een taken as a child. She would have been spared that dreadful life with Clint McCloud.”
Lauralee turned and gazed up at the loft, then turned to Dancing Cloud again. “One thing wonderful came from that marriage,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Brian Brave Walker,” Dancing Cloud said thickly.
Lauralee nodded.
A sudden cry of despair wrenched Dancing Cloud and Lauralee apart. They ran toward the ladder that led to the loft, Brian Brave Walker’s hysteria squeezing their insides.
When they reached the loft, Brian Brave Walker was bent over his mother, desperately hugging her.
“You can’t be dead!” he cried. “Tla-no, no! You can’t leave me! Without you I have nothing! You have been my world. I’m sorry I ran away from home. Please forgive me and come back to me now. I will never leave you again!”
Lauralee felt frozen to the floor. Trembling, she placed her hands to her throat. She watched Dancing Cloud go to Brian Brave Walker and clasp his hands to the small brave’s shoulders. With a slight yank he managed to wrench Brian Brave Walker’s grip from his mother.
“Come now, son,” Dancing Cloud said, his voice gentle, but filled with command. “It is time to allow your mother’s spirit to begin its journey on the path to the hereafter. We must help her spirit along by singing songs and praying. Cry, my son. Cry it all out. Then we will go among our people. You will be taught the true ways of mourning that your people, the Cherokee, practice.”
Remembering why his mother had named him “brave,” Brian Brave Walker willed himself to stop crying. He left his mother’s bed, his chin held high, his shoulders squared.
“Show me how it is done,” he said, looking up at Dancing Cloud with his trusting dark eyes. “Show me everything Cherokee. I wish now to be your son. My mother would want it that way.”
Lauralee moved slowly toward Brian Brave Walker. “Child, I also want to help you adjust,” she murmured.
She jumped with alarm and almost fell backward down the ladder when Brian Brave Walker glared up at her, his eyes and pursed lips revealing how he still hated and mistrusted her.
Dancing Cloud was as stunned as Lauralee by the intensity in which Brian displayed his hate for Lauralee. It was hard for Dancing Cloud to accept, or overlook. He wanted to shake the child and scold him for treating Lauralee in such a callous way.
But he knew that this trust and loving had to be learned, not forced on him.
Lauralee stepped slowly around Dancing Cloud and Brian Brave Walker. “Take him downstairs and I shall see to Soft Wind,” she said, her voice breaking. “I shan’t be long.”
“No! No! Leave her be!” Brian Brave Walker screamed, trying to jerk himself free from Dancing Cloud’s tight clasp so that he could go to his mother again. “It’s your fault that she’s dead! Why did you not do more for her? You were supposed to heal her! Instead, you killed her!”
Lauralee grew dizzy beneath such a horrendous tongue-lashing and accusations. She grabbed for her head, her heart racing so fast that she felt it might leap from her throat.
“Brian Brave Walker, you . . .” Dancing Cloud began, but Lauralee interrupted him.
“Leave him be,” she said, stepping past them, toward the ladder. “I shall go and inform those who will prepare Soft Wind’s body for burial that she has left us.”
Dancing Cloud’s eyes were soft with love for her as he nodded and watched her go down the ladder.
Then he knelt down on his haunches and turned Brian Brave Walker to face him. “You are filled with much hate,” he said, his voice firm, yet gentle. “Do you realize the strength of such hate and what it can do to a a-s-ga-ya, man?”
“A . . . man . . . ?” Brian Brave Walker said, his eyes widening. “You are talking to me as though I am a man?”
“Do you feel deeply within your heart that you deserve to be called a man who would one day be a great Cherokee warrior?” Dancing Cloud asked softly.
“Ii, I wish to one day be a Cherokee warrior,” Brian Brave Walker said anxiously. He wiped his eyes dry with the backs of his hands. “I wish to be called a man.”
“Can you say that moments ago when you were shouting at Lauralee and saying unkind words to her that you were being a child, or a man?” Dancing Cloud said. “Did saying such things make you feel big, or little?”
Brian Brave Walker sighed heavily. He shuffled his feet nervously. “I do not want to hate,” he said, glancing over at his mother who lay peacefully and as lovely as he could ever remember. “Mother would not want me to hate. She never even instructed me to hate my father. She said that hate is like a sore that spreads and spreads.”
He looked into Dancing Cloud’s eyes once again. “I want no sores within my body, especially my heart,” he said innocently.
“Then you must place your hate for Lauralee behind you, my son, for it is very misplaced as it is,” Dancing Cloud said thickly.
Brian Brave Walker hung his head for a moment, then he moved slow eyes up at Dancing Cloud. “But I do hate her so much,” he said, his voice breaking.