White Fire

“I do not know,” Gray Feather said somberly as he knelt before the fireplace. He placed small twigs on the grate, and then larger logs. “But this is now your home. We will stay until White Fire returns.”

Dancing Star moved slowly into the bedroom.

When she saw the child’s crib against the far wall, she went to it and stared at it. Her gaze settled on a small horse that had been carved from wood. She inched her hand toward it, then stopped when Gray Feather came and stood beside her.

“‘That crib belonged to White Fire’s son when he was a smaller child than he is now,” Gray Feather said. He saw his granddaughter’s interest in the tiny wooden horse. “The horse also belongs to his son, but I am sure the child would share it with you if he were here and he saw your interest in it.”

He picked up the toy and handed it to his granddaughter; then he led her back into the living room.

“How long will we have to wait before White Fire comes home?” Dancing Star asked as Gray Feather sat down on the blankets before the fire, then gathered her onto his lap and held her.

“As long as it takes for him to return,” Gray Feather said sullenly as he took a quick look toward the door.

When he heard the cry of an eagle outside, not that far from the open door, a chill rode up and down his spine.

He could not help but think that the eagle’s cry was some sort of an omen. Perhaps White Fire had run into trouble after he had left the village.

Yet there was no proof of that except that he was not here in his lodge. He could not send out his warriors to look for him on such a foolish notion as that. Surely White Fire was all right. He would arrive home safe and would embrace Dancing Star as his birth daughter.

“Tell me again how you came to know White Fire,” Dancing Star asked, gazing up at Gray Feather. “He is not Chippewa, so why do you care so much for him?”

Gray Feather sighed. “There is so much about the young brave that reminds me so much of myself when I was his age,” he murmured. “And too often I have dreams that set him at my right side in council, as though he is my son by birth. Our hearts became as one almost the moment I set eyes on him when he came to our village in friendship.” He swallowed hard. “And your mother loved him.”

“You did not have a son, only a daughter,” Dancing Star said, a sadness entering her eyes.

“No, I did not have a son, and now I do not even have a daughter,” Gray Feather said.

He gazed into Dancing Star’s eyes and could not find the words to tell her that he no longer even had a granddaughter. The moment Song Sparrow had placed the coil of her hair around her neck and chose the cowardly way out of life; she had yanked Dancing Star from Gray Feather’s arms and heart.

“I will always love you, Grandfather,” Dancing Star murmured, as though she had read his thoughts.

Taking these last moments with her, before he left her to live separately from himself and his people, Gray Feather hugged her tightly to him. “No matter what I feel forced to do, I will always love you, too, Granddaughter,” he said, his voice breaking.

When she kissed him softly on the cheek, that part of his heart that had been left intact after the discovery of his daughter, broke into shreds.

Chapter 29

She bid me take life easy,

as the grass grows on the weirs;

But I was young and foolish,

and now am full of tears.

—William Butler Yeats

His wrists and ankles raw from the chains and the weight of the balls holding them down, White Fire hung from the stone wall, the bars on three sides of him a crude reminder of what his fate might soon be.

Stripped of all his clothing, and with welts on his wrists from trying to get free of the chains, he stared up at the window at the highest point of his cell.

The sky was blue with only a few puffs of white clouds sailing past. He could hear the activity in the courtyard, reveille having been sounded some time ago.

His stomach aching, he fought against his mounting hunger, for there were more important things on his mind at this moment than food; than even his own welfare. Flame.

He wondered where she was now. All that he knew was that she was being sent upriver to a convent.

And then there was Michael. White Fire hung his head and sighed as in his mind’s eye he saw his son and the trust that he had finally gained from him, which had been torn asunder by Michael’s adopted parents during White Fire’s absence.