The Cry of the Wind

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  George felt the blood drain from his face as she spoke.

  “We are sorry you have traveled so far to hear this, but your proposal is rejected.” She turned and walked from the room, her footsteps as clipped as her accent. Her ministers followed her, as did their aides, and finally, with a clatter of metal, the armed and armored soldiers.

  The two of them stood there, alone in the immense hall of words and knowledge, staring at the empty passageway. George could hear his own breathing, felt his pulse pounding in his throat. When he finally moved, the scuff of his shoe against the tiles was overloud, rasping and harsh in the silence that beat down upon him.

  George thought back on his previous failures; on the battlefield, in Washington, in San Francisco. With Mouse Road. This was just another in a long string of deficiencies, another disappointment in his catastrophic history.

  “Aaugh!” he bellowed through gritted teeth, startling Alejandro.

  “My boy,” Alejandro said, “I am as frustrated by this as you are.”

  “Somehow, Alejandro, I doubt that very much.” He walked away down the long hall.

  “We must tell the women,” Alejandro said after him. “We must break the news to Speaks While Leaving.”

  “You go,” George said. “You tell her. I have something else to do.”

  The palace was big, a labyrinth of hallways, a perfect place in which to lose oneself. George wandered the corridors, blind to the grandeur at every turn, interested only in the turns themselves. He walked, deeper and deeper into the belly of beast, until he found a small sitting room. When a maid happened by, he flagged her down like a cab.

  “¿Sí, señor?” she asked.

  “Whisky,” he said, sure that the word would be understood in any language.

  It took a while, but eventually it arrived, brought in a crystal carafe by an underbutler on a silver tray. George took the bottle, filled the glass, slammed back the drink, and poured another while the first still burned down his throat.

  “Encore,” he said, indicating the carafe. The butler bowed and retreated.

  In that tiny, windowless room, George hid and drank. The liquor at first warmed him, soothed him, and stifled the shivering anger that had gripped him from the moment the queen regent had left him standing there, jaw agape, his mind a foam of anguish. Then, and quickly, too, the whisky began to work its other magic, numbing him, driving out the thoughts that plagued him, but before it did, before it could shove every trouble into that dark closet of drunkenness, it first had to open that closet. He saw every inadequacy he’d ever faced, every failure he’d ever known. He saw the destruction of the airship that had taken him into Cheyenne territory, saw the death of Mouse Road’s older sister, saw the disappointment in Storm Arriving’s face when he failed to return with the weapons he had promised. He saw his own gullibility at Vincent’s subterfuge, saw his father’s chest red with blood, saw the ashen face of Three Trees Together as his voice was silenced for all time. He saw his mother’s condemnation. He saw Mouse Road’s resignation.

  He wept as these anguishes washed over him, especially the last one, for while the others spoke of a failed past, Mouse Road’s disappointment spoke of an empty future. He saw no future, none at all; only the void lay before him, without purpose, without a goal, without a family, without a nation, without a home. He drank again, felt the burn, and waited for the troubles to be corralled and packed away into that closet of secrets, of pain, of failure.

  “What are you doing?”

  He turned his head and the room slewed around him. The glass was taken from his hand, the carafe removed from his reach. His gaze traipsed behind the person until she slowed down long enough for it to catch up.

  “Mouse Road,” he said, the Cheyenne syllables slipping around in his mouth before he could utter them. Then he laughed, for the troubles had been banished, tucked into their alcoholic beds. “I’m celebrating.”

  “Celebrating? Alejandro told us that the woman-chief of the Iron Shirts refused us.”

  “Yes,” George said, though the Cheyenne word—Héehe’e—came out as more giggle than agreement.

  “Then what is there to celebrate?”

  Now he did giggle, and raised his glass, though realizing he no longer held one only made him giggle the more. “I’m celebrating an unbroken record. There is not one thing I have tried to do for the People that has worked.”

  She stood before him, hands on her hips, her almond-shaped eyes narrowed by the intensity of her disapproval.

  “And to think,” she said, “that I wanted to be your wife.”

  “That was a long time ago, sweetheart.”

  “That was this morning, you fool.”

  The grin slipped from his face. “What?”

  “Where have you been, these past weeks?” she asked him. “On the boat, and in that rolls-along? Where were you?” She made an indelicate sound. “Swaddled in your pity is where you were. Deafened by your own whines and wails, and blinded by the hands you held over your own eyes, that is where you were. Too consumed by your hatred of yourself to see my love for you.”

  He knew by her tone and words that he should be contrite. This was the point to apologize and turn over a new leaf, start a new chapter and move forward. This, he knew, was his last chance with her.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to care. “What does it matter?” he asked.

  “Not to you, that’s clear enough, but it matters to me.”

  His head wobbled as he tried to keep her in focus. “Why?”

  She came forward and knelt at his feet. He could see the tears in her eyes, now, and the anguish that from a step away had seemed disgust. “Because I still love you,” she said. “Because I still want to be your wife.”

  “But you told me yourself,” he said. “I cannot be a normal man. You said you had accepted that.”

  “And I have,” she said, leaning against him. “And it is part of what makes you special to me, that you are not a normal man. You are driven, brave, and passionate, unsatisfied with inaction, and yet somehow empty of any personal ambition. You love the People better than many who are born to the blood. You will not be a normal man, not ever. You are One Who Flies, Son of Long Hair. You will lead an extraordinary life, and I wanted to be part of it.”

  “Wanted?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “Wanted. When I thought that it was me whom you loved.” She pushed back away from him and stood. “But not now.”

  “Why not?”

  She went to the sideboard and retrieved the carafe and glass. “Because, when things were the worst for you, you ran to this, and not to me.” The liquor sloshed within its crystal as she clunked it down on the side table. “I have been replaced, and I won’t be wife to a man who loves me second best. Second wife is for widowed sisters, old women, and men-becoming-women. Not for me. I will not be second wife.”

  She put the empty glass back in George’s hand and he concentrated on holding it, not wanting to drop it on the hard floor. In his encroaching stupor, it took him a few moments to realize that she had gone.

  He was alone in the small room.

  The lamplight glinted from the facets that ran around the base of the glass. He felt its smoothed ridges and polished edges beneath his fingers, and reached for the carafe.

  I will not be second wife.

  He considered the half-emptied carafe and the amber whisky it still contained. His head swam with liquor already consumed, and he could still taste its sharpness, the grit of charcoal, the musk of peat. More would bring oblivion and, quite possibly, forgetfulness. More would ensure that this moment would not become yet another moment he would have to battle, but is that what he wanted? Did he want to forget everything she had said, or just the last thing she said?

  He reached for the bottle.

  Chapter 19

  Moon When the Whistlers Get Fat, Waxing

  Fifty-seven Years after the Star Fell

  Palacio de San Lorenzo

&nb
sp; El Escorial, España

  Speaks While Leaving had listened to Alejandro’s description of his audience with the queen regent, but all she had really heard was that their proposal had been rejected. That one fact drove from her mind every other thought she might have had.

  Rejected. Denied. Refused.

  She held back tears as Mouse Road had asked after One Who Flies, held them back as Alejandro had asked if there was anything he could do, and held them back as he bowed himself out of the room and Mouse Road left in search of the man she loved. Then, alone with her daughter, Speaks While Leaving had finally let the tears fill her eyes and slip down her cheeks. Blue Shell Woman fretted with her mother’s emotion. Speaks While Leaving stood and took her to the window where they both could look out through the rippled glass.

  The window was one of many that opened out onto a courtyard that sat entirely within the palace walls. Four pools of clear water flanked a shrine, and the sun high overhead spilled down into them, flashing from the backs of fat orange fish that glided beneath the lily leaves. The sun and its heat beckoned to her, and, with Blue Shell Woman on her hip, she went down in search of it.

  Servants bowed to her as she made her way through the halls and stairways. Several made the sign of their faith as she passed, but she cared nothing for that now. She wanted to think of nothing, right now, nothing but the feel of the sun on her face, on her hair, on her shoulders. Making her way past statues and paintings and murals, she found the courtyard and stepped out into it.

  She could smell the heat rising from the stones, and she walked from the shadows into the blinding sunlight as a thirsty man toward water. Closing her eyes, face upturned, she felt the sun’s heat and saw the red as it tried to penetrate her eyelids.

  The courtyard was square and walled by two tiers of tall, arched windows. On the north side, three square towers commanded the rooftops, and to the south, she could see one of the palace’s corner towers. Along the outer edge of the court, bushes grew in a thick border, though they were kept unnaturally low and square by the trimming of vé’hó’e gardeners. Within that border, two low steps led to a raised stone platform at the corners of which were the four pools. Standing tall in the center of everything was a stone shrine.

  Blue Shell Woman cooed in the warmth, and Speaks While Leaving took her to one of the pools. They sat down on the stone edge and the baby immediately reached for the fish. Speaks While Leaving let her splash her hands, but kept a hand beneath her belly so she wouldn’t go headfirst into the water.

  The shrine cast a sharp-edged shadow across the pool, and the fish wove their way from light to dark, keeping their distance from the baby’s splashing hands. Her ripples shattered the sunlight, sending shards dancing on the shrine. Speaks While Leaving watched the play of light along the shrine’s columns. Four tall openings made the shrine into a sort of stone gazebo, its domed top supported by four columned niches. In each of the niches was a life-sized man made of stone. The nearest statue held a book to his chest and wore robes like many of the vé’hó’e in the paintings she had seen. His face was bearded, too, as many of the vé’hó’e were and as the men of the People could not be, even had they desired it. His expression, however, was a puzzle to her. He looked either sad or sleepy or perhaps fearful. His head was cocked a little to one side, but his eyes were looking upward to the sky, as if he were afraid something was about to fall upon him. His free hand he held upturned, prepared to catch that which was coming down.

  What was he thinking about? she wondered. What was he afraid of?

  The stone man embodied all her feelings about the vé’hó’e. They were cold, pale, stiff, and entirely incomprehensible. She felt tears building again within her and there, in that quiet courtyard, with her daughter playing happily at the water’s edge, she let her grief flow, and her tears fell onto the hot stones, each one evaporating, its damp circle shrinking to nothing even before the next tear fell.

  The vision—or at least her interpretation of it—was dead. There would be no peaceful solution. War would come, was already on its way, and it would take those she loved and the life she loved with it, burning it away like a wildfire. And Storm Arriving, already in the vanguard of that war, already aching for that contest, would likely be one of the first consumed by War’s gluttony. Blood would spring from the land, as if the earth itself were injured. The vé’hó’e would come onward, with nothing to slow them down but the People’s bravery and indignation.

  How many would die? How many would survive? Any? Would anything of the life she knew survive the onslaught that was sure to come? Would she? Would her daughter?

  For the first time in her life, she actually wished for a vision to come upon her. Never before had she ever wanted to feel the chill of the spirit powers, but now she did. She wanted to know, wanted to understand what was coming, but as she opened her mind to the other world, it was veiled, dark, silent. She could not feel it, not here, not in the center of a stone courtyard surrounded by stone walls surrounded by even more walls, all set atop a rocky hillside inside a harsh country. Here, she was utterly cut off from the People, from the land, and from the powers that coursed through it.

  Blue Shell Woman’s joyous giggle brought her back to the sun-drenched court, and as she reached to take the lily leaf from her daughter’s mouth, she startled to find a woman standing in the shadowed opening of the shrine.

  “I beg your pardon,” the woman said in the Trader’s Tongue. “I heard the child’s laughter. I hope I am not disturbing you.”

  Speaks While Leaving wiped tears from her cheeks as she regarded the small woman. Her fine, black clothing accentuated her pallid skin; the only color she bore was the gold of the large cross that hung at her breast. She stood, hands clasped before her, but while her words had been polite, there had been no apology in her tone.

  “Your Majesty,” Speaks While Leaving said, guessing her identity. She picked up Blue Shell Woman. “We were just leaving.”

  “No,” the queen said, stepping forward but remaining within the shrine’s shadow. “Please, don’t leave on my account.”

  Speaks While Leaving looked the queen in the eye, hoping this vé’ho’e woman took it as the challenge she intended it to be. “I do leave on your account. My people will perish, on your account.”

  “Please,” María Cristina said as she sat down on the pool’s stone rim, unconsciously arranging the ample hems of her skirts.

  Speaks While Leaving glared at the queen a while longer, allowing herself to feel the antagonism that she might otherwise have held back, and hoping that her feelings showed upon her face.

  “Is this your daughter?” the queen asked.

  It was the only question that had a chance of breaking through her scorn. She fought the impulse to relent and pulled Blue Shell Woman close in a double-armed embrace, but that only made the little girl laugh.

  “Yes,” Speaks While Leaving said. “My daughter.”

  “How old is she?”

  “A little more than a year.”

  “That is a good age.”

  That the queen wanted to talk was obvious, and Speaks While Leaving was suddenly curious as to what would bring her out into the heat. “Your Majesty has children?” she asked, keeping the conversation alive.

  The queen smiled. “Vraiment,” she said and chuckled. “Two daughters, the Princesas Mercedes and Teresa, and my son, who will be king. A son who most likely saved my life.” She held her hands out toward the baby. “May I?”

  She let the queen take Blue Shell Woman into her arms and watched as she cradled her, made bubbly sounds, and waggled two fingers along the infant’s lips. Speaks While Leaving was taken off guard by this woman’s easy manner. “How is it your son saved you?”

  “My husband died while I was still pregnant,” she said. “It was a troubled time here, but I was able to have my son crowned king before he was even born. Had he been another daughter, the succession would have been open to question, and the Federalists w
ould likely have had me exiled. Or killed, along with my children.” Sitting there, smiling into Blue Shell Woman’s laughter, the queen told her the rest of the story, of Spain’s troubles as the pendulum swung between a monarchy and a republic, and of the uneasy compromise that had been struck between the two.

  “So you have had to negotiate for your survival?”

  “Yes,” the queen said, regret touching her voice. “I have.”

  “That is what I am doing. Only I negotiate not just for myself, but for my nation. How can you turn your back on our request?”

  The queen smiled as she glanced up at Speaks While Leaving. “Because I had to. At least right then, I had to.”

  Speaks While Leaving frowned. “I do not understand.”

  Blue Shell Woman reached for the hand-sized cross of gold that hung at the queen’s throat. She unpinned it and gave it to her. The baby immediately put the cross into her mouth.

  “I had to refuse the offer. It had been decided. But the men who made that decision are concerned only with their own power and the power of their factions.” She laughed again, a low, throaty sound that seemed out of place in such a small woman. “It is ironic. These men are prideful of their peasant bloodlines, but the higher they rise, the less they hear what their own peasantry is saying.”

  The queen leaned close. “I listen,” she said. “I hear the tales they tell. I know what the people want their leaders to do. I hear what the people say.”

  “And what do you hear?” Speaks While Leaving asked, daring to hope.

  “I hear them speak of a brave people who have stood up to the might of Spain and now struggle against the American upstarts for their very existence. I hear of armies killing women and children. I even hear the tales they tell of a most remarkable corrida that took place in San Francisco. But right now, all I hear is the tale of a young mother to whom the birds flock, and with whom she converses; a woman who preaches peace, for her people and others; a woman who has visions, and who carries about her an aura of holiness the like of which has not been seen since the days of the saints.”