the man grew.
She struggled to stifle her disgust at his bloody tales, succeeding in holding her tongue. Where she came from, trickery and lies were a sign of low character, not opportunities to boast. She would have been mortified to tell anyone she was capable of such treachery.
Black Tail was the only dark spot in her new situation. Although Shadow was not pleased to have Lucie, she did not hit her or shout. The food was better here and Lucie had less work. Eagle Dancer did not sleep with them but visited after dinner. He brought two buffalo hides and Lucie set to the arduous work of tanning them under Shadow’s direction.
The task of stretching the enormous skin upon the upright frame exhausted Lucie. Shadow seemed impatient with her progress. Lucie lifted the tanning knife and began dragging it over the underside of the buffalo, scrapping away the bits of fat and sinew still connected to the hide. Flies buzzed about the bloody skin, and she batted them away.
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��Why does Eagle Dancer need a new lodge?” asked Lucie.
Shadow stopped and stared, dumbstruck. At last she closed her mouth and spoke. “All women make the home for the husbands.” She waved a hand at the lodge behind them. “I made this for Blue Elk two summers past.”
Understanding dawned. She wasn’t making a lodge, she was making the home she would share with Eagle Dancer as his wife. Lucie sank to the earth, kneeling before the great hide, the knife still in her clutched hand. Minnow howled from inside the teepee. Shadow scurried off, leaving Lucie blinking stupidly at her knees.
Eagle Dancer considered her a woman and as soon as she finished this work they would be wed. Fear rose in her throat like ice water jumping the banks of a river. Her head snapped up and she glanced this way and that, searching for some way to escape. Her attention fell back to the knife and her bandaged wrist.
She stilled.
This was the only way left. She stared at the blackened blade and shuddered. She gripped the handle.
She recalled the girls she had met on the trail. They had walked along for hours discussing Indian attacks and capture. Rebecca Woodland had vowed to die before she allowed an Indian to ravage her person. Lucie wondered if the silly girl really had the courage to die. She glanced at the buffalo skin and wondered if she had the courage to live.
Then Black Tail came upon her. He walked close behind her and dropped a letter into her lap, then came to rest beneath a cottonwood tree that supported one side of the hide she scraped.
Lucie knit her brow as she stared down at the writing, recognizing her name and the writing simultaneously.
Her mother lived!
A cry escaped her.
“Quiet, stupid girl,” Black Tail whispered.
Her fingers shook as she lifted the letter and pressed it over her heart. Her mother’s writing, here in this wilderness.
She did not cry out again as she tore open the envelope and drew out the folded page.
Dearest Lucie,
This man has agreed to bring you to us. Go with him and do as he asks. He is a friend. I miss you with all my heart. Do not give up hope. We will be reunited soon.
