Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (22 page)

On the morning when the monsoon ended I put my ear against my bedroom wall, dislodging a few of the drawings that hung there.  I heard the chirping of birds, the last of the raindrops oozing to a trickle.  Suddenly I came to life with insane frenzy.  I tore through my closet, gathering my spear, my candy stash, packing an old duffel bag with empty notebooks and a set of colored pencils Sky had bought me.  I swung the bag over my shoulder.  Without saying "Hello," or "Goodbye," I raced out of my house and into fresh air.

Fresh air was an overstatement.  I stepped into the sun and choked.  The pine trees, the hill turmeric blared with blinding white light.  My breath caught in my throat and swelled like a balloon, my skin and hair frying in the sticky heat.  I wanted to rip my clothes off and hide in the lake.  I thought about Mustard Canyon out in California, one of our tribe's oldest hunting spots.  You stood out there longer than five minutes at a time, you died of heat stroke.  I'm not even exaggerating.

I forced air into my lungs, breathing through my mouth.  Bright splashes of silver shone off the ground at me.  I crouched down, surrounded by dove feathers.  I picked up the feather nearest me and it burned my fingertips.  Why were there so many more feathers now than there had been in June?  Maybe it was the end of the molting season; or maybe the monsoon had had something to do with it.  There was any number of rational explanations.  My imagination had never been a rational thing.  The anniversary of Mom's death was coming up in a few days.  I didn't believe in coincidences.

I hunched in on myself, the world going black again.  I shouldered my bag, gripped my spear, and darted into the sprawling badlands.

The route to the promontory was something I'd memorized long ago, back when I was eight or nine years old.  My mom was the first person to take me there.  She'd shown me all her favorite places around Nettlebush: the amsonia fields and the wolves' dens, the ricegrass meadows and the coal seams.  She'd told me she didn't want me to be lonely.  She must have known she was about to die.

My legs carried me by memory up the easy clay incline.  I sat down at the top of the breathy peak, legs dangling over the steep side.  When you sit on the promontory you get the best view in all of Nettlebush: piercing canyons, weedy gulches,
saltbush and sagebrush and even water in the dry gullies, if you're coming out of the monsoon.  I couldn't see any of it.  Imaginary shadows swarmed all around me, mopping the sweat off my brow, biting my ankles and hissing.

"Mom," I said.

Her voice was the sound the dry wind made when it rolled through the clay valleys.  She used to sing to me with that voice.

"Huntoyan kematuu," she sang, me on her knee, her hands in my hair.  The sunlight spilled across the mudflat, across our heads.  "Mi'akinna, mi'akinna."

"Mi'akinna, mi'akinna," we sang together, the Hunter's Song.  We were hunters, Mom and I.

"I'm sorry," I said at present.  Shadows ate my voice.  I put my duffel bag on the promontory and lay my head on it.  I lay down in the sizzling heat, half hoping it would cook me alive.

I stayed on the promontory for the next few days.  Despite the darkness, it was a relief to finally be outdoors, like emerging from an airtight cocoon.  I went into the reserve in the mornings only to wash myself and help with the daily hunt, but shadows followed me even there.  At one point I snapped at Daisy At Dawn when all she wanted was to know whether I'd finished my summer book report.  I belonged away from people, I rationalized, where I couldn't hurt any of them; I didn't want to hurt any of them.  On occasion I sneaked into my house to work on the shelves in the basement and snag more candy, but by nightfall I went back to the badlands, back to Mom's phantom song and the last vestiges of her human heart.  I counted the passing days as the anniversary of her death drew near.  A hole ripped open in my stomach.

By the time the 24th arrived the darkness in the badlands was impenetrable.  I raised my hand in front of my face and couldn't see my fingers.  The only way I could discern between day and night was the temperature--stifling and sweaty or cold and sharp as ice.  It didn't matter either way, because the hours passed nonsensibly, railroad fast at some points, torturously slow at others.  My imagination filled in the lulls.  The sea of darkness transformed in front of my eyes.  Clowns with deviant smiles rode unicycles in and out of the nothingness.  Hammerhead sharks wriggled and writhed on top of chopping blocks.  Ballerinas sprouted lily-soft wings, metamorphosing into tulips, their laced up slippers the delicate roots.  Iron Eyes Cody cried a single tear.  The worst were the swinging pendulum in the background, sickle-shaped, and the
click, click
sound of invisible fingernail clippers.  I'd had a fear of fingernail clippers since I was five, when Mary tried to cut one of her hangnails and tore her index finger open.  Just reliving the memory right now, I could puke.

The disturbing imagery dissipated in the sloshing of ocean waves.  I stared into the tide-shaped shadows, watching as they formed a pilot whale.  His head was giant and blobby, disproportionate to his gray-black body.  He glided gracefully through the void around me.  He swam at me, his fins spread out like wings.  I felt myself disappear in him.

I felt the darkness fade.  Light blotted the nothing-colored sky, dousing it in midnight blue.  The moon rose, white and gray in snow and dirt, waning gibbous.  The canyons lit up sapphire blue, edges jagged, slopes crunchy.  I saw the southern oak grove far below the promontory, the tops of the trees hairy and gold and tickled by wind.  I saw the tent rocks miles away, the ones that hadn't fallen in the monsoon.  Tall and skinny, top-heavy, the slender blond pillars were ringed in platinum age lines.

Coyotes shrieked on cold air.  Whistling whippoorwills taunted them:  "Watsa mu'a, watsa mu'a."  I'd never seen a night so clear, I thought, my eyes watering.  Maybe I didn't need glasses after all.

Rafael
.

It was a voice without a voice.  It could have been my mother's voice.  I hunched my shoulders, arms around my legs, knees pressed against my chest.  I felt small and terrible, insignificant and afraid.

Rafael?

I heard sand crumbling beneath rubbery sneakers.  Alarmed, I glanced over my shoulder.

I couldn't imagine how Sky had found me.  He stood partway down the promontory, gazing up at me with a mask of concentration.  Half of his face was painted in white moonlight, his hair shimmering like cornsilk.  His kaleidoscopic aura sent rays of yellow and white-blue and red-violet into previously unseen clouds, illuminating them, stripping them of secrets.  He colored the pockets in the sky as bright as children's crayons, with all the flakes and flaws and perfect imperfections that went with them.

So that's where the light came from.  So that's where the darkness went.

"The hell are you doing here?" I said, startled.  I scrambled to a stand.

Sky climbed the last leg of the promontory to me.  We stood on even footing and he was still shorter than me, the tops of his curls barely reaching my shoulder.  I hadn't seen him since before the monsoon.  A dam of emotions opened up inside my chest: relief; excitement; reprieve.  I swear he looked like an angel, his eyes tiny and
foxlike, his mouth kind, if unsmiling.

What's wrong?
he asked.

"I'm fine," I said.  Someone from the hunt must have told him where to find me.  "Just not in the mood for people lately," I hedged.

Sky hesitated.  Sky gestured over his shoulder. 
I can leave if you want.

"Don't," I said quickly, panicked.  It was the very last thing I wanted.  "I'd rather have you here."

We sat together on the promontory, side-by-side.  Sky's arm, Sky's thigh pressed into mine and I wondered whether he was doing it on purpose.  His emotions felt cautious, but content.  I pointed out the landmarks in the badlands: the southern oaks below us, the prairie dogs burrowing for cover underneath a small gulch.  He leaned against me under the guise of getting a better look.  My heart pounded madly.  One person had all this power over me.  One person could dispel the darkness that dogged me like a disease.

Sky's hand came down on my knee, his fingers closing.  Today was July 24th.  Today was the anniversary of the worst day of my life.

"Nine years ago today," I muttered.

Sky looked at me like he already knew.  I opened one of the notebooks at my side.  I showed him the latest drawing of my mother, her eyes closed and her arms spread, her regalia a poppy orange.

Tell me about her
, Sky said.  His fingers traced the details of her dress, the lines of her face.

I talked.  I told him how Mom's song had put songbirds to shame.  I told him how she liked strawberries and had a fear of water and used to hide in her bedroom during the monsoon.  It felt good to talk about her to someone who didn't know her, but at the same time, it hurt.  It hurt because she wasn't here anymore, because no amount of words or drawings could resurrect her.

"She asked me to help her," I mumbled.

Sky grasped my hand and squeezed it, a lifeline, an anchor.  It was more than I deserved.  I slid my hand free from his.  I hearkened to the growling of imaginary monsters.

"She was in so much pain," I said.  "She wanted it to stop."

This part I'd never told anyone before, not even Uncle Gabriel.  I trained my eyes away from Sky's watchful gaze.  I watched a horned owl flit across the prismatic clouds.

"She asked me to get her her pills," I said.  "I didn't know she was going to take all of them at once."

I saw Sky's head rocket on his shoulders out of the corner of my eye.  I squeezed my eyes shut.  I didn't want to see.

Rafael
, Sky said.  He jostled my arm, his feelings frantic and sick.

"I killed her," I said, voice tight.  "If I hadn't tried to help her, she could still be alive right now.  I didn't know.  I didn't mean to hurt her and I did it anyway.  I wanted to help her.  I'm just like my father.  I can't stop.  I can't stop--"

You are nothing like your father
, Sky said, taking my face in his hands, turning my face his way.  My eyes opened of their own accord.

"We have the same face," I said.  "We like the same music.  He taught me to love books.  He taught me to draw.  I'm already like him in all the ways that count.  I can't stop, Sky--"

I couldn't stop babbling.  I was so scared, I shook.  My eyes filled with tears.  I wiped them hotly with the backs of my hands.  Sky ran his hands through my hair, combing my braids, battling my insecurities with his fingertips.  Except I'd had these insecurities long before I'd met him.  Their roots ran as deep as the roots of my hair, the bones buried in my skin.  If I could have ripped the bones out of my body, I might have.  I might have tried to sell them for time.

It's okay
, Sky said.  He ran his hands over my face, my hair, my face again.  Each of his touches soothed away patches of illness.  He took my emotions into him, where the depths of his too-big heart smothered them ruthlessly. 
Come into me
, he said, and angled me closer to him, tugging me toward him.

I slouched against him.  I was worried he'd drown in me; I was bigger than him, heavier.  He held up solidly under my weight.  He wrapped his skinny arms around my back and crushed me against him.  Before I knew it, my head was on his lap.  His knees were bony and his jeans were dirty and he was infinitely more comfortable than my own bed.

I snagged my arms around Sky's waist.  I pressed my face against his stomach.  I felt every breath he took, slowing my own breathing until we matched.  My face was damp with tears; I worried that I'd wet his shirt.  He didn't care.  His fingers roamed my scalp in feathery touches.  He tucked my hair behind my ears and stroked the back of my neck.  I'd never felt so relaxed.  The feeling was doubly strong when I realized Sky was relaxed, too.  Our emotions were in synch.  I knew just then that anything he felt, I felt.  Anything I felt, he felt.  For a moment, however brief, however lasting, we shared the same heartbeat.

I thought:  Thank you, Creator.

Sky's fingertips brushed the shell of my pierced ear.  I could feel his sorrow on my behalf, but his want, too; his yearning.  I wanted to give him everything he wanted, everything I had.  I wanted him to get away from me.  I couldn't bear the thought that I might hurt him someday.  I couldn't bear the thought that he might leave me.  He was the only person on the entire reservation who made me feel halfway decent, like I stood a chance at circumventing my father's blood.  When he wasn't with me, I remembered that I'd already killed one woman; I was too far gone.

You're not.

I turned my head over on Sky's knees.  The night sky hung above me.  Sky's face hung above me, boyish and sylvan and otherworldly as Pan's Daphnis.  A part of me felt like I could have devoured him.  That was the part that scared me.  I couldn't fathom hurting Sky, though; I didn't want to, and it didn't make sense; it went against my instincts, my every instinct searching for his comfort, his safety.  His hand came toward my face and it was almost pathetic how excited I felt, my breath pausing in my chest, pilot whales wailing in my ears.  I caught Sky's hand before it found its resting place.  I felt his feelings jolt when they raced to catch up with mine.  His fingers threaded with mine, our heels, our palms fitting together.