Shaman, Robert Shea [new ebook reader .txt] 📗

when she came to this house. Sunlight still slanted through the paper-covered west window and fell on the layer of leaves that covered White Bear's bed.

But when she tried to move, pain struck her like knives driven into her knees and elbows, as if she had been sitting in the same position for days.

"His eyes!" Yellow Hair cried, pointing at White Bear. From the floor Redbird could not see what Yellow Hair was seeing. She forced her aching legs to lift her.

White Bear looked at Redbird, then at Yellow Hair. He smiled faintly.

She had done it. He was back in his body.

A spring of pure, sweet joy burst up inside her. A sob welled from her lips. She stumbled toward Yellow Hair and felt that she was going to fall. Yellow Hair's arms held her up.[494]

She saw his mouth open, heard him whisper to her, "You brought me back. I will always love you."

"And I will always love you," Redbird said. Her voice was a croak, as if she had not spoken in days.

She turned to Yellow Hair. "Now he will live."

Laughing and crying at once, Yellow Hair thanked Redbird again and again in their common language, calling on her God to bless Redbird.

Bless me? But what of that man in the mine?

"Give White Bear the tea of elm bark now. Later, little food, only little," Redbird said. "Easy-eat food. Hominy good. Later, soup with meat."

Yellow Hair eagerly agreed.

"Must sleep," said Redbird. She slurred her words, too worn out to speak clearly.

She could lie down in another room, Yellow Hair said, leading her away from the canopied bed where the weeping grandfather bent over White Bear, holding him by his shoulders.

"I gone many days?" Redbird asked.

Yellow Hair's deep blue eyes widened. She shook her head at the word "days." She assured Redbird that she had been silent only for an instant. She had been singing, then she closed her eyes, and a moment later when she opened them again, White Bear had opened his. Yellow Hair hugged her so hard it hurt her.

Just an instant? Every time Redbird went on a shaman's journey she learned something new.

Yellow Hair, her arm around Redbird's shoulders, led her to a bed in another room. Redbird had never lain on a pale eyes' bed, but she sat down on the edge and fell back. If she was not so tired she would not have been able to sleep in this bed. It was too soft. Yellow Hair lifted her legs onto the bed for her.

That was the last thing Redbird remembered.

After a day and a night of sleep, Redbird woke refreshed. And hungry. A cure for that was quickly produced for her; and now she was sitting on a pale eyes' chair at a pale eyes' table, devouring slices of fried pig meat and fluffy cakes brought to her by the old servant.

Seated across from her was a fat, smiling woman she had met[495] once before. This woman had tried to comfort her the day Floating Lily was killed. This, she knew, was White Bear's aunt.

Yellow Hair, tears streaming from her turquoise eyes, appeared in the doorway of the room where White Bear lay.

White Bear, she said, wanted Redbird to come to him.

Redbird's hunger vanished. She went rigid.

Yellow Hair weeps now, but I will weep forever after.

She heard the suffering in Yellow Hair's voice and knew that her heart was hurting because she believed Redbird was going to take White Bear away from her.

Redbird knew better. She had defiled her powers by using them to destroy White Bear's uncle, and now she must pay for it.

The lance twisted in her heart as she stood up at the table.

The fat woman stood up when Redbird did, came around the table and hugged her. She smelled of fresh-baked bread.

Redbird walked past Yellow Hair to enter the bedroom. White Bear was reclining with pillows behind his head in the bed where he had lain for so many days. His chest was bare except for the white bindings that protected his wound. The wrappings made his olive skin look darker, and above the cloth Redbird could see the start of the five shining scars that ran down his chest.

The leaves had been cleared away from the quilt that covered him. His bundle of talking papers telling the story of the first man and woman and how they lost their land of happiness was on the table beside his bed. Next to it lay the knife Star Arrow had given him when he was a small boy.

When he saw her his face glowed and he held out his arms to her. She rushed to him, and heard a cry of pain behind her. The door of the bedroom shut softly.

She threw herself across the bed, longing to hold White Bear. His arms around her were not as strong as she remembered them, but his embrace was firm.

"You came to me while my spirit wandered on the prairie," he said.

"The Redbird guided me to you."

"Before you came I saw many things."

"What things?"

He said, "The pale eyes will spread across the Great River and[496] even into the Great Desert. There will be no place left for our people."

"If we go far enough west—" she began.

"No," he said. "They will go as far as the western ocean. The Turtle warned me about this." He stroked her hair lightly, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

She had a heart-crushing feeling that she would never lie like this with him again.

"You are so much better today," she said.

"You, too, know the way of the shaman now. You healed me."

She lifted her head and looked into his eyes. This was the moment when they must decide.

"I am the only shaman our people have now," she forced herself to say. "The few who are left need me. I must go back to them."

His eyes shut tight suddenly, as if his wound was paining him.

"Stay here with me," he said.

His words struck her and tore through her, as his uncle's bullet had torn through him.

"I could never stay here. When you are well enough, will you not come back to your people?"

He shook his head. "We cannot fight the pale eyes and we cannot run from them. They will destroy us. Unless we learn to live as the pale eyes do."

"That destroys us too."

"That saves us!" His nostrils flared and his dark eyes glowed. "I can use the power this wealth and this land gives me to fight for our people. And you can do it with me. And Eagle Feather. I will show the people how to make use of pale eyes' ways. I will share my land with them."

Her heart felt as if it were being ground between stones. This, she understood, was what she must suffer because she had used her shaman's powers to hurt another. She was going to lose White Bear. She had saved him from death. He was going to live, but not with her.

The claws of that giant Bear that was his other self seemed to stab into her chest and tear her in two. She could not live with this pain. She must surrender to White Bear.

Yes, I must stay with him. I cannot leave him. Eagle Feather needs him. We will be safe here, and comfortable, and at peace.[497]

She would send for Eagle Feather. The fat aunt and the grandfather would love them and care for them.

She tried to see herself living here with White Bear. For a moment the picture was clear in her mind. Then it dissolved in blackness as she realized that taking herself out of the Sauk tribe would be like pulling a medicine plant up by its roots without its consent.

She would die. It would be a slow death that would be worse than the pain she was suffering now.

And then another thought struck her.

Children!

Her heart felt heavy as a mountain.

She remembered how Owl Carver had said, after Eagle Feather smoked the peace pipe with the Winnebago, that he could be a greater shaman than any of them. But that would happen only if he was raised as a Sauk.

Floating Lily was dead. Redbird could not live with the people who had murdered her.

And—she touched her belly—this was not White Bear's child.

She began to cry aloud.

She sobbed till she thought her ribs would crack. Her throat burned; her voice rasped. She pressed her forehead against his chest. She heard him groan in pain, but he was hurting her more than she could ever hurt him.

"How can you ask me to stay where they killed Floating Lily? How can you stay here?"

"What would you have me do?"

A sudden thought occurred to her. "The pale eyes give gold for land. Take pale eyes gold for this land, and you can take the gold with you to the Ioway country and share it with our people."

"No, Redbird," he said sadly. "What could we do with gold, out there in Ioway? Sometimes the long knives have given our chiefs gold in return for land, yes. In no time the gold melted away. Gold by itself is like seed corn. Without the right ground to plant it in, it is soon used up and gone. The only way I can use the wealth my father Star Arrow left to me is to stay here and work with it."

She had stopped crying. This hurt too much for tears. Only when Floating Lily was killed had she felt more pain than this.[498]

For a moment she could not bring herself to say the words she had to say.

From somewhere she summoned the strength to speak.

"Then I must leave you."

Each word, she felt, was an arrow fired into him.

His arms tightened around her. "I beg you to stay."

Spirit of the Redbird, help me to do what I must.

It would hurt less if she acted at once. She pushed herself away from him. She stood up and crossed the room to the closed door.

"May you walk always in honor, White Bear."

"No, Redbird, no!" He was crying bitterly now, and he rolled over and buried his head in his pillows, beating the bed with his clenched fists.

She could not bear to leave him weeping like this, like a child she was abandoning. She would rather see him angry.

Then the spirit Bird, whom she had called on for help, sent her a message. She saw Wolf Paw, as he had looked when he was proud and undefeated, with the red crest on his head, a red blanket wrapped around him and black paint around his eyes.

Why did I never see it before?

Wolf Paw wore the markings of the Bird she was named after, the Bird that was her spirit guide. Neither she nor he had been aware of it. But it must mean that they were destined for each other, and that what had already happened between herself and Wolf Paw had to happen.

To live out her life with Wolf Paw and never to see White Bear again was like being told she would never again see a day with sunlight.

But it was as the spirit Bird had sung to her— What must happen, must happen.

She breathed deeply. She hated having to tell White Bear about Wolf Paw. If he had been willing to come with her, she would not have had to say anything. Wolf Paw would not have tried to hold her. And if she gave birth a moon or two too soon, White Bear would have forgiven her. But now she had to use Wolf Paw to hurt White Bear.

To hurt him so as to heal him.

But when I am gone from here, who will heal me? Must the shaman suffer wounds that can never be healed?[499]

Yes, if she has dealt such wounds.

"You would not want me anymore, White Bear," she said. "These past moons since you left us I have been Wolf Paw's woman."

He raised his tear-streaked face from the pillow and stared at her. "What are you saying?"

"Wolf Paw lost his wives and his children at the Bad Axe. He was like a dead man. I wanted to heal him, and I will heal him, by living with him."

His eyes widened. She could see anger darkening his cheeks.

He said, "After my father took me to live here, you waited six summers for me while Wolf Paw courted you. Could you not keep him off for a few moons?"

She held out her hands imploringly. "Before, when he was an honored warrior and had his family, he had no need of me. He wanted me as he wanted another feather to hang in his hair. But now