Brave Warrior (13 page)

Curly laughed. “Hawks are red with rounded wings. You saw a falcon.”

“What does a falcon mean?” Maisie asked him.

“Your life path is individuality,” Curly said. “You must learn patience with those who don’t understand that.”

“Really?” Maisie said, as a feeling of peace came over her.

Felix was thinking hard. Listening to Curly describe his vision and his father’s interpretation of it, something had struck him hard. Curly was told not to be boastful about his accomplishments, to let
others sing about his victories. This lesson seemed like one that Felix needed to learn, too. Hadn’t he betrayed Maisie because he thought he was better than her in some ways?

Emotion tore through him, and he grabbed his sister hard and held her in a tight hug.

Curly looked at them knowingly.

“The vision quest teaches us many things,” he said.

He turned to leave, but then returned as if he had forgotten something.

“The horseman,” Curly said, “he instructed me to wear a single red-tailed hawk feather instead of a warbonnet. A warrior without a warbonnet,” he added.

Maisie and Felix looked at each other.

“I think it’s time,” Felix said softly.

But Maisie was now searching the empty space where the tepees had been. Yellow Feather and the women had finished taking them down, and there was nothing left where she and Felix had slept.

“Maisie,” Felix said. “The feather.”

Maisie looked back at Felix, then at Curly, before
she broke into a run. Somehow she had to find whoever took down that tepee and the small bag that had been hanging on the post. The bag where she’d hidden the red-tailed hawk feather.

M
aisie stared in the empty space where the tepee had stood. How would she ever track down that bag? Without it, there was no way back home. Strange, Maisie thought, just a few days ago Newport, Rhode Island, was the last place she wanted to be. But something about her vision quest and the falcon made her feel more comfortable in her own skin. Her life path, Curly had said, was individuality. Perhaps if she stopped caring about Bitsy Beal and Avery Mason and the rest of them, she might be able to follow her life path, whatever that meant.

But if she didn’t find that bag, she wouldn’t get the opportunity to find out.

She didn’t realize that Curly had followed her.
He was standing beside her now, looking confused and displeased.

“There was a bag,” Maisie began. “Hanging on one of the poles in the tepee.”

Curly looked even more displeased.

“The medicine bundle?” he demanded.

“I…I don’t think so,” Maisie said. “It didn’t have medicine in it.”

“You looked inside?” Curly said angrily.

“I wanted a safe place to put something,” Maisie tried explaining. But Curly was not listening.

He folded his arms across his chest and glared at her.

“That was my father’s medicine bundle,” he said. “No one except the medicine man and my father knows what is inside it. Now its power is destroyed. Useless.”

“I’m sorry,” Maisie said.

Curly glared at her.

“The only reason you were allowed to stay is because the Lakota share their food, their tepees. My father insisted, even though I told him I do not trust the white settlers. Even young ones like you.”

“I’m so sorry,” Maisie said again, close to tears.
“Where is the medicine bundle?”

“My father has it with him. He will need it as we move past the settlers.”

“Maybe I can talk to the medicine man and make it powerful again?” Maisie said hopefully.

“Ha!” Curly snorted. “Do you have two or three horses for a new medicine bundle?”

“No.”

“Then you cannot help,” he said dismissively. “You’ve done enough damage. It is time for you to go off on your own. Back to your people.”

With that he turned on his heel, away from her.

“I can’t go back without what I put in that bag!” Maisie shouted after him.

Curly stopped. He turned around slowly, his eyes steely.

“What did you put in there?” he asked evenly.

“A…a feather,” Maisie said.

By now, Felix had joined them.

“You lost the feather?” he said.

Maisie nodded.

“What is so important about this feather?” Curly asked Felix.

“It’s from home,” Felix said carefully. “It’s hard to
explain, but we need to give it to you in order to go back.”

Curly’s face grew thoughtful.

“This feather has power?” he asked finally.

“Yes,” Felix and Maisie both answered.

He seemed to consider this carefully.

“Come,” he said to them. “We will go to my father and seek his advice.”

“How could you do something like that?” Felix whispered to Maisie as they walked across the empty field.

By now, the people were loading their horses with their belongings, preparing to leave.

They found Worm throwing buffalo hides onto a horse and securing them with rawhide.

“Father,” Curly said. “Do you have your medicine bundle?”

Worm shook his head no.

“What?” Maisie exclaimed. “Where is it?”

“Little Thunder borrowed it,” Worm said, surprised by Maisie’s reaction. “He needed good luck.”

“But where is Little Thunder?” Felix asked.

Worm shrugged and pointed toward the horizon.

“Gone,” he said simply.

Frightened, Maisie looked at Felix. He looked back at her, fear in his eyes.

Curly said, “Little Thunder does need good luck. Your feather will give him special power.”

“No, no,” Felix said. “You don’t understand.
We
need that feather.”

“To give to me,” Curly said.

“Right,” Felix said.

“I give it to him,” Curly said, satisfied.

“You can’t,” Maisie insisted.

Worm spoke softly, his voice tinged with sadness.

“Four summers ago, a great council met at Fort Laramie to end the government’s intrusion on our land and our people. They insisted we choose a chief, someone to tell us what to do. All of us! The Lakota and the Crow and the Cheyenne, the Arapaho and Shoshone. As if one man could order so many different people.”

Worm paused, considering this idea before he continued.

“Since we do not believe in such a person, the government chose for us. They gave us presents and
money so that the white settlers could move safely along the Holy Road. They were satisfied with this. But no one, not Conquering Bear, who they named chief, not me, no one, rules the Lakota.”

He set his dark eyes directly on Maisie.

“No one rules the Lakota because we own nothing and nobody. You see?”

“I understand,” Maisie said, “but—”

“Little Thunder needed good luck,” Worm reminded her.

She watched as he climbed on his horse and slowly joined the tribe as they left what had been their village.

“How can we find Little Thunder?” Felix asked Curly.

“You can ride with us,” Curly said, his voice heavy with resignation. “Maybe we see him. Maybe not.”

“Arapaho,” a voice whispered to Curly through the tepee flaps a few nights later.

They had ridden for days across the plains before finally setting up their tepees. Maisie and Felix were so dispirited that they did not even feel relieved to be off horseback and on the soft buffalo hides, gazing up
at the stars through the opening at the very top of the tepee. Without that feather, they were trapped here in 1800s, out in the Great Plains, with no hope of getting back home to Newport.

Curly sat up.

“Are they planning a raid?” Curly asked.

“In the morning,” came the answer.

Then the sound of footsteps hurrying away.

Maisie shivered despite the warm blanket covering her. She thought of her bed in the Princess Room, with its supersoft sheets and silk canopy. She thought about the big pink poufe, and how she liked to sink into it and think her thoughts. All of those things seemed impossibly far away, and Maisie feared she would never see Elm Medona, or her mother, again.

“We must prepare for battle,” Curly said to Felix.

“Battle?” Felix sputtered.

“Maybe get good horses,” Curly added.

Felix thought about the day they had gone to touch the enemy. He still could clearly see the face of the Comanche, his bow drawn, the arrow aimed at Felix. In a battle, that arrow would be fired.

“Curly, I don’t want to fight,” Felix said, trying to
hide the trembling in his voice.

Curly stood before them both, dressed simply. On his cheek he’d painted a white zigzag that looked like a lightning bolt, but nothing more.

“We attack Arapaho before they attack us,” he said matter-of-factly.

He waited until Felix reluctantly got up. Curly reached forward and painted white spots on Felix’s face.

“Hail,” he said when he’d finished. “Like the hail of our arrows on the Arapaho.”

In the moonlight streaming in from the top of the tepee, Curly’s and Felix’s faces glowed eerily.

Maisie jumped up.

“I can’t let him go alone,” she said.

“Girls do not come on raids,” Curly told her.

“Stay, Maisie,” Felix said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“If you’re going, I’m going,” Maisie insisted.

“In a dress?” Curly said, pointing at her.

“Get me leggings. And a shirt,” Maisie said firmly.

Curly hesitated, then left the tepee.

“You don’t have any idea how scary it is,” Felix said.

“I saw the attack on Yellow Feather’s village,” she reminded him. “I’ll never forget it.”

Curly returned and handed her buckskin leggings and a shirt with a white sun painted on the front.

“Power,” he said, showing her the circle there.

“I’ll be right out,” Maisie said.

The clothes smelled like the suede jacket her father used to wear. He’d bought it long ago at a flea market in Rome, and it had been one of his prized possessions. Maisie used to like to bury her head in his chest and smell the rich scent mixed with a long-ago owner’s tobacco. She wondered if he’d taken that jacket with him to Qatar, where it was always hot and no one ever needed to wear jackets. Like so many things from their old lives in New York, it had probably been discarded. Maisie was probably the only one of the four of them who even thought about it so fondly. Everyone else just kept moving on, as if their lives together on Bethune Street didn’t matter anymore.

Sighing, she stepped out of her dress and into the leggings and shirt. The clothes felt heavy, the rich smell enveloping her. Maisie reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the elastic she always
carried but never used on her unruly hair. But now she gathered it into a thick ponytail and tucked the ends under the elastic, hoping she looked a little bit more like a boy.

Then she stepped out of the tepee, where, as far as she could see, bare-chested warriors sat erect on horseback.

Her eyes scanned the group until she found Felix and Curly. Beside them, a white-and-black-spotted horse waited for her. Curly watched her struggle onto it. But she did it, finally settling into the curve of its back. In the distance, the sun was beginning to rise, the blazing orange ball on the horizon.

Curly raised his hand and let out a war cry, high-pitched and ferocious.

The others responded with whooping and cries.

With a thunder of hooves and a cloud of dust swirling around them, Maisie and Felix were off to battle.