by Jenna Kernan
Raven hugged her grandmother, the dress now pressed between them. When they separated, Raven held the dress.
“You must teach me to sew like this. And quillwork, too.”
Her grandmother laughed. “Oh, ho! Who are you and what have you done with my little warrior?”
Raven laughed, forgetting her worries as she slipped into the new garment.
She did not say she preferred her leggings and long shirt, because she found that she wished to look like a woman when she returned to the tribe tonight and tomorrow when she faced the council.
Their hair created a problem, but there was enough to gather at each side of their heads, and the stubby ends were covered with additions to resemble hair. Wren’s hair now included thick ropes of mink tails and Snake’s braids were made of horsehair woven and tied with tufts of the soft feathers of a hawk’s belly.
Raven’s hair received a sheath of deer hide that was tanned on only one side, so that the strips resembled hair left free. She thought Little Deer looked lovely with the shells tied to her hair and the strips of green leather woven at each side of her head in twin braids.
Once adorned, the women were escorted to the gathering place by the Low River women, who sang a welcome along the slow procession. Raven wished she could enjoy the ceremony, but instead she looked at each lodge, searching for the guards that would be posted to watch the captive.
As twilight stole the color from the day, the drums began to sound and the entire tribe gathered about the large central fire. After the women sang, the young men took over. They were followed by the older married men on one side of the fire and the older women on the other. They danced in separate lines.
When the young women danced, the returned captives danced, too. Raven was asked several times to join, but her heart was as heavy as her feet and she waved off all attempts to include her. Snow Raven knew that the celebration would continue for days, and she hoped that the high spirits of her tribe would reveal itself in mercy toward Running Wolf.
In the past, captives were killed, enslaved or adopted. One of the warriors, Soaring Hawk, had even taken a white boy into his family when he found his parents dead in their wagon. She had heard that he and his wife, Silver Cloud, loved the boy, who was thought to be fourteen winters when he arrived. He replaced the son they had lost to sickness and the boy was fond of them, but when he became a man and a warrior, he asked to return east and so Soaring Hawk had brought him to the wagon trail, where he had joined a group of blue coats traveling toward the sun.
Snow Raven’s family had lost many loved ones. Her mother and her parents to illness; her father’s brother to war.
Her brother approached and she wondered if, had she not returned, he would ever have taken a captive to replace her as sister.
“Tomorrow, the council will see you,” said Bright Arrow.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“I cannot say.” Bright Arrow motioned with his head and they walked away from the dancers, stopping outside the circle of light. He waited until Raven was away from the gathering before he stopped walking.
“Have you lost your mind?” he asked.
“No.”
“Then, why choose him?”
“He makes my heart sing.”
Bright Arrow groaned and looked to the heavens.
“Why couldn’t you choose warriors from the Black Lodges when we camped beside them last winter or one from the Shallow Water people? The warriors of the Wind Basin tribe are brave. They would protect you with their lives.”
“Perhaps they would, but Running Wolf has already protected me. It is only because of him that I live.”
“But he is snake!”
Raven tossed her hands in frustration. “Do you think I do not know? Do you think I am doing this thing to be difficult?”
Bright Arrow’s shoulders sagged. “I do not understand.”
“Because you have never loved.”
Bright Arrow looked insulted. “I have been with a woman.”
“That is not love.” Raven lifted her gaze to the sky, now awash with lavender and orange. “I tried to resist, because I knew this path would be difficult. But I have chosen this road and will walk beside him in this world or the next.”
Bright Arrow shook his head like a dog who sits too close to the fire. At last he motioned her on.
“Come. We have to return.”
“I want to see him.”
“That is not wise.”
“Where is he?”
Bright Arrow placed a hand on her shoulder and pressed down so she felt the weight of his grip. “You cannot escape with him.”
She knew that.
“I will see him. You can take me or I will find him myself.”
“You may find him, but you will not see him.”
She gave him a belligerent look.
“If you try, the guards have orders to tie you like a captive.”
Raven considered that as an option.
“In a separate lodge,” Bright Arrow added, as if reading her thoughts.
Her brother was war chief. But he still followed the order of the chief, their father. If she wanted to see Running Wolf, she must convince him. And she would need influence.
“Where is Grandmother?” she asked.
* * *
The dancing went on into the night. Raven found her grandmother, who agreed to go speak to her son the following day. So Raven searched the camp and found the lodge where Running Wolf was detained. She was not allowed to enter but was somewhat relieved to know that he was safe for the moment. She called to him and received no reply, so she called encouragement and promises, which she had no idea how to keep.
She spent a restless night in her grandmother’s lodge, waiting for her father to return. According to Truthful Woman, Bright Arrow now kept his own tepee and was courting a woman from the Black Lodges tribe.
It was customary for a man, once married, to live with his wife’s tribe. Truthful Woman was Wind Basin and her husband, Night Storm, was born to the Black Lodges. Their sons—her father, Six Elks, and his brother, Iron Heart—were both Wind Basin. It was only after her father married Beautiful Song, Raven’s mother, that he became one of the Low River tribe. When her husband died, Truthful Woman had come to live with her son.
Raven and Bright Arrow were both Low River, but if Bright Arrow married this Black Lodges woman, he would become Black Lodges, as well. It would not matter. Bright Arrow was brave and capable. She believed he would earn his place as war chief very quickly, just as her father had risen quickly to chief of the Low River people. And if she could convince her father to allow her to wed Running Wolf, he would become Low River.
Raven tried to think of ways to get her father to accept Running Wolf, but when the birdsong reached Raven’s ears, she had no answer. She could see her breath in the cold air, and though the lodge was full of light, she heard none of the usual sounds of prayer songs being sung outside the lodges by the men. Everyone was still wrapped in their sleeping skin against the cold and the late night of dancing.
Raven snuggled down in her bedding, exhausted from worrying half the night. Was Running Wolf warm enough?
That thought brought her upright. She stirred the coals to life and rekindled the fire. She was up and out and drawing water before her grandmother had even stirred.
When she returned from bathing by the river, carrying the water, she found her grandmother inside the lodge, grinding dried tubers into flour. The husks of the dried turnips had been woven into a long rope for easy transport and her grandmother’s rope was so long it stretched around her working area and back to the peg where it was stored.
“Bring some buffalo berries,” said Truthful Woman, speaking as if all were normal and Snow Raven had not been away.
> It was comforting and disconcerting all at once.
Raven retrieved the requested item from her grandmother’s food stores and handed it to her. Then she wound the rope of tubers as she would a lead line and hung it back on its peg. Her grandmother stirred water into the mixture to bring the berries back from their dried state to something plump and juicy.
“Will Father join us?”
“Hmm. I don’t think so. Some of the Black Lodges are staying here and my son is spending some time with his uncle.”
“I did not know Brings Horses was here.”
“You have been busy.”
Truthful Woman served the meal in a turtle-shell bowl, and Raven lifted the spoon carved from buffalo horn and ate hungrily.
“It is good to see you have an appetite. You will need strength today, for it is a difficult job to convince men to do anything.”
Raven paused in her meal. “Will you bring food to Running Wolf?”
Truthful Woman showed her another bowl full of porridge. Her brother arrived in time to finish the remainder of the meal, for though he had a lodge, he had no woman to cook for him.
“Will you speak to Father with me?” Raven asked her brother.
“You do not want my help. I still want him killed.”
Her grandmother patted Bright Arrow. “Do you not want your sister’s happiness?”
“Not if it means she will humiliate herself with a snake.” He looked at his sister, his face a mask of confusion. “You will not tend fires or clean fish or make clothing. You insist on riding, hunting and fighting like a warrior and now you bring this man to our camp.” He raised his voice. “It is too much!”
“We are who we are. And we love who we love,” said Truthful Woman.
Bright Arrow grunted and returned his attention to his porridge.
Six Elks called a greeting to his own home, and all discussion ceased as he entered the lodge with his elderly uncle.
“From the volume of your voices, the entire tribe will know what is too much, son.”
Bright Arrow gave up the place across from the entrance instantly and Truthful Woman added more water and flour to her iron kettle to begin a second batch of porridge. She offered the helping she had set aside for Running Wolf to her son and he accepted it and passed it to his uncle.
All was quiet except for the turning of the smooth stick Truthful Woman used to stir the porridge and the scrape of the horn spoon on the turtle shell.
Raven wanted so much to explain to her father that they must not harm Running Wolf, but her fear stopped her. What if she presented her opinion badly? What if it did not matter what she said because, like her brother, his mind was fixed?
Her father had raised her to hate the Sioux. Everyone had suffered loss from battle or raid, but her father harbored special detestation for their enemy since the death of his brother. She knew this only from her grandmother, who had said her son had once been carefree and careless but all that had changed when his brother had left.
Six Elks finished a first helping of porridge and her uncle a second. Raven found herself clicking her thumbnail with the one on her opposite index finger in a nervous repetitive action. Finally they lowered their bowls. And both men turned their attention to Raven.
“So, daughter, what is it you wish me to know about our captive?”
Where to begin? So many things seemed important. She wanted to leap into the conversation, but she collected her thoughts. She had rehearsed half the night, but now that she had his attention she was mute.
“Have you changed your mind, then? Come to your senses and realized that you are safe now?”
“No. I am more afraid now than when I was first taken captive because then I only feared for my own life. But now I fear for his.”
“He walked into our hands. Once an elk walked into our camp. I’m sure you know what happened to the elk.”
Raven began again. “When I was first captured, Running Wolf kept the man who attacked Grandmother from killing me. This man tried to kill me several times. Running Wolf protected me and outwitted this man at every turn. He kept me from being used by the men of his tribe, he kept me from being sold to a white trader and, when we were freed, he brought us home. These are not the actions of an enemy.”
“If he is such an ally, why did he not bring you all home months ago?”
“Because like all warriors, he followed the orders of his chief.”
“What is it you want us to do, daughter?”
She tore off her thumbnail with her teeth and then gnawed on the ragged tip. Why was it so hard to say aloud?
“I wish you to give your permission for me to marry him.”
Her grandmother stopped stirring the porridge. Her brother choked on the hot tea he had been sipping and her father and uncle stared like owls.
Finally her father laughed.
“For a moment I thought you were serious.”
“I am serious, Father. I love him. I would give my life for him.”
“He is a captive,” said Bright Arrow. “We kill captives. Let me test his strength. Let us see if he dies with honor or if he yips and howls like a coyote with his coat on fire.”
Raven gripped her hand into a fist. Her grandmother placed a hand upon her arm.
Her father dismissed both Bright Arrow and Raven’s request. “He is not Crow. You cannot marry him. But he has brought many of our women out of enemy territory and he did not kill my son when he had the chance. Still, he is Sioux.”
Raven bowed her head to think. Her father had not spared him. Neither had he condemned him.
Then she resumed her attack.
“If he goes, I will go with him.”
“He is not going. I do not free captives.”
Truthful Woman spoke at last. “I have heard that my granddaughter protected the warrior from her brother and his men. I have heard that she was willing to go with him to the Spirit World rather than let him die.” Her grandmother touched the healing scab on Raven’s neck, and then turned her attention back to her son. “You have heard this, too. Did you also hear who stopped her?”
Six Elks made a face. “I did.”
“This is a selfless act. Most men would have used her as a weapon to help them escape. But he saved her even from herself while knowing he would lose any chance of escape.”
Six Elks’s scowl deepened the creases across his forehead.
“Such a man does not deserve to be a captive,” said Truthful Woman.
Her uncle spoke. “Truthful Woman is right. He should not be a captive because all Sioux are better dead. Making him a captive is dangerous. Who would want a warrior as a servant?”
Raven crept across the circle to her father and took hold of his hand between her two smaller ones. She thought of all the requests she had made, both insignificant and outlandish. Her father had denied her nothing. But this...this she feared he would not grant.
“Spare him,” she begged.
Six Elks looked to his uncle. “What are your thoughts?”
“No warrior with any honor would live long as a captive. Even if he did survive the winter, which he will not, he would try to escape. You will have to guard him constantly or let him go and then hunt him down and kill him. It is a lot of trouble. Just kill him now.”
Raven gave a strangled cry and fell across her father’s lap, wrapping her arms about his waist and weeping.
“If I were a captive, I would kill myself,” said Bright Arrow.
Her father patted her shoulder as she wept against him. “Perhaps he will escape and we can just let him go.”
Raven sat up. Before she had wiped her eyes, she realized that she would rather see him go than have him live here as a captive. Then he could keep his honor and go on his vision quest and return to
his people. He could start again. He would have everything he had before.
Everything except her.
She had said that if he went, she would go with him. But she could not. She could never return to his tribe without revealing Mouse’s deception.
Would he forget her in time?
She used the heels of her hands to swipe away the tears.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Let him go.”
Her father looked long at his daughter without speaking. At last he rested a hand upon her cheek.
“I will recommend this to the council. If I can persuade them, then he will go and you will stay.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Raven knew this was the best chance for Running Wolf. He would live. He would rejoin his people and, in time, he might forget her. Perhaps marry Spotted Fawn and reach his destiny as a leader of his people.
But even knowing all that, her heart was dead. It beat but it might just as well have been a burl in the wood of a tree. She would survive. She knew she would.
Her grandmother and her father showed her that the living continued on even after a loved one was lost. But in her father’s case, the loss had changed him, made him more solemn and more angry. She felt herself changing, hardening like the cascading water that froze in blue strands in winter.
That day the council met, and at night the people prepared to continue the welcoming of the return of the captives. Tomorrow men would be sent to the other tribes to report who had survived and who had died in the four years since the first of the captives had been taken.
Raven watched the council lodge, waiting for the leaders of her tribe to emerge. For a time she sat with the other women around the outside of the lodge. Most of what was said could be easily heard.
She was not a patient sitter.
Unlike the other women, she had brought nothing to do with her hands. Truthful Woman handed her a small pouch. Inside were flint and steel and a soft bit of leather. By the time midday arrived, Raven had three new arrowheads napped.
