The Winter Valley

 

1874

 

Delshay’s eyes were a dark sparkle between the deep furrows of his face. His lips drew down, his expression critical, as he eyed the half-built structure at the valley’s edge.

This thing was no Apache construction. It had too many right angles for that. But neither, Tawa knew, was it fully the brainchild of the settlers. Though the building had sharp corners and a square doorframe, the nearly-finished roof was built from the cottonwood branches that filled the valley. In that respect, it had something of a wickiup about it. It belonged.

“The walls won’t hold,” said Delshay.

Tawa hid his smile. “Why not, Uncle?”

“Because they won’t. They’re too thin. The building is too tall for them.”

Daniel must have heard them talking. The doctor was nearby, unloading a box of medicines from his wagon. The horses grazed a few yards away. They weren’t tied; they didn’t need to be. No horse from Tucson would move more than a few feet in grass this deep.

If Daniel had heard them, he gave no indication of it.

“Uncle,” said Tawa patiently, “I think Daniel and Maggie know what they’re doing.”

“I’m telling you, the walls are too thin,” said Delshay stubbornly. “I will tell Daniel. They must be made thicker.” He marched over to the doctor, who received him as patiently as ever. Daniel’s Apache had lost its stilted quality.

That was hardly a surprise. Many people in this corner of the world spoke far better Apache—and far better English—than before.

“Robert!” Nizhoni shouted. “Robert, get back here!”

Tawa turned, only moderately alarmed. Whatever was happening, Nizhoni had it under control. She had, after all, appointed herself the primary authority on Robert.

The ten-year-old sprinted across lush grass, and for a moment, Tawa simply admired her. Her glossy hair bounced on her shoulders in thick braids; he could tell Maggie had visited today. She ran easily, her cheeks rosy, her limbs strong and ever-growing, and quickly caught up with the little boy stumbling toward the creek.

The child squealed as Nizhoni caught him up. His thick, dark hair already reached his shoulders even though he’d barely learned to walk. But his eyes were grey-green, the color of his mother’s.

“Tó!” he shouted. “Water!” Both languages came from him with equal ease, little though he was.

“No water for you,” said Nizhoni firmly.

She swung him in her arms, immediately distracting him. The little boy’s squeals turned into happy giggles.

“Land’s sakes, Cecily,” Maggie exclaimed nearby. “That was close.”

“Oh, never.” Cecily laughed. “Nizhoni would never let anything happen to him.”

Tawa turned. The two women strolled up from the smaller building across the creek, the one that had been finished a year ago. Cecily carried an armful of books. A small crew of children played in the grass nearby, many carrying slates and pencils.

The sight of his wife still made Tawa’s heart beat faster. The valley’s sunshine had streaked her chestnut hair with brilliant gold. She wore moccasins and a skirt trimmed with lace and a buckskin jacket just like his. Her hair hung loose, knotted and wild, spilling down as far as her hips.

Her eyes dwelled fondly on Robert and Nizhoni, then focused on Tawa. He smiled. She returned it. Neither of them said anything; neither of them needed to.

Daniel strode up from the wagon, sweating and smelling of sawdust. “Who made Delshay an expert in building permanent structures?” he hissed.

Maggie laughed, a cheerful sound that pealed across the valley like a church bell.

“Delshay doesn’t have to struggle to survive anymore,” said Cecily. “He has the time to interfere with everyone else’s business.”

“Delshay was never one to sit still,” said Tawa.

Daniel smiled. “He has good points to make. I appreciate his help, even if I wish he would stop changing his mind about what he wants in the clinic.”

Maggie took his hand. “He wants the same thing that we all do, my love. A place where anyone and everyone can come for healing. No judgment. No prejudice. No special treatment. No questions asked.”

“The door will always be open,” said Daniel.

Maggie squeezed his hand. “Always.”

Tawa stepped into the brief silence that followed. “Is there … any news?”

The question hung between them, as weighty as ever.

Daniel shook his head. “The land is still under federal review. It will be for a long time. They have greater worries than this little parcel of land. They also know that they cannot win this legal battle, so they’ll simply drag it out for as long as possible.”

“Let them drag.” Tawa held out his hand. “The ground is here. The people are here. The record says what it says. We are safe here.”

“Watch out!” Daniel cried.

Galloping hooves echoed across the valley. Nizhoni snatched Robert close. Tawa seized Cecily’s hand, but he didn’t move. The rider was aiming well past them.

It was Chee. He clung to the mane of a wild black colt whose tail streaked behind him like a silver banner, hinting that he would one day be gray. Boy and colt crashed recklessly across the grass, hurdled the stream in a great bound, and pulled up at the trees’ edge. The colt pranced, snorted, and tossed his head.

Chee gave a glorious whoop. “Yee-haw!”

Cecily slapped her forehead, laughing. “Yee-haw? I’ve taught you a year’s worth of English lessons, Chee, and the best you can do is ‘yee-haw’?”

Chee vaulted from the colt’s back and affectionately slapped its neck. “This is better learning, Cecily! Better than in the classroom,” he said in accented English.

Cecily laughed. “I’m not sure your mother would agree.”

Chee whipped around. Lozen stood in the clinic’s doorway, arms folded. She said nothing, but her glare was enough. Chee meekly led his colt back across the creek.

Tawa laughed softly to himself. Some things never changed.

 

***

 

That evening, there was food, fire, and the noise of a community that had stopped holding its breath. No one muffled their voices; no one hushed their songs. Instead, the cottonwoods rang with the presence of the Apache, of people in a place where they belonged, from which no one would drive them. Their laughter rose as thickly as the smoke from the campfire.

Only Robert had gone quiet. The little one’s joyful laughter could fill the world, but now, he lay curled up beside Nizhoni near the fire, his little head in her lap. She stroked his hair with absolute contentment. Tawa looked at her and thought of the sickly little thing that had lain just like that with her head in his lap only two years ago. She was so strong now, so sure. He rejoiced.

Across the fire, Delshay was telling the story of Coyote and Bobcat. Tawa had heard it from him a thousand times before, though there was a time, as they wandered the desert, when Delshay did not tell it at all. Tawa had been a little boy when he had heard this tale from Delshay for the first time.

But it had been different then. Even then, the lines around Delshay’s mouth and eyes had all pointed down, and he had told it in the hushed monotone of one who passes on a story because he fears it might die if he doesn’t. Tonight, he told the story with joy, with passion. With the hope of one who knows it will carry itself forward forever.

Delshay pitched his voice higher to make the voice of Coyote. “Ha! That is a clever trick, Bobcat, but my next one will be cleverer still,” he said.

“No, no, no,” said Lozen, shaking her head. “Coyote played his next trick without saying anything to Bobcat.”

Delshay frowned. “Ah, you’re right. You always remember the details, Lozen.”

Lozen smiled contentedly. Chee sat beside her, tolerating her hand on his shoulder. His younger siblings slept in her lap, the firelight dancing on their faces. She met Tawa’s eyes across the fire, and her smile only widened.

Yes, Tawa thought. Lozen always did remember.

Daniel and Maggie laughed together at something private. Then Maggie looked around, scanning the circle of firelight that illuminated the gathering dusk. “Where is Cecily?”

Tawa squinted at the sky. “She has forgotten herself in her work again. I will go and find her.”

He left the campsite in the thick of the trees and walked down the grassy slope to the place where the creek splashed across the pale stones. A light flickered in the little building beside the clinic; candlelight. Candles were among the few settler luxuries that Maggie always brought on her monthly visits.

Cecily sat with her back to the door, her chestnut hair flaming fire in the candlelight. She was bent over a notebook, her pen scribbling constantly.

“Beautiful one,” said Tawa quietly from the doorway.

Cecily raised her head. “Tawa?”

“We all miss you by the fire.”

She stretched, arms high above her head. “I lost track of the time.”

He entered her little study. “What are you working on?”

Books and papers sprawled over the desk that Maggie and Daniel had brought for her from Tucson. English words covered many of them, but she’d written others with accents on many characters. Apache. Cecily both spoke and wrote it now almost as fluently as those who’d been born into it.

“I was translating these last few territorial documents.” Cecily rubbed her face. “It’s absurd that the federal authorities insist on doing everything in English.”

“Your translations make a world of difference to those who can only receive those communications in their own language.”

“Yes, well. It shouldn’t be necessary.” Cecily smoothed a page. “I’ve finished, though. Right now, I’m working on tomorrow’s lesson plans for the children.”

Tawa noticed that her regular, elegant writing filled her notebook’s pages, but there was something else in the margins, a chicken-scratch scribble that reminded him of something. Of the map, he realized. The one that had brought them here and defended their valley.

He smiled. She wrote in the margins just like her father.

He laid a hand on her back. “You have become the person that all Arizona Territory turns to,” he said, “when two worlds need to speak to each other and cannot find the words alone.”

Cecily closed her notebook. “It’s my honor. Let’s go back to the fire.”

They stepped through the study door, and Cecily looked up, her eyes scanning the stars. Tawa had his arm around her without thinking about it; it was simply where his arm went, the crook beneath it simply the place where Cecily always was.

She hugged herself, her eyes distant.

Tawa spoke her Apache name, and she looked up at him, her gray-green eyes dancing.

Tenderly, he kissed her forehead. “This valley is more itself with you in it.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

Tawa chuckled. “I mean that this place has always been where my people come to shelter, where there is peace. You make it even more so.” He touched her chin, raising her head. “And I … I am more myself with you beside me.”

Her eyes shone, and she let her head rest on his shoulder. Nizhoni’s laughter floated down from the trees above them; the dancing firelight illuminated everyone they loved as silhouettes.

In the sheltering arms of those trees, beside the leaping flames, their child slept in Nizhoni’s lap. The daughter of Tawa’s sister flourished, whole and well. Maggie and Daniel sat side by side at last and upheld the justice for which they had all fought so hard. And here stood Tawa, his arm around the woman he loved beyond where he had ever known love could reach. Safe. Unafraid.

“There it is,” Cecily whispered.

“What?” he asked.

She pointed and said its name in Apache. “The star that stays.”

It opened like a shy eye above the blue mountains, bright against the deepening night, patient and absolute. The valley held them for as long as the ground stood.

They had left the desert behind. It had never created their love, Tawa knew.

It had only removed everything that was in the way.