Life at the Speed of Us

by Heather Sappenfield

  The bear stepped closer and stopped, head tilted, listening. A thin crescent scar rose above her left eye. Behind her head flitted a brown butterfly with white-outlined wings. My mouth dropped open.

  The bear charged. I yanked my hand from the trunk, facing her, waiting for winter to appear.

  The scene switched to slow motion. I’d never noticed gravity in these other worlds, but now my feet became a thousand pounds I could not budge. The bear blurred toward me—a blast of musky scent—and I felt its paws press my shoulders. I slammed onto my back and blurted pain as claws pierced my chest.

  “Mom!” I screamed. “It’s me!”

  Her beady brown eyes reflected my ghostly image. We regarded one another for seconds, an eternity. She snorted, her head snapping down, her weight compressing my chest like resuscitation. She hopped off, hustled to the side, and studied me. Her cub barked from its tree. Still, she studied me.

  She bellowed, rose on her hind legs, and charged the spruce, slashing it with her claws. She turned, and I saw her milk-laden teats. She dropped to all fours, snorted again, and sauntered toward her cub. It scampered down the tree and hopped at her face. She glanced over her shoulder three times before they disappeared into the forest.

  Dark spots rose in my vision. I couldn’t move. Blood from the bear’s punctures trickled over my shoulders, down my back, and was sponged by my long underwear. I inhaled against the pain in my chest and smelled my own fear. The sun was scorching. A fly circled my face. You could change the world. Right. I couldn’t even pass one simple test: my promise to Dad. I was a failure.

  I loosed one bleak laugh at that foreign sky.

  29

  Sovern?”

  It was Súmáí.

  “Sovern!”

  Gravity seemed to glue every part of me to the ground, and I struggled to lift even my eyelids. His cool fingers rested against my quill-spotted cheek. I raised my arm, clumsy, and he took my hand and held it. He leaned down. Was he going to kiss me? I flinched.

  I sat up, wincing. He inventoried me from my face to my boots. He studied my long underwear shirt, and, pressing my chin to my chest, I saw an arcing red smear. I pointed toward the Upward Dog spruce. He sighed like he was deciding something. He strode to it and studied the claw marks oozing with golden sap.

  I realized fully that I was sitting in one of Súmáí’s universes. Don’t panic, I thought. You’ve found him. Stay and learn. Even so, my breaths came shallow and fast.

  Súmáí saw this and knelt before me. He dipped his finger inside my shirt’s collar. I sucked air through my teeth at the bloody cloth’s tug on my skin. He peeked in and his brows pressed close. He helped me up and guided me toward the spruce. I struggled to stand straight and could feel it would be a while before that happened easily, yet I managed to plant my feet and stop him. I touched his chest, pointed to my eyes, and touched his chest again.

  Súmáí shook his head. He pointed to the blood on me and to the spruce.

  I pointed to the tepees at Gold Bowl’s base, my eyes, and the tepees again.

  He looked across the bowl and scratched the back of his head. Finally, he pressed his lips and nodded. He ran his hand over my hair and down its length.

  I stiffened and stepped back. Had I given him a cue I’d missed? Was this a universe where we’d been intimate? Was this even the Súmáí I’d met before? He’d touched my cheek, though, in that way we had.

  He pointed at my chest, then his, and he crossed his fingers. My pulse amplified at that, and then even more as his arm curled around my back. I tried to relax but couldn’t. To mask it, I took his arm by its wrist and kept my fingers there till I felt his pulse, willing it to slow mine. He tilted his head and seemed to look beyond me at something sad, like he had in the cabin.

  He pointed down the mountain and gestured walking with two fingers. I shrugged, tried my wobbly legs, and found I could manage.

  He led me down Gold Bowl, following its natural contour till we emerged where this morning I’d come out on the road and joined with a crowd of skiers. Now we followed a trace trail snaking through a field of tall grass. To make things seem real, I focused on the fuzzy tips brushing the backs of my fingers like whispering numbers.

  Every step issued a jolt of pain, and blood glued my long underwear shirt to my back. My cracked ribs felt like they’d cracked again, and my arm throbbed against its brace. The heat lifted the scents of dirt, new growth, and my own blood, making me even woozier.

  To keep going, I studied Súmáí. His hair stretched down his back, intersecting his quiver and bow’s diagonal line. My gaze followed the line of his back to the belt of his deerskin pants, then followed their tan profile down to his moccasins. The first time we’d met, when we’d surprised each other, I’d been repelled. Now I felt drawn to him clear to my bones. But it was nothing like a crush. I stumbled, and he turned faster than seemed possible.

  Because I knew he couldn’t understand, I said, “Why am I so drawn to you?”

  He seemed to struggle not to touch me. Maybe I was with a different Súmáí. If not, I had definitely missed something. Súmáí’s actions and my walking around in this world meant the equation for all this had altered. He saw my confusion, half-smiled, and started down again.

  From the thousand times I’d snowboarded it, I knew this draw intimately, knew all of the back bowls like I knew a mirror’s reflection of my face, so I understood where we were when he stopped short of the tepees and led me around the village’s eastern edge. He motioned for me to stay and pressed his finger to his lips. I watched him disappear into the forest, still seeing that gesture for silence. I laughed once, and then I couldn’t stop laughing. If anyone could hear me, they’d think I’d gone crazy. Maybe I had.

  I scanned around, making sure no animals would charge me, and settled gingerly on a fallen log. I eyed my snow boots and realized I’d left my snowshoes, hat, and parka at the spruce, my phone in its pocket. I glanced at the sun. Each of my visits to Mom seemed to have had a purpose—a pattern I couldn’t quite discern. That pattern whispered, unceasing, against my brain. Was I here on this day, loose in this universe, for a reason?

  I rocked to ease the soreness building in my body. That bear was Mom. No doubt. She’d recognized me. Had she brought me here? Or Súmáí? If that was Mom, then maybe that cub was me. If so, I was pretty freaking cute. I ran my fingers back through my hair and then flinched at Súmáí standing beside me.

  “Don’t do that!” I said.

  He grinned and pressed his finger to his lips again.

  “You have no idea how ironic that is,” I said.

  Tucked under his arm were clothing—elk-skin, deerskin, I couldn’t tell the difference—and a rag. I rose like an old lady and he led me away from the tepees, farther east, following the creek. We walked a while, crossing into the Silver Bowl drainage, where a tributary flowed into it. Just above this confluence, one of those house-sized rocks that makes you wonder how it got there rested half in the creek.

  Súmáí walked to its upriver side. Here the water swelled, forming a pool. He lifted his bow and quiver over his head, and then his sleeveless shirt and amulet bag. He toed off his moccasins. As he unlaced his pants at the sides of his belt, I tried to seem nonchalant. But only the legs fell away, so that a deerskin rectangle hung from his belt halfway down his thighs, front and back. Lindholm had never talked about this.

  “Get a grip, Sovern,” I muttered. I’d been making out with Gage for months. I blinked back the sensation of his kiss as Súmáí stepped into the water, sheathed knife at his hip. He held the rag.

  I pulled off my snow boots, peeled out of my snow pants, yanked off my ski socks, and stomped down my long underwear. I stood there like an absolute dork in my Tuesday days-of-the-week panties and that long underwear shirt. I took off my arm brace and started to lift the shirt over my head, but Súmáí said something, so I
stopped. He gestured for me to come into the water.

  That first step’s cold was brutal. Clear, clear water swirled around my feet. Súmáí grinned, stepped toward me, and held out his hand. I forced my gaze from how his body glimmered with water beads and took his hand, clenching my teeth as I waded in. I paused, lifted off my amulet bag, and slung it to the bank. The water was to our chests in four steps. Súmáí lowered himself to his neck, so I did too.

  The water seeped into my shirt, and as it met the glue of my blood, softening it, I realized why Súmáí had encouraged me to keep on my shirt. I shivered. He pulled me to him and wrapped his arms around me, loosely. Testing. I failed not to seem nervous. His arms loosened.

  My mind zoomed around for footing. What were the rules now? What was too fast when time was undefined? An unknown? I had to be here, now, for a reason. Mom’s aching claw marks ringed my chest, and Súmáí’s arms circled my waist. I forced back thoughts of Dad.

  After a bit, Súmáí tested the glue of my shirt’s dried blood. He took the hem, and I helped him tug it over my head. He tossed it to the bank. He moved us to waist-deep water.

  With the rag, he washed my back and shoulders, working around the straps of my bra. He washed gently at first, then harder, adding fine gravel from the pool’s floor. That scrubbing, combined with the freezing water, felt great. The swelling and soreness eased, though each goose bump on my flesh felt sharp. Súmáí turned me to him and washed gently across my chest. I gnawed my lip against the pain.

  When it was clean, he sucked in his breath and traced Mom’s punctures. They curved from my shoulders to my clavicle, then down, meeting in a dip over my heart where the bear’s inner claws had been. I remembered Gage tracing a heart on my back. Gage was better-looking. Why was I so attracted to Súmáí? I could feel that attraction, literally, in my bones. I closed my eyes against memories of Gage, and when I opened them again, Súmáí looked at me with such intensity I hunched forward. From the cold, he must have thought, because he led me out of the pool.

  Arms crossed for warmth, I followed, feeling pale and idiotic in my underwear and bra. Súmáí lay flat on his back in the grass, so I lay beside him, a total dork, but the sun seared my skin with welcome heat. His every movement seemed careful not to be intimate. We watched clouds migrate. A hawk spiraled above. I wondered how we must look from up there.

  Súmáí rolled onto his side and propped himself on his elbow. He took in my length. I tried not to feel ashamed. I imagined his finger running along my outer curves to the punctures on my chest. Slow down, Sov, I thought.

  His head snapped to the side, tense and listening.

  He rose catlike, pulled me to my feet, grabbed his bow and quiver, and guided me behind him in one swift movement as he faced the opposite bank. For the second time that day, I worked to make myself narrow.

  I reached down, retrieving a perfect skipping rock, and followed the line of Súmáí’s gaze, but saw nothing. He raised his bow just as a guy stepped out of the forest. Then another. One was blond, the other dark-haired, both with beards that had overgrown their faces while their hair hung scraggy below sweat-ringed hats. They reeked of cigarettes. The blond sauntered to the pool’s edge on the opposite bank.

  You see a million sepia photos of people back in the day, and their trousers, suspenders, coats, and brimmed leather hats seem normal, but when there’s one right in front of you, it’s like a modern person playing dress-up. Or like you’ve dropped into a movie. I stifled a laugh till I saw the guy’s intent face and the harsh line of his mouth. The dark-haired guy stepped to his side and smirked. Both wore gun belts.

  “We got ourselves a near-naked Indian.” The blond guy said. “How’d you get that white woman?”

  The dark-haired guy shot Súmáí a scalding look. In Spanish he said, “No debe estar aqui.”

  I frowned. Why shouldn’t Súmáí be here?

  He didn’t answer, of course. He just kept his arrow aimed on the blond guy’s chest.

  “Donde robo’ la mujer ? ” the blond guy said.

  “He didn’t steal me, asshole!” I said in Spanish.

  Súmáí tensed.

  “Entonces eres una puta,” the dark-haired one said.

  The probability of getting shot was high, yet I loaded that stone in my finger like Dad had shown me a thousand times. I stepped from behind Súmáí, faced the scumbags full-on, and said, “I’m no whore.”

  If you’re talking fabric, the line separating a bikini from a bra and panties is a fine one, but when you’re facing horny scumbags, that line seems a mile wide. I rolled back my sore shoulders. The men startled but composed themselves. Their eyes roamed over me, snagged on the punctures around my neck and then my pink Tuesday underwear.

  “Damned if she isn’t a beauty,” the blond guy said, sort of reverent, and then his gaze clicked with calculation.

  The dark-haired guy grunted. He spoke in English this time. “Wrong day. Can’t read?”

  I winged the stone at his sneer and dove toward the boulder. Soreness had altered my aim, but both guys’ arms flinched up and the stone hit the dark-haired guy’s ear. He stumbled back, his deafening shot missing high, just as an arrow pierced his chest.

  The blond guy shot, but Súmáí was lunging behind the rock, string twanging. The blond guy fell next to his partner. Arrow shafts rose from their chests like props.

  I hunched over and my hand came to my mouth. I glanced at Súmáí, but he was staring at the men, seeming to see a thousand omens. He jogged above the pool and hopped across the creek on three stones. Yanking his arrows from the guys’ chests, he wiped them clean on their shirts. He drew his knife from his hip and knelt at the dark-haired guy’s head.

  I spun to my pile of clothes, then remembered the clothes Súmáí had brought and moved to those instead. Of course he’s scalping these guys, I told myself. He’s a real Ute. This is not a movie, and those arrows are not props. Scalping was a sign of bravery and manhood, Ms. Lindholm had said. I gulped air. This was all happening too fast.

  My hands shook as I put on my amulet bag and pressed it to my chest. The creek had left me smelling like clean earth. I unfurled the deerskin shirt and tugged it over my head. I expected it to feel stiff, but it was supple. I rolled up its long sleeves and strapped on my arm brace. There were leggings, and the leather rectangles on the belt. I belted on the rectangles, then struggled to tie on the leggings with jittery fingers.

  Was this why I was here? To help Súmáí kill two men? I pulled on my snow boots. When I straightened, Súmáí stood beside me.

  I flinched. “Don’t do that!”

  One side of his mouth curled up. Two bloody scalps—one blond, one brown—hung from his hip.

  I hooked hair back from my face with my finger, feeling him notice how my hand shook.

  “Hablas español,” he said.

  I grinned despite it all and said, “Sí.”

  30

  I followed Súmáí to where the dead guys had emerged from the forest, and then along their tracks to two horses. Behind their saddles were strapped mining pans and short shovels. I wondered if Súmáí understood these men’s greed for gold or silver or whatever else they could sell. I scanned Silver Bowl; I’d never considered the real history behind the names that in my world seemed like a sort of game. In my world, they mined cold white gold here, the light fluffy kind a person could soar through.

  Súmáí handed me the reins of one of the horses. It was reddish brown with a white oval on its forehead, and I kept it at arm’s length. Other than watching pony rides at the fair, I’d never been near a horse and knew them only from movies. Súmáí laughed gently.

  “We will go on foot,” he said in Spanish.

  He led his horse down the valley toward his village. I mimicked how he held the reins, relieved when the big animal followed me. I focused on each step, each breath, noting the horse�
�s sharp scent as I tried to sense reality. Mom’s attack + Súmáí’s affection + these miners = things happening way too fast. I looked down at my deerskin covered legs and felt myself balancing on sanity’s blade.

  As we crossed the tributary draining from Silver Bowl, I was glad for the rubber of my snow boots as the horse clopped against the rocks and splashed water behind me. I tried to take it all in stride, but I was already nervous as hell and shaking. As I hopped to the far bank, I noticed I wasn’t nearly as stiff as before. That icy creek water had helped. Tomorrow, across my chest, the pain would be awful, but at least my legs were moving better. Tomorrow? I thought. What did tomorrow even mean here?

  A man spoke. Súmáí halted. Four Utes frowned down at him from horseback. I lurked near his horse’s rear, not the smartest thing, but it seemed the lesser danger. I peeked around and saw Súmáí hold up the scalps. The Utes’ eyes darted to me and I ducked back.

  “Sovern.” Súmáí gestured with his hand.

  I stepped out, leading my horse till it stood beside Súmáí’s. They nickered at one another. Looking at those Utes, I felt like I was on a movie set again, but no way did I think they were just props. Two were older than Súmáí. Two looked about the same age. All their faces had similar round shapes. The younger ones wore deerskin leggings and plaid flannel shirts. An older one wore a deerskin shirt like mine, and a blue bandana wrapped his head.

  The older Ute in front seemed in charge. His braids were wrapped with rawhide. Over one ear, at the start of his braid, a white feather plumed up. A brown feather plumed up from the other. He wore a choker of white beads. His deerskin shirt and leggings were fringed. He spoke scalding words to Súmáí, and Súmáí seethed something equally hot. He regarded me.

  “This is Sovern,” Súmáí said in Spanish. “She comes from the trees.”