Lending Light (Gives Light Series Book 5) (13 page)

"
Anyway
," I said, "would you really wanna keep a part of yourself covered forever?  Wouldn't you get tired of that?"

Sky tugged his jacket collar higher.  He looked away from me; and my grin died with realization.  Sky already kept a part of himself covered.

"Is it bad?" I asked quietly.

Sky turned his head quickly and looked at me.  He crossed his eyes; anything to make his face look ridiculous.  Maybe he'd picked up on some of his dad's Shoshone reticence after all.

"Do you ever get pissed that you can't yell?" I asked, feeling angry on his behalf.  "Do you ever just want to tell people to shut up and pay attention to you?"

Sky flopped onto his stomach.  He traced my chain tattoo with his fingers, shrugging.

"That tickles," I muttered.

Sky's touch turned into teasing flurries.  Bastard was doing it on purpose.  I laughed like an idiot because I was an idiot; because I was ticklish as hell.  I gave Sky a feeble push.  He sat astride my knees and tickled my sides, my belly, my chest.  I would have knocked him off of me except I was laughing too hard; I didn't want to hurt him.  His flute dangled in front of my face, his doofy muffin hair gold in the sunlight.  God, but that doofy hair was the most awesome thing in existence, curls springy and tight and flopping everywhere, begging me to mess them up.  I messed them up.  He slumped against me, face buried against my shoulder.  He laughed.  I couldn't hear his laughter, but I felt it ripple through his skinny body, through my larger body, all the way up to my hairline.  It seemed to me like the most natural thing in the world to toss an arm across his back and feel the laughter reverberating there, too.  His back was warm, heating me with sunlight, with kind feelings and well wishes and the nonchalance of summer.  He rose and fell under my arm, gentle, addling, and I stopped myself from crushing him into me, although the whole of me said I should, my nerves taut and thrumming.  I splayed my hand across the dip in his back.  I couldn't remember ever feeling this happy, and half thought it was a crime.  Someone was going to show up and handcuff me and that would be the end of it.  Nettlebush wasn't ugly anymore, but colored in lights.  The festive greens of the terrain, the muted watersilks of the sky were a slipshod mosaic, a child's rough drawing that somehow achieved total harmony through dissonance alone.  I wasn't ugly anymore.  I was Waha Kopai, alone in my cave until Wind and Sky came down for me and told me I was okay the way I was.

"I wanna teach you to ride a horse," I said.

Sky sat up on my hips.  Sky stretched his lanky arms over his head, but smiled uncertainly.

"I wouldn't let you get hurt," I promised.  "You could ride with me at first, at least up to trot.  Anyway, whoever said dogs are man's best friend was shitting himself.  Horses are man's best friend."

But I like dogs
, Sky said.

"Yeah, well," I said.

He scruffed my coarse hair with his fingers.  He tucked it behind my ears.  He flicked my earring and I offered to give him a piercing of his own, but he declined very quickly.  I'd already given him a tattoo the other day, an atlas moth on his left arm.  He'd acted like a baby about it, too.  Even that had made me happy.  Everything he did was cosmically tailored to be the Best Thing Ever.  He probably could have eaten cereal or raked leaves and I would have been fascinated by it.

"You going to the pauwau in a couple days?" I asked.

Sky turned his eyes upward, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.

"What are you so afraid of?" I asked.  "Even I like pauwaus.  Don't like '49s, though, people sit too close to you."

Sky looked at me like I was speaking gibberish.

"You've never been to a pauwau," I realized, incredulous.

Sky spread his mouth in a silly grin.

"It's just a gathering," I said.  "That's what pauwau means, it's a Powhatan word.  A bunch of different tribes come together and dance and eat and--you know, whatever.  We keep it traditional.  Only Native clothes, only Native songs, only Native games.  For that moment it's like colonization never happened.  The '49's the afterparty.  Everybody sits around a drum and plays whatever comes to mind.  Last year we sang the
SpongeBob song.  It was weird."

You know who
SpongeBob is?
Sky asked, looking surprised.

"Well, I mean," I said.  "There's a lot of kids around here."

Sky smiled sleepily. 
You mean like you?

"Shut up," I said, but didn't mean it.

He tried not to show me he was yawning, but I figured I'd better get him home before he fell asleep on my shoulder.  I guessed he'd worn himself out with all his treacherous tickling.  City kids.  I pulled him up off the ground and he leaned against me when we walked back to the crossroads.  I kept an eye out for Uncle Gabriel, because the last thing I wanted was another talk about how I was supposed to stay away from the only friend I had.  Sky nudged me when we stopped outside his house.  My hip felt cold when he disentangled himself from me.  He waved goodbye and darted up the steps.  I watched him even after he had gone, even when the door clapped shut on the dead, hot air.

"He seems very nice," Sarah Two Eagles said, trailing down the road toward me.  "I like his hair."

"What're you doing out here, Tyke?"  That kid was always alone.  It worried me.

"I am on my way to a Full Moon party," Sarah said.  "Will you come with me?"

I balked.  "Full Moon Ceremony's for girls only," I said.

"I think so, yes," Sarah said.

Women were the only beings on earth naturally purified by the moon's cycles.  But Christ, I thought, feeling weak.  I didn't need to know the kid was menstruating.

"You could come to the party," Sarah said.  "We're not doing the Ceremony just yet.  First we're painting our nails and making cornhusk dolls."

"Why the
hell
do you think I want to do that?" I asked.

Sarah grabbed my hand.  I found myself stumbling down the road after her, her tiny and serene, me giant and flailing.

Sarah didn't lead me back to her house, but to Selena Long Way's house, just across the road from the reservation's hospital.  I could hear the hissing of cars on the turnpike south of us.  We climbed a narrow flight of steps into the house's even narrower entry hall, the walls a weird egg yellow.  At the back of the house sat a small delegation of girls.  Siobhan Stout lounged on the depressed sofa, red-haired and dark-eyed, her teeth wired up in colored braces.  Autumn Rose In Winter reclined daintily in a high-backed wooden chair, her modest skirt touching her ankles, her high, straight ponytail wrapped in a white bow.  Her little sister Prairie Rose wore a ponytail, too: on the side of her head, artificially curled.  Every last one of these girls was younger than me.  Every last one of these girls turned in my direction and stared.

"Uh," I said.

Selena came in through a side door.  She laughed when she saw me.

"This is my friend, Rafael," Sarah introduced.  She dropped to the carpet, crossing her legs.

"Yeah," Selena said, cool and casual and a little smug.  "Pretty sure everyone knows who he is."

"
Why
is he here?" Prairie Rose asked, wrinkling her face.

"He needs his nails painted," Sarah explained.  "For the pauwau."

"Hey, Rafael," Siobhan said, leisurely.  Something about her reminded me of a stoner.  "Do you like blue, or purple?"

"Blue," I lied.  "Wait--"

Autumn Rose stood up, walking toward me.  Her whole face was flushed pink, her smile sweet.  "Would you like glitter, too?" she asked shyly.

The gods of fate and haplessness conspired to make me sit still and shut up; which was exactly what I did, too stupefied to react.  Prairie Rose bounced over to me with the nail polish.  Autumn Rose took my fingers in gentle, slender hands, but the moment she touched me I felt her fear.  She had the same last name as one of Dad's victims; Mercy In Winter, probably a cousin or an aunt.  Selena shook out her messy hair and climbed up on the couch and got her trail mix all over the carpet, snacking with an open mouth.  The weirdest part was when Dr. Long Way, a burly woman with a buzz cut, came charging into the room.

"Shhhh!" she said.  "Any of you ladies need anything from the Shalimar?"

"Not even," all the girls said, and Dr. Long Way charged back out, humming a song by Pipestone Creek.  Did she just call me a girl by proxy?  Sarah leaned over and shut my mouth for me.

"Why don't you dance at pauwaus anymore, Rafael?" Sarah asked.  Sky's light broke away from me and bounded around her, cooling to a fresh spring green.  "Sage In Winter said you used to."

I grunted.  "Got tired of it," I said.

"You could win money if you danced at the bigger pauwaus," Siobhan said.  "Like that one in Oklahoma.  Five Hundred Nations?"

"I got banned from Oklahoma," I said dully.

"No way!" Prairie Rose protested.

"Yes way," Sarah hummed.  "I was there."

"What did you have to do to get banned from a
reservation
?" Prairie Rose gawked at me.

"Six reservations," Siobhan helpfully reminded everyone.

"How old are you?" I asked Prairie Rose.

"Twelve, why?" Prairie Rose said shrewdly.

"Then I'm not telling you," I said.

"Hold still," Autumn Rose bade me kindly.  "I'm fixing your cuticles."

Two coats of nail polish and one nail file later and Autumn Rose and Siobhan sponged my fingers with cotton balls.  My face burned with humiliation.  Selena went into her kitchen to get more trail mix, which was a good thing, because I wanted some, too.  Damned if she wasn't spoiling her dinner, though.

"It's because you get into fights, right?" Prairie Rose said.  Her sister blew air on my wet nails.  "Why do you do that?" she asked me.

I shrugged, sulking.  "Can't help it."

"That's such bull!" Prairie Rose squeaked.  "What are you, a grizzly bear?  You have a choice.  If you know something's wrong, don't do it!"

Out of the mouths of babes, I thought, moody.

"I think Rafael is very nice," Sarah said.

Autumn Rose broke into a giggling fit, an unfortunate habit of hers.  Only because she was still touching my fingers did I realize her laughter was the nervous kind.  She let go of me.  Sarah didn't seem to realize she'd said anything remiss.  Prairie Rose blew raspberries, just to clue her in.

"Everyone's afraid of you, you know," Siobhan told me.

"No," I snarled.  "Really?"

"It's not because of your father," Siobhan said, uncommonly on point for a Shoshone.  "It's because you walk around making faces at everyone.  Really, what do you expect?"

"Siobhan," Autumn Rose murmured.

I hesitated.  "Am I always making faces like that?" I asked.

"Yup," Siobhan said.

"Ugly ones!" Prairie Rose sang, punching the air.  Autumn Rose yelped and ducked out of her way.

"Why?" Siobhan asked me.

"Dunno," I said, contemplating.  "Just never realized, I guess."

"Smile at people," Siobhan suggested.  "Even if you have to force yourself.  It'll make all the difference."

Selena snickered.  "More like give 'em a heart attack."

"What do girls do during the Full Moon Ceremony?" I asked.  I'd wanted to know since I was a kid.

"We turn into reptiles," Selena said, kicking her feet up on her couch.

Speaking of the ceremony, it was about time for them to get ready.  Selena kicked me out of her house, but gave me a bottle of nail polish for the road.  Sarah walked outside with me and we stood under the salmon sky, Sarah's little hands folded behind her back.

"You need to make friends your own age," I said skeptically.

"I want you to be my friend," Sarah said to me.  "I think we're very alike."

"Yeah?" I asked, ready to shoot her down.  "Did your father kill somebody?"

"Yes," Sarah said.

It was the first I'd heard of it.  I started.

"He belonged to the American Indian Movement," Sarah said.  "During the Second Incident at Wounded Knee.  The FBI tried to wall the Oglala people in their town and cut off their food supply.  The elders were hungry.  Daddy picked up a gun.  He's been in prison ever since."

That wasn't at all the same as my dad.  "Your dad's a hero," I said.  A political prisoner, I thought, angry.

"I think so," Sarah said.  "But it doesn't matter how or why you did something.  Soldiers kill our enemies to save our lives.  That doesn't mean they aren't killers."

This wasn't the sort of conversation I thought an eleven-year-old ought to be having.  "You gonna miss dinner tonight?"

"Yes," Sarah said, hopping in place.  "We're going into the isolation tent to celebrate our womanhood."

"Don't grow up too fast," I said, alarmed.

"Will you be my friend?" Sarah asked.

"Maybe," I said, defeated.  I already knew I meant yes.  "Eat something, okay?  Even if it's just a snack."