The Apache arms reached for me, helped me stand, even when my chest begged for more air.
For the first time since I’d arrived in their village, the Apache started to chant my name. “Aiyana! Aiyana!” they yelled. I felt their hands slapping my back as they chanted.
That’s when I knew I’d won the first challenge. I’d won the race.
I looked frantically for Honovi despite the sweat clouding my eyes but the Apache arms held me captive.
I searched for him through their arms but Honovi was gone.
Instead of Honovi, I found Manaba’s face in the crowd. He stared back at me with his wide, night-black eyes. His head tilted and the corner of his mouth turned up in a smile.
It was probably the closest thing to praise he ever gave.
***
After helping myself to cool water from a clay bowl, I followed Manaba’s wives to their windowless house. There was no time for rest. The second challenge began immediately.
My heart continued to pound like a drumbeat. That’s because I feared the second challenge most of all.
Mercifully, only a small crowd followed us and they remained outside Manaba’s house. Even Olathe’s children stayed outside, although the hushed, curious voices seeped through the animal skins as easily as water over sand. I was finally thankful their home lacked windows from prying eyes.
The second challenge would be judged by Manaba’s wives and was, I assumed, as much a test about the three of us getting along as it was about my ability to weave a basket. I wasn’t worried about Doli but Olathe petrified me. She treated me like an unwelcome pet.
Before the second challenge began, I wanted Diego to stay as translator but he disappeared with Lobo after the race, presumably in search of more elk meat and mountain berry wine to fill his belly.
“After tomorrow,” he told me coolly. “My business with the Apache is finished. But don’t worry, Aiyana,” he added in a gloating tone that made my nostrils flare. He patted the pouch of shiny stones in his shirt pocket. “I’ll be back. Count on it.”
Olathe and Doli gathered all of the necessary tools needed for the basket making challenge and laid them on a mat next to their fire: a clay bowl filled with water, a stone knife, a bone awl, a stack of tree bark, moistened willow leaves, a pile of pine needles, and long thin strips of deerskin. My temples throbbed at this challenge, more than from the race against Haloke. Despite Gaho’s best efforts to teach me, I’d never woven one entire basket. I used to think that weaving them was tiresome and silly. Why sit inside making baskets when there was a river to swim or rocks to explore? Chenoa used to tease me about my lopsided, unfinished creations. I usually tossed them into the fire when it was clear they could serve no useful purpose. And I didn’t care. Not really. Now I’d have given anything to hear my mother’s patient instructions once again, instructions that were passed down from her mother and her mother’s mother before her. Instructions that I never took seriously.
I knelt before the tools and took a deep breath to steady myself.
Olathe and Doli sat on other side, watching my clumsy fingers warily through their long eyelashes. Studying me.
That made it worse.
Finally, Doli nodded and said something in a soothing tone. Olathe simply sighed and shook her head as if her decision on the second challenge had already been made.
But then Doli reached for my hand to stop it from shaking just as Olathe said something sharp that made us both flinch.
Doli returned her hands to her lap, reluctantly, as my fingers continued to tremble and fumble.
I swallowed, hard, and then lifted my chin. I took a deep breath and then reached for the first piece of bark. At least I knew what to do with the bark. I would use it to serve as the basket’s base. I pressed it between my hands, as if to show that I knew what I was doing, but Olathe’s pinched lips told me that I was only trying her limited patience.
Then I reached for willow leaves soaking in a shallow clay bowl. They were long and thin and bent easily in my hands. Doli and Olathe sucked back a collective breath, as if to say that I was on the right path.
But then what?
My anxious eyes met Doli’s. Her eyes drifted to the bone awl.
I picked up the bone awl and flicked the sharp tip with my fingernail.
A hint of a smile flashed across Doli’s lips, and I sat higher on my knees. Slowly, I reached for the deerskin strips. They were no wider than my pinky.
Again, Doli’s eyes smiled back at mine as my hand lingered over them, pretending to choose the finest one.
I chose the thinnest one on the bottom. Carefully, I placed the deerskin strip in one hand and the bone awl in the other. The bone awl was cold in my hand. I knew that I was supposed to thread the deerskin, but how? What was the technique that Gaho had showed me? Was it a stitch? A coil? Did I simply wrap it around one end of the awl? And why couldn’t I have paid attention when she showed me all those times around our hearth? Why couldn’t I have listened, just one time?
Awkwardly, I wrapped the deerskin around one end of the bone awl. Doli’s shoulders caved forward with the anxious breath that she held inside her chest. Olathe’s eyes rolled backwards again with obvious disgust.
That’s when my hands dropped to my knees.
The tools spilled across the dirt, the bone awl rolled toward the fire. Before I reached for them, tears landed on my hands.
Who was I trying to fool? I couldn’t make a basket. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. I’d have had better luck plucking a Sky Wanderer from the sky with my bare hands.
My hands felt thick and clumsy, my fingers, stiff as the bark.
Doli said something to Olathe. I heard my name but I understood nothing else.
Olathe said something back but her tone lacked its usual sharpness.
I sniffed, wiped my nose and cheeks with the back of my hand, and then reached again for the bone awl and the deerskin.
Don’t give up
, I told myself.
Try again. You must try again.
But the second time, Doli’s small hands reached for mine. Her fingers were slender and smooth. She covered my hands with hers. Then she said something to Olathe.
Olathe sighed heavily, shook her head, but finally placed her hands over Doli’s. Olathe’s fingers were long and slightly more wrinkled than ours. We huddled together, saying nothing, our hands joined over the tools.
At first, I didn’t understand. What were they trying to do? Did they want me to stop? Was my clumsiness with their tools too painful to watch? Did they want me to give up?
But then Doli’s small hands guided mine, first to the bone awl and then to the deerskin while Olathe’s hands reached for the willows. She sprinkled them with more water from the clay bowl when they had become dry.
Carefully, Doli’s hands moved over mine as she helped my fingers to wrap the deerskin around the bone awl. With our other hands, we wrapped the deerskin around six pine needles.
I watched the process, mesmerized. Their hands became my hands.
And Doli’s hands were magical. Her fingers knew exactly how to tie and wrap and stitch. Silently, they guided mine as if our hands were joined as one, not two. Before we had to stoke the fire, the three of us stitched the first coil. The basket had begun to take shape.
I smiled at Doli after the first coil, grateful. And then I looked tentatively at Olathe. I nodded at her and was rewarded with a small nod—no smile, but a nod.
As we worked above the basket, Doli and Olathe talked softly and I listened. I didn’t understand their words but the gentle sound of their voices helped to ease the tightness in my chest. They were sisters, after all. Sisters helped each other; they stuck by each other no matter what. No matter how painful.
As I listened to their voices, I thought about Chenoa. I couldn’t help it. I saw her face in my mind and I heard the sound of her sweet voice inside my head. She was a lot like Doli, gentle and kind, whereas I was more like Olathe, stubborn and impatient. We really weren’t so different, Olathe and I. Perhaps that’s why we didn’t get along.
Too soon, the conversation stopped. The basket was finished.
And I was almost sad when we were done. I liked listening to Doli and Olathe, the way their soft voices and airy laughter bounced up and down like water bubbling in shallow creek pools.
Our basket was wide and mostly flat and no higher than my hand. The coils were a mixture of soft browns and greens from the bark and the pine needles. Willow leaves wrapped around the pine needles in a simple but straight pattern. It was quite possibly the most beautiful basket I’d ever seen, all thanks to Doli and Olathe.
Silent, we sat back on our knees, examining our handiwork as embers glowed in the fire. Tears flowed down my cheeks again, not at the basket, but when I looked gratefully into the faces of Doli and Olathe. Their cheeks shined in the firelight.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking. “Thank you, sisters.”
They nodded and smiled, even Olathe, if only reluctantly.
Suddenly Manaba’s house didn’t feel so suffocating. Instead of dreary, the fire that always burned in the center gave the house and their faces a welcoming glow.
As Olathe was about to stand, I reached for her forearm, urgent. “Wait,” I said, pulling her back. “Please. I have something for you.”
Olathe sat back on her knees, confused. She looked at Doli. But Doli smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
Carefully, I reached for the knot behind my neck. I untied Gaho’s necklace and laid it gently in my lap. I slipped off two of the precious white shells.
I knew that they wouldn’t understand my words, but I said them anyway. “This necklace belongs to my mother,” I said. “It belonged to her mother and her mother’s mother before her. I’d like each of you to have a shell as my gift. It will keep us connected always.”
In both hands, I presented the first shell to Doli.
Doli shook her head. She tried to push hers back but I pressed it gently against her chest. “No,” I said. “Please. I insist. Please keep it.”
Slowly, Doli opened her hand and accepted the shell.
In both hands, I gave the second shell to Olathe.
Olathe nodded at me and smiled as she studied my shell in the palm of her hand. She said something to me in a soft voice that I didn’t understand. But then she removed her own necklace before threading the white shell between the other shiny red and yellow stones that lined her beautiful necklace.
And so, in a strange way, we became sisters in the firelight at the unlikeliest of times. In the unlikeliest of places.
Then Olathe rose from the mat and walked to the flap at the door. When she lifted it, the sky, incredibly, had already turned a darker shade of blue. The sky would be black soon and I would have to leave for the forest to complete the final challenge. The cold outside air that invaded the house made me shiver. Olathe said something that I didn’t understand but I assumed she was going to find Manaba and tell him the good news about our basket.
While I was alone with Doli, I grabbed her hand, urgently. “Please, Doli. There’s something I need for you to do for me. You’ve been so kind.” My voice cracked. “I don’t know who else to ask.”
Doli stared back at me, wide-eyed. Frightened.
Quickly, I removed another white shell from my necklace. I pressed it to my heart and then I said, “Honovi. I need you to give this to Honovi. Can you do that? Do you understand?” My eyes searched hers. “No one will let me see him. You’re my only chance.”
At first she shook her head and my throat tightened.
But I persisted. “Please,” I said. “You must understand. You must help me. Please, Doli. Please.” I placed the white shell against my chest, over my heart. “Honovi,” I said again. “Honovi.”
“Honovi,” Doli said. Her voice struggled to wrap around Honovi’s name. But she said it. And some of the anxiety drained from her eyes.
“Yes,” I said, smiling through more tears. “Honovi. Please give it to him.” I nodded over her head in the direction of the healer’s house.
Did she understand? Would she do it?
“Give,” Doli said, although I wasn’t completely certain if she understood or if she was merely repeating my words. But then she said, “Doli give.” She held the second shell between her hands and made a show of giving it to me.
I nodded, hopeful.
And then I threw my arms around her, my new sister, as more of my tears sprinkled on her shoulder. I bit my lower lip to choke back desperate sobs.
Doli stroked the back of my head, rocking me gently in her arms, as my breathing slowed.
She might not have understood my words but I had to believe that Doli understood my meaning. That hope was all that I had left.
Olathe and Doli made a proud display of showing off our basket in front of Manaba and the rest of the Apache.
I had to admit, even I was proud. Odder, I began to feel less like a stranger. I wondered whether with more time if I could actually feel like I belonged. It was tempting.
I smiled as I watched their faces, particularly the other Apache women, as they touched and admired the basket. They lifted it against the sunlight, judging its durability. The basket coils were wound perfectly and not a single pine needle or willow leaf was wasted in its creation. When Manaba poured a gush of water from a clay plot through the basket as the final test, not a single drop leaked through. And across the faces and shoulders of his people, I watched a tiny smile flash across Manaba’s face. He meant for me to see it. I’d done well. I’d passed the second challenge.
Only one remained.
After Manaba and his wives slipped back inside their house and the other Apache returned to their own homes and daily activities, I was left uncharacteristically alone outside.
On purpose? Was this another test?
I wondered.
Test or not, it wasn’t an opportunity I intended to waste.
I walked to the other end of the village to the healer’s house. Heavy smoke continued to billow in grey and white clouds from the hole at the top. Another Apache, a broader one with an even sterner face, stood guard at the entrance. It was so tempting to simply walk past him and march right into the healer’s house and demand to see Honovi, but I knew how my efforts would be rewarded. It would only end badly. I would be labeled a foolish girl and banished to Manaba’s house until my third challenge began. Or worse, perhaps I would be beaten.
And I couldn’t take the chance of angering the healer or Manaba, not when I was so close. No, I needed to rely on Doli to deliver my shell to Honovi. Honovi would understand its meaning.
So instead I walked in a large circle around the healer’s house, picturing Honovi inside. Was he sleeping? Awake? Was he better? Was that his face at the race? Or was I dizzy from exhaustion?
Instead of stopping, I walked past the healer’s house till I reached the last row of dwellings closest to the creek. I proceeded to the furthest end of the creek near the waterfall for some privacy and a bath.
It was there that I found him, sitting propped up against a willow tree, sleeping.
Diego.
He was snoring. Loudly. The sounds from his mouth and nose drowned out most of the gentle babble from the creek. His lips fluttered and sputtered whenever he drew back a breath. He sounded just like an ornery javalina.
Diego’s long legs were extended and crossed casually at the ankles. His feet were bare; his boots sat next to the tree. His arms hung haphazardly at his sides as if they had grown tired of hugging his growing girth. His dusty black hat covered the front of his face, and Lobo was missing. There was no one else near the tree except Diego and me.
I stood at his feet, watching. Waiting for him to stir. But only his lips sputtered from all of his snoring and wheezing.
Carefully, I crept to his side and studied his shirt. It was dotted with elk fat and berry stains and I grimaced. He snored like javalina and ate like one, too. His belly rolled over his belt with each exhale. He looked like a bloated fish.
I crouched over him, lower, studying his opened shirt.
And I barely allowed myself a breath when I saw it: the pouch filled with shiny stones. It peeked at me from inside his shirt.
It would be so easy
, I thought.
My eyes darted alongside the creek.
Empty
.
And then past the tree.
There wasn’t a single Apache anywhere.
Just Diego and me. And his pouch of precious stones.
I swallowed, hard.
Carefully, my fingertips felt the opening of his shirt. The fabric was rough like sand and smelled of smoke and sweat like the rest of him. My nose tickled from his stench but I didn’t dare breathe too deeply.
Slowly, quietly, I opened his shirt wider with the bottom of my thumb, till the pouch was almost completely exposed. I grazed it with my fingertips. I could feel the outline of the hard stones inside.
Suddenly, Diego snorted and my hand snapped back.
What would I say if he suddenly woke
? My mind raced.
Manaba suddenly requires a translator?
But Diego’s snorting returned to steady snoring and I had to squeeze my eyes shut for a heartbeat to regain my nerve. Then I watched his shiny wine-stained lips part with each breath.
It would be so easy…
I just need to get close enough.
My fingertips reached for the pouch again. It rose and fell on his chest, light as sand. With my thumb and forefinger, I slowly, carefully, quietly, began to slide it away from his shirt.
At first, I barely moved it the width of a tiny black hair on his chest.
But then I got braver when most of the pouch was exposed. I slid it to the middle of his chest, careful not to let it rest too heavy against his skin and startle him.
I smiled when I had the pouch squarely in my palm. I lifted it, just as his chest exhaled from another breath. I smiled at the pouch. The deerskin was dusty and dirty, exactly like his shirt, but inside it contained everything I needed.
Clutching the pouch in my hand, I began to back away from his body, first one toe, then the ball of my foot, then my heel, over twigs and pebbles, never making the slightest sound. It was like I became a cloud, weightless and silent. Even Honovi would be impressed.
Honovi
.
All of the triumph in my smile disappeared.
Just as Diego stirred.
As his lips slapped together, I leapt behind the tree, wincing when I landed too heavy on a twig.
Crack!
The dry stick broke in two underneath my foot.
The tree, mercifully, was wide enough to hide me completely. I crouched behind it, waiting, hoping, begging Hunab Ku to protect me.
But then I smiled at the sky when Diego’s snores returned, drowning out all the other sounds around us.
Just as I was about to turn on tiptoe for Manaba’s house, a sliver of something shiny flashed across my eyes. It poked out from Diego’s shoe. And it baited me for a closer look.
Curious, I bent closer for a better look.
It was Diego’s knife, the one with a shiny point and handle as smooth as Gaho’s skin.
The knife that almost killed Honovi.
A quiet rage brewed all over again inside my chest when I remembered Diego’s cold hands on my skin and how they wrapped so cruelly around Honovi’s neck.
I had to have it.
The knife would be useful, too
, I thought quickly, suppressing the memory of that night, mostly to stay calm.
There will come a wiser time for revenge.
Sucking back a breath, I slinked backwards around the tree, one toe at a time. My skin grazed the raised bark edges until I finally reached Diego’s shoes. Like everything else he wore, his strange black shoes were dusty and stained. Carefully, I bent over his shoe and waited for him to stir. If it was possible, his snores grew louder. Without much additional effort, they could silence the entire forest.
But then, quick as a lightning bolt, I reached inside his shoe and plucked out his knife before Diego inhaled his next greedy breath.
I stuffed the pouch and the knife inside the front of my dress and tightened my belt to hold them against my chest.
And then without so much as another glance at Diego, I raced back to Manaba’s house, my feet barely touching the ground.
Now Diego will need me more than I’ll need him.