Captive Spirit

by Liz Fichera

  I was alone. My breathing quickened.

  I rose and then walked away backwards a few steps till I was certain that no one was watching.

  I wove slowly between the bushes and trees, crouching low to stay hidden. The further away from the horses and the deerskin sacks, the more invisible I became. Most of the trees were lush and green and taller than I. When I stood behind one, it completely covered me, although the tips of the leaves pricked my skin like saguaro needles whenever I brushed too close.

  “Aiyana!” Diego yelled, startling me. His voice wasn’t close but it was close enough.

  I swallowed and circled in place. Where to next? It would be so easy to escape. I wanted so badly to run. But how far could I get without protection for my feet? My teeth began to chatter and my hands pressed anxiously against my neck.

  My necklace.

  Yes…

  Quickly, I untied my necklace and pulled another shell from the cord.

  “Aiyana! We need a fire,” Diego yelled. “Now!”

  Lobo barked. And just like Diego’s voice, the barks grew closer.

  With trembling fingers, I yanked one of the braided tassels from the ends of my dress. Then I threaded it through the shell, almost dropping it at first. My fingers trembled from fear as much as from cold.

  “Aiyana!” Diego yelled again, this time angry.

  “Yes!” I yelled back. My voice cracked and sounded too forced, even to my ears.

  I didn’t have much time.

  Frantically, my eyes scanned the branches. I found one eye level with me. There I hung the shell and wrapped the thread around a thin branch three times, not caring that the leaves poked my fingertip. Blood dribbled down my hand but I spun away from the tree before leaping over a small bush. I dropped to the ground, landing on my palms.

  “Aiyana!” Diego yelled again, louder this time. Lobo barked alongside him, drowning out everything else.

  Their footsteps got closer and my temples pounded.

  When they reached me, I was crouched on the ground and reaching underneath a bush. Lobo immediately ran to my side and began nuzzling my neck as if I had been gone for ten suns instead of only a handful of heartbeats.

  “Didn’t you hear me calling?”

  “Yes,” I said quickly. My throat was dry. “I was…I was just trying to find dryer branches to start the fire.”

  Diego’s head tilted, considering this. Did he understand my words? Did he believe me? If he noticed the blood on my hand, he didn’t say.

  I begged Hunab Ku to keep Diego’s eyes from spotting my hanging shell. It hung only three footsteps from where he found me.

  “Good. Because we need a fire for the rabbit,” he said as his eyes narrowed over my head. He looked as if he sensed danger, and a line of goose bumps raced down my back. Did he see the shell? Was I too obvious?

  But then I slowly stood and clutched three dry branches against my chest as if they would keep me from drowning. I fidgeted from one foot to the other, trying to warm my feet. They were bright red and as cold as the tip of my nose.

  I sniffed.

  Diego’s eyes lowered to my feet. “Yes, well, dryer branches would be better.”

  “My feet are so cold,” I said, anxious to pull him away from the tree, back to horses, back to the fire. “May I have something for my feet?”

  Diego sighed but then his lips pursed. “That is why I gave you the rabbit skins. The night you tried to run.”

  I swallowed, remembering. And who knew how far I would have gotten if Diego hadn’t found me. Or Lobo. I should hate Lobo with his perfect hearing and sense of smell. But I couldn’t.

  Diego’s voice softened. He stepped closer and placed his hand on my shoulder, squeezing it. “Will you try to run again?”

  I blinked then I shook my head, obediently.

  “Promise?” His voice turned silky.

  I swallowed hard, nodding.

  “Good,” he said, as his eyes studied mine, narrowing and then widening. “You have beautiful eyes, Aiyana. I didn’t notice them before. They’re green.” His voice trailed off as he drew me closer by the shoulders.

  My eyes lowered when I felt my cheeks burn. The touch of his hand on my shoulder made me nervous, even anxious. Truth be told, it sickened me.

  “As green as the pine trees. As green as the forest,” he added, a curious smile in his voice.

  I couldn’t raise my eyes to his.

  He finally dropped his hands. But instead of falling to his side, his hand reached for my chin so that I had to look at him.

  “Aiyana,” he said. “Why won’t you look at me? I won’t hurt you.”

  My body stiffened. I didn’t believe him. He’d already hurt me; he took me from my home. He burned my village.

  “Then it’s settled,” he said, his cold fingers underneath my chin. “After we eat, you will have something for your feet. I can’t have you freeze to death.”

  And then he let go of my chin.

  I swallowed and forced myself to say, “Thank you.” The words tasted bitter. And before I could stop myself, I asked, “Why would you be so kind?”

  Diego wouldn’t answer. He simply took me by the elbow and led me back to the horses and his friends.

  I supposed if he could lie to me than I could lie to him. I had every intention of escaping again. Nothing, not even a belated kindness, would stop me from returning to my village or despising him.

  ***

  The second moon’s rise was better than the first but hardly easy. With each step higher into the mountains, I was that much further from my village.

  At least with a full belly of rabbit and bits of dried meat, my vision wasn’t as blurry, and my body didn’t ache so much from the cold. I wrapped the rabbit pelts around my feet with the cord that had been tied around my wrists. A deerskin sack served as a thin blanket over my back and shoulders. And I knew that my escape was fast approaching. Any longer and our horses would reach the top of a mountain that seemed to disappear into the clouds. I feared that once we crossed that ridge, I could never return.

  As the horses climbed, the trees grew thicker and taller. The bright greens from the leaves and the grasses were almost blinding except for the occasional golden yellows and muted reds that looked out of place on the same branches. And the trees stretched as high as the mountain itself, with skinny brown trunks that grew straight into the air. I marveled at their ability to stay upright without falling. It seemed even the gentlest wind could topple them.

  And the wind. The wind on the giant mountain never stopped howling. When I tilted my head, the cold air brushed across my ears. It was like listening to a hundred voices all whispering at once. Once I thought I heard Gaho call my name.

  Because of the wind, I didn’t dare drop another shell to the dirt. The wind and the knee-high grasses would only bury it forever.

  My eyes constantly studied the ground and the trees for things to eat and places to hide. I needed them both when I escaped. But we hadn’t crossed a stream or a river. Unless the mountain trees held water in their branches the same way the saguaros did, I’d die of thirst. I decided that I’d need to steal one of Diego’s deerskin water pouches. Would they miss just one?

  But then it was as if Hunab Ku himself heard the thoughts spinning inside my head.

  “There is a small stream up ahead,” Diego announced, pointing past the shoulders of Jorge and Alfonso. “It’s on the map.” He patted the deerskin sack hanging closest to his leg.

  Map. So that’s what they called their strange black symbols, symbols that tell a man where to go. I turned my head into the wind and heard rushing water. I closed my eyes and inhaled the cold damp air. The faint scent of moisture tickled the inside of my nose. It was definitely water. I could smell it.

  “We’ll stop there,” Diego said. The horses’ skinny legs began to move with new purpose, as if they smelled water and rest, too. “This is where we’ll camp for the night.” I nodded obligingly and then Diego continued. “Can
you fish?”

  “Fish?” I blurted.

  “Yes,” he said. He pressed his fingers together and made a curvy motion with his hands.

  The corners of my mouth turned up in a tentative smile. I thought about all of the hours I spent with Honovi at the river. He taught me how to spear even the tiniest of silver fish with nothing but a sharpened reed. I was never as fast or as strong, but unlike Honovi, I was patient. I never returned to Gaho empty-handed and for that she, begrudgingly, allowed me to fish.

  “I can fish,” I said finally, careful not to react too boastfully. If I could fish, then I could survive.

  “Good,” Diego said. “That would be most helpful tonight. I’m tired of eating rabbits and squirrels.” He grimaced while I tried to suppress my enthusiasm. “Fish will be a nice change for us. Haven’t had fish since we left the outskirts of your fine village—”

  Diego stopped himself when my expression darkened. I wondered how long he and his men had been hidden in the deserts that surrounded my village. Why couldn’t they have just kept riding? Why couldn’t they have left us in peace? I didn’t understand the hearts of these strange men.

  Diego scratched the side of his head, turned abruptly, and caught up with Alfonso.

  “Stay with her,” he instructed Jorge.

  Jorge nodded and then started to fidget in place.

  Diego and Alfonso led the horses to one end of the stream that pooled at the bottom in a perfect circle. Water cascaded down a narrow cliff and my chest caved forward, watching it. The cliff’s jagged edges were covered with trees and vines and reddish brown rocks like the ones that surrounded my village. And if the water wasn’t so cold, I would have gladly dove in and bathed. My deerskin still reeked of smoke and my hair was knotted and smelled like the horses.

  Without a word to Jorge, I turned for the other end of the stream carrying the empty deerskin water pouches. Jorge followed, saying nothing. If he could stop staring at me long enough, I’d try to sneak a filled water pouch down the front of my dress. It had grown loose around my waist. Surely one small pouch could go unnoticed.

  The clear stream rushed over glistening red and brown rocks where the late afternoon sunlight was lucky to pierce through the tops of the trees that hid it from the sky. The water gushed so loudly that it drowned out the wind.

  Alongside me, Jorge knelt over the stream and began to fill the pouches that I lined next to the edge. I kept the tiniest one next to my foot and saved it for last. After I filled it, I tucked it close to my leg and then I bent over the stream and begin to cup water into my hands. I wanted to shriek from the cold. It stiffened my fingers but I kept cupping it anyway, splashing it over my face and neck and drinking till my lips turned numb. My skin prickled from the iciness of it, even the parts where the water didn’t touch.

  Jorge, still silent, did the same, and resorted to only sideways glances as he splashed water into his mouth. I wondered why I made him so nervous. Of the three men, I felt most comfortable with him, perhaps because he reminded me of Onawa. I wondered if I could trust him. Could he be a friend, too?

  “Are you from Spain, too?” I asked him carefully.

  His body stiffened. “Yes,” he said, his eyes darting away from mine. He threaded loose strands of his straight black hair behind his ears, more so as something to do with his hands.

  I paused, drank another handful of water, and then said. “What’s it like? Spain?”

  Jorge inhaled deeply and then sighed. He looked across the stream at the cottonwood trees that lined the edges. “It’s not like here.”

  “Then what’s it like?”

  Jorge shrugged his shoulder. He didn’t answer.

  I swallowed. Quietly, I said, “Do you miss your village?”

  He turned to me and nodded. In the clearness of his eyes, I could see that he told the truth.

  Tentatively, I said, “I miss my village, too.”

  But my words made Jorge nervous, uncomfortable. He rose from the water’s edge and dusted off the front of his pants. Suddenly he behaved as if he’d rather be anywhere than beside me. He stuffed his hands in his front pockets and started scanning the other side of the stream, the cliff, the sky—anything but me.

  I sighed inwardly. We were strangers again and I wondered if maybe that’s all people from different villages can ever be.

  I bent over the water and stared at my reflection. I brought my hand to my cheek. My face had thinned. My hair was frizzy around my face and I ran wet fingers through it, detangling some of the knots. I sat back on my knees, surrounded by the water pouches, and then scanned the river for fish. Fish as long as my forearm and the colors of the rainbow darted underneath the water, sometimes crashing into each other as they navigated the rocks. I smiled again. Catching a fish in this river would be easy. But I would need to make myself a spear.

  Jorge walked behind a nearby tree, close enough to keep an eye on me but far enough away for some privacy. He loosened his pants and I instinctively looked the other way. Anxiously, my eyes scanned the ground for a suitable stick, one that would be as long as my arm and no thicker than my thumb. It would serve as a spear.

  And a weapon.

  I would sharpen the tip with a flat river rock. Diego wouldn’t mind, as long as it caught fish.

  Across the stream, I stared at a wall of trees. The water’s edge was thick with them, all different sizes and shades of green. Some grew like deformed arms out of the side of the cliff. Finding a suitable stick would be as easy as spearing a juicy fish. As my eyes scanned for the perfect stick, something bright caught my eye in the midst of all the green. Just for a moment, it also caught a sliver of late afternoon sunlight. I blinked then rubbed my eyes. At first I thought it was a bird, maybe a dove.

  I squinted and then rubbed my tired eyes again.

  It wasn’t a bird. Or a feather. Or even a leaf.

  It dangled from a single tree branch across the river, eye level with me. If I wanted to, I could step across the larger rocks in the water and pluck it like a berry.

  But I didn’t. I didn’t dare.

  That’s because dangling from a bright green tree branch was one of the white shells from my necklace. The same one I tied to another tree in another place. What else could it be?

  More importantly, how did my shell find its way all the way up this endless mountain?

  Chapter Nine

  I couldn’t break my eyes away from the shell.

  I’d almost forgotten the small, half-filled water pouch that I left sitting alongside the stream. At the last minute, when I was certain Jorge wasn’t looking, I slipped it down the front of my dress, hoping my tightened belt would keep it from falling down to my feet when I walked.

  My heart raced as Jorge and I walked back to where Alfonso and Diego began to unpack their deerskin sacks. My mind spun with all of the possibilities, none of which made sense.

  How did my shell find its way to a tree branch?

  Who put it there? A bird? There were flocks of black birds the size of jack rabbits with yellow beady eyes darting above us. Certainly any one of them could carry a shell, but all this way?

  And what about Diego? Would Diego be so cruel as to give me false hope? Did he find the shell from where I left it? Would Alfonso?

  My hands and fingers trembled as I dug a hole for the fire, knowing that someone from my village—maybe even someone from my family—could be sharing the same air.

  I should have been concentrating on rubbing the fire sticks between my hands but my eyes refused to stop scanning the forest surrounding me. Breathing had become difficult; concentration, practically impossible. My hands turned clammy. The sticks kept dropping into the hole.

  “What’s taking so long with the fire?” Diego asked. His tone was unusually curt. I wondered, too late, whether Jorge had told him about our conversation by the stream.

  I lowered my eyes to the fire sticks and willed myself to concentrate. After blowing on my hands, I began to rub the sticks. One stic
k rubbed against the other while lying flat inside the freshly dug hole. Lobo sat beside me, his tail thumping expectantly against the cold ground. It kept perfect time with the beating near my temples. Lobo sniffed around my belt for more dried meat. Finding none, his snout dropped to his paws. Seems I couldn’t please anyone, not even a wolf.

  “The wood must be too wet,” I said, hoping that the anxiety in my voice went unnoticed. When I couldn’t produce even the slightest glow with my sticks, I swallowed, pulled back my shoulders, and coaxed my heartbeat to slow. And then with my head lowered, I tried again. And again. The third time, mostly from exhaustion, my fingers didn’t tremble as much.

  Alfonso grunted over me, predictably, and Diego sighed. “Guess I’ll go catch some fish,” he said, kicking a rock with the tip of his boot, just as the tip of my stick began to smolder.

  Thank you, Hunab Ku, I murmured to myself. “If you’ll wait, I’ll come with you,” I said just as the dried leaves inside the hole began to burn from the heat of my sticks. I sat back on my heels and stared up at him. Feeling bolder, I pretended to smile.

  That pleased him.

  “I’ll wait,” Diego said, his voice returning to his normally bright tone, along with a glow in his eyes that burned my cheeks. Lowering my eyes to the fire, I stoked the leaves with a longer stick, just until I was certain the fire would spread inside the hole. I filled it with enough dry leaves and twigs to keep it burning till our return.

  Diego extended his hand to help me up but I didn’t reach for it. This amused Alfonso—the first time I’d heard him utter anything besides a grunt or threat. Ignoring them both, I began to walk toward the stream. I could hear the water before I saw it.

  It wouldn’t take long to spear a fish. More importantly, I was determined to see my white shell again and make sure that my empty stomach wasn’t playing tricks on me.

  Diego and I walked in the direction where Jorge and I filled the water pouches. The wind hadn’t had time to cover our footprints in the soft sand.

  “What will we require, then?” Diego asked me, nudging my shoulder with his. His playfulness surprised me. And it made me feel uncomfortable, especially when I was certain he had eaten fish before. What kind of man does not know how to spear a fish? “Shall we fish with our hands?” he teased.