by Peggy Webb
He used the past tense. As if the bullet had already done its job.
She couldn’t even say thank you for fear of breaking down. Her eyes were red and puffy, for she’d cried all the way from Oklahoma to the Hudson River. She’d barely been able to get from Logan Airport in one piece.
Inside the ICU cubicle, Clayton lay against the pillows, his face drained of the rich copper tints of his heritage. Kate stood silently by his side, not yet willing to make her presence known, wishing she could spare him this final humiliation: Her golden idol had turned to clay. The man she respected and revered above all others, the doctor who had taught her to save lives, had tried to take his own.
The previous night after the line had gone dead, she’d tried frantically to reach him. She called his house and got no answer. Then she called the hospital, expecting him to be on duty, expecting him to laugh and say the phone call was a sick prank.
Instead, she talked to Melissa Sayers Colbert. “He’s asking for you, Kate. He keeps calling your name, over and over.”
“Why? Why did he do it?”
“Because he loved” —Melissa became hysterical, sobbing and keening into the phone. Kate hung on to the receiver, her knuckles turning white— “me. It was me he loved. Clayton loved me.”
“Of course he did, Mrs. Colbert. He always spoke of you in glowing terms.”
“He did?”
“Yes. Always,”
Now, looking down at his pale face, Kate whispered, “Why, Dr. Colbert? Why?”
His eyelids fluttered open. One hand lifted feebly toward her as he tried to focus his eyes.
“Ka—”
“Shhh. Don’t talk. I’m here.” She took his hand, scared by the cool, boneless feel of it.
He closed his eyes once more, and his chest heaved with his shallow breathing.
“I talked with your wife,” Kate said. “She’s right outside in the waiting room. She hasn’t left your side since they brought you in.” Why? Why?
“The ...clinic . . .”
“It’s wonderful. We had a beautiful open house.” Just the two of us, three counting the governor.
“The house . . .”
“Don’t worry about the house. I’m not much of a housekeeper, as you well know, but it’s still in passable condition. I’ll go on a real cleaning spree when I get home; then, when you come back to Witch Dance, that house will shine from top to bottom.”
Clayton Colbert was dying, and she couldn’t seem to stop her meaningless chatter. She was a doctor. She’d have to get used to death.
Brian and Charles floating away in the water came to her mind. No. She’d never get used to death.
“They’re ...yours, Kate. My will . . .” Clayton felt himself drifting away. He couldn’t go. Not yet. He clung to Kate’s hand. It was warm and full of strength. If he could just hang on, her energy would flow through him. “I want you . . .”
“Please, Dr. Colbert . . .”
“...to have them.”
Silent tears flowed down her cheeks, and Clayton knew: Kate loved him, loved him in the purest, most beautiful way.
He didn’t have to die after all.
Melissa came in and kissed him. Her lips felt dry and cold. Beyond his wife’s head he saw Kate, his beautiful Kate with hair like a halo.
“I love you,” he said, but she didn’t seem to hear.
“Flat line,” someone said. Melissa flung herself across his chest, but he didn’t feel a thing. He was already floating, floating toward the light that was as bright as his Kate’s hair.
o0o
Melissa Sayers Colbert stood beside the open grave, watching Clayton being lowered into the ground, wretched and broken in her grief, holding tightly to the hand of the woman standing beside her. Leaves fluttered down from the oak tree and landed, golden, on the casket.
“Dr. Colbert would have liked that,” Kate Malone murmured. “He always found beauty in nature.”
Melissa didn’t know. There were many things she hadn’t known about her husband, things she’d learned from the woman beside her. Kate Malone.
Her nemesis. Her comforter.
He would have liked being buried in Witch Dance with Muskogean words spoken for him, Kate had said, but Melissa couldn’t bear the thought of having him so far away. She had to take comfort where she could get it, and the familiar words of the Episcopal priest made the sight of Clayton’s bronze casket disappearing into the dark hole bearable.
Keening in her agony, Melissa flung herself outward, toward the grave. Kate’s hands stayed her. Kate’s arms sustained her.
“Everything is going to be all right. Shhh ...everything is going to be all right.”
But it wasn’t. She’d killed her husband. She knew that as surely as if she’d pulled the trigger. The scene in the study replayed itself—Clayton with his head bowed, defeated, and she, oblivious of his pain, taking her pleasure any way she could get it.
“No,” she whispered. “No.”
Nothing in her life would ever be all right again. Clayton was gone from her forever.
Without knowing she was in the arena, Kate Malone had won. And even that didn’t matter anymore.
“Will you take me home?” Melissa sounded as old and tired as she felt. “I want to hear about Witch Dance. I want to know what Clayton had for breakfast and whether he read the paper in the morning or at night. I want to know what he did when he was walking the land, what he said, how he looked, how he acted. I want to know everything about him.” Oh, the wasted months. The wasted years when she’d stayed behind in Boston while he was roaming carefree over the land he loved. “Make him live for me again, Kate. Please.”
Kate took Dr. Colbert’s widow to their Beacon Hill house and told her every moment of Clayton’s last summer. In doing so, she relived her own summer, the soaring beauty of the land and the scorching passion of Eagle Mingo. It all rolled over her like the tide, with the same force, the same inevitability. The deep velvet nights with the stars hanging so low, they burned the skin. The muted mornings, as soft as pastel gowns, stitched and laced and beaded with love rituals. The thunder of horses’ hooves in the bright indigo days with the two of them racing along the river while the call of the winged ones echoed off the hills.
Her summer had a name, and its name was love.
Wrapping her arms around herself, wishing they were Eagle’s arms, she leaned toward the fire. Melissa’s voice was nothing more than a muted counterpoint to her thoughts.
Love. She was in love with Eagle Mingo.
Had he found her note on the clinic door? Did he miss her as terribly as she missed him? Did he want her as desperately?
“Clayton had a deep tribal affinity,” Melissa was saying. “I guess I never realized that.”
Kate knew someone else whose tribal affinity was even stronger, someone whose very being shouted Chickasaw.
“I tried to make him over,” Melissa continued. “I tried to make him forget everything he ever believed in, everything that was Chickasaw.”
Shivers skittered along Kate’s spine. Could Eagle ever forget he was a full-blood?
“In the end, I think that’s what killed him. He could never buy back the dignity I took away.” Melissa covered her face with her hands and began to sob. “If I could have him back for one more day, one more hour . . .”
Speaking soothing words, Kate gave her hot tea and a sedative and put her to bed. Then, exhausted both physically and emotionally, she leaned against the bedroom door and closed her eyes. She needed about twelve hours sleep and then a week to absorb all that had happened. But one need overrode all others: to see Eagle and tell him she loved him.
Chapter 15
Witch Dance
Winston couldn’t find his way through the snowstorm. He kept stumbling and falling, and the wind was taking his breath away. An avalanche started high in the mountains and tumbled downward with terrifying speed. He took the full blow on his head.
“Winston ...Winston . . .”
Dovie was calling him from far away. “Wake up, honey. You’re having a nightmare.”
He struggled to sit up, and the avalanche knocked him back to the pillows.
“Winston!” Dovie’s scream brought Wolf and Star running. “Call Cole,” she yelled, jerking on her robe and slippers. “Find Eagle.”
“What’s the matter?” Wolf said,
“Something horrible is happening to your father.”
o0o
Ada
The entire family gathered around Winston’s hospital bed. That was the way he wanted it. IV tubes were hooked into his arms, and the left side of his face was drawn from the stroke, but he could still talk. Barely. And he still had his wits, or so the doctors said.
“You were lucky, Winston. Your cognitive abilities are still intact.”
He’d need them for what he was about to do.
“My people are now without a leader.” His speech was excruciatingly slow and slurred, but they all seemed to understand. Dovie squeezed his right hand, and he squeezed back. She understood what he was going to do. Many a night they’d lain side by side in their big bed discussing this very thing: the transfer of the Mingo mantle of duty.
“You’ll be back in no time.” Cole’s eyes betrayed his lie. “A little medicine, a little therapy, and you’ll be back in the governor’s office, giving us all hell.”
Mingo released Dovie and raised his hand for silence.
Star tried to muffle her sobs, and Wolf tried to look grown-up. His younger children were scared, but he wasn’t about to give up and let them be without a father. No, he wasn’t going to die, at least not anytime soon if the doctors could be trusted, but neither was he going to recover. Not entirely. Part of him was gone forever, the physical and emotional strength that would allow him to lead his nation.
“My firstborn will take my place.” His eldest son’s face was impassive. That was good. A leader’s thoughts should not be discerned merely by the expression on his face.
Winston closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his strength. He had to get everything said now, in case the doctors were wrong.
“Both my oldest sons have great qualities, but only one of them will lead this nation.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Eagle.”
Cole’s wife put her hand over his arm, and he smiled at her.
“It was fated from the beginning, Anna,” Cole said.
An expectant hush fell on the room, and all eyes turned toward Eagle. With the perfect stillness in his face that Winston knew would soon become a trademark, Eagle moved toward the bed. Only his eyes betrayed his thoughts, his glittering, tragic eyes.
He took his father’s hand, and in the ancient tongue of his people he accepted the terrible mantle of duty.
“It shall be as you wish. I am Eagle Mingo with the blood of my Chickasaw fathers for generations back to the great chieftain Piomingo flowing through my veins. I will serve my people and my nation with honor. And I will never waver in my duties.”
Winston closed his eyes. He could rest now. The transfer of power was complete.
o0o
Eagle knew she would come to him beside the river. And so he waited, waited beside the mystical fire, letting the new gold of autumn leaves and the hurried rush of the river transfuse his soul.
He saw the white mare coming from a great distance. And when the moon showed its face from behind the cloud, he saw her hair, luminous as the flames warming his skin.
Naked, he stood with his arms outstretched. And she came to them without words, without preliminaries.
He held her with his hands pressed against the flat of her back and her curves fitted softly against his body. The night wind blew her hair against his cheek and her skirts against his leg. The look, the feel, the taste of her seeped through his skin and into his blood, and he knew that she was a part of him, would always be a part of him.
In that crystal moment he would have traded his soul to be with her forever.
He kissed her softly, as if it were the first kiss in creation, too new to be treated with anything except gentleness. And when she began to hum deep in her throat, he devoured her with lips and teeth and tongue.
“I couldn’t wait to get back to you,” she whispered. “I couldn’t wait . . .”
Kate stepped out of her dress, and as it fell in a soft heap at her feet, the ceremonial leave-taking he’d planned flew from his mind, borne away on the winds of passion that swept over him. He took her down to his blanket, and surrounded by her burning flesh he made love in a firestorm of emotion, heaving against her with a silent intensity that sought to obliterate everything in the universe except their two bodies, melded and slick and desperate.
The moon turned her skin to silver and the glow of her entered into him, bone, sinew, and blood; and he knew that as long as he lived, the memories of this night would live too, a shining, untouchable core that was Kate Malone.
Beside them, the river sang its timeless song and their horses whinnied softly. Father Sky withheld his chilling breezes, sending instead the warm breath of Indian summer.
Eagle covered her until they lay at last with arms and legs entwined, temporarily sated. He laced her fingers tightly with his, and pressed their joined hands against his heart. His pain leapt upward and outward, bearing its unspeakable ugliness toward Kate so that she turned to him, uneasy and not understanding why.
“Eagle?”
Her eyes were the color of the sea under storm, and he knew that he would never again see them changing as the seasons do, from the bright emerald of laughter to the smoky gray of fear.
Silently he called upon the four Beloved Things Above to give him comfort, but they hid their faces from him and would not be found.
“Shhh.” He touched her lips with his. “Now is not the time for talking.”
Now was the time for saying good-bye.
Eagle left the blanket. In his tent were two large seashells and the feather of an eagle. Taking Kate gently by the arms, he positioned her, kneeling, upon his blanket.
“Waka ahina uno, iskunosi Wictonaye.” Facing her, he knelt and cupped her face. “Waka.”
“Oh, yes . . .” She threaded her fingers in his hair. “Yes, my golden Eagle.”
“Sexual fire is the magic of life,” he said as he kindled a miniature fire in the largest seashell. “All the powers of the universe come together to create this magic, just as you and I will come together.”
With the feather of his namesake he fanned the purifying smoke over their bodies. It curled around her thighs and drifted upward, ever upward, taking with it the power of the fire and the power of the eagle.
Kate’s body went slack, and she reached for him. He caught her hands and held them tightly.
“A while yet, Wictonaye. This must be done with ceremony.”
Sudden understanding made her weak. Braced against his hands, she leaned forward. Through the veil of smoke his face was unreadable, but nothing could hide the torment in his eyes.
“This is good-bye, isn’t it, Eagle?”
“This is good-bye.”
Kate held him fast. It was far, far too late for running away.
“Why?”
“While you were gone my father had a stroke.”
She bit her lower lip to still her cry of despair.
“I am the oldest son, the chosen one.” The smoke could not obscure the mark of the eagle on his thigh. “I will lead my people.”
Love for him beat against her heart like tides seeking the shore, but she kept her feelings inside. From the beginning she’d known that Eagle could never belong to her.
“We had our summer, Eagle.” His eyes burned into hers, and the smell of smoke became overwhelming. All the powers of the universe melded into a single explosion of sexual fire.
Kate and Eagle came together with such force that all the prairie became silent with awe. Even the winds stopped to watch and listen. In the dead calm there were no sounds except the anguished murmur of Muskogean. And wh
en there were finally no ways left to say good-bye, the chosen one and his Wictonaye filled the night with their shattered cries.
They lay silent against each other, heaving. At last Eagle raised himself up and dipped the feather into the second seashell. The smell of lavender filled the air.
Kate didn’t move as he caressed her body with the feather. The fragrant water beaded her breasts and pooled in the indentation of her navel. Shivers skittered along her skin when he touched the cool, wet feather between her thighs.
Their gazes locked, held.
“If you would say to me, ‘Stay,’ I would give up everything for you, Kate. Everything.”
“How do you know I won’t, Eagle? How do you know I won’t get on my knees and beg you to stay?”
The feather brushed the blue-veined skin inside her thighs and behind her knees and in the arch of her foot. Sexual fires rekindled in Kate, but she held them inside.
“Because I know you, Kate. You’re too proud to beg.”
With Eagle bending over her, golden and delicious, and the scent of pheromones and lavender filling the air, Kate almost proved him wrong. In one graceful movement she stood to face him.
“Not too proud for one last good-bye,” she whispered.
He bracketed her hips, pulling her to him. The night was deep and watchful as he bade her a final farewell. When it was over, she knelt beside him, and, dipping the eagle feather into the lavender water, she cleansed his lips.
Her hand trembled when she laid the feather aside. That small weakness was the only one she’d allow herself.
“Good-bye, Eagle.”
“Take Mahli, Kate. She’s yours.”
Three months earlier she would have refused the extravagant gift, but her summer among the Chickasaws had taught her that gifts were not to be rebuffed.
“I’ll take good care of her, Eagle.”
“She’ll be receptive soon. I will breed her to the black. All I ask is for her colt.”
“Of course. When Mahli is ready, I’ll bring her to you.” She took a small step back, severing herself from him by degrees. Already his face was a mask. Even his eyes were unreadable. The fire was gone from them, and they were as deep and black as the bottom of the sea.
