“Ay-ah!” Grey Doe shouted suddenly. “She burns!”
I turned in time to watch Grey Doe drop a basket. I thought she spoke of her hot water basket and tea. I reached for Grey Doe’s hand, but she pushed at me and grabbed for Shooting Star. Then I saw the flames reach up behind my little sister, heard her howl in pain.
Grey Doe lunged at Wren, but her one-armed weight pushed her off-balance and Wren’s ankles and feet edged into the fire. Grey Doe pitched like an uprooted tree over me, her strong hand batting at flames. Her body held me from helping, kept Wren’s legs wedged in the fire.
I pushed at Grey Doe and reached for water to pour on the flames. By mistake, my hand sunk into the sweet-smelling basket of honey. I wrenched Wren forward, pulled Grey Doe with her, then both of them onto my chest. Smoke swirled and threatened to suffocate our breathing. With no other choice, I doused Wren with the sticky gold stream, grabbed for her feet and cupped my gummy hands over them. My action smothered the burning. Then I helped Grey Doe pull Wren farther from the pit.
A sizzling sound, like fish oil dropped on hot rocks, came from Shooting Star’s flesh. With hands gooey with honey, I patted out flames, pulled off what was left of smoldering sage.
“What happened!” Grey Doe panted as she rolled from under us. She pushed open the hide covering to the outside, not waiting for an answer. Smoke and bad smells billowed out. She crawled out herself, still coughing.
Wren whimpered beneath my stinging hands. Her flesh burned red, and the bottoms of her feet were blistered with soot. Honey felt soothing on my burned hands, something that surprised me as I held Wren’s tender feet. She winced, then added in panting breaths, “It helps.”
“More honey!” I shouted to Grey Doe who stood outside, thumping smoldering ashes sparkling near the opening.
She squatted and looked at me, at us.
“It eats the stinging,” I said.
“I will see if Wuzzie has blazing-star leaves,” she said, in control now that the danger passed. “You,” she said to me, “take the blanket, dip it in the river. We will wrap her burns. That is how it is done. Maybe I’ll see about honey.” Her words scolded as though I had suggested something childish, of no value.
But the honey felt good on my own hands and the stinging soon stopped.
Though we were not to be interrupted during this private time, Willow Basket spied Grey Doe leaving and knew something bad had happened. She saw the excess smoke too, so joined us.
“Soak this in the river, for Wren’s burns,” I told her. I continued to rub the sticky honey over Wren’s red back, massaged it gently into her toes and her feet, tried not to notice how she shivered with the scorching pain.
When the wet blanket arrived, Wren would not use it, wanted the sweet healing of honey instead.
“You make it worse,” Grey Doe chided her. “Do what you’re told, now.”
Wren agreed to the blazing-star poultice Grey Doe brought back, but Sunmiet’s honey sent by Lukwsh made her skin feel best, she said.
That evening, in the darkness of the hut, I offered to gather Wren’s wood for her.
Grey Doe scoffed. “She must gather her own to make the passage. The spirits would not understand if another made the piles.”
“But her feet …”
“You must not deprive her of the joy she will earn by completing her tasks on her own feet. Besides,” she added with her old bite, her chin pushing the air before her, “you think that honey heals? Then why worry. She will walk with no trouble at all.”
I watched Wren hobble out in the morning for her early gathering, grateful the third week had passed and only one remained. I wished she did not need to travel so far to bring her wood. I thought through the night that there had to be another way.
With the silence of a marmot sitting out a coyote’s eyes, I reworked the piles while Grey Doe slept. Gently lifting greasewood and sagebrush from several mounds, I made another and another, gradually shrinking larger piles, ending with many more. I hoped Grey Doe’s old eyes did not notice.
“She will be angry,” Wren whispered when she returned from her first forage.
“Only if we tell her. Otherwise, she will never know,” I said and rubbed honey into Wren’s feet, peeled dead black skin from her heels and her toes and wrapped her ankles and tender feet in rabbit pelts, fur side out. And I raised a song to the Spirit that might know my name and hers, be even wiser than the wind. I asked him to put out the flame in Wren’s feet.
Grey Doe did not discover us. When she awoke, Wren would make her way back for more wood. When we left the hut at the end of the week, Wren said her skin felt tender to cold and to hot, but it felt smooth like a baby’s bottom without scarring. Her feet were the color of a red sunrise, though the natural bronze color was sure to return.
When she showed Wuzzie that the honey took away both sting and scars, he snorted.
“It is the blazing-star poultice, not what that tibo discovered,” he said.
But Wren noticed later that he kept a new tin of the honey next to his fire.
I said nothing to anyone about speaking with a Spirit or how it seemed to have listened. I kept to myself the satisfaction of knowing that what I thought of had brought some healing to a friend.
As was the custom, Wren divided her clothes between Grey Doe and me when we finished in the hut—clothes which were all too short for either of us. Lukwsh delivered her a burled bowl in honor of her woman state, and together we made new clothes from traded cloth Vanilla Leaf had received from the army’s wagon. She traded for one of Wren’s baskets.
It pleased me that I recognized the patterns, knew what they expected yet could take what action I thought best. Nothing bad happened because I helped Wren gather wood; nothing bad had happened because I learned to blend.
While we worked the cloth in the pale light of the wickiup fire, caught up on the gossip from our time away, Wren told Lukwsh of the honey cure and of my helping with her gathering. Lukwsh listened quietly, then her fingers touched my knee as we knelt side by side, and her eyes watered in appreciation. I let her look of kindness wash over me, let it fall like rainwater in a gentle spring, felt it refresh me, cleanse me, let myself feel loved. My heart split wider, as a wada seed in spring.
I think that moment I made the choice to stay, to remain where I felt cherished, where I belonged.
In the spring of the year known by Sarah’s agents as 1871, I felt that I might soon be taken as Shard’s wife. Instead, Thunder Caller announced that we would charm the antelope, and all attention turned to this.
Word came into Wuzzie’s vision that a herd grazed not far from Snow Mountain. Headman We-ah-wee-wah announced a time of dry ground, a hard winter ahead, so the antelope would be welcome both for food and hides and would carry us through the winter.
“Ten days from now we will charm them,” Thunder Caller announced to the gathering. “Each must do their part.”
“Not you,” Wuzzie said, his finger pointing at me through the seated crowd gathered in the headman’s lodge. I sat among the women in the back and turned to see who Wuzzie pointed at behind me. I had not spoken, made myself small.
“It would upset the spirits to have someone who does not listen to them be nearby,” Wuzzie said.
His bony finger pointed at me.
Wuzzie did not know I prayed to a listening Spirit, could not know. He hung on to old hatreds such as my plunging in the water with Wren. Like Shard, Wuzzie had been traveling more. But Wuzzie danced with a prophet man named Smohalla, and he told us Smohalla could raise the dead, destroy the tibo.
Wuzzie stood and walked wide around me, muttering about wehe not being of enough value for the vermin he brought into this band. I wondered, then, if he also feared me, believed I stocked some power I did not have. A prideful, foolish thought.
“We need all hands to help,” Shard said, his voice deep like the man he had become. “All must listen to the drum’s vibration, sing the songs.” He sat not near the s
eat of power, but his voice carried it. The air in the lodge felt hot, close.
Wuzzie’s neck jerked quickly to where Shard sat cross-legged in the circle of men.
“This herd has been sent. No tibo will stain the Creator’s provision. South, the owls brought sickness and many have died. North, they wage war.” He nodded his head in the directions, his arms folded across his chest. “It is a gift to Lukwsh that her owl is still among us. But no owl will be among us while we hunt.”
“Only small children and old ones are to be left be-hind,” Thunder Caller said, his last word dropping.
“Let that one remain with the children,” Grey Doe said.
There was a long quiet broken by the words: “This is a good plan.” Wuzzie sat back down.
“The moo’a can stay with the children,” Shard insisted. “Neither will be harmed then or asked to do more than their share. To charm such a large herd, each young back is needed, including that of all our sisters.”
Grey Doe grinned at his final word, lifted her chin toward me. Her look distressed me, but I had no time to respond.
“Who are you to know so much about antelope?” Stink Bug said.
A murmur of discontent rumbled around the gathering. Brothers speaking against brothers in the council boded poorly.
Stink Bug had grown large, carried a man’s chest, a boy’s puffed-up pride. I noticed Flake and other dogs dropped their tails between their legs when he walked near. He scoffed at me when I grabbed at his arm once in the futile defense of a pup. Later, I watched him move in anger against his horse, leaving welts as he smiled.
“Have you been present when we have hunted in recent years? No,” he said.
From behind him, I could see his thick neck turning a reddish brown beneath the part in his black braids as he made his charges against his brother.
“Neither have I been on raids to rattle white women in their gardens,” Shard said. “I have other thoughts than making their men angry enough to shoot for no reason.”
“They need no reason.” Stink Bug snorted and shifted weight on his wide buttocks. “It will not matter how woman-like your words are. They will still take what they wish unless we do what we know.”
“It is not wise to speak of war when we have been given the gift of a herd,” Thunder Caller said wisely, breaking the brothers’ eye arrows.
“If she stumbles, is foolish, it will be bad,” Wuzzie said. “All will be lost. Mistakes. Errors. Disobedience. All cause problems.”
“It is so for each of us,” Shard said. “No one’s thoughts must stray from the charming. Each must say openly if we trip or make a mistake. We all know this.”
“We will ask Shell Flower to help build mounds, then return to be with the children and moo’a. That way all are served.”
All but me, I thought.
“This is a good plan also,” Wuzzie agreed, “as long as As-i-am”—he dragged out the word—“does nothing foolish.”
We rose and filed out from the lodge, the issue settled. But Wuzzie’s words made me wonder again at my place. I thought of Shard, of his willingness to defend me. But was it as his sister or his friend, or as a future mate?
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Building the mounds is most important,” Shard said, pressing with his fingers for me to stop. His voice flowed over me like wind whispering in tall pines on the way to the rocky crest of Snow Mountain. People passed around us, rushed a bit as the air smelled of rain.
“It is the mounds and the movement that charm them. The antelope know about one, the other is new. Both make the prong horns think they are walking to safety.”
“But they aren’t,” I said.
A pause, then, “You will be part of what matters before you leave.” Wisps of black hair found their place across his face. He shook his head, did not lose my stare.
“What I have to give is an unworthy gift?” I asked.
“Just different,” he said, this time with no pause, as though he had thought about me in this way before.
We walked toward the edge of the lake, the smell of salt and mud mingled in the air. I felt a dog sniff at my hands. Smoke, Shard’s new one. The dog chewed gently on his fingers, came between us.
“He does not accept you as the head of his pack,” I told Shard. “You are just a littermate, someone to play with and chew.” I reached across to scratch Smoke’s ears. “He will not listen to you unless you act like a headman.”
Shard laughed, paused. “So you have discovered the ways of dogs, now,” he said.
“They are easier to understand.”
I missed the dogs when Shard left, had never become attached to another as I had to Pinenut, was surprised now that I looked for Flake.
Smoke bounded into the water scattering mudhens, setting swans to escape.
“You will avoid seeing them scattered and confused after they walk through the openings and it is not what they thought,” Shard said, and I realized he had returned to the antelope. “Even though it means food for the people, and I am grateful, it is always a sadness for me when I see that they have trusted us. The fright shows wild in their eyes at their mistake, but they are unable to escape, their minds lull them, make fences that trap them.”
It took many words from Shard to share his thought out loud. His eyes held a faraway look, as though he saw something more than antelope charmed then destroyed.
“You risked speaking,” I told him, hoping he understood what I meant.
“A brother must always talk for his little sister,” he said, a smile in his voice, teasing.
I felt a flame on my neck, an irritation at his lightness for my feeling.
“What about your brother? Did you wish to talk for him? Is that why he says such things about you in front of others?”
Shard grew silent and squatted at the lake’s edge.
“Who knows what makes my brother mad,” he said. He picked up a stick and drew in the mud. “His anger feeds on what he cannot change. Like all of us. Maybe anger at an older brother who has no power, either.” Shard sighed, then slapped his hand on his thigh to bring the dog. “Stink Bug could make a change, but he prefers to use it to stomp others.”
He stood and took my hand, stepped back from Smoke as he ran out of the darkness toward us and shook himself of the wet as he panted into the night.
I resisted speaking into the silence, and Shard finally spoke, a lightness to his voice: “I should have stayed so he would not be alone in a lodge with women. That can make a man mad.” I could hear a grin in his voice and a wish to change the subject as we started to walk.
“Maybe he will leave, like you did,” I said, “if he can find a woman to fix pine-nut stew and live without little sisters to boss around.”
“Some woman’s grandmother will invite him in. Grandmothers like big eaters.” He laughed.
The possibility had not entered my mind before. Lying at a grandmother’s feet, yes, but moving in? Women here who married did not leave their lodges. Men joined them.
So Lukwsh had been different. She had come to a new place. Her husband had created their lodge that did not include his mother or grandmother. Only the children of his first wife. And one child together before the father died.
“Does a grandmother wait for you, too?” I asked.
The pause seemed longer than usual, and I thought of Vanilla Leaf’s grandmother or maybe someone in a faraway place. And what of me, of my choices, what lodge would gather my husband to its fire if I stayed here?
“You will go away, to find a wife?”
“My father did,” he said too quickly.
His hands covered mine, alerting all my senses. I felt the callous ridge from the leather reins he held when he rode, the roughness from the waters his hands dipped into for ducks and for fish. Our breaths mingled in the small distance between us. I wondered if he could hear my heart. I did not want to move. I wanted to hold on, to savor the sweet tension of the moment.
“You have
gone away,” Shard said and moved his wide hand in front of my eyes to bring me back.
“Being different,” I lied.
“I like a spear that is unlike any other,” he said, and I thought he spoke of the uniqueness of me. “One that feels good in my hands, alone.”
He pulled me closer to him, and I pressed my head to his chest.
“Wuzzie will not like this,” I said.
He paused, moved me back away from him enough to look into my eyes. “Nor Grey Doe. But it is not theirs to decide.”
Perhaps we spoke of the antelope charming, but it felt as though these words could speak of love as well.
We walked in silence back to Lukwsh’s lodge. His fingers still touched mine, though our hands were bumped by Smoke slipping between us as he moved in and out of the darkness. Shard stepped aside at the lodge opening and touched my back lightly as I bent to enter. I turned, thinking he had something more to say. And I wanted to catch the sweetness of his breath so close to my face.
“It is time your brother brings you back,” Grey Doe said into the night. She snapped back the entering flap, broke our spell. “Your brother,” her words hissed, “nothing more.”
Shard disappeared into the dark, and I shut out the chattering Grey Doe continued in my ear. Instead, I remembered Shard’s words about liking a special spear, about the choices being our own.
So I stayed with them for the beginning of the charming when Thunder Caller and Wuzzie chose two men to be the messengers to the antelope. I felt some pride mixed with worry when both Stink Bug and Shard were named.
We had traveled south, along the west side of Snow Mountain more often now called Steens. There a wide basin opened, sunk south gently as the summer sun eased out of the day. Clusters of sagebrush and rabbit brush, sparse stands of juniper and tall grasses near springs dotted the earth, attracted the antelope. A spring rain washed the desert into pungency.
In the morning, the two men chosen lit their sagebrush torches and stood back to back, then walked away from each other, marking a wide circle with their torches in the dirt as directed by Wuzzie and the headman.