“No, he was not there,” Fire Thunder said, lowering his hand to his side.
He turned and faced the fire, the flames leaping like his heartbeat, at being reminded of the small child, and his own part in his death. Would he ever feel less guilty for having laid so much responsibility on Good Bear’s shoulders?
When the child discovered that he had let his chief down, it was a shame so intense, mixed with fear, that sent him to death that no proud warrior would ever lay claim to.
If only Good Bear could have lived longer. If only he had been given the chance to become a proud warrior, Fire Thunder despaired to himself. Good Bear would have then known the true evil of dying at one’s own hand.
“Thank God,” Kaylene said, moving to his side. She lay a hand on his arm. “Where did you find him? Or is it too painful to talk about?”
“His parents are living a nightmare,” Fire Thunder said sullenly. “And, no. I do not wish to talk about it. I am also a part of that nightmare.”
“Fire Thunder, you know how distraught Good Bear’s parents were when they did not know where he had disappeared,” Kaylene said guardedly. “Think about my mother and what she is going through, not knowing my fate. It isn’t fair to her to let her believe that perhaps by now I am dead. Please take me to her. Let her know that I am alive. She is not guilty of anything. She should not have to pay for the sins of my father.”
“She is as guilty as he,” Fire Thunder grumbled, turning a frown down at Kaylene. “She stood aside and watched my sister being caged.”
“She had no choice but to,” Kaylene said softly. “As I, she feared my father too much to interfere in anything that he chose to do.”
“You feared him?” Fire Thunder said, forking an eyebrow. “Did he abuse you?”
Kaylene swallowed hard.
She turned away from Fire Thunder.
He took one of her hands and turned her to face him. “Did . . . he . . . ever harm you?” he asked thickly.
“Not purposely, or should I say, not physically,” Kaylene said, her voice drawn. “He would lose his temper so quickly. When I found out that Little Sparrow was at the carnival, and I was told that she was taken in out of pity, I truly wanted to believe that. When I hinted at anything different, my father flew into a rage. He threatened me. That is why I did nothing to free her when I saw her in the cage.”
“Think back, Kaylene,” Fire Thunder said, his heart beating quickly, he so badly wanted to tell her what he truly suspected—that the man might not be her father. It was possible that she was one of those children taken so long ago, that she had blanked it out of her memory.
But he had to take this slow and easy or he might cause a hurt within her heart that would not ever heal. “Were there other children? Did other children suddenly appear at your carnival? Could your father have done this time and again?” he asked warily.
Kaylene did not want to remember, did not want to recapture the other times, the other children, when they had happened to suddenly be there as workers in the carnival. Each time her father had said they were runaways, there on their own accord.
But the longer she thought about it, the more she didn’t want to remember the way the children shied away from her father—the way the others would suddenly run away, only to be caught and brought back.
She had never wanted to believe the worst.
She had forced herself not to see the way it truly might have been.
“Kaylene, were there other children?” Fire Thunder insisted, wanting to plant the small seed of doubt in her brain about who her true biological parents weren’t, without actually coming out and saying it.
He wanted her to come to the conclusion alone, not to blame him for bringing to light that she may have been abducted those many years ago.
And if he was wrong about this, she would hate him with a passion for placing such doubts inside her mind.
Kaylene gulped hard. “Yes, there were,” she whispered.
Fire Thunder came close to saying that might it not be true, then, that she was a stolen child?
But he felt it was too cruel.
In her startled eyes, he saw that she might be coming to that conclusion, herself.
He could not help but fear what he had begun here, yet he knew that it was best for Kaylene, should he be right. She had the right to know that this demonic man had no true blood ties to her, releasing her of any guilt she may have at being kin to him.
He hoped with all of his heart and being that it was the truth!
Kaylene was remembering many things about her past that caused a wonder to build within her heart. If so many other children had been stolen away, might she also have been?
Yet there had been a difference between her and the other children. She had lived separate from the others. She lived with the Sheltons as their daughter.
She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth when she recalled something else so vividly it might have happened only yesterday—the time when her father had said that it was time that she earn her keep like the other children in the carnival.
She had found the panther, and they had become close friends. Midnight had grown up muscular and strong. Her father had forced her to perform with him.
As at other times in the past, she now felt used, as though the only reason she had been born was to perform and make money for her parents.
And she knew that her mother couldn’t have any more children.
Could she, in truth, have never been able to have any? Had her father abducted Kaylene as a baby, to fill that gap in their lives?
Fire Thunder watched Kaylene’s expressions change as she stood there in deep thought before him.
Then his heart skipped a beat when she lifted tearful eyes to him. “Please take me to my mother,” she softly cried.
Deep inside her heart, she despaired over this question of whether or not this woman named Anna was her mother. Why hadn’t she thought of it until now? The many times she had wondered which parent she looked like, seeing no resemblance in herself to either of them.
Why not then?
Why did it take all of this to make her realize that things were not exactly as they should have been between herself and . . . those who called themselves her parents.
The cruelties of her father should have made her wonder long ago, for it would have been a blessing to discover that he was not truly her father!
Fire Thunder felt himself weakening beneath Kaylene’s pleading eyes, and started to tell her that, yes, soon, he would take her back to her mother, but only to question her. She would have to return with him, for he now knew that no matter what her background was, he loved her with every fiber of his being. He could never let her go.
But he stopped and stared at the blood seeping through the bandage on her shoulder. Her wound was not healing as he had thought. It had opened again. He feared infection. He had to do everything in his power to make sure that did not happen.
Ignoring Kaylene’s question, and the heart-wrenching way she had asked him to take her to her mother, Fire Thunder swept her into his arms and started walking toward the door.
“What are you doing?” Kaylene asked, her eyes wide. “Where are you taking me?”
As he carried her outside, and the early rising sun cast lengthy shadows on the cage, Kaylene’s heart sank.
Struggling against Fire Thunder’s hold, she looked desperately up at him.
“Have I said too much?” she cried. “Have I begged too much to be set free, so much that you will place me in that dreadful cage again? Please, oh, please don’t.”
She wiped frightened tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. “I thought that you cared for me,” she sobbed. “And now you are going to punish me again. I . . . don’t . . . understand. Never shall I understand.”
“I will never cage you again,” he said thickly. “As I told you before, I caged you only that once so that you could experience what my sister experienced. It is a lesson taught, learne
d, and surely never forgotten.”
“Yes, I have learned many lessons while at your village,” Kaylene said guardedly. “And I understand why you had the need to teach me. But now I wish to leave.”
Fire Thunder’s eyes met hers and held. “This is now your home,” he said softly, yet with finality. “Accept it.”
Kaylene felt suddenly weak.
She was too lethargic to argue anymore.
And she had to admit to herself that the thought of staying with Fire Thunder forever made her insides grow warm with the wonder of this possibly being the place that she had sought all of her life, where her roots could be planted.
She would make a good wife. She would make a good mother.
Yet there were too many unanswered questions!
She . . . had . . . to find the answers.
But later.
Right now, all she wanted to do was sleep. She was sorely tired. And there was a pounding ache in her shoulder. She could feel the blood as it seeped from the corners of the bandage.
Her head spun as she started drifting . . . drifting....
“Where . . . are . . . you taking me?” she managed to whisper.
“Where I should have taken you earlier,” Fire Thunder said thickly as he saw her eyes close, her cheek resting against his chest.
Fire Thunder broke into a soft run and stopped when he reached a lodge at the far end of the village from where his lodge was. A spiral of smoke rose from the smoke hole. A faint chanting sound wafted from the wigwam.
Fire Thunder knew that his village shaman, Bull Shield, had other things on his mind, with his duties to Good Bear to tend to today before the burial rites. But Bull Shield was always there for his chief.
Carrying a limp Kaylene in his arms, Fire Thunder stepped inside Bull Shield’s lodge, where a fire burned softly in the fire pit in the center of the floor.
Bull Shield was sitting with his legs crossed before the fire, his long, gray hair flowing down his bare, thin back. He wore only a breech clout and armlets and a necklace of animal teeth.
Bull Shield was elderly. His eyes sank into his cheeks. His shoulders were hunched. His legs and arms were bony.
“You have brought the white woman to my lodge for curing?” Bull Shield said as he turned pale, almost sightless eyes of wisdom up at Fire Thunder.
Bull Shield’s gaze went to the blood-soaked bandage. He rose to his feet and motioned with a hand toward a pallet of furs beside the fire. “Place her there,” he said softly. “I will do what I can to make her well.”
“I would have brought her sooner, but she seemed to be healing well enough,” Fire Thunder said as he gently lay Kaylene on the pallet. “And I did not want to startle her by bringing her to you. As you know, white people are hesitant to accept shamen. They do not see shamen in the same light as they see their white doctors.”
“Yes, I know,” Bull Shield said, bending beside Kaylene. “And the white men and woman are wrong not to see that we shamen can work wonders that white doctors are ignorant of.”
Fire Thunder knelt down beside Bull Shield as the shaman slowly unwound the bloody bandage from around Kaylene’s shoulder.
Fire Thunder winced when he saw the bright redness of Kaylene’s wound, and how it was strangely puckered. “The herbs did not work their magic enough on the wound,” he said, scarcely in a whisper.
“What I do today will begin the process of healing her,” Bull Shield quickly reassured him. “But tomorrow a Buffalo Dance must be held in her honor to guarantee her full recovery.”
“But tomorrow is Good Bear’s burial,” Fire Thunder said softly.
“Good Bear’s burial will come first; this woman’s healing ritual will come second,” Bull Shield said.
He stepped to the back of his lodge to gather several tiny buckskin bags. Then he returned and peered into Fire Thunder’s eyes. “The curing ceremony is the only way she will ever be totally healed,” he said warningly.
Fire Thunder stood out of the way as Bull Shield placed his ointments and powders on Kaylene’s wound. Then the shaman knelt over her and shook his rattles, made from gourds, as he chanted.
Fire Thunder was glad to have been able to give Bull Shield something in his life that made it worthwhile. He had appointed Bull Shield the village shaman, not out of pity, but out of admiration for a man who had been born partially blind.
Bull Shield had lived alone since his parents’ deaths. No women had looked on him with favor, for no woman would marry a man who was unable to hunt.
Bull Shield had told Fire Thunder that being the village shaman had brought him much more recognition and admiration and worth than any woman ever could. He was happy. Bull Shield was at peace with himself, and Fire Thunder was proud to know the old man.
Kaylene stirred. She heard the drone of a voice and the shaking of a rattle close by. It lured her slowly awake, feeling blessed that the pain in her shoulder was all but gone again.
When she was finally fully awake, she saw an elderly man leaning over her. His eyes were sunken, his hair gray and long over his shoulders as he chanted and shook his rattle. She gasped with alarm.
Then a gentle hand took one of her hands. The familiar voice of the man she could not help but love spoke to her. Quickly, Kaylene turned toward Fire Thunder. Alarm in her eyes, she started to speak.
But the words would not come to her when she saw how lovingly Fire Thunder was gazing at her. His fingers twined through hers in a way a man would hold a woman’s hand only if he loved her.
Fire Thunder leaned closer to Kaylene. “Do not be afraid,” he whispered, not wanting to disturb Bull Shield’s trancelike chant. “This man, whose name is Bull Shield, is our village shaman. He is what a white man’s doctor is to the white man. Only his skills surpass any white man’s doctor I have ever become acquainted with. When I saw that your wound had worsened, I brought you to Bull Shield. You drifted off to sleep before we arrived.”
Kaylene gazed from Fire Thunder back to Bull Shield, then looked down at her shoulder. Then she turned to Fire Thunder again. “I do feel better,” she whispered back. “The pain is all but gone in my arm. The bleeding has stopped.”
Bull Shield stopped chanting and lay his rattle aside.
He placed a gentle hand on Kaylene’s brow, drawing her attention to him. “Your shoulder will soon be well and your strength will return, but first you must participate in the Buffalo Dance ceremony tomorrow,” he said, his voice low and deep.
“Buffalo Dance ceremony?” Kaylene gasped, paling. She gave Fire Thunder a pleading, questioning look.
“It is a curing ceremony,” Fire Thunder said.
“No,” Kaylene said, trying to get up. Her weakness caused her to drop back to the pallet of furs. She looked wild-eyed up at Fire Thunder. “I don’t want to be a part of any curing ceremony. Please don’t force me to.”
“It will be something that will intrigue, not frighten you once you see what it is all about,” Fire Thunder said, gently lifting her into his arms. He rose to his full height. “Now I will take you to my lodge. You will get your rest. Soon all of this will be behind you. Then you can start life with renewed vigor.”
Kaylene clung around his neck with one arm, and questioned him with her eyes again. Then she lay her cheek against his chest. She gave the shaman a sideways glance as he placed a hand on her injured shoulder, just above the bandage.
“Tomorrow we will meet again,” he said, gently patting her.
She knew that she should thank the elderly man, but instead, she snuggled closer to Fire Thunder and clung harder to him. She feared tomorrow and what sort of hocus-pocus would be used on her.
Even though whatever the shaman had done today had made her feel much better, she did not want to be made a spectacle of, with ceremonies that included more chanting and more shaking of rattles over her.
Then another thought came to her: Fire Thunder’s people! Would they accept a ceremony that would be held in her honor?
I
t was apparent that they saw her as an enemy. She would never forget the way they looked at her so loathingly when she had been in the cage.
Fire Thunder carried Kaylene from the lodge and through the village until he reached his own. When he took that first step inside he stopped, startled at what he saw.
Panic filled him when he saw Little Sparrow sitting with Kaylene’s black panther beside the fire. Little Sparrow was hugging it, and the cat was allowing it.
If Fire Thunder was not imagining things, he thought he might even be hearing the panther purring as Little Sparrow stroked her tiny fingers through his sleek black fur.
Sensing something was wrong by the way Fire Thunder had stiffened, Kaylene drew away from his chest and gazed around her.
Her eyes stopped, startled, at the sight of her panther with Little Sparrow. “Midnight!” she gasped out.
The sound of Kaylene’s voice made Midnight leap away from Little Sparrow. He went and stood before Fire Thunder, his green eyes gleaming as he gazed up at Kaylene.
“Midnight, oh, Midnight,” Kaylene said, as Fire Thunder slowly eased her feet on the floor. “What are you doing here? You just don’t know the danger of being here, do you?”
She knelt and drew Midnight into her arms. She hugged him as he cuddled close to her.
Fire Thunder stepped gingerly away from Kaylene and Midnight and went to take Little Sparrow’s hand. He urged her slowly to her feet.
Little Sparrow yanked on his hand to draw his attention.
In sign language she told him that she and the panther had made a fast, lasting friendship. She told Fire Thunder that she and the panther knew how to communicate. Midnight had told her that he was worried about Kaylene. He had come to be with her. Little Sparrow begged her brother to allow Midnight to stay.
Fire Thunder turned and watched Kaylene and the panther, absorbing what Little Sparrow had said to him.
When Kaylene looked up at him with a soft pleading in her eyes, he was lost to her and to what she wished. He saw no choice but to allow the panther to stay. It was apparent that it would mean a lot to both Kaylene and Little Sparrow.
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