The Brave

by James Bird

  I burst into a full sprint and charge the cabin. Aji follows closely behind me. The front door is right in front of me, but I don’t slow down. Instead, I run full speed into it just like I did with the wheelchair into the fence. It bursts open from the impact, and splinters fly in all directions. I skid to a stop in the center of the cabin and growl, revealing my sharp teeth.

  Orenda is tied to a bed, in the corner. But she looks different too. She has iridescent skin that changes colors with each step I take toward her. She has a smooth round head with two large eyes staring at me. The moment she recognizes me, she smiles.

  “My rebel,” she says.

  But before I can approach her, she panics. “Watch out!” she shouts, and her eyes dart behind me.

  I turn around, but it’s too late. A thin silver sword is driven into my shoulder. I howl in pain and stumble back. The sword levitates in the air, but I don’t see the—oh yeah, obviously I cannot see the invisible man holding it.

  The sword points at me, challenging me to a fight. I accept the challenge with a low growl. The sword floats toward me, but from behind the invisible man, Aji charges into the cabin and jumps onto him. They both hit the ground and tumble across the cabin floor. As they fight, the invisible man slowly becomes more visible. I can see him, but it’s like he’s behind a fogged-up window. He resembles a Spanish conquistador, the kind that brought diseases to the Americas way back in the day that killed millions of the Native people.

  “Untie Orenda,” Aji shouts to me as he tries to hold the conquistador off.

  I rush over to Orenda and bite through her ropes. Once freed, she sits up and shouts, “Aji!”

  I turn around and see the conquistador driving his sword into my brother’s chest. The sound of a helicopter crashing into the ground and exploding fills the room. Anger fills my entire wolf being. Aji’s furry squirrel body drops to the ground, dead, and slowly turns into my brother in human form. But he’s not moving.

  The invisible man smiles and lifts his sword. The tip of the blade red and dripping my brother’s blood. I growl and slowly ready my body to attack.

  I pounce. He swings his sword, but I leap over it. It grazes so close to me that it slices some of my fur off. In midair, I see the sliced off chunks of my fur float off of my body and dissolve into tiny numbers.

  That was close. My body collides with the invisible man, and I immediately sink my teeth into his right shoulder. We both hit the ground, and I drag him across the floor with my powerful jaws. He screams in pain as I bite down until his bones crack between my jagged wolf teeth. Blood pours out, and I move my mouth toward his neck. I clamp down and violently shake until there’s nothing left in between my teeth. The conquistador’s head rolls away, and his lifeless body goes limp and lies in his growing pool of blood.

  I turn to see Orenda, but the bed is empty. Where did she go? I look around but can’t find her.

  “I’m free,” she says from above me.

  I look up and see Orenda with her giant butterfly wings fully spread out. My jaw drops. She’s beautiful. Her wings are red, black, and yellow. She flutters down to me and wraps her wings around me like thick blankets enfolding a cold puppy. I immediately feel warm. She kisses me. My eyes close.

  * * *

  My eyes open. I’m back into my room. I fell asleep. What a strange dream. I sit up and try to hold on to the taste of her kiss before it fades away completely. This dream felt so real. I even check my hands to make sure they’re not wolf paws. I think of my brother and how he died saving my life. I think of Orenda and how I fought and killed the invisible man to save her. And then I think of what she was, a beautiful butterfly.

  I look over at my window and see the night sky. Oh no, I slept all day!

  I leap out of bed and rush over to Orenda’s tree house. My feet move so fast that I nearly fall off the ramp as I scale it. When I enter, I see that it is completely candlelit. And I’m not the only one in here. The tree house is full of people. My mom and Ronnie stand near the wall where her paintings used to hang. My grandma and Seven are both sitting on the floor facing her bed. Her dress is now black. Foxy sits at the foot of her bed, with his hands clasped together, supporting his chin. And there’s one more person in here. The old Native American man who gave me the test in the teepee. Yeah, the test I failed.

  He is pacing back and forth like a wild tiger, chanting words that I assume are Ojibwe. In his hands are a small drum and stick. He beats them softly, but it still somehow manages to vibrate the entire room. Everyone but the old man is looking at me.

  “What’s going on?” I ask to anyone who will hear me.

  But no one answers. Instead it is Orenda who locks her eyes on me, luring me forward. I walk to her. My heart beats louder than the drums with every step I take. I sit down beside her. She looks exhausted but somehow still happy. I can’t believe this. Everyone was up here with Orenda while I was sleeping peacefully in my room.

  “Why didn’t anyone come get me?” I ask the group.

  The drums stop, and a very old wrinkled hand rests on my shoulder, but I don’t take my eyes off of Orenda, not even for a second.

  “You had to finish your dream,” the old man says to me.

  My eyes begin to well up. I remember Orenda’s last words to me before she kissed me. I’m free.

  “Twenty-three,” I say under my breath.

  I hate that my brain made me count his letters. Right now is the worst time for this. Right now is the worst time for all of this. Everyone is acting like this is goodbye. But it can’t be. Not yet. I’m not ready.

  “Can someone please tell me what is going on?” I ask again, louder this time. And as much as I don’t want to hear the answer, I also need to.

  But again, no one answers me. I turn around toward my mom to plead with her, but when I look back, everyone is gone. I’m alone in the tree house with Orenda. Even Foxy is gone. I rub my eyes, because this cannot be. But somehow, they all disappeared. The hairs on my arms rise up. The little flames from the candles all sway left, then right, and flicker.

  “That’s impossible,” I say to myself as I check for a third time that no one is in here with us.

  When I turn back around to Orenda, she sits up and smiles. Her movements are alive again. Even her skin is flushed from the sickly pale color back to the tone of fire.

  “Is this real?” I ask her.

  Her mischievous grin—the one I missed so much—wraps around my heart, and she reaches out her arm, placing her hand on my cheek.

  “Everything is real, you dork,” she says.

  I grab her hand and pull it to my dorky mouth. I kiss all five of her fingers. If this isn’t real, then I don’t ever want to be real again. I want to stay right here, with her, in this make-believe world forever.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I say, my voice cracking on every other word.

  “I can’t stay a caterpillar forever.”

  “I’m not asking you to stay a caterpillar. I’m asking you to stay with me,” I say, and feel rivers running down my cheeks.

  And like we were one, tears now fall down her cheeks to match me.

  “It’s time for me to spread my wings and fly,” she says to me.

  “No. I can’t lose you. I won’t lose you.”

  “Then don’t. Keep me here, forever,” she says, and reaches out, placing her hand over my heart.

  I drop my head down and stare at her hand. It pulses from my heartbeat. My whole body is beating in its rhythm, and now hers is, too. I lift my head up and stare into her fiery eyes.

  “I love you,” I say, realizing this is the first time those three words have ever left my mouth. “From the bottom of my heart to the top of my lungs, I love you,” I say again.

  She closes her eyes like a door, almost slamming shut. And after a few seconds, her eyes rise, like the same door being swung back open. Her mouth opens too, and out falls the four words that make life worth living.

  “I love you, too.”

>   And the moment her sentence leaves her mouth, a pair of butterfly wings unfold and spread out of her back. They are the exact wings from my dream. My eyes open so wide that they nearly fall out of my face. She flutters her beautiful wings and slowly lifts out of her bed. I can’t believe what I am seeing. Orenda is flying. Orenda is a butterfly. All of this was real. Everything she said was the truth.

  She flutters over to her open window, but before she flies out of it, she turns to me one last time.

  “You know where to find me,” she says, and flies out of the tree house and into the night.

  I run up to the window and look outside. But Orenda is gone.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE ULTIMATE SEASON   (30)

  There is a knock on my door. I open my eyes. I’m in my room. I’m so confused right now. My face is soaking wet, and I thought I was just in the tree house looking out the window, trying to see Orenda flying away. Was this all a dream? Again?

  My mom opens the door. I can see the sadness in her eyes, but she doesn’t speak just yet. She doesn’t quite know how to say what she has to tell me.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s Orenda. You need to see her now,” she says as Ronnie appears from behind her and puts his arms around her.

  “Twenty-seven. She’s still here? It was just a dream?” I say, and launch out of my bed.

  “She’s waiting for you, son,” Ronnie says in a sad version of his voice.

  “Twenty,” I say, and rush past them, out of my room and toward the backyard.

  I slide the glass door open and run through my yard, squeeze through the fence, and race up her tree house ramp. But inside, no one is here. Wait. Where is she? Where is everyone? I look out the window and see Ronnie and my mom looking up at me through our backyard.

  “She’s in her room,” my mom shouts to me.

  “Thirteen,” I shout back, and sprint down the ramp and into her house.

  I rush through her house and open her bedroom door. And just like my dream, everyone is in there. My grandma sits with Seven. Foxy sits at the foot of her bed. The old Native American man beats his drum while chanting hymns in his mother tongue. Even Ronnie and my mom enter the room behind me. And again, the bedroom is lit by candles placed throughout the room just like in my dream.

  Wait! In my dream Orenda died. Is that why we are all here? Is this the time for all of us to say our goodbyes? It can’t be. Dreams aren’t real! Right?

  “I just dreamt all of this,” I say aloud for everyone to hear.

  The old Native man stops his drum and turns to me, once again putting his wrinkled hand on my shoulder. “We know. The truth comes to us in dreams,” he says.

  “What truth? That she has ALS? That her body is shutting down? That she’s dying?” I ask, barely holding in my tears.

  “Is that what your dream showed you?” he asks.

  “Twenty-eight. No. In my dream she became a butterfly,” I reply.

  Foxy lets out a huge sigh of relief. I shoot my eyes toward him. He looks at me, gets up, and hugs me. “Thank you,” he says, and squeezes me so tightly I wince.

  “It was just a dream. Right?” I ask him.

  Foxy doesn’t respond. Instead, he releases me, and I sit beside Orenda. But she isn’t lively like she was in my dream. She’s not moving at all, other than her forced breathing.

  Her eyes are half open and half closed. I reach out and take her hand into mine. I stare at her face and remember how much she has taught me. I remember her laugh. I remember her hitting me in the head with a baseball. Our first kiss. Our last kiss. I remember everything.

  Suddenly, all the lit flames from the candles begin to flicker and sway. The old Native man begins his chants in Ojibwe. I hold my breath and hope for Orenda to sit up, please sit up. Please smile. Please talk to me just like in my dream, but she doesn’t. She lies there still, barely able to stare up at me. I keep waiting to see a pair of beautiful butterfly wings sprout out of her back, to witness her take flight, but it won’t happen this time. I know it won’t. I want to beg her to stay. I want to tell her how many more adventures we have ahead of us. I want to tell her how we can still rage against the night together. Like the brave rebels we are. But what comes out of my mouth shocks me.

  “You’re free,” I say to her.

  A small tear escapes her nearly sealed eyes. Mine, however, run down my cheeks like wild horses. And then it happens. I watch Orenda’s chest rise up one last time, then it falls.

  Orenda has taken her last breath. My words are true. She is now free.

  I collapse and cry into her chest. I tell her I love her as many times as my mouth allows me to. I tell her that I’d trade my own life for her heart to start beating again. And through my howling, I hear my mom weeping behind me, followed by Ronnie’s strong hand resting on my shoulder.

  I lift my face off of her body and turn to them. My mom is embracing Foxy. And as defeated as I feel, I can’t help but think about him. All his pain. His world just ended. He lost both of his hearts. It is more than any man should bear, but for his wife and daughter, he’ll force himself to survive this heartbreak. He’ll live on, for them.

  It is what they’d both want, and he knows it. We all know it. We all know she wants us to not be sad about death, but to be happy about life. She taught us that. Orenda was the most happy and alive person I have ever met, and she’s been secretly dying this whole time. If that’s not what true bravery is, then true bravery doesn’t exist.

  The old Native man stops his drum and approaches me. His wrinkled hand reaches out, and through my peripheral vision, I see it and grab it. His bones feel weak and brittle under his loose and stretchy skin. I look up and stare into his swollen eyes.

  “Tomorrow, you will come see me,” he says, and begins his drumming again.

  “Twenty-four,” I say under my breath, but I doubt anyone heard me.

  I look back to Orenda’s beautiful face, and suddenly everything around her begins spinning. I close my eyes to stop the room’s rotation, but that just makes it worse. It takes every ounce of strength within me to leave her side and rise to my feet, and as I do, everything stops.

  “Mama?” I call out.

  The entire world stops. Everything goes black.

  All I remember next is hearing a very loud thud.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  MEMENGWAA   (25)

  I don’t exactly know who carried me to my bed last night, but I suspect it was Ronnie. He even took my shoes off and tucked me in. For a moment, I hold on to the hope that everything that happened last night was just a nightmare. That Orenda is still alive, but my hopes are shattered as I sit up and feel the pounding in my skull. By the size of this hematoma on the side of my head, I must have had quite the fall.

  Seven is still asleep, and I finally have a chance to get a good look at her. Lately, I’ve been so preoccupied that I haven’t really given Seven much attention at all. And I must say, she’s put on a lot of weight. My grandma must feed her a lot during their adventures. As my feet hit the floor, Seven wakes and raises her head.

  “You can keep sleeping, girl,” I say to her, and she lowers her head as if she understood me perfectly.

  I still feel weird as I walk. Like I’ve somehow been out of my body for so long that I’ve forgotten how to use it. I start with simple steps. One foot in front of the other. Left, right, left, right. And don’t forget to breathe. I open my bedroom door and walk down the hallway.

  Ronnie is in the kitchen making breakfast. He’s even wearing an apron that’s way too small for him. If I wasn’t so down, I’d point out to him how ridiculous he looks, but instead, I approach my mom, who sits at the table and looks as hurt as I feel. I wrap my arms around her, and she stands up and hugs me back. We both don’t break away for what feels like minutes.

  “You don’t have to go to school today, but you’re gonna have to go back at some point,” she says.

  “I know. But there’s somewhe
re I need to go first. Can you take me somewhere?”

  “Of course. Where are you going?” she asks.

  Even Ronnie stops what he’s doing to hear my response.

  “In my dream Orenda said, ‘You know where to find me.’ So I have to go and find out.”

  “Find out what?” Ronnie asks.

  “If all of this is real,” I say, and snatch the keys off of the counter and toss them to my mom.

  I rush back to my room and put my shoes on. And even though just moments ago I wanted to curl up in a ball and wither away from sadness, I feel a newfound hope inside me. Maybe there is still a chance that everything Orenda said and did was not some fabricated fairy tale Native Americans tell themselves to make life on earth a bit better.

  I need to be brave. Maybe there is just as much truth to their stories as they believe there is. I mean, if my time here with her has proven anything, it is that magic does exist. Why can’t she be magic, too? Orenda was the wisest person I have ever met, and maybe I haven’t even begun to scrape the surface of how deep her wisdom truly goes.

  I hop into the bed of the truck. Ronnie sits passenger, and he must really want to find out too, because he hasn’t even taken the apron off yet. My mom starts the truck and drives us out of the reservation. As we enter the highway, I realize I haven’t told mom where to go exactly, but she is heading the right way. She must know. She must have done this drive before to see Orenda’s mom.

  As we turn off the road and into the forest, I take notice of all the clouds swimming above me in the deep blue sky. I smile as their shapes change from puffy clouds to animals. I shout them out so every animal in the sky can hear me. There’s an albino alligator upper left. A silver-clouded potbellied pig upper right, a white-tailed deer directly above me, and in the sky’s dead center, we drive under a giant white puffy turtle. If these clouds can shape-shift into animals, then maybe us people can too. Seriously. Why not? This world is full of unexplainable things.