Somewhere to Dream (Berkley Sensation) (9 page)

CHAPTER
14

Target Practice

When Jesse returned from the river, he was met by Dustu. The scowling warrior was leaning heavily on a thick branch that had been stripped of bark. He used it because Jesse’s wicked twist had done a painful number on Dustu’s ankle. It was going to be a long time before the warrior was able to stand on two feet again.

“U yo,”
the smaller man said, his upper lip lifted in a sneer. “Too bad river does not clean ugly skin off. You are still white.”

Any pleasant thoughts of Adelaide and the river instantly vanished. Jesse kept walking. He had his own limp, but he did his best to mask it as he passed Dustu. “Yeah? And you’re still a turd.”

He was surprised to hear a steady
shuffle thump shuffle thump
behind him, then realized Dustu was following him.

“What is turd?” Dustu wanted to know.

“What comes out the back end.”

A moment, then Dustu laughed. “Turd. I will use this.”

“Go ahead. It’s all yours.”

“I say you will burn, turd.”

Jesse stopped and took a slow breath. He turned and met Dustu’s spiteful glare. “What?”

“You will cook like
awi i nage ehi
.”

Jesse stared through his lashes, then shook his head very slowly. “Eh?”

“Awi i nage ehi,”
Dustu said slowly, like he was talking to a two-year-old. Then he raised his free hand and spread his fingers over his head like antlers.

Jesse started walking away again, but Dustu wasn’t finished. Relentless little bugger kept on limping behind him, tossing barbs.

“I will sing song for you while you burn,
Awi i nage ehi
. Special song. I will dance.”

Jesse snorted. “One-legged dance. Sounds great.”

They kept moving, and Dustu surprised Jesse with how fast he could go. He’d hoped to simply outpace the man. Just like a cockroach to keep on going no matter how many times you step on him.

“I will take your golden hair. It will fly like bird’s wing over my house.”

Jesse spun to face him, gritting his teeth. “What is your problem, bat face?”

Dustu’s smile was broad. Satisfied. And missing a couple of important teeth. “You are problem. I do not want you here.”

Arms crossed, Jesse leaned closer. “That makes two of us.”

“Leave.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Of course, since I already busted your leg, you wouldn’t be able to be in the war party that guts me, but you could watch.”

“You are not Cherokee. You do not belong here.”

Wasn’t that the truth? “Thanks for the information. I’ll be sure to think on that.”

Dustu either didn’t understand the sarcasm or chose to ignore it. His snicker didn’t sound the least bit contrite. “You will die, white man.”

“We all gotta go sometime,” Jesse muttered, then squinted hard at the warrior. “Some of us fall faster than others.” He stepped toward Dustu, set his hands on the man’s chest, then shoved hard. Dustu, already off balance, flew backward and landed in a gasping heap a few feet away.

“I kill you,” Dustu growled.

Jesse pointedly observed him, letting his eyes travel over Dustu’s fallen form. Then he nodded and turned away. “Or I’ll kill you first, little man.”

Dustu didn’t follow, but his shadow did, casting darkness on Jesse’s entire outlook. The man had been right. He
didn’t
belong here. They probably
would
kill him eventually. But he had no say in anything. He was stuck here, left to wait and wonder and bang his head against a wall if he wanted. The only thing he wasn’t allowed to do was leave the village. That was driving him crazy.

He stormed past a house and purposefully whacked his hand against a fish-drying rack, knocking the thing over and dropping a dozen fish into the dust. A little boy with shoulder-length black hair stood nearby, looking up at Jesse with round, nervous eyes, and Jesse drew back his hand as if he was going to hit him. He’d never have done it. Wouldn’t hit a woman or child if his life depended on it. But he wanted to scare the kid. God help him, he wanted to terrify him. It worked. The little boy took off without a word, the weathered soles of his feet pounding the earth as he ran.

Furious energy buzzed through Jesse, taking his mind off all the aches and pains in his body and pushing him to walk faster. He needed to get some of this anger out. He needed to take it out on something or else he might just explode. When he passed the next house he slammed his fist against the wall and growled like a trapped animal but kept walking. A woman popped out of the house, squawking, demanding to know what he was doing, he supposed, but he just flapped a hand at her.

Half a dozen horses milled around in the corral, and Jesse had to fight the need to vault onto one of those broad backs and race far from this place. But that would mean certain death, and he was too angry to allow that just yet.

He’d had to deal with anger before, obviously. But then he’d had the wide-open outdoors, where he could run all by himself. He could gallop across the spaces, navigate through the forest paths, or simply hide out awhile in a cave or by the water. If he could just keep moving, maybe this need to throttle something would fade.

A pile of still-hot ash from an earlier fire sat directly in his path, so he kicked it, scattering dust and gray coals, then stepped over the mess. When one of the friendly village dogs came pounding over to him, leaping and curling its tail in anticipation, he leaned down and roared at it, teeth bared, until it slunk away.

He reached the other side of the village and stood on the outer edge of the forest, looking in. He couldn’t run, obviously, because they’d kill him. And because of the restless fury pulsing within him, he certainly couldn’t just sit and ponder the situation. He wasn’t that kind of man, anyway. He needed to keep his hands busy. Needed to take out some of his anger on something. On impulse, he stooped and grabbed a rock at his feet, then threw it into the trees. The thud it made when it hit an unseen tree trunk or ricocheted off a boulder hidden within the shadows was mildly satisfying. He scouted the ground, looking for more, then stopped short at the sight of a weathered pair of moccasins beside his own. He looked up into the slightly amused gaze of Soquili.

The Indian didn’t say anything, just narrowed his eyes and studied Jesse for a second. It was unexpected, Jesse thought, seeing so much calm in those black eyes. Something you didn’t expect from what he’d always known as savages. Then Soquili set his hand on Jesse’s arm to move him out of the way, and Jesse was instantly back on guard, fists raised. But Soquili only laughed and shook his head. He turned away and stepped a few paces back, then waved at Jesse to get out of the way.

Jesse frowned, not understanding. Eventually, when Soquili jerked his head to one side, he gave in and moved. As soon as he was far enough out of the way, Soquili drew his tomahawk from its place around his waist, swung it back over his head, then flung the weapon toward a large dead stump a few feet away from where Jesse now stood. The blade did a perfect spin, then planted itself in the middle of the wood with a rewarding thunk. Soquili walked up, grabbed the handle, and tugged it out, then walked back and did it all over again, this time from a little farther back. He repeated the same action five times, then stopped in front of Jesse and folded his arms over his broad chest.

“You.”

Jesse looked up at him from under his lashes, then huffed. As he walked back to where Soquili had thrown from, he muttered, “It’ll be you I’m aiming at, brother.”

He’d thrown knives before, when he was younger. Aimed them at a certain spot on the barn wall. One he’d set in his mind as his father’s face. He wasn’t bad at it, but he’d admit to not being the best. Never thrown a tomahawk before, though. He pulled the one from his belt and stared down the five long paces from the trunk. He wondered if he’d even be able to hit the thing. Might just lose it in the woods. He started to swing his arm back, then stopped and glanced at Soquili, whose wry grin didn’t help Jesse’s confidence one bit.

“What?”

Soquili moved his hand, thumb edge up, in a straight line, indicating how Jesse should throw.

“Yeah, yeah.” Shaking off the tip, Jesse drew back the tomahawk and hurled it with all his might at the trunk.

It hit the trunk, which was a great start. Then it hit it sideways, then fell uselessly to the ground. Unable to stop himself, Jesse looked over at Soquili, but the big brave had his eyes glued to the ground at his feet. At least he didn’t have to answer to any teasing. Jesse picked up the tomahawk, moved his arm in a practice swing, then hurled it again.

Same result. This was not helping Jesse’s mood one bit. Twice more he tried, and twice more the tomahawk ended up lying like a stick on the ground.

“Forget it,” he finally said, jamming the weapon back into his belt.

“Do not kill it.”

“What?” Jesse snapped. The last thing he wanted right about now was a lesson.

Soquili didn’t seem to notice. He walked to Jesse’s side, holding his own tomahawk as an example. He showed Jesse how loosely he held the weapon, then slung it back and casually nailed the trunk.

Jesse eased his grip a little, weighing the thing in his hand. Soquili stepped away and nodded, looking confident, then folded his arms again while he watched. Nothing like a little pressure, Jesse thought, setting his feet one ahead of the other. He’d tried to look like he didn’t care when Soquili was showing him what to do, but in truth he’d studied every move. The hard part, he figured, was not making it hard. Easy does it, as they say. So he pulled his arm back and swung through in one fluid motion, and the tomahawk floated end over end, planting itself in the dead wood. Just like Soquili’s.

Jesse stared at it, shocked it had been that simple. Soquili was smiling easily now, and he nodded in the direction of the weapon, but he didn’t have to. Jesse was already walking over to pull it out and do it again. After a few perfect throws, Soquili carried over another log, one that was a little smaller in diameter. He took a turn, hitting the centre with annoying accuracy. Jesse missed a couple of times, then sunk the blade nice and deep. He experimented, moving back farther from the target, twisting his wrist to see what happened, then let Soquili coach him on how to make his shot even better. Then Soquili left and Jesse stayed.

For an hour, he threw that thing, throwing harder and farther until his shoulder screamed at him to stop. But the satisfaction of seeing and hearing that delicious success was exactly what he’d needed. He took out his aggression, his frustration, his indecision on the little trunk, and when he finally came away, it was with a feeling that he could, after all, survive all this. He hadn’t answered a single question about any of it, but he’d at least gotten ahold of his anger and used it in a good way, rather than getting himself in trouble by starting a fight or something. It wasn’t the last time he went out to that spot for target practice.

CHAPTER
15

Tloo-da-tsì

He’d gone hunting with Soquili and a few others, showing them he knew how to use a bow and arrow. They watched him constantly, suspicion thick in their black eyes, but they all assumed he’d fall in line eventually. Join their Cherokee family. As if he had any choice. Over time, he forced himself to become more polite with Salali and Ahtlee but could never call them Mother or Father—though, God knew, Ahtlee was without question a better father than the one he’d originally been given. But to look these black-haired people in those slightly slanted eyes, set above flattened noses and broad cheekbones, and call them his family? How could any white man do that?

Adelaide didn’t seem to be part of any one particular family, but she was close to Soquili’s. He would have to ask her about that someday.

He’d noticed that among the Cherokee, there were elders, people who looked after the decision making in council, and who decided the fates of others with a blink of their milky eyes. The women seemed to be the ones in charge, even over the elder men. Above them all floated an ancient crone named Wah-Li.

“Come,” Soquili said one day in his halting English. “Wah-Li see you.”

“What if I don’t want to see her?”

“Not a question.”

So he’d gone, after some last-minute primping by Salali, and ducked under the opening of the big council house in the middle of the village. The heat of the place sucked his breath away, yet the only warmth radiated from a small hearth fire where the old woman sat, tiny and shriveled by time, wrapped in blankets Jesse would have found smothering.

“Sit,” she croaked.

Jesse didn’t sit immediately. Nor did he speak. He paced the entryway of the house, studying every corner, making himself aware of exactly what he was getting himself into. But the room was almost completely black, save the red embers and the wrinkled woman. He squinted, trying to adjust his eyes to the darkness, but could see nothing. He didn’t like the darkness behind her. It felt . . . occupied.

At length he sat, but he kept his gaze on the hidden place behind her. He didn’t think she’d notice anyway, since her eyes were masked by a murky layer of white.

“Tloo-da-tsì,”
she muttered with a smile, then poked a twig into the fire. “I thought so.”

Jesse frowned but said nothing. He wasn’t sure what she’d said, but he thought it’d been English. He’d been told the old witch spoke the language, that she’d learned along the way, with help from Adelaide’s sister. He hoped so. Otherwise this was going to be a waste of time. Not that he had a great many things to do with that time, but still.

“You are uncertain of this place, Tloo-da-tsì.” When he didn’t speak, she smiled and he saw only more darkness within the toothless jaws. But it wasn’t threatening, that smile. Curious, like a child’s. His muscles loosened just enough as he began to relax. She cast a quick glance over her shoulders, toward the back of the house, looking for whatever it was that held his attention. Maybe she wasn’t so blind after all.

“You hide in the shadows, but you do not like when the shadows hide from you.”

She definitely spoke English. That woke him up. “I don’t like surprises,” he admitted.

She smiled. Her face seemed to have collapsed in on itself, lacking either bone or teeth to keep it in the right shape. Age had had its way with the woman and left her with a hideous face, yet the air around her felt soft and comforting.

“This life brings many surprises,” she assured him. “Your life with the Tsalagi is a surprise, I think.”

That roused a crooked smile. “Oh, I’d say it most certainly is.”

“And are you unhappy?”

Unhappy? Hardly seemed to scratch the surface, did it? Jesse dropped his chin to his chest and bit his lip, willing himself to keep calm. Wouldn’t do to reach across the fire and throttle an old woman just for asking a stupid question. One he wasn’t about to justify with an answer.

Unhappy. Huh. How about furious? How about, What the hell is going on? Would that qualify as “unhappy”?

Jesse got to his feet, debating his next move. His first instinct was to turn and leave, stomp out of the stifling house and maybe head to the river. Get away from the crazy woman and the looming shadows.

But he didn’t go. The old woman intrigued him. What was it about her that had the whole village so entranced?

“Where will you go, when you run from here?”

He glanced at her, startled. He didn’t like learning he was so transparent. It was a decent question, though. He couldn’t go home, though his father probably assumed he was already dead. That was maybe a good thing. He could let Thomas keep on believing that.

“I have to get home to my family,” he bluffed.

The woman tilted her head like a sparrow. “I hear you have only a father. The Catawba took the others.”

It was as if an Arctic wind suddenly whistled through the house. Jesse remembered suddenly the shapes of the men who had killed his family, even though they’d been in the distance. He remembered how their wild eyes had been painted with rings of black and white. He stared at the old woman through cold, cold eyes, but she didn’t even blink.

“You hear right.”

She continued as if nothing had changed between them. “You have a family here now. You must trust the new family.”

“I don’t trust easy.”

“No. I see that.” She hesitated. “Permit me to touch your face, Tloo-da-tsì?”

He frowned, startled by her request. “Why?”

The curious smile lit up again. “What have you heard of me, the old woman of the village? What have your new people said?”

“That you’re in charge.”

She chuckled. “I do not know those words, but I think I understand. The People come to me for answers because I can see what they cannot. May I touch your face?”

He jerked away and stared at her, not understanding. It seemed like an invasion, letting someone touch him like that. Not like when Adelaide had helped him out, though. That was different. That was to fix his injuries. But the old woman just smiled up at him, so obviously harmless he could find no reason not to stoop and let her do what she wanted.

“Here,” she said and patted the ground beside her.

Jesse puffed out a breath through his nose, but he sat where she said.

“Now. Just sit,” she said calmly.

Her fingers were shriveled and soft as deerskin, her joints twisted at strange angles from their losing battle against rheumatism. In spite of the pain he assumed would come from doing so, she pressed them firmly against his cheeks, her forefingers on his temples. She smiled at him, then closed her eyes. Without thinking about it, his did the same.

He floated. He had no other words with which to describe what happened in that moment. The air around him churned, like someone had poured the boiled kettle into a cold bath, then swirled the water around. Part of him wanted to jerk away, demand to know what was going on, but most of him didn’t really care. Didn’t want to move at all. He felt relaxed, more soothed than he could remember ever feeling. He saw things he hadn’t remembered until that moment, pictures and sounds from his past flowing before him like the globe in Doc’s house when he spun it slowly. He recognized the old privy and the mangy brown dog sitting outside of it. He kind of remembered that ugly dog from when he was little. The mutt had ended up with a muzzle full of porcupine quills and had to be shot. There was his mother, her face so long forgotten, beckoning. He ran to her, his little boy body melting into the promise of security in her arms. Then she was gone, and he ran with his brother, laughing in the summer grass.

But his life contained much more, and that dwelt in the dark. He waited for the old woman to unlock the door, unsure. Part of him feared what she would see, wanted to keep it hidden and thereby stay safe from it himself. Part of him cowered in shame at the truths his memories would give her. But he also knew that when she saw it, he would somehow . . . feel all right. He might even understand a little better. He had been so young, after all.

But he found no comfort in the picture of his father, loosing his belt to teach him one lesson or another, tightening fists to use on his sole surviving son. He saw no peace in the images of torture and killing his father and his gang had inflicted on others. He had nowhere to hide from the shame that threatened to shadow all his dreams. He tried to hide, tried to shield the old woman from it, but she was there, her thoughts with his. She was
in him
somehow.

Then he saw the girl, Adelaide. Her expression was tired and sad, as it so often was. She gave the impression that she was very much alone, and though she obviously ached with loneliness, she seemed petrified of connecting with anyone. Her pain, from whatever source, penetrated almost as deeply as the old woman’s thoughts. He wanted to touch her, comfort her in exchange for all she’d done for him, but her image vanished in the next breath, and he felt a lingering sense of loss when she was gone.

The pressure of Wah-Li’s fingertips eased on his temples, and he coaxed his eyes open, not wanting to rush back to reality. But the ancient crone was waiting. Sadness floated in her eyes.

“You do not trust for many reasons,” she said, her voice more gentle than it had been before. “The Tsalagi will help you.”

Jesse didn’t know what to say. Even if he had, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to form the words. He was suddenly exhausted beyond belief, his body close to collapse. She saw it and smiled. “You had much in your mind. Sharing has been difficult. You will sleep well tonight.”

He had no doubt of that.