The Dove (Prophecy Series) (3 page)

“How did you save me? I was cursed to die.”

She leaned close to his ear again so that the warriors would not hear. “Windwalkers do not die.”

He felt the moisture on his lips and touched it, then frowned when he saw the blood. Then he saw her wrist and his nostrils flared.

“What did you do?”

“You shed blood to save my life before I was born. I shed blood to save you,” she whispered, but she was beginning to shake.

Between the distance she’d run and the blood she was losing, she felt faint.

Yuma looked beyond her shoulder to Adam and Evan, who were standing behind her. “My brothers, bandage her wound.”

Evan tore a strip from the garment he wore wrapped around his waist, then knelt beside her and used it to bind her wrist.

As the men stood watching, they heard the snarl of a big cat, then the death cry of its prey.

Cayetano frowned. This was not a safe place to be.

“We go now!” he said.

Tyhen stood abruptly, and then swayed on her feet.

Cayetano grabbed her before she fell. “Rest easy, my daughter. I will carry you home.”

“No, I cannot go,” Tyhen cried.

Cayetano frowned. “What now?”

“Take Yuma home, but I have to go to the bridge.”

“There is no need. They are all dead.”

“There is a need. Please, my father. The body died, but the spirit did not.”

The skin suddenly crawled on the back of Cayetano’s neck as he contemplated dealing with a demon spirit instead of the man possessed by one.

“We will take her,” Adam said abruptly. “She’s going to need us. Leave some guards here. We won’t be long.”

Cayetano did not like it. He did not hide from his enemy, but he’d seen what it had done to Yuma and feared that kind of power.

“Then I’ll wait here until you return. Both of you should carry her to the bridge. She’s too weak to walk,” he said.

“No,” Tyhen said and strode off into the darkness with Adam and Evan behind her, carrying torches to light the way.

Not a word passed between them as they returned to the gorge. Even before they reached the rim, they felt the evil. The sight of torches still burning among the dead bodies below was eerie, but it was nothing to the spirit hovering above the chasm. It was a ball of fire, pulsing like a beating heart and growing larger by the second.

“Can you block him?” she asked.

They nodded.

“Then do it,” she muttered.

The twins joined hands and focused as Tyhen lifted her arms to the moonless, star-studded sky.

The spirit suddenly screamed and shot fireballs into space in an effort to dissipate itself so it could not be contained—but not in time. Adam and Evan put a mental wall around it, giving Tyhen the time she needed.

She’d never done anything like this before, but it seemed her soul knew how. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Words came to her, then through her, as she began to chant. The drums she’d heard earlier rode with the wind that came sweeping down the gorge, fanning the burning torches below. Then it rose around Tyhen in a high-pitched whine, whipping her hair against her face and tugging on her clothing. She stood within it, chanting louder and faster.

When it began to spin out into the space above the gorge, the twins were the only ones to bear witness to what happened next.

One second the angry spirit was there, and then it was not. It had been sucked up into the maelstrom she had created and sent back to the dark where it belonged.

When the drums stopped, so did Tyhen. She knew before she opened her eyes that it was gone.

“It is done.”

The twins remained silent. There was little to say about what they’d seen, but it was obvious what it had taken out of her to do it. Her body trembled from exhaustion. When she turned to walk away, Adam slipped a hand beneath her elbow as Evan took the other. It was time to go home.

****

By the time they reached Naaki Chava, it was nearly sunrise and Tyhen was asleep in Cayetano’s arms. He’d waited anxiously for them to return, and when he’d seen her staggering into the clearing, he swept her off her feet and carried her close to his heart all the way home. He loved her so much; it had never mattered that she was not his own.

“There comes Singing Bird,” Adam said.

“She’s crying,” Evan added.

“Thank you for everything you did,” Cayetano said. “Go rest. I will deal with this.”

They nodded and spoke soothingly to Singing Bird as they passed her.

From the frantic look on her face, Cayetano guessed Yuma and the others had already told her what had happened.

“She’s all right,” he said quickly. “She’s just asleep.”

Singing Bird was crying as she ran her hands all over her daughter’s body. “I was so afraid. I let her go. I let her go.”

He didn’t often see Singing Bird’s tears, but when he did, they hurt his heart. “You did the right thing. We’ll talk later. Help me get her to her room.”

“Yuma said Tyhen cut her arm so I called for our healer to come. She’s there waiting.”

Cayetano didn’t know how to explain exactly what he’d seen. “She saved Yuma’s life with her blood. I don’t know what’s happening with her, but she’s changing.”

Singing Bird stared at her daughter in disbelief, then shook off the shock and led the way to Tyhen’s room. Yuma was standing by the door.

“You are supposed to be resting,” she said sternly.

“Where is she?” Yuma asked.

“Cayetano comes,” she said, pointing to the doorway.

Moments later he appeared with Tyhen in his arms. Before she could explain that Tyhen was only asleep, Yuma staggered backward in shock.

“What happened?”

“She’s just asleep,” Cayetano said.

Yuma wiped shaky hands across his face, and when he spoke it was a statement, not a question. “I will sit with her.”

Singing Bird touched his arm. “You are still weak. You need to—”

“I will sit with her,” he said again and walked into the room behind Cayetano.

Cayetano looked at Singing Bird and then shrugged. “It is beginning. Let him. If we don’t, when she wakes up, she’ll go find him.”

Singing Bird took a deep breath. She’d known since the night Yuma saved her from Bazat that this day would come. Tyhen was without experience, but she trusted Yuma would not cross a line until the time was right. She turned around and led the way into her daughter’s room.

The healer, Little Mouse, stood up the moment they walked in, and when Cayetano lay Tyhen on her bed, the healer went to work, cleaning the cut on Tyhen’s wrist, then smearing the wound with an ointment she’d brought. She placed two medicine leaves on it and then bound it with a strip of clean cloth.

Singing Bird touched the tiny woman’s shoulder as she spoke. “Thank you, Little Mouse.”

“Do I stay?” she asked.

“No, but do not go down to your home in the dark. You will sleep here in the palace until morning.”

Little Mouse nodded. She knew where the location of the servants’ quarters because she’d slept there before and scampered out of the room.

Yuma got his sleeping mat and put it at the foot of Tyhen’s bed, then sat down and crossed his arms as if daring someone to make him move.

Singing Bird sighed. “Call me if you need me.”

Yuma nodded.

Cayetano glanced back as they walked out. Acat, the woman who had been Tyhen’s caretaker since birth, was settling down on her sleeping mat and Yuma was on guard. It should be enough.

****

Tyhen slept all the way to sundown. She woke up as Little Mouse was dabbing medicine on the cut in her wrist, then sat up and grabbed her hand.

“Yuma?”

Little Mouse pointed at the man asleep on the floor at the foot of Tyhen’s bed.

Tears welled, blurring Tyhen’s vision.

“He is well?”

Little Mouse smiled. “He is well.”

Tyhen sighed, then leaned back and let her resume her task.

“Will this mark me?” she asked.

“Not on your face. You are already healing. Maybe here,” she said, pointing to the cut on her wrist.

Tyhen felt the tears rolling down her cheeks as she closed her eyes.

Windwalkers do not die.

There was so much knowledge she’d been born with, but this was the first time that fact had been tested. Obviously Windwalkers healed fast, too.

Little Mouse smiled as she left, passing Acat who was on the way in.

“Is it too late for food?” she asked.

Acat was happy her sweet child was hungry. It was a sign she was well.

“I will find food and drink,” Acat said and scurried out of the room.

Tyhen nodded, her gaze still locked on Yuma.

Wake up
, she thought and exhaled softly when his eyes suddenly opened.

“I am awake,” he said slowly. He sat up then looked around the room. “Where is Acat?”

“Bringing food and drink.”

He looked at the raw wound on her wrist until his vision blurred. “You saved my life.”

She nodded. “And I would do it again and again and—”

He felt the passion in her voice. “You are still young,” he said softly.

She sighed. “I am grown in every way that counts.”

He eyed her soft curves. “And I gladly wait, regardless. You belong to me.”
And I will love you forever.

She smiled shyly. Even though he hadn’t spoken aloud, she heard it anyway. She scooted down to the end of the bed then leaned over and stroked the side of his face.

“I know you will protect me,” she said. “But you did at the near-cost of your life, which should not happen again.”

He saw a flush of color on her cheeks and thought there was none more beautiful than her face.

Moments later, Acat came back carrying a tray laden with food and drink.

Tyhen motioned to Yuma. “Come eat with me.”

He got up and moved closer. Acat handed him some fruit and bread, and a cup with a drink made of chocolate. He drank until the cup was empty and then began peeling the banana as Tyhen chose a piece of fruit and piece of the bread made from the corn and maize they grew in the fields.

She ate like she was starving, ever-conscious of Yuma’s steady gaze. As she took a bite of the fruit, a drop of juice ran down her chin. Yuma reached out, caught the drop with his finger, then licked it off.

Suddenly frightened of the feeling that ran through her, Tyhen shuddered then looked away. He was right. She was still too young.

Yuma saw the uncertainty in her eyes and sighed. He’d waited over fifteen years. Soon it would be sixteen, and for her, he would wait a lifetime more. Some things were just meant to be.

****

It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout the city about what happened at the gorge, and that the swinging bridge was gone.

Singing Bird had expected a reaction and thought she had prepared her daughter for the worst, but the next morning as they walked down to the school where Singing Bird taught, she was shocked. People looked at Tyhen with new eyes and then looked away, suddenly afraid of the chief’s daughter.

Tyhen didn’t care. She’d done what she had to do to save Yuma and she would do it again. She walked with her shoulders back and her chin up. She’d always known she was different. Now they knew it, too.

Singing Bird gave her daughter a quick look and then relaxed. She didn’t know what had happened at the gorge and didn’t ask, but Cayetano was right. Tyhen was changing. She thought she’d been ready for the inevitability of this day. She’d always known it would be Tyhen who would finish what she started, but the time when that would happen was suddenly upon them and she wasn’t ready.

Still the children awaited her at the school, and once she began the day, she pushed her worries aside. Tyhen was no longer a student and worked with her, teaching younger children the math and the language of the New Ones, teaching them how to count, and the letters that made the words, and then how to read and write them. Of all the things the New Ones had brought with them, knowing the strangers’ languages and how they did business would be the one thing that would put them on an equal footing with the people who would come to take their lands.

Two days a week volunteers from the New Ones came in and taught the students other languages as well. The older students were already fluent in French, Spanish, and English, and Singing Bird had been working on creating an alphabet that would be universal for all Native languages, and in return, teaching it to the New Ones so that the traditional languages of their tribes would not be lost.

Adam and Evan had created a process to make a kind of paper from the pulp of several jungle plants, and the paper had been bound together to form books.

There were books with the alphabet and books with stories. There were books with history as far back as anyone in Naaki Chava could recall and books of stories from the future. There were how-to books that had pictures and directions on everything from metal working to ceiling fans and dug wells. There were books about the precious metals that the strangers would be seeking, and the lands they would covet.

If the New Ones knew how to do it, they wrote about it, even to the point of explaining electricity and all kinds of inventions from the future. The books weren’t large, but they were many according to subjects and were made over and over in duplicate so that wherever people parted ways, they took a bundle of these books with them to teach others. It was Singing Bird’s dream that within five or ten years, every tribe on what she’d known as North and South America would know these stories and the languages, and know the urgency of teaching them to the ensuing generations.

****

Two months later:

It was the rainy season. Even when it wasn’t raining, water dripped from every leaf, every tree, every roof, and onto the ground. The jungle growth was so thick the sun rarely made it through the canopy and walking on the leaf-littered ground beneath it was often slippery.

The first time Singing Bird mentioned that walking on the ground was as slick as walking on ice, everyone but Yuma and the twins looked at her in confusion.