The Dove (Prophecy Series) (37 page)

Yuma was right behind her.

“Hold out your hand,” she said and gave him half of the soap she was holding.

Without another word, they walked out into the river until it was up to their waists, then began to wash, first their hair, then their bodies, then each other’s backs. Then when they were clean, they retrieved their clothing and washed it as well.

As Tyhen was scrubbing her shift, she glanced back at the shore where Little Mouse was sitting and then back at Yuma.

“What did you whisper in Little Mouse’s ear?”

He grinned. “I asked her if she’d been thinking good thoughts about Chiiwi. Since it made her giggle, I would say that she has.”

Tyhen smiled. “I have to let my mother know we found Little Mouse. It will make her heart very happy.”

“Do you think that Little Mouse will want to come with us?” he asked.

Tyhen shook her head. “She likes Chiiwi. She will stay here, and that is good. Everybody needs to belong to someone like I belong to you.”

He took her face in his hands and kissed her soundly. “If I was not standing in water, I would puff out my chest and strut like the little roosters that used to be in Nantay’s pen in Naaki Chava.”

She giggled. The day was joyful. A lost friend had been found and they had water and good food to eat.

****

Singing Bird was cracking a coconut when she suddenly heard her daughter’s voice.

Mother. I have news.

Singing Bird was already smiling as she laid down the machete and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Is it good news?”

Yes. We have reached a river called Rio Yaqui. Yuma says to tell you it is in a place you once called Mexico.

Singing Bird sat down on the steps leading into the long house, picturing where they would be.

“You have walked a very long way already. Is everyone well? Have you had trouble?”

Tyhen wasn’t going to tell her about her battle with the outcasts. Ever.

We are well and had no trouble. But when we reached this river, we found someone who has been lost. Mother, we found Little Mouse!

Singing Bird leaped to her feet and started laughing and crying and then laughing again from the joy that filled her heart.

“I cannot believe this! What happened? How did we lose her? How did she come to be so far away?”

It was as you feared. She got left behind. She stayed in the palace until the day the mountain died. After that she ran away. Many days later she was captured by bad men and brought to this land. She is no longer captured and is happy in this village.

“My heart is so full of joy I can’t stop smiling,” Singing Bird said. “Will she go with you when you leave that place?”

No. There is a man who loves her. She will stay.

“Tell her I am sorry. Tell her I would never have left her behind had I known she was missing. Tell her for me.”

I already did. She cries no more. I have to go. We send our love.

Singing Bird began clapping and dancing and then ran off to find Cayetano. It wasn’t every day that someone came back from the dead.

The New Ones stayed two nights at the Rio Yaqui, washing clothes and catching fish and smoking most of it to take with them, while giving their weary feet a much needed rest.

Little Mouse was so elated to see the New Ones again that she spent most of her time within the camp, trading stories of their narrow escapes with her old friends.

Just before sundown on the first night of their encampment outside the Hiaki village, Little Mouse came looking for Yuma and Tyhen.

“You have not seen my home,” she said.

“Then we will see it,” Yuma said.

“You come now?” she asked.

Tyhen nodded. “We will come now.”

Little Mouse pointed at their packs. “Bring those with you.”

They did as she asked without question because Little Mouse always had a reason for everything she said and did.

When they reached the dugout, she led the way inside. They ducked their heads as they entered, but the room inside was high enough for them to stand upright.

“It belonged to a woman and her man who died and now it is mine,” she said.

Tyhen was fascinated by the creativity of digging below ground to build a dwelling, and even more so by the roof over their heads. The dwelling was small, but it felt safe, like being wrapped in her mother’s arms.

“It is very nice,” Tyhen said.

Little Mouse gave Yuma a sly glance. “For the time that you are here on the Rio Yaqui, we will trade beds. You sleep here with Tyhen. I will sleep in your tent so I can visit more with friends I will soon lose again.”

Yuma grinned, then picked Little Mouse up and swung her in a circle, which made her giggle madly before he put her down.

Tyhen’s eyes widened. The luxury of privacy was something they had long since given up. “That would be a wonderful gift, and we thank you,” she said.

“Good. Then I will go,” she said and picked up a small pack and started up the steps.

“Wait. I will walk you back,” Yuma said. “I need to tell Johnston where we are, just in case.”

“I will wait here,” Tyhen said.

Little Mouse pointed to a covered pot sitting on her table. “For you if you are hungry.”

And with that she was gone with Yuma hurrying after her.

Tyhen turned and looked at the bed, which consisted of a large pile of skins and fur to soften the ground on which they lay. It was far from the comfortable bed she’d had in Cayetano’s palace, but after all they had been enduring and the tiny tent and mats where they laid their heads, this place was more luxurious in her eyes than any palace.

“All for us. On this night there will be little sleeping,” she said and clapped her hands.

****

Yuma ran all the way back to Little Mouse’s dugout. Tyhen’s name was on his lips as hurried inside, closing the door behind him.

Corn husks were floating in the air and beginning to move around the dugout in a circular motion. Leaves from some herb that she’d been drying were rattling where they hung and she was naked and lying on the bed of skins and furs.

He took a deep breath and then shed his clothes as he dropped into the bed beside her.

Tyhen ached deep in her belly for him to take her. She wanted to feel the power of his body and lose her mind. She parted her legs as she reached for his arm.

“Hurry, my Yuma.”

He slid between her knees and then they were one. The corn husks floated down from the ceiling, coming to lie where they fell. The dry herbs no longer rattled, but their scents now filled the air. They made love in a room smelling of something peppery and of sweet sage, and when she came in a gut-wrenching moan, he let go and went with her.

And so it went for the next two nights. Working all day to refit their packs and making love at night among the skins and furs in a room filled with sweet sage.

For the rest of her life, the scent of sweet sage would be the trigger to make Tyhen ache for the joining.

****

On the morning of the third day, they were packed and ready to leave when Cualli and the little Hiaki people came down to the river to see them off.

Little Mouse stood beside Chiiwi. The smile on Chiiwi’s face was broad as Little Mouse waved her good-bye. Now that she knew what held Chiiwi back, she made sure to let her feelings show.

Tyhen waved and waved until her sight was blurred by the tears of a final good-bye. Then she caught Yuma watching her and it was his steady gaze that settled her heart. She shifted her pack to a more comfortable position and fell into step within the column.

Thanks to Cualli and several of the others from the village, the New Ones had several landmarks to add to the map that they’d made. They now knew where they were going, and they would follow this very river for a very long way to get there.

****

Once the New Ones left Rio Yaqui, it triggered what the people all over the nations had been looking for. When the dove came into their land, the birds began to appear.

Villages in all four directions began seeing white doves. They were showing up in the villages of the Chumash in the west, and in the villages of the Shoshone to the north. They were appearing to the Apache, and to the Comanche, to the Caddo, and the Crow.

Far to the north, the Blackfoot saw the white dove flying, and when it landed on the chief’s dwelling for two days straight, they knew it was their sign.

The Sioux saw the dove and began to ready for the march.

The Cree and the Abanaki saw them. The Cherokee saw them. The Creek, the Shawnee, and the Crow saw the sign. Every tribe had been given the prophecy and they knew what had to be done.

Just like in the time before Firewalker, when the people had been shown Layla Birdsong’s rescue by a Windwalker and began their mass exodus to Arizona, so now these people were on the move. The sign of the dove had been seen and heeded, triggering what would become the second gathering. This one would be even larger than before, and this time with tribes of people, who in the time of Firewalker, had even ceased to exist. But this time the people were not running away to save their lives. They were going to meet their future.

****

One month later:

The New Ones had followed the river until the river was no more. Then the path they took led them back up into the mountains, and the first day they woke up with a covering of white on the ground, Tyhen finally understood the frozen.

There was less than an inch of the pure white dusting of snow, but it covered everything in sight. The sky had cleared and the bright sun made staring at the landscape painful, and the absence of color and definition was disconcerting to Tyhen and the children who had never seen snow.

Even with the clothing the New Ones had provided and the many hides they had tanned during their time in Naaki Chava to make clothing more fit for the cold, Tyhen couldn’t get warm. She’d been born in the tropics and her blood was too thin, Shirley Nantay said.

The men stayed on the lookout for rabbits and foxes, for the big wolves and the bears. And when the opportunity presented, they took them down with their spears or with bows and arrows, thanking them for their sacrifice to keep the people fed and warm and they kept moving. Eventually, Yuma had enough white rabbit skins for her to make them both warm leggings, and Shirley showed her how to line the moccasins with rabbit fur so their feet would stay warm. And just when Tyhen was getting used to breathing cold air, they came down from the mountains into a less frigid temperature. They had been given a brief introduction of the winter that was to come, but for now they were back in lighter clothing.

One day not too long after the final descent, Tyhen saw a woman step out of the line with a young boy, and knew they were seeking a bush for privacy.

Something about the lay of the land and her inability to see what was behind the small line of trees made her hesitate to go on and so she stopped to watch and wait for them to come back.

Yuma was ahead of her a few yards, walking with Montford and didn’t know that she was no longer in line.

She stepped up on a rock so that she could see above the people’s heads, and in her mind, she also saw the big cat on a ledge above the mother and boy that they did not see. She sent a silent but urgent message to Yuma as she pulled her knife.

There is danger. Follow me!

She saw Yuma spin around and then lift his spear over his head so that she could see him. She pointed, then leaped off the rock and made a dash toward the trees where the mother had taken her son.

Yuma was only a few yards behind her and she knew he was closing fast because she could hear his heartbeat, but she couldn’t wait because she could also feel the bloodlust of the cat ready to pounce.

Without a clear path to see where everyone was standing, she couldn’t take a chance and use the wind without harming the mother and son, too, so it was going to come down to how far Yuma could throw his spear.

She saw the mother and son as she rounded the tree line at the same time she saw the cat. Its ears were flat, the long tail twitching, and even before she could shout a warning, it pounced.

She leapt forward, sailing over the mother’s head and caught the cat in mid-flight. Her knife went into its back near the right front leg as they hit the ground at the same time. Tyhen lost the knife and her grip on the cat, and when it happened, the cat pounced and she was holding a hundred and fifty pounds of an angry animal with sharp teeth and long claws. And then it had her by the throat and everything went black.

Yuma rounded the trees less than five steps behind her, and when he saw her feet leave the ground, he lunged forward to try and stop her, missing her by inches.

The moment she landed on the cat, it rendered his spear useless. He couldn’t throw it without hitting her. He was already running toward them with his knife in his hand, passing the woman and her son, who were running away.

The cat had Tyhen by the throat when Yuma reached them, and he had Warrior’s Heart in his hand.

He drove the knife into the back of the big cat’s neck just as the fangs sank into her throat. He was praying to the names of every god he’d ever heard of as he dragged the dead cat off of her body.

He dropped to his knees, saying her name as he began to assess her wounds, but she was covered in so much blood he couldn’t tell what was hers and what belonged to the cat. There were scratches on her legs, on her arms, and a long deep scratch down the side of her cheek. But it was the bite marks on her neck gushing blood with every beat of her heart that scared him.

He picked her up in his arms, pressed his hand against the neck wounds, trying to stop the blood flow, rocking her back and forth in his arms and begging her not to die.

“No, Tyhen, no. You are my heart! You are my life! You cannot die! You said you cannot die. Please, please, hear my voice. Stop the blood. You have to stop the blood because I cannot.”