“You have to understand that for the Diné” — he pronounced it correctly — “the word ‘witch’ does not mean the same thing that it does to us. Shamans and healers and medicine men and women, those they had, but they were not called witches. ‘Witch’ is a bad word to them, meaning one who practices evil magic.”
“It was not evil,” Nizhoni said proudly, speaking for the first time. “I tried to tell them this, but they did not understand.”
“No, they didn’t,” Jeremiah agreed, before directing his attention back to me. “You must understand, Angela, that there were not so many of us Wilcoxes back then. A little more than twenty, when you numbered all the children of my brothers and sister, but my wife had died on the journey here, and I had no children of my own. I thought that I would like to meet this young woman, because if she was as powerful as the rumors claimed, then she would do better to be here with us, with people who understood her powers.”
“And because you just happened to need a wife,” I said dryly.
He did not appear offended by my comment, replying, “I will not lie and say the thought did not cross my mind. So my brother Samuel and I rode for three days, journeying to Navajo lands, and we met with Sicheii, Nizhoni’s father, who had very good English, as did his daughter. He was suspicious at first, but soon realized I could be of some assistance to him.”
I raised an eyebrow, and Jeremiah went on, “In my ignorance, I didn’t realize the Diné did not have the custom of the bride price the way some other tribes practiced it, and Sicheii saw no reason to correct my mistake — not when he could be rid of the daughter who had been causing trouble in his tribe and be three horses and five bars of silver richer at the same time.”
To me that didn’t sound like all that much to exchange for a human being, but apparently Nizhoni’s father had thought differently. “So…you didn’t steal her.”
“No.” Another of those quick looks in his wife’s direction. She was still standing in the same place, but now her arms hung relaxed at her side, and her head was tilted slightly, as if she had been listening intently. “And she did not seem unwilling to come back to the settlement with me.”
“I was not,” she said. “It was in me to know more of this white man’s magic, and I knew I could run away later if I wanted to.”
“But you didn’t,” I guessed.
Her chin went up at that, and I tensed, wondering if she was going to launch another one of those attacks. Then she seemed to deflate, head drooping as her hair fell forward to conceal her face. “No, I did not.”
Jeremiah paused, his gaze moving from me to her and then back to me again. “In time she became my wife in more than just name. She learned from me, just as I learned from her. A little more than a year after she came to live with us, she gave me a son.”
“Jacob,” I supplied, recalling the name from the one and only time Connor had ever spoken of his long-ago forebears.
“Yes, and then you had all you needed from me, didn’t you?” Nizhoni spat.
For a few seconds he didn’t reply, only watched her from hooded dark eyes. “That is not true.”
She shook back her head. “You may speak untruths to this girl, and she may believe them, but I was there. I know.”
“You know what you have told yourself, but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth,” Jeremiah told her. Surprisingly, his voice was calm and even a bit sad. “The world was a different place then, and men did not speak of their feelings as freely as they do now. That does not mean those feelings did not exist. I will be honest and say I did not love my first wife. She was a cousin my father urged me on his deathbed to marry, and I was a good son and followed his wishes. But she had suffered from ill health for some time, and in the end she succumbed to a fever as we were traveling down out of Colorado. I buried her there, and mourned for a life cut short, but I did not feel any great loss.”
Kind of tough for her, I thought, but I didn’t say anything. I had no experience of living in that kind of world with those sorts of expectations, so I thought it better not to comment.
“But Nizhoni,” he began, then shook his head. His eyes met hers, and it was almost as if a spark jumped between them. Oh, yes, something still lay there smoldering, even after all these years, even after all the resentment and misunderstandings. “There was much made over Jacob, I know, because finally the primus had an heir, and so perhaps Nizhoni felt overlooked.”
Glancing over at her, I could see that her expression had grown blank and cool again. Never a good sign.
I wasn’t sure if Jeremiah hadn’t seen the look on her face or was ignoring it, because he continued, “And then when Jacob was only four months old, typhoid fever struck our settlement and many others in the area. We fared better than most, as my sister Emma was a healer. But then the fever took Nizhoni, and it seemed that Emma could do nothing for her. You have perhaps seen this even now, with your science. If someone doesn’t have the will to live….”
Something else Margot had gotten wrong. At the very least, she’d been given the wrong information, but I realized I shouldn’t be that surprised by how the story might have gotten twisted over the generations. When you came right down to the point, I supposed it was a fine line between killing yourself outright and not wanting to live anymore.
“Why should I have continued to live?” Nizhoni demanded. “When you saw me only as a vessel to bear you powerful children?”
His mouth tightened, but his tone was even as he went on, “At the end, she was not herself, raving in a fever. It was very dangerous, that someone with her power should be in so little control of herself, and my brother Edmund was forced to put a spell of binding on her, so that she could not hurt anyone in the family. She cursed me then, cursed me with her last breath, saying I should have no joy of any of my wives, nor would any child of my line. At the time I thought little of it, for, as I said, the fever had quite put her out of her mind.”
During this speech Nizhoni wore an odd expression on her face, a strange half grimace, as if she were recalling those hours of pain and delirium. “Do I look mad to you?” she said at last.
“Now, no, but then was a different matter. You were so wild, screaming in both English and Diné, that half the time we didn’t know what you were saying…not until later, anyway.” His gaze shifted toward me, although I could tell it was difficult for him to look away from his wife. “She died just before dawn, and was buried in a little stand of cottonwoods down near the stream.”
Cold flooded through me as I realized that was where we stood now. Somewhere beneath my feet were Nizhoni’s bones. No wonder she had lingered here, haunting this quiet spot, for almost a hundred and forty years.
“We all did mourn her, but life goes on. I had a son to raise, and I did not wish him to be without a mother his entire life. A little more than a year later, I married a woman from one of the neighboring settlements. That…did not go well.”
“She died?” I ventured.
“Yes, four months gone with our child.” His jaw tightened. “I tried to tell myself that these things sometimes occurred, but….”
“But you married again, and the same thing happened.”
“Not precisely the same thing, but yes, she did not survive six months of marriage to me.” During all this he had seemed remarkably calm, but for the first time I saw a flash of anger in his dark eyes as he looked at Nizhoni, cold and calm, listening but saying nothing. “I understood then that Nizhoni’s dying curse had contained all her power within it, and there was no escape from it.” He drew in a breath then, spreading his hands wide. “And that, Angela McAllister, is the truth of what happened.”
“Your truth,” Nizhoni said, and I shook my head wearily.
“Everyone’s truth is a little different,” I told her. “Are you going to fight for another hundred and forty years over whose truth is better?”
She didn’t answer, but looked away, her gaze apparently fixed on the unnaturally sparkling stream a few
yards away.
“It seems to me,” I went on, thinking I really hadn’t signed up to be some sort of afterlife marriage counselor, but knowing I had to do something, “that you two were always misunderstanding one another. I suppose it’s not that strange, since you came from very different worlds.”
Not that it really excused either of their behavior. As much as I wanted to shake both of them for their stubbornness, for their refusal to reach out to one another and tell the other person the true nature of their feelings, I knew that really wasn’t going to help. What was done was done, as Aunt Rachel liked to say. All I could do was try to make sure the future didn’t carry with it these dark echoes from the past. And, whatever I might think of the way they’d been so horribly at cross-purposes, I hadn’t been there. I couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like to live back in that place and time, when societal pressures on men and women were so very different from what they were today.
But love was love, whether it was experienced now or in 1876. Maybe getting them to admit that would be enough. I pulled in a breath, then spoke. “Jeremiah, I just want to ask you one simple question.”
He inclined his head slightly but remained silent, waiting to hear what I was going to say.
“Did you love Nizhoni? Do you love her?”
“Yes,” he said simply. “I did, and I do. It was wrong of me to say nothing, and ever since I lost her, I have berated myself for my silence, but — ”
“That’ll work for now,” I broke in. “And Nizhoni, did you love Jeremiah?”
Silence. The air was so still that I thought I could hear the thudding of the blood in my ears, the faint creak of Jeremiah’s boots as he shifted his weight. What if she wouldn’t admit it? I didn’t have much left in my bag of tricks.
Something in the proud set of her shoulders seemed to slump, and she whispered, “Yes. I did. I was weak. I should not have allowed myself to care for him. I — ”
Her next words were smothered, however, as Jeremiah strode forward, took her in his arms, and kissed her so thoroughly that I found myself staring, embarrassed, at the ground, although I could still catch a glimpse of what they were doing out of the corner of my eye. After a brief, muffled sound, she made no protest, her arms tightening around him, drawing him close.
As they kissed, the stream grew brighter and brighter, looking like a ribbon of molten silver in the dark landscape. At last they broke apart, but I noticed their fingers were still intertwined, as if, after spending so many years apart, they could not bear to be separated again.
“Will you come with me now, beloved?” Jeremiah asked softly.
“Yes, my husband.” She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it softly. Pale metal glinted on his finger as she did so, and I realized he was still wearing a wedding ring. The briefest glance over her shoulder at me, and she said, “Be happy, Angela. For you will be alive to see your children grow to adulthood.”
Then they were moving away from me, somehow stepping onto the gleaming surface of the water, walking along it as if it were simply a pathway, until the light surrounded them. It seemed to flow over their limbs, embracing them, and then they were gone, the stream now looking like just an ordinary stream, all trace of that extraordinary silver light disappearing as if it had never been.
I stood there in the dark starlit night, pulling in one deep, heaving breath after another. Nizhoni was gone, and she had taken her curse with her. The Wilcoxes were free.
I was free.
Stepping out of the little stand of cottonwoods, I expected to see the empty fields and hillsides around me gradually fill in with the shapes of the houses and roads and walls that should be standing here…but they didn’t. Nothing changed, and I felt a stirring of fear inside me.
So Jeremiah and Nizhoni had gotten their happy ending…but did they have to leave me here in the otherworld she’d created with no way out?
Okay, Angela, I told myself. Breathe. You just accomplished the impossible, so getting out of here can’t be too hard compared to that.
I thought of where I was. Northwest of downtown, with high hills on either side. That was clear enough in my head from looking at Google maps. Now I just had to visualize how everything had appeared before Nizhoni’s reality took over — the dry creek bed with the bridge over it, the big houses to either side, sitting on their half- and third-acre plots.
So I closed my eyes and brought those pictures up in mind, recalling every last detail I could, right down to the fancy wooden playhouse/slide/swing-set combo I’d spotted in someone’s backyard. There. That should do it.
But when I looked around me, nothing had changed. Same cottonwoods, same stream moving briskly within its banks. Same vast, vast emptiness, with nothing around me except miles and miles of ponderosa pines.
My heart began to hammer in my chest. Just walk, I told myself. It’s better than standing here and doing nothing.
Seeming to move of their own accord, my feet took me away from the little grove where Nizhoni’s bones rested, down the creek, down in the general direction of the town center. What would happen if I made it all the way there, I wasn’t sure. Would I find an older version of Flagstaff, or nothing at all?
No, that wasn’t right. If I had somehow gotten stuck back in 1876, there wouldn’t even be a Flagstaff in the place I was looking.
A little sob caught in the back of my throat, but I kept going. I wouldn’t stop now, no matter what, not even if I walked over this stony ground until my flip-flops broke apart. If I made myself keep on, maybe I could still get back to Connor somehow. I tried to make myself feel the shape of his hand beneath mine, the way it had been resting when I went into the otherworld, but I couldn’t. My fingers were cold in the chilly night breeze, unwarmed by his flesh.
I don’t know how long I walked. The darkness never changed, and neither did the landscape. That is, maybe there were slight variations in the shapes of the hills and the locations of the trees, but I never saw a single sign of life. No buildings, no roads, no people.
Until….
Her back was to me, her long black hair lifting in a faint breeze that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere. I froze, wondering if this was Nizhoni, returned from wherever she’d gone with Jeremiah. Had she come back to help me?
My pace quickened, gravel crunching under my feet, and the woman turned. No, this was not Nizhoni. Only the silky dark hair was the same, hanging almost to her waist. But this woman was older, her face more oval.
And then I realized who it was.
“Marie?” I said, voice incredulous, cracking a little on the second syllable. “What — what are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to take you home,” she replied calmly, as if running into each other in this place was the most natural thing in the world. “I felt — I could tell you were having some trouble.”
“Were you watching me? How did you know I was here?” My voice sharpened. “Did you see what happened with Nizhoni and Jeremiah?”
“I had a vision of you here, and knew I must come.” Head tilting to one side, she asked, “What is this about Nizhoni and Jeremiah?”
“The curse is broken,” I said simply.
Her eyes shut, and she whispered something under her breath. “So it did come to pass. I wasn’t sure — ”
“Yeah, it might have been good to know you weren’t feeling totally certain, but since you bailed on us and only left a note — ”
“I am sorry about that. It was just” — she made an impatient gesture with one hand, as if trying to wave away something that had irritated her —“it became too difficult for me, because I knew you would learn about your father, and then all those memories I had tried to push away for so many years would come flooding back. I went back to the reservation, to surround myself with stillness, to keep myself from knowing the truth. It was weak of me, and I apologize, but I did not want to know what had become of him, how he had moved on with his life. ”
“But he hasn’t,�
� I said, my tone softer than I would have expected it to be. Maybe it was simply that I’d just seen how much damage love thwarted could do. “He’s hidden himself all these years, waiting for tonight to come, but I don’t think there’s ever been anyone else. He never stopped loving you.”
Her eyes widened, and it seemed as if she was struggling within herself, struggling to believe what I had just told her. Then she stood up a little taller, her shoulders straightening, and she said simply, “Then I think it’s time for both of us to go home.”
18
Promised Land
Marie took my hand firmly in hers, and we walked along the creek bed, heading south and east. This time, though, the empty fields and thickly growing pines began to fade away, replaced with the familiar sprawl of suburbia. And as the real world fell in around us, we began to move faster and faster, not flying as I had in some of my meditations, but still doing a credible imitation of The Flash as we covered the miles to downtown in only a few seconds.
At the last minute she let go of my hand, and I felt my consciousness fall into my body with an almost physical thud. My eyes shot open, and I saw Lawrence and my father watching me in concern, even as Connor’s fingers clasped mine and he said,
“Angela? What happened?”
It all seemed to hit me at once — Nizhoni, and Jeremiah, and how they had walked away from me up that shining creek, going into the light. “It’s over,” I whispered. For some reason, my throat felt as dry as if I’d walked a hundred miles of desert road.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s over’?” Connor asked.
“The curse. It’s broken. They made up, and he kissed her, and they went into the light together.”
None of that was probably very coherent, but he seemed to get the gist of it, because his eyes lit up and he pulled me against him, kissing my mouth and my cheeks and my forehead while somehow laughing at the same time. I didn’t mind, even when he missed and kissed my eyelid. After all, it was Connor, and just to feel him and hear him was enough for me.
Darkmoon (The Witches of Cleopatra Hill Book 3) Page 26
