The Dove (Prophecy Series) (23 page)

“Agreed,” he said, then dropped his pack, dug out a slightly bruised papaya and a very bruised banana. “You choose. I will eat the other.”

She took the papaya, then slipped the knife from her belt and quickly peeled away the skin before cutting it in half. The juice was sweet and sticky, running down her arms and mixing with the dried mud and blood.

“Half for you,” she said and then took a big bite of her own.

He peeled the banana and broke it in half, then traded fruit.

“And half for you.”

She took it with a smile.

“Together we are one,” she said.

“Together,” Yuma said and ate his half of the small banana in two bites. “So when we find a place to camp, I want to wash from my head to my toes.”

“We can’t bathe in the river,” she said. “Crocodiles.”

“We can’t go to the water, but we can bring the water to us,” he said and patted his pack to remind her of the small bucket he carried in his pack.

“I will wash you if you will wash me,” she offered.

His eyes widened. “In front of everybody?”

She frowned. “Being naked is nothing here. I said wash. That is all.”

“Thank you for reminding me,” he said and then grinned.

When she realized he’d been teasing, she actually laughed, then sighed. After all that had happened, she’d been thinking she would never laugh again.

“Are you okay to leave?” he asked.

“Yes. We should go.”

“Since you are the Windwalker’s daughter and have a very loud voice, I leave it to you to let everyone know.”

She punched him on the arm.

He grinned.

She wasted no time as she turned to face them and raised her voice to be heard.

“Today has been hard. We are sad, we are hurt, and we are tired, but we need to go so we can make camp before dark.”

They stood as one without question, eyeing the tall young woman with the mud-streaked clothing and blood dried on her face and then began to gather their things.

She bent down to pick up her pack when someone shouted out her name. Then another followed, and then another, and another, until they were chanting her name in unison.

When she turned to face them, they were shouting her name and pumping their fists in the air.

Yuma’s hand slid up her back and he gave her neck a soft squeeze. Her eyes filled with tears, but instead of crying, she thrust a fist into the air and shouted.

“For peace!”

“For peace!” they echoed.

“For the people!”

“For the people!” they echoed.

She slung her pack over her shoulder.

Yuma threaded his fingers through her hand.

She tightened her grip as they walked away.

****

After six hours on the trail away from Naaki Chava, Cayetano and Singing Bird made camp where they stopped, urging the people to stay as close together as possible. The need to protect themselves from the deadly pythons and jungle cats was always there, so he set his warriors as guards around the perimeter of the camp with orders to change shifts every four hours. It would give all of them some rest time and should keep the people relatively safe.

After a brief meal of fruit and a small piece each of the baked flatbread she had packed, Cayetano unrolled their sleeping mats. The twins unrolled theirs as well. When they all lay down, Cayetano was on one side of Singing Bird and the twins were on the other side, making sure that whatever might land in their midst would have to go through all of them to get to her.

But she didn’t just matter to her family. She was beloved by the people. She’d worked beside them in the fields, laughed with them, cried with them, and for the last sixteen years had given a part of every day to teaching them what they needed to know to change their lives. She was the heartbeat of what was left of Naaki Chava.

And so they slept body to body, dreaming again of the earth shaking and the city burning, and the people they’d known who had never come out.

****

The sun was already beginning to set when Tyhen and the New Ones finally found a place to set up camp. The first thing they did was refill their water jugs, and then they began gathering water to get clean. They had never been as dirty or as miserable in their life as they were right now. And as hungry and thirsty as they were, they wanted to be clean worse.

One after another people began to shed their clothes where they stood and then wash away the grime on their bodies and hope their weariness went with it.

Now that they had stopped for the night, they had time to think about the deaths. As the water ran down their faces, tears ran with it. The stories of their survival began to emerge as they described seeing people swept away right beside them, of the blood on their own clothes and bodies not belonging to them, and of the look of horror on the victims’ faces as they realized what was happening.

Story after story emerged as the dirt came off and the skin came clean. They weren’t just cleansing their bodies. They were cleansing their souls of the horror they’d seen.

Tyhen listened for a while as she waited for Yuma to return with their water, but then she shut it out. When Yuma suddenly appeared out of the darkness with a bucket of water and their water jugs both refilled, she breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

She stood up and let her shift fall down around her ankles. It was so dirty she didn’t want to think about ever putting it on again, but she no longer had the luxury. Once they were through bathing, she would wash their clothing and lay it out to dry on top of their tent as they slept.

As weary as Yuma was, when he caught sight of her willowy body, the naked skin shining like a gilded statue in the firelight, it made his chest hurt. She was so beautiful—so brave—and she was his to love.

As she reached down to dip a rag into the water, Yuma took it from her.

“Here, my little warrior, let me,” he said softly.

She didn’t argue. She was almost too weary to stand. She had already tied her long hair away from her face and neck, so when the water first touched her skin, the sensation was so welcome she went limp, like she’d been holding her breath all day long.

Yuma saw the tension roll away with the dirt. When he began washing her belly, then down her long, slender legs, she had to brace her hands on his shoulders to keep from falling.

“I feel weak,” she whispered.

“You aren’t sick. You are exhausted,” he said. “Just relax, I’m almost through.”

He dipped the rag into the water one last time.

“Lift your foot, little dove,” he said softly, and when she did, he washed it thoroughly, even between the toes, then washed her other foot and sat her down on the sleeping mat to dry off.

“I’m going to get clean water for my bath,” he said and hurried off.

Her eyes were heavy, and as she waited for his return, her body began to sway, falling almost asleep and then jerking when she felt her chin dip toward her chest. She looked beyond the tent tops into the dark, watching for Yuma’s return. The last thing she remembered seeing was a piece of yellow moon hanging just above the mountain’s peak, and then she was out.

By the time Yuma came back Tyhen was on her side, her legs curled up toward her chest and sound asleep.

He washed quickly, and with the help of a nearby friend, got his back washed, then rinsed out their clothing as best he could, before tossing out the water. They hadn’t eaten any food, but exhaustion was stronger than an empty belly and there was always tomorrow to fill it up.

He spread their clothing on top of the tent to dry and then managed to get her awake enough to crawl inside it. Before he went in, he set about building a smudge fire. The mosquitoes were swarming, drawn to the site by so many bodies. But burning smudge fires in the midst of the tiny tents and stoking them with certain green leaves harvested from the jungle helped ward them off.

And just to make sure they weren’t kept awake by them in the night, Yuma crumpled up a medicine leaf to release its oils, then rubbed it all over their clean skin, even the bottoms of their feet. He didn’t know what the leaves were actually called, but they left a slight peppery scent on the skin when crushed that he knew the mosquitoes did not like.

As soon as he finished, he tossed the last of the greenery on the fire, satisfied as he watched the smoke thicken, then crawled into the tent beside her and pulled her close against his chest. With the weight of her breasts against the backs of his hands, he took a deep, weary breath and closed his eyes.

****

Tyhen was dreaming. In the dream she was in the jungle with her mother. She could see her and all the others sleeping so close together that their bodies were touching.

The twins were sleeping side by side and Cayetano was holding her mother close against his chest. She could see the rise and fall of her mother’s breasts and the frown on Cayetano’s forehead. He never really rested, not even in sleep.

She saw the warriors standing guard and the piece of moon above them, heard the squall of a jaguar somewhere off in the distance, and felt a warrior’s heartbeat jump at the sudden sound.

She moved silently among the weary travelers, seeing bodies with fresh wounds and new burns, hearing people snoring and others moaning softly in pain. She walked through clouds of insects feeding off the blood of people too weary to swat them away, and felt their sadness and despair.

The urge to wake her mother was so strong that it was physical pain, but she did not follow the thought because she knew they would not see her. Still, she could not bring herself to leave them in such a miserable existence without doing what she could.

She turned toward the moon and began to chant. As she did, a soft wind rose, stirring through the area and disturbing the insect swarms to the point that they swiftly disappeared. It wasn’t much, but it was a small comfort she could add to their rest.

Despite the urge to linger, her spirit began pulling away. Still, the desire to look back was too strong to ignore. When she did, she saw the twins sitting up on their sleeping mats, their gazes fixed in her direction. She lifted her hand in greeting, and to her joy, they waved back. Moments later she was gone.

She woke up in Yuma’s arms. When she smelled the smoke from the smudge fires, she remembered where she was and closed her eyes again, this time following the dream time to another sleeping fire, and an entirely different breed of travelers.

She could tell by the dark energy within this camp that they were bad men, and the amount of weapons that they carried and the number of scars on their bodies attested to the brutality of their lives. She sensed that they were outcasts, banned from different tribes for evils done, and she walked carefully among them in case there was a dark shaman who could see and track her.

The last thing she wanted was to call attention to her presence, but instinct warned her that the more she knew about these men, the safer her people would be. These men were raiders who killed for pleasure, stole for greed, and raped and then killed the women they took once they were done with them.

These men also knew nothing about the prophecy or the strangers who would threaten their future existence, and would not have cared if they had. They had no allegiance to anyone but themselves, and their numbers were large.

She looked around at the area in which they slept, but it was unlike anything she’d ever seen. It was not jungle growth, and there was only dirt beneath her feet. Their smoldering fires did not smell of wood smoke, but she didn’t recognize the scent of what was burning. The half-moon hung in a sky so vast the stars looked close enough to touch, and the mountain range below it was unfamiliar.

Still at the edge of their camp, she heard one man grunt, then roll over and get up. When he began to walk through the sleeping men toward where she was standing, she froze. He paused to relieve himself and was almost through when he suddenly looked in her direction as if sensing he was being watched.

It was all the warning she needed that she’d been there too long, and when she left the camp, she didn’t look back. She didn’t want him to see her face.

****

The man was Yaluk, leader of the band of outcasts. He had not seen Tyhen’s spirit, but he’d felt it, and then he’d caught a glimpse of something with the shape of a woman’s body, but tall, very tall, before it disappeared.

Always wary of witchcraft, he went back to his bed with an uneasy feeling. He had no problem killing, but the world of the dead made him uneasy mostly because he’d sent so many there. He needed a potion, a talisman for his protection, and made the decision that he should visit his sister. She was the only member of the family that would still talk to him, and she lived with her man in the tribe to which he used to belong. It was nearby. She could get a talisman for him from the medicine man. The medicine man didn’t have to know the talisman was for him.

When he woke the next morning, it was still on his mind. The men had plenty of food and drink from their last raid and he was fairly certain one of the women they’d taken was still alive. They would have plenty to occupy their time while he was gone, and after a few orders to his second in command, he headed out of camp at a trot.

It took almost two hours for him to reach the location, and the farther he walked, the angrier he became at the thought of being cursed. By the time he topped the rise above the home of his sister, he was in a terrible mood.

The settlement, which was along a river called Rio Yaqui, which was where the Hiaki, also called Yaqui, lived. And the fact that he had been exiled from the place where he’d been born, ate at him daily. But because he wanted a favor from his sister, he could not start trouble.

He watched the coming and goings down in the village until it began to get hot. He was tired and hungry and it was time to make his move. He began circling the area until he came to an arroyo that led to the back of his sister’s home, jumped down in it, and followed it toward her house.

He could smell corn and squash cooking even before he reached the dugout. It had been a long time since he’d had anything but meat they’d hunted or stolen. He hid behind the dugout, waiting until people in the area had moved on and he could no longer hear voices. When he was certain all was clear, he circled the dugout and slipped in so quiet that Nelli never heard him enter.