Captive Spirit

by Liz Fichera

  Then, barely leaving a print in the dirt, I crept away from my spot on the cold ground. I left the rabbit skins and the sleeping men and tiptoed till I was far enough away to draw back a breath.

  And then I started to run.

  I ran toward my village—at least in the direction where I thought it would be. With the sun over my left shoulder, I was certain I could find my way back home.

  My legs and hips still throbbed from pressing against the thick man’s shoulder, but I ran as fast and as hard as I could anyway. Instead of leaping over pale green sage brush, I leapt over round bushes with leaves so green they were almost black. When I landed, the balls of my feet slammed against dry pointy leaves that covered the dirt. It was like landing on a bed of cactus spines. I winced but kept running. There was no time to think about pain. No time to think. Running was my only chance at escaping from the World Beyond, my only option.

  Behind me, the men yelled. I didn’t understand their words but their message was clear. After a while, their angry voices grew fainter and I was grateful for that. So I pushed harder, wanting to put as much distance between us that I could. I didn’t know how far I needed to run to reach Sleeping Mule Deer and my village and it didn’t matter. I’d run till I saw them. I’d run forever if necessary.

  Sweat beads trickled down my forehead even though the sky was still cold and grey. My dress stuck to my legs and my necklace bounced against my chest with each step but I got further and further away, despite it all. I ran until my feet turned numb. One more bush to jump over, then another. They were endless and covered this new world, the World Beyond, as far as Hunab Ku allowed me to see.

  And then suddenly, over the steady drumming inside my head, I heard a growl in the distance, a low, deep, gurgling sound. There was no time to track it. I sucked back an anxious breath and kept running.

  But then the growl echoed and seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Only for a moment, my pace slowed as my eyes swept in frantic circles across the grey morning light, looking for what belonged to the sound, tracking it but seeing nothing. I suddenly wondered, Is the hunger and thirst in my belly playing tricks on me?

  I squeezed my eyes shut only a heartbeat but kept my fast pace. The sweat from my forehead stung my eyes. I blinked again and just as soon as they opened a large shock of grey and white charged into my chest, pushing me backwards with its claws.

  I screamed as I fell to the ground. I landed on my back, hard.

  Instinctively, I curled into a ball as soon as I crashed to the ground and covered my face but the beast continued to growl next to my face. Its breath was hot and sticky. And then its growl turned into a bark when it had me trapped. I couldn’t escape its teeth. It yelped and barked so loudly and close to my ears that my head began to ring like one of Onawa’s wooden flutes. I crouched low to the ground, screaming, shielding my face with my arms but the growling beast wouldn’t back away. The more I screamed, the louder it barked, triumphant, as it stood over me, baring its fangs with front teeth as long as my finger. I was certain that it planned to feast on my flesh. And there was little I could do to stop it.

  And then one of the men appeared out of nowhere. He laughed as he towered over me, blocking me from the sun. It was the thicker one. Mercifully, he pulled the beast back by the scruff of his neck.

  “Up,” he commanded, although that’s what I think he said. I finally lowered my arms from my face, breathing so hard that my chest threatened to split open. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the beast. I feared him more than the strangely dressed man. The beast looked back at me uneasily with golden eyes, his yelps reduced to a soft growl, as if waiting for me to flee again.

  At first I thought the beast was a coyote. But it was no coyote that I’d ever seen. I’d seen plenty when they ventured into our village searching for discarded bones and meat scraps. Coyotes never scared me; they were too small. But this beast was bigger and broader across the haunches, and its paws were as big as my palms. The man, remarkably, patted the animal’s head and stroked the back of its grey coat like they were old friends. The beast finally stopped growling and licked the man’s hand with a long pink tongue before it nuzzled its snout against his knee.

  “Lobo,” the man said to me.

  I watched him numbly.

  “Lobo,” he said again, nodding to the beast.

  “Lobo,” I finally whispered. It was a name I’d never forget. I blinked, unable to look away from the beast. Lobo was a word I recognized, although until that moment I thought that wolves were only found in Yuma’s stories.

  Chapter Six

  I had never been a prisoner before, although I guessed that’s what I was. Why else would the man tie my hands?

  With a thin piece of cotton rope, he took my hands into his rough ones and wrapped the rope three times around my wrists until my skin burned. I wanted to cry out but I didn’t. What would crying accomplish?

  With my hands tied in front of me, the man and his wolf led me back to where we had left the other two men and the deerskin sacks.

  The men were standing when we returned, paying me scant attention. They moved between the sacks with a sense of urgency and purpose. They’ve done this before. Traveling. Lots of times. I could tell.

  One of them, the shorter man, stood alongside three enormous animals that I had never seen before in all my life. Like me, they were tethered to the man with a long, dark rope. Were they prisoners, too?

  I stopped walking at the mere sight of them, afraid that they could charge at me like the wolf. The ropes hardly seemed a deterrent to beasts their size. One was as wide as a pit house. All three were taller than even the tallest man among them.

  When I stopped to gawk, the thick man pushed me forward and said, “Horse.”

  “Horse?” I whispered, although I said it like a question. Horse was not a word I’d heard before, not even in the old stories told by Yuma or Ituha. It was a strange word that hissed through my teeth, like a deep exhale. There were no horses in my village, only deer that we hunted in the mountains. It would have been as easy to put a rope around the neck of a deer as it would to catch a lightning bolt in the sky.

  I assumed the men would eat the beasts, maybe one of them, but it seemed like too much meat for three people—four, if they planned to feed me. The horses were muscled across the chest with silky coats, reddish brown like my skin and blue-black like a night sky. It didn’t seem possible that their four skinny legs could support their bellies. Yet I wondered what the meat would taste like, especially as my stomach growled. Would it be dry like deer meat or greasy like rabbit?

  I was surprised that instead of butchering one of the horses, the third man, the tall one with the scar across his mouth, began to hoist deerskins atop their broad backs. One of the horses made an anxious, high-pitched screeching sound as its long snout snorted into the cool air. It had strange, tiny black eyes on either side of its long snout that regarded me warily, like the wolf.

  The man with the scar clucked his tongue and talked to the horse as he worked. His deep voice soothed the horses, oddly.

  Everyone was busy packing, moving, talking—everyone except me. All I could do was stand, motionless. Staring. With the wolf at my side, I didn’t dare run again. I’d be more successful lifting my arms and soaring into the sky.

  So I stood there, my knees wobbling from hunger, cold and thirst, watching the men load their horses. I still didn’t know why they had carried me away from my village or where they planned to take me but I was theirs now, like one of their deerskin sacks, until I figured how to escape.

  And I would escape. That much I promised myself.

  I looked over my shoulder toward my village. I couldn’t see it but I knew it was there, over mountains that disappeared from the horizon, waiting for my return. A lump grew deep in my throat as I regarded the lonely horizon. So many hours spent dreaming about the World Beyond and now all I wanted was to be back home, safe, working alongside Gaho at the hearth, running aft
er Chenoa in the saguaro forest, watching Honovi play in the ball court. So many lost memories spinning around inside my head.

  Until finally I spun around and faced the men, my nostrils flaring.

  “Water,” I said. My tone was urgent.

  The men stopped, no doubt surprised by my tone.

  “Water,” I said again, louder, even as my voice cracked from the dryness coating my throat and the building tears behind my eyes. I blinked them back. Tears wouldn’t return me to my village. I needed water and food to think clearly. I made a drinking motion with my hand. Surely these oddly dressed men with the strange voices wouldn’t allow me to die of thirst or starve. Why go to the trouble to take me in the first place?

  The wolf lay close to my legs, keeping me captive by its nearness. Its fur brushed against my leg, rough and scratchy like a dried cornstalk, as the thicker man reached into one of the sacks and pulled out a deerskin pouch no bigger than my hand. He walked to me from where he stood next to the horses. He raised the pouch to my lips. A few drops dribbled onto my lips but I wanted—needed—more. He pulled it away but I surprised myself again by shaking my head. “More,” I begged. “Please, I’m so thirsty. I need more.”

  The man sighed and then, reluctantly, raised the pouch only to pull it back abruptly. He smiled. Then he said, “If you behave, you’ll get more later. Food, too. If you’re good.”

  “Please,” I begged again. “Just a little more.”

  He sighed again and then raised the pouch. The man with the scar glared at him but said nothing.

  I took another greedy gulp, not caring that some of the water dribbled down my neck, before he pulled it away.

  But the man beside me surprised me again. He reached inside his pocket and put a strip of something soft in my hands. He pressed it against my palm until he was sure that I wouldn’t drop it. He raised his hands to his lips, motioning for me to eat, before returning to the sacks and the horses.

  I watched him walk away and then, very carefully, I raised my tied hands to my lips. I inhaled the strip. The smell was sharp and spicy and wrinkled my nose. Curious, I licked it once before stuffing one end of it inside my mouth. Was it a trick? Would it make me sick?

  No.

  I sniffed it again and smiled, relieved. It was only a piece of dried meat—maybe rabbit or squirrel—and it was so delicious that I could have eaten a handful, not just a thin morsel no longer than my tongue. Lobo’s tail thumped steadily at my feet and I paused from savoring the dried meat when his tail whacked against my leg. It thumped steady like a drumbeat and reminded me of everything I left behind.

  I stared down at him. The tip of his tail was white as a cloud and matched the streak down his chest. My eyes traveled to his face. Lobo gazed up at me with strangely curious eyes. Slowly, I split my precious piece of dried meat into two pieces with my teeth. I stuck one of the pieces into my mouth, savoring it, letting it roll underneath my tongue, while I lowered my tied hands to Lobo’s snout. Warily, I opened my hand and waited for him to take the second piece. He took it with his long tongue, not his teeth, and I drew back a relieved breath.

  Lobo’s half disappeared in a heartbeat, but then he nudged closer and continued to study me, his tail thumping faster, his head tilted. Suddenly his paws didn’t seem so enormous or his fangs so terrifying.

  And I couldn’t help myself.

  I smiled down at Lobo. That’s when his cold wet nose nuzzled my hands and I very carefully stroked the top of his head with my fingertips. The fur on his head was as soft as bird feathers. His ears flopped backwards while I scratched and stroked. And then I knew.

  In the unlikeliest of places, I had found a friend.

  Chapter Seven

  When we left, it was as if we were never there and that scared me most of all.

  The three men loaded the horses, careful not to leave a thread or a footprint behind. The youngest one swept away our tracks with the ends of a tree branch.

  How would my family find me? Did they know I’d been taken?

  Yet inside I wept for the people in my village. I could never forget how their screams pierced the sky as the desert burned all around them. And when I closed my eyes, I only saw the terrified faces of people I had known my whole life. The images shook my entire body, with rage or fear I was not certain. But how did it happen? How did we let it happen? Why would anyone destroy my village? And why take me?

  I stared over my shoulder toward Sleeping Mule Deer, still trying to piece together the fire, my capture, and everything in between. The taste of blood in my mouth was a reminder that my worst fears were still very real.

  I wasn’t dreaming.

  I wouldn’t wake up on my mat next to Chenoa in the pit house while Gaho stoked the hearth, a sliver of grey from the sky brightening the room. And with each step the horses took, I was one step deeper into the World Beyond, missing my family more than I ever thought possible.

  Strange beasts, horses. They were broader than deer and more skittish than coyotes.

  The thicker man, the one with whom I rode, motioned for me to climb on top of the tallest horse when they were ready to leave. I assumed we’d walk. Walking was all I did when I wasn’t running. So when he nodded toward the horse, I shook my head, confused, and dug my heels into the ground as if that would somehow change his mind.

  But then the other man, the one with the scar, grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me atop the horse like one of his deerskin sacks before I had a chance to blink. The horse barely moved but my entire body wobbled as I clenched my thighs together to keep from falling sideways.

  I’d never ridden a horse. Before the last moon’s rise, I’d never seen one. Riding a horse was like sitting atop a boulder at the river except this red boulder moved and made irritated snorting sounds, like mother javalinas herding their young.

  After I was seated, the thicker man lifted his leg and mounted the horse so he sat in front of me. He held the long rope that thread around the horse’s head. As he held the ropes and clucked to the horse, my breathing slowed and I wasn’t so frightened, although my legs began to chafe against the horse’s fur. His fur wasn’t silky, not like the white strip between Lobo’s ears. The horse’s coat felt rough like sand and smelled of sweat.

  As we rode, Lobo ran beside us, sometimes barking, other times running ahead in search of rabbits and birds, his long pink tongue hanging over the side of his mouth. Whenever he got too close to the horses, the horses whinnied and he’d run off till he was almost a grey dot on the horizon. But I worried whenever I didn’t hear his bark or see his wagging tail.

  When the sun beamed directly over us in a cloudless sky, the man seated in front of me finally spoke. He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Name?” he said in strangely accented tones. “What is your name?” He pointed a finger at my chest.

  I sucked back a breath at the question. I knew what he asked. But why would a man care about the name of his captive? Stunned, I stayed silent, in case it was a trick.

  Then he pointed to his chest and said, “I am Diego.” I couldn’t help but focus on his lips when he spoke. His words were almost the same as mine except that his voice rose and fell in different places. His voice was like a song while mine was heavier, boxier. I wanted him to speak more. I wanted to hear more words. “Your name?” he asked me again, slowly.

  I swallowed. Finally, I said, “Aiyana,” just as soon as his right eyebrow arched impatiently.

  “Pretty name,” he said, surprising me again. He did understand me. How was that possible? “For a pretty girl.”

  I spoke slowly, in case my words confused him. “Where is your village?” I asked.

  “Spain,” he said simply.

  I’d never heard of that village before. I had only heard of the White Ant and the Red Ant Clans. Ours was the only village I knew. “Where is Spain?” I said. It was difficult to say the name of his village at first. Like the word horse, Spain sounded odd as it rolled off my tongue, as if it had no place on my lips.
r />   He sighed loudly, extending his arm. “Very far from here.” His face turned mournful, like he was thinking about something special. Or impossible.

  “Is that where you’re taking me? Spain?”

  He shook his head and chuckled.

  At first I thought he didn’t understand me. But then he clucked at his horse when it tried to stop and graze on a patch of wispy grasses. “No,” he said, pursing his lips as his eyes scanned the strange landscape that stretched before us. He patted a deerskin sack that hung next to his leg just as the horses began to climb. I had to grip Diego’s belt to keep from flipping off the horse’s backside.

  As the horses climbed, the air turned colder and thinner; the ground, darker and rockier. It became harder to breathe and not just because I was scared.

  “Where, then?” I prodded, anxious to learn more about my captors.

  Diego turned completely forward in the saddle and snapped the rope that threaded through his hands. The horse trotted faster and we bounced uncomfortably until we reached the other two men riding single-file in front of us.

  “Where?” I asked again but Diego wouldn’t answer me. Frustrated, my eyes instinctively scanned for Lobo. I felt a relieved pang in my chest when I saw the back of his legs and his wagging tail even though a grey rabbit squirmed between his jaws. Sadly, I knew how his rabbit felt.

  “Why have you taken me?” I whispered but Diego still wouldn’t answer. At least he let me ask the question so I tried again, even as tears built behind my eyes. “Why have you harmed my people? What happened to my village?”

  Diego remained silent. Suddenly he behaved as if he didn’t understand me, as if my words were gibberish.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself not to whimper like a child as my chin lowered next to my chest. When my eyes finally opened, I was staring down the front of my deerskin at Gaho’s necklace and my tied wrists.

  My heartbeat quickened. My eyes widened.