For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley
Wolf Hawk had just returned home from the secluded spot where he always went to speak his private early evening prayers, when he heard a woman’s voice outside his tepee.
He recognized the voice.
It was Dancing Fire, the mother of twin braves who were the age of thirteen winters.
Wolf Hawk was always ready to open his home and heart to Dancing Fire, for she had been widowed not so long ago. Her husband, Short Bow, had died in the river when his canoe capsized during a storm.
Wolf Hawk sensed that something was not right with Dancing Fire, for there was distress in her voice when she spoke his name.
Normally she had the soft voice of fresh, new breezes that came to this land in early spring.
She was as dear and sweet as those winds, and when he realized that something was causing her distress, he always did what he could to ease it.
He hurried to his entrance flap and shoved it aside. He looked out on a woman of beauty, yet one whose face was lined now with wrinkles that had appeared after she’d lost her true love in the river.
In her dark eyes was a renewal of that distress.
“What is it?” Wolf Hawk asked, searching her eyes. “Why do you come to me with such worry, not only in your voice, but also your eyes?”
“My sons,” Dancing Fire said, nervously wringing her hands. “Neither has returned from their hunt. They have been gone for far too long now. I fear something bad has happened to them. Oh, Wolf Hawk, were I to lose them, too…”
“Do not think such a thing,” Wolf Hawk said, gently interrupting her. He reached out and took her hands in his in an effort to calm her. “You said they left to hunt. How long ago?”
“Early this morning,” Dancing Fire murmured, lowering her eyes in shame that she had waited so long to come to her chief for help.
But she had not wanted to embarrass her sons should they appear only moments later in their lodge.
“They took no provisions with them,” she blurted out as she looked quickly up at Wolf Hawk. “They wanted to prove they could care for themselves without carrying provisions from home to ensure their comfort. It was just another way to prove to their mother that they were brave like their father. They are brave, but there are so many things that could harm them while they are away from the safety of our village.”
She swallowed hard, then said, “My chief, they are so young,” she said softly. “They long to walk in the moccasins of a warrior when they are, in truth, only young braves.”
“You should not lose trust in the abilities that were taught them by their father. They know how to survive away from the safety of their lodge and people,” Wolf Hawk said. He lowered his hands from hers. “They probably were enjoying their hunt so much that they decided not to return home as soon as they had initially planned. I am certain you are just allowing a mother’s fears to consume you needlessly. The young braves will surely arrive home anytime now.”
“Although I know that you are speaking what you think is truth, in my heart I feel a strange disconnection, as though my sons no longer have breath to connect them to me,” Dancing Fire said, tears filling her eyes. “Please listen to what my heart is telling me. Go find them and guide them back to safety.”
Only now, as she persisted in asking him to do something he had already said was probably not needed, did Wolf Hawk understand the depth of her fear. Usually, when he spoke comforting words to a mother, she accepted them and went back to her home and sometime later discovered that he was right, and she was wrong.
But this time he saw that he might be the one who was wrong. He could not take the chance that the two braves might be in trouble.
“Say no more,” Wolf Hawk replied. He reached for her and drew her into his gentle, comforting embrace. “I will gather together several warriors and we will go and find your sons. We will tell them how they have worried their mother. We will bring them home to you. Soon.”
She clung to him. Sobs wracked her body. “Thank you, my chief,” she cried. “Oh, wa-do, thank you. You must find them. They must be safe. They are all that I have left in this world.”
“No, you are wrong about that,” Chief Wolf Hawk said. He stepped back a little so that he could look down into her eyes. “You have your chief and all of your Bird Clan, who are of your extended family. We are all as one. If you are afraid, so is every one of our people afraid. If you laugh, we all follow you in laughter. Today when we bring your sons home to you, we will all celebrate their safe return with you. Remember this, Dancing Fire. You are never, never alone.”
“Ho, yes, I do kno
w that,” Dancing Fire murmured. She swallowed hard. “It is just that my lodge is so empty without my family to fill it with love and laughter. I have lost one voice, my husband’s. I cannot lose two more.”
“You go to your home and do your beadwork while I gather warriors to find Eagle Bear and Little Bull,” he said.