Yelloweye, an Erotic Paranormal Romance Western Adventure
Devon Layne
Copyright ©2017 by Elder Road LLC
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted via e-mail to ElderRoadBooks@outlook.com.
Cover art licensed from Shutterstock.com.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and highly improbable.
eBook Edition
ISBN 978-1-939275-68-4
Elder Road Books, Bellevue, WA
Preface
This story is about three souls in five bodies who set out to save Mother Earth. Because it moves through both time and space, I want to point out a couple of terms that will be helpful as the story progresses.
Now-time: The twenty-first century. The now-time birth of the protagonists is in 2001 and the story ends when they are 22 years old.
Before-time: The nineteenth century. The before-time birth of the protagonists is in 1858 and they step out of time in approximately 1872 with a brief foray back into before-time in 1874.
Oxėse: Cheyenne word for elsewhere or other place. When the protagonists step out of time in 1872, they go to Oxėse. It is a place closely resembling nineteenth century America, if Europeans had never arrived. But time in this place is meaningless. The protagonists dwell there for as long as necessary to prepare for the great battle. In Oxėse, all time is the same.
I have used many other Cheyenne words, some of them correctly. Please remember that this is fiction. It is not a history and certainly not intended to either appropriate Cheyenne culture or denigrate its rich heritage. In the protagonists’ before-time lives, they were members of what would become a lost tribe of the Cheyenne, the People Who Follow the Owl, referred to in my limited Cheyenne as Méstaa'e-vo'ėstaneme. If you are interested in the fine points of pronunciation, I suggest you check the English/Cheyenne dictionary listed below.
I couldn’t always find words that directly related to the concepts that were being expressed, but still needed a word. I used several reputable sources, including the excellent English/Cheyenne dictionary of the Chief Dull Knife College in Lame Deer, MT (http://www.cdkc.edu/cheyennedictionary/index-english/index.htm). There were times when I altered words or combined them to get the concept I wanted, like Heove-'éxané, the literal translation of Yelloweye.
I have also adapted some Native American myths, using languages that are taxonomically similar (Algonquian). I have, for example, adopted gray wolf from the Pawnee. While this story has parallels in many cultures, I found this one the easiest to blend with the characters I had created. Hence, proto-wolf is named Manėstóhó'néhe or Creator Wolf. I have, with greatest respect for the original stories, also referred to the legend of Sweet Medicine, the ancestor who gave the Cheyenne their laws, the four arrows, and other prophecies.
I hope you find the story enjoyable, and offer this very limited glossary of Cheyenne or near-Cheyenne words to help as you read.
Glossary of Cheyenne Words
Animals
Heove-'éxané: Yelloweye, the Owl.
Méstaa'e: Owl, harbinger of death.
Méstaa'e-vo'ėstaneme: Owl Family or People Who Follow the Owl.
Mo'ohta mée'e: Blackfeather, the Raven.
Aénohe: Winter hawk, Redtail.
Hó'nehe: Wolf.
Manėstóhó'néhe: Creator Wolf.
Ma'ėhóóhe: Red fox.
Mo'éhno'ha: Horse, Indian pony as opposed to wild horses.
Nȧhahévo'ha: Wild horse.
Wapiti: Elk.
Ésevone: Buffalo.
Vóhpȧhtse: White Mouth, the Grizzly.
Popóhpoévėsémo'éhe: Moose.
People
Ho'néené'šeohtsévá'e: Wolf Riding Woman, Caitlin’s Cheyenne name.
Ho'néemé'eōhtse: Wolf Rising, Phile’s Cheyenne name.
Ho'néhenótȧxeo'o: Wolf Warriors, one of the names for Phile and Caitlin.
Héstahke Ho'néheo'o: Twin Wolves, a common way for the People to refer to Phile and Caitlin.
Vé'otsé'e: Warpath woman, a descriptive name sometimes applied to Caitlin.
Tsétsėhéstȧhese: The People. Cheyenne.
Ho'enáséé'e: Earth Sister, Mandy’s Cheyenne name.
Ho'evȯtse: Whiteman.
Vé'ho'e: Modern Cheyenne term for whiteman. (Whiteman is typically a single word.)
He'évánó'ėstse: Wise woman.
Ma'heónėhetane: Holy man, shaman, medicine man.
Heséeotá'e: Medicine woman; herb woman.
Náhko'éehe: Mother.
Náhko'e: Mommy.
Kȧsóéso: Little boy, term of endearment. Used before an official name is given.
He'éka'ėškónėhéso: Little girl, term of endearment. Used before an official name is given.
Naéhame: My husband, mate.
Nȧhtse'eme: My wife. Lit: my-woman
Na-mé'oo'o: Sweetheart, lover.
Hestȧhkeho: Boy and Girl twins.
Tsévéhonevėstse: Chief.
Námėšeme: Grandfather.
Motsé'eóeve: Sweet Medicine Standing, Sweet Root Standing. The Cheyenne prophet commonly called Sweet Medicine. He organized the structure of Cheyenne society, their military or war societies led by prominent warriors, their system of legal justice, and the Council of Forty-four peace chiefs meeting to deliberate at regular tribal gatherings, centered around the Sun Dance. Before his death, he predicted the coming of the horse, cow, whiteman, etc. to the Cheyenne. He received the Maahótse, a bundle of Sacred Arrows which they carried when they waged tribal-level war.
The Earth and things sacred
Nóváhe: Sacred medicine. Archaic old term for a deity.
Ho'e: The land.
Néške'emāne: Grandmother Earth.
Oxėse: Elsewhere; other place. A place outside time.
Nésemoo'o: Spirit guide.
Ho'e-momóonáotaovóho: Domination, dominion
Mo'xȯhtse: Arrowhead.
Onéhavo'e: Drum.
Noahȧ-vose (“giving hill”) or Náhkȯhe-vose (“bear hill”): Cheyenne name for Bear Butte, the place where Ma'heo'o (God) imparted to Sweet Medicine, a Cheyenne prophet, the knowledge from which the Cheyenne derive their religious, political, social, and economic customs.
Cast:
The story is set in the 2020s, but the main characters (Phile and Caitlin) talk about living simultaneously in the 2000s (born in 2001) and in the mid-1800s.
1860s-mid70s:
Wolf Rising: Alternate identity of Phile. (1858-disappearance in 1873. Reappeared in Oxėse.) Referred to as the Twin Wolves or sometimes the Dark Wolves.
Wolf Riding Woman: Alternate identity of Caitlin. (1858-disappearance in 1873. Reappeared in Oxėse.) Referred to as the Twin Wolves or sometimes the Dark Wolves.
Miranda Lewis: (1849-1873) Host of the 21st century Laramie Bell when she was time traveling (Blackfeather). After she died in 1873 Laramie hosted her in the future (21st century).
Jason Wardlaw: (1847-1873) Host of the 21st century Kyle Bell when he was time traveling (Blackfeather). After he died in 1873 Kyle hosted him in the future (21st century).
Miranda and Jason are the great-great-great-great-grandparents of the 21st century Ramie, Kyle, Phile, and Caitlin.
Katie Forster: (1851-~1875) Companion to Miranda in the journey to Wyoming, Ramie’s lover when she was in Miranda and third party in Miranda and Jason’s marriage (Blackfeather).
White Horse: (~1842-1873) Jason’s Cheyenne companion educated in Boston and working with him as an interpreter in the cavalry. White Horse appears in Blackfeather and is mentioned in Redtail.
Theresa Ranae Bell: (1852-1904) Miranda’s stepsister and companion in Wyoming, ran off to marry White Horse. Theresa plays a prominent role in both Redtail and Blackfeather.
White Horse and Theresa are also the great-great-great-great-grandparents of the 21st century Ramie, Kyle, Phile, and Caitlin.
Late 1880s
Kyle (Redtail) Wardlaw: (1873-1892) Host of Cole Bell (Pa) when he was time traveling (Redtail). Died young, but impregnated Both Laramie Wyoming Bell (the first) while Cole was in him, and Kat Tangeman, to whom he was engaged, just before he died. Son of Miranda and Jason.
Laramie Wyoming Bell (the first): (1873-1929) Daughter of White Horse and Theresa who fell in love with Cole when he was hosted by Kyle.
These two characters are also the great-great-great-grandparents of the 21st century Ramie, Kyle, Phile, and Caitlin.
Kat Tangeman: (1871-1927) School teacher who was engaged to Kyle Wardlaw and became pregnant. When Kyle died, she married Arthur Alexander and her son “Artie” Alexander was actually Kyle Wardlaw’s son.
Hence, Kyle and Kat became the great-great-great-grandparents of Ramie and Phile on the Alexander (Mary Beth’s) side of the family.
Katie Lynn (Caitlin) Forster: (1873-1889) Host of Genieve in Redtail who died young during an abortion in a Laramie brothel. She is the daughter of Jason and Katie.
(Three generations intervene.)
Late 20th century
Cole Alexander Bell: (1976- ) The main character/narrator of Redtail who traveled to before-time to inhabit Kyle Wardlaw. Known to the family as Pa.
Ashley Brewer Bell: (1975- ) College classmate of Cole who married him during the Range Wars (Redtail). Mother of Kyle and Caitlin, by Cole. Known to the family as Mom Ash.
Mary Beth Alexander Bell: (1973- ) Cole’s first cousin (his mother and her father were siblings) who joined Cole and Ashley in their marriage (Redtail). Mother of Ramie (Laramie Wyoming Bell II) and Phile by Cole. Known to the family as Mom Mar.
Genieve Murrieta: (1976-1998) Cole’s high school girlfriend who had a short duration as a time traveler hosted by Caitlin Forster (Redtail). Married Joe Teine.
Joe Teine: (~1970-1996) Villain in Redtail and time traveler who was hosted by Sheriff Cal Despain of Laramie in the 1880s.
Philemon Morgan: (~1919-2003) A time traveler hosted by prospector Bill Campbell who established a line of inheritance for Cole in the future (Redtail).
21st Century: The Last Generation:
Laramie “Ramie” Wyoming Bell (the second): (1997- ) Daughter and oldest child of Mary Beth and Cole. Becomes a time-traveler and is hosted by Miranda (Blackfeather). When Miranda dies in 1873, Ramie hosts her in the 21st century. Ramie was given ‘the box’ by the kids on her 22nd birthday.
Kyle Redtail Bell: (1998- ) Son of Cole and Ashley. Becomes a time-traveler and is hosted by Jason Wardlaw (Blackfeather). When Jason dies in 1873, Kyle hosts him in the 21st century.
Aubrey Diaz Bell: (1998- ) Kyle and Ramie’s wife (Blackfeather). Mother of Theresa Miranda Bell and Katherine Ranae Bell (Yelloweye). Theresa was born on Caitlin’s 19th birthday.
Philemon “Phile” Morgan Bell: (2001- ) Son of Cole and Mary Beth (Blackfeather and Yelloweye). Phile simultaneously inhabits two bodies. In before-time he is Wolf Rising (1858-disappearance in 1873). Referred to as the Twin Wolves or White Wolves. One of the principal narrators of Yelloweye.
Caitlin Forster Bell: (2001- ) Daughter of Cole and Ashley (Blackfeather and Yelloweye). Caitlin simultaneously inhabits two bodies. In before-time she is Wolf Riding Woman. (1858-disappearance in 1873). Referred to as the Twin Wolves or White Wolves. One of the principal narrators of Yelloweye.
Mandy “Earth Sister” Stevens: (2001- ) Girlfriend/wife to the two people and four bodies above (Yelloweye). Also referred to as the Voice of the Twin Wolves. Granddaughter of Merv Longsteer.
Merv Longsteer: Old Cheyenne shaman and drum maker who owns a trading post in Laramie (Blackfeather and Yelloweye). Is Mandy’s grandfather. Assists in educating Caitlin and Phile in the old ways and in drum making.
John Little Elk: A Cheyenne drum maker who becomes the missionary of the White Wolves and Earth Sister.
Later on (last chapter):
Stig Wolfe: The now-time manifestation of the combined Phile/Wolf Rising.
Rita Wolfe: The now-time manifestation of the combined Caitlin/Wolf Riding Woman.
Talia Wolfe: Adopted name of Mandy Stevens as wife to Stig and Rita.
Colin Wolfe: (2023- ) Oldest child of the Wolfe family. Biologically, he is the son of Wolf Rising and Caitlin.
Avis Wolfe: (2023- ) Second child of the Wolfe family. Biologically, she is the daughter of Phile and Wolf Riding Woman.
Beth Ann Wolfe: (2023- ) Third child of the Wolfe family. Biologically she is the daughter of Phile and Mandy.
1
Birth and Confusion
The Family
Shivers ran through Ramie and gooseflesh raised on her neck and arms as her hands stroked the polished wooden box. It had sat untouched for three and a half years as far as Ramie knew.
“It’s not good to keep them together,” Caitlin said as she handed Ramie the key to the box. “I’ll keep the box safe. You take the key.”
“It’s a Schrödinger’s box,” Phile added. “The cat is both dead and alive until you open the box. One day, your need to know will outweigh your fear that you’ll find a dead cat.”
“When you make that decision, come and get the box,” Caitlin concluded.
Her bratty brother and sister had been gone for a year now. They disappeared right after the family’s celebration of their twenty-first birthday. Everyone went to bed that night just like always. In the morning, Caitlin, Phile, and their two horses were gone. Even that didn’t trigger alarms. It wasn’t unusual for the pair to disappear for a few weeks or even a month and then show up back at the ranch as if nothing had happened.
But when a few days stretched to a few weeks and then a few months a dark cloud seemed to settle over the ranch. The two kids had been a source of chaos on the ranch, but after their disappearance, worry and then despair had permeated the family.
It cast a pall over the celebration of Theresa Miranda Bell’s third birthday. The elder of the third generation living on the ranch had been born on Caitlin’s nineteenth birthday, a day after Phile’s. The three-year-old didn’t know there was a problem. She happily accepted the wagon, the dolls, and the toy horses as her due. After all, for the past few months, her position as princess of the household had been usurped by baby Katherine Renee.
The family loved Aubrey’s little critters. Of all of them, Miranda, riding quietly in Ramie’s mind, was the most affected.
I never even got to hold my baby. Oh, my poor Kyle. How can your parents stand not having their children in their arms? How can you stand it, Ramie? How can you stand thinking you’ll never have a child with our husband?
“I think about it,” Ramie answered. “We’d be risking everything. But the more I look at those little ones, the more I’m willing to take the risk.”
It was so sweet of Aubrey to give our daughters family names. It is like my stepsister and our lover still live in them.
“And you,” Ramie added. “Our darling wife is as committed to the family as our husband. The names seem to be part of the land we dwell on.”
Ashley and Mary Beth are distraught. Cole is hardly better. It is time to open the box.
“It is,” Ramie sighed. Cole looked at her and opened his arms. His daughter hugged him.
“We all miss them,” Cole said.
“I have something, Pa,” Ramie said. “They gave it to me on my golden birthday. Caitlin kept it in her room so I wouldn’t be unnecessarily tempted to open it.” Ramie drew the key from beneath her shirt, held by the leather thong next to the wolf’s teeth that had never been taken from around her neck.
“Tempted?” Cole asked quietly.
“It’s a locked box, Pa,” Ramie said. “Phile said our need to know had to outweigh the possibility that it would contain a dead cat.”
“Schrödinger. Taught you kids all about that, whether you were time traveling or not.”
“Are we ready, Pa?”
“Look at your moms,” he said. “At me. We’ve aged ten years in the past year, not knowing what happened to our children. Do you think that’s what is in the box?”
“Knowing the brats, they might have literally left a dead cat in it,” Ramie snorted. “I think we need to know.”
“Get it.”
Ramie held the box in her arms almost as lovingly as Aubrey cradled their baby. They joined Moms and Pa in the ranch office. Pa was in his big chair by the fireplace and held out his arms for his granddaughter. Aubrey surprised him by plopping herself in his lap. He laughed and held both baby and daughter-in-law. Theresa ran to her grandmothers.
Kyle paused behind Ramie and put his hands on her shoulders.
“What have you got?” Ashley asked.
“Schrödinger’s box,” Ramie answered. “Caitlin and Phile gave it to me three and a half years ago. They said it was for when the need to know…”
“And you’ve been holding onto it for a year since they… left? You never once thought that we should investigate this?” Ashley demanded.
“We won’t be able change anything once the box is open,” Kyle said. “We always hoped there would be something we could do. The box holds the answer.”
“You think,” Mary Beth said.
“We decided it should be a family decision whether we open it or not,” Ramie said.
“We who?” Cole asked. Baby Theresa was trying to reach his glasses and he was catching her little fingers in his lips. She giggled.
“Miranda and me. They gave it to me.”
“So, open it,” Ashley said. Her impatience showed.
“Mom Mar?” Ramie said. Mary Beth put her arm around her sister wife and held her, then nodded. “Pa?”
Cole sighed. He patted Aubrey on her rump and gently pushed her and the baby toward Kyle. Mary Beth handed Theresa off to Kyle and the two wives piled onto Cole in his chair.
“Open it,” he said as he embraced his wives.
Ramie sat between Kyle and Aubrey and fished the key from her shirt. It was such a flimsy little lock that she could have twisted and broken it in her fingers. It was such a delicate barrier between her and the truth about Caitlin and Phile, yet there was something significant about inserting the key and turning it. The box opened and she lifted the sheaf of paper from the box. She could see the top page was in Phile’s handwriting. It would take a while to read this aloud, but no member of the family wanted to be left behind in the discovery.
She took a breath and began.
Phile: Entering the World
I remember being born.
I was eight years old. It was summer and Caitlin and I had gone out to the pond in the north pasture. I don’t remember what we were playing. We just liked to run and whoop and holler. Seemed like we always had a lot of energy. Of course, being a hot July day, we ran ourselves exhausted, dove into the pond, then plopped in the grass and went to sleep.
I thought I was dreaming, but I couldn’t wake up. Then I realized that I was awake and Cait was crushing my hand in hers. She looked panicked, but I couldn’t reach out to her. I had this other scene in my head that I was seeing—not just seeing. I could feel everything that was happening.
I didn’t want to be born. My consciousness was telling me that it was nice and I should stay where I was, but I was being pushed and I just panicked.
I don’t think babies are supposed to remember being born. They have to forget that shit in order to survive. But I remember everything about it like it happened a minute ago.
I hated my mother. She’d given me everything I needed and now she didn’t want me any longer. She pushed and strained and forced me out where it was cold and light and rough and hurt. Why didn’t she want me? We’d been so close. I cried.
Women I didn’t know took me away from her. I couldn’t understand any of the gibberish they were speaking. If they’d just speak English, I’d know what was happening. They cut my lifeline to my mother and I felt her blood cease to flow in my veins. I was alone.
Voices I couldn’t understand spoke softly all around me. This was what it was like to be a baby? Hearing and thinking, but unable to understand anything? I was wrapped in a soft skin. I tried to apply the word blanket to it, but rejected the thought. Skin. It was almost like having a person wrapped around me. Then nothing. I thought they’d forgotten me.
I was scooped up in a woman’s arms—the softness told me woman—and taken to another place. It was dark and I kept trying to see what kind of place I was in. I expected a hospital, but a cool breeze told me I was outside. Then back inside. My eyes didn’t work right. It was like waking up in the morning with your eyes full of sleep gunk but being unable to wipe them.
And then there was real skin against me. I could feel a heart beating and I could smell nice warm milk. Instinct took over and I started sucking like mad. It tasted so good and it was like mother was taking me in her arms again. Only it wasn’t my mother.
That’s when my eyes started to clear and I looked straight into the eyes of Caitlin. I could see her in two realities. My eight-year-old sister was sitting next to me outside in front of the pond, scared and crying. My infant sister looked at me across the breast of the mother feeding us. We reached for each other and when our hands touched, I finally knew everything would be okay. As long as I had Caitlin, everything would be okay.
Caitlin: Loving
I love Phile. I’ve loved him since the day I was laid in a crib beside him. No. I don’t remember that day. I remember the day we were born, eight years later, when I reached over and took his hand at my mother’s breast. He’s sweet and he keeps me from being… well, worse than I am. For a wild Indian, he gets real sentimental sometimes. I guess I take after Mom Ash. She would never talk about that emotional stuff. I know she feels it, though. And I feel it, too. I just thought that before I start my part of the story, I should make sure you know for a fact. My spirit is bound with my brother’s. Our hearts beat as one.
That first week after we were born… It still seems strange to talk about something that happened when we were eight years old and we have all the memories of. Suddenly, we had Mom Mar and Mom Ash who we saw every day and had lived with for eight years, and we had another mommy who held our little infant bodies in her arms and let us suck milk out of her teats. It was impossible not to bond to her. We didn’t want to not bond with her. She was our safety in the strange world we’d just been born into. She was food and warmth and comfort. And little cooing sounds and singing.
Don’t know if you remember how sick we were that week. Delirious, I think Mom Mar said. From my perspective, I’d have said disoriented. Something was happening in my brain because the world I’d always known was continuing in one half while the other half was getting a whole new data stream from a different me. And it was almost like watching a DVD at 4x. You know, that fast forward thing. And neither Phile nor I could stand to be apart from each other, even when it was so disorienting that we threw up.
We’d often slept with each other. Seemed like he always knew when I was upset over something and would come padding into my room so I could hold him. Worked the other way, too, but I learned not to go wandering into his room since he shared with Kyle. If he got upset, he just came to me. It was funny that Mom Mar insisted we share a room that week so we wouldn’t infect anybody else. It was what got us through the first wave of adapting.
Phile: Mommy
It was really confusing. Caitlin and I would lie in the bed in her room here at the ranch, and squeeze our eyes shut trying to just see one life instead of two. It was obvious that other life wasn’t in the here and now. While our mommy was warm and loving, we didn’t understand anything she said and conditions were kind of primitive.
“Are you sucking on a tit?” I asked Caitlin as we lay in bed. “Are we okay?”
“I think so,” Cait said. “Phile, we just got born someplace else. What’s happening?”
“I can… I can taste the milk in my mouth. When I look at you here in my room, I can see baby you sucking away beside me. And I know it’s you, but…”
“Yeah. You don’t look like your baby pictures. You’re dark with black hair and brown eyes.”
“So are you. Are we twins?”
“I don’t think so. There was no one inside with me. I don’t like to think about being born. But at least when I got out they stuck me right on Mommy’s tit. I was so scared. Then you got there and I knew it would be okay,” Cait said.
“Someone took me away as soon as I got out. I was wrapped in a skin kind of thing and they brought me to you. That’s not like normal, is it? Caitlin? Do you think something is wrong with my mommy?”
It was the middle of the night in real time on the same day we’d been out by the pond, but it seemed like time was moving a lot faster in the… We decided to call it ‘before-time’ eventually, though that didn’t happen right away. We were living some time and place that was long ago. But in a week or so of life in before-time, we’d still only seen Cait’s mommy and not mine. I felt this deep sadness and sense of loss when I thought of my birth mother. I knew… I just knew she was gone and I’d never see her. And that kind of bled over into now-time and I was afraid I’d never see my mom here either.
“I have to go see Mom Mar!” I blurted out.
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
I don’t reckon we’d busted in on Moms and Pa since we were little, but Cait and I crawled right into bed with them and hugged them all night. They were another anchor to what little reality we could grasp.
Moms weren’t sure what to do with two thumb-sucking eight-year-olds plastered against them when they woke up. Pa mumbled something about needing a bigger bed and crawled out from the middle. Mom Ash and Mom Mar tucked us back in bed.
With the initial shock fading, we slept a lot that week. I remember a doctor came out. I don’t know what he thought, but we just stayed in bed and slept most of the time. That helped because before-time was moving a lot faster than now-time and we could almost convince ourselves it was a dream if we were asleep. But we’d wake up and look at each other and still be able to see what was happening in before-time. It never stopped.
By the end of that week in bed, we were almost a year old in before-time. We could walk to the kitchen in now-time without our baby selves wanting to crawl. It was like growing a new arm or something and having to get used to it doing stuff our regular two arms didn’t know about. But the physical disorientation settled down. We’d decided we were just crazy.
Caitlin: Meeting Yelloweye
Moms watched us like hawks all the time and we couldn’t get any privacy so we could talk about what was going on. Seemed like things slowed up a little in before-time when we were awake in now-time. When we slept in now-time, before-time sped up. But we were learning things. Words. We had to be careful with our little before-time bodies that we didn’t try to do something that our eight-year-old bodies could do. But we learned quickly that if we were really quiet, we could whisper to each other in English in before-time and people would just think we were talking baby talk. We started doing the same thing in now-time to talk in the language of the people. Moms shook their heads and said something about us talking gibberish.
We were lucky it was summer. We did our chores in the morning and lay low the rest of the day. When you look at them, you think babies don’t do much but suck and shit, but these two babies were learning so much our heads hurt. All the time. We knew we were crazy, even though we didn’t know the words for it. We were relearning everything while we were still trying to learn ourselves.
We figured out that we were Indians. We were in a tribe and on the move. Náhko'éehe, our mother, had little time to recover from childbirth before we were carried together on her back as we marched. We moved a day or two and then camped for a week or more. The first time Phile called our mother ‘mama’ she didn’t respond at all. It took a while to figure out that the word she used was Náhko'e.
Being able to talk to each other in now-time and learn together helped speed things up and it started to look like we were psychic. When school started, it was almost like cheating. There was this one question on an arithmetic test that I had trouble with. The question just didn’t make sense. I turned to Phile in our before-time and asked him about it. He said I missed the addition sign and to do that. In our classroom, I looked at the paper and made the correction. He didn’t give me the answer, exactly, but he was always better at arithmetic than me. I did the same thing for him in spelling.
It worked the other way, too. Náhko'e said something to Phile that he didn’t understand and was about to get smacked. We were walking out in the pasture here while we were setting up camp there and I told him what to say. He did it right away and didn’t get punished.
Somehow, we made it through that whole first year of now-time and were relieved when school was finally out. In before-time, we were about five years old. The People—that’s what our tribe called themselves—avoided us most of the time. While our Náhko'e continued to love and care for us, the others thought we were some kind of spirit children. An old man in the tribe we called Grandfather made sure we had food and Náhko'e often tended his fire. I suppose it was because we learned so damned fast. I mean, we had an eight-year head start on most babies. We had a lot to learn about life in the village, but we knew a lot already and if we didn’t understand something, we could look it up on the Internet.
That first day of summer vacation, Ramie and Kyle went off riding their black horses and came back with Ramie all doubled over with cramps. She’d started her period and made like it was some kind of disaster. Not like every woman in the history of the world hadn’t done it before her. But the Moms were all sympathetic and taking care of her. Pa took Kyle out for a ride and for the first time in a year, we weren’t being watched.
We made a couple sandwiches and grabbed a can of soda and just walked away.
We didn’t go very far. We never intended to run away or anything. We just wanted to be away from where everyone was watching us all the time. And that meant heading down to the pond, stripping off all our clothes and diving in. The water was still damn cold, but we didn’t care. We were naked and excited to be out of school. We could run and be wild as we wanted and no one would ever know or care. And our before-time selves were right in sync with us. Something was going on in the village and we just wandered off to play in the creek.
And that’s what brought us to Yelloweye. He scared the shit out of us when we first saw him. He was standing on a log just where the creek enters the pond. We were nine years old and barely four feet tall. That owl sitting on a log was looking us right in the eye.
And he was there in before-time, too. Talk about little! That big old owl towered over our five-year-old selves. We were terrified.
I grabbed Phile’s hand and started tugging, but Yelloweye stopped me.
I don’t mean he physically did something to block my path or anything. He just started a series of gentle hoots. I’d never heard anything with so gentle a voice. And with each little hoot I was drawn closer until Phile and me were just a couple feet away. Our other selves just plopped down on the ground in front of him.
Couldn’t tell you a word of that conversation. Not because I don’t remember it, but we just can’t speak in that voice. Animals—even really smart animals like that great gray owl—don’t talk in words. There’s no one-to-one relationship that says this hoot equals that word or even that concept. They don’t have the same concepts we do. They don’t have the same imagery. They fly! How can someone with two feet anchored to the ground ever comprehend stretching out wings and catching an updraft to soar a mile above us?
When he’d finished talking to us, he tucked his head under a wing and ignored us. We were dismissed. We almost forgot to put our clothes on to come home, we were so excited and scared.
Yelloweye, the owl, or in the language of the people, Heove-'éxané, had a mission for us. For the first time since we started living a double life, things started to make sense to us. We had a gift and he would teach us how to use it.
Phile: Bullies
We were lucky for as strange as we were. In now-time we just stuck together and we were so weird that most everyone avoided us. Grade school is like that, I guess. There were other kids who the cool kids shunned as well. I don’t know why we never thought of becoming friends, but maybe we just assumed that we should avoid the weird kids, too.
The biggest problem we’d had wasn’t from one of the kids, but from our teacher. She didn’t like the fact that we slept in class a lot so she kept trying to trick us and humiliate us. In order to manage the inflow of experiences, one of us would stay awake in class while the other concentrated on what was happening in before-time.
“Kȧsóéso, teacher is going to call on you,” my sister whispered in before-time. “She wants to know countries that touch the North Pacific.”
“Thank you, He'éka'ėškónėhéso,” I said to Caitlin. We didn’t have names in our tribe yet. We were just called little boy and little girl.
“Phile, would you answer the question, please?” Miss Sanders said. I know she suspected I was asleep. Well, I had been.
“All the countries of North America touch the North Pacific,” I said. “Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The western edge of the North Pacific is bordered by Russia, Japan, and China.”
“Very good, Phile. I was afraid you weren’t paying attention.”
“But where is the dividing line?” I asked. “Is it the equator that separates the North Pacific from the South Pacific? Shouldn’t we include Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and the Philippines?”
“Ah… In this instance, we were only discussing the major nations of the north, but… This would be some excellent research for you to conduct on behalf of the class. Monday during our geography lesson, I would like you to do a presentation on where the North Pacific is divided from the South Pacific and have a comprehensive list of all the independent nations that touch the North Pacific,” Miss Sanders said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Bitch. I went back to sleep. It was Caitlin’s day to pay attention.
But that doesn’t mean there weren’t bullies in before-time, too. Bent Bow was a teenager, maybe ten years older than us at the time Yelloweye appeared next to the creek. You’d think that his accomplishments as a hunter would make noticing little kids unimportant. But Bent Bow liked to torment us—all the smaller children. It wasn’t unusual for him to ‘accidentally’ trip a toddler or to make fun of a hurt child. I’d been pushed down many times, but there was no one to complain to. Náhko'e was a kind and caring parent, but she did not want to hear tales. Children had to work out their own issues.
So, of course, it was Bent Bow that saw us talking to Yelloweye.
Owls, among many Native Americans, are respected but viewed as a bad omen. It seems they always show up just before someone dies. Yelloweye flitted away, knocking the two of us back as an arrow flew near our heads. Bent Bow had been determined to kill the evil omen and didn’t care if we were in the way. We scrambled up and ran as he was nocking another arrow.
That wasn’t the end of it, though. Bent Bow went to the village elders and told them of the owl that spoke to the ‘death children’. It wasn’t the first time we’d been called that. We’d long-since learned that my mother died the night I was born. Ma'heóná'e, our medicine woman, called us to the central fire. Cait and I held hands as we faced her and glanced around at the hardened faces around us.
“Children, have you spoken to Heove-'éxané?” she asked softly. We nodded. “Has he a message for us? Is death near?”
We were lucky that in now-time, we were huddled together in Caitlin’s room, waiting for Yelloweye to take us somewhere that we could learn to use our gift—even though it wasn’t clear what the gift was. Caitlin and I talked over what we should say. We were only five years old in before-time. So, when we spoke to the medicine woman in unison, it added a lot of weight to what we said.
“Heove-'éxané does not bring an omen of death to our village today,” we said together. “He has come to teach us so we may help protect the village. We must learn from Yelloweye and protect his people.”
Ma'heóná'e looked around the circle at the shocked elders. We had spoken clearly and together. And in adult language, not children’s talk. There were some grunts from around the circle and warding signs against evil, but mostly there were nods to the old woman.
“Hestȧhkeho,” she whispered. It meant ‘twins’. She took ash from the edge of the fire—to us it looked like she was just putting her hands in the fire, but the ash at the edge was cool. She drew on our faces with the ash while she chanted about the spirits guarding us and the village helping the Great Spirit teach us. Periodically, the men and other women near the fire joined the chant and circled us as she continued drawing on our chests. As little children, we didn’t wear clothes unless it was cold and we had to wrap in a blanket. She painted us up front and back as the village chanted and danced. Then we were sent back to the edge of the village to our mother’s tent and told to come back to see the medicine woman in the morning.
Our real education had begun.
Caitlin: Learning
We shivered together on my bed looking out the open window, thinking about what we’d just been through in the village. It was confusing and frightening. And we still didn’t know what our gift was or how we were supposed to use it.
Yelloweye had said it would be difficult, but it was important. We needed to help him save his People. Or our People. Or maybe all people. Some things just weren’t clear. We couldn’t figure out why he was talking to us in now-time if we needed to save the People in before-time.
Not far off we heard the hoot of the owl. It called to us. I felt like I was being tugged right out of my skin. I tried to resist, holding onto Phile and trying not to cry out with pain at the grip he had on me.
And then we weren’t there in my room any longer.
We were soaring up in the night sky. Far below us, we could see every blade of grass in the pasture. Trees rushed beneath us and we felt the updraft catch under our wings and lift us so we could bank and turn again. There was a change in the direction the grasses moved and suddenly we were diving toward the earth. It was frightening and exhilarating and joyful all at once. And then we had a mouse in our claws, tearing the head from its body as we climbed into the sky again.
This is what you will learn. You will ride in the minds of the flyers, the four-leggeds, the two-leggeds. You will learn how they live and how they die. You will learn how they hunt and how they kill. You will learn the secrets of Néške'emāne, Grandmother Earth, and she will make you ready.
Yelloweye had spoken in our heads as we had ridden in his. And then we were back in our own bodies.
The Family
“My poor babies,” Ashley sobbed. She and Mary Beth wept against Cole’s shoulders. Tears streamed down his cheeks. Even the baby, nestled against Aubrey’s bosom whimpered. Kyle rocked three-year-old Theresa in his arms. Ramie set the bundle of papers back in the box.
“I can’t just keep reading this,” Ramie said. “We gotta take breaks. There’s children to feed and horses to care for. Pa, Alex wants to talk to you before they drive the cattle up to the summer pasture. They’re late moving because the grass has been so lush down here, but they want to be moving at first light tomorrow, so you better go see him now.”
“You’ve taken to being boss just fine, daughter,” Mary Beth sniffed. She got off Cole and pulled Ashley with her. “Come on, wife,” she said. “It’s time to get the family settled for the night. Aubrey, may I burp the little treasure when she’s done with your tit?” She needed the contact with a child as she let what she’d learned about her own youngest settle over her.
“Yes, Mom Mar,” Aubrey said. “I think she’s about done sucking.”
“Come to Gramma, Theresa. It’s time to get the birthday girl ready for beddie. Papa has to go water the horses,” Ashley said holding out her arms to her granddaughter. She needed the contact as well. The child jumped to her grandma and started giggling when Ashley blew a raspberry on her tummy. The mood gradually lightened as the family went about their chores and prepared for bed.
The younger generation finally gathered the children and went across the yard to the bunkhouse. With two children and three adults, the little two-bedroom home was beginning to feel crowded. They would have to deal with that eventually.
2
Wild Indians
The Family
I have a bad feeling about this, Miranda whispered in Ramie’s mind as they went about their business the next day. Jason didn’t want to be there when you opened the box last night. He’s been holding something back. Maybe hiding something.
“Yeah, but don’t push him. Kyle and Jason have their own demons, sweetheart. Knowing our little brother and sister were growing up in an Indian village must be hard on them. Like us remembering being kidnapped,” Ramie sighed. She finished feeding the stabled horses. With the number of pleasure riders who now boarded their horses at LK Stables, they were building another horse barn and Kyle had gone to check the day’s progress on the construction. The new barn would house the breeding and foaling facility so the old barn would be strictly boarding.
All day, Ramie fought the desire to simply run to the box and read the rest—or, alternatively, to burn it all so she wouldn’t have to find out. But she had a business to run. She had to go to the bank to make the monthly deposits. She had to pay the loans for building and expanding the ranch. She needed to ride out on the northern trail where one of the boarders had reported a tree down across the trail. Work had to be done. Laying the cat to rest had to wait.
Kyle joined Ramie on the way back to the ranch house for dinner and took her hand. They walked quietly. Aubrey met them at the door with a kiss. After they’d scrubbed up they each cuddled a baby and then sat down to a dinner of liver and onions.
“It just floors me,” Cole said. “How can they live with their consciousness split between two times? It defies the laws of physics.”
“Pa, what part of time travel doesn’t defy the laws of physics?” Aubrey asked sweetly. They were all thinking the same thing, but Cole had a definite soft spot for the mother of his grandchildren.
“Well, sweetie, when it was just me traveling, and as much as I can tell the same was true of Phile and Geneive and Joe Teini, everything was one-way. We could go back in time. We affected the present by leaving treasure where we could find it in the future. We got plenty tangled up in the lives we led in that other world, but we didn’t communicate with our present self while we were back in the past,” Cole said. “When we were gone from here, our bodies more or less kept up appearances, but memories of those times were muted and dreamlike. Sometimes it appeared we were sick, like you were after the wolf attack, Ramie. And when our hosts died, that was it.”
“Except you were trapped there for a long time, just like I was,” Ramie said. “Then you went back. Twice. You went when Arthur Alexander summoned you and he gave you his body. You took me with you to meet my great great great grandmother. But for Kyle and me, our hosts communicated with us just like we do with them now. We worked as partners.”
“Still, I never would have guessed that you could bring your hosts with you into our present. And Miranda and Jason, we love you and welcome you here,” Cole added. “I never mean to be disrespectful to our grandparents.”
“We’ve only ever known you as Pa,” Miranda said through Ramie’s voice. “I wish I could connect all those dots, but we’re no older than Ramie and Kyle.”
“I love learning from your experience, though,” Mary Beth said. “Your pie dough is the best ever.”
“Excuse me,” Ashley said. “The love-fest is nice, but back to the subject at hand. I think you just captured the difference, Cole. You had Kyle Redtail as a host. Geneive had Caitlin. Ramie had Miranda and Kyle had Jason. When you were there, two consciousnesses inhabited the body and one took control. Ramie and Miranda talked about it and were companions. You just jerked control away from Kyle and made him sit quietly. But the difference is that Caitlin and Phile aren’t inhabiting someone else’s body. They’ve never once mentioned a host.”
They sat quietly at the table as what Ashley said sank in. If it was true, Caitlin and Phile were the same people in both timeframes. They didn’t have hosts. They each had two bodies.
They finished their meal and cleaned up. Ramie and Aubrey got the children bathed and ready for bed. Theresa cuddled up in Kyle’s lap again while Aubrey nursed Katherine. Mary Beth and Ashley curled together in Cole’s lap as Ramie extracted the pages from the box and began reading again.
Phile: The People
I have to write about growing up Cheyenne and how we found out that was what we were. Yelloweye had provided a powerful wise woman in our village to teach us, but he found someone to teach us in now-time as well.
There are certain things you never think about. Like earth. The name of our planet is Earth. We call the dirt on the ground ‘earth’. Earth isn’t a name for a planet. It’s the same as calling it ‘world’. We name the things that are other than us. Mars and Venus. They aren’t Earth.
We knew we weren’t Crow or Lakota. They were other than us. We wouldn’t even have looked for a name if we didn’t exist in both times. We were the People. They were Pawnee. Those others were whiteman. We didn’t need to name ourselves.
It was the same with Phile and me. People in the tribe called us like they called all the kids. Little boy and little girl. Or now, they often called us Hestȧhkeho, Twins. When we became adults, the Great Spirit, or perhaps Yelloweye, would give us a name because we were other to him.
Merv Longsteer caught us. We always loved that shop. It smelled like leather. We’d saved up all our birthday money and planned to get ourselves good knives. Among the people we learned how to use a knife before we were six summers. Of course, our knives weren’t steel. The whole knife was made of elk bone. The handle was wrapped with rawhide and the blade shaped down to be sort of sharp. It’s a lot easier to make a point than an edge, but points aren’t good for slicing meat.
We got carried away in his shop and it was one of those occasions that we were talking the same both lives. In before-time, we were holding our knives in front of us while in now-time, we were looking at the knives in the case and talking about them.
“Those knives are good for skinning,” Merv said as he leaned over the counter to talk to us. We were surprised, but also kind of flattered that the old medicine man would talk to us children.
“We need something like this so we can learn how to use it to make something like this,” I said pointing at a longer blade. He nodded.
“What will you make it out of?”
“The first one is bone. But it’s hard to get it real sharp. I want to make the next one out of flint or obsidian. I’m learning to identify the right stones,” Phile said. He was enthusiastic. Merv nodded again.
“Don’t use your bone knife to try to chip the obsidian,” he said. He pulled the two short knives we’d been looking at out and took them out his back door. We followed. He bent down and picked up a couple stones. “First, you can make a better edge on your bone knife by using one of these stones to scrape along it.” He demonstrated the proper way to scrape the stone against the steel blades, always going the same direction. “Now when you get a piece of obsidian or flint, you need to chip it by striking it lightly with a harder stone.” He demonstrated again. “Many of our ancestors became experts at chipping the flint to a fine edge. But you can use the sanding stone to hone it even finer. Do that and your arrowheads and your knife will pierce the hide quickly and smoothly.”
Phile and I looked at each other. When Merv said ‘arrowheads’ the word clicked in our minds. Mo'xȯhtse—the Cheyenne word for arrowhead. I caught my breath and looked at Merv. All this time, we’d been speaking to him in the Cheyenne language.
“Listen to your teachers,” Merv said, changing to English. “They are teaching you well. When you share these tricks with them, show them respectfully and not as though you are better than they are. Your spirit walks among the Cheyenne people. When you need more help, come and visit with me.”
We thanked him and paid for our purchases. Pa examined what we’d bought and decided it was best not to tell the moms that we were running around with sharp knives. He swore that if we hurt anyone with our knives he’d use them to take the skin off our backs. We sort of believed him.
We tried not to speak Cheyenne in now-time again, but sometimes we got mixed up. Merv was the only person who didn’t think we were just making up gibberish.
In two more years of now-time, we’d aged five years in before-time. We were eleven-year-old wild Indians in now-time, doing all kinds of crazy stuff. We were trying to assimilate seven years of learning in two years. In before-time we were ten.
And in before-time, the learning was intense. The village wise woman and the elders were all teaching us. And they seemed to do it with a sense of fear—sort of like they were afraid they’d forget to teach us something vital. We soaked it all up the best we could and might not have had as much trouble except that Yelloweye was teaching us in both before-time and now-time. You all thought we were out chasing the horses when we were running along riding in their heads as they raced around the pasture.
Yelloweye explained that he couldn’t open us to our gift of joining minds with other animals until we had joined our minds across time, but it was important for the children we were in before-time to grow up being recognized from infancy as touched by the owl. He taught us about natural order and that some animals were meant to be food and to supply other needs for the People. We also learned about animals who were outside our food chain and would dine on us, given the opportunity.
We could summon animals for our use, including rabbits, squirrels, some birds, and even deer, elk, and buffalo. But when we summoned them to their deaths, we needed to respect their sacrifice, be mercifully quick in our kills, and take part in the animal’s… the best word we ever came up with was Karma. We did this by immediately eating the liver and letting the animal become one with our lives. After all, they sacrificed themselves for our nourishment.
Caitlin: Soldiers
We’re trying to split up the writing, but Phile gets too emotional to write about this part, so he’s working on the story of the wolves.
Among the animals that would dine on us, at least figuratively, were ho'evȯtse, whiteman. They didn’t care about food. They wanted the land to be theirs. We knew in now-time what whiteman would eventually do to the land. Farming and raising animals were understandable. But the men with rifles would kill hundreds of buffalo and leave them to rot on the prairie. Carrion birds flocked behind the white hunters who just rode on.
We were scavengers as well. When the white riders passed, we would rush to the killing field with a travois and bring a buffalo carcass or two back to the village. We would not hunt after the white killers had been through. Some in our village would not eat the meat of the buffalo killed by bullets.
We never knew our fathers. They had gone to fight the blue suits before we were born and never returned. Like the buffalo, they were left on the prairie and scavengers took their bodies. So even when we were very small, we set snares and scavenged buffalo for our mother so we would not starve or freeze in winter.
In our tenth summer, Phile and I each killed a whitetail deer. We paused over the dead bodies and thanked our brothers for giving us the food we would need and their fine skins for our clothes. We opened their bodies with our short bone knives and ate the livers fresh and warm from their guts.
We were triumphant as we loaded the carcasses on our travois and headed back to our village. The hunting men of the village had gone farther to seek prey, but we were able to call our food to us and returned long before the men would be back.
That was the last time we were ever happy. Yelloweye was sitting on our tipi.
“Children, go to the flagpole in the center of camp and stand with your mother,” Tsévéhonevėstse Elder said. He was an old man, but he was our leader. We carried a flag of the United States with our village that was given to us by a soldier when they wrote a paper that would keep us safe. “Soldiers are coming and we must show them that we are peaceful people who abide by our word.”
We stood with our mother, excited but a little frightened, too.
And the soldiers came.
We were just standing there waiting to greet them and they came over the hill with their horses galloping toward us and their long guns belching death all around us. They drew their short guns and kept firing as they closed in on us. We stared in the eyes of a yellow-haired ho'evȯtse charging with his gun pointed at us.
“Run, children, run!” Mother cried pushing us to obey. Death stared at us and we turned to run as Mother crumpled to the ground. Our mother! Our mother was dead!
We ran. At the edge of the village where Grandfather had met us, our horses and the fresh deer stood waiting. We cut the travois loose from them and leapt to their backs to ride away. Screams. Smoke from the guns. Terrified people running away. Soldiers knocking them down with their horses. Our village was gone. Our mother was dead. And we fled. We rode our ponies as far into the mountains as they could take us before we rested. And then we collapsed together and wept.
This did not happen while we slept in now-time. Phile and I were out near the woodlot where the old cabin was and the fireplace still stands. We were celebrating having killed our first deer. We considered catching a rabbit and roasting it, but Moms would have had a fit if they knew we started a fire in the woods. We were excited about the soldiers coming to our village in the past and stood in front of the fireplace as if we were among them.
But just as Yelloweye—our friend—sat on our tipi, he sat beside us on the old chimney.
We saw it all as we stood there and when we ran in before-time, we ran in now-time as well. We caught our horses and rode toward the mountain. We rode in panic. We rode hard, our horses understanding the urgency. We had always managed to keep some separation between the two halves of our lives, but we lost it that day. We rode and wept with our other selves, unable to differentiate which of us was which. We rode until it was dark and we were far up in the mountains.
It took us two days to separate our present selves from our past selves. We had horses with no bridles or even a lead rope. Yet they stayed near to us and came when we called them. We snared a rabbit and cooked it over a fire that we started ourselves. We had no weapons or tools other than the knives we always carried. Our before-time selves had their bows and arrows that had been left slung over their horses. In now-time, we didn’t even have that. We began working to make ourselves bows and cut straight saplings to cure for arrows.
At night, we held each other for warmth.
That is where Yelloweye found us. We’d seen him with us in before-time and at the ranch in now-time. For the first time, we were frightened of him. He was, indeed, the harbinger of death. Our mommy was dead. Maybe our whole village. We’d seen them ride the People down and kill them.
I sorrow for you, my children.
He called us his children.
“I wish you could have learned this lesson another way,” he said. No. He didn’t say anything. He never said anything. We just got this wave of sadness from him. This is what will happen to the Ho'e, the land. The ho'evȯtse will kill all that is before him.
“What do they want, Yelloweye? Why do they do this?” Phile asked.
They wish Ho'e-momóonáotaovóho, dominion, to rule over all. They wish the earth and all the creatures to bow down to them and yield their treasures, whether they will or no.
“What must we do?” I asked.
You must learn and survive. You must be who you are and talk to your brothers and sisters of the earth. The day will come when only you stand between destruction of the land and its survival.
Pa laced our butts with his belt when we got home. We’d been gone three days and one of the riders from the upper pasture found us and took us to camp. The next day Pa showed up at the trailhead with a trailer and loaded our horses. He wasn’t going to even let us ride down to the ranch.
When he’d laid one across each of our butts, he sank down on his knees and hugged us and cried.
“We thought we’d lost you,” he said. “We’d never be the same without you. Don’t ever scare us like that again. You can’t possibly understand how much your moms and I love you.”
I think that was the first time I did understand.
Phile: Wolves
Life didn’t get any easier. I mean this life, here in now-time. It wasn’t easy in before-time, either. This gets so damned complicated. We were alone and isolated in before-time. In now-time, we isolated ourselves and were even more antisocial than we’d been.
We went wild. I know we’d been difficult ever since we first met Yelloweye. But more and more of our life in the present was in sync with the past. And we couldn’t be in sync while we were around other people. When excuses failed to work, we just made it so nobody wanted to be around us.
It was easy to hate everybody.
In the wintertime, we had to go to school. Oh, we learned stuff. Sixth grade was better than our other school, mostly because we got to go to Laramie and rode the bus with Kyle and Ramie. They never said much, but we knew they were always on the lookout for us.
“Move, dweeb. I wanna sit by your sister.” Daniel Watson from the Bar Double-D was two years older than us. We’d had three years with him out of Centennial Elementary School and forgot what an asshat he was. I didn’t want him anywhere near Caitlin and she told me in before-time that she didn’t want to be near him.
“No.”
“Don’t ever tell me no, you little turd. I’ll put your head through the back window,” he said.
“Maybe you’d like to try putting my head through the back window,” Kyle said. Kyle was only fifteen, but he was already six feet tall. He’d be real tall and thin like Pa. I didn’t think I’d ever be that tall. I was used to thinking of myself among the People. Kyle had Daniel by the back of his neck. I thought the kid was going to swing at Kyle, but he just shrugged.
“Hey, I was just trying to be friendly,” Daniel said.
“I distinctly heard you say you wanted to sit by Phile’s sister,” Kyle said. “She said to bring the douchebag to her. So, you come here and sit right next to Ramie while she tells you about life. I’ll be right here across the aisle in case you need me.”
We couldn’t hear what Ramie said to Daniel Douchebag, whatever that was. We liked the sound of it. I never found out what Ramie told him, but we never heard anything from the eighth-grader again, even though the junior high was in a different building than the senior high. He avoided us. It was cool.
Ramie and Kyle were cool. I wished a lot that I could be like them. They were different than Caitlin and me. I mean, they were best friends and all that. I often heard one say to the other, ‘I got your back.’ But Caitlin and me… She was the only person in the whole world who mattered to me.
If it hadn’t been for Kyle’s birthday in May, I think Caitlin and I would have run away that summer. We nearly did anyway. But we understood that in many ways, it would be harder to live alone in the wilderness in now-time than it was in before-time. There were too many people and they were always too close to us.
But on Kyle’s birthday he moved to the bunkhouse and had an apartment of his own. That meant I had a room to myself for the first time in my life. Ramie moved out to the bunkhouse that summer and it was easier for Caitlin and me to slip into each other’s room without being caught. We kept quiet about it, but when Moms and Pa went to bed, one of us would slip over to the other’s room. Didn’t seem to make any difference which. We always knew where we were going to sleep and that’s where we went.
Yeah, I’ve been sleeping holding my sister in my arms forever. We’d never been apart from each other in the tribe. I was supposed to go to the men’s tent if it hadn’t been for the attack on our village. But we never rejoined what remained of our village after the attack. It was just Caitlin and me in the wilderness together. Even if we felt someone had to be watchful at night, Caitlin would sleep leaning against me or me against her. We were all we had.
I’d protect her against the world.
We continued to grow and learn. We didn’t pay attention in school any more than it took to pass tests. There were some subjects that we liked, but they were just a little part of school. History of our people. Well that was a footnote in the chapter about winning the West. Most of the chapter was about the railroad and included a field trip to the museum in the old depot. Biology was just a couple chapters in the general science book, but we found out a lot about how animals were related to each other and how they were classified. Geography of the Rockies and the Midwest was interesting for a couple of weeks. But mostly, we still took turns sleeping and waking each other up when the teacher was about to call on us.
And out in the pastures, we continued to learn the ways of the animals. On Ramie’s sixteenth birthday, Phile and I both summoned pronghorns for our hunt. We wanted to use bows for the hunt, but part of the reason we all went hunting was learning gun safety and shooting. We took our shots carefully and then rushed down to field dress our kills. Mom Mar was a little disgusted when we each ate the liver fresh from their guts. We thanked the pronghorns for helping to feed our family for the winter.
The rest of the family was really upset. It seems they watched wolves take down a small herd of elk and because of the laws, they couldn’t do anything about it. Caitlin and I quested about trying to find the minds of the predators, but had no luck. The whole family developed a hatred for the ‘killing machines’, as Mom Ash called them.
We got to see Merv sometimes. About once a month, Caitlin and I would skip out of school at lunch and go to his trading post. Without a village, a shaman, or a wise woman, our before-time selves had to discover everything on their own. Merv was patient with our questions and helped us in both lives.
We only got caught once. It almost killed us.
Our first period after lunch in seventh grade was study hall and Mr. Adams never took attendance. Lots of kids had passes for the library or the gym. We were in his Social Studies class the period before lunch, so we’d shoulder our packs and stop long enough to use the sign-out sheet before we left. That gave us nearly two hours and we could run to Merv’s in fifteen minutes.
“What’s the question today?” he asked in Cheyenne when he saw that the shop was empty except for us.
“Ma'heónėhetane, how can we honor our dead when we cannot claim their bodies from the murderers?” I asked. We’d fled from the scene of our village during the massacre. We returned in the spring and found nothing there. It was like we had never existed there at all. Merv did not ask who we wished to honor. We’d asked Yelloweye, but the concept was foreign to him.
“Ah. When we kill a buck to eat the meat and use the hide, how does the doe honor him?” he asked. “It is the same when a wolf kills a young one. How does the parent honor the child? And even if you found what remained when the spirit left, how would you honor the dead?”
“We would pray for their spirit to find comfort with the great ones,” I answered.
“That is good, but it is out of your hands. We let the body replenish the earth. We let the spirit fly to the sky. Indeed, there is nothing we can do to stop this cycle. Whiteman puts potions in the body, wraps it in cloths, puts it in a box, buries it deep, and places a stone cairn over it. But even that body will eventually return to the earth.”
“What should we do, then?” Caitlin asked.
“Live. The doe honors the buck by raising the young and keeping them safe. The parent honors the child by slaying the wolf so other children will be safe. We honor our dead by living a life that is worthy of them,” Merv ended our lesson and sent us running back to school so we wouldn’t get in trouble.
That worked except the time when there was a substitute teacher for Mr. Adams in the afternoon and she checked the library to see that those who had signed out were there. Mom Mar had to come to the school to meet with the principal about truancy and took us home after school. We got extra assignments and weren’t allowed to sign out to the library again for the rest of the month.
But we weren’t expecting how mad it would make Moms and Pa.
Mom Ash made us sit at the kitchen table as soon as we got home and do our homework.
“You finish that homework and then go to your rooms. There will be no running outside tonight. And I will be checking on you to see that you are in your own room. I know you don’t care about anything else. You don’t care that we are unhappy. You don’t care that your teacher got reprimanded for letting you out of school. You don’t care that even your friend could get in trouble. But you care about being together. So, you’ll live tonight apart. It’s the only thing I can think of that will get through to you.”
It did. We’d planned to hunt in before-time, but we depended on being together in this life to stay in touch while we split up in the past. We’d already headed out separately in before-time, intending to circle our prey while talking in now-time. If we couldn’t be together in now-time, we’d be apart in both lives. That had never happened before.
“No!” I screeched. Pa slid his belt out of his pants and laced me one across the back of my legs. I switched to Cheyenne and called out to Caitlin, “Go to the creek of two horses. I will go there.” She was crying and screaming back, but all I caught was ‘hurry’.
“And stop your gibberish!” Mom Mar yelled. Mom Ash pushed Caitlin into her room as Mom Mar came into mine. She snatched up my computer and left. I couldn’t even message Cait. I was frantic. It was at least three miles to the two horses creek from where I was in my past life. But it had been the only place I could think of while my legs were stinging.
I ran.
Yes, I had a horse, but in the deep woods, I can move more quickly on foot than on a horse. I told her where I was going and knew that she’d follow as quickly as she could. It seemed to take forever. I made the mistake of a child and forgot about the gorge that lay between me and the creek. Instead of going to where I knew a path lay, I tried to descend it where I encountered it. I fell and twisted my ankle.
But I couldn’t stop. I had to get to my sister. We were all we had in this world and the only thing that made it okay to go about our lives in now-time parting and coming back together was because we were always together in one life or the other. Being parted from her in both lives was like suddenly being blind and deaf. I beat at my past self, demanding that I ignore the pain in my ankle and continue up the other side of the gorge. I made so much noise that I could have been a white man stumbling through the brush. Animals that I could normally communicate with ran from me.
And then that big owl was right in front of me.
Not in the past, but in my room. While my feet still moved me forward in before-time, in now-time, Yelloweye stared me down.
His reprimand stung more than Pa’s belt. I had been given a gift, but in the moment when I needed it most, I ignored it and ran like a crazy man. If I did not regain my senses, my sister and I might both be in danger. Worse. The image Yelloweye gave me was ‘food’. We might be food.
I closed my eyes with Yelloweye’s warning burning in my head. In before-time I stopped running and crashing through the woods. I paused to listen. In the distance, toward the setting sun, I could hear wolves. That was the only sound. My crashing through the brush caused all the nearby animals to hide. They would emerge again soon. In the air, high above, a hawk circled.
I sent my spirit questing for the bird and felt the wind lift his wings as he sought an evening meal. I greeted him and he calmly welcomed me to his flight. I looked out at the ground far below. I found the creek and gently guided Hawk along it to look for Cait. What I saw chilled me. She sat by the creek waiting, trying to calm her nervous horse that was dancing around nearby. A few hundred yards away, the wolves had stopped their howling and were stalking closer to her.
I dropped back into my body to keep it moving along the path Aénohe had shown me. As I moved silently along, my mind quested out for the wolves. A hunting pair. They were hungry. The male’s thoughts were of gorging on warm flesh. The female thoughts were darker. Yes, she was hungry. Yes, she thought of the feast. But her brain was filled with the kill. She wanted to rip the life from her prey.
I tried to talk to them—to turn them away. But they were too filled with the scent of the prey to hear me or to care. I tried to send them fear, but this only made them more vicious. I kept trying to calm myself while wanting to scream out to Caitlin. I was closing in from one side, but the wolves were closing in from the other. My bow was ready with new flint arrowheads on my arrows. My view of Cait had shown that she did not have her bow ready to shoot as I had. She had her new long-blade knife.
After our first meeting with Merv Longsteer, we had honed our bone knives to a sharpened edge. But we had also set about making new obsidian hunting knives. Caitlin sat still, but her horse edged farther away. Its size and intelligence made it a formidable opponent for a wolf unless there was a full pack. A hunting pair would be a severe challenge for the animal who could very well die, even if it drove off the attackers.
I quested into the wolves again and saw Caitlin through their eyes. It was a strange sort of double vision as I caught glimpses of her through the trees with my human body and the pulsing meat that the wolves saw. They came into the clearing facing Caitlin, snarling at her. Caitlin was afraid, but I could tell she now sensed my approach from the other side. We were near the same size, but the wolves probably outweighed us by ten or twenty pounds each. She had tried looking through the wolves’ eyes, but seeing herself the way they saw her froze her.
There was no time for great strategy. I drew my bow as I entered the clearing and moved toward them. Wolves are much happier to track moving prey than still prey. They will circle a buffalo and yip at it, diving in to nip at its feet, but not attacking while the buffalo is still. If the buffalo gets tired of their goading and attacks or attempts to run, the pack will pounce on it and bring it to the ground.
Caitlin’s stillness and my action drew the attention of the wolves toward me. I was moving prey and they charged toward me as one. I loosed my arrow and caught the big male. I had drawn my second arrow, but could not track the female because Caitlin had dived for it. The male howled and continued coming for me. My second arrow stopped it, piercing its eye.
As the wolves changed direction and charged toward me, Cait snatched a handful of the bitch’s fur and swung onto her back, riding her into the ground. Her obsidian knife sliced through the bitch’s throat and Caitlin lay on the bloody mess.
“I knew you would get here in time,” she sobbed as I lifted her from the carcass. “If I had tried to fight them, they would have attacked. Even if I killed one, I knew I could not avoid the other. It was so hard to stay still and wait. Phile, from now on we don’t get separated!”
“We are a hunting pair like these,” I said. “I will eat the heart of this wolf before it cools.” Caitlin nodded and we fell to butchering our kills. We pulled the hearts out and held them before each other. And bit into them.
I could feel the power and fierceness of the wolf enter into me as I ate the organ. But I could also feel the lust for blood that filled me. I saw it reflected in Cait’s eyes as the blood dripped from her hands and chin while she ate the meat.
Wolf is not great-tasting meat. Any animal that eats other animals or carrion tastes foul. But we burned the meat well enough over our fire that we could tear strips off and choke them down. This was our kill and we would eat it. Even the vicious predator deserved the honor of knowing his meat nourished one of greater strength.
“I will wear this she-wolf,” Caitlin said. We’d skinned them and made a frame to stretch the hides as we cleaned them. “I will be Ho'néené'šeohtsévá'e. I am Wolf Riding Woman. I have ridden the wolf and lived.”
“That’s a mouthful, even in our language,” I laughed. “But you are a woman. And you have ridden the wolf.”
“I will save my name for when the bleeding starts. But now you know me.”
“Then as I wear the skin of this warrior wolf, I will be known as Ho'néemé'eōhtse, Wolf Rising, for I rose to meet him in battle.”
“You are my mate, Wolf Rising,” she responded.
We finished our work and headed for the creek. We did not have much in the way of clothes. We’d been on our own for a year and in all that time had avoided contact with anyone else. It was easy to make a loincloth. We had buffalo robes to keep us warm when the weather turned bad. We stripped off what we wore and went into the creek to wash.
While we washed, my horse ambled into the clearing and went to where the other horse grazed. They snuffled their greetings and we sent our warm thoughts to our two friends. We emerged from the creek and turned to embrace each other. It had been a hard day.
“Wolf Rising,” she giggled. “Your manhood is rising.”
“Wolf Riding Woman, it is your womanhood that is causing this attention,” I answered. “You know I love you. We’re way too young to deal with all that sex stuff. Someday when it is more than just an uncontrolled reaction, we’ll figure out what to do with it. But from this day, I never want to be parted from you again.”
The Family
“I don’t think I can listen to any more tonight,” Mary Beth said. “I was a terrible mother. My poor babies. My poor babies.”
“You weren’t a terrible mother,” Ashley snapped. “You aren’t a terrible mother. How could we know? We were trying to raise them right.”
“They were only twelve,” Cole said. “Even with other time travelers in the family, none of us started that young. Twelve? Hell, eight! None of us started until we were at least sixteen. And it was always related to becoming sexually active. Even Genieve said that’s how she started. If you want to be pissed at someone, yell at the old owl. He took away our children!” Cole was getting worked up and stood up to wave his arms around, nearly dumping his wives on the floor.
“I think Mom’s right, though,” Ramie said. “We need to take a break. My voice is getting hoarse. And I don’t think this is something we’re supposed to rush through. I’m exhausted. Miranda, drive.”
Miranda shifted easily into control of Ramie’s body and let her other self weep silently.
“I think I need to bake a pie before bed,” she said. “Mary Beth, why don’t we get our hands in some lard. We can make up a couple of those egg pies we read about for breakfast.”
“Quiche? Yes, Grandma,” Mary Beth smiled.
Evening chores got done. Kyle took the babies to the bunkhouse to put them to bed. He hadn’t said anything during the reading, nor afterward. He just held his children as tears streamed down his cheeks. Aubrey sat with Ashley and Cole for a few minutes before going to join her husband.
“Something’s wrong, baby,” Aubrey said as she joined Kyle looking down at the babies. “What is it? You know you can tell me anything.” Kyle held his love and wished Ramie would hurry up in the house.
“It was me,” he croaked. “‘…a yellow-haired ho'evȯtse charging with his gun pointed at us.’ I still remember it. All these years living as Kyle and living as Jason and all of both of our memories as we rode over that hill into the village believing we were riding into an ambush with our guns blazing. I killed their momma! It was me.”
“You didn’t know, honey. Your commander lied to you. You stopped others from being killed. You got that horrid private court-martialed. You’ve told us the story. You did the best you could,” Aubrey said pulling Kyle to the bed and holding him.
“That didn’t help my little brother and sister. We just thought they were being brats. Until the horses came. Everything changed then. But nothing could undo what I’d done.”
3
Getting Grounded
The Family
They’d worked out a pattern. Everyone had work to do and no one could spend all her time reading the book left for Ramie by her younger siblings. Nor could they handle more at one time than the hour they spent in the evening holding each other as they read. Every word the kids had written cut into the hearts of their mothers, father, and siblings. Even Aubrey, the only one not related by blood, worried that the babies might be affected by hearing the story at such a young age. But more than that, she worried about her husband and wife.
Cole was late when he parked the ATV behind the ranch house. He’d driven to the upper pasture to check on the herd and his ranch hands. He was steaming when he sat at the table for supper with the family.