Brave Warrior (14 page)

The Lakota warriors charged forward, directly into the Arapaho preparing to attack. The Arapaho wore large feathered warbonnets, like the Lakota. But the Arapaho warriors wore elaborate fringed
shirts decorated with colorful beads, lines of porcupine quills, and rows of elk’s teeth. Their faces were painted with bright war paint. Except for Curly, who painted just the lightning bolt on his cheek, the Lakota also painted their faces and bodies with bright colors and sacred designs. They painted their horses, too, and attached feathers to their tails. The bravest warriors wore fur necklaces and sashes across their bare chests. Maisie noticed they all had their medicine bundles tied to their breeches or to the horses’ tails, and she thought longingly of the feather she’d tucked into Worm’s medicine bundle.

Hump, one of the fiercest Lakota warriors, led the charge, with Curly close behind him. A barrage of arrows were shot at them as they approached the enemy. Suddenly, Hump’s horse was shot from under him. Arapaho warriors quickly converged on him as he fell to the ground. Maisie thought for sure they were going to kill Hump, but as the arrows continued to fly, Curly leaped off his own horse and in one quick motion lifted Hump from the ground and away from the arrows of the Arapaho.

“How did he do that?” Felix said in wonder as Curly managed to get Hump on his own horse with
him and continue to keep moving, the Arapaho keeping stride.

Curly fearlessly rode straight through the enemy lines even as arrows whizzed past him.

Maisie and Felix hung back, watching the battle rage ahead of them. It seemed like the arrows could not hurt Curly, even though he was in the middle of the fighting. The warriors noticed it, too, and soon the Arapaho were retreating. The Lakota began a war chant, circling Curly and rhythmically bowing to him from atop their horses in admiration and respect.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, two Arapaho warriors thundered up to him, challenging Curly face-to-face, their bows and arrows poised to kill.

Maisie held her breath. The moment felt like hours.

An arrow let loose, heading directly for Curly’s heart.

But it missed by a hair, brushing past him and landing in the grass.

Just as Maisie exhaled, Curly shot off two arrows in rapid succession. The first killed the warrior who had shot at him. The second took down the other
challenger. Both men looked surprised when they were hit. Each of them grabbed at the arrow in his chest, as if he couldn’t believe it was there. And then, in slow motion, their eyes rolled back in their heads, and first one, then the other, slumped forward on his horse.

Curly urged his own horse close to them.

In horror, Maisie and Felix watched as he lifted up the first warrior’s head by the hair with one hand, and raised his tomahawk high in the other, slicing the air as the tomahawk cleanly scalped the fallen Arapaho.

Felix had to look away, but Maisie could not stop watching as Curly did the same to the second dead warrior.

He lifted the bloody scalps for everyone to see.

Then he began to attach them to his belt.

Just then, an arrow flew through the air and hit Curly straight in the leg.

His body jerked with surprise and a look of pain filled his face.

Without hesitating, Hump yanked the arrow from Curly’s leg.

“Ouch!” Maisie blurted.

Even from where they sat on their horses, she could see the blood spurting.

Hump bent and placed a piece of rawhide on the wound.

The warriors were chanting and whooping even louder now.

“He got hit because he was keeping the scalps,” Felix said. “Remember his vision?”

Maisie nodded. “He isn’t supposed to keep anything for himself.”

They watched as Curly threw the scalps to the ground. Then he turned on his horse and gave a loud, victorious cry. Even the most decorated warriors surrounded him and bowed.

The Arapaho had retreated, and Curly had become a hero.

E
xcitement rippled through the village upon their return. News about the battle had already spread, and by the time they rode back to camp, everyone knew that Curly had saved Hump, one of the most honored and most ferocious warriors in their tribe. Arrows, they’d been told, seemed to bounce off Curly. He had killed two Arapaho up close, scalping them easily.

As the warriors entered the camp, the entire tribe greeted them.

Standing in the front was Worm, waiting for his son.

Curly dismounted and approached his father, who placed a hand on each of Curly’s shoulders. He looked him in the eye.

“For someone so young,” he said solemnly, “you have shown remarkable bravery.”

Curly stood proudly before his people, but said nothing.

“You have a wound,” Worm said, indicating where the arrow had struck his leg.

“I did not listen to my dream,” Curly admitted. “In the heat of victory, I took scalps and kept them for myself.”

Worm nodded. “You will not forget that lesson again.”

“No, Father,” Curly said. “I won’t.”

Worm faced the tribe and announced, “Tonight I will have a ceremony for my son, to honor his bravery today, and to send him forward with a new name worthy of his warrior status.”

A murmur spread through the crowd. Almost immediately, they dispersed to make preparations for the ceremony. Women began to light a fire in the center of the camp. They retrieved buffalo meat, baskets of fruits and vegetables. Others prepared special ceremonial robes and bonnets.

Maisie and Felix watched all of the activity swirling around them.

“He really was brave,” Felix said.

“Yes,” Maisie agreed, feeling miserable.

“I know,” Felix said. “It’s time to leave.”

“But we might never get out of here!” Maisie blurted.

“We won’t be stuck, Maisie,” Felix said. “Don’t worry. There has to be a way to find Little Thunder.”

But he didn’t really believe that. As far as he could tell, there was no way to find Little Thunder and no way to get back home.

They sat together watching everyone preparing for the ceremony, wishing more than anything that somehow they could close their eyes and find themselves tumbling through time again.

“Maisie,” Felix said later that afternoon, “maybe we can figure out another way back.”

They had watched everyone busily preparing for the ceremony for a long time. But without anything to do themselves, they’d decided to take a walk down by the river. Standing there now, even the sight of rainbow trout jumping through the air and splashing back into the water, and the way the sunlight made the river sparkle, could not lift their gloom.

Maisie didn’t even look at Felix. The idea was ridiculous, she knew. They had to give the feather to Curly in order to go home. And the feather was gone.

“I’ve been thinking,” Felix continued, “and maybe the object isn’t the thing that gets us back.”

“Then why did Great-Aunt Maisie keep those handcuffs for so long?”

Had he forgotten how Great-Aunt Maisie schemed to time travel to meet Harry Houdini again? How she’d kept those handcuffs just so she could do that?

“She kept them to
go back
,” Felix said.

“Right,” Maisie said, frustrated. “What’s your point?”

“The objects bring us back in time,” Felix said patiently. “They don’t bring us home. They stay with the person. Clara kept the letter, and Alexander kept the coin, and Pearl—”

“You’re right!” Maisie said, finally understanding. “But if the feather brought us here, then what will bring us home?”

“That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” Felix said. “And I may have figured it out.”

Now Maisie was studying her brother’s face closely, waiting to hear what he had to say.

“Everything we tried to go home failed, right?” he asked.

But he didn’t wait for an answer.

“I thought real hard today about what happened right before we traveled back. With Clara, she was telling us about
her
great-aunt, and how we should pay more attention to Great-Aunt Maisie.”

“Okay,” Maisie said as she tried to remember. “And Alexander and I were in that cemetery—”

“And he told you how important family was. He was an orphan, and he knew how hard—”

“Pearl talked about losing her sisters and brothers—”

“And Harry told me:
I believe in you. Now you just have to believe in yourself
,” Maisie said, growing excited.

“The thing is,” Felix said, “he said it to you, but it meant something to me, too. I wanted to win the election for class president and to have friends, and even though it was all going so well, I didn’t believe in myself yet. He gave me the courage to really put myself out there.”

“We just wanted different things,” Maisie said softly. She still couldn’t accept that after being together their whole lives and moving along the same path, she and Felix now wanted different things.

“We’re twins,” Felix said, “but we’re individuals, too.”

Maisie nodded sadly.

“We’ll always be twins,” he added, throwing his arm around her shoulders. And as much as he had wanted to un-twin, the fact that he was always going to be Maisie’s twin brother suddenly felt perfect.

“I guess that’s what our vision quest was all about,” he said.

“Tolerance
and
individuality,” Maisie agreed.

Felix looked at Maisie, his eyes wide.

“But that means we did get a lesson from Curly. He interpreted our spirit guides for us.”

Maisie felt her hopes crashing. “And we’re still here,” she said.

“What are we missing?” Felix asked.

But Maisie didn’t answer. She knew it was another rhetorical question.

The sound of a stone dropping into the water caught their attention.

Down the bank a bit, Yellow Feather stood skipping stones. Maisie and Felix watched as she lightly threw a stone across the water, and it skimmed the surface, alighting once, twice, three times before landing with a pleasant plop.

“Can you show me how to do that?” Felix called to her.

Yellow Feather’s face brightened when she saw them.

“It’s simple,” she said. “Come.”

“Learning how to skip stones isn’t going to help us figure out how to get home,” Maisie said.

“Neither is standing here,” Felix reminded her.

Yellow Feather handed Felix a smooth, round stone, and demonstrated how to throw it in such a way that it didn’t land immediately but rather danced across the water.

“You try,” Felix told Maisie when he finally got a stone to skim across the surface. “It’s kind of like throwing a Frisbee.”

Maisie took the stone he offered her and pretended she was in Central Park playing Frisbee with her father. He had taken Maisie and Felix there on summer afternoons, patiently teaching them the
fine art of throwing a Frisbee.

But when she tried it with the stone, it just landed with a splash.

“Practice,” Yellow Feather said. “You can do it.”

But every stone Maisie threw just belly flopped into the river, while Felix’s gracefully skimmed along.

“I give up,” Maisie said finally.

She took one last rock and imagined her father standing across the green grass in Central Park, smiling at her.
You can do it, Maisie!
he’d say, and that Frisbee would leave her hand and float right into his.

“Look!” Felix shouted.

Maisie did look, and her stone touched down on the water, then lifted ever so slightly, before gently dropping into the river.

“I’m glad you found me here,” Yellow Feather said. “I am sad, and you made me happy.”

“Why are you sad?” Felix asked her.

“I want to find my people. I want to go home.”

“So do we!” Maisie said.

“Little Thunder was supposed to take me,” Yellow Feather said. “But he is gone.”

“Do you think he’ll come back for you?” Felix asked hopefully.

But Yellow Feather shook her head no.

The sun was sinking low on the horizon now. Without it shining down on them, the air grew cold quickly, and the shadows grew long.

“We need to return for the ceremony,” Yellow Feather said.

The three of them slowly walked away from the river, up the hill toward the village. Each of them homesick. Each of them deep in private thought, trying to figure out a way home.