“Is it true?”
“The rebels would say anything to—”
“I asked is it true? Do we have men down there?”
“I don’t know, Autie! Reports are confused and spotty. Information is still coming in.”
“Aw, Hell,” Custer said as he sat down heavily onto a velvet-covered chair. He looked through the telegraph messages. The block letters shouted at him, but though they said no more than Jacob had already told him, they could not exaggerate the importance of the words. Three ships of the line sunk in Havana harbor. Two Spanish freighters, loaded with sugar. One captured rebel with a tale of an American spy posing as a newspaperman. And all the meetings, all the backroom maneuvering he’d done, none of it would come to anything.
“That’s it, then.”
“Sir?” Jacob said.
“That’s it. There’s nothing else we can do.”
“Mr. President?” Samuel leaned forward, concern in his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“God damn it!” he shouted as he pushed himself to his feet. “Of course I’m not all right!” He tossed the messages and they bloomed into a fluttering dahlia of paper that floated to the floor. He staggered and caught himself on the back of the chair, then shoved at it, tossing it forward into the side table. “God damn it!”
“Autie! Settle down!”
“Settle down?” he rasped at Jacob, limping toward him. “Why in all Hell should I settle down?” But his weak foot caught on the carpet edge and he toppled, crashing forward into the divan. Jacob and Samuel reached for him but he snarled and waved them back. He lowered himself onto the floor, leaning back against the divan’s upholstered satin, the taste of metal in his mouth.
He stared at the floor as his mind was filled with the memory of the last time he had sat on the floor. Last Christmas, it had been, downstairs in one of the sitting rooms. He had sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fire. Across from him had been his old friend, his old adversary, Three Trees Together. On that day, the old chief had given him a buffalo robe he had painted with the scene of the massacre at Kansa Bay, and on that day, Custer had decided that he needed to work toward peace with the Cheyenne. Remembering the reunion with his son that had followed, he was reminded of all the many and complicated reasons that had led him to that decision.
And now those decisions, those reasons, and all his work since that day were for naught. All his hopes now lay at the bottom of Havana’s harbor, sunk with those warships and papered over with the telegraph messages that littered the floor.
He wanted to weep, but he did not have the time.
“Autie?” Jacob said.
He looked up at his old friend and saw reflected in his eyes the pain that he felt. Samuel, too, was affected, quietly gathering together the strewn messages, his face dour.
“We’re going to war, Jacob.”
“I know, Autie.”
“Mobilize our forces.”
“Yes, sir. What do you think they will do?”
He took a deep breath to clear his head. The maps unrolled in his mind, and he saw the theater laid before him. “It’s obvious,” he said. “Rightly or wrongly, they’ve got evidence that we have been working to usurp their control over Cuba. They’ll return the favor.” He looked up at his two closest advisors.
“We’ve been backed into a war, my friends. Against Spain and the Cheyenne. In the Territory.”
Chapter 28
Moon When the Cherries are Ripe, Waxing
Fifty-seven Years after the Star Fell
Near the Red Paint River
Alliance Territory
They rode northeast, following the swath of churned earth that marked the buffalo’s path through the land. The wind blew in from the west, the direction of beginnings and birth, and Speaks While Leaving leaned into it. It turned her shortened hair into tiny whips that lashed her face with relentless zeal, and it made the grass lay down, even where it had not been trampled or grazed down by the passage of the buffalo herd. She could smell the weather on the wind’s shoulders, clouds piled up beyond the world’s rim, pregnant with rain. She could smell, too, the dusty dung chips left in the wake of the buffalo herd. The coming rain would soften them and they would seep down through the hoofprints, returning to the land to renew the soil. Life sprung from the buffalo, and the land sang the song of the herd.
Ahead to the north, rising from the horizon’s edge were the Sacred Mountains, dark with trees and distance. The Teaching Mountain was there, and the Listening Mountain, and the Mountain of Whispers, too, though she could not make out their individual profiles across the hazy miles. But they were there, she knew—purpled guardians of the People—and their presence gave her a rock of stability in a life that had gone entirely too far out of her control.
Mouse Road and One Who Flies rode side by side, their whistlers as close as a mated pair. Watching them over the past weeks, during the journeys on sea and on land, she had seen them grow stronger together. For nearly a moon, they had rarely been separated, spending their days with each other, a pair now, instead of two persons. Together, they were impervious to the pain around them, their mutual love softening the blows of grief and disappointment that she knew they felt. Their devotion warmed her heart as any true love might, but it also tasted of bitterness, bringing home all the failings of her own love for Storm Arriving. Where they had formed a partnership, she and her husband were still only two people, a man and a woman who had more yearning than satisfaction, more history than future.
The future. She could not see it, and she dreaded it. It was a future now of war and conflict, a future she had been trying to avoid, but there was also another future, a closer future, into which she did not want to travel. Every wave on the sea and every roll of the land beneath her whistler’s feet brought her closer to an immediate future that she could see, and too clearly. As the land began to slope down toward the meandering Red Paint River, as they neared the moment when they would spy the first outlying lodges of the tribe’s circular encampment, she wished for the courage to flee, to turn her back on everyone and ride away.
But such courage would only delay what must come, not avoid it. That, too, she could see, and so she summoned a different courage.
“You will hear it soon enough,” she said.
Mouse Road and One Who Flies jerked on their reins, startled at the sound of her voice. She had not spoken for several days—had barely spoken at all since Blue Shell Woman had been laid into the broad salt waters—and so she understood her companions’ surprise. They prodded their mounts and came closer.
“You will hear it soon enough,” she said again, gesturing toward the river’s path. “When we ride in, you will hear it, but it will be better if you hear it now from me.”
“Hear what?” One Who Flies asked, without concern, and the lack of suspicion in his voice sharpened the edge on the guilt that cut her heart.
Her whistler rumbled deep in her breast and paled the skin on her flanks, sensing her rider’s fear. Speaks While Leaving reached forward to scratch between her shoulders and soothe her anxiety, a motion that also gave herself time to muster the will to proceed.
“I have lied to you,” she said.
“About what?” One Who Flies asked.
She dragged at the words, pulling them from her mind to her lips. “The Council never authorized us—no, they never authorized me to negotiate with the Iron Shirts.”
Mouse Road had known this and grew ashamed of her own silence. One Who Flies looked at his new wife and then back at Speaks While Leaving, not understanding the ramifications of her words.
“They knew none of it?” he asked, incredulous. “They didn’t approve of the terms? The concessions we offered? The concessions the Iron Shirts accepted?”
She signed with her hands. No. None of it.
One Who Flies spoke distractedly, dreamlike. “But you said...the Council was divided...an alliance would convince them...”
“Yes,” Speaks Whi
le Leaving said. “Divided between peace and war.”
He laughed at the irony. “They don’t have to worry about that decision anymore. It has been made for them.”
“Not by me!” Speaks While Leaving shouted, and then reached forward again to calm both her mount and herself. “Not by me,” she repeated quietly.
“No. Not by you,” he said, “though by whom does not matter. War is a faithful hound, and comes no matter who calls it home.”
“I am sorry,” she said. “I was not thinking of what it might cost you two.”
Mouse Road toed her whistler forward and touched Speaks While Leaving on the shoulder. “It did not matter,” she said. “I would have gone looking for him with you or without you.”
“And I,” One Who Flies said, coming up on her other side. “If you had not come, I would still be lying in the mud.” A cloud crossed his features. “Or worse.”
“You gave us a gift,” Mouse Road said, and Speaks While Leaving saw her exchange a glance at her beloved for a smile. “Any pain I have known is outweighed.”
“And for me as well,” One Who Flies said.
She burst out with tears she did not know she had. She thought that she had cried all she would ever cry, but now, with their easy acceptance of her transgression, she found that she had more tears she could shed. Sobs broke in her chest, making it impossible to speak until she controlled them.
“What of the Council?” she asked.
“What about them?” One Who Flies asked in return.
“The alliance with the Iron Shirts. The promises I made to María Cristina. What can I do about that? War is coming. It follows us like a stench. How can I tell them what I’ve done? What should I tell them?”
One Who Flies patted her arm. “My dear sister-in-law,” he said. “Isn’t it clear enough? You must turn your lie into the truth.”
“But war...my vision...” She could not explain it to him, how the vision had led her, how her visions always led her. This vision had spoken to her in images of peace, trade, and cooperation. She had not felt the bite of war; she had not smelled the smoke of death in it. But war was coming. Was the vision wrong? And if the vision could be wrong, was it a vision? Were any of them visions? “I cannot see,” she said, panicking, feeling the blindness approach as confidence in her prescience dimmed. “The vision...I cannot see.”
A hand gripped her arm and she was jolted back to awareness, back to the prairie, to the wind, and to the blue eyes of One Who Flies, his gaze stern, his hold on her arm bruising.
“You can see,” he said. “But sometimes it takes more than dancing to bring a vision into being. This is one of those times.”
She blinked at him. “More than dancing?” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “A great vision takes great work.”
Could it be? Could the vision be true and war still come? She looked at One Who Flies, and saw the hope and belief in his eyes.
“Yes,” she said, wanting to believe as well and feeling her dread lessen. “Peace is the goal, but perhaps not the path.”
He smiled at her, and hope filled her heart.
They started off again, following the subtle folds of land that marked the limits of the Red Paint River. In wet winters, the rivers that flowed through the gentle land would rise from their shallow banks and flood the land for miles. In summertime, though, these unassuming heights merely gave a rider a longer sight, and when the sun had only a hand of sky left in the west, they saw the first lodges of the Great Circle of the People. Smoke rose from the conical homes, and at the western edge they saw the shadow of whistler flocks.
They saw outriders heading toward them and waited for them near an upthrust of grey rock. Waiting, they saw, too, that the camp’s circle was broken by gaps where some of the bands should have been. Whether they had left early, or never arrived at all, Speaks While Leaving did not know, but it was a sign that all was far from well.
The eight riders stopped at a hundred yards, rifles ready. “Who are you?” one of them shouted.
With the sun at their backs and One Who Flies in his vé’ho’e clothing, Speaks While Leaving understood their caution.
“I am One Who Flies,” he shouted to them. “Of the Tree People band, with Speaks While Leaving and Mouse Road.”
The riders peered at them, conferred, and then two riders sped back to camp, yipping with the news. The other six came forward to meet them.
Speaks While Leaving knew a few of the men, especially Silver Cloud, a cousin on her father’s side from the Hair Rope band. He rode closer, studying their faces and her cut hair.
“You bring bad news,” he said, for there was no question.
“Yes,” One Who Flies said. “And good news.”
Silver Cloud glanced at Speaks While Leaving. “But mostly bad news.”
“Yes,” One Who Flies agreed.
“Is my husband home?” she asked Silver Cloud.
He signed: Yes, he is in his lodge.
She turned to One Who Flies and Mouse Road. “I will wait for him here. He will have much to tell me, and I would not have him do it in the heart of camp.”
One Who Flies signed his understanding, and Silver Cloud and the others escorted him and Mouse Road toward camp.
Her whistler grew fractious, watching the others depart, being so close to home and flock and yet kept behind, alone. She dismounted and with a slap on her flank, sent the hen running. The whistler sang as she headed toward the flock and her family, a yodeling call that was echoed in the distance by others welcoming her home.
Speaks While Leaving sat down to wait at the base of a speckled boulder, facing the setting sun. The wind was in her face, rushing past her ears with the sound of waves on a shore. A few clouds had rolled up into the sky, and the sun painted them blue and yellow and orange, the day’s final chore as it drifted down toward slumber.
The earth sang. She heard it in the ground beneath her and in the stone at her back. The silent, truculent land of the Iron Shirts had bothered her deeply, but here, despite a heart still raw with grief, she was gladdened by the conversations that surrounded her on every side. From the sky to the earth and in the water that linked them both the songs of life rang and buzzed and trumpeted through her mind, and when she closed her eyes, her other sight opened. Though she felt the soft rays of the setting sun on her face, life around her gleamed with its own shining brilliance. She moved through the light, listening, watching, tasting the dreams that filled the world’s heart.
The crying wind kneaded clouds that hummed in rainbow hues. The grass yawned, sleepy after a long season in the sun, ready for the approach of autumn it felt in its rooted feet. A field mouse winked black bead eyes and cleaned his whiskers, preparing his bravery for his twilight rounds, while a gopher organized his burrow with modest pride. Atop the speckled boulder against which she sat, a wren landed and speared the air with three sharp notes, impatient for tomorrow’s sun though today’s had yet to depart.
She put her hands on the ground and felt its heartbeat, heard the rush of its lifeblood in the waters of the Red Paint River. She saw everything in lucid detail, from the depths of every cloud to a single hair on the mouse’s face, but when she turned to look at herself, she saw only vapor and fog. She was a nebula in a world of clarity, a figure wrapped in doubt. Despite the light of life around her, she waited in shadow, and the shadow grew, darkened, chilling her. She heard the rhythm of a rider’s approach, and when a whistler sang a question, she opened her eyes.
Before her was one of the largest drakes she had ever seen, his withers a head taller than a man. Aggressive bars of red and white flared along his muzzle, and his flanks wheeled with shapes of clashing color that flaunted his confidence. Astride this grand beast sat Storm Arriving, imperious and fearsome.
The right side of his head was freshly shaven. He had drawn a line of black paint along his hairline, and four streaks of black dragged downward beneath his right eye: black, the color of victory. Bloody sun
light sizzled on the seven rings of white silver that pierced the rim of his ear, and twin eagle feathers were tied to the top of his braid with a black leather cord. His leggings dripped with a luxuriant fringe that seemed to move with the colors of his drake’s display, and tied to his leather shirt were the scalps of his victories—at least twenty in number, she could not count them as their tufts of blond, red, and brown hair crawled across his shoulders and chest like living things in the wind.
He was magnificent, and she stood, wanting to tell him so, but the purpose in his eyes was as dark as their color, and his mouth was a tight line: a rope pulled near to snapping. She could not speak to him. He was part spirit and part man. He was War, and he was Death, and she could not speak to such a creature. She could only stand before him, gazing at him through her tears, and wonder at the transformation of the man she had once loved so dearly.
He unhooked his feet from the loops in the riding harness and slid down the whistler’s side, landing on both feet. Then he strode toward her and without a word swung a wide, backhanded blow that struck her across the face. She stumbled backward against the boulder, and caught herself there, one hand on the warm stone, one on her hot cheek. She blinked away new tears and looked up at him. He stood, wide-stanced, his chest expanding and contracting with angry breaths. He stabbed a finger at her.
“You have failed me as a friend,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion. “And you have betrayed me as a wife. But now, with your stubborn arrogance, you have killed our child.” He looked up and shook his fist in the wind’s face. “Blue Shell Woman! My daughter! Forgive me!”
When he brought his gaze down upon her once more, she felt it like a weight. She saw in his eyes the wound that threatened to tear him open, and she knew she had put that wound there. Beyond any other change that she saw, this change was of her own making. She curled around the pain in her heart, cowed by the wrath she had created.
He turned and pulled himself up onto his war drake’s spine. He set his feet in the harness loops and toed the mount around to face back toward the camp.
The Cry of the Wind Page 36
