“You are finally awake,” the young brave said, his voice filled with a sudden relief. “You have been asleep for way too long.” He hung his head for a moment, then looked slowly up at Lauralee again. “You slept soundly like my mother. Then she died.”
He eased onto the edge of the bed and placed his tiny arms around Lauralee’s neck. “Do not die,” he sobbed. “I need you to be my mother. I am sorry for having hurt you with my words and actions. I now know that my life would be empty without you. I no longer care if your skin is white like my true father’s. The difference is in the heart. Yours is pure. His was black and evil.”
Touched to the very core of herself over Brian Brave Walker’s declaration of love for her, Lauralee’s eyes filled with tears. This made it easier for her to brush aside her sadness over having lost one child, for she had just gained another!
“Don’t cry, Brian Brave Walker,” she said, stroking his coarse, midnight-dark hair. “I understand why you felt the way you did. Shhh. Please don’t cry. Everything is going to be all right.”
“No, it is not,” Brian said, slipping out of her arms. He gazed sadly down at her. “The baby you carried inside your body. It is dead. I feel to blame. I treated you so badly. Your hurt feelings made the baby come from inside you, did it not?”
“Heaven’s no,” Lauralee said, gasping softly. She placed her hand gently on his cheek. “Dear, I’m not sure why the child was taken from me. All that I know for certain is that it was God’s choice.”
“Your God was mean to you,” Brian Brave Walker said, wiping his eyes dry with the backs of his hands. Then he smiled at Lauralee. “But you still have two children,” he proudly announced. “Myself and Hope.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the cradle, where Hope slept.
Then he looked guardedly at Lauralee. He had yet to hold the baby. He had most certainly refused to look at her face. To do so would hurt him too much. He had not long ago been forced to say farewell to his own baby sister.
The worst of Brian’s feelings and fears and the fruit of many of his nightmares was that his evil father may have taken his sister out into the forest and left her for the wild animals to feed on.
He did know for certain that his sister had been taken from his mother. His father had stated that he would do this. By having said that, it had even at that moment been the same as done. His father’s hate for both·Brian Brave Walker and his baby sister had been that deep.
“I shall get Hope and bring her to you,” Brian Brave Walker said, knowing that doing what he had so adamantly refused to do before might be enough to prove to Lauralee the depths of his feelings.
“You will bring Hope to me?” Lauralee asked, her eyes wide. She had yet to see Brian Brave Walker even get near the child, much less take it from its cradle. That meant so much to Lauralee. So very much.
She wiped tears from her eyes when he anxiously nodded.
“Then, yes, I do wish to hold her,” she murmured. She moaned from pain as she tried to get more comfortable on the bed, so that it would be easier to hold the child.
Brian Brave Walker crept over to the cradle. His little heart throbbed with a deep longing for his sister when he gazed down at the sleeping child. She was wrapped snugly in a blanket, a loose corner drawn down partially over her face so that he could not actually see her face.
He turned his eyes to Lauralee. “Susan Sweet Bird has gone to her dwelling to prepare corn bread dumplings and bean bread for our supper,” he said, purposely delaying picking up the child. “Father . . . Dancing Cloud? He has gone to sing to the heavens.”
He paused and listened. “He sings no more,” he murmured. “Perhaps he will come now and discover that you have awakened.”
“I heard him singing even when I was still partially asleep,” Lauralee said, the remembrance making her feel warm and wonderful inside, and very, very wanted. “My Cherokee warrior is gifted in many ways. I am sure I will discover many more of his hidden talents after we become man and wife.”
“The wedding will be soon now,” Brian Brave Walker said matter-of-factly. “Father told me that as soon as you are well, we will have us a wedding and a large celebration. I will even dance with other young braves. Will that not be a grand time for us all, Mother?”
Lauralee sucked in a wild breath of wonder when he addressed her as “Mother” as easily as it had been for the words to slip across his lips.
And Father?
He definitely looked to Dancing Cloud as his father.
Yes, now they were a true family.
And so they should be.
They had all gone through hell and back to have such, to become, a family.
His arms trembling, Brian Brave Walker bent over the cradle and slipped them beneath the child. In his mind’s eye he recalled the first time his mother had allowed him to pick up his small sister. He had grown accustomed to the feel, had
even rocked her in his mother’s rocker. He had so enjoyed having a sister.
“Sweet baby,” he whispered as he so very carefully lifted Hope from the cradle. “I will not drop you.”
Lauralee scarcely breathed as she watched Brian Brave Walker. This might be the first time for him to have ever held a child.