by Sharon Sala
“Is it too late for food?” she asked.
Acat was happy her sweet child was hungry. It was a sign she was well.
“I will find food and drink,” Acat said and scurried out of the room.
Tyhen nodded, her gaze still locked on Yuma.
Wake up, she thought and exhaled softly when his eyes suddenly opened.
“I am awake,” he said slowly. He sat up then looked around the room. “Where is Acat?”
“Bringing food and drink.”
He looked at the raw wound on her wrist until his vision blurred. “You saved my life.”
She nodded. “And I would do it again and again and—”
He felt the passion in her voice. “You are still young,” he said softly.
She sighed. “I am grown in every way that counts.”
He eyed her soft curves. “And I gladly wait, regardless. You belong to me.” And I will love you forever.
She smiled shyly. Even though he hadn’t spoken aloud, she heard it anyway. She scooted down to the end of the bed then leaned over and stroked the side of his face.
“I know you will protect me,” she said. “But you did at the near-cost of your life, which should not happen again.”
He saw a flush of color on her cheeks and thought there was none more beautiful than her face.
Moments later, Acat came back carrying a tray laden with food and drink.
Tyhen motioned to Yuma. “Come eat with me.”
He got up and moved closer. Acat handed him some fruit and bread, and a cup with a drink made of chocolate. He drank until the cup was empty and then began peeling the banana as Tyhen chose a piece of fruit and piece of the bread made from the corn and maize they grew in the fields.
She ate like she was starving, ever-conscious of Yuma’s steady gaze. As she took a bite of the fruit, a drop of juice ran down her chin. Yuma reached out, caught the drop with his finger, then licked it off.
Suddenly frightened of the feeling that ran through her, Tyhen shuddered then looked away. He was right. She was still too young.
Yuma saw the uncertainty in her eyes and sighed. He’d waited over fifteen years. Soon it would be sixteen, and for her, he would wait a lifetime more. Some things were just meant to be.
***
It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout the city about what happened at the gorge, and that the swinging bridge was gone.
Singing Bird had expected a reaction and thought she had prepared her daughter for the worst, but the next morning as they walked down to the school where Singing Bird taught, she was shocked. People looked at Tyhen with new eyes and then looked away, suddenly afraid of the chief’s daughter.
Tyhen didn’t care. She’d done what she had to do to save Yuma and she would do it again. She walked with her shoulders back and her chin up. She’d always known she was different. Now they knew it, too.
Singing Bird gave her daughter a quick look and then relaxed. She didn’t know what had happened at the gorge and didn’t ask, but Cayetano was right. Tyhen was changing. She thought she’d been ready for the inevitability of this day. She’d always known it would be Tyhen who would finish what she started, but the time when that would happen was suddenly upon them and she wasn’t ready.
Still the children awaited her at the school, and once she began the day, she pushed her worries aside. Tyhen was no longer a student and worked with her, teaching younger children the math and the language of the New Ones, teaching them how to count, and the letters that made the words, and then how to read and write them. Of all the things the New Ones had brought with them, knowing the strangers’ languages and how they did business would be the one thing that would put them on an equal footing with the people who would come to take their lands.
Two days a week volunteers from the New Ones came in and taught the students other languages as well. The older students were already fluent in French, Spanish, and English, and Singing Bird had been working on creating an alphabet that would be universal for all Native languages, and in return, teaching it to the New Ones so that the traditional languages of their tribes would not be lost.
Adam and Evan had created a process to make a kind of paper from the pulp of several jungle plants, and the paper had been bound together to form books.
There were books with the alphabet and books with stories. There were books with history as far back as anyone in Naaki Chava could recall and books of stories from the future. There were how-to books that had pictures and directions on everything from metal working to ceiling fans and dug wells. There were books about the precious metals that the strangers would be seeking, and the lands they would covet.
If the New Ones knew how to do it, they wrote about it, even to the point of explaining electricity and all kinds of inventions from the future. The books weren’t large, but they were many according to subjects and were made over and over in duplicate so that wherever people parted ways, they took a bundle of these books with them to teach others. It was Singing Bird’s dream that within five or ten years, every tribe on what she’d known as North and South America would know these stories and the languages, and know the urgency of teaching them to the ensuing generations.
***
Two months later:
It was the rainy season. Even when it wasn’t raining, water dripped from every leaf, every tree, every roof, and onto the ground. The jungle growth was so thick the sun rarely made it through the canopy and walking on the leaf-littered ground beneath it was often slippery.
The first time Singing Bird mentioned that walking on the ground was as slick as walking on ice, everyone but Yuma and the twins looked at her in confusion.
Cayetano laid down the food he was eating and stared.
“What is ice?”
Singing bird looked up, a little startled she’d used a phrase from the past. That past belonged to Layla Birdsong, the woman she’d been in the time of Firewalker, and she rarely thought like that anymore.
“Uh... ice. Ice is, well, it’s when...”
“Frozen water,” Adam said, then realized he’d only added to the confusion.
Now Tyhen was frowning. “What word is frozen? What does it mean?”
Singing Bird shifted into her teacher voice. “Okay, you know how I teach the young ones about other parts of the world and what happens in our future?”
Tyhen nodded.
“So some places are very dry and have no rain. Some places have different kinds of weather and some are only cold. We know cold. It’s how we feel when we get sick with a fever. Remember how you shake and want to be covered? So frozen is colder than cold. When we say it’s going to freeze, that means the weather is going to get so cold it turns the water into ice. When the water is ice, it’s very hard like a rock and will not pour out of a jug. That’s when we use the word frozen. The water is frozen. When it is like that, it hurts to hold a piece of ice on your tongue, and if the ground is icy, it’s so slippery that you cannot stand up and you fall down. If you get too cold in this kind of weather, your body loses feeling and sometimes people die from being too cold.”
“I do not like slick as ice,” Cayetano stated.
“I do not like frozen,” Tyhen added.
Singing Bird sighed. “And yet you, my daughter, will see all of this and more before your work is done.”
Tyhen’s eyes widened, and then she glanced at Yuma to see his reaction. He was smiling. She didn’t know whether to be insulted that he was laughing at her or relieved he wasn’t afraid.
“I will not be afraid of frozen,” she muttered.
Yuma laughed.
She glared.
Singing Bird rolled her eyes.
“I miss ice cream,” Evan muttered.
“What is ice cream?” Cayetano asked.
Singing Bird sighed. “It’s something cold
and sweet and good to eat. I miss it, too,” she said. “But I do not miss Firewalker and that is enough talk about what is gone.”
When she got up from the table and walked out of the room, Cayetano looked at Yuma and frowned.
“Why is she sad?”
Yuma shrugged. “Probably for the same reason all of us are from time to time. We are grateful to be alive and feel honored that what we did by coming here will make a difference to all the generations to come, but we had a different way of life and now it’s gone. And so are the people we loved. I go back there in my dreams to visit my father, then I wake and I am here.”
He looked down for a moment and then back up. When he did, Tyhen thought she saw tears in his eyes. Then he looked at her and smiled.
“But here is good. Different, but very good.”
Cayetano didn’t like Yuma’s answer. He didn’t like to think about the past because in Singing Bird’s past, she was Layla Birdsong, and he was not a part of that world.
He got up from the table and walked out. He needed to make sure she wasn’t crying. It hurt his heart when he saw her cry.
Tyhen glanced at the twins. “Are you sad, too?”
Adam shook his head.
“No,” Evan added. “We were not happy in the past. Now we are.”
She nodded, but wouldn’t look at Yuma. She didn’t want to see tears in his eyes. She didn’t want this place to be lacking because that meant she wasn’t enough.
She took a piece of bread as she got up from the table and then walked out of the room. She knew Yuma was behind her. Still, she said nothing as she paused just inside the doorway to look out.
The rain had stopped, but the birds were still sheltering up in the trees beneath the leaves. She stepped outside onto the stone walkway and began tearing off pieces of the bread and tossing them out onto the ground.
Within moments, birds began coming down from the trees, pecking hungrily at the unexpected treats.
Yuma watched her, wondering what she was thinking. He knew she was upset and he knew he shouldn’t have laughed at her. Like Cayetano, it hurt his heart when she was sad.
“I’m sorry I laughed at you,” he said.
She kept tossing bits of bread.
He walked up behind her and then stopped just short of touching her.
“I’m truly sorry,” he said softly.
Tyhen could feel the warmth of his breath against the back of her ear and there was a knot in her belly. She needed to say something but words wouldn’t come. All she managed to do was just shrug.
Cayetano put his hands on her shoulders, then let them slide down the length of her arms all the way to her elbows.
“Do you forgive me?” he whispered.
She spun around to face him. “You laughed at me.”
He could hear the hurt in her voice. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, but settled for a touch of her cheek instead.
“One day I will take you to a land where you will see such things as ice and animals very different from what you know here. You will see people like us but different. Some will be more like the New Ones who came from the time of Firewalker. And the message you bring to them, and to all the others in that land, is what’s going to change everything we were. By the time that happens, you will be a woman of great power and magic. The twins have seen it. It will be so. And then you can laugh at me in all my ignorance.”
Her eyes widened. Even as he was speaking of it, she was seeing it—vast flat lands and mountains so far away they looked blue. As the vision continued, she saw the flat land give way to mountains and deep rivers and large herds of strange animals.
“You will be with me?”
“I will be with you.”
She shuddered, and then the vision disappeared and another truth became reality. “When we leave here, I will never see this place again.”
“I will be with you,” he repeated.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I will not see my mother or my father again.”
He cupped her chin. “I will be with you.”
Tears rolled down the curve of her cheeks. “And I will be with you,” she said, then laid her cheek against his chest and closed her eyes, willing the tears away.
Chapter Three
Three months later: Festival of the Corn
Cayetano was taking his best hunters into the jungle again. There would be much feasting during festival week, and while there were many good hunters in Naaki Chava, the chief took it as a point of pride that the palace provided a large portion of the meat. This was their third hunt in as many days, and if they had good hunting again today, it would be the last needed for the week-long event. He was on the way out of the palace when Adam came running up to stop him.
“Cayetano! I have been looking for you!”
Cayetano frowned. “Is something wrong?”
“Could we talk where others don’t hear?” Adam asked.
Now he knew something was wrong. He led Adam out a side entrance and walked a short distance away from the building before they stopped.
“This is far enough?” Cayetano said. “Tell me.”
“Evan and I have been having the same dream for three nights and we believe it is a warning. Something is going to happen during the time of the festival that could be a threat to Tyhen.”
Cayetano frowned. “What kind of danger?”
“Many shamans are coming to see her, maybe even challenge her. They know about what happened to the dark priest, that Yuma was cursed, and what Tyhen did to save him. No one but Evan and I were there when she went back to the swinging bridge, and we did not speak of it, but the shamans saw it in their visions. Now they want to see her for themselves. If they don’t like her, they will brand her as a witch, which will cause people to fear her and her powers. But if they see her and feel no threats, they may look upon her as a quiet, but kind, young woman who uses her power for the good of her people.”
He frowned. “I do not like that they come here to judge her. Their opinions matter not to me.”
Adam kept trying to explain. “But they will matter to Tyhen. If she does not have the people’s trust, she will not be able to do what she was born to do.”
“But she does good things now,” he argued.
Adam touched Cayetano’s shoulder in a calm, almost comforting manner.
“Word of the woman who rides the wind will spread beyond Naaki Chava, even beyond the mountains into the lands far to the north, and when it does, she will follow.”
Cayetano’s eyes widened and his heart began to pound. Singing Bird had told him Tyhen’s path was to help change the future, but he did not like to think that she would be leaving here to do it.
“But why must she go so far?” he asked.
“You already know this. She must unite all the tribes everywhere so when the first strangers from across the big water come to this great continent... and they will come, they will not be able to control your people or take away their lands.”
His shoulders slumped. “So that in the future Firewalker will not come.”
“Yes. She has to succeed in uniting the tribes or the strangers who come to this land will drive us away all over again.”
Cayetano’s eyes narrowed angrily at the thought. “When do these priests come?”
“They will come into the city on the first day of the festival as the old shaman, Ah Kin, is blessing the harvest.”
“She is still a young girl, not a thing to put on display,” Cayetano said.
“Her soul is ancient and you have no choice,” Adam said.
Cayetano shrugged off Adam’s touch and tightened his grip on his hunting spear. “I go to the hunt now,” he said sharply and walked away.
Adam sighed. He knew Cayetano would think about what he’d been told, and by the time he retu
rned, would be in a better frame of mind to discuss it.
Then he heard footsteps coming up behind him and turned around. It was Evan.
“I just told Singing Bird,” Evan said. “She’s upset but accepting. How did Cayetano take it?”
Adam rolled his eyes. “He heard me out, then argued and went hunting.”
Evan shrugged. “He will be better when he returns. He always has to think on a problem before he can act.”
“Where’s Yuma?” Adam asked.
“Looking for Tyhen. She’s the one this is going to impact most.”
“I’m glad I’m not him,” Adam said.
Evan nodded. “Me too. Did you tell Cayetano about the old shaman?”
“No, but he is behind this confrontation,” Adam said.
“I know. What should we do?” Evan asked.
Adam’s eyes narrowed angrily. “Nothing, unless we have to. We wait and see how Tyhen handles them. I think she will be fine. If she can dispatch a dark spirit like the one at the swinging bridge, then a bunch of old men who have visions should not bother her. If they are as powerful as they claim to be, then they will soon know her true worth and get behind her. If they choose to challenge her, then we can be certain they are charlatans, and there are ways to deal with people like them.”
Evan eyed his brother, admiring the wide set to his shoulders and the beauty of his face. It never occurred to him that he looked exactly the same, because he never felt as capable as Adam.
“I like living here in Naaki Chava,” Evan said.
Adam looked at his brother curiously. “You are worried about leaving here one day.”
Evan shrugged. “Here is happy and safe. We never had that before.”
“We didn’t die when Firewalker came for a reason, Evan, and this is it. Is it not our destiny to help Tyhen complete her quest?”
Evan sighed. “Yes.”
Adam put his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Then that is enough discussion about something that has yet to happen. Let’s go see what the women are cooking. I have not eaten today.”
They walked away, confidant that for the time being, all the warnings had been delivered, when in actuality, one had not.