by Dinah McCall
Moments later, Layla felt the sun on her body and cringed.
“The sun… is it bright?” she asked.
“Yes. It makes the crops grow and the babies healthy.”
“Babies? You have children?”
She heard a catch in his breathing. “I am speaking of the babies in Naaki Chava.”
“You don’t have children?”
“I have no other woman. I want no other woman. I have been waiting for Singing Bird.”
Layla was stunned. She needed to see his face and this place.
“I don’t understand. How could you be waiting for a woman who didn’t even live in this world?”
He didn’t answer and she didn’t push it.
As they walked, she began to hear voices now – lots of voices, people laughing and talking, some passing them closely enough she could hear their footsteps, then their voices, speaking directly to her as if they knew her.
“Singing Bird has returned.”
“Singing Bird… it is good that you are here.”
“Singing Bird, it is good you are home.”
It was one little comment after another that still made no sense, and Cayetano had not spoken to them or to her. She didn’t know what was wrong, but his silence was telling.
When they reached the water, he set her on her feet only long enough to unwind the cloth from her waist and then picked her up again and walked into the water, easing her in little bit at a time so as not to shock the sensitive skin. As soon as he was chest-high in the water, he laid her down to float as if he was putting her to bed, still cradling her head on his arm for a pillow.
It was soothing, and a habit Layla was learning to appreciate.
“Cayetano?”
“I am listening.”
“There were many others who came with me. They had injuries and burns, too.”
“We were prepared. They have shelter and food. They are all being cared for.”
“There was a little boy. He fell just beyond the portal and I went back to get him. We were the last to come through. Did he live?”
“He lives. Acat cares for him.”
She was silent only for a few seconds. There were so many things she wanted to know.
“You said that you’d prepared for our arrival, but how did you know we were coming? Why did you already know my name?”
He was silent for a few moments, and Layla wondered if he would answer. It was hard to concentrate with the cooling waters lapping her breasts and between her thighs. Just when he had almost lulled her to sleep, he began to speak.
“There are people who can see things from the past and things that have not yet happened.”
“Like my grandfather,” Layla said, and then immediately flashed on his bloody body turning into dust before her on the ground. A rush of sadness swept through her, spilling out in a burst of anger that quickly turned to pain. “They shot him. I never got to say goodbye. One minute I was holding his hand, then fighting, and then when it was over he was dead.” Even though her eyes were covered, she put her hands over her face and began to sob. “He was all I had left.”
Cayetano pulled her close, cradling her against his chest.
“No, Singing Bird, no. You have me. You have always had me.”
He cradled her like a baby, letting her cry while his own heart ached for the time when she would know him again.
Layla cried until her head hurt, her heart hurt. She cried until the bandages fell off her eyes and the healing medicine was gone.
“Let me stand,” she said, and when he would have hesitated, she insisted. “I’m strong enough. I won’t fall.”
He moved his arms from beneath her back and head. When she dropped her feet to the bottom, the water rose to her shoulders, but it felt good to be upright.
She heard a catch in his breathing as he touched the scar on her cheek. The urge to see him was overwhelming, to see for herself that this man was not Niyol. She was convinced that she wanted Niyol back so badly that she was only imagining this odd connection to Cayetano.
She began cupping water in her hands and splashing it on her face, rubbing the gel-like medicine from her eyes until it was all gone from her skin.
“Is this place in the shade?” she asked.
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“I want to see your face.”
Suddenly he was afraid that she would reject him. He grabbed her hands.
“The healer said your eyes were not well.”
She held onto his hand and then slowly opened her eyes – just a little – just a test.
At first the light burned, and she blinked several times in rapid succession until it eased. Her first sight of him was blurry, and then as it adjusted, she found herself staring at the span of his chest.
It was brown like hers, which she expected. He was taller than her, which she already knew. His neck, rising up from his shoulders was strong and muscled. His face was broad at the cheeks, slanting down to a more angular jaw and chin. His forehead was broad, with a nose that jutted proudly from the middle of his face. His ears were pierced, and there were small chunks of turquoise laced through cord, dangling from the lobs. Both sides of his hair had been pulled back from his face and tied together at the crown of his head in a topknot. The eyebrows and lashes were as black as his hair, and arched over eyes as dark as a night without stars.
When her gaze slid to his mouth, she started to shake.
His lips were full, with a most beautiful curve, but it was the scar at the corner of his mouth that nearly stopped her heart. It wasn’t a big scar, and it certainly wasn’t ugly. But it was familiar. Her pulse kicked out of rhythm as she reached toward him. He flinched and then sighed, as if accepting the inevitability of the moment.
Layla lifted her hands, and when she began to trace the shape of his lips, she closed her eyes too soon to see his tears.
All she could think was that she knew this shape, and the scar – dear God, she knew this scar - angling very slightly down, giving him the appearance that he was about to grimace.
“I am losing my mind,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Because I know this, and I should not.”
She heard a swift intake of breath, and then his hands were beneath her backside and his voice was rough and thick with tears.
“Do you remember this, Singing Bird? Do you remember me?”
He lifted her up.
One second she was floating in the water and then he stepped between her legs. She made way for him without thought, and when he eased her down onto his erection, she wrapped her legs around his waist and held on.
He shuddered as he settled deep within her. It had been so long since he’d known this. He had to pace himself or it would be over far too soon. He had to accept that she was real and would not go away like she did every night in his dreams.
He buried his nose against her hair and smelled the cleansing root Acat washed into her hair. He could feel the scar down the back of her arm. All of this was real, so she must be, too.
He began to move his body within her, and as she rocked against it, his heart was full. This was real! This was true! He was thrusting up - then again - then again - and again - until the water was slapping against their bodies to the same rhythm as the ride they were on.
Layla’s arms were around his neck, her forehead pressed hard against his chest, her legs locked around his waist. When he shifted his stance and pushed her down harder on his erection she knew he was going to groan.
And he did.
His fingers were splayed wide beneath her backside, and when he began to dig them slightly into her flesh, she knew he would groan again.
And he did.
It was frightening that she knew that, but also a turn-on that she could do this to him - that she set him on fire - that it was her he claimed. The elemental need that shot through her was unrecognizable. In the few brief moments between one thrust and the next, she became a woman she d
id not know.
She remembered everything that pleased him - how to move, what to touch, how long to wait between each stroke. When the climax finally rolled through her, it came in a mind-bending wave.
Cayetano’s blood was on fire. He couldn’t think beyond how she made him feel. When she leaned back within his arms, he knew she was pushing him deeper into her womb. And when she braced herself against his chest, her fingers digging into his flesh, her eyes closed and lips parted in building ecstasy, he knew she was going to come.
And she did.
And because he’d been alone too long to be without her again, he went with her.
****
Seven sleeps later:
Layla accepted her place in Cayetano’s life. She didn’t fully understand it, but she couldn’t deny what she felt. He was Cayetano, and although their faces weren’t quite the same, there was something of Niyol in him, as well. And when he wrapped her in his arms at night, he was the Windwalker, sweeping her up into the wind and carrying her away from danger.
The blisters on her skin were nearly healed, and as soon as the sun no longer made her eyes weep, she would be officially welcomed back by the people of Naaki Chava.
With the bandages off, she finally saw the world into which they’d come.
****
The city sprawled out across a great valley between jungle-covered mountains. It was tropical in appearance, but while the foliage was somewhat familiar, it was much larger and more colorful than anything she’d ever seen in books. There were enormous trees that looked like palms gone wild, and ferns higher than a two-story house. It made her think of artists renderings of earth during prehistoric times.
Color was everywhere - in the mountains surrounding Naaki Chava, in the fabric of their skirts, in the designs on their handmade pottery, and most especially in the bird-life.
There were all sizes of parrots, in colors of the rainbow, as well as birds that she’d never seen. Large, royal-blue birds with massive wingspans and tails as long as her grandfather’s braids, red and green birds with topknots that fanned out across their heads when they were angry; like a hand-carved comb stuck in a woman’s hair. And their calls were just as colorful as their plumage. It was, without doubt, the most stunning sight she’d ever seen, and at the same time made her sad, wondering if their earth had looked this way in the beginning. The monkeys high up in the trees were of every hue and size. At night, the sounds of big cats on the hunt could be heard coming out of the jungle around them.
The streets were paved with a kind of limestone that made them so white that they glistened in the light of day. Nearly all of the dwellings were square, like the old pueblos, but larger, and with ornate carvings above doorways and on roofs. Everything started with a square and if it was more than one room, it went up in graduated sizes of the same shape. There were no round corners anywhere that she could see except in art, or in the carvings.
Despite the numbers of newcomers she’d brought with her, they had somehow made room for them to live. She didn’t know whether they’d built new dwellings in preparation for their coming, or if they were living with the residents.
During the Last Walk, before their earth died, Layla and the others had moved through vast desert-like areas with sparse growth and trees stunted from a shortage of water. Here, everything was in abundance, from the river running through the valley, to the lush abundance of the fields where food was grown. It looked like paradise, and yet Layla sensed an undercurrent of secrets she had yet to learn.
As Acat had shown her, the women wore a length of hand-woven fabric around their waists that hung just to below their knees, and ornate bib-like collars that hung lay on the front of their chests like a breast-plate on a piece of armor. Some of the bibs were braided cloth or woven reeds, some were formed by connecting different sized pieces of hammered silver. The more ornate bibs had tiny shells fastened within the silver. But the collar Acat put on Singing Bird was nothing like the others. It was all different sizes of turquoise; the sky stones signifying status.
The mens’ breechclouts were made of hand-woven fabric and hung to their knees. Their hair was cut straight across at the ends, pulled back from the sides of their faces, and fastened at the tops of their heads.
Cayetano’s dwelling was what she would consider a palace of its time. It had been built on a rise overlooking the valley below. Adobe-like brick and natural stone had been laid in colorful geometric shapes to form the floors. The openings between the rooms were tall and arched, and most without doors. There was a natural water flow from the mountain behind the dwelling that flowed into an aqueduct beneath it, furnishing water directly to the cooking area and to a room where a sunken bath had been built. It channeled the water in such a way that it was always running a trickle of fresh water through it, like a self-aerating pool.
She was continually surprised at what she would have called advance technology for the times, and wondered how it had all been lost.
The servants treated her with deference, which furthered her belief that Cayetano held some high office, but it was the large open room in the middle of the palace that proved her suspicions correct. He was obviously their chief and that great room was where he ruled. Even though it was nothing like the tribal council she’d been used to, she had to keep reminding herself that wherever they were now, old rules no longer applied.
There was a raised section at one end of the great room where the throne had been placed. The back and arms of the chair were made of elaborately carved wood with large, equally over-sized spears fastened in a crossed position behind it. The walls were painted in fresco-like fashion with pictographs telling centuries’ worth of history she had yet to understand.
A Jaguar skin with a fully attached head hung on the back of the throne. The head was positioned so that whoever sat beneath it appeared to be its next prey, its mouth open in an eternal snarl with two large amber-colored stones set where they eyes used to be. The big cat’s legs were draped over the arms of the throne, so that whoever sat in the seat took on the persona of the cat, claws and all.
Servants came and went throughout the palace all day, some bringing food, carrying water, cleaning behind the constant stomp of the footsteps of those who came and went.
One did nothing but work a loom weaving cloth, and the steady thump as the woman worked it was, at first disturbing, then after a time no longer noticeable.
The room that concerned her the most looked like a war closet, rather than storage. It was filled with feathered headdresses, and what looked suspiciously like body armor. There were hundreds of spears and bone knives and axe-like weapons. The axe blades fastened to the handles appeared to be the fangs of the same kind of cat as the one on Cayetano’s throne and guessed them to be ceremonial rather than useful.
But seeing the weapons was a reminder that the aspect of war had begun when from the start of human existence. She started to worry about what kind of world she’d led her people into then cast aside the worry. Whatever was here was still far better than what they’d left behind.
The only building higher than the palace, was the temple; a towering four-sided pyramid in the middle of the city. From a distance, it looked a little like a square layer cake with a single stairway on every side. The top of the pyramid was yet another small room and she wondered what happened in there.
In her mind’s eye, she already knew the vista from the highest point of the temple - from the rooftops of the city, to the marketplace, to the river, to the acres and acres of growing crops, and the jungle beyond. It was yet another unsettling memory that had no explanation.
Cayetano ruled it like the chief he was, but she had no idea how that would impact her until the day she made her first public appearance.
Chapter Fourteen
Cayetano walked into their rooms as Singing Bird was being dressed. Acat and two other servants were trying to help, but she was balking despite their insistence of certain garments.
Altho
ugh the women of Naaki Chava wore their hair in elaborate hairstyles, looping the lengths into big fat rolls both at the sides and the tops of their heads, Layla wanted hers down, and so it was; glistening like sunlight on dark water. The silver necklace she’d worn around her neck was now threaded through her hair in such a way that the little bird charm was hanging in the space between her brows; a private homage to her father and her past.
The bib of turquoise around her neck rested on the swell of her breasts, and the soft fabric of her multicolored skirt clung to her shape like another skin. She was still thinner than she’d ever been, but Cayetano understood why. It was at great cost that his Singing Bird had returned from the dead.
He eyed her proudly, thinking to himself what a magnificent woman she had become and discarded the tiny changes. Besides the lack of weight, the only other differences were the scars on her body, which she wore proudly, and the occasional glimpse he would get of how fierce she had become. She’d died a woman beloved of her people, and returned a warrior for their race.
He walked up behind her and despite the women giggling around them, kissed the back of her neck.
Layla shivered with longing. Just a touch and she melted before him.
“You like these best,” he said, and put them in her hand.
She looked down at the chunks of turquoise marbled with thin threads of gold, obviously meant to hang from her ears. But they were hardly metal studs and she didn’t have any holes big enough in her earlobes for the cords to fit through.
“They’re beautiful, but they won’t fit in my ears.”
Acat giggled and took them out of her hands. “Yes, they will fit. I will do it for you.”
When Layla felt the weight of them on her ear lobes she was stunned.
“But how?” she muttered, running her fingertips along the on the sides of her face and then along her ears. Without warning, she abruptly stopped. In her mind, she’d been touching a stranger’s face.