The Five Dollar Mail Book 3: The Road Home

105: Hokahey

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. Chapter artwork of Still Water Woman made of found images by me. 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.

This is one of my "ambrotypes", made of found images. This one of Still Water Woman is from a picture of Yankton Sioux activist Zitkala-Sa, who worked towards the improvement of Native American policies. She wrote a Native Amerian opera, called The Sun Opera, in 1913. Giving her waist+ length tresses a haircut for this portrait of Still Water Woman was a challenge. I love the incredible strength and determination in her face, and the direct, intense gaze in her eyes. -gina

Crouched on the sod roof of the trapper's cabin dug into the hillside, Still Water Woman fanned a little more smoke into the skin bag. She could feel the bees humming inside, vibrating softly as they woke from their smoke-induced stupor. The sleepy effect of it was wearing off, and she didn't want to be holding the bag when it did. A few of them crawled lazily up her arm, clinging to the leather fringes on her dress.

"Ah, shitfire..." Wacanga breathed, peering around the stone chimney at the gunfire erupting out in the darkening yard. "They sure know we're here now." He jerked his head back and a chip of stone exploded from the corner of the chimney. There was yelling and cursing from below. "But it worked. They're comin' out. They may be up here soon, though." He crouched down beside her, his face tight with fear. "I do not like that you are here in this," he said in the language of the People.

She gazed at his face, at how his blue eyes had darkened with the sky, and his yellow hair was fading to the color of moonlight in the deepening mauve shadows. "And I do not like that you are, Wacanga," she said, feeling a sad smile tug at her lip. He was right. It had not been difficult to get up here. All they'd had to do was sneak through the trees and brush, go wide around the hill, and then walk out onto the roof where it dug into the slope. Anyone could do the same. A lost honeybee was hoisting itself up a loose strand of his hair, drunken and clumsy. She gently caught it in her hand and dropped it into the bag with its sisters. Despite their peril, despite the fact that they might end up dying here, on this roof, the sound of the humming bees made her smile. They sounded the way they had on that warm afternoon in the grass, when she and Wacanga lay together as one. When she had realized that nothing mattered but how he'd felt in her arms, sweet and alive and Now. How he'd arched against her, her name a prayer on his lips, and how one fleeting moment of feeling his pounding heart and his shuddering breath against her cheek was all she would ever need in the world from that moment on.

He saved me. He thinks I saved him, that I brought him back to life, but he does not know the truth. When he first opened his eyes in my lodge, I walked back into the world. We walked back together. "If we walk the Soul Road tonight, Wacanga," she said, "we will hold each other's hands."

He gave her a quizzical look, unable to interpret her words. She shook her head dismissively, leaned forward, and kissed him, savoring the sweetness of him. The shouting below was faraway, unimportant. She quickly stood up, intending to dump the remainder of the bees and the rest of the honeycomb scraps down the chimney before she found herself holding a bag of stinging, angry sisters.

He grabbed her hand, jerking her back downwards, sheltering her behind the chimney and the shadows. "Be careful! If you get shot..."

"I choose to be here, Wacanga," she reminded him as the sound of gunfire peppered the air. "You did not put me here."

Below them, Lights the Storm and Eagle Bone made a panicked break for cabin, erupting from the underbrush as bullets shredded the leaves around them. She gasped. A blue coat had hung back from the fray, and Still Water Woman watched in growing horror as he raised his freshly-loaded rifle to his shoulder, aiming at her brother and the Crow scout. We have been betrayed. "Wacanga!" She grabbed Wacanga's arm, pointing wildly.

"Shit!" he spat, fumbling his pistol into position as a stream of unintelligible syllables sputtered from his lips. He fired a frantic shot, and the soldier recoiled, running after his fleeing quarry. "Down!" he barked, pushing her down onto the grassy sod as another shot whined off the stone chimney. He steadied the salvaged army pistol and squeezed off another shot, cursing and muttering.

Below, Eagle Bone was close enough that she could see him breathing, see, the heave of his chest and the ripple of his arm as he drew back his bow. The soldier dove behind the firewood stacked against the side of the house, drawing a pistol and aiming at her brother, exposed against the bare stone. With an agonized cry, she swung the satchel over her head, sending it sailing into the soldier's hiding place like a falling star.

The bluecoat howled, his pistol firing impotently into the sky as the imprisoned bees swirled out in an angry cloud. Jesse was fumbling in his pockets, reloading the pistol with bullets he'd taken from a dead soldier's coat back in the village. He spun the cylinder and flipped it around in his hand, offering the handle to Still Water Woman.

Startled, she looked up at him, shaking her head. "I do not know how..."

Jesse continued to hold out the weapon to her. "It's a good day to learn" he said. "We are not dying on a roof today."

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