Darkmoon(97)

“Well, uh…from someone in my clan,” I faltered. Jeremiah looked equal parts angry and shocked, but I didn’t think that anger was directed at me. Not exactly, anyway. “Um…that’s not what happened?”

“I suppose it’s not that great a surprise, that the McAllisters might twist the tale.” He reached up to push away a lock of hair that had fallen over his brow, and the gesture was so like one of the gestures I loved about Connor that I pulled in a startled little breath. The Wilcox blood really did breed true. “Do you want to tell her the truth of it, Nizhoni, or should I?”

She glanced away from him then, not meeting his eyes, and remained silent.

“Ah, then, I’ll do it.” His gaze lingered on her for a second or two more, and at last he returned his attention to me. “I don’t know what you were told, but we came here in 1876, the year of the great centennial. There had been some trouble back in Connecticut — ”

“You were practicing dark magic,” I cut in.

“More McAllister lies.”

“We don’t lie.”

His raised eyebrow indicated his disbelief, but he only said, “Very well. Let us say ‘misinterpretation of history’ and leave it at that. It was more that we were experimenting with magic, and the primas of the surrounding clans took exception to our work. So we left and headed west, where we thought we’d be allowed more freedom. All that open land, and no one looking over your shoulder.”

Yeah, I thought, that sounds like heaven to a Wilcox.

“There had been some thought of pushing on to California, but we came here and saw the snow on the mountaintops and the pine forests, and knew we didn’t want to go any farther.” He glanced over at Nizhoni, but she was still standing there without moving, without speaking, although I could tell she was listening intently. Fine by me. If she’d decided to hang on Jeremiah’s every word, it meant she most likely wouldn’t be flinging any stray logs at my head. “We built a small settlement here, my brothers and my sister and their families, and started over. And after we’d been living here for a few months, we began to hear rumors of a powerful young witch who lived in the desert lands north of here, among her people.

“You have to understand that for the Diné” — he pronounced it correctly — “the word ‘witch’ does not mean the same thing that it does to us. Shamans and healers and medicine men and women, those they had, but they were not called witches. ‘Witch’ is a bad word to them, meaning one who practices evil magic.”

“It was not evil,” Nizhoni said proudly, speaking for the first time. “I tried to tell them this, but they did not understand.”

“No, they didn’t,” Jeremiah agreed, before directing his attention back to me. “You must understand, Angela, that there were not so many of us Wilcoxes back then. A little more than twenty, when you numbered all the children of my brothers and sister, but my wife had died on the journey here, and I had no children of my own. I thought that I would like to meet this young woman, because if she was as powerful as the rumors claimed, then she would do better to be here with us, with people who understood her powers.”

“And because you just happened to need a wife,” I said dryly.

He did not appear offended by my comment, replying, “I will not lie and say the thought did not cross my mind. So my brother Samuel and I rode for three days, journeying to Navajo lands, and we met with Sicheii, Nizhoni’s father, who had very good English, as did his daughter. He was suspicious at first, but soon realized I could be of some assistance to him.”

I raised an eyebrow, and Jeremiah went on, “In my ignorance, I didn’t realize the Diné did not have the custom of the bride price the way some other tribes practiced it, and Sicheii saw no reason to correct my mistake — not when he could be rid of the daughter who had been causing trouble in his tribe and be three horses and five bars of silver richer at the same time.”

To me that didn’t sound like all that much to exchange for a human being, but apparently Nizhoni’s father had thought differently. “So…you didn’t steal her.”

“No.” Another of those quick looks in his wife’s direction. She was still standing in the same place, but now her arms hung relaxed at her side, and her head was tilted slightly, as if she had been listening intently. “And she did not seem unwilling to come back to the settlement with me.”

“I was not,” she said. “It was in me to know more of this white man’s magic, and I knew I could run away later if I wanted to.”