Baji and I stare at each other. The white knife scar that cuts across her pointed chin has picked up the bluish tint of coming dawn. Black wavy hair frames her beautiful oval face and flutters over her buckskin cape. Her knee-high black leggings are speckled with old pine needles, collected in her mad dash through the forest. Seeing her standing there over the body of the man who was about to kill me is ethereal. Her hair blows softly in the breeze, feathering over her shoulders.
“You are so beautiful.”
She tilts her head reprovingly and her mouth quirks. “We were talking about insanity and murder.”
“Well, I’m past that now. I’d rather talk about you, about how you look in the blue morning light, your long legs spread and your bow half-drawn. The image is heartrending.”
She tucks her arrow back in her quiver, slings her bow over her left shoulder, and walks around the dead man to step into my arms. As she embraces me, a warm sensation tingles through my muscles. I rest my chin against her temple, and drown for a time in the silken texture of her hair. The glossy strands smell of campfires and leather, things that comfort me.
“I’m glad you’re here with me,” I whisper. “Being with you is all I’ve ever wanted.”
She hugs me harder, her strong muscular arms like granite bands, but says, “I think you want peace more than me.”
The soft words remind me of my duty to our Peoples. I heave a sigh. “I take it that you do not wish to stay here in my embrace any longer than necessary.”
She laughs and looks up at me with shining eyes. “If I could wish for anything that would be it. But we do not have the luxury of wishing, Dekanawida. We still have to pack up our camp. As it is, we won’t make it to Shookas Village until late afternoon. And I have the feeling, somewhere deep inside me, that we need to get there. I don’t know why, but I want to hurry.”
She pushes away from me, and clasps my hand. We walk back toward our fire with Gitchi at our heels.
As the day brightens, the scent of pine suffuses the cold air.
Out of curiosity, I ask, “Baji, where were you when the man burst from his hiding place in the aspens?”
Black waves dance around her face as she looks up, and gives me a hesitant smile. “In the birch grove, why?”
“No reason. I just didn’t see you out there. I…”
She smiles again and looks away. She’s avoiding my eyes. Why?
My heart starts to pound harder as a strange weightless sensation comes over me. The light. No, no, it’s not possible, but … Images cascade. Baji appearing on a trail I didn’t even know I would take … running all the way to find me with a head wound that would have killed most men. No … I—I would know.
I look down at her, my gaze searching for some sign …
As though my unspoken words are bludgeoning her, she stops and a shiver goes through her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I … I was just wondering…”
She looks up and the lines around her eyes tighten as though she senses my thoughts. Her gaze shifts, scanning the forest as she sighs, “Dekanawida, before we leave, there’s something I need to tell you.” She clutches my hand tighter.
“About what?”
Her black eyes glisten like jewels. “About what Shago-niyoh said to me on the trail.”
Thirty-five
A short while later, Baji crouched across the ashes of the campfire, staring at Dekanawida in the resplendent predawn glow. Gitchi lay between them, his gray muzzle propped on his forepaws, watching in utter silence. Occasionally, when their voices grew strained, his tail lightly tapped the ground trying to ease the tension by showing them he loved them.
Baji pulled a branch from the woodpile and toyed with it to keep her hands busy. Dekanawida’s handsome face showed barely endurable pain. She could feel every shifting thought that moved behind his eyes. Like obsidian-sharp lances, they stabbed and jerked, cutting and carving her souls. Is this what strong emotions felt like in the afterworld? Is that why the Land of the Dead was beautiful and peaceful, and people only made war for sport? They couldn’t bear anything else?
She gripped the branch harder. Generations of civilization, of corn and squash, had fallen away from her, leaving the sublime purity of the wild behind—and like an ancient wolf she could smell the storm coming. The air tasted of snow and cold sweat. If it had been nightfall, she’d be digging her den in a snowbank, on the leeward side, where later she would be sheltered from the freezing darkness that engulfed the world outside.
“Baji, listen to me,” Dekanawida insisted. “It means nothing. I tell you it doesn’t. Shago-niyoh frequently asks cryptic questions. He does it to teach—”