The Dove

by Sharon Sala

  Even before she saw it, she was impressed by the idea and quickly stood.

  “Let me see.”

  They turned the frame around and quickly rendered her speechless.

  It was a very detailed map done in colorful paints, showing what had once been the North and South American continent; from Canada all the way south through the United States, through Mexico, Middle America, and all the way to South America. Everything about the shapes looked perfect, but the land masses were unbroken and unclaimed, save for the single name they’d put at the top.

  One Nation.

  They’d named the entire land mass One Nation, with First Nation being what had been North America, and Second Nation, being what had been South America. And the umbilical cord connecting the twin continents that made them one nation was what had been called Middle America; where Naaki Chava used to be.

  “This is amazing,” she said. “How did you come up with this name?”

  “It was easy,” Evan said. “The twin continents are like Adam and me. We are separate to look at, but the blood that ties us together makes us one, just like the land on this map. They appear as two separate places, but see the umbilical cord still connecting them? It makes them One Nation. North is First. South is Second. And there is Boomerang. And one day as you learn the locations of other cities, you will add them and see the nation of tribes as they are.”

  “Cayetano is going to be very proud of this.”

  Adam smiled. “Tyhen has seen our vision. She will make sure the New Ones also make copies of this same map. Tribal chiefs should know how vast the resources and people are to whom they belong.”

  “Thank you, my sons. Thank you very, very much.”

  “It was our pleasure,” Evan said.

  Adam nodded, and still they did not leave.

  Something about the stillness with which they were watching her made her wary. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  “Nothing bad. Tyhen and the New Ones are in what was once called Mexico. They are searching for water and adapting their way of life to the surroundings.”

  “Are they in danger?” she asked.

  Evan sighed. “We agreed we would not lie to you. Yes, they are in some danger, but Tyhen is more than a worthy opponent. She is a fierce and dangerous person to have as an enemy, Singing Bird. She will keep them all safe.”

  Still suspicious, Singing Bird watched their faces closely.

  “Her powers increased very drastically and all at once, it would seem.”

  “It would seem,” they said.

  “She has her father’s powers, doesn’t she?”

  They looked at each other and then back at her and nodded.

  “How did this happen?”

  Adam hesitated. But mother and daughter would be forever separated and it seemed Singing Bird deserved, at the least, to know the truth.

  “Tell her,” Evan said. “Tyhen won’t because she believes it would hurt her mother’s heart.”

  Adam nodded. “Windwalker gave them to her in the temple at Naaki Chava. He’s the one who told her when to leave.”

  Singing Bird turned pale. “But I thought he ceased to exist when the curse was broken.”

  “He stayed for her.”

  She moaned beneath her breath and didn’t know it. “Where is he now?”

  “He is no more. When he gave her his powers, he ceased to exist.”

  Singing Bird covered her face, but she wouldn’t cry. When she lifted her head, her dark eyes were blazing. “I saw him in her like I’d never done before. I should have known.”

  “I tell you only so that you will know how safe she is. She cannot die, Singing Bird. Not until she gives away her powers to her child as he did to her. For as long as One Nation exists, there will always be a Windwalker’s daughter to lead the people in it.”

  Singing Bird’s eyes were shining with unshed tears, but the triumphant look on her face was dazzling.

  “Then this has all been worth it!” she cried and turned and picked up the framed map. “Come help me find a place for this. We have a new world in the making. It needs to hang in a place of honor!”

  ***

  This was the morning of the second day without fresh water and time was running out. Water containers were empty or nearly so. Food supplies were getting low and the heat of another day had set in for a long hot visit.

  Today the New Ones who were taking the lead were Yaqui and Apache men, who like Luz Reyes, had once lived in this place. It was vastly different from their time, and yet somehow familiar. They were delighting in what could only be called forests of cacti, thickets of spiny plants double and sometimes triple the size of how they’d known them.

  In the distance the marchers had seen wild pigs, some as large as small ponies, and big cats not unlike the jaguars from the jungles. With all these animals about there had to be water nearby as well. They would find it, and they would hunt food to sate their hunger. It was just a matter of time.

  While many saw it as a vast, harsh land with its own brand of beauty, Tyhen hated it with a passion. For a woman born and raised in a lush green land with water at every turn, this was nothing short of her worst nightmare.

  Yuma knew she was struggling to stay positive. It wasn’t the heat that was pulling her down, it was the horizon. She’d grown up in a city with a jungle around her, and a mountain in front of her. She’d never been allowed to climb that mountain, and this horizon was too damn far. They needed one good thing to happen, like finding water before sundown.

  ***

  Yaluk was elated. It had been a long while since they’d had the opportunity to take many prisoners with much wealth. Once his scouts had given him the direction the witch was on, he knew just where to launch his attack. They were heading straight through Cholla Pass, and once they spotted that small spring in the rocks about mid-way through, the distraction of finding water would serve to shift their focus from being on guard, to quenching their thirsts.

  He’d stationed half his men on the East mesa and taken the other half onto the West mesa with him, giving them a clear view into the pass below.

  It was all about finding the witch among her people and taking her down. He didn’t know what she looked like. All he knew was that she was tall. People weren’t tall in this land and especially women. She should be easy to pick out.

  They’d been in place for almost two hours, watching the approaching dust trail when they got their first glimpse of the people.

  Although he and his men were high above the pass, he was struck by their long arms and legs and the men’s long easy stride. When he saw the leaders looking up as they entered the narrows, he flattened down even more, scooting backward so that his head would not be visible from below, and his men did the same.

  Ten minutes later, Yaluk was in shock at the number of people still coming into the pass. And with no end in sight and many tall people, he had yet to pick out a woman who looked significant.

  His men on the other mesa were waiting for his signal. He could start the avalanche of rocks he had at the ready and be done with it, but if the witch got away, this would only make things worse for him in the long run. He did not want to be a target for her magic.

  And then he heard a man let out a loud whoop of delight and knew they people down below had finally found the water. He smiled.

  ***

  Tyhen was uneasy. The moment they’d started into this pass the hair stood up on the back of her neck.

  “Yuma!”

  He turned. “I know. It’s like your dream, isn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “What do you want us to do?” he asked.

  She glanced up again and in that moment, knew she needed to be on the mesa, not looking at it from below.

  “You keep them moving through. I’m going up,” she s
aid and saw disapproval in his eyes.

  “And let you out of my sight? What if they hurt you?”

  “Then they will be dead and I will heal.”

  Her anger stirred the air around him, lifting the hair from his neck and cooling the sweat on his brow and still he frowned.

  “You don’t make this easy. The day is bound to come when you meet something you cannot control.”

  “I cannot die.”

  “But I can die, and one day you are going to scare me to my grave.”

  She frowned. “You do not say that and we have a purpose. I know mine. Do you know yours?”

  He threw his arms around her neck and kissed her hard and fast, uncaring who might be watching.

  “Yes, I know my purpose,” he said, and the minute he turned her loose, she ran back in the direction they’d come from and disappeared.

  He headed toward the front of the line at a lope. They needed to know something was going to happen and he didn’t have much time.

  Precious minutes passed as he ran past the straggling line of weary walkers. He came around a bend in the pass just as he heard a yell of jubilation and was guessing someone had found water. At least he was hoping that was it because they were in serious need. However, finding water was going to stop progress through the pass, which would make them sitting ducks for an attack.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The moment Tyhen found a place to be alone she began to chant, feeling the power of the earth coming through her feet, up her body, and out of her hands. When it began to turn the air around her, her heart skipped a beat. The feeling was an anxious anticipation like just before she and Yuma became one. She hastened the chanting which turned the air faster and faster until she was standing in the midst of a wild, spinning vortex that took her up onto the mesa.

  ***

  The men were poised for attack when they heard a roar. They turned, saw the spinning wind behind them, and panicked.

  To Yaluk, it was frightening and unlike anything he had ever seen. It swept across the mesa like a ghost wind. Before they could run, it blew them off their feet and began dragging them across the rocky ground through rocks and cactus and leaving skin and blood behind.

  They were screaming in pain, begging for the wind to stop, begging the Old Ones for mercy, but to no avail.

  ***

  Tyhen already knew Yuma had done his part to get everyone to safety. When she saw the people running away from the water, she shifted the force of the wind and blew Yaluk and his men off the other side of the mesa, away from Cholla Pass.

  Their screams ended abruptly when they hit the ground, but Tyhen’s heart was hard. Better their screams than the screams of her people, she thought, as the funnel took her across the pass onto the East side of the mesa.

  Having witnessed their friend’s demise, those warriors were already in flight, but they didn’t get far.

  One by one, the spinning wind picked them up and took them high, then let them go, dropping them down onto the mesa below.

  The New Ones below heard the screams, got brief flashes of the wind funnel, then a few minutes later it sailed down the length of the pass in an “all clear signal” and disappeared.

  Yuma waved his arm. “It’s safe. Back to the water,” he yelled and began leading the New Ones back to the spring.

  The pool of water was small and there were many people lined up to refill their water jugs, so it took a long time.

  When Tyhen suddenly appeared in their midst, no one commented on her absence or what they’d seen. She was the Windwalker’s daughter fulfilling her promise, and they showed their appreciation by quietly handing her a drink or a piece of food or offering her their seat in the shade.

  Yuma had been watching for her and when he saw the look on her face, he knew she would remain silent for many hours now. It was how the violence affected her. He ached for a way to make it better, but as long as there were people willing to kill their own, she would not stop, and he could not spare her heart.

  Tyhen had shut down. Not thinking about what happened was her way of getting past it. When they were ready to leave, Yuma searched her out at the spring and found her sitting quietly in a place of shade with her hands lying loosely in her lap, her gaze focused on a wet spot on the earth where someone had spilled water a short time earlier.

  A large lizard was resting in the sun about ten feet above her head but no one noticed, or if they had, had simply let it be. Enough death had happened this day and no one had the stomach for killing a lizard that would not feed them all.

  The sun was hot on the top of his head, but in that moment his body felt light, so vividly alive that if they had been alone, he would have taken her in his arms and loved her back to health. She was his heart—his mate—the other half of his soul, and when she hurt, he felt her pain.

  He knew she sensed his approach because she suddenly raised her head and the look in her eyes made him hurt.

  Save me. Love me.

  He read the plea and took her hand.

  She stood as he pulled her into his arms and then held her so close against him that they were bonded by the heat.

  “You saved many lives. It is done. Hold onto my love, little dove. Let it go. Let it go.”

  He felt her shudder and then slowly slid her arms around his waist. The longer they stood together, the tighter her hold became until she was shaking.

  It was his reminder that this woman/child was not yet seventeen. In his world, before Firewalker, she would have been a long-legged girl on the brink of becoming a woman in lust with some equally lustful boy who would most likely break her heart.

  Here, she was a warrior with the power of a god, battling daily for the people to whom she belonged. She had lost her innocence even before she was born, but she would never lose her man. He would cut his own throat and die bleeding to save her and she knew it.

  He was her strength.

  He heard her whisper his name.

  “Yuma.”

  “I am here.”

  “Do we leave now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. There are too many ghosts here. I am ready.”

  He frowned, and then pushed her back until her could see her face. “Remember what I told you? Why men like those raided and killed?”

  She saw her own reflection from the sunlight in his eyes and shivered. “For women.”

  He nodded. “So if you had done nothing, which women among us would you have chosen to give away knowing the deaths they would suffer would be long and brutal?”

  She blinked. “None.”

  He nodded and held out his hand. “Good answer. I have your pack. We go now.”

  She threaded her fingers through his, taking strength from the firm grasp as they left the ghosts of Chollo Pass behind.

  They walked north as she had ordained, and when the sun went down, they set up another camp. They were less than two miles from Rio Yaqui, unaware of how close they were to their destination.

  Yuma put up their tent and laid down their sleeping mats, gave her a drink of water, then held the flap back for her to crawl in. She had refused food and he did not insist.

  Later, Johnston came over to check on her and found Yuma sitting quietly at their fire watching a small grouse cook that he’d shot with his bow and arrow. They visited a few moments and then Johnston left, but not before leaving a piece of Shirley’s bread for them to eat.

  Luz Reyes brought a small pot of the mashed Yucca leaf and told him how to use it for soap to wash their hair.

  Montford came a little later with some cactus blossoms and told him how to prepare and eat them.

  And so it went until the people began bedding down for the night. They wanted to thank her for saving their lives but since she slept, they thanked Yuma instead.

  When the last fire was banked
and the coyotes began their nightly chorus of singing to the night sky, he took off his loincloth and took Warrior’s Heart into the tent with him, laying it within easy reach.

  Tyhen was curled up on her side, but he could see tears. She was crying in her sleep.

  He scooted up behind her, put his arm across her waist and pulled her close.

  She murmured something aloud, and he slid his arm beneath her neck, and then pillowing her head upon his shoulder, he quietly rocked her back to sleep.

  ***

  Tyhen was dream-walking.

  In the dream she was looking out across a land so vast it was like looking at the reflection of the sky, a place with no beginning and no end. No matter where she turned, the land was the same, seemingly flat with no trees or mountains, only knee-high grass waving in the wind.

  And as she looked off into the distance, she saw many huge blackish-brown animals with mountainous humps on their shoulders and curved horns on their wooly heads.

  Then something made them move, and when they did, they came toward her. They ran as one, sweeping ever so slightly in one direction, then rolling gently back in another, spilling down the slope toward where she stood until she could feel the vibration of their approach beneath her feet. She thought she should run, but there was nowhere to go, and so she stood in their path as they came toward her.

  Their eyes rolled wildly like they could see her even though she was a wraith. The grunting and huffing of their collective breathing only added sound to their terrifying approach. The air around her was cold, but she could see heat waves rising from their backs, and when they were finally close enough to touch, she held out her arms and closed her eyes as they ran through her. And then she wept, knowing them as one living being knows another while the thunder of their hooves and heartbeats pulsed within her.

  They ran and they ran until, finally, they were gone and she felt heavy and empty, like her ability to move had gone with them. Sad that they had passed, she looked to the direction from whence they’d come and this time she saw people. Like the animals, they came toward her, too, and she wondered if the animals had led them.