by Godwin, Pam
I found the men near a fresh-running stream. Naalnish waved when he saw me and laughed at Darwin when he pounced a trout in the shallow water. Akicita and Badger met me half way.
The elder prodded my face. “It heals. The energy flows strongly through you.”
“What energy—”
“Come on,” Badger grabbed my hand. “We have a million questions.”
Akicita rested his skeletal fingers over ours, freezing Badger’s forward motion. “No questions, Badger. We’ll talk about the weather or the abundance of rabbit in this region. Or that incredible dog of yours.”
I smiled and followed them to the river.
We were gathered around the stone hearth when Lone Eagle returned with my gear. He appeared from the footpath and his eyes greeted mine.
For a moment, he stood there, staring at me. I stared right back. He wasn’t what I expected. Not a clone of Naalnish and Badger. His bronze skin and strong facial features hinted Native American blood, but his stunning eyes and short wavy russet hair suggested another heritage. He was exquisite.
I swallowed against a reflex of guilt. Gawking at another man felt like cheating. Still, I couldn’t look away.
His thumb tapped the limb of his bow, the string sawing back and forth on his muscled thigh. And his eyes…something swirled in their coppery depths, as if he was seeing me. Inside me. Then his mouth dipped in a frown. His mouth was distracting. I swallowed again.
Silence rippled through the camp as he approached. The air seemed to follow him.
“I moved the Humvee further into the mountains. It’s still miles away.” Despite his stolid tone, a few words were traced with a southern drawl.
“How did you—”
“I’m a tracker. Where do you want your things?”
Ah. No doubt I left a screaming spoor in my chase with Annie. “I’ll take them. I’m not sure where I’m staying.”
His brows gathered. Contempt? Or was it curiosity? Before I decided, he marched toward the lean-to’s with my things.
Badger joined me. “Don’t worry about him. He’s kind of a loner. Hasn’t been with us long this time. Found us after the outbreak. His mother was one of us.”
Without replying, I took off after my things and the peculiar man who conveyed them.
I found him settling my supplies in the last shelter at the far end of camp. None of my weaponry made the trip, not that I expected it considering their attitude toward guns. I said to his back, “Lone Eagle, is it?”
When he turned, I melted a little. The man was as hot as the Appalachian sun.
“My mother called me Lone Eagle. It’s Jesse actually. Jesse Beckett.”
“Okay, Jesse. Thank you for collecting my gear.”
His body tensed and his eyes glowed. “The arsenal you are transporting…you don’t even know what you’re about. I’m surprised you haven’t blown off any limbs. And where did you get an AA-12? You realize if you actually saw real combat, that shotgun would be taken from you and used against you.”
Heat rushed to my face. “Would you offer me the same judgment if I sported a dick? Fuck you.”
He winced. Then stepped around me, leaving me fuming through a vehement grinding of teeth.
I paced in front of the shelter. Who the hell did he think he was? I pressed my hands to my cheeks to cool the blaze there. My lungs labored to suck in air. If I actually saw real combat? I wanted to box his ears. And shove my boot up his ass. I turned on my heels to go after him.
Badger hailed, “Where are you going, Evie?”
I took a deep breath. “I need a cigarette.”
He lit and handed me a hand-rolled. The first drag rolled across my palate. Some of the strain released from my shoulders. I pointed to the shelter where my gear resided. “Whose lean-to is that?”
“Uh…that’s Lone Eagle’s. He doesn’t sleep there much. He stays out there.” He gestured to the surrounding woodland. “He put your stuff there? It’s yours now. I don’t think he’s in the habit of hanging around people. He grew up with us. You know, on the reservation? All our families were close. But then his parents split. He left for Texas with his old man. Came back in the summers sometimes. I guess he was some sort of football champion in high school. Heard he got a big school scholarship. But something happened. He didn’t go. Then he disappeared. That is until a few months ago. He found us after the outbreak…”
I tuned him out, counted to ten. Then counted again. Eventually, he took a breath.
“Did you ask him what happened? What he’s been doing?”
He laughed. “Of course. He told me the Lakota don’t ask questions and scolded me for talking too much. Now I just leave him alone.”
A fucking understatement.
“What’s that?”
Shit. I said that out loud? “You do talk a lot.”
He held out his hand, his face split in a grin. “Then come back to the campfire and you can do all the talking. We don’t know anything about you.”
I considered his offer. I wouldn’t be able to avoid their questions for long. And I didn’t feel an urgency to run off just yet. They were nice. Decent people. Most of them.
Maybe I could answer a few questions. Recount some impersonal aspects without picking at unhealed sores. I accepted his hand and followed him to the hearth.
The Lakota were all there, listening to Akicita unravel a captivating tale about an encounter with a grizzly. Jesse sat on the far side, his expression cryptic. His vivid copper eyes followed me until the bonfire’s blaze blocked his view.
Badger pulled me down next to him and prodded me with questions. So I began my story with the aphid by the pool. Then I detailed my other aphid encounters, brushing over particulars about my personal life. They hooted at the narration of the night I met Darwin.
My talkative friend couldn’t resist questions about marriage and children.
“Like you,” I said, “I also lost everyone I loved and cared for.”
Akicita followed my noncommittal response with the Lakota story. His eyes sparkled and his soothing voice curled around me in a warm embrace. When he finished, I said, “Tell us another one.”
He cast me dark eyes underscored with years of knowledge. “I have many more, but first”—the corners of his mouth creased—“I give you a Lakota name. We will call you Spotted Wing.”
“Spotted Wing?”
Naalnish ran his hand through my hair. Two ladybugs clung to his finger. “They like you.”
My lids drifted closed. The journey there had been a lonely one. And lingering at the edges of my mind was a sad resolution that my future held more of the same.
I had a myriad of questions for them but I remembered Badger’s warning. The Lakota didn’t ask questions. I found a kind of safety in that. They offered possibilities. A new name. A new life. In the Allegheny Mountains among gentle men. As far as options went, I couldn’t come up with a reason against staying.
Jesse stood, hurled a clod of dirt into the fire. Then he pinned me with a glare and disappeared through the timber.
Okay. There was one.
Let everything you do be your religion
and everything you say be your prayer.
Lakota Sioux
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: LA VIDA LAKOTA
The following weeks flew by as we readied for winter. I learned to make clothes, weapons, food and medicine from the mountain plants and animals. When the first snow forced us downstream, we settled into an abandoned one room cabin.
Idleness and seclusion narrowed the world to that little room where hibernation imposed itself on me, shoving me into a painful awakening. Stripped of distractions, I was left with an abundance of introspection. Those final hours with my dying children. My forsaking Joel to escape within myself for two months after. The dark basement at my father’s house. My knife in Joel’s head.
With Akicita watching over me, I slept to escape my self-scrutiny, my loathing, and my mistakes. Only, sleep forced me to face my nightmar
es.
Akicita administrated sleep aids on the worst days. He told me a restful body would germinate a conscious mind. I just wanted numbness and accepted his antidotes with abandon.
And so, I slept. In and out of consciousness, days turned to weeks until four months had passed. Time nurtured my trust in the Lakota, my worry about the aphids and crazed men forgotten. I knew the bugs were still out there in our isolated woods. I could hear my companions fighting them.
I would never be able to repay them for their protection, for the time they gave me to nurse the bruise inside of me. But I accepted the gift with a healing heart. And there, in the tiny cabin under Akicita’s care, I slept until spring.
A web spread through the darkness. I balanced on a gossamer thread. Gloom rose from the abyss. It licked the bottoms of my feet, teasing. One slip and I would spiral. I stretched out my arms, focused on keeping my feet stuck to the thread. For within the gloom, flickered memories. Memories of my final hours with Joel. Memories I didn’t want.
The abyss surfaced in smoky tendrils. Then it solidified, curled like fingers and plucked the thread. My balance wavered. A laugh erupted, intoned with Arabic notes. It came from everywhere. From nowhere. The thread bounced. My heart pounded in my throat. My feet slipped.
A sweet haze of citrus smoke and minty anodyne caught me, floated me forward. Then a figure appeared. A red shadow. He held out his hand. Sedative humming slowed my pulse. I reached for him.
I woke from the dark. Birds chirped the song of spring. Akicita sat at my side, haloed by dawn’s illumination from the window behind him. I covered a yawn and accepted the hickory coffee he placed in my hands.
“Hihanni waste,” he said.
“Good Morning.”
His dark eyes swept over my face, asking the question he didn’t verbalize.
I shook my head. Another empty dream. Much like my memory of the prior months.
“You fight inner places, Spotted Wing.”
“Maybe.”
He closed his eyes. He wouldn’t belabor what we both knew. I couldn’t control what I saw when I slept. Nor could I fight the sleep that stole most of my winter.
“To rest is to heal.” He turned away to scrape resin from his pipe.
I was tired of resting. And while the nightmares were mild—thanks to his hallucinogenic teas and herbal pipe—I was tired of them too. Akicita believed my dreams were visions. But how could I follow what I didn’t understand? And let’s not forget the vibrations that crawled through my guts every time an aphid neared. Nothing felt familiar. Not my dreams, nor my visions, nor my body.
“No more sleep aids, Akicita.” No more hiding.
His ears twitched under thick silver braids. I couldn’t see his face but his voice told me the smile was there. “The heart wakes.”
The density of his words soothed me even if I didn’t understand them. Just like his presence. He never left my side through the winter, pushing daily exercise and filling my belly. The others hunted and guarded. But they always checked in, their eyes filled with expectation. What they expected, I didn’t know.
The shuffling of feet slipped under the door and rustled across the cabin floor. Darwin’s nails scraped along the porch.
“They’re waiting for me,” I said.
Akicita didn’t respond.
“What if I can’t fight the nightmares? And I still don’t know what I am.”
Without turning around, he said, “Just be.”
I wiggled fingers and toes, the parts of me still familiar. Several breaths in and out. My worry loosened little by little. Then I gathered my gear and emerged from hibernation.
I recovered my strength in the weeks that passed since my winter slumber. As I bent over a net of springing fish, struggling to stand in the river rapids, I wondered what kind of vitamins Akicita had been putting in my food.
“Naalnish. Hurry. I can’t hold it,” I shouted across the stream. Naalnish bounded through the current with grace. He released me from my burden and I fell with a splash in the shallow bank, laughing.
Badger yanked me out of the cold water. “Evie, when will you learn?”
I wiped wet hair out of my face and snorted.
He pulled me into a hug. “We depend on each other. This is how we survive. It’s a Lakota rule.”
“Mm. I’ll remember that when you remember the Lakota rule on guarding your tongue.” His heart thudded against my cheek, warming me despite my sodden clothes. “Besides, you loafers were still asleep and I was hungry.”
Akicita emerged from the cabin. Darwin dashed to my side, his tail whipping my leg.
“We’ll see who’s loafing”—Badger’s lips twitched against my crown—“when you go hunting with us today.”
I stepped back and knew my eyebrows shot up my forehead. “Oh, I finally get to play with the cool kids?”
He grinned and pulled me back to his chest. “Patience is a strength to carry through life. Your mind needed time. Your heart needed healing.” He poked a finger in my rib. “And we were hungry. Your clambering would’ve scared away the quarry.”
“Clambering? Oh, please. I can shoot from—”
“No guns.” He held my arms up, sheathed in blades. “It’s time we see how you use these.”
I let out a dramatic sigh. He ignored it and pushed me toward the cabin.
Akicita waited on the porch, wrapped in red and black wool. His lips spread across his face, deepening the wrinkles in his cheeks. He reached out a shaky hand and lifted my chin. His voice was as salving as the smoke drifting from his pipe. “We hunt many things. The Lakota show you the hunt for feather and fur. You show the Lakota the hunt for truth. Together, we will learn.”
I understood his proverbs as well as I understood the complexity of his gaze. But the hope in his eyes empowered me, made me want to succeed. No matter the road or the expectation.
“I won’t disappoint you.”
“No, Spotted Wing. You certainly won’t.” Then he followed Badger back to the snow-fed stream.
The thawing banks gurgled as it drank up the melting snow. Barren of leaves, the forest hid little between glistening trunks and skeletal thickets. I shivered and reached for the door to shed the wet clothes.
The hairs on my nape prickled, had me looking over my shoulder with the sensation of being watched. A shadow darted between the trees, moving toward me. I released a dagger from my arm sheath.
The figure floated closer, gliding with the finesse of a predator who knew its prey wouldn’t run. Then his copper eyes glinted. I crossed my arms, the dagger’s hilt warm in my fist.
His bow hugged his back, tomahawk on his hip. He closed the distance between us, his gait slow and lethal, his stare never leaving mine.
Our interactions were few, yet I was certain he watched me. I pushed back my shoulders and pretended he didn’t unnerve me. And why did he unnerve me? Was it his sinful beauty? His bed ruffled hair? The flex of his muscles when he flung arrows from the bow? Perhaps it was the flame in his eyes as he looked at me. Like he was doing at that moment. A throb sang below my waist. Jesus, stop looking at me.
His scowl deepened as he stepped onto the porch. “You’re hunting today.”
“Word travels fast.”
“One only needs to open their eyes.”
I followed his gaze to the stream. The others stood over a myriad of bows and knives wearing grins even wider than usual. Badger’s hands waved in the air, illustrating whatever was spewing from his overworked jaws. I smiled, but it fell away when I looked back at Jesse. There was something in his eyes so unlike the frown on his face.
I held his stare, an effort that made me squirm. “You coming?”
The fire in his eyes turned into an inferno. Quiet wrapped around us, tempered by the dripping snow.
“Because I really savor all our tender interactions.” My sarcasm was obvious, right?
His brows collected in a frown. “Wouldn’t miss a show of you lopping off a limb.” A smirk defi
led his gorgeous face. Then he vanished inside the cabin.
What a dick.
We broke our fast with a quasi-succotash of corn, pine nuts and fish, washed down with hickory coffee. Then Badger and Naalnish mounted the trail, each carrying a tomahawk and a bow. The latter man packed a six-foot longbow. I felt naked with only the blades on my arms.
Darwin ran to our side. I patted his head. “I’m sorry, boy. You’re staying with Akicita. Bleib.”
“Even though you taught us those commands,” Badger said, “he still listens better to you.”
“Then maybe I’ll start using the commands on you,” I replied, but my attention focused on the barren tree line.
He leaned in. “Don’t worry. He’s near. He doesn’t let you out of his sight.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Jesse? That’s…it’s weird.”
He shrugged and gave me a lopsided smile. Then the hike began. Single file, Badger cleared the path with a long stick and Naalnish erased the trail in our wake. A few miles up the mountain, I slowed to walk next to Naalnish. “Why cover our tracks?”
“We are trackers. So we understand what it is to be tracked. We do not want to tempt our enemy.”
The Lakota believed all things were woven together in a network of life and energy. Meaning killing aphids could break the fragile threads that connected us. Oh, they killed when they needed to. But they went to great efforts to protect the web they held dear. “So cover our scent, aphids stay away, the web remains balanced?”
He knew I asked to satisfy curiosity, not because I shared their beliefs. He resettled a bed of leaves and nodded. “The web of life catches dreams, you know.”
I remembered the trinkets sold in the old west souvenir shops. Willow hoops and horse hair made to look like a web, fringed with feathers and beads.
“Maybe there are dreams that shouldn’t be caught,” I said.
“Use the threads to trap the good, Spotted Wing. Lead the bad to the center, let it fall through the hole.”
