Courage to Love (Flynn Family Saga) (14 page)

An image appeared in front of him: Ben and Frank and Sam, sitting around a cook fire.  He realized, suddenly, that he had always held himself a little apart from them.  Another image formed: Maggie sat down beside Sam.  He smiled at her, and she smiled back.  In spite of everything that had happened to her, she opened herself to the love Sam had for his adopted daughter, to the friendship of Ben and Frank, in a way that Flynn had never dared to do.  He saw his Fire-haired Woman, lying beside him in the morning, smiling at him.  He loved her and wanted her, but even with her, he held back a little of himself.

And because of that, there was no
tiyospaye
, not with Ben or Frank or Sam.

Or even Maggie.

And then he saw his daughter’s body, small and perfect, perfectly still, her skin blue.

Pain ripped him like the claws of a bear, and he cried out.

Keeper handed him a ladle of water.

Flynn’s hands shook as he drank.  He shut his eyes and fought the pain.

“Open yourself to your pain, Eagle Heart.  You sit upon the earth.  Draw upon her strength to sustain you.”

Flynn shook his head and clenched his teeth against the pain that threatened to tear him apart.  He was alone.  He could not even feel the earth beneath him.

Keeper poured more water on the stones, and more steam filled the lodge until he could not see Keeper across the fire, across the rocks, across the years that separated them.  Alone, so utterly alone.  Flynn covered his eyes with his hands.

But the visions came anyway:

The first man he killed at Manassas.

The guards in Camp Sumter.

The dark and filth of the Hole.

The men on their way to Elmira, screaming, trapped in cattle cars as the train rolled away from the tracks.

The men in Elmira, nearly three thousand of them, dying like flies.

He saw all the moments of pain in his life, strung like bear’s claws on a necklace, sharp and rending, rending his heart, rending his soul until he felt as if he could not stand it.

Without moving, he left the sweat lodge.  At least, his spirit did.  He stood on the plain, before a sea of grass.  The wind blew, rippling through the grass like the footsteps of an invisible giant.  His pain subsided a little.

Then, he heard growling behind him.  He turned.

A black bear, almost as tall as a grizzly, stood just outside the forest.  It began to shamble toward him.

Fear filled him.  He turned to the prairie.

A white buffalo stood in front of him.  Suddenly, it turned into a Lakota woman.  Her hair was jet black, and her cheekbones were high beneath eyes the color of midnight.  She breathed on him.

Flynn turned and ran, but the bear kept pace with him.  Flynn realized dimly that he had two good legs, that this must be a dream, but it
felt
real.  He felt the earth beneath his feet.  He felt the bear’s hot, moist breath on his neck.  He couldn’t run any faster.  The muscles in his back tensed, waiting for the bear’s claws to tear into him.  Agony seared down his back.  He felt his blood began to flow, warm and wet, from the gouges in his flesh.  Desperate with fear and pain, he felt himself changing.  His arms spread outward, tingling as they sprouted eagle feathers.  His cry of pain turned into the eagle’s cry of defiance.  His arms/wings beat downward, and he left the earth, left his fear and pain behind.  Instinctively, he found a warm current and spiraled upward.  The earth below him seemed very small and unimportant.  The wind carried him north and east.  He drifted effortlessly over plains and rivers and the low, green eastern mountains.

Suddenly, he recognized the river and the hill outside Elmira.  His wings disappeared, and he fell, in man-shape.  He dropped to his knees in front of the gate that led to the prison camp.  Thousands of men filled the space inside the walls.  He heard their cries and moans and curses.  He smelled the stench of urine and despair and death.

Behind him, the black bear growled.

Flynn flew up into the air again, leaving grief and guilt and pain and rage behind.  But he circled over the camp as if tethered to it.  His eagle’s eyes were sharp.  He saw a young man, wearing the rags of an officer’s uniform, moving from man to man, listening here, comforting there.  Once he stopped and knelt beside a dying man.  He wrote a letter to the man’s wife, taking down, word for word, the sergeant’s last words to his beloved Caroline.  The young lieutenant bowed his head a moment.  Then, he closed the sergeant’s eyes and moved on.

Flynn watched his younger self move from prisoner to prisoner, giving comfort where he could, and merely sitting with the dying when they were too far gone to hear him.

“I had forgotten,” Flynn whispered.

But his words came out as an eagle’s cry.

The younger Flynn looked up, envying the eagle his freedom.

And Flynn remembered.  He remembered the day Sergeant Toliver had died.  He remembered the words of the letter he wrote to his wife, Caroline.  He remembered the faces of the men in the little notebook he always carried with him.  He remembered looking up and seeing the eagle, soaring overhead.  He tried to pat his pocket, but he was an eagle.  He had no pockets.  Screaming with frustration, he stooped toward the earth and took man shape again.  The notebook was there, in the pocket of his buckskin shirt.  His hands shook as he took it out.  He tried to read the names of the men who had died, but tears blurred his vision, tears that would not fall.  The pain in his chest was too great, and still, he could not cry.

Behind him, he heard the bear growl.

Flynn took the eagle’s shape again.  He soared away from Elmira, away from his pain.  Something drew him back to the prairie.  An enormous herd of buffalo ran free, thundering across the plain.  Flynn circled it in wonder.  He had not seen so many buffalo since he was a boy.

Pathfinder stood just outside the forest, watching the buffalo run.  He held out his arm.  Eagle Heart folded his wings and let himself fall.  He landed on his father’s arm.  Pathfinder smoothed his feathers.  “Open yourself to your pain, my son.”  He threw Eagle Heart into the air.  His wings became arms and he fell to the earth.  He heard growling and turned.

The bear stood behind him.

This time, Flynn drew his knife, the knife Pathfinder had given him.  He lunged at the bear.  Blood flowed from the bear’s chest, but he continued to move toward Flynn.  Flynn fought the bear until the sun began to set.  His arms shook with weariness, but the bear did not tire.

“Eagle Heart, embrace your pain.”  Pathfinder’s voice was gentle.

Flynn bowed his head.  He lowered his arms.  Every muscle was rigid as he waited for the bear to tear him to pieces.

Instead, he felt soft fur against his chest.

Flynn raised his head.

The bear stood in front of him.  The bear’s eyes were Flynn’s eyes, the same eyes he saw in the mirror when he shaved.  He saw the sorrow, deep and profound.  But he saw something else.

He saw strength.

Flynn drew a deep breath.  He soared once more over the land, and he saw his life, spread out like a map:

He saw the pain of being sent away from his first family to boarding school.

He saw the pain of not belonging there.

He saw the pain of being beaten by bullies.

He saw the joy of triumph when he learned to hold back his tears.

He saw the joy when his parents brought him home.

He saw the pain of losing his home.

He saw the pain of seeing his father hurt his mother.

He saw the pain of seeing his father killed.

He saw the joy of finding a new father in Pathfinder.

He saw the joy of having a brother.

He saw the joy of belonging somewhere at last.

He saw the pain when he crawled over the rim of the valley and saw the charred bodies of the dead.

He saw the pain of being banished from his
tiyospaye
.

He saw the joy of meeting Alexander Ridgeton.

He saw the joy of discovering the silent, empty places with him.

He saw the pain of killing his first man at Manassas.

He saw the pain of losing Jennie.

He saw the joy of finding Sam and Ben and Hank.

He saw the pain of losing Hank.

He saw the pain of watching his friends sicken.

He saw the joy of winning their freedom.

He saw his own physical pain as he was beaten again, just as he was when he was a boy.

He saw the astonishing joy of finding a friend in Joseph O’Malley.

He felt the pain of being a prisoner again.

He felt the sorrow of burying nearly three thousand men.

He felt the tenuous joy of freedom.

He felt the deep, abiding joy of helping others start new lives.

He felt the potent joy of finding Maggie, of falling in love with her.

He saw his Fire-haired Woman, the first time they rode together.  He saw the wonder and awe in her face as she watched the rain and tried to count the stars.  He saw the sorrow in her face as they buried her grandparents.  He saw her innocent trust when she clung to him and wept, grieving for the only people who ever gave her love and respect.  He saw her joy when he showed her the prairie, the sensuous delight in her face when he fed her fish, fresh-caught from a stream.  He saw her delight in the cabin he had built for her, not knowing he would ever meet a woman who would love to live beneath the stars in summer and in a small, humble cabin in the winter.

He saw all his happy moments strung together, like bright, polished stones, interspersed with the claws of a bear.

And then, he saw the truth: that joy and sorrow were not separate, but entwined, like a strong rope.  The strength of that rope flowed into him, and once again, he was aware of the earth beneath him.  He opened his eyes.

Pathfinder laid his hand on Flynn’s shoulder.  “I am proud of you, my son.”

Flynn raised his head.  A little girl with red hair and brown eyes stood next to Pathfinder.  Flynn held out his arms.

His child ran to him.  He held her close.  Her small body was soft and warm, like Maggie’s.  Flynn shut his eyes, and his tears blessed her hair.

The little girl lifted her face to him and smiled.  “Don’t cry, Papa.  I’m with Grandfather.  He’s a lot of fun.  He knows the best stories.”

Flynn laughed.  “Yes.  Yes, he does.”  Slowly, he got to his feet.  He held his daughter’s hand in his for a long, long time.  Then, he let go.

She went to Pathfinder, who took her hand.  Pathfinder smiled at Flynn.  “I am proud of you, my son.  But it is time for you to go back now.  And remember, whenever you think the pain is too much to bear, your daughter and I are right here, in your heart, where we have always been.”

Flynn nodded.  Pathfinder and the little girl vanished.  He looked back at the forest.  The bear stood beneath the trees in the forest, but it did not move.

Flynn came back to his own body, seated in the sweat lodge.  He was breathing as hard as if he had run all the way from Elmira to Lancaster.

Or flown.

He took a sip of cool water and shut his eyes.

Someone touched his shoulder.  Flynn opened his eyes again and saw Keeper’s face, as wrinkled and brown as old leather.  Flynn nodded solemnly.  “I’m all right.”  He told keeper of his vision.

Keeper nodded back.  He squeezed Flynn’s shoulder and handed him a buffalo skin.  Flynn wrapped the skin around his shoulders.  He helped Flynn to his feet.  Together, they left the sweat lodge.  Flynn pulled on the leg and then his trousers.  He walked slowly back to his sister-in-law’s tipi.  Sees Far sat across the fire from him.  Flynn drew a deep breath.  “I saw Pathfinder.”

Sees Far’s head jerked up.  He looked at Flynn questioningly.

Flynn drew a deep breath.  “My daughter is with him.  They are on the prairie.  There are so many buffalo.  It is as it was before.  He is happy, Sees Far.”

Sees Far bowed his head.  “Thank you, Eagle Heart.”

Flynn was silent a long time.  He stared into the fire.  “I saw the White Buffalo Woman.  She looked—she looked a lot like our grandmother, only younger.”

Sees Far raised his head again and smiled.  “I always thought she would.”

Flynn lifted his head.  “She gave me the courage to face the things that hurt me the most.”

Sees Far sighed.  “It’s not fair.  A white man gets to see White Buffalo Woman in a vision, and I don’t.”

Flynn laughed.  He sobered quickly.  “I am more Lakota than I am white.”

Sees Far stared at him a long time.  Slowly, he nodded.  “I think you are right, Little Brother.  I think it was wrong of our father to send you away.”

“Maybe.  But if Pathfinder hadn’t, I never would have met Maggie.”  He shut his eyes.  “I love her so much.”

Sees Far came around the fire and touched his shoulder.  “We all do, Little Brother.  Now get some sleep.”

Flynn nodded.  “Thank you, Sees Far.  For everything you’ve done for me.”

Sees Far smiled and squeezed Flynn’s shoulder once.

Flynn got up slowly.  He left the tipi and walked outside.  He stared up at the clear black sky of the prairie, dusted with more stars than there were numbers to count them.  He wondered where Maggie was, if she looked at the same stars.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

On the third day of April, Maggie watched the black water of the Missouri swirl around the prow of the lead barge.  She looked back.  Ross and Ben were talking amiably, as if they had been friends for years.

They disembarked amid the usual cussing and confusion.  As soon as the wagons were on dry land, they began to move westward.  Ben bossed the outriders, green men who had little experience with guns or trouble.  Maggie watched as Rick Martin, a boy who was even younger than Billy Brewster, rode on the opposite side of the wagon from her.  His head kept swiveling from side to side, and his face was pale.  Ross rode up to the boy and laid his hand on his shoulder.  “Relax, son.  We shouldn’t run into any trouble until we reach the prairie.”

Rick nodded.

The knot in Maggie’s stomach eased a little.  She dropped back and surveyed her charges, one by one.