Speaks While Leaving had not thought of that game for many years. All of her childhood memories, in fact, had been tucked away, hidden from view. And as the warmth of the memory faded into sadness, she remembered why she had stored them all away and never took them out. The path she walked now was very far from those days, as were her dreams of an ordinary life with a husband, a lodge, and children. She was denied that life because of who she was, what she was; she was Speaks While Leaving, seeress and vision-maker. She was anything but ordinary, and the simple joys of family, of storytelling, and of happy faces around the lodge-fire were never to be part of her extraordinary life.
But before she put the memories away again, she allowed herself to finish the game, playing all the birds she knew, watching them fly through her dreaming, until she decided on which one would be the one for her.
Blue jay, with his full wings, shiny feathers splayed like the ribs of the fans carried by the women she met in the Land of the Iron Shirts. Yes, blue jay, who would throw himself out of a high tree, arrowing down to a nut or tasty grub, flaring his wings only at the last moment to land with a bounce on the forest floor. Yes, those were the wings she would choose, a dancer’s wings that could spiral around trees, twisting from limb to limb, playing chase with all her fellows.
Thunder rolled in, encroaching on her thoughts. She turned, pulled her whistler to a stop, and stared.
The storm that on last glimpse had been building quietly, miles behind, was now upon her. The clouds writhed, rolling as she watched, and even though sunshine still dappled the hills ahead, the storm behind her was dark, thick, and ominous. Lightning flashed. Thunder came on a blast of wind, and out from under the shadow of the storm came another sound: lower, insistent, borne of rushing winds. Dust, grass, and leaves swirled up from the ground, and a dark spiral reached down from the storm.
The wind’s moan rose in pitch, and the spiral dropped to the land, an inky finger that dragged a line across the earth, scraping up plants and dirt. It moved, swiftly scouring a trench across the prairie, thickening as it went, hopping up and stabbing down again. The air went opaque with sudden rain, and the panicked trumpeting of her whistler broke through her fascination. She turned northward, toward the hills and the trees, and let her whistler do the rest as the menacing coil spun its way toward them.
Other animals joined them in flight, but many proved too slow and were taken up by an invisible hand, devoured by the storm. The whistler was fast, but the snaking storm was faster, closing the gap as it intensified into something almost solid. The wind buffeted them while debris and hailstones struck her side and her whistler’s flank. They could not outrun it, so she yanked on the bridle and sent them off at an angle. The twister leapt across distance as they turned, its towering bulk limned with lightning, thunder crashing and wind roaring like a hundred walkers. She lay low along the whistler’s back, aiming for the trees ahead. The twister spun, but did not turn to follow. They ducked in past the line of trees, reaching it along with a pair of does and one terrified coyote. She did not stop, but let her whistler run farther into the wood, following a well-worn deer track that twisted through the trees. She looked back. The branches lashed with the violence of the passing storm and closed behind them. Thunder broke above and the wind howled like a wounded beast. She did not notice when the trail widened.
The whistler sang a rough, high note. She turned and saw the danger. The walker had been hiding at the edge of the clearing, waiting for prey to come in along the trail. The beast lunged and her whistler shrieked, claws tearing into the soft ground. Speaks While Leaving held on as her mount thrust to the side; the walker’s lunge went wide, jaws clacked shut on empty space. It pivoted sharply, swinging its heavy tail in counterbalance, snapping tree limbs in the small clearing. From the sheath at her belt, Speaks While Leaving pulled her knife as the walker came at them again. The whistler leapt away, avoiding the teeth, but the walker shoved forward, butting the whistler and sending mount and rider sprawling against nearby tree trunks. Speaks While Leaving’s leg was trapped beneath the whistler, tangled in the first rope. She kicked to free herself. The walker set its feet and ran forward again, mouth agape, teeth flashing. Lightning burst in the sky as the jaws came down, teeth sinking into both her arm and the whistler’s shoulder. Whistler and rider screamed, their voices lost in the thunderclap. The whistler kicked at the walker’s neck with claw-toed feet and Speaks While Leaving stabbed with her knife, aiming for the head that pinned her. The yellow eye saw the blade—too late—as she plunged it deep into the socket. The walker’s head jerked to the side, teeth ripping flesh as it recoiled. It reared, twisting, trying to escape the blade and the pain, shaking its head to free the knife. It stumbled backward, breaking more branches as it writhed until, with one terrible swing, it impaled itself, skewering neck and skull on the pointed ends of broken limbs sticking out from the trunk of a spruce. It fell to the ground, thrashed twice, three times, and was still.
Everything was hushed; even the wind had gone quiet, the storm blown out, leaving only the patter of droplets from the leaves above. Sunlight sifted down through the rain-slick branches, dappling the silent clearing. It would have been beautiful, but for the bodies of whistler and walker illuminated by the shafts of light and the thick, nauseous smell of blood that hung in the stillness like a miasma.
Speaks While Leaving moved her injured arm and cried out at the sudden pain. Blood seeped from deep wounds along her biceps and she could feel the grating ends of a broken bone in her forearm. She blinked to focus her mind and worked fast. The walker’s teeth had sawn through flesh and bone with equal ease. Her arm was laid open in several places, exposing the twitching muscles beneath. Her hand was useless below the knot made by the broken bone in her forearm. She braced her right foot against the spine of her dead whistler and shoved, rocking it forward just enough to free her pinned leg.
She stopped, tasting metal in her mouth and feeling fire in her lungs. She reached for her side-bag and a length of cloth. Only then did she notice the broken branch that pierced her side. First things first, her teeth had to suffice as she tore off the cloth into strips. She wound the strips of cloth tight about her upper arm to stem the flow of blood.
Then she turned her attention to the length of wood that speared her side. Pain flowed into her like a river, pulsing with every labored breath, every slowing heartbeat. Her vision began to dim, but when she heard the heavy footsteps of an animal, her heart pounded with renewed energy, bringing her back to focus. Through her growing fog of shock, she saw a dark, massive shape lumber into the clearing. She had no weapon, no knife, no tool, not even a stick with which to defend herself. Her only chance lay in stillness, and the hope that the larger bodies nearby would prove more interesting to... Then she saw the glow.
The animal was still in the shadows, but it carried with it a glow. She squeezed shut her eyes, forcing clarity to her vision, but still her vision swam and blurred. The glow atop the animal slipped down to the ground, came forward, and she saw one of her ghosts, one of the spectral figures that followed everyone during twilight hours.
But where those ghosts had always come in threes, this one was alone. She watched as it came closer, curious, her mind detached. The danger of her situation was forgotten, or at least set aside, while she puzzled over this curious arrival. What was this creature, shaped so like a man, broad and tall, but with hair long and unbraided. The ghost came forward quickly, passing from shadow into one of the shafts of light. She smiled.
“It’s you,” she said.
“Yes,” Limps said.
Limps had been a soldier for many years; for as long as Speaks While Leaving could remember, he had been the tall, silent presence on the periphery of anything that had to do with the Kit Fox soldier society. He was never the one expected to become a chief—he never had the gifts—but he was never far away from those who did, including Storm Arriving, for whom he was a constant and dependable advisor. His career was studded with s
uccessful raids, skirmishes, and battles. He even faced the father of One Who Flies on the plains along the Kansa River. She wondered if One Who Flies knew that, as she watched Limps dress and bind her wounds.
But Limps had never married, had never even courted a woman. Many of the old grandmothers of her band, gossiping around the beading circle, considered him a Man-Becoming-Woman, but others laughed at that idea.
“He has a heart for women,” her aunt, Diving Lizard Woman used to say. “For one woman, at any rate.” Others around the circle would nod, agreeing with the obscure proclamation, but when Speaks While Leaving asked what they meant she received only smiles and silence.
Now, as she watched him work, she finally understood. His figure was limned in the glow of his combined purpose; there was no fracturing of possible paths for him. He was unified, a man of single purpose. His brow knitted in concentration. For the most part, he knew what to do—he had seen more than his share of battles and injuries. When there was doubt, she saw it on his face and guided him with a gesture or answered his one-word questions with a word of her own. Occasionally his gaze would meet hers and hold for a moment, just a moment, just the briefest lingering that spoke to her and told her, showed her, cried out to her with the truth that she had never been able to see, the truth that she had never imagined.
“You love me,” she said.
He paused in his cleansing of the wound in her side and looked at her. His eyes were black, shadowed by loose hair fallen forward, but they shone, reflecting the light that spilled down through the trees, bathing her. He did not speak, did not acknowledge her statement, but the corner of his mouth lifted in the slightest hint of a smile, just as his eyes grew sad. He returned to his ministrations.
“How long?” she asked.
He froze.
“Forever,” he said, and continued his work.
He dressed the wound that had pierced her back to front, layering compresses of tree moss, using brain tissue from the fallen walker as a cleansing salve, binding it all with birch-bark and strips of deerhide, thin and supple. He re-bandaged the wound on her arm, and wrapped her forearm against a splint made from planks he cut from a broken branch. Then he swaddled her in a blanket from her side-bags to keep her warm.
She did not have any illusions about her condition; her injuries were grave and infection almost certain, though the aid Limps had provided had improved her chances greatly.
He brought his whistler near and transferred to it everything he could salvage from her belongings. Exhaustion and shock edged closer to her, fuzzing the edges of her consciousness.
“How did you know where I was?” she asked.
“One Who Flies,” he said.
“He told you I was going?”
Yes, he signed.
“He told you where I was going?”
Yes.
“Did he tell you why?”
A shrug.
“And now?”
He pointed off into the woods, toward what she did not know. “Now, I bring you the rest of the way.” He looked directly at her, eyes bold yet intimate. “You and I. We complete the task. Yes?”
She smiled. “Yes. And thank you.”
He nodded again, and she slept.
Chapter 14
Plum Moon, Waning
Four Years after the Cloud Fell
North of the Elk River
Crow Territory
She did not know how long they had been moving, or if the day was young or old. Fog enshrouded them and the sun was hidden, struggling to light the world. Limps cradled her in his arms as they traveled; his hair was bright with droplets of mist, his eyes fixed on the trail ahead, the scars across his bare chest and shoulders pale beneath the light from the leaden sky.
He sensed her consciousness, looked down, his face void of expression. Her vision swam, rocked by the whistler’s loping gait. She was still cocooned in the blanket, though now its folds were stifling, not comforting. Her skin was hot against the cool air, though her teeth had started to chatter.
“Fever,” she managed to say.
He glanced down at her again. She had not told him anything he didn’t know already. Holding her so close, he knew. He had felt her burning in his arms. She realized that he had expected it—with such injuries, it was almost impossible to avoid—and also that he knew what it likely meant. So, she did not press against his reserve, but let him goad the whistler, keep the pace even over level ground, and get them to whatever goal he had set.
The fever increased. She felt like an autumn leaf too close to an evening fire. Her skin blistered, cracked open, peeled back, began to smolder. The fog’s moist kiss sizzled against her cheek. Her eyes clouded as they cooked within her boiling blood. She moaned, felt cool water on her lips, and swallowed with a throat seared by her own heat. Her eyelids fluttered and she saw the moon, or was it the cloud-masked sun, swimming in mist? She heard the whistler’s fluting call, smelled the spice of its skin, smelled smoke, was she burning again? There were voices, several, shouting, demanding. Whistlers sang, discordant, and a coyote raised a question to the sky. She opened her eyes and stood naked at the edge of a stream-fed pond. It was night and the moon hung low, glistening in a clear sky, but the world around her was lit by the flames that danced on her skin and through her hair. Across the pond, Coyote waited, his eyes bright with her firelight.
“Who are you?” Coyote yipped from across the water.
“I am Speaks While Leaving,” she told him.
“No,” Coyote said, laughing. “You. Who are you?”
“That is who I am,” she insisted. “I am Speaks While Leaving.”
“No,” Coyote said. He laughed again. “You cannot be she.”
“Why can I not?”
Coyote rolled on the pond bank, his laughter bouncing off the moon, his pink tongue bright in her firelight. Then he stopped, stood, and looked at her.
“Because Speaks While Leaving is dead.”
He turned and loped off into the night, his laughter echoing. A dragonfly flew past, touching the calm water. Ripples reached outward, reflecting moonlight, starlight, firelight. The growing circles bounced back from the pool’s edge, and the edge became a rim, became a bowl held in a hand. The moon came down out of the sky, dove into the bowl and came up a pale cloth dripping water. Hands wrung the cloth out and brought it close, laying it gently across her forehead.
The firelight was no longer along her skin and in her hair. It rested nearby, in a firepit, its smoke thick with sage and tobacco and fragrant cedar. As the hands retreated, she saw the rising cone of the lodge above her, and the face of Limps, his features a mask of worry.
“I am better now,” she told him, but his face did not brighten with the news. She glanced to the side, and saw several men, dozing around the fire. By their clothing, she could tell that they were of the Crow People. Several were chiefs, and a few seemed to be holy men. She recognized Grey Feather among them, and tried to turn, to rise to greet him, but the pain was too great, her weakness too complete, and she lay back down.
“Grey Feather,” she said, and his eyes opened. “I come to you; I come to all of the peoples of the north. You are needed. I have had a vision, and we must all act as one.”
The other men had awakened, and though no one spoke, they all sought each other with their eyes. She saw fear within them, and strove to calm them.
“I am Speaks While Leaving,” she said, “and I bring this vision to you, to see for yourselves, so that you will know the truth of it.”
She reached to the spirit world and began to weave them all together, all the chiefs and grandfathers present, into one mind. Around the edges of the lodge, shadows deepened and stood as the spirit powers stepped into the world of the People, and with a flash of light, the vision began.
She could see their faces as they watched, saw their mouths hang open in silent awe, saw them shout in sudden fright at what played out in their minds.
“Three paths,” she told
them. “Three choices. At the outset, each one as proper as the next. We can act alone, refusing all alliance with the vé’hó’e; we can join with the Iron Shirts against the bluecoats; or, now that we have proven our power to our oldest enemy, we can join with the bluecoats against the foe he fears even more than he fears us.”
The chiefs traveled the three paths, seeing each one through to its culmination.
“Solitary action leads to oblivion, as we become nothing beneath the winds of time. Alliance with the Iron Shirts enslaves us, chaining us to their ways. And now, watch, see! See what happens when we join together, first among ourselves, and then with the bluecoats! See!”
She looked at their faces and saw the comprehension dawn, saw the long view come into focus, as the bluecoats suddenly saw them not as hated enemy, but as vital ally. The vision faded, and only the firelight remained. Some chiefs put their heads in their hands, overcome by the experience, while others continued to stare into the distance where the other world had been. Grey Feather rubbed a hand across his face, and looked over at Speaks While Leaving.
“Do you see, now?” she asked him. “Do you understand?”
“Great Daughter, I see,” he said, his voice thick. “It shall be done.”
Speaks While Leaving looked at Limps. He dipped the cloth into the bowl of cool water. His face was streaked with tears as silently he began to bathe her hands and then her arms. She was too tired to speak any more, and drifted off into oblivion.
Chapter 15
Thursday, October 9th, AD 1890
Beneath a Wounded Sky Page 13