Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (32 page)

You've got the best imagination
, he said.

"It ain't my imagination," I said roughly.

I snatched him into my arms.  It was a waste to have arms and not hold him.  It was a waste to have a mouth and not kiss him.  I kissed lazy patterns on the crown of his head, his hair torturously soft beneath my lips.  He slumped bonelessly in my grasp, in a way I thought to laugh at, but didn't, because I empathized too much.  Because he made me feel the same way: weak and crazy and detached from my own body.

"I wanted to hate you," I said.  I brushed my fingers through his curls.  I brushed my hands down his sides.  "I was gonna hate you when you first came here."

Sky's emotions piqued, stunned, under my skin.

"Yeah," I said hoarsely.  I kissed his ear.  "Didn't know it's impossible to hate you."

I don't know about that
, he said, fingering the hole in my torn jeans.

"It is," I said stubbornly.  I kissed the birthmark on his cheek.

Plenty of people don't like me
, Sky said.

" 'Cause they're stupid," I said.  I wanted to kiss his fingers.  I wondered whether it was possible to kiss his lights.

Rafael, you can't go around calling people stupid just because they disagree with you.

"Yeah, I can," I said.  "Don't tell me what to do."

He captured my arm, kissing the chain tattoo that wound around my wrist, all the way up to my elbow.  Each chain link was a different sin.  By kissing them, I felt like he was absolving them.  All the times I'd acted hatefully--all the times I'd hated myself--he took them away.

I couldn't imagine that there existed people who didn't like Sky.  The very precept seemed to violate the laws of nature.  It was only at dinner that night, when Sky walked among the elders, handing them honey biscuits and blue corn mush, that I realized he might have been talking about my father.

"How do you like
Johnny Mnemonic
?" Aubrey asked me.  We were sitting together at a picnic table.

"It's freaking awesome," I swore, because how cool would it be to have a chip in your head that stored huge chunks of data?  "Aubrey," I said.

Aubrey sat up straight.  "Yes?"

I chose my words carefully, not wanting to upset him.  "Wasn't Rebecca Takes Flight your aunt?"

Aubrey managed to look uncomfortable anyway.  "My mother's sister, yes."  By which he could have meant an actual sister, or a cousin.  There's no difference in our language.

"Do you, uh," I said.  I was starting to regret that I'd spoken up.  "Do you miss her or anything?"

Aubrey looked at me curiously, probably because I was breaking another cultural rule.  At length he said, "I don't remember her very well.  That is--I know she worked for IBM, something to do with taxes..."

Maybe it was better that way.  Maybe it was better that he didn't ache the way Annie did right now.  All I said was, "Oh."  But I hoped somebody missed Rebecca anyway.  Everybody deserved to be missed when they were gone.

The annual Ghost Dance was a good occasion for people who missed their loved ones.  It was an occasion when the souls of the departed came and danced with the souls of the living and everybody prayed together: for peace, for better days.  I didn't like dancing very much, and I'd had enough of wallowing over my parents' absence.  So on the evening of the dance, when everyone was busy purifying their homes, I sneaked out of mine and stole into the hospital parking lot.  Sarah Two Eagles was waiting for me there, her blue rain boots laced up to her knees.  It wasn't raining out.  It hadn't rained since the monsoon.

"Are we really going to the library?" Sarah asked, hopping when she saw me.

I carried
Witch Week
and
The Ogre Downstairs
under my arm.  I said, "I wanna get the Sweet Valley books."

"I do not know what those are."

"They're awesome.  C'mon."

We boarded the Yaqui Crossing bus, surprisingly not crowded, when you take into account that non-Natives were getting off of work around that time.  Sarah's feet didn't reach the grated floor when we sat down.  She swung her legs and bounced in her seat, telling me about how she and Sage In Winter had taken to searching the reservation's forest for dinosaur fossils together.

"If you find any," I said, "don't tell anyone."

"Why not?" Sarah asked.

" 'Cause then we'll have news trucks swarming the rez," I said.  "Nobody wants that."

"Do you think dinosaurs are friend or foe?" Sarah asked.

"Friend," I said.  "Long as they don't touch my samosas."

"Do you like pop rocks?"

"What are those?"

"Here."

She made me cup my hand.  She dug a pouch out of her pocket and shook little green crystals onto my palm.

"Are these drugs?" I asked skeptically.

"No, they're delicious," she said, and poured the rest right into her mouth.

Warily, I tossed the not-drugs into my mouth.  Yeah, I could see why they were called pop rocks; I tried to chew them and they crunched and gave resistance--and this is coming from a guy whose teeth are so sharp I used to walk around with a bloody mouth when I was a kid.  After a few seconds of chewing it felt like my mouth was exploding.  I panicked.  Sarah petted my arm and that was worse, in a way, because I got her emotions when I hadn't expected to.  Smallness.  A twinge of sorrow.

"What's wrong?" I asked.  The candy was starting to taste good.

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked.

"You upset about something?"

"The Ghost Dance, I suppose," Sarah said.  "I don't like it when people die."

I didn't know what to tell her.

"Why do people have to die?" Sarah asked.

"Because of Coyote," I said.

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked again.

"Coyote did it," I said.  "Coyote made death.  You don't know the story about Rattlesnake?"

Sarah shook her head.

"In the beginning of days," I said, "everybody, all generations lived under the same sky.  Wolf was the one who gave them eternal life, and saw to their comfort and needs.  Coyote was jealous that everyone loved Wolf so much.  He tried to trick Wolf into introducing death, so we would come to hate Wolf instead of revering him.  Wolf knew what Coyote was up to, but he played along anyway.  He took away immortality.  And when Rattlesnake bit Coyote's son, and Coyote's son was the very first person to die, there was nothing Coyote could do about it.  He'd made his choice.  It was his own fault.  Now he has to live with it."

"Why is Coyote so mean?" Sarah asked.

"Because that's the way God is," I said.  "God is good and God is bad.  If God were all good, there wouldn't be accidents and diseases.  If God were all bad, there wouldn't be marriages and friendships.  But if you can see that even the bad things are part of the natural world, the bad becomes good, too, in a way."

"Hm," Sarah hummed, swallowing her candy.

"This shit tastes awesome," I said.

"I agree."

We got off the bus in Yaqui Crossing, a sad city with cracked sidewalks and mile-high apartment buildings, brick facades boarded up, windows barred.  Nobody from the Yaqui tribe actually lived in Yaqui Crossing.  I'll never understand why taipo'o push us out of our homes, then name 'em after us.  Sarah skipped after me when I led us down the street to the library.  When I listened to her, I realized she was singing: 
Piawaantsi, piawaantsi
.

"Are you full Shoshone?" I asked.

"No," Sarah said.  "My dad was Nakota.  I have his name."

"Two Eagles?" I asked.

"There was a chief named Two Eagles," Sarah said.  "From the Sans Arc band.  He's our ancestor."

I said, "I dunno if I'm related to anyone like that.  I know the first Gives Light was a
candle maker."

I took her arm and pulled her close to my side.  The library was in a bad part of town; I didn't want to lose sight of her.  We came up on the concrete building, the glass doors towering.  She tilted her head back and let out a bird call.  More than a few pedestrians gave her weird looks.

"Come on, Pocahontas," I said.

We went into the library, metal detectors beeping on the floor.  We went through a door on our right and emerged in a huge room stuffed with armchairs.  Sarah waved her arms, her eyes roaming the books on the walls, the pencil-thin staircases.  At the far back of the room an inoperable fireplace jutted out over the hardwood floor.

"Do you have a library card?" I asked.

"No," Sarah said.

I led her by the hand to the return desk.  I piled my books on top of the desk and asked the librarian for a paper form.  I took the pencil out from behind my ear and Sarah and I sat on squashy armchairs.  I gave Sarah the pencil and paper.

"I get my own card?" Sarah asked.  The summery green aura danced around her shoulders.

"You have to take good care of it," I said.  I tried to sound stern, so she'd take me more seriously.

"Yay!  Thank you, thank you."

I turned in her form when she was finished signing it.  We climbed the staircase to the second floor and I squinted at the spines on the shelves.  Since when did the print look so tiny?

"Why are Sweet Valley books awesome, Rafael?" Sarah asked.

" 'Cause they've got girls that take care of themselves," I said.  And hot guys, I didn't add.  The Tyke was only eleven.

"I would like a Sweet Valley book," Sarah decided.

"You can get the Unicorn Club ones," I said.

I grabbed as many Sweet Valley books as I can carry.  Sarah imitated me, with the result that only her eyes were visible over the top of her stack.  We skirted around the bookshelf and sat down at a round table under one of those old-timey ceiling lamps.  I opened up a battered copy of
Twin Switch
when suddenly I started to feel restless, antsy.  I knew why, too.  Sky wasn't here.

Sarah giggled.  I frowned.

"What?" I said.

"You look funny," Sarah said.  "Squirming like that."

It didn't make me angry.  I felt good that I'd made her laugh.  "Just itchy is all," I lied.

"I told Grandpa you were very nice," Sarah said.

"Grandpa?" I asked.

"Yes, I live with him."

"Can't place him," I said.

"He runs the church."

Reverend Silver Wolf?  "I didn't know he had a family."

"Yes, he's Mom's father.  Mom moved to Florida to be closer to Dad.  She comes back around wintertime."

The dad that was in prison.  It struck me that this kid might have been the only other person on the reservation who knew what it felt like to have a killer for a parent.  I'm not even gonna pretend it didn't come as solace to me.  I wouldn't have wished that turbulent existence on anyone, though.  When you have a killer for a parent, it means that a killer had to be born for you to be born.  People died so you could exist.

Sometimes I wondered that Sky didn't mind it when I touched him.  A man tried to kill him eleven years ago.  The proof was on his throat.  A man tried to kill him, and I was that man's child, and no matter what I did I was going to be that man's child.  And I knew it wasn't my fault--I was starting to understand that--but that man was still one half of me.  For Sky to love all of me was unfathomable.  What kind of a heart did that take?  The elders said everything contained the capacity for both good and bad.  They must have made that rule before they'd met Sky.

"I think you should have gone to the Ghost Dance," Sarah said, turning the pages in her Unicorn Club book.

Maybe I should have; but only because Sky was there.  "I don't like dancing."

"You should Grass Dance again," Sarah told me.  "You should do it at the next pauwau."

"I just said I don't like dancing."

"I think I have to be in the Christmas pageant next winter," Sarah said.  "I wish Grandpa wouldn't make me."

"Yeah?  What part," I said, "do you know?"

"I don't know."

"My family used to make me do the pageant, too," I said.  "Played the Black Bear when I was five."

"Isn't the Black Bear the one who dies?"

"No, that's Gray Bear."

"Oh.  Was Prairie Rose ever in the pageant?"

"No, but Autumn Rose was.  She played the Buffalo.  We had a Prairie Chicken, too.  And an Antelope."

"Mm, chicken."

Sarah said she'd be right back.  She pushed her chair back and hopped out of her seat, dashing away from the table.  Alarmed, I stared after her.  It took maybe two seconds before I crashed out of my chair and followed her.  A mom with her young son glared at me.  I gulped, muttering an apology.  I found Sarah in the aisle labeled "Religion," standing on her toes.

"Don't run away like that!" I hissed.  "I'm supposed to be taking care of you!"

"I'm making a statement," Sarah said happily.