The Guardian (5 page)

“Tell me about your mother, Black Sun.”

Her question caught him off guard, like the sudden jab of a thorny branch. Her fingers still furrowed his flesh, a sure sign that the pain had not passed. But the eyes that met his were clear and calm. “You told me you couldn't help her,” she said. “What happened?”

“Nothing that you would want to hear at a time like this.”

“She died then, in childbirth.” Charity's voice was a pain-laced whisper. “Tell me about it.”

“For your entertainment? To pass the time and take your mind off the pain?” He shot her a contemptuous glare. “For that I have better stories, Charity Bennett. Wouldn't you rather hear the tale about the wolf and the spider?”

“No.” Her grip on his arm had relaxed, but her hand remained. “I need to know why you're putting your own life at risk to help me. I think it has something to do with your mother. And yes, it will take my mind off the pain. That, too.”

Black Sun felt the tightness like a clenched fist in the pit of his stomach. He had never told anyone the full story of his mother's death—not even his wife, whom
he had loved. That he should bare the past to this small, irritating white woman was unthinkable. And yet, because she had asked, he found himself struggling for a way to begin. He stared up at the sky, groping for words.

“How old were you?” she asked gently.

“Fourteen winters,” he said, feeling the raw unwinding of the story begin inside him. “My mother had lost many of the white man's babies—he was very big and she was small, and they always seemed to come too soon. But this one she did not lose. Her time was close on that night…when it happened.”

He felt the light pressure of her fingers on his wrist, as if she sensed the awfulness of what he was about to tell her. It was only when he glanced down at her face that he realized she was having another contraction.

“Go on,” she whispered, her voice taut and husky with the effort of holding back the pain.

“The white man—he had a name, but I always thought of him as the monster—had traded some furs for a jug of whiskey that day. He got drunk, and when he got drunk, he got mean. My mother had made a stew for him, and he threw it, pot and all, against the wall. Then he started screaming at her and kicking her with his boots. I was only a boy, and not very big for my age. When I tried to stop him, he grabbed me, threw me out into the snow and barred the door.”

Black Sun felt the tightening of her fingers. This pain seemed to be lasting longer than the others.

“Go…on, please,” She was breathing in gasps now. “Please…”

“I pounded on the door,” Black Sun continued, though his mind was no longer on the story. “From inside the cabin, I could hear him screaming, hear her screaming, and then—”

“Oh!”
She pressed her lips together to muffle the moan. “I think it's…coming,” she whispered. “Sweet heaven, the baby, it's coming!”

“Try not to push!” Black Sun scrambled to his feet, wishing he'd thought to make preparations sooner. Attending a birth was women's business and he had only the barest knowledge of what needed to be done. Now he improvised as best he could.

Yanking a rope from the pack, he tossed the end over a stout limb of the pine tree. Finding a short, strong stick, he made a knot around it so that the stick hung crosswise, a forearm's length above Charity's head. “Hold on to this,” he said, guiding her hands around the stick until she could clasp it easily. “Pull as hard as you need to.”

Her body went limp as the pain abated, but her hands kept their grip on the stick, so that, for a moment, she simply dangled, with her knees resting lightly on the ground.

Tugging the buffalo robe aside, Black Sun used his hands to scoop out the ground beneath her and line the hollow with swiftly gathered handfuls of fresh leaves and grass. By the time he finished, Charity was writh
ing in agony. Her eyes locked with his for an instant, then closed in a grimace of pain and effort.

Seared into memory, the images of his mother and his wife rose again in Black Sun's mind. Once more he willed them away. Charity was young and strong and full of fight, he told himself. Even with her small size and the trials she had suffered, there was no reason to doubt that her child would come swiftly and safely, unless…

But no, he would not even voice that thought. He had done all he could. Now he could only wait, hope and try to ignore the fear that lay like a coiled thing inside him—the fear that this woman, too, would die and that somehow it would be his fault.

Black Sun raised his eyes and murmured a plea for forgiveness to the sacred canyon—to the rocks, the trees, the water, the animals that had lived here undisturbed for generations. Then, turning his attention to Charity Bennett, he made ready to do what he could for her.

 

C
HARITY CLUNG
to the stick that Black Sun had rigged for her. Her sweat-slimed palms gripped the papery bark as the pain twisted her body—
good
pain, she told herself repeatedly. Good, good pain that was bringing her baby into the world.

“Hold on…hold on…” Black Sun's deep voice droned in her ear. His presence calmed her, reassured her that everything would be all right. He was her res
cuer, her guardian angel who had covered her with his wings in this time of danger. He would not let anything happen to her or the baby. She had to make herself believe that or she would lose her will to fight.

Why was the baby taking so long? She had thought, when the pains worsened, that it would be a matter of a few pushes and then she would feel the lightening of her body and hear the mewling cry that would bind her heart forever. But time had crawled on and on, agony-filled minutes flowing into what seemed like agony-filled hours. The moon had drifted along the high rim of the canyon, then vanished from sight like a curious lady visitor grown bored with waiting for something to happen.

All this time, all this torment, and there seemed to be no end to it.

The knifing contraction slid away, giving her a few moments of blessed relief. Charity let go of the stick and slumped to the ground, the folds of her filthy, ragged skirt falling around her like the petals of a mud-trampled flower. Her arms felt as if they'd been wrenched from their sockets. She massaged her aching shoulder joints, fighting tears of frustration.

“Here.” Black Sun offered her a sip of water from the skin bag, which he'd refilled at the spring. His face was etched with weary shadows, as if he'd shared every pain with her.

“It won't be much longer,” she said. “Surely it won't.”

He reached out and brushed the matted hair back from her face with his rough brown fingers. She closed her eyes, savoring his gentle touch. Where had he been going when he found her? she wondered. Who would be waiting for him, worrying because he hadn't arrived?

“Do you have a family, Black Sun?” she asked, suddenly needing to know.

“A boy of six winters.” His voice rasped with fatigue.

“And his mother?”

He glanced away without answering her. For the space of a breath, Charity was puzzled. Then, with the certainty of instinct, she understood why. Black Sun's wife was dead. Like his mother, she had died in childbirth.

Other things began to fall into place, as well: why he had taken it upon himself to save her, and why he took such pains to hide the depth of his anxiety. If she and the baby lived, it would be a token of his salvation. If they died, it would plunge him that much deeper into purgatory or whatever the Arapahos might call that self-made prison of the soul.

Black Sun had never finished telling her the story of his mother's death. But Charity had no wish to hear it now. To know that it had happened was already as much as she could bear.

She reached for the stick as the tightening began once more. Black Sun watched her, his eyes hooded in shadow.

“I need…a story,” she gasped as the pain surged through her body. “A good story—you said you knew one about a wolf and a spider.”

A bitter smile twitched at a corner of his mouth. “That is a story for children,” he said.

“Then tell me a story for…grown-ups!” Her hands clawed at the stick as she fought to keep from crying out. If the pains grew any worse, they would rip her in two, she thought. But she would endure anything to get this baby into the world, and the contractions were good because they meant the baby was coming. Surely it was. She could not—would not—be dying.

The tears she'd been holding back all night overflowed and spilled down her cheeks. She began to cry, quietly at first, then in big, gulping sobs that shook her whole body. All she wanted was to have this baby, and she was trying so hard, so hard…

Through her tears, she saw that Black Sun had risen to his feet and was looming above her. Gently but firmly, he uncurled her fingers from around the stick and enfolded them in his big hands. She gripped his warm, solid flesh as her tears continued. “I'm sorry,” she whispered, ashamed of her own weakness. “Making such a fuss. I've read that when it comes to having babies, the women of your people are strong and brave, not like…like
this.
”

“Your tears are tears of courage, Charity Bennett.” His voice was rough with weariness. “Hold my hands when the pains come, and I will tell you the story of
this canyon where we have come for refuge. It is, as you say, a story for grown-ups.”

“Thank you.” Charity rested her forehead against the back of his hand, feeling the pressure of cords and tendons against her skin. How good it would feel to stop and rest for a while, to lie on the buffalo robe, protected by the circle of his arms, and to drift off to a place where there was no fear. But she knew better than to wish such a thing. No part of that wish could possibly come true.

Steeling herself against the pain, she waited for the story to begin.

“I
T HAPPENED
a long time ago.” Black Sun's voice drifted over and through her like smoke from a glowing campfire, and Charity realized she was listening to a gifted storyteller. “The great Thunderbird who rules the sky decided he would take the form of a man and walk on the earth for the space of a moon. This canyon is where he made his camp.”

“Here?” She looked up at him, astonished and delighted in spite of her tortured body.

“You're kneeling on sacred ground right now,” Black Sun said. “The whole canyon is sacred ground.”

“Then…we really shouldn't be here, should we?”

His gaze flickered away for an instant. “We had no choice,” he said. “I have asked forgiveness, but what is done can't be undone.”

“I see.” A contraction twisted through her body. If she and the baby lived, she would know that forgiveness had been granted, she told herself. If not… But what would forgiveness matter then? What would anything matter?

“Tell me what happened here,” she gasped, clutch
ing his hands as if they were her only anchor to life. “I want to hear the rest of the…story.”

“The Thunderbird had planned to walk out over the land to see how men and women lived and how they treated each other. But on his very first day in the canyon, those plans changed.”

“Changed how?” Charity kept her gaze locked with his.

“A beautiful woman came up the canyon, looking for roots to dig. Thunderbird saw her, and because the desires of a man had become part of him when he changed his body, he wanted her.”

“And the woman?”

“She saw that he was kind and handsome, and she wanted him, too. He took her to a cave, high in the canyon. She became his wife, and in her arms Thunderbird learned everything he had ever wanted to know about men and women. The two of them were so happy together they didn't come out of the cave until it was time for Thunderbird to change his form and go back to the sky.”

“So, did he leave her there and become a bird again?” Charity's pain had eased. She felt wrung out and exhausted, but the story had pulled her in. She knelt on the ground, her hands lying limp across her knees, her eyes gazing up at him.

“Yes,” Black Sun said. “He left her and went back to his place in the sky.”

“What a sad story.”

“Sad? Why?”

“Because he didn't take her with him or stay here with her. They loved each other, and they couldn't be together.”

Black Sun shook his head. “It had to be that way. He belonged to the sky. She belonged to the earth. They could only be together here in the canyon.”

“Then, that's all?”

“No, there's much more to the story. When they came out of the cave, they discovered that their love-making had caused the rain to fall and the sun to shine. The grass, which had been dry and brown, was fresh and green. There were leaves and flowers, and this was the very first springtime. They made a vow that every year they would come back to the canyon and stay together for a moon, so that spring would come to the earth.”

“Spring is coming now. Does that mean they're here with us, in this canyon?” Charity asked, only half in fun.

“If you choose to believe their spirits are here, then they are.” His voice was solemn.

“Is that the end of the…story?” She sucked in a breath as the twisting sensation began low in her body.

“Not quite.” He gazed down at her in the moonlight. “After the woman left the canyon, she gave birth to twin sons. One of the sons gave her people the gift of fire. The other gave them the gifts of language and music. So you see, it's not a sad story, after all.”

“No…it's quite a lovely story, in fact.” Her voice caught in a muffled sob as the pain ripped through her. How much longer could she stand this before her strength gave out? She was so tired, so utterly spent. All she wanted was to lie down and close her eyes and slip into merciful darkness.

And this contraction seemed worse than all the others combined. Charity bit her lip to keep from screaming. The salty taste of blood seeped into her mouth.

“Push…” Black Sun had caught her wrists and was pulling her upward. “You have to push…now!”

“I…can't.” She sagged toward the ground, held upright only by the grip of his hands. “I'm tired…so tired…”

He jerked her upward, the sudden strain on her arms jarring her to full awareness. His hands slid up to enfold hers in a fierce clasp.

“Listen to me, Charity Bennett.” His eyes blazed like hot coals. “This child of yours also has gifts to give the world. Gifts of beauty and courage and love—but only if you're strong enough to do your part now! If you give up, you and the baby will die—and I won't let that happen. I won't watch you die the way I watched my mother die!”

His voice was fierce, almost angry, but his hands were gentle. She could almost feel their warmth flowing into her, nourishing her, filling her. She felt the magic of the story he had told her, felt the peace of the canyon enfolding her as she struggled.

“Don't fight the pain,” Black Sun's voice urged her. “Use it. Help it to do its work.
Push!
”

Charity braced her feet against the sacred earth and flung all her reserves of strength and spirit into one excruciating push. She moaned like an animal as she felt her stubborn flesh begin to yield, felt the downward pressure as the baby moved into the birth canal. Sensing what was about to happen, Black Sun shifted her hands to the stick above her head. She hung from it, gripping with all her strength as he crouched beside her and moved his hands beneath her skirt. He seemed to be chanting something in a low voice. The words that drifted up to Charity made no sense; then it penetrated her fogged mind that he was chanting in Arapaho. She could only hope it was some kind of blessing.

Spent, she hung limply from the stick. Was it over? Was her baby really here? Then why couldn't she hear it crying?

Why couldn't she hear her baby crying?

Panic exploded through her like flame through black powder. Then, before she could react, she heard it—the sharpness of a slap, followed by a tiny gasp and a loud, indignant squall.

It was the most beautiful sound Charity had ever heard.

Black Sun was fumbling with something in the darkness. Charity's eyes caught the glint of moonlight on a knife blade, and the motion of his fingers tying some kind of knot. With effort, she found her voice.

“Is my baby all right?”

“Yes.” Black Sun's voice floated up to her. He sounded light-headed, almost giddy with relief. “She's fine. She's just upset with me for spanking her.”

“She?” Charity's heart skipped a beat.

“You have a daughter—with a good pair of lungs and a very strong heart.”

“Give her to me. Let me hold her—” Charity released the stick, only to discover that she was too weak to stay upright. She slumped against Black Sun's shoulder, her blurred vision fixed on the tiny, squirming creature who rested between his knees. He was drying her off with a piece of soft leather, his hands huge and dark against the small, pale body. The baby was complaining at the top of her lungs, clearly giving him a piece of her mind. It was impossible to look at her without smiling in wonder.

“Lie down and rest,” he said, nodding toward the buffalo robe he'd placed on the soft pine needles. “You'll need to feed this little wildcat right away to keep her quiet.”

Even as he spoke, Charity felt the liquid surge in her swollen breasts. How strange, and yet how natural it seemed. She was already aching to hold her daughter in her arms.

Glancing down at the front of her scorched, mud-stained dress, she groaned in dismay. The faded chambray gown buttoned down the back. How on earth was she going to get it open, with the charred fabric all but fused to her skin?

Black Sun's eyes flickered toward her and she saw that he understood. “Lie down,” he said again. “I'll help you.”

Bone-weary, Charity stretched out on her side and waited for him to finish drying the baby. Her eyes followed his every movement as he cradled the small figure between his hands and placed her gently in the crook of Charity's arm.

The baby was still crying, kicking with her legs and beating the air with her tiny fists. Gazing down at the perfect little rosebud face, crowned by moon-pale hair, Charity felt her heart quiver and melt.

Black Sun bent over her. Charity's pulse skipped as she saw the knife in his hand. “Hold still,” he murmured, reaching for the front of her dress. She gasped softly as the blade sliced downward, cutting through the worn fabric of her dress and shift, causing her breasts to tumble into view.

He withdrew his hands at once but did not avert his gaze. Charity felt a hot blush creep over her skin. Indian women often went bare-breasted, she reminded herself. They nursed their babies in the open air, within sight of anyone who passed. She had seen them herself near the trading posts. It would not occur to Black Sun that there was any impropriety here. And this was certainly no time to be modest.

Conscious of his eyes on her, she shifted the baby to her breast and brushed a nipple against the small, puckered mouth. Instinctively the baby clamped down
and began to suck like a greedy little piglet. Charity's soul overflowed with love and she realized there was nothing on earth she wouldn't do for this tiny bit of squalling, kicking, hungry life.

Black Sun smiled—the first real smile Charity had seen on his somber face. “Your daughter is strong,” he said. “One day she will grow up to be a strong woman, like her mother.”

Charity gazed up at him. This man had saved her life and brought her daughter into the world. He was truly her guardian angel. She owed him everything.

Glancing down at the baby again, she thought briefly of Silas. She could see nothing of the grim, fanatical preacher in her daughter. The coupling that had conceived this spirited child had been a furtive, almost shameful act, performed in total darkness with both participants modestly clad in their nightclothes. Physical contact had been limited to the essential body parts—Silas had not even kissed her, she recalled now.

Why, then, did it feel so natural to lie bloodstained and bare-breasted in full sight of a heathen savage she had known for only a few hours—a man who already knew her far more intimately than had her own husband?

Something unreadable flickered in Black Sun's eyes. Abruptly, he turned away from her and moved toward the flat rock where he'd unrolled his pack. Picking up another buffalo robe, smaller and softer than the one Charity was lying on, he laid it carefully over her and the baby.

“Rest and keep her warm,” he said. “I'll be close by.”

Covered by the woolly robe, Charity was already beginning to feel drowsy. She opened her mouth to thank him, but by the time her thoughts could form words she was drifting into the soft, dark fog of sleep. The last thing she remembered was the heart-binding tug of her baby's mouth and the awareness that Black Sun was on guard, watching over them.

 

B
LACK
S
UN TOOK
a moment to check the horses. Then he settled himself on the flat rock beside the pine tree that sheltered Charity and her baby.

He was exhausted, but he was too elated for sleep. In any case, it might be wise to stay awake. There was always the chance that the smell of birth blood could attract a wolf or a cougar, or that the
Siksika
had managed to pick up their trail in the moonlight. But his sharp instincts detected no such dangers tonight. There was nothing on the wind but the freshness of damp earth and the sweet peace of the canyon.

As his gaze drifted over the rocky ledges, Black Sun felt a quiet sense of welcome and forgiveness. He had come here in need, and the canyon had taken pity on him. It had blessed him with Charity's life and the life of her baby daughter.

Rising, he crouched beside the sleeping pair and tucked the buffalo robe around them. Charity lay on her side, the baby cradled in the crook of her arm. Her profile was soft in sleep, the fear and pain gone from her
flower-like features. Her mouth was as innocent as a child's, her lashes like the vane of a golden feather against her pale cheek. Her hair spilled over the dark brown buffalo skin. Tentatively, he touched a stray lock. It curled around his finger like the tendril of a vine.

She had displayed a warrior's courage today, he thought. A woman of his own people could not have shown more bravery. The pride that surged through him was hot and fierce, almost possessive, as if she belonged to him.

Swiftly he willed the forbidden feeling away. This was no time for emotion. As soon as Charity was strong enough to ride, it would be his duty to get her out of the canyon and to deliver her safely to the nearest trading post. That accomplished, he would mount his horse and ride away—and he would not look back.

There could be no bond between them, no connection that would last beyond the day of their parting. She would go back to her people and find herself a new husband. He, in time, might even look for a new wife. His son needed a mother, and holding Charity's newborn baby in his arms had reminded him of how much he wanted more children.

Black Sun gazed up at the river of stars above the canyon walls. How small and unimportant he felt in this sacred place. Perhaps his quest to find the hidden power and become a medicine man for his people was nothing more than vanity. Perhaps he should abandon the dream, return home and settle down to an ordinary life.
Was this the answer the spirits had given him? Was this why the vision had not come?

Black Sun's grandfather, Four Winds, had urged him to go on this quest. Four Winds had seen more than eighty winters and had wanted his only living grandson to take his place as medicine man. But Black Sun had not proven himself worthy of the gift. When he returned home, he would tell his grandfather to look elsewhere.