Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (10 page)

Don't worry
, I signed to Annie. 
He's mad at me, not you.

Annie turned on Rafael at once.  "Why are you mad at Skylar?  He's a nice boy."

Rafael blinked.  He frowned.  "That's not fair," he mumbled.  "I don't speak the hand thing."

"Have you tried my acorn squash?" Aubrey asked brightly.  Bright was a pretty good adjective for him, because he was wearing an all-orange overcoat and a grassy green breechclout, almost painful to look at.  "Good, isn't it?"

I gave him two thumbs up.

The music had ended.  I heard Gabriel's voice just then, loud and calm, carrying over the field.  He started telling a story about the earth's beating heart, a heart that beats in all of us.

"Your uncle's got quite a way with words," Annie said politely.

"Nah," Rafael said.  "He's a dumbass."

Annie raised her eyebrows.  She looked at me.  I grinned impishly.  Rafael only insulted his uncle when he was in a good mood.  I was just grateful he wasn't mad at me anymore.

"Rafael," Aubrey started awkwardly.  I could tell he was trying to be friendly, but I think he found Rafael scary.  I couldn't blame him.  "You're in the school year above ours, aren't you?"

"Not anymore I'm not," Rafael said.  "Got left back after the thing with Sleeping Fox."

Aubrey looked extremely uncomfortable.

"You could have ignored his rants instead of hitting him," Annie said.

Rafael's face clouded over.  "You trying to tell me how to handle myself?"

Annie bristled.  "Oh, now why would I do that?  But when you very nearly blinded the boy--"

"He's fine now!"

I was starting to feel just as uncomfortable as Aubrey.  I put my finger to my lips, begging them to lower their voices.  Rafael looked my way and settled down, sheepish.  By luck, Gabriel had just raised his voice; I don't think anyone heard the argument.

The pauwau lasted at least until midnight, by which point most of us were dead on our feet.  I must have nodded off, because the next thing I knew Granny was shaking me awake.  "Time to go, Skylar," she said, sighing like she'd had the time of her life.  I took the long blanket from her arms and took her by the hand. 

"Sky," Rafael called, catching up with us.

I was fully prepared to wave good night, but the look on Rafael's face stopped me.  He looked vulnerable, the way he had when he'd thought I wasn't going to like the flute he'd made for me.  Granny sighed again, this time with annoyance.

"I didn't blind him," Rafael said.  "Sleeping Fox.  I just decked him, that's all.  He's fine.  He's right over there, look."

I didn't look.  Because Rafael's appeal was frantic and desperate--and wholly unnecessary.  Of course he hadn't blinded William Sleeping Fox.  He'd already said as much.  Why wouldn't I believe him?

It was almost two in the morning by the time I laid my head on my pillow, drowsy and content.  I was halfway to sleep when a thought occurred to me, jolting me awake.  Rafael didn't care whether William Sleeping Fox was blind.  He cared that I was mute.  His father had taken away my voice.  He didn't want me to think that he was like his father.  He didn't want me to feel unsafe.

He had called me Sky.

I'm positive I fell asleep smiling like an idiot, wary that one of these days, my face was going to freeze that way.

10

Trojans

The pauwau was probably the most fun I'd ever had.  I was still thinking about it one morning, dreamy and reminiscent, when I saw something sitting in the middle of the reservation that definitely didn't belong there, as foreign and jarring as a spotted pink elephant: a car.

I wasn't the only one who had noticed it.  In time, practically the entire population of Nettlebush had come out of their houses and surrounded the car, some curious, some amused--many angry.

The car doors opened.  A man and a woman climbed out, the woman tall and willowy, the man short and round with a big forehead.  Neither looked very Native American.  The woman opened her coat and took out a badge.  A wave of uproar sounded instantaneously through the crowd.

Granny, bless her heart, shoved her way to the front of the crowd.  She drew herself up to her full height--which was still inconceivably tiny.  I ran after her, frightened.  To her credit, she didn't shove me away when I seized her arm.  She didn't relent, either.

"Didn't you see the sign outside?" Granny said loudly.  " 'No cars beyond this point.'  Or can't you read?"

"We need to speak with your tribal council, ma'am," said the woman.

Nobody moved at first, restless murmurs traveling on windless air.  Finally a woman stepped forward.  Her jowls were heavy, face perfectly expressionless, gray-white hair pinned back for ease of work.  I guessed she was in her fifties.

"Forgive us," she said.  "But your police have no Constitutional authority here.  If there has been a crime, and you've reason to believe it implicates someone on this reservation, I'll be happy to review it myself."

I had no doubt that this was the Nola Red Clay Rafael had told me about.

"Actually, we're FBI," the man explained.  "And under the Major Crimes Act--"

"I do find it funny," Mrs. Red Clay mused, "that you mention major crimes.  None of you seemed very eager to act on it when we reported a series of murders a decade ago.  I will assume that this present matter concerns money and is therefore of a much higher priority.  Would you like to come inside for tea?  I'm afraid you'll have to move your car first."

Mrs. Red Clay was the epitome of cool.  I wanted to whoop and cheer, physical disability aside, but felt it would have been a betrayal to Granny.  Granny was already eyeing me pretty sternly.

The morning routine resumed once the two FBI agents had moved their car and followed Mrs. Red Clay to her home.  Annie was livid when we went back to her house to start cooking for the day. Her hands shook so badly, she dropped the bowl of white beans she had meant to mash for dinner.  Luckily it was a wood bowl and didn't break.

I grabbed a dish towel and quickly cleaned up the mess. 
What's wrong?
I signed to her, worried.

"Waltzing in here like they own the place, ordering us around--this is our land--
our land
--it's always been
our land
--"

I felt terribly for her.  And I wondered, unable to help myself, whether I wasn't just imposing on something sacred the way those FBI agents were.

Rafael came over to Granny's house at midday for a lunch of hardtack (on which he was still very opinionated) and iced juniper tea.  We sat together on the kitchen floor and he said, "Bet those cops want to question you before the day's done."

I gave him a puzzled look.

"What, you don't think so?  June--your dad runs off and you get dumped in Nettlebush.  July--a bunch of white cops show up.  It's probably something about your dad.  Only makes sense that they'll question you."

I thought he was exaggerating, sort of, because it wasn't a bunch of cops, just two.  And one of them had been black.  Still, I saw his point.  I had already told Officer Hargrove everything I knew.  I didn't know what else the FBI thought that they could glean from me, but I knew that the prospect of another interrogation was downright tiring.  I put down my hardtack.  I didn't feel so hungry anymore.

Rafael grinned at me suddenly, wolfish, with just a hint of shark.  "Wanna go somewhere?" he said.  "They can't ask you questions if you're not here.  We'll stay out the whole day and conveniently turn up at nightfall."

I didn't like the idea of inconveniencing anyone, not on principle, anyway, but I figured those two cops were getting a run for their money at Mrs. Red Clay's house.  And I
was
tired of hearing about how Dad was running around the States on a continental vacation without me.  And then I had a sudden thought, and I smiled in spite of myself; I snatched Rafael's notebook, took the pencil from behind his ear, and scribbled in the margin of an empty page,
Let's go to the cinema.

Rafael read my note.  He tucked his hair behind his ear and worried his bottom lip.  His earring was shaped like a dagger, and when I saw his teeth, I had the strange thought that they were just a little sharper than human teeth were supposed to be.  He ran his tongue over his teeth, still contemplative.  I wondered how that felt.  Another strange thought.

"What, like...movies?  I've never seen one."

In so many ways, Rafael was exactly like the hundreds of kids I had gone to school with all my life.  In other ways, he was more like a bizarre creature dropped on Earth through an intergalactic wormhole.  I couldn't imagine not knowing the magic of the cinema.  It was utter sacrilege, as far as I was concerned, that Rafael didn't know that magic.

I gave Rafael back his notebook and pencil, grabbed his hands, and pulled him to his feet.  I motioned for him to stay put and ran up the stairs to my secret money stash.  I could feel his dubious gaze on my back even from the top of the staircase.  I unearthed my long-forgotten schoolbooks, surprised that they weren't collecting cobwebs and moss, and stripped them of hidden cash.

I darted down the stairs.  Rafael stopped me before I could run out the back door.

"I'll go with you," he said, sounding uncertain.  "But only if you ditch the jacket.  It's hot as hell outside.  You'll cook to death."

I faltered.  I didn't like people looking at my neck.  Rafael had never seen the scars on my throat, and I wasn't keen on changing that.  He was right, though; it was stifling outside.  The climbing heat was due to get worse just before the monsoon season.

Reluctantly, I unzipped my jacket and laid it on the arm of Granny's rocking chair.  Rafael's eyes traveled straight to my throat, just as I had feared, but I didn't entirely blame him; I knew how ugly it looked.  I can remember the first time I saw the mended scars--when I was five, in a hospital bed, giraffes on the walls, Dad holding the hand mirror for me.  They were thick and uneven, deep, two rigid ridges running ear to ear.  Garish and scary and red, just like clown makeup, and just as horrifying.  I don't know why Mom's killer attacked me.  I guess he didn't want me to talk about what I'd seen--which means that he got his way, in the end.  I try not to think about that too much, or else my throat closes up; I feel like I can't breathe.

"Somebody's definitely gonna kick your ass," Rafael said.

I started.  He wasn't looking at my throat anymore.  His gaze was on my left arm, on the atlas moth.  I grinned slowly.  Rafael grinned back.  He tucked his hands sheepishly into his pockets.  "Don't worry," he said solemnly.  "I won't let 'em."

I pretended to swoon.  He punched me in the arm.

I wrote a quick note to Granny and left it on her rocking chair, and Rafael and I sneaked out the back door.  It felt sort of like we were on a stealth mission, glancing over our shoulders, darting underneath trees, sprinting down the road past the hospital and the little black car parked outside.  Rafael grabbed my hand at one point and pulled me behind an oak just as someone passed us by; but it was only Mr. Little Hawk, the very opposite of imposing.  We laughed about that, long and hard, Rafael wiping his eyes, until I couldn't breathe.

We walked the ramps along the turnpike to the bus stop and sat on a bench beneath the sun.  The wind from the traffic kept tossing Rafael's hair into his mouth; he spat out his braids, disgruntled.  The bus pulled up to the bench and we climbed aboard.  Rafael let me sit by the window so I could watch the desert rolling by, great big golden sand dunes and rock nettles and dry brush.  There was only one other passenger on the bus, a little old man wearing a top hat, fast asleep.  Rafael seemed to get a kick out of that and sat sketching the man in his notebook, top hat askew, drool sliding down his chin.  I stole Rafael's pencil and gave the guy a villainous mustache.  Rafael, proprietary, fought me for the pencil until it bounced out of our hands and rolled underneath the seats opposite ours.  It was only fair that I get up and retrieve it, so I did--just as the bus lurched and I fell to my knees.  We both laughed at that.  The old man snorted and the bus driver shot us an ornery look in his mirror.

"Play Greensleeves," Rafael commanded, just as I'd resumed my seat.

I picked up the flute hanging from my neck and blew air at Rafael's face.  The shrill sound woke Mr. Top Hat, who shook his hand at us and started complaining about kids these days.  I worried at that, but he got off the bus a few minutes later.  "You're a hero," Rafael said dryly.  "He might've missed his stop if not for you."

We got off the bus in Paldones, a city I'd visited a couple of times with Dad before, mostly because they've got a real ball park, not like Angel Falls.  Paldones is one of those places where you'd expect John Wayne to star in a cowboy movie, like Rio Bravo, but without the stables.  Rafael looked at everything like he'd never seen it before, and I guess that was true.  I had to pull him along by his hand just to get him to stop staring at a car wash across the street.

We found the cinema, a little stucco building with six theaters, and I prompted Rafael to pick a movie that looked good.  He walked along the outside, scanning the promotional posters, and picked out a horrible-looking chick flick.  I shook my head vigorously.  Definitely not.