The soldier was fast. We pursued him over the ridge marking the boundary from Gold Bowl into Silver Bowl. Súmáí reached down and touched a footprint in the loose soil around a pine. “Indian.”
“How do you know?”
He pointed at the track. “Moccasin. A scout.”
“Then we can let him go.”
Súmáí shook his head. He looked at his own moccasins. “Will you at least wait at camp?”
“No! You just said I’m a great hunter.”
“To hunt you must accept death,” he said.
My mouth dropped open, but I could find nothing to say. He took off again with more caution. He didn’t look back, but I followed.
We chased that scout diagonally up the mountain for what seemed like forever. I’d catch glimpses of him—tall, military pants, flannel shirt, buckskin vest, hair in a single braid down his back. No bow or rifle rode his shoulder, and I took heart in that. Obviously the scout knew this area, but he couldn’t know it nearly so well as Súmáí and me. Especially me, because I’d snowboarded every contour of this bowl seeking entertainment and adventure. Now I ascended it, life on the line.
I glanced at Big Ridge, at where Sapphire East lodge perched in my world. Inside it, greeters held out tissues for entering guests to wipe runny noses before they headed to the restaurant to select gourmet meals. Calm music wafted down from speakers mounted in the vaulted ceiling. Sometimes it was Native American flutes and singing. In the women’s bathroom, there were hair dryers, hair spray, and lotion. Out front, on a little rise beyond the racks of skis and boards, stood a bronze statue of a bear that people from all over the world would pose with for photos. Out the other side stood a glittering ice sculpture that would change every year—mountain lion, eagle, skier, Ute. Even though it was more spectacular than the bronze one, this statue wasn’t in as many photos because it required tourists to exit out the lodge’s inconvenient far side and walk thirty yards to the right.
I hadn’t come to Sapphire East with Súmáí, and seeing it for the first time, I was amazed again by how many more trees there were here than in my world. Yet I still recognized the hollow before the rise to the ridge, a spot where I always had to maintain my speed from above, which was hard because a sandstone cliff band striped it. I’d always hated those cliffs. They were higher than I was comfortable jumping, but I’d found a spot toward their outermost edge where I could negotiate halfway down and, pulse pounding, launch the last ten feet.
Súmáí stopped and scanned around.
“Do you see him?” I whispered and wished I hadn’t been gazing at the imaginary lodge.
Súmáí pressed a finger to his lips—Shh!—and shook his head.
I eyed the cliffs, glad for them now. The scout wouldn’t be over there. But where had he gone?
Before the final rise to Big Ridge lay an open stretch, then a teardrop-shaped grove of pines. In my time, one of those charred trunks stood alone there, and a chairlift carried skiers straight over it. Between us and the pines was an open stretch.
Súmáí jogged, hunching low, along the forest’s edge, and then he paused, scanned the open area, and sprinted. I sprinted right behind him. We entered the grove, moving cautiously, searching. Had we come all this way just to lose the guy?
The moon had shifted toward the horizon and now painted everything in long shadows. One side of the trees’ trunks were lit in stark relief, and I recognized a spruce with yellow spots. It had an Upward Dog shape. I peered into its branches and made out a brown-gray lump.
“Súmáí! Another tree!” I whispered.
He circled back to me, finger pressed to his lips again in frustration—Shh! He studied the trunk and squinted up into the branches. He looked at me, eyebrows raised.
I blurted, “I can’t—”
I will never forget the clean sound of that airborne blade piercing his flesh. A knife sunk to its hilt just above the waist of his pants. He stumbled back, notching an arrow, and shot. There was movement—fast—maybe twenty feet away. In the striping shadows, I couldn’t see whether the arrow found its mark. Súmáí collapsed against a tree trunk.
“Súmáí!” Over his shallow breaths, I heard a snap and movement heading out of the grove. A fury shot through me, so potent it sparked out my fingertips. I bolted after the sound.
The scout loped with an arrow stuck in his thigh, so, despite those snow boots, I gained on him as he traveled west, toward the cliffs. I followed, lower on the mountain. He must have forgotten the cliffs, because he reached their edge and had to scramble straight up. I beelined to their base, knowing my shortcut well. I could hear him above, to my right, still ascending as I scaled the ten feet I usually launched. I worked to silence my breaths as I scurried over the top. I set my feet and notched an arrow.
The scout rounded the cliffs, looking over his shoulder as he hobbled toward me. Pulse deafening in my ears, I sighted his chest. The scout looked ahead, saw me, and his moonlit face converted to shock. I shot.
“White? Woman?” he said in English, and he slumped to the ground. The arrow in his thigh hit first, rolling his leg inward, and he cried out.
I strode to him. His hand gripped my arrow in his chest, and his eyes spewed hate. At his hip, his knife sheath was empty. I wanted to kick him, kick him right off that cliff. But I couldn’t.
“You are a traitor,” I said in Spanish.
He laughed, a ghastly rasping sound. “And? You?” I can’t remember which language he used. His eyes closed and he fell into unconsciousness.
I turned to the moon. I looked down the valley to where Phantom Peak loomed, the shadow-face now cast by lunar light. Its eyes watched me, harsh with judgment. My voice had given us away when I’d spoken in the grove. Súmáí had warned me, and still I’d spoken.
I looked to the stars and opened my mouth, but no scream came. I drew from my guts, bent double with the effort, but still no scream. I dry-heaved on silence.
I sprinted back to Súmáí. He sat slumped against the pine. He’d pulled the knife out. Blood—black in the moonlight—bloomed against his shirt.
“Oh, Súmáí, what should I do?”
“Do you have a needle and thread?” His face contorted in pain as he tried to smile.
I kissed him and he kissed me back, hard.
“Súmáí, there’s a tree. Right here! We could travel to the tree near the village. I’ll get the horse and bring you down.”
He shook his head. “That is not the way of the trees.”
“Okay, then we’ll go to my world. They have magic there, remember? Dad can save you! He’s right on the other side!” As I said it, I knew it was the right idea.
Súmáí shook his head.
“You’ll die!”
He shook his head.
“Can’t we at least try?”
He smiled weakly, reached up, and touched that freckle riding my lip. “Wife.” His eyes fluttered closed.
“Súmáí! No!”
Blood had glued his shirt to his skin. I peeled it back. A two-inch mouth above his hip burbled blood. Whimpering, I pinched it closed. There was so much blood.
“Súmáí, wake up! Súmáí!”
He didn’t stir. I kissed him, and still he didn’t stir. I sobbed and slid my hand behind his head, sat him up, pulled his arm over my shoulder, and wobbled us to standing. Seven steps, me dragging him, brought us to the spruce.
I hugged and lowered him against it, setting him down too hard, and then kneeled, straddling his legs. Smearing aside his hair that had stuck to my cheek, I took his hand, wiped his palm off on my snow pants, and pressed it against the spruce. I filled my mouth with a lock of his hair. I wiped off my other palm and pressed it to the trunk.
The plucked-cello-string sound reverberated through me. It grew louder, intensifying till it felt like a volcano was vibrating beneath my hands and throug
h my body. Súmáí shook. The spruce’s roots rumbled beneath my knees. An electric jolt shot through me, and Súmáí jerked like a puppet as I cried out. The sound’s frequency rose so high I wanted to cover my ears.
“Sovern,” Súmáí said just as a jolt shot up the spruce. A deafening crack sounded, and the top ignited. Needles rained down as our eyes latched. A porcupine thumped to the ground, grunting in pain and sending out a spray of quills that pierced our pants. Súmáí’s hair yanked from my lips.
Blinding white. Charcoal’s blunt scent. Cold.
My palms pressed against smooth black. The chairlift hummed overhead, voices falling from it—chit-chat, banter, laughter. Snow schussed against turning skis. Súmáí was gone.
“What the hell?” fell from overhead.
“Get a picture of that!”
“Is she drunk?”
“Post it on Instagram!”
The heavy scent of shampoo and perfume arrived. “Miss? Are you all right?”
Out the corner of my eye, I saw pale cheeks and a mouth coated with stark red lipstick. Her skis and poles crunched snow as she backed up.
“What’s the matter, Helen?”
“Norman, call 911!”
42
Sovern?” Sarge crouched in the charred trunk’s well beside me. “Sov?”
I’d made a grave mistake—I should have fled when that couple called 911. I was covered in blood but not hurt. There’d be no explaining it. I rocked my forehead against the dead spruce, unable to pull myself away from that link—any link—to Súmáí.
“Lo siento! ” I whispered. Sorry, indeed. Why couldn’t I have listened to his warning?
“Sov?” Sarge touched my back. A moment later, I heard him pull his radio from its Velcro holster. He was calling for a sled, and the thought of that humiliation gave me the strength I needed.
“Lo siento,” I said, this time to Sarge. I spun away and sprinted across groomed corduroy toward the cliffs, on the same path the scout must have taken. I could hear Sarge pursuing me, but his steps died out as I adjusted my route, heading up so I’d come out above the cliffs. Over three months in Súmáí’s world had left me fit. I hit the road to Sapphire East lodge, against the rush of post-lunch skiers and boarders heading into the bowl. I’d left this world for Súmáí’s in the early afternoon, so maybe I had returned at the same time—just through a different spruce.
I looked over my shoulder and spotted Sarge watching me with the saddest expression. He’d call Dad, no doubt.
People skied past, horror all over their faces. I took in my bloody clothes and felt the drying blood on my face. I couldn’t care less what these idiots thought of me. I did care about Dad, though, and I needed not to make a scene. I needed to get to the cabin.
I followed the road halfway up and then cut across Silver Bowl. I’d forgotten I’d left on a powder day, and the cut-up snow off the groomed section was thigh deep. With each step, I tinged the snow pink. I found tracks that traversed horizontally across the slope, and I followed them into a stand of pines where I paused to catch my breath and think.
Once Dad heard, he would no doubt tell Wash, Big John, Tucker, and Crispy that I was on the loose. I couldn’t handle facing any one of them with the touch of Súmáí’s lips still fresh on mine, and his blood against my body still warm. I hugged my sticky chest, pressing all I had left of him nearer. I sat down, rocked myself, and bawled.
After a while, cold made me rise, and it occurred to me that I could rise—that I wasn’t weak, like I’d been after my visits to Mom’s universes. Another sign that it really was this world’s past I’d been in.
Above and to the left was the lift that followed the ridge between Gold and Silver Bowls. I prayed that the liftie working the top was a snowboarder. Across from that lifthouse stretched the service road between Sapphire East and City Center. Used by snowcats and snowmobiles, it was U-shaped, rising to both locations. If I could borrow the liftie’s board, I could glide in seconds half a mile toward the cabin.
I looked out at the lifthouse from the pines that stopped just before the ridge. A snowboard leaned against a railing at the top of three stairs leading to the door. Beyond the lifthouse stretched an open area, with skiers and boarders gliding away from the chairs. I couldn’t make it across that open space without the liftie seeing that I’d heisted his board, so I’d have to backtrack.
I slunk to the board, maneuvered it under the rail, and retreated into the pines. I followed the forest, staying high. After watching for someone watching for me, I sprinted across the no-man’s land of the scoured ridge and crested over into the scraggly trees on its other side.
I stepped onto the road, threw down the board, and ratcheted its bindings tight against my snow boots. The liftie must have been huge, because his board was a beast, and his bindings were so far apart that standing in them felt like starting the splits. It would carry me far and fast, though.
I ran, in crazy strapped-in steps—one, two, three, four—and jumped, landing with momentum, right foot forward. I hunched in an aerodynamic tuck and felt the bow and quiver press my back in the sore line I’d gotten from falling off the horse. I locked my freezing hands behind me. Speed. I needed speed to carry me far up the other side.
The road was steep on this first part, and my pulse revved at my acceleration. I gulped panic, willed myself not to change my balance heel to toe, and the world blurred. I sobbed as Súmáí’s blood lost its last warmth in the icy wind. I raced into the hill’s bottom and leaned hard on my back foot—my front foot lifting—to force a last bit of acceleration.
About a third of the way up the other side, I lost momentum and stopped. I hopped sideways to keep from sliding backward. I unbuckled my boots and turned the board over in the road’s center, digging its bindings into the snow so it wouldn’t glide away. Maybe the liftie would get it back before his shift was over.
A snowmobile approached, and I sprinted into the pines. I didn’t look to see who drove it. If it was one of my ski-patrol family, I’d feel so guilty. I kept grinding through the deep snow, diagonally and up, toward the cabin.
I skirted the edge of the runs that sprayed off City Center like a wheel’s spokes. I came to one of the busiest runs on the mountain, and, hiking my bow and quiver higher on my shoulder, turned my less-bloody back to the traffic and ran. I still heard gasps. A “what the hell?” An “is there hunting season in March?” That made me snort as I considered Súmáí’s hungry family.
I entered the cupped hand of pines, and everything that had happened over the last few hours—my fight with Súmáí, our battle with the soldiers and our pursuit of the scout, then my own pursuit of him, my attempt to save Súmáí, and the cold flight from that blackened spruce to the cabin—settled into my legs like lead. I trudged till I spied the cabin’s door. It was ajar, and Dad’s skis leaned next to it.
He never left his skis out there. He was waiting.
I fell to my knees and squinted at the sky. I thought of Chief Úwápaa, Súmáí’s mother, Túwámúpǘch, her baby, Panákwas and Mú’ú’nap, their wives. Had they survived the attack? No doubt Súmáí had died at that burning spruce. I saw the men I’d killed topple from their horses and saw hate spew from the scout’s eyes. And? You?
I felt my needle push through Mom’s bear flesh and her tongue lick my palm. My hand, the one Mom had licked, came to my scar necklace and traced it. I was Bear Necklace, Woman of the Trees. I shut my eyes, sealing those memories before I faced Dad. I rose and strode toward the cabin.
My steps were soundless up and across the deck. I peeked in the door’s open wedge. Dad sat, elbows on his knees, hands clasped, head down. His shirt sleeves were pushed up, and his one wrist was lily white from the newly removed cast. I nudged open the door.
His face shifted from grim to horrified. I could see him forcing himself still as he looked past the blood to my longer h
air and the bow and arrows jutting above my shoulder.
“Sovern?”
I stumbled back, hitting the open door, and it slammed closed behind me. I banged to the floor, my arrow and quiver clunking at my side. I tried to speak—I owed him that—but my words had killed Súmáí now too, and my mouth wouldn’t budge.
The sun had moved across the living room window when steps sounded on the deck, followed by a knock.
“Hang on,” Dad called.
He slid me from his lap, hobbled on legs obviously filled with pins and needles, and nudged aside my bow and quiver. He opened the door, stopping it before it hit my knee.
“Hey!” Wash said, and I watched his snow boots maneuver around Dad. “Ah, Sov! What the hell’s happened?”
I looked up at him, chin trembling.
Dad reached down and scooped an arm around me. “We’ll find out later,” he said to Wash. “Help me, will you?”
Wash lunged to my other side.
“Bathroom,” Dad said.
“Hoo, Sov!” Wash waved his hand past his nose. “Where have you been?”
I couldn’t make my legs or arms help them. In the bathroom, after closing the door halfway, Dad peeled off my long underwear shirt, and it was like I was watching from somewhere else. I felt an extra tug as my amulet bag caught my hair, and I knew Súmáí’s blood glued it to my shirt. I blinked back the memory of him in the pool, removing this same shirt, saturated with my blood. Dad dropped it onto the floor and gingerly tugged off my snowboard pants, avoiding touching the quills. I glimpsed a red-faced horror in the mirror and looked away as Dad investigated me for injuries. His mouth dropped open when he noticed my scar necklace.
“You went through the spruce, didn’t you?” he said.
I tried to speak. Really, I did. Words just wouldn’t come, so I looked up with eyes that said yes.
He tilted his head, sighed, and turned on the shower. He tested the temperature and adjusted it. He pulled a washcloth from the shelf of towels and draped it over the tub’s side.
Life at the Speed of Us Page 24