“You will never be the man your father is.” Ishara twisted the blade. Blood bubbled from between Aloran’s lips. “And I will never, ever be your prize.”
She used her foot to kick the chieftain’s son off her blade, and he fell to the ground with a sickening thud. Dead.
Relieved, Ishara spun back to Mechan, dropping to her knees beside his prone form.
“Ishara.” Her father commanded her with just one word, but her love for Mechan kept her securely by his side.
“Father,” Ishara whispered between her tears. “This is my husband, and I love him.” She looked away from Mechan and back to her father. “I cannot leave him.”
“What did you say?” Ishara brushed a hand over Mechan’s top-knotted hair and tried to tug him closer to her, cradling him. Behind her, Ishara’s father bristled; she felt the tension emanating from where he stood. But her plight for her husband outweighed the guilt that she felt for marrying—no, loving—the enemy.
“My husband. He is my husband and I am his wife.” Ishara leaned down and kissed the dying man’s forehead. “Mechan…please do not die here.”
The chieftain grunted, his eyes rolling to look at Ishara and her looming father. With another cough, more blood escaped from his mouth. His lips moved, but another cough caught them and buried them beneath a wheeze. She leaned closer to hear him.
“My…my people…will stop fighting…if our union can bring peace.” He spoke to Ishara, but his eyes remained on her father.
“Tell him to speak up.” The Oolani chieftain demanded.
“Father. Please.” Ishara lifted Mechan’s chin with her hand and tried to clear the blood from his lips. “He says that his—our—people will stop fighting if my marriage to him can bring peace.”
Women started to emerge from the tent where they took shelter. The once bonded slave women of the Manahotchi ran toward their warrior husbands, tears in their eyes. In some cases, even their daughters followed, having also been captured. Not one Manahotchi tried to stop them. Their eyes were transfixed on their deteriorating leader and the leader of their enemies.
Mechan coughed again, his breathing raspy and ragged.
Ishara cradled him closer, tears streaking down her cheeks. “Father, please. He does not wish to fight any more. See? The women have been let free. He’s changed the ways of his stony, stubborn heart.” A sad smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “A very stubborn heart.”
Mechan began to fade. She watched her husband as his eyes fluttered close, then strained to stay open.
Her father turned his head and noticed the women returning to their husbands, brothers, fathers. He saw the corpse of Mechan’s son, slain by Ishara to defend her lover. With a sigh at the sight of his mourning daughter, the Oolani chieftain relented. “Very well. For you, my daughter, we will seal peace between our clans. There will be no more fighting, as you have become a Manahotchi wife, and therefore, the Manahotchi have become our family.”
Chapter Eleven
The vision of Ishara blurred, faded, then sharply came back to view. Mechan struggled to keep her in his gaze, to focus on her so that he would not feel the searing pain threatening to claim his body. He could not leave her like this. She would be as miserable as he had been after his wife’s death. He had to hold on.
Mechan strained to focus on his wife, who now held him like he was a child. Her embrace comforted him, lulled him. As she leaned forward, the lion’s tooth necklace dangled above her perfect collarbone, which framed the delicate part of her beautiful neck.
The necklace.
Mechan gasped for air and reached up for it. Ishara’s hand clasped over his, stopping him, as if she didn’t know that his movements were voluntary. Perhaps she thought that his mind had begun to let go of sense, as it often happens before death sets in.
A Manahotchi woman knelt down beside Ishara. Realizing what Mechan reached for, her mouth dropped open and she turned to rip the necklace off Ishara’s neck.
“Dahlia! What are you doing? Let go.”
Dahlia rose before Ishara could grab the necklace back. Relief swept through Mechan’s weakening body.
“No, Ishara. You do not understand.” Dahlia held the tooth up in her hand, making it visible to those who stood around the mournful scene. “A great healer came to this tribe. We did not know where she was from. She kept her face covered and a thick cloak shrouded her form.” Turning the tooth over in her hand, the Manahotchi woman continued her story. “She took this tooth from the chieftain’s wife and pricked her finger with it. After the tooth was tipped in blood, she told us that ‘where true love survives, so will life.’”
Ishara wiped her cheeks again. Tears fell on Mechan. They were warm. Pitiful. “I do not understand.”
Lifting his hand, the chieftain summoned the will to speak. “Ishara…you…must prick my skin with the tooth.”
Even though Dahlia held the tooth out to Ishara, the grieving wife did not take it.
“It is not the time to be stubborn, Little One.” Mechan touched her face, his fingers falling down the length of her cheek. “Trust me.”
Ishara’s green eyes shifted back to the tooth Dahlia extended toward her. Taking it into her hand, she sniffled and mumbled softly, “Do not call me that.”
She smiled a perfect smile. Mechan could happily die if he wished to. But spirits how he wanted to stay with her.
Without much warning, Ishara sliced the tooth into his skin, immediately drawing forth crimson.
He could hear the blood rushing to his head, gathering between his ears. It lulled him away. Away. Away.
He saw Ishara in gold, shackled. Beautiful. Everything about her was beautiful. He loved her too much to let go. He needed her. She was the part of his life that had been missing for all the years after his first wife’s death. She was the reason why his heart beat, why his veins pulsed. She could infuriate him and defeat him and love him all at once.
The blood stopped. A cold wave seized his body, shocking his very core. Mechan was numb. Dead. He couldn’t even hear the way Ishara cried just before his lids closed and the world fell out from under him.
* * *
Where true love survives, so will life.
Ishara held her dead husband. Racking sobs shook her body. She had never cried this way before. She never cried in front of people before. Or her father. It showed weakness, but without Mechan, she was just that—weak—and she did not care what anyone else thought.
“Mechan. Mechan!” She shook him by the shoulders, but his head only wobbled back and forth, dropping like an infant’s head would when not supported. “Wake up! You said to trust you. You said to trust you!”
“Ishara…” Her father put a comforting hand upon her shoulder, but she shrugged it off.
“Do not touch me.” Barking the order at her father would also be a high offense, if it mattered any more. Nothing mattered anymore. “He said to trust him. You said it would work.”
Dahlia sunk away from Ishara’s side, stood, and melted somewhere behind the crowd of people. Ishara continued to sob, tears falling then tracing down Mechan’s face. “Please…please do not leave me. Do not leave me.”
When she looked at him, all she saw was a shell. Her husband no longer lived inside his body. His spirit left. He left. Ishara settled the body on the floor, then leaned over and pressed her lips against Mechan’s. They were still warm, only the edges felt cool. “How will I live without your love?” The words were whispered to the corpse as secrets would be whispered.
Behind her, she heard the crowd of Oolani and Manahotchi gasp. She turned to look at what they would dare make a commotion over while she mourned the chieftain’s loss. Her lips parted to scold, she did not care who she yelled at or why, she just needed to yell. Scream at the top of her lungs. Grieve.
But when she turned, she came face-to-face with a lioness. The same one from the cave. Its dark, soulful eyes stared through Ishara into her very spirit. The beast moved past her and crouched down beside Mechan. “No, don’t!”
The lioness opened her mouth and roared, its voice filling the camp. Ishara sat paralyzed on the ground, unsure of what she could do. She continued to roar, over and over again, as if encouraging Mechan to come back to this world.
His toes moved.
His toes moved?
Ishara blinked, leaning forward to observe. Surely she hadn’t seen that.
Fingers moved.
His legs jerked once. His arms twitched after that.
“Mechan?”
The lioness moved away from the chieftain, stared at Ishara again, and then prowled away back into the trees.
The chieftain lived.
“Ishara?”
She sprung forward, tears in her eyes, and knelt over Mechan’s body again. “You…you are alive. How? You were dead.”
Her husband smiled, sitting up. His powerful arms, once lifeless, wrapped around her form and she felt small and safe. “Didn’t I tell you to trust me?”
“Yes, but you died, Mechan.” Ishara buried her head against his chest and closed her eyes, urging herself not to break out in tears again.
“You are stubborn.” He kissed the crown of her head and squeezed her close.
The Oolani chieftain cleared his throat as he looked down at the two. Having witnessed the whole scene, Ishara noticed that the wrinkles around his eyes seemed softer. His pensive expression gave way to one of love and understanding.
Mechan rose first, then helped his wife to her feet. She clasped his hand, unwilling to let go of him and tensely waited for the formal introduction to happen. Father and husband. Chieftain to chieftain.
“My daughter’s husband, I greet you.”
“The spirits and the Manahotchi welcome you here.” The formal greeting was supposed to happen between tribes before one set foot on the other’s land. Mechan shook the Oolani man’s arm, grasping around the wrist as was traditional.
“Let this day start a new age for our people.” Ishara’s father turned toward the crowd and raised Mechan’s arm up into the air. “Let this lesson in love serve as a lesson for us all.”
Ishara smiled at her father and husband. Though the camp lay in ruins. The Manahotchi men brought out the celebratory deerskin drums and began to pound on them. Dahlia peeked out and smiled from around the people in the crowd, who now all clasped hands in greeting, no longer enemies.
The drums pounded along with Ishara’s heart, which beat for her people, Oolani and Manahotchi. Most of all, it beat for Mechan. She felt the pulse in her fingertips as they pressed into his palm. The Oolani chieftain’s daughter smiled and let the beat of the drums carry her away into her new life.
~ About the Author ~
Leia Rice resides in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband and her dog, Sailor, and primarily writes historical fiction and women’s fiction. She holds her Master’s in writing from the Johns Hopkins University.
Find out more about Leia Rice here:
Twitter: leiarice
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