The Five Dollar Mail Book 3: The Road Home

19: Icemelt

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. Chapter artwork found image.  All graphics by me.

Book 1: The Green, Book 2: Lynch's Boys, Book 3: The Road Home, and the Riders & Kickers Anthology are available on Amazon under the name Regina Shelley. So if you hate waiting for chapter posts and/or want a more polished read, the finished product is available now.

Still Water Woman shouldered open the door flap to her lodge, holding tight to the basket of supplies she'd gotten from Two Elk. The last of the afternoon sun was spilling past, shafting down into the smoke flap and pooling shadows deep inside the tipi. She stood still in the smoke-scented half-light, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness.

Jesse slumped against the backrest nearest the door, his head lolling back and his gleaming hair spilling over his shoulders like the sunlit river that had brought him. She could hear the soft rhythm of his breathing, heavy and slow as he drowsed. His bound hands hung limp against the lodgepoles. She was relieved to see that he hadn't appeared to have struggled, instead succumbing to his weariness and just drifting off to sleep. He had been angry and dismayed about his captive state, and she regretted that it had to be done, but there was no helping it. He was stronger now, and she had no reason to trust him. Especially inside her lodge, around Runs Laughing. When Two Elk had told him he could instead be outside, and subject to abuse and violence, he'd apparently decided to not make it harder on himself and calmed down. They'd just had too much trouble with the wasicu of late, and everyone was jumping at everything.

In order to give them something to tether their captive to, the inner lining of the lodge had been hitched up to expose the lodgepoles where Jesse was sleeping. A chilly draft was creeping into the tipi as the warmth from the retreating sun faded and she frowned. The last thing she wanted was for him to get chilled.

She knelt before him, touching his shoulder and softly saying his name. He startled awake, his blue eyes wild, as if he'd just been snatched from a troubling dream.

"Jesse," she said again, hoping the sound of his name would calm him, even though she knew he wouldn't be able to understand most of the rest of her words. "I am going to check your injuries. Do not be afraid." Her words felt empty as she said them. Why should he not be afraid? He wants to go back to his sister, to these people who are his family. He thinks we might kill him. He does not trust us, just as we do not trust him.

She settled onto her knees in front of him and reached for his injured hand, bound to the lodgepole and wrapped in a worn bandage. The cut had been dirty and abraded and she had been glad he was still unconscious the first time she'd cleaned it and stitched it shut. It was reddened and tender, but didn't look to be infected.

He said something she didn't understand, and she turned her attention to his face. There was a betrayed pain in his eyes that made her heart sink. She didn't understand his words, but she understood his heart. She marveled at his voice, deep and husky and expressive. She wasn't sure what she'd expected him to sound like when he lay still and deathlike in her lodge, but hearing him speak for the first time after he had regained consciousness had surprised her. "Jesse..." she said softly. "You will not make it out of the village if we let you go now." She gently rubbed salve into the stitched cut, feeling his eyes on her as she worked, before binding his palm in clean wrappings. His fingers were long, his palms callused. He is used to hard work. That much is easy to see. She turned to his knee, unlacing the short piece of rawhide she'd used at the knee of the leggins Eagle Bone had given him. He had taken a brutal blow to his leg at some point, and it was abraded and still a little swollen.

"Still Water Woman." He said the words she knew meant her name in his own language. She turned, meeting his eyes again. He twisted his wrists against the rawhide binding them to the lodgepoles, shaking his head and murmuring.

Freeing him could be a very big mistake. Eagle Bone will be very angry. But then, this is not Eagle Bone's lodge. Her hand went to her knife and he drew in a deep breath, watching her, his eyes never leaving hers. She noticed that there was a quickening of his breath, a faint widening of his pupils, and she felt a thin, exquisitely painful pang go through her heart. Does he think I mean him harm after all this? She carefully slid the blade against the rawhide and sliced through it, freeing his hand. And do I care that he, this stranger that came back to life from the edge of Death in my lodge, that dared to touch the sky, thinks that?

She warily caught his wrist, rubbing circulation back into it, keeping a grip on her knife with the other hand. Yes. I do care. It makes me unhappy that this man who has been carried to us by the river is now a frightened captive in my lodge. She wondered what her husband, They Fear Him, would think of this if he were to look down on the from the Soul Road, and she stopped herself. Let They Fear Him go, she reminded herself. He has gone from this life and I am still here. I am done with my grieving. Time to live again with my own People. Two Elk says it is not good to grieve this long.

Her eyes were suddenly hot, and the breath she drew was shaking and unsteady. Jesse had gently turned his hand, closing his long fingers over hers and ducking his head to better see her face. "Hey..." he said, his brow furrowing, the words he was murmuring soft and concerned.

He could have reached over and tried the knot at his other wrist. He could have reached for her knife. He did neither of those things. Instead, he let go of her hand, and softly brushed her cheek with his fingers before folding a lock of her shorn hair behind her ear.

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