Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (8 page)

We waited; no parents came. 

"Alright," Rafael said.  "Don't move."

He got closer to the falcon and crouched down.  I couldn't see what he was doing, but then he stood up and turned around, the baby in his hands.

"It's dead," he said.  "Probably it couldn't fly, so the parents had to leave it."

I know animals die in the wild all the time.  I just wish they didn't.  It's crazy, but nothing bothers me more than animals getting hurt.  I think Rafael saw that I was upset, because he went on talking in a much gentler tone than usual.  He said things like, "It wouldn't have survived long, anyway," and "If it died while flying, it died very quickly."  I knew he was trying to console me.  I thought that was remarkably kind of him.  Still, I think I must have been distracted; I barely noticed the rain stopping or the walk home.

It was a few days later when Rafael came to see me at Granny's house, looking uncharacteristically abashed.  I let him inside and fetched the juniper tea from the icebox, but he didn't seem very interested in it.  I noticed that his hands were tucked secretively behind his back, not unlike a little boy caught stealing sweets before dinner.  I wondered whether he was in trouble with his uncle for something, but apart from that awful power metal stuff he listened to, I couldn't think of anything he'd done wrong.  Suddenly he freed both of his hands, producing a small, slender white flute on the end of a thin leather cord.

"Take it," he said, sounding angry.

I took it from him, but only because I was too startled to do anything else.  The flute looked brittle, delicate, but in my grasp it was strong.  It was smooth to the touch, six holes running from tapered end to end.  I couldn't tell what material it had been whittled from.  Just touching it made me feel humbled.  I think everyone feels humbled in the presence of beauty.

I looked at Rafael questioningly.

"Well, I mean," he started disgruntledly, "maybe you can't sing.  But anyone can play the plains flute.  You don't need vocal cords for that.  Just breath."

It was ironic that he was talking about breathing--because suddenly I couldn't breathe at all.  He knew.  How did he know?  He was looking at me in this incredibly vulnerable way.  I realized he was afraid that I might reject his gift.  How anyone could have rejected it, I don't know.

I felt the smile forming on my face before I'd even consciously decided to smile.  I couldn't think of a way to thank him besides looping the leather cord around my neck.  Rafael seemed to relax, relieved.

"Bird bones," he admitted.  "That's what all our flutes are made of.  I saw how it upset you when that fledgling died.  I didn't want you to think its death was a waste."

In a way, I thought I could see how there was a life after death.  I'd heard falcon cries before; Angel Falls is close to the desert, not that far from Nettlebush, and you tend to see a lot of falcons out there.   When a falcon cries, either it's sharp, like a shriek, or it's soft, like a clear, bright whistle.  Maybe that fledgling couldn't fly, but it mollified me, some way, knowing that its song wouldn't die.

Death wasn't a waste of life.  My mom was gone.  I'd never have the chance to know her.  But it was through her absence, aching and acute, that I had come to know Rafael instead.

8

Omega

Rafael and I developed the routine of spending our afternoons in the windmill field, our evenings by the lake.  He'd sit sketching or reading in silence while I learned to play the plains flute, how to make it produce the sounds I wanted: low and mournful, solid and reedy, airy and bright.  Occasionally Rafael would throw impossible instructions at me, like: "Play Ring of Fire."  Or my personal favorite: "Play Greensleeves."  I didn't know how to play Ring of Fire or Greensleeves, not yet, anyway, and he knew it; he was teasing me, in his characteristically gruff way.  Whenever he made requests like those, I liked to lean over and blow air in his face from the end of the flute.  He'd laugh--surprising me the first time, because I'd expected him to smack my shoulder instead--and I'd get a glimpse of his rare smile, wolfish and boyish and radiant.  I really liked his smile.  I'd never particularly admired a smile before, and it mystified me when I realized that I admired Rafael's.  I guess what I liked about it was that it was honest.  It was a look into his heart and soul, both of which he typically kept hidden behind dark scowls and curtains of knotted black hair, fearful that exposing them to the world meant exposing them to pain.  It was Rafael.  And he wasn't afraid of exposing his heart and soul to me.

And that was the most amazing experience, the most amazing gift that anyone had ever given me.  Even my father, my only friend for most of my life, had been guarded and private with me, taciturn about his family, evasive about my mother no matter how desperately I had wanted to hear about her.  Rafael hid nothing from me.  Similarly, I was incapable of hiding anything from Rafael:  He always knew what I would have liked to say, and with startling and increasing accuracy as we spent more time together.  One time, for example, I was wondering exactly how he had lost that tooth at the back of his mouth when he saw my eyes on his waning grin and replied, "Ran into a fence when I was twelve."  And then I wondered how the heck he could have missed the giant fence standing right in front of him and he said, "Shut up."  The thing is, I don't think I would have hidden anything from Rafael even had I had the ability.  He shared everything with me; I wouldn't dare deny him the same courtesy.

But not everyone shared my enthusiasm about all things Rafael.  Annie, in particular, had something to say about it. 

"Skylar," she said one evening, "there are so many
nice
boys in Nettlebush...  Are you sure you want to be friends with him?"

To begin with, it was weird where I had found her--on the front porch with Granny, the two of them sitting in rocking chairs.  I never would have pegged those two for friends.  But I thought I knew what Annie was hinting at.  Rafael's father had killed my mother.  It was a sickly, unsettling truth that would never go away.  I couldn't begin to imagine what Dad would say if he knew that Rafael and I were friends.

I didn't think Rafael deserved to be judged for the things his dad had done.

He's kind
, I signed to Annie. 

Annie nodded, distracted, chewing on her fingernail.  She said, "He fights a lot--with the boys from school.  He put William Sleeping Fox in the hospital once." 

I knew Annie wouldn't lie to me--and I knew Rafael didn't get along with the other kids in Nettlebush--but I had a hard time imagining Rafael as a brute.  Sometimes he would hit me on the shoulder or the arm, but playfully.  Except for when he dragged me around the reservation like a tugboat, he was never anything but gentle with me.

That same night, Rafael grabbed my hand and tugged me into the woods.

"You have to see this," he said.

He wasn't following the trail to the lake.  In fact, I didn't know where he was taking me.  I only knew that I trusted him.

Rafael didn't seem to know where he was headed at first, either.  Every now and then he'd stop, look around, and start off in a completely different direction.  Watching him was an amusing way to pass the time, but puzzling.  Usually Rafael was a lot better at remembering and following directions.  It took me a while to realize he wasn't lost, but following the changing winds.

He stopped, suddenly, and pulled me behind a beech tree.

"Look," he hissed, leaning around the trunk.

It was a pack of wolves, picking their way leisurely across the woods.  There were about ten of them in total, three of them very young.  The young, with their gangling and skinny legs, captured my attention first.  I don't think I'd ever seen anything so cute.  I would have loved to draw closer, to stroke their pelt.  Despite appearances, though, they definitely weren't puppies--and the hungry adult entourage they traveled with looked more than a little formidable.  Then I realized something peculiar about the wolves:  They were all white.  Didn't white wolves belong in the arctic?

"They're gray wolves," Rafael explained, voice low.  "In the summertime, they shed the gray part of their pelt, so all that's left is the white.  You see what they're doing?  They travel against the wind so their prey can't smell them coming."  He must have noticed that I balked, because he flashed his teeth in a quick grin.  "They don't hunt humans unless they're desperate."

I looked again at the wolf pack.  There was something profound about the way their coats matched the moonlight, their dark noses to the ground.

Rafael nudged me, pointing.  "That's the alpha at the front.  She calls the shots.  Behind her is the beta.  She takes over if the alpha dies.  The one at the back of the pack is the omega.  It's the omega's job to take care of the sick and play with the pups."

It fascinated me that Rafael knew so much about the land and the creatures living on it.  I wondered how he'd first acquired that knowledge.  Had his uncle taken him out to the woods and the badlands one day and started talking?  His mother, maybe?  My heart sank on the latter thought.  I wasn't the only one who had lost a mother to senseless violence.  I thought about what Annie had told me, how Rafael got into a lot of fights at school.  Rafael was a boy who had suffered through more than his fair share of loss.  He tried to hide it, but he was sensitive and compassionate.  I couldn't picture him as a punk.

"What?" Rafael said suddenly.  He was looking at me again. 

I shook my head, smiling lightly.  It didn't matter.  I didn't care.

We went to the lake and sat side-by-side by the moonlit water.  Rafael took out his notebook and a grubby piece of charcoal and started sketching--probably drawing the wolf pack, I thought.  I realized Rafael didn't own any colored pencils; all his drawings were in gray.  Immediately I tried to figure out where the nearest bus stop was.  I'd brought some money with me to the reservation, most of it stuffed inside my schoolbooks for safekeeping.  One trait I'd picked up from Dad was the paranoid proclivity to hide my cash.  I guess you have to, when you've earned it illegally.

"Hey," Rafael murmured without looking up.  "When they find your dad, you gonna leave the reservation?"

I didn't actually know that for a fact.  I was pretty sure that Dad would be put in prison once the cops found him--not for anything he might have done on the run, but because I'd betrayed his confidence and told Officer Hargrove about his job.  Dad couldn't exactly raise me from behind bars.  And in the event that he didn't go to prison...  What then?  He'd made it clear that wherever he was headed, he didn't want me with him.  If he didn't want me, how could I go back to living with him?  And why didn't he want me?  All these years I'd thought he loved me as much as I loved him.  To think that I was wrong...  I felt like a little kid again.  I felt like I could cry.

I didn't, though.

I felt Rafael's eyes on me even before I met his gaze.

"He's still your dad," he said.  "No matter what he's done."

I suddenly knew why Rafael had gotten into all those fights at school.

There was something else, too, that Rafael had me thinking about.  Come autumn, either I'd be on the reserve or I wouldn't.  If I left the reserve, I might never see Rafael or Annie again.  Maybe we could write letters to one another, but that wasn't the same as watching the nuances on their faces, hearing the words on their lips.  A future without Rafael felt unfathomable in a way that took me by surprise.  I'd managed just fine without him in the past; now, without him, the future looked unrecognizable and lonely.

More importantly than that, I thought, once I'd left the reservation, who would wash Granny's windows and fetch her crabapples and snap beans?

"I don't know how your dad could have left you alone, anyway," Rafael said indignantly.  "It's obvious you're the coolest person on the planet."

For one ridiculous moment, I thought my heart had literally stopped.  Every sound sounded magnified--crickets restless in the beech trees, owls hooting from their nooks, toads scampering wetly across the forest floor.  Rafael didn't seem to notice my reaction; he had gone back to sketching, braids and lank hair obscuring his tilted face.  I couldn't for a second comprehend how he thought there was anything cool about me, let alone "coolest."  I'd thought it was glaringly obvious that that title belonged to him.  I began to smile--and then I was smiling so hard, it hurt.  And I didn't care.  I had never felt so absurdly happy in my life.

I must have still been wearing that idiotic smile when I went home for the night.  I came in from the outhouse and Granny, alert, asked me if I needed to see a doctor.  I shook my head, kissed her cheek, and darted up the stairs to bed.

"Well!" I heard her laughing after me.

9

Sky

A couple of weeks into July, and suddenly everyone on the reservation only wanted to talk about one thing:  An upcoming pauwau.

I had no idea what the heck a pauwau was, so I finally asked Annie one morning, when my curiosity got the better of me.

Her face lit up.  "Oh, it's wonderful!" she told me.  "Every season we get together with the other tribes for a big celebration.  The summer pauwau's always in Nettlebush.  We all put on our regalia and show off our different styles--dancing and music and sweets--for some, it's quite competitive.  But," she added, and I saw an impetuous twinkle of mischief in her eyes, "for others, it's the perfect time to start feeling...amorous."