The Cry of the Wind

by Kurt R A Giambastiani

  The baby mewed weakly as he took her. Speaks While Leaving recognized the sound, having heard it in a dream: the call of terns, light as air, slicing through the wind bound for distant shores. She blinked, and tears fell from her eyes. Garcia-Fuentes glanced over at One Who Flies, and then looked up at her.

  “They are in the worst of it,” he said, “and there’s little we can do.” He put the flared tube back into his bag and pulled out a wooden box. He undid the brass latch and opened it, revealing many small compartments lined with red velvet. In the compartments, fit snugly into the depressions, were square bottles of dark brown glass, each sealed with cork and wax. He lifted first one, then another, checking the handwritten labels wrapped around each bottle until he found the one he sought. Taking it out, he closed and latched the box. With his fingernail, he scored the wax seal and pulled out the cork, then sniffed the contents.

  “This is sanguinaria. Give them one drop of this on a lump of sugar...just one drop,” he said, handing her the bottle. “Once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening. Just one drop. Otherwise, continue treating them as you have been. Some warm broth might be good, too.”

  Speaks While Leaving took the bottle, looking at the long looped words that described its contents. “One drop,” she echoed, and pulled the cork to smell the contents as he had. Her nose wrinkled at the scent: it was nauseous, vile, the odor of warm rot.

  She smiled. Bloodroot!

  “One drop only,” Garcia-Fuentes said again. “Any more will cause vomiting.”

  “Yes. One drop.” Bloodroot. He had given her a bottle of bloodroot. She pointed to his box. “Do you have any black-cherry bark?”

  Garcia-Fuentes stood and put the box back in his bag. “Señora, I am a physician, not some scoundrel selling tonics.”

  She blinked, not understanding his bristled attitude. It did not matter. Bloodroot was what she wanted, and bloodroot was what he had given her. It would help the soreness and constriction in their throat, and allow them to take in more liquid. “Thank you, señor.”

  He bowed to her, bid adieu to One Who Flies, and left. One Who Flies whispered something to Alejandro as he took the towels and pitchers of water and ice. Then he closed the door and went to Mouse Road. He laid the dampened cloth on her forehead. She moaned but did not move. He prepared another for Blue Shell Woman.

  “Alejandro brought some lump sugar, too,” he said, offering her the damp cloth.

  Instead of taking the cloth, she handed him the baby. He took her in his arms gingerly, as if she were brittle and likely to snap. Speaks While Leaving went to the table and set two lumps of sugar on the table. Then, with care, she loosened the cork in the bottle and tipped it, watching as the dark liquid seeped out, building up a bead on the lip of the mouth. She could smell its foulness, a stench that she knew well from preparing it as a red dye and as a paint, as well as a medicine. The bead became a droplet, and the droplet eased out until, with a small tap, she made it fall onto the sugar cube, soiling its sparkled whiteness, turning it the color of dried blood. She prepared the second cube as the first but shook off a smaller droplet, coloring only the top half of the cube.

  The first dose she gave to Mouse Road, propping her up and bringing her to semi-awareness. She winced at the awful taste, despite the sugar’s sweetness, but the cube quickly melted away. But a whole cube would be too large for Blue Shell Woman to take, so she crushed it between two spoons and gave the result to the baby while One Who Flies held her. Blue Shell Woman complained but could not rid herself of the medicine.

  Then she sat on the bed next to One Who Flies.

  “There is little else to do, now, but make them comfortable, and get them to drink as much as possible.”

  “You could probably use some sleep,” he said.

  “No,” she lied. She hadn’t slept but a few, dream-filled moments since their departure from Cadiz. “I am fine.”

  “You are not. Here.” He patted the bed. “Lie down. I’ll hold the baby. As you said, there’s little else we can do.”

  She sighed, but he was right. She laid down on the bed, lying close to the wall so he would have a place to put Blue Shell Woman down when she got too heavy.

  Sleep closed her unwilling eyes, and she dreamt of fire in the sky. Smoke burned her eyes and she heard the sounds of war screaming across the land.

  She awoke and blinked away sleep. Her eyes had crusted over, and she rubbed at them. One Who Flies was pacing slowly back and forth in the small room—three steps one way, three steps back—holding Blue Shell Woman in his arms. His hair was mussed and there was stubble on his chin. In the windowless cabin, she knew not if it was night or day.

  “How long?” she said.

  “All day,” he said. “It is nearly nightfall.”

  “How are they?”

  His expression told her. They were not good. She rose quickly and reached out for her daughter.

  “I gave them both their medicine for the evening. Mouse Road has taken some juice, but I can’t rouse the baby enough to get her to drink.”

  Her daughter’s skin was gritty, hot, and dry. Her breathing was labored, her eyes rolled up in her head. Putting a hand on the baby’s breast, she could feel her heart; a rapid flutter, as fragile as a bee in straw. And as dangerous.

  She had seen this. From times spent tending the sick of her own band, and even some vé’hó’e children, she had seen this. A single glance at One Who Flies told her that he had not. He had helped his sisters through the red fever, but they had come survived. This, he had never seen.

  Mouse Road was sleeping, and from the regular rise and fall of her breast, Speaks While Leaving could tell that the fever had passed over her. She sighed, trying to control her emotions a little longer, glad at least that the price of her foolhardiness would not be doubled.

  “Thank you, One Who Flies. I can watch over them for a while. You look like you could use a walk around the deck or a splash of water on your face.”

  He rubbed at the stubble on his chin and then raked back his hair. “Yes. I probably could. Would you like something to eat? I can bring something from the galley.”

  She smiled, but knew that her sadness showed through. “Something to eat,” she said. “Yes. Fine.”

  “Fine,” One Who Flies said, glancing at her, gauging her mood. “Are you sure? I could stay.”

  “No,” she said and shooed at him with her free hand. “You go. I’ll be fine with them alone for a little while.”

  “If you’re sure,” he said, and then gathered up the soiled and sodden towels, the empty pitcher, the bowl of water that had been clean chips of ice, and took them all away.

  She bolted the door behind him.

  She sat down on the empty bed, up in the corner against the wall, her daughter in her arms, her legs folded together and to the left in the manner proper for a woman of the Closed Windpipe band. As the ocean rocked the ship, the ship’s motion rocked the cabin, the cabin rocked her, and she in turn rocked her baby. She sat straight-backed in her corner refuge, denying her desire to collapse, curl up, and weep. The time for that was close enough. For now, she could maintain a dignified vigil. It would not be long.

  She retraced the steps that had brought her to this place, following the path of small decisions she had traveled, revisiting the bright hope that had banished the qualms that had lurked in the crevices of her mind. At what point should she have turned away? At what juncture should she have turned left instead of right, gone back instead of forward? At Cadiz? In Cuba? In the vé’ho’e town?

  At home?

  Should she have never left? Should she have listened to the council of her fear and let Mouse Road go ahead on her own? Should she have gone back to sleep in her empty bed?

  Her empty bed. The image set her mind a-reel, for with it came its opposite, accompanied by memories of the man who made the difference: her husband, the man of whom she had not thought for days, even weeks. She had spent too much of her life unmarried
, too many years alone, and had fallen back into those patterns that had set her apart from normal people and led her across the prairie searching for the truth of her visions. She had always followed her visions, trusting the gift of the ma’heono over the advice of men, over the wisdom of chiefs, and now, over the cries of her own heart. Following those visions had cost her—in love, in time, in the closeness of family and friends—but now, as her daughter lay dying in her arms, now and for the first time, she regretted it.

  Blue Shell Woman’s head hung back, her mouth slack and open, her lifepulse rippling along the gentle crease of her throat. Her small body jerked with each inward breath, her lungs sucking air through a throat nearly swollen shut and letting it seep out again in a gurgling rattle. Speaks While Leaving watched her, counting the moments between each spasmodic breath, counting first to five, then six.

  I did not know, she told the spirits. I did not know that this was part of the price.

  Seven.

  Had I known, I never should have agreed to pay it.

  Eight. Nine.

  “I am sorry, my daughter. I did not know.”

  Ten.

  And no more.

  Above, she could hear the night wind cry out as it was sliced by the ship’s mastlines. She heard ancient thunder in the engines below. The night closed around her, swallowing her, swallowing light, wreathing her in its depthless void. The cry of the wind became her own voice, keening as grief cut through her, and the thunder from below became the pounding on her door, a pounding that grew louder with her mourning wail, rising to a peak as she began to sing the words of her daughter’s death song.

  At dawn, she stood on deck against the ship’s rail. One Who Flies held her tightly, keeping her steady as well as keeping her upright. Her throat was raw from crying, and her sobs now were only croaks as she held out the shrouded body of her daughter to Doctor Garcia-Fuentes. The doctor took the body from her, but still she reached out after it, grasping the air.

  Alejandro stood close by, events making him paler than his own discomfort obliged, and with him was the ship’s captain, who quietly read words she did not understand from a small, leather-bound book. The doctor took the body to the rail and, at a nod from the captain, dropped Blue Shell Woman into the sea.

  Words were beyond her capacity to form, but her mind seethed with them—words of shame, of guilt, of grief—as well as wordless things: sharp claws of pain, freezing fires of regret, and the black shards of broken dreams. Her daughter’s shrouded form bobbed on the waves—so small a thing held in the expanse of the ocean’s palm—and Speaks While Leaving prayed that her spirit would find its way from this wide place to the star road that even now had not faded completely from the sky. The burial cloths grew heavy with water and began to drag at Blue Shell Woman’s body. As the swells rolled over the body and the pale shroud grew dim beneath the dark waves, Speaks While Leaving knew that it was more than just a daughter she had lost here. It was a past, and a future as well. More had died here than her child, but she would have to wait until she returned home before she knew what else she was burying beneath the waves.

  Chapter 24

  Thursday, July 24, A.D. 1890

  White House

  Washington, District of Columbia

  The chair’s right front wheel squeaked like a mouse on the rack as Douglas brought Custer down the back hall of the White House. Custer had thought often about that squeaky wheel, hating it just in and of itself, and hating what it represented. Many times, he’d thought of getting it fixed, but each time he had relented, always deciding to leave it as it was. The squeak, annoying as it was, served his purposes, for with each shuttle from the residence to the library, just as with each noisy and ignominious trip in the small elevator, he was reminded of his incapacitation and goaded into further action. The squeak had become a prod, and today—especially today—he was grateful for it.

  He straightened in the chair as they came around the corner, heading toward the kitchen. Several staff members, in aprons and in servant’s black-and-white, stopped and stood against the wall to give him room to pass.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” each said in turn, and Custer returned their warm smiles with a wink and a nod as Douglas and the squeak ushered him down the hall.

  Just outside the kitchen door, he raised his hand and Douglas stopped. The swinging door stood just ahead, still rocking slightly to and fro from the last person through. Custer took a breath to calm himself, then gripped the thick wood handle of his cane in his left hand. Douglas set the stops on the chair’s wheels and came around to help, but Custer waved him off. With his feet on the thin and well-traveled carpet, he leaned forward, got his weight over his knees, and pushed upward with legs and on the cane.

  Standing there on his own, having got there on his own, he saw Douglas’s small smile.

  “Feeling feisty today, Mr. President?”

  “You bet,” Custer said.

  Douglas stepped back toward the door and pushed it open.

  Walking, Custer had learned from his many training ambulations taken around the library’s oval floor, was mostly a matter of falling forward, but doing it slowly so that one’s head didn’t outpace one’s rear end. He did it now, tipping forward slightly, feeling the brief but definite lilt of his gut as he passed from stability to precariousness, and then set his legs and cane in motion to keep pace. He walked to the door, pushed against the cane to turn right, and entered the kitchen.

  The White House kitchen was a large, bright room with tables, stoves, ovens, and cabinets. Pots and pans and cooking dishes hung from hooks on the right, while ladles and utensils of metal both bright and dark hung on the left. In the middle was an open working space filled with the scents of blooming yeast, chopped herbs, and cleanliness. Normally, it would also have been filled with Cook’s staff of twenty, all busy putting food to the fire or meat to the knife, and the din of orders, instructions, and banter would have bounced from the walls. This morning, however, it was quiet, empty, and ominous.

  At the table farthest from the door sat seven men: Samuel, Jacob, and five other secretaries from Custer’s cabinet, all sitting silently, staring at their cooling cups of coffee. Wearing their dark suits and beetled frowns, they seemed more out of place in this room than ballerinas on a busy street corner, but as Custer walked into the kitchen, their frowns eased and with a scrape of chairs and the rattle of china, they stood.

  Inwardly, Custer smiled. At least to these men, he was still the President.

  Samuel pulled out a chair for him as he made his halting way to the table. Custer saw the appraisal in their eyes. His limp and his halting step were marks against him, and his still-imperfect speech would not help the matter. He had to show them his inner strength, and his ability to command.

  “Good morning,” he said, intelligibly but with impediment.

  “Good morning, Mr. President,” they answered. Glances flickered around the table as the cabinet members saw both how far he had come, and how far he had yet to go in his recovery.

  “Please, gentlemen. Be seated.” They sat along with him. “I note that a few are not in attendance,” he said.

  “Er, yes,” Jacob said, offering Custer a cup of coffee. When the cup was refused, he went on. “The Secretary of State is currently in New York, engaged in trade talks with the French.”

  “And Hawkins?”

  “The...the Secretary of the Treasury sends his regrets, but is unable to attend.”

  “Ha,” Custer said with a wink. “Well, we knew which side of the fence he was on, now, didn’t we?”

  The others chuckled and the mood relaxed. Jacob nodded. “We did, indeed, Mr. President.”

  “No matter,” Custer said. “The men I want are here. The men I trust are here. Let’s get the ball rolling. Jacob?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.” He took a piece of paper out of his coat pocket, unfolded it, and laid it out on the table before him. Custer saw that his friend’s hands trembled
a bit; if the others saw it, they didn’t show it. On the paper were a few simple lines of notes. Jacob cleared his throat.

  “Gentlemen, we have brought you here because we are at a pivotal point. The crises that have been building for the past months are about to crest and break. The Cheyenne response to Morton’s war is costing us more in civilian casualties than in military, and populations and investment in the regions have begun to drop. The legislature is demanding action. As one senator succinctly put it, ‘Business needs people.’”

  He nodded to Samuel and Custer’s aide produced copies of a report which he handed to the others.

  “As you will see in this dispatch,” Jacob continued, “the rebels in Cuba, emboldened by the new influx of cash and arms provided at the Vice President’s direction, have succeeded in burning or severely damaging three sugar refineries in the Havana area, including the complete destruction of one American refinery, in which three Americans perished.”

  Jacob warmed to his task and Custer was glad to see it. His Secretary of War had been an able soldier and had proven to be a good administrator, but public speaking was not where his strength lay, except when he got his hackles up. Jacob calm was a trustworthy man, but Jacob riled, with the tension that growled in his words and the dark, deadpan gaze that showed most clearly the pitiless resolve of which he was entirely capable, that Jacob was a man of whom to be wary.

  “We now have Spanish troops in the borderlands,” he told them. “We have Spanish warships prowling the Gulf, and we have a Spanish railway pushing north out of Albuquerque. Spain has allied itself with the Cheyenne, in spirit if not in fact, and in response, Morton has sent our warships to Havana—over my objections and the objections of Secretary Fairchild—to protect our interests in Cuba. What good a thousand sailors will do against those rebels is any man’s guess.” He reined in on his acrimony with visible effort, taking his notes from the table and returning them to his breast pocket.