“I’m not your wife,” she reminded him gently. She unbuttoned his shirt with shaking fingers. “If we don’t return to Grandfather, the handfast will expire. You’re going to get better so you can remedy that. Make an honest woman out of me.”
One of the corners of his mouth twitched up into the ghost of his lopsided smile.
Her heart quaked, the eminent break threatening. She held it together by sheer force of will.
Pulling her eyes away from the smile that would forever haunt her, she looked down at his wound. A gaping hole stared back. The blood was thick and black, the wound itself puckering and already red.
The tremors in her heart became stronger as a small voice whispered he could not survive such a wound.
Jessie brutally shut it off.
Luke.
Silently, she tore his shirt to form a compress and pressed it to the wound. “You’re gonna be fine.”
His eyelids fluttered, and he covered her hand with his.
“C’mon Luke, stay with me.” She fought to breathe around the grief that strangled her as surely as any noose. Smiled at him, pretending her heart wasn’t on the verge of breaking. Tried to force herself to believe that he’d escape from the jaws of death this time, like he had before.
Luke could do this. He’d be fine.
“Don’t,” he said in a voice like gravel. “Be with me, Jess. Just be.”
Jessie blinked against the resignation in his words, but a piece of her heart broke off all the same. Shaking her head, she pressed her hands into his side, his blood seeping through her compress and warming her hands. She fought to keep herself from looking at it. It would break her if she saw what was true.
“Don’t say that. You’re gonna be fine.”
Whitfield was suddenly by her side, and he knelt down beside her and pried her hands away. “Let me see, Jessie.” He lifted her makeshift compress from Luke’s wound and pressed a fresh one to it. “Oh, Jessie.”
“He’s had worse. Right?”
She looked at Parker, silently begging him for confirmation. Of course Luke had had worse. She’d seen the scars. He’d be fine.
Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Whitfield shake his head tightly at Parker. Her gut twisted and she pretended not to notice.
Pop knelt on Luke’s other side and took her hand in his.
“Jessie,” he began.
She snatched her hand away from him. “Shut up, Pop. Go make a fire. He’s gonna be fine. You were dead for months. So he’s gonna be just fine. Right, Luke?”
Luke moved his hand and she grabbed it, holding it to her chest. “Jess,” he whispered. “Just be with me… Lay with me one last time.”
Her heart shuddered and trembled and she tried to pull herself together the only way she knew how. “No.”
“Dyin’, Jess.”
“No.” For a moment, the only sound she heard was the heavy rushing of blood in her ears.
“Jessie, honey,” Pop said, rubbing her back gently.
She ignored him and the warning in his words. “No. You’re not dying, you hear me? You’re not. I won’t let you.” She hoped someone would listen.
Luke. Her father. Her ancestors. Her heart.
Jessie jerked a long knife from Whitfield’s belt as he looked at her with startled eyes, perhaps unable or maybe unwilling to stop her. Swinging her braids over her shoulders, she sawed at the first one with a strength borne of desperation.
Once it was free, she twisted the shorn hair around Luke’s hands. She sawed off the second braid, joined that one with its twin, and ran the knife along her palm. Blood seeped from the wound onto her hair, and she bound their hands together with her hair and her blood.
Her father and Parker began building the fire she requested as Whitfield held the compress to Luke’s side. For a change, the normally chatty nobleman was a silent as stone, his body stiff and his mouth little more than a thin slash across his face.
Jessie lay beside Luke, her head pillowed on his chest, and listened to the faint, erratic beating of his heart. “I bind you to me. You are mine.”
She put everything she had into those words. Her heart. Her body. The magic that resided in the recesses of her soul, magic that had always been there, but she’d denied her whole life.
That way lies death, her grandfather’s voice warned.
“He is mine,” she countered.
A cold wind blew across them, lifting her shorn hair from her neck, and she took it as a warning from her ancestors not to trespass in their territory. Cursing them silently, she swore they’d have to take her with them, because Luke wasn’t leaving without her. She didn’t care what they did as punishment.
He shivered in her arms.
She leaned up to kiss the dark stubble of his jaw. Her heart and his intermingled and became one, bound by an invisible tether as strong as iron. Where he went, she followed, from now until eternity.
“You feel that, Bradshaw? You’re bound to me. You’re not going anywhere.”
Out of the darkness, shapes materialized from behind rocks, from behind trees where nothing had been moments before, out of thin air. They walked toward her, pale and ephemeral imitations of life, and she heard them chanting.
Parker began shouting, and Whitfield jumped back and drew his weapon.
Jessie closed her eyes and ignored them.
Let her long departed ancestors have their war.
“Granddaughter,” a voice said.
She raised her head to see her grandfather and Cheveyo standing before her, surrounded by her tribesmen, who faded in and out of the ever thickening dark like shadows and mist.
Somehow, she’d known he’d come, because even though it made no sense that he was with them, she wasn’t surprised to see him standing among the ghosts of her ancestors.
Behind him lurked the shadows of her Shoshone brothers.
“Grandfather,” Jessie whispered. She didn’t bother to hide the tearstains on her cheeks. She let him see these marks on her face as he could not see the scars on her heart.
“You saw what was at your feet.”
She choked on those tears. In the distance, she heard the plaintive wails of the wolf, and wished she could do the same. Howl her anguished song over the Earth, so everyone would hear her pain.
Muha’s sisters already mourned. She would not allow herself to do the same.
“Yes.” She brushed Luke’s hair out of his eyes with tender fingers. “Save him, Grandfather,” she begged him in Paviotso, her voice as broken as her heart.
Her grandfather was silent for a long time. “I am not sure that is the will of the ancestors, Little Singer.”
No one had called her that name since her mother’s death, and another piece of her heart splintered and died.
“I don’t care about the ancestors. It’s my will.”
“You are as stubborn now as you ever were.” His voice was quiet and melancholy.
“Save him. I know you can.”
Grandfather nodded solemnly, more an acknowledgment of her request than an agreement. Behind him, the others weaved in and out of the darkness. She heard their chanting on the wind, their singing in the crackling of the fire, and saw their dancing in the glittering of firelight.
Luke.
She shook she head, refusing to see what was right in front of her, as she always did.
“No,” she whispered.
Grandfather began to sway. “Let him go, Granddaughter.”
Her heart fractured yet again. She couldn’t. Not when she’d only just found him. He was hers, and she was his. “I—I can’t.”
Her grandfather turned in a small circle. “Let him go.”
“Stop it! You’re not dancing him into death! He’s going to live! He has to! They can’t have him!”
She screamed.
Grandfather ignored her, his deep voice heavy in the wind as he began to sing the song of life and death.
Cheveyo, wearing the bone pipe chest plate of a shaman,
knelt beside her and touched her arm. “You must let him go, cousin.”
“No. No.” There was a tug on the invisible tether binding Luke to her.
“It’s not your time. You cannot follow where he is going.”
Cheveyo looked up at their grandfather, whose dancing had become stronger, the chanting no longer susurrus on the wind. His song swam around her, loud in her ears, his magic heavy in the air as he danced Luke to the next life.
“Jess…” Luke whispered, his pale lips dry and cracking. Love shone in his glassy eyes.
“You’re gonna be fine, Luke.” She touched his forehead. There was a surety in her voice that surprised even her, as if she believed she could force him to live simply by the strength of her spell and her own iron will.
Who knew? Maybe she could.
If her grandfather could weave a spell to separate the souls of a hundred men from their bodies, surely she could weave a spell to do the opposite for one man. Her ancestors had allowed her grandfather to weave a spell of death; surely they would allow her to weave a spell of life.
They would never be so unfair.
“Dyin’ ain’t so bad, Jess.” Luke shook off the braid binding them together and pressed it into her hands, and her spell began to break apart. “Not knowin’ you’re here, safe. Let me go.”
“No.”
He closed his eyes and shuddered. Death rattled in his throat, uncoiling like a nest of vipers.
She refused to acknowledge what was right in front of her and clear to everyone else, as she always had. He’d live. She’d make sure of it.
After a moment, Luke opened his eyes.
He squeezed her fingers. “This is why I fight... So I could be someone good enough for you.”
A strangled sob escaped her before she viciously tore it from her own throat. She wouldn’t mourn him. She wouldn’t let him pass.
Cheveyo produced a litter, and she allowed Parker and her father to pull her away from Luke as they placed him on it. She felt sick. She felt empty and alone.
She was broken.
“Let me go, Jess.”
Her grandfather’s singing washed over her as he wove his ancient song around Luke. Dancing him into death, as he would have with her mother and Gideon if he’d been able. Giving Luke to their ancestors to protect.
Let me go, Jess, Luke had said.
She’d heard the plea in his words, even if she hadn’t wanted to listen to it. Instead, she’d tied him to a broken, painful body for her, because she couldn’t stand to lose him. She didn’t do it for him.
He asked only to be released.
Something deep inside her cracked, and her heart was split in two as she did the hardest thing she would ever do.
She clasped his hand to her chest and allowed her spell to break apart in the wind like dust.
And she let him go.
“I love you, Luke Bradshaw,” she whispered. Her tears fell upon their joined hands. She wrapped her hair around his hands, her gift for him to take into the next life, in the way her mother’s people mourned the passing of the beloved dead.
“I know you do.” He closed his eyes.
For a moment, she was transported back to that night he had held her in the Shaeffer mine, when she told him she hated him. She would have given anything to go back to that night and make love to him then. Not waste all the time she had being angry for what had happened in the past.
Because she understood that now was the important thing, and clinging to the past only brought pain. If only she had recognized that sooner, she would have treasured every minute of every hour she’d spent with him. They would have lived lifetimes in these last few days. If she had been able to see through the cloud of her hurt, she would have recognized she’d loved him her whole life, and nothing would ever change that. Nothing.
Not even a future where she would be forced to live without him.
Cheveyo touched her shoulder, and two men picked up the litter. “We must go.”
“A moment,” Luke croaked. He motioned to Parker. “Take care of her for me.”
Parker nodded tightly and put his arm around Jessie’s shoulders. “I will.”
“Love you, Jess.” Luke closed his eyes. “It’s all right. I’m ready.”
Jessie wasn’t, and she never would be.
Cheveyo approached her, cupped her head in his hands, and kissed her forehead. “It’s time, sister.”
Jessie nodded, trailing after them as they carried Luke away. The singing had become louder, drums pounding in rhythm with her heart, the dancing of her mother’s people fast and furious, their song mournful and plaintive. She turned in unison with them.
Cheveyo clapped a big hand to Jessie’s shoulder, halting her dance mid-step. “Stop. You can’t come where we are taking him. You must let him go.” He pointed to Parker and Whitfield. “She can’t come with us. You must make sure she doesn’t follow. I must have your word. You are responsible for her now.”
“What?” she cried, starting after him.
Parker and Whitfield grabbed her by the arms and held her fast.
Panicked, she struggled against their hands. “No! Take me with you!”
They couldn’t do this. She needed to be there as Luke passed from this life to the next, as she hadn’t been for her mother and Gideon. If she had to let him go, she would be there until the bitter end. She would see him to the next life and give him over to the ancestors. Grandfather could not be so cruel as to deny her that. It was her duty as Luke’s wife.
It was her right, since she was letting go of the other half of her soul.
“It’s time. We will take care of him.” Cheveyo motioned to the warriors who carried the litter, and his eyes carried a warning for Parker and Whitfield, who stood at her elbows.
The Shoshone began to close in, forming a line between Jessie and her tribe she knew she would not be allowed to cross.
Cheveyo took up the chant, his feet turning in slow circles as he began the dance of life and death.
“No! Luke! Grandfather, don’t do this!” Jessie screamed, pulling against the hands holding her. “Cheveyo! No!” She looked over at Whitfield. “Please, Jonah. Don’t do this. Don’t let them do this to me. Please.”
His face twisted, and he shook his head.
“Please,” she begged, and hot tears splashed onto his hands where he held her. “Let me go with him. Please. Please.”
Whitfield looked over her shoulder at Parker. “I can’t do this, mate.” His voice broke and he dropped her arms. “She’s right. We should let her go.”
But Parker grabbed the arm Whitfield had just released and held her tight, wrapping her in an embrace.
“Please, Parker.”
“No,” he said gruffly.
“Solomon, Please.”
“No.”
Jessie’s eyes found Cheveyo as he pushed through the brush and dry grass and faded into the trees. “Cheveyo!” She struggled against the strength of Parker’s arms. “Oh, God, please no! Luke!”
They faded into the dark.
“Luke! No! Luke!” Jessie collapsed to her knees in the dirt.
Parker knelt beside her, holding her in his arms, and she beat against his chest with her fists.
“Luke!”
What was left of her heart shattered and her soul was cleaved in two as Cheveyo and her grandfather danced the one great love of her life into the abyss.
Luke.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The next few weeks passed in a blur.
Jessie’s first memory after Cheveyo and her grandfather stole Luke from her was of Parker carrying her back into the Great Salt Lake house, and the sound of Elizabeth’s cries when her brother told her Luke was dead.
She recalled the smell of the room Luke and she had shared. She remembered holding his pillow against her chest and inhaling the scent of him, and falling asleep like that. She remembered crying into that pillow and erasing the smell of him with her tears, and mourning that loss
, too.
At some point, her father told her he had to leave for Chicago, and he insisted she join him. Jessie listened, she heard him, but she didn’t move and she didn’t answer. She had no voice to answer him with. The mere act of waking took too much effort.
She slept at all hours, brief periods of relief from the sorrow.
During her waking hours, she silently begged Luke to visit her. She plumbed the depths of the abyss, searching through the voices as she begged her mother to keep him safe. Every time she closed her eyes, she begged her ancestors to take her.
Take me.
But her heart continued to beat, and each morning when she woke, she tasted grief on her tongue. She watched the sun rise each morning and set each evening. Time passed as if the world hadn’t just ended.
And in those long, dark hours between dusk and dawn, she would pace the halls, listening to the stillness and the emptiness that had become her life.
She was shattered but her body refused to break.
Take me, she begged.
Her prayers were answered by empty silence.
And then one night she woke to the moonlight streaming through her window. She sat up and looked at the moon for a long time, and Luke’s face flashed in the silvery light.
Jessie, a voice whispered. She wanted it to be Luke’s, but it wasn’t. Come.
She stood up from the bed and found her legs wobbly and shaking, as if she hadn’t used them in quite some time. Reaching out, she wrote Luke’s name in the condensation on the window, and remembered a time when they had sat side by side under the light of a moon just like this, when he’d had her heart and she hadn’t wanted to admit it.
A time when he’d kissed her and she’d slept.
She had to get him back. She had to get him and take him home. He shouldn’t be buried in some anonymous grave on Shoshone land, even if they were her grandfather’s allies. He should be buried in Virginia City, near his mother and hers.
Jessie would lay him next to Gideon’s marker, brothers in the beginning and in the end. She would buy a plot for herself and, when she died, she’d leave instructions for her body to be taken to Virginia City and laid next to her husband.
Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) Page 30
