A War of Daisies

by A. A. Chamberlynn

She was met, not unexpectedly, with another wave of laughter.

  A swell of power rolled within her, that lightning that had touched her during the cyclone, that heat that had visited her at the gun shop. Willow whipped both Colts out, pointed one gun in each direction, arms stretched wide, and fired from each. A wave of energy surged out of her, spreading out across the men, following the trajectory of her shots. Beneath her, Bullet shimmied in place and snorted.

  Both groups of men began to shoot. But not at her. At each other.

  Willow hastily backed Bullet up against the canyon wall, watching the hail of gunfire. Getting caught in the crossfire could be just as deadly, and the two groups were blocking her escape on either side. As she watched them, something even stranger happened. She saw flashes of yellow eyes, of wings, of clawed hands. Willow blinked and shook her head. The sun was clearly messing with her vision. She blinked a second time, and when she looked again, they looked like ordinary people.

  She needed to get out of here, or she and Bullet were going to die.

  The lightning flashed through her once again, and her voice boomed out across the canyon. “Dismount!”

  The men paused in their shooting long enough to get off their horses.

  “Get out of my way!” she commanded.

  And they did. A part of her felt surprise, but another part, the core of lightning within her, expected nothing but complete obedience.

  Willow whistled, and all their horses followed her and Bullet as she picked up a lope and moved down the canyon. When she’d gone a safe distance, she felt the flow of whatever had come over her dissipate. And then she began to shake.

  What exactly had just happened?

  Looking back, she saw that half the group lay injured on the canyon floor. Those remaining upright just kept on shooting, a writhing mass of chaos and destruction. How had they known who she was, and that she was a woman? She shuddered to think what would have happened had… whatever that was not taken charge. Maybe she could have shot her way out of there. Maybe.

  Well, today clearly wasn’t her day to die. Twice now this power had saved her. Strange, inexplicable, and… intoxicating. She could control people with a mere command. What else could she do? Willow felt a surge within her, an acceptance of this new challenge.

  With one final look behind her, Willow urged Bullet into a trot and they left the bloody battle behind them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Penelope

  “Grandmother?” The word sounded foreign to Penelope. “You’re my grandmother?”

  The old woman smiled, her weathered skin crinkling around her eyes. She wore a deerskin dress, and several silver and turquoise necklaces. “Yes. You can call me your nálí.”

  Penelope wasn’t sure how to take all of this. Atsa walked past her into the house and sat down on another rug near the fire. Penelope remained frozen by the door, not sure what to do.

  “Please, sit with me,” Nascha said, patting the spot on the rug next to her.

  Penelope crossed the room, curiosity and apprehension warring inside her. She took a seat next to Nascha. Her nálí. Her grandmother.

  “What do you call yourself, shitsoi?”

  “Penelope.”

  Nascha nodded. “I suppose you have many questions.”

  Now it was Penelope’s turn to nod. Nascha gestured for her to ask them.

  Penelope’s mind spun like a compass. So many questions. It was hard to decide what to ask first. “How did you find me?”

  “I never lost you, shitsoi,” Nascha said. “But until you became a woman, it was not the right time to seek you out.”

  “You mean, you’ve known I was in Hawk’s Hollow this whole time?”

  “I did.”

  Penelope wasn’t sure how to feel. She felt both anger and… happiness. That someone had been keeping track of her. Someone cared about her.

  Nascha continued. “After your zhé’é—your father—died, your mother couldn’t stand to be anywhere near the Diné.”

  “Diné?”

  “The Navajo people.” Nascha sighed. “It was too painful for her. She took you, and she started a new life, so she could forget. I respected that decision. While you were a girl.”

  Penelope thought back to her eighteenth birthday, two weeks prior. She and Willow had held a joint party since they were just a few days apart.

  “But now that you are a woman, it is time for you to make your own choices.” Nascha raised her arms into the air to indicate their surroundings. “And so you did. You are here.”

  Penelope turned to look at Atsa, who had been quiet this whole time. “It was you that I saw from the top of the buttes a few nights ago, wasn’t it?”

  Atsa nodded.

  Penelope wanted to ask how he’d found her there, in the middle of the night. She’d woken from one of her dreams of wolves, and then she’d seen him, his horse, and his wolf. How had he known she’d be awake, and in that exact location? She didn’t have the courage to ask. Not yet.

  “I thought that you might be curious about the other half of your blood,” Nascha said. “It called to you. And now we are together.” She shrugged, as if it were completely logical, as if that explained everything.

  Penelope still had so many questions. “How did my parents meet?”

  Nascha pursed her lips, and Penelope thought she might be wondering why Penelope’s mother hadn’t told her this. But she didn’t voice her thoughts, if so. “They worked on the same ranch when they were quite young, younger than you are now. Friends for several years, and then, more than that.”

  Penelope knew that her mother’s parents had both died when she was young, so they hadn’t been around to protest. She would like to think that they would have been open-minded, but so few people were.

  “And… how did he—” She dropped off, unable to finish.

  “How did he die?” Nascha asked gently. Her eyes went distant as she spoke of it. “There was a dispute over some horses. One of the neighboring ranchers said that your father stole horses from him. Of course, he did not. That was proven later. But not before your zhé’é was shot in an argument over it.”

  It had been nearly twenty years, but the pain in Nascha’s eyes still burned brightly. She shook her head and took a deep breath, let it back out.

  “I’m sorry,” Penelope said, reaching out and resting a hand on the old woman’s shoulder.

  Nascha straightened. “It is not for you to apologize. You must never apologize for things you are not responsible for.”

  Penelope opened her mouth to apologize again, then her cheeks grew hot and she nodded. After a few moments of silence, she said, “What next?”

  “That is up to you, shitsoi. Did you only seek answers to questions, or do you wish to learn more about your people?”

  Penelope realized she hadn’t thought that far ahead. Everything had been a blur of impulse and gut instinct. She couldn’t believe it was still the same night that she had left her home in Hawk’s Hollow. Left her mother and her sister. It seemed an eternity ago.

  “I think…I want to learn more. If you’ll allow me.”

  Nascha frowned. “It is your right, shitsoi. You are one of us. It is not for us to allow or not allow. It is for you to claim or not claim.”

  Penelope nodded.

  “Tomorrow we will introduce you to the rest of the clan. Your father’s clan is called the Gray Streaked Dawn Clan,” Nascha said. “After that, you can decide if you wish to live here, or travel between your old home and your new home.”

  Penelope felt a strange feeling in her chest. New home. Nascha had welcomed her into the clan without a moment’s hesitation. In the course of a quarter-hour, she felt more seen and wanted than in her entire life in Hawk’s Hollow. Tears stung the corners of her eyes.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come,” Nascha said. “You must be tired from your journey. Let us eat, and then you can rest.”

  Atsa got up and gathered three painted clay bowls from shelves at the
back of the hogan. He returned to the fire, and Nascha ladled stew from a small iron pot into the dishes, then placed a blue biscuit into each.

  “Mutton stew,” Nascha explained when Penelope eyed it curiously. “And bread from blue cornmeal with juniper ash.”

  They sat around the fire and ate, Nascha occasionally looking up and smiling at Penelope. It felt utterly surreal to be sitting there, and yet something within her recognized it as home. The fire flickered in her eyes, and in Atsa’s eyes across from her. Her mouth watered as she ate the stew and the delicious bread. She realized she’d never finished her dinner the night before. It had been quite some time since she ate, and a long journey through the plains. The longest journey of her life, in more ways than one.

  When they finished their food, weariness enveloped Penelope. A full stomach, the warmth of the fire; sleep called to her. Atsa went with her as they checked on the horses one last time and brought them a bucket of water, and when they went back inside, she saw Nascha had made another bed of woven blankets on the ground a few feet away from her own. Atsa bid them goodnight and left to go back to his own hogan. Penelope laid down on her bed of blankets, her eyes heavy. She watched the flames dance, smelled the sage smoke, sweet and thick.

  “Goodnight, shitsoi,” Nascha said softly.

  Sleep swirled in around her almost instantly. As did the dreams. And for once, Penelope didn’t dream of wolves.

  She dreamt of the night sky. Stars burned like chunks of quartz crystal. She could hear someone singing, but couldn’t make out the words. Then, one by one, the stars started to go out, like candles snuffed. The darkness grew, and though Penelope had never been afraid of the dark, fear choked her now, made her sob in her sleep.

  Just as the darkness became absolute, when only a handful of stars remained in the sky, there came a light. Bright and blinding and pure white. It seemed to be a comet, coming across the depths of the black night toward her, but when it drew closer, she realized the blaze of light was a horse. A horse more brilliant than fresh snow, purer than cotton blossoms in the spring.

  It slowed to a trot as it came near, then stopped before her, huge and radiant. And it called her name, a mind to mind connection. The name it called was not Penelope.

  “Haséyá. Rise.”

  Penelope awoke, her heart a war hammer in her chest. Nascha was sitting up, too, watching her. The gray light of dawn blinked through the hole in the top of the hogan.

  “What did you see, child?” Nascha asked.

  Penelope was too shaken to answer, so she shook her head.

  “You saw the darkness, didn’t you?” Nascha took a deep breath, let it out. “I have seen it, too. Have felt it coming. I fear this darkness will spread over the land.”

  Penelope nodded, rubbing her hands over her arms to calm the goosebumps that had risen over her skin.

  Nascha hooked Penelope in her gaze. “My dreams told me it was coming. As they told me you were coming. You are a part of the battle ahead.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. You have been brushed by the darkness. I know this from my visions, and I felt it the moment you entered this place.”

  “What do you mean?” Penelope shivered. “Brushed by darkness?”

  “I do not know how it happened, shitsoi.” Nascha sighed. “But you are a part of what’s to come. You will make a choice that will determine the fate of us all.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Felicity

  Felicity watched the tea kettle scream and she envied it. To be able to lose control, to let it all out… such a simple thing. Such an impossible thing. No, she was the boiling heat and the raw strength, but with no outlet.

  “Beatrice!” her mother shrieked. “Take that kettle off the stove! The preacher will be here any moment!”

  Felicity hastily leaned forward and lifted the kettle off the stove. The kettle ceased its banshee call with a hiss that sounded profoundly disappointed.

  “Miss, do you need help?” Beatrice asked, coming up behind her.

  “No, thank you,” Felicity said. “Just making a bit of tea before dinner.”

  It was hardly an appropriate time for tea, but she’d been a mess of anxiety since the incident at the butcher shop, and sorely in need of something to soothe her nerves. She poured the water over a cup of loose mint leaves and leaned in over the aromatic steam that wafted up.

  If she could only have another three minutes alone…

  Her mother bustled into the kitchen and let out another shriek. “Felicity! This is no time for tea!”

  “I have a stomachache,” Felicity said. Which was true. A stomachache caused by anxiety.

  “Well, you’ll just have to grin and bear it. Our guests will be here any moment!”

  “Beatrice. Please.” Her mother glared at the housekeeper. No one else could say please in quite so demanding a fashion.

  Beatrice stepped forward, face carefully neutral, and gently took the teacup from Felicity’s grasp. Felicity relinquished without argument, though a sigh escaped her lips.

  “Pull it together,” her mother snapped, and strode out into the hall. “Come along,” she called over her shoulder.

  They adjourned to the parlor, where Felicity’s father waited, smoking a pipe and reading a magazine.

  “Harold, honestly!” Felicity’s mother said, waving a hand in the air and coughing with great exaggeration.

  Felicity had to stifle a giggle. Her father rolled his eyes with great aplomb and went to put his pipe in his study. The doorbell rang. Felicity’s mother looked like she might explode, from several different emotions at once. They took their seats in the parlor, sitting primly on the elegant furniture. Felicity’s father came back last, and as soon as he sat down, Beatrice opened the front door to greet their dinner guests.

  “Preacher, how lovely to see you!” Felicity’s mother said, moving across the room in a sweep of petticoats. “And Abigail!”

  The preacher and his wife spoke similar greetings, then the preacher said, “You remember our son, Travis.”

  “Of course!”

  Felicity wondered if her mother realized how fake she sounded, how strange her smile looked stretched so widely across her face.

  They began in the parlor, Beatrice pouring everyone drinks: brandy for the men, lemonade for everyone else. Conversation started light: the weather, the upcoming fair, school for Felicity and Travis. Felicity caught Travis shooting her furtive glances from beneath his blonde lashes. They knew each other from school and church but had barely spoken a word to each other. Of course, almost no one spoke to Felicity.

  Next, they retreated to the dining room, where Beatrice served the braised beef, prime rib, stuffed quail, greens, potatoes, and bread. Felicity couldn’t touch the meat, not after what she’d seen earlier. Her mother, however, had no such compunction. Dessert was bread pudding with peach glaze. Felicity’s mother gave Beatrice glowing compliments that never left her mouth except in front of guests.

  After dinner, it was back to the parlor for Felicity to entertain the guests. She started on the harp, playing Mozart and Handel. Beatrice served coffee in little white china cups. Next, Felicity moved to the piano. She played a couple of songs, and then, to her immense surprise, Travis stood and said, “Would you mind if we played a duet?”

  Felicity looked to her mother, whose shock registered for the barest of moments before another face-splitting smile moved across it. The other adults offered hearty encouragement. Travis approached the grand piano, and Felicity slid over to allow him space on the bench.

  As he took his seat, Felicity realized this was the closest she’d sat to a boy in her whole life. Her mother had made sure of that. She could feel the warmth from Travis’s body. He cast her a smile which seemed genuine.

  “Do you know Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata?” he asked softly.

  “Of course,” she responded, then blushed at her somewhat rude retort.

  Travis just grinned and raised his hands above the keys. “
Ready?”

  She nodded.

  “Three, two, one…”

  The song began in perfect harmony. Felicity had only ever played duets with her father, and that had been years ago. It was actually…pleasant. Unlike her harp playing. Travis looked over at her and smiled as he played, and she found herself smiling back. They didn’t miss a beat, staying in perfect sync for the entirety of the song. When they finished, the room filled with applause, including Beatrice, who stood in the corner.

  “Bravo!” said the preacher. “That was wonderful.”

  “You are splendid on both the piano and the harp,” Abigail said.

  “You are,” Travis added.

  Felicity’s cheeks flamed. “You are very talented, too,” she said shyly.

  “I have a marvelous idea!” Abigail said. She turned to look expectantly at her husband.

  “Oh—oh, yes! Perfect!” he exclaimed.

  Felicity and her parents exchanged glances.

  “We’ve been discussing how to take the musical performance at the fair up a notch,” the preacher said. “And I think we have our answer.” He pointed both hands at Felicity and Travis. “I know you’re already playing the harp, Felicity, but adding the piano duet would be spectacular.”

  Abigail smiled. “As long as your parents give permission.”

  “Of course,” Felicity’s mother said, that same too-big smile pasted on her face. “We’re so flattered.”

  “You’re going to bring a piano down to the arena?” Felicity’s father asked. He grinned. “Now that’s something I’d like to see.”

  “We’ll just have to make it work,” the preacher said.

  “We have another week to figure out the details,” Abigail said.

  Felicity and Travis returned to their chairs, and the two families conversed for another half-hour. After that, Abigail pronounced it time for them to be getting home. Everyone said their farewells and Beatrice held the door for their guests. They watched and waved from the door as they loaded up in their wagon and rolled away from the house.

  As soon as the door was shut, Felicity’s mother dragged her aside, her fingers crushing in their strength. “What was that boy whispering to you by the piano?”