Stormfeather Ch. 07

"I'm just hoping that Winky's eye gets better, that's all," Amy said.

"Winky?"

"I can't think of anything better for a name. She probably won't stay with us anyway. I just wish her the best." She held out the bowl and cooed to the animal to come closer. When it looked to her that the wolf was as close as she'd likely get, Amy took out a chunk of trout and offered it, worrying about her fingers a little bit.

"She may nip your fingers lightly by mistake," he said, "if it happens, make a sound in warning to her and she will be more careful the next time. She will not wish to bite you."

"You're doing it again," Amy said softly over her shoulder.

"Sorry," he began.

"Don't be," she said, "I just mind it a little bit and I'm getting used to it. I'd just like it if you could try not to do it too often. I do love you, I just don't always want to be reminded that I'm not as ... able as you are."

"But Sheena," he replied, "I am not the one who can see in my dreams or ... draw pictures to keep the memory or shoot down men at impossible distances. I think that I am not as able as you, Sheena."

She knew at once that he was being sincere as he saw things from his side and kicked herself a little for it. "Let's just leave it alone. Arn. Now I'm the one who's sorry. I don't want to go on about it all day, I just felt a little annoyed for a moment, and I regret saying anything now." She smiled at him, "I'll just try to get used to it if you try not to do it that often."

He sat down beside her as the wolf screwed up her uncertainty and stepped closer to very carefully take the piece of fish. She looked as though she was about to dance away again to eat it, but suddenly decided to stand with them as she ate. Amy praised her quietly and finally felt the soft fur under her fingertips as she passed another piece with her other hand. She peered carefully at the eye and decided that it looked clear, if somewhat bruised. "I hope that she'll be alright on her own if she decides not to stay," Amy mused.

"It is hard for me to tell," he said, "I know that she is young to be on her own and I feel her sadness. A wolf's pack is really family if there are no outsiders in it. For her to have lost them, it means that she has no parents or brothers and sisters now. She may decide that we might welcome her – if it is what we want, you and I." He reached out and gently rubbed over one ear and the animal's uninjured eye closed a bit in pleasure.

Amy chuckled, "I think that I've lost my heart to a boy and his dog."

"That is not the way that I see this," he said, "She is hopeful for my kindness, but she knows that she needs your acceptance for her to stay. I have lost my heart also to the one who amazes me without end."

She winked at him, "I think that's what women are really for, not for housework and having babies, that's just wasting our talents, though it's often all that we're allowed to do. I'm really not like that," she warned him with a mild glare, "though my great aunt always tells me that I'm getting to be an old maid and that it's high time that I got serious with a man. I think we're really here to mystify and amaze men, though most are too stupid to appreciate it."

She settled herself carefully to lean against him again, "I like you because you're not like any man I've ever known. You alone seem to have learned the importance of keeping a woman warm."

She looked down at her moccasins again. "I notice these things." she nodded brightly, "You're the one that I need to get serious with."

"Do not heap too much honor on my head," he said ruefully, "It took me hundreds of years of solitude to learn this secret. But if we are finished now with our laughter, this does not worry or frighten you, what you have dreamed between us? That you have drawn us like that if your dreams are what will come? Perhaps you ought to ask what lies ahead when you dream tonight."

She shook her head, and pointed at him, "You said it yourself - calm acceptance." she said, "So please don't get too concerned just yet. For one thing, neither of us knows just when that dream that I drew is supposed to happen. For another, you of all people shouldn't be surprised that I can accept this idea if your mother could dream like me, even without drawing what she saw. The dream is the dream, it doesn't matter what I wanted to draw. I drew what I felt was there."

She looked around, "It's starting to get cooler, you'd better put your arm around me."

He loved her warm smile after he'd done it. It wasn't getting anywhere near cool yet and wouldn't for hours. He was just perceptive and Amy liked that about him.

"I may not have to train you very much at all," she grinned as she leaned against him comfortably, "Anyway, if you think about it, I have these dreams and then I draw them. It takes time to do that, and the whole time that I'm drawing, I'm thinking and more importantly, I'm feeling as I remember things in the dreams. I am trying to express the feeling of the dream. It's how I came to know so much about the wandering warrior whose life was pulling at me. It's how I got to know what's inside of you."

He looked a little uncomfortable. "I understand better, but how is it that you came to know that we are to be together? This is something that is strange to me, yet you are so sure."

"You seemed to want to test me yesterday to see if I really wasn't afraid of you. I can't blame you for that because of your life, but my first tests came in other dreams of us before I'd even seen you look at me in my dream. Starting from the second night, I've sometimes had dreams that are not in the past, but are most certainly in the future if the telling of the dreams hold to how they've been so far."

She looked to make sure that she'd caught his gaze and held it. "I saw myself with you – and not just traveling. I just didn't know about the braids, but I do now, obviously." She held her hand up with her thumb and forefinger held tightly together. "I saw us this close – for hours – and you can imagine what I saw us doing. How would you feel if you saw yourself like that, being intimate with someone you don't even know? What if it came to you that this wasn't a normal dream? What if you knew that what you were seeing was real somehow and that it would and even had to happen? It scared the hell out of me at first. Those were the ones that frightened me a little until I saw how much you loved me in the dreams, and then I started to fall in love with you."

"Hell," she grinned softly in admission as she held up her hands in a helpless gesture, "I just couldn't help it."

He sat listening to her intently and she nodded, "Oh, I wasn't prepared to just go along blindly with what I saw," Amy said. "But after meeting you and after all of yesterday, I learned that you are as you were in those dreams. So I guess I'm saying that after that, I've just accepted that I'm going to be yours." She shrugged as though she had no say in it.

"Something makes me dream like that, and for all of your abilities, I know that it's not you. For whatever reason, I have an ability which any girl would kill to have – I was able to see the one for me ahead of time. You're the one that I'm supposed to love. That's where the acceptance comes from, Arn."

She looked away and chuckled to herself, "And it's a damn good thing that you're the kind of man who I'd want to have a love with as much as I do. I really doubt that I'd want anyone else after getting to know you."

She looked up and he seemed to be frozen in place, so she reached around to gently pull his face to hers and kissed him softly once. She pulled back to smile at him, "For almost three weeks since I realized it, I've been in love with someone whom I'd never met, and really didn't know if I ever would meet. It's worse than being lonesome, it's hopeless. So now that I've met you, it isn't such a surprise to me who you are, and what you are, is it? To me, they're really the same thing - you're the one I think that I'm supposed to love. I sure hope that you feel like I'm the one for you too though I'm no beauty. Because after all of this, if you can't love me, I'm pretty sure that there's no one who I would ever want."

His voice came to her quietly. It was almost a whisper, but she heard it plainly.

"Forgive me for my wondering, Sheena. I do love you. Even though you think there is little beauty there to love. For one who can see so far clearly, this is where your visions fail you, this close in. But do you know the price for what you want? Even if we begin to love, and it seems that we are already on that road, it cannot be for long, unless you want to be what I am. There is much pain to the beginning of it. It is possible that you may not come through it alive, or you may stay in the madness of it forever."

He exhaled heavily at the unpleasant thought of it, "You must know what I would have to do then."

Her gaze at his eyes didn't falter. Even when she blinked, he found her looking steadily at him and there was no fear that he could feel or see. "I thought so," she said quietly, "If it has to be, then it's what I have to do to be with you. And I'm sure that it has to be, since I've seen us being intimate and we were both wild. I saw myself just as furry as you, so I guess that means that I'll survive it. If you'll be there with me, I won't be afraid. When?"

"Not yet, Sheena. We only know each other - I mean here, together, two days now. I would stay with you for all of it. We can do this in a few days. I know that your heart is determined and I know that you are the bravest woman I have ever known. You shine like the sun to my eyes. I am not ready yet, and you need to learn much first. Then you can ask for this."

"Would you be mine then?" she asked, and he knew at once that the question was a sincere one from her, without any of her joking attached to it.

Looking at her there in the sunshine with the breeze just moving her mane, his heart was taken again in her graceful hands, though she hadn't moved.

He chuckled and put his arm around the small of her back to rest his hand on her hip, but she knew the truth when she heard it, "I am yours now," he said softly. "I think I was yours from the first vision. When you came to find me in the darkness, I was almost certain of it, but I did not know that you felt anything for me. Now I feel the power of your hold. You sit and smile at me as you talk, and you do not know how strongly you hold my heart to you like this. So we travel together then. There is no choice in it for me anymore."

Her arms went around him and after kissing him, she laid her head on his shoulder, "That's good then," she sighed with the smile that he could feel against his skin, "After finally being with you, I could never be anything other than miserable as the wife of a wealthy rancher or a tubby banker."

She raised her head a little and he saw her green eyes peering steadily at him over the horizon of his own shoulder and felt her kiss against it, "A girl could do a lot worse than loving someone like you. I might never be rich, but that's not important. I'll probably never have a fine home, but I won't care. I'll wander with you through wind and snow if it's where we have to go, as long as I have you, I'll be happy."

"You have overlooked some things," he began in a mild and gentle tone of warning, "You have your life – there are people who care for you and love you. You are a teacher."

"I know all of that," Amy replied. "I have some time to work that out. The way that I see it, no matter what happens now, or which way we go – everything in my life will have to change in some way. I don't mind that, and I even welcome it. My life hasn't always been sunshine and peaches, though right now if I were to allow it to continue the way it's headed, it could be very comfortable – and sleepy. I'm just not that kind of girl. Even hardship doesn't put me off much, it makes the good times better and at least you know that you're alive if you find yourself struggling to stay that way now and then. I wish there were more women who weren't content with staying in the background."

From her vantage point with her cheek against his shoulder, she could see the smile from his cheek. "There are such women. When I was coming north before my friend the horse was born, I passed through a land in turmoil. Tribes who lived sometimes peacefully because of the space between them fight more now because their land is taken from them and they have nowhere to go. The Comanche and the Apache have always been enemies. I heard the tale of one young woman whose husband was killed by a Comanche chief when he surprised their raiding party as they looked for horses. He took her husband's scalp and she could not let it go out of her love for him. She saw the man and the black stallion with three white feet that he rode."

"What happened?" Amy asked, intrigued now.

"There were no men in her family who were young enough and strong enough warriors to strike back. As a new widow, she was kept with her mother-in-law. She waited until the woman slept, and then she stole away in the night, taking some dried meat and a water jug with her ceremonial dress and moccasins. She dared not try to take her mother-in-law's knife and her own had been taken from her. She ran until she found the camp of her enemy and found his horse among all of the others. The horse didn't snort when she led it half a mile away to tie it to a bush where it could eat the grass at that spot."

He looked at Amy and she looked to be hanging on the front edge of the porch as she listened. "You must have loved to hear tales when you were little," he said to her, "I wish now that I could draw as you do."

"Please go on." She was almost begging him to continue, and it made him chuckle as he pulled her closer. He felt as though he had no choice in it anymore and wouldn't dream of having her wait longer.

"She went back to the fires and saw that many of the men were drunk, and the chief among them. She changed her clothes in the darkness beyond the light of the fires to put on her ceremonial dress and joined the dancers, coming at last to stand before the chief where she raised her arms to invite him to dance with her. She prayed that no one would recognize her as one of their enemies."

"They are allowed to do this four times. The chief stood up on the fourth, and they danced around the circle until she led him away as though she wanted to take them to a secluded spot. She saw her husband's still-damp scalp hanging from the man's belt and the sight of it gave her courage. She led him away but then she ran from him, staying just ahead to keep him chasing her. He was angry with her now and when she let him catch her, she tried to grab his knife, but could not. So she bit his neck and hung on as he tried to beat her from him with his fists. She kept her arms high enough to prevent him being able to hit her as hard as she knew that he could as his blood ran down over them both. She managed to hold on until he grew weak and fell down. Then she found his knife and stabbed him in the chest. She scalped him and took his beads and breechcloth and ran to where she'd hidden his horse."

"Her ride back took a couple of days, because she would fall asleep from her exhaustion and whenever she awoke, the horse had turned back. It was a terrifying time for her. She only stopped to allow the horse to graze and drink. She had no food or water for herself and it was harder for her to mount the horse every time. As she approached her own people, she was not recognized because her dress was covered with the man's dried blood and so was she. She lost consciousness as she tried to get past her own sentries."

"What happened to her? Was she killed? This is true, and not just a legend or anything?"

He shook his head. "She awoke in her family's tipi. She holds much high honor among them, having done what no man of their tribe could do. She took her own vengeance, avenged her tribe, and killed a very powerful chieftain of their enemies – and she killed him with nothing more than her teeth. The stabbing was only to make certain that he was dead. She brought back his scalp, belongings, and his own horse as proof. She raids with the men as a warrior now."

Amy was astounded. "What is her name?"

"I did not know her story when I met her, but –"

Amy's mouth fell open. "You've met her?"

He nodded, "She was with a raiding party when they overtook me. We did not understand each other for a time, but I made it clear that I wished only to pass through their lands in peace. She is very proud and I learned why only later that night from one of the men. She made a remark about thinking to keep me prisoner at first, but changed her mind," he shrugged. "I stayed the night, but was far away when they woke. I made sure the men who were to watch me slept well."

Amy smiled knowingly, "What did you do?"

He looked off innocently, "When she said that I was her prisoner, I waved my hand and her horse fell asleep. She landed a little hard and was angry with me but could do nothing and she knew it. Only she saw my hand. She did not know how I did it, but she knew that I was the cause. She could not kill me for no reason since I am not from an enemy tribe, and they were all a little nervous about me. I heard her tale after she went off to sleep. Her name is one that is not permitted to be spoken to outsiders. It was that way before her husband was killed. She is known as Gouyen now. In their tongue, it means 'chaste' or 'wise'. The same word fits both things. She is a great warrior among them, and I wish her well."

"Where is she now?" Amy asked.

He shrugged. "Still alive and well, I hope. She could be anywhere from northern Mexico to as little as fifty miles from here. I do not know. I have seen many Comanche here. There are less Apaches, but they are here somewhere."

She found his breechcloth in her view and it took her thoughts in another direction for a moment. "Hey, where you come from, do the women always wear dresses? From what I saw, the answer seemed to be yes and no. I'm not big on dresses."

"The season decides it," he replied, getting to his feet, "and the age of the wearer. If you and I go together, I think that you would find a dress to be a problem and your pants there would wear quickly. I will make clothes for you that will wear better and anyway," he smiled, "your dreams have shown the best things for you, I think. These things are not that close to what the women of many tribes wear. Almost all wear dresses of some form, though there are those who do not for the same reasons of practicality."

He walked away and Amy was left to smile at Miss Winky as the animal got to its feet to approach a bit hopefully, but was still nervous. "You don't have to worry, sweetie. I've saved a little bit of my bacon and eggs for you. You can call it a bribe, I guess. I don't think you should get too used to my food, but I know you've had a hell of a day."

Winky had no answer beyond what Amy could tell from her slowly wagging tail as she accepted the scrap of egg from her hand and then allowed herself to be scratched behind an ear.

Amy found the old wooden ball and tried to play with Miss Winky for about an hour, always mindful of what might be the cause of the stiffness that she observed. Amy stopped the game entirely when the wolf winced once and yelped a little from her own sudden move.

Stormfeather looked a mess when he returned and she was about to ask, but then settled for just a curious glance as he walked to the pump and began to wash. She tried not to stare at him for long, knowing that he'd give her an answer to the question in her mind if she did. Instead, she guessed that he'd gone to skin the dead wolves and stretch out their hides, but doubted if even he could do four in the time that he'd been gone.