A Flight of Arrows (24 page)

That last was a black root inside her, thickened and twisted, choking off each seed of hope that dared to sprout. It coiled round every thought of Papa. Entangled her prayers. Pulled her down like petticoats in deep water. She'd just helped bring a healthy baby into the world and placed him pink and squalling into the arms of a woman who'd prayed ten years for a living child…and Anna felt nothing. Nothing she ought to feel.

With her midwifery case and her hot, dragging feet, she wandered the streets of Schenectady, lacking the will to go home. There was nowhere now that painful memories didn't linger, waiting to pounce. Lydia's house. The Binne Kill. The farm.

Home
had vanished at the wood's edge, with Two Hawks.

Hearing a sob, Anna halted and looked around, only to realize the
sound had slipped from her throat. She'd drawn the attention of two matrons outside the chandler's shop, faces crimson with the heat. Anna turned from their solicitous stares, got her bearings, and made a beeline for Lydia's, still lugging the case Lydia had presented her on her last birthday. She had prayed for a guide, someone willing and able to lead her to Two Hawks's village, but now she was desperate enough to drop her case in the street and keep on walking all the miles to the farm, to saddle William's mare and ride it west along the river until she found someone who could point her to Kanowalohale.

Did Two Hawks still want her? Did he hope for a future with her? Or was all hope and wanting obliterated, silenced forever by some enemy's arrow or musket ball? Would she ever know?

She'd reached the house and the alley to the stable in back when footsteps sounded behind her.

“Anna!” Lydia reached her, flushed as if she'd been running up and down the streets in the heat, blue eyes animated, bright. “Come into the house. I've something to tell you.”

Without curiosity or care, she let Lydia push her into the house, pluck her case from her grasp, and place it on the table. Without reminding her to restock it immediately, as was her unswerving practice, Lydia grasped her hands. “Daniel Clear Day is down at the Binne Kill, with Reginald.”

It needed a moment to absorb that. Clear Day was
here
. Come to see Papa. The blood drained from her heated face, leaving her dizzy. “Is it William? Two Hawks? Lydia,
tell
me.”

“Anna, sit down.” Lydia caught her as she swayed and walked her to a bench. “Two Hawks is well, or was when Clear Day left to come here. And, Anna…so was William. Two Hawks has seen him.”

“Seen him?” Anna echoed, the blood now pounding in her temples. “William? You mean they found him? He's at Kanowalohale?”

Lydia sat beside her. “Not there. And no, they haven't found him exactly.”

“But you just said…” Anna shook her head. “Lydia, what
did
you say?”

“Let me start at the beginning.” Anna refrained from interrupting—barely—as Lydia told her the tale of Two Hawks scouting and the fort at Oswego and the ravens in the sky and his going down to the fort gate and getting that fleeting glimpse of William in his green coat. “I took Clear Day down to the Binne Kill, and thankfully Reginald was there. I left them together and came to find you—are you all right now?”

The bench beneath her was solid, but Anna felt insubstantial, a feather that might float away on the merest breeze. “Oh, William…and Two Hawks wasn't able to speak to him? How wrenching hard that must have been.” It wrenched
her
heart.

“Yes,” Lydia said, though her smile blazed wide. “And there's more. Two Hawks told Clear Day to tell you he hasn't forgotten the words you spoke at your parting.” Lydia searched her face, as if those words might be readable there. “He said he'll find the way to Reginald's heart if he must fight through a hundred redcoats to do so. He'll find William again.”

Almost Anna felt joy. Two Hawks lived. He remembered. But he still wanted to please Papa. To make
him
happy.
“I cannot now take you from him, only leave you to mend what is broken.”
Those were some of the parting words Two Hawks professed to remember.
Mend what is broken
.

Her face felt cold, stiff as clay. “I want to see Clear Day. Talk to him myself. Now.”

Lydia's smile faltered at her bitten-off tone. “I knew you would. That's why I've been looking for you, so we can go to him together.”

“No, Lydia. I'll go alone. I've waited, you see. For a guide.” Anna rose, steadied herself with a grip on the table's edge, and headed for the dining room. “Someone to take me to Kanowalohale. Clear Day can do it.”

She needn't pack much. Kanowalohale wasn't too long a journey. A couple of days afoot was the impression she'd had from Two Hawks. But
he was swift and could run for miles. Perhaps if she took William's horse…

She was halfway through the dining room when Lydia caught her up. “Anna, wait.”

She whirled, fury spitting from her like sparks. “No! I'm beyond sick of
waiting
. I want William found, and I'm relieved he's alive, but I don't want him back at the cost of Two Hawks's life. I must find him, tell him he doesn't need to risk his neck finding William in order to have me. I'm giving
myself
away—without a by-your-leave from Papa or anyone else.”

She made for the stairs. Lydia's footsteps dogged her. “Anna, no. Don't do that to your father. He—”

Anna turned on her at the bottom stair. “I don't care! Don't you understand that?”

Lydia flinched back. “Don't care?”

“I don't care about pleasing Papa, or clearing the path to his heart, or whatever it is everyone thinks
he
needs.” She heard her voice, brittle, full of rage. From a distance, it seemed, she watched herself spew up the darkness that had long filled her. A spurting wound. “He doesn't deserve to have it cleared. He's the cause of it, all the grief and pain we've endured. Let him stew in it if that's what he wants!”

“Anna Catherine Doyle, do you even hear yourself?” Lydia's face grew stern in a way Anna had never seen. A fire lit her eyes as she drew her small person up straight. “You need to forgive your father.”

“Forgive him? He's the one who stole a baby. He's the one who lied and deceived and destroyed William. He's the one who couldn't bring himself to treat Two Hawks like the son he tried to force William to be. He's the one who—”

“Aubrey did not start you in the womb of your mother, but he gave you life, risking his own for yours.”
Two Hawks's words echoed like a crack of thunder in her bones.
“Even if Creator did not bid us honor our parents, for that alone I would honor him in my heart.”

Anna nearly choked as her voice broke. “He's the one who didn't let me die on that wilderness road!”

Lydia had gone as pale as bleached linen. “Oh no,” she said, reaching for her. “No, no, no. Don't
ever
say that.”

But it was true. It would have been better had she died a baby. Never known such pain. Anna drew back, opening her mouth to say so, but all that came out was a wail. She covered her face with her hands, unable to bear the sight of Lydia's devastated gaze. Still she could see another pair of eyes, dark and beautiful and piercing her with their disappointment. She groaned, stricken and convicted.

“What will Two Hawks say to me? He bade me mend what was broken between us, me and Papa. Oh, what will he say?”

“Life is blessing, but it is also testing. Take the one as you do the other and trust Him who allows all.”
She'd promised to do so and utterly failed.

“Oh, my girl.” Lydia's arms were around her, hot and pressing. “More importantly, what is God saying to you about it?”

She stood stiff in Lydia's embrace, gutted by the sudden absence of anger, the withering of the root within. Desolate without it. Its strength had kept her going, even as it devoured her from inside.

“That I need to repent,” she got out at last, the barest whisper.

Lydia held her tight. “Then do so. It's never too late to be obedient to the Almighty, not while you still draw breath. You're breathing, aren't you?”

Anna sucked in a shuddering lungful of air, then wilted onto the stairs, hands over her face. “I wanted Papa to be first. I've waited and waited. But it's going to have to be me, isn't it? I have to forgive him. I have to
honor
him.”

Two Hawks had understood. Papa's failings didn't exempt her from doing what she knew was right. She lifted her head. Lydia was on the stair beside her, face streaked with tears, eyes alive again with hope. “There's my girl…my beautiful, brave girl. Oh, how I've missed you!”

It was too warm in the house to cling to one another in anything resembling comfort, but Anna needed a different sort of comfort, that of a mother, which Lydia had always been to her.

She also needed her father. Needed to restore him to his rightful place in her heart, for him to know he was restored. She pulled herself up straight, knowing she had to act, and fast. “I still want to talk to Clear Day, but can we go and see Papa. Right now?”

Lydia bit her lip, then gave her the unreserved smile Anna adored.

“Clear Day doesn't strike me as one to beat around bushes. We'd best hurry. Let's wash our faces and go.”

T
hese things I have said are hard things to hear
—
but listen, I am going to say more. I am going to tell you another story about that warrior whose son was taken, which is the same story told from the other side. It is like a basket, these two stories that weave together to make a whole, seen and unseen. I am going to tell you the unseen story now
.

Through all the bad that came of what the redcoat did to that warrior and his wife, and the son not taken, Creator was not looking aside as though He did not see. He was busy in it, all the while weaving good things out of it. For when that warrior left his home and went away, he went to a People the missionary had known before—the Senecas—a few of whom had chosen to follow a Jesus path through life. Among them this warrior finally stopped running from his Father in Heaven. He let his heart be caught and broken by the crushing of sin. Not the sin of that redcoat. His own sin. That warrior cried out for forgiveness, and at last in his heart the Great Healing began
.

Had all these bad things not come to him, to wound and to rob, would he have softened his heart to the missionary's God? Who can say? I am only telling you the story of what happened, how that warrior became a man again, one whose wife could without shame claim him as her husband. A man a son could respect and follow
.

Even so, while they waited for their lost son to return from that far land where he had gone for white man's learning, the warrior struggled
with a hard thing Creator asked of him
—
forgiving the redcoat for the thing he had done. But now the warrior had weapons to fight that battle, which he had come to see was not against the redcoat after all but against his own sinful nature, and against the one who is enemy to us all. Those weapons were these: truth like a girding sash; righteousness like leather across the chest; peace like moccasins for feet to walk in; faith like a shield to protect a family; eternal saving a covering for the head
.

Word came at last that the lost son had returned to the land of his birth. It was time to face the redcoat, to show everyone who worried about it whether that warrior had given his whole heart to Creator or had held some of it back. But he held nothing back. Though wounded and bleeding, he gave the white shell beads to the redcoat, along with his pledge of peace
.

Now here is a thing worth thinking on. That warrior believed he was setting the redcoat free in forgiving him the great wrong done his family, but it was himself he set free. Where once in him was hatred, leading him like a rope around the neck, now there was compassion, even though the lost son, when he learned the truth of who he was, ran from them all in despair and anger at this great betrayal. This has been a sorrow in many hearts, but Creator is still watching. Still working. He is still telling that warrior's story, and the story of all of us
.