Between Earth and Sky(91)

“Bring her if you want. I don’t care.” Her shaky voice betrayed her. She took a step toward the house, then turned back. “It won’t be forever. Goodbye, I mean. We’ll see each other again, I’m sure.”

Her friend flung another seed onto the earth and looked down, but not before Alma saw the doubt in her eyes.





CHAPTER 37


Minnesota, 1906



Alma alighted the carriage and shook the dust from her skirt. Stewart kept his gaze forward, the brim of his derby shadowing his face from the morning sun. He’d woken with a stiff, rigid manner and sat thus still. “Which direction are you going?”

She looked both ways down the thoroughfare. “North.” She pointed in the direction she’d started off yesterday before turning around, the direction Frederick had instructed her to go.

“How far?”

Ningo’anwe’biwin, whatever that meant. “Um . . . no more than a couple of miles.”

“And what’s the name of this sister?”

A layer of dust had settled over her from the ride in and seemed to cover everything—her shoes, her skirt, her hair, her skin, even her tongue felt dry and gritty. She swallowed. “Minowe.” How strange to speak her name aloud after so long, and yet so effortless, as if her lips had never forgotten the motion. “Margaret, that was her Christian name. Surely she’s married now, but I don’t know her surname.”

Stewart exhaled, long and steady. He took out his handkerchief and dabbed the back of his neck. The white silk turned damp and brown. She watched him finger the blue initials hand-stitched at the corner before finally looking at her. “And you’ll be back at the agency by—”

“By one. I promise.”

He turned forward again and held his eyes shut through another long exhale. Then, without goodbye, he steered the horse and buggy toward the livery. It sickened her to watch him go. Her neck felt flush, but her hands clammy. They’d argued before, she told herself as she started off down the road. But this was more than an argument. Something had wedged between them. Something sharp and deep. Or maybe it had always been there—her past, her secrets—and only now lay exposed.

She glanced over her shoulder. The white agency building glared in the sunlight, painfully bright against an otherwise neutral landscape. She squinted and watched Stewart mount the steps. He was doing this for her. Whatever was between them, he was still here. After she got her answers from Minowe, after they freed Asku, she and Stewart could look forward again and let the past alone.

First she had to find Minowe. A dense fringe of grass and shrubs lined either side of the road. Beyond lay open field—some tilled, some fallow—with stands of birch and cottonwood about the border. But no path anywhere in sight.

Ningo’anwe’biwin. She unpinned her hat and wiped her brow with the sleeve of her duster. When had she heard that phrase? She caged her present troubles and thought back. Summer perhaps? Long ago. Warmth had hung in the air, the canopy of leaves above her full and green. Minowe was beside her and they trudged hand in hand behind a loping Asku. She’d been ten, maybe eleven.

“How much farther?” she’d asked.

Asku turned and grinned. “Ningo’anwe’biwin.”

“What does that mean?” she asked Minowe.

Her friend puzzled a minute, working through the translation, then her face brightened. “From one place of rest to the next.”

“Oh.” Alma walked a few more feet, then stopped. “How far is that?”

Minowe shrugged.

Asku whirled around again. Light filtered through the trees, falling around him like a golden cloak. “About half a mile, Azaadiins. Come on. You can make it.”

He seemed then as he’d always seemed to her: invincible, infallible. And Minowe . . . Frederick had been right. They used to be inseparable.

A cool fall breeze nipped at the back of her neck and rustled her skirt, sucking the memory of warmth from the air. Solitude stung her like a hornet’s bite, a cruel reminder why she seldom tended the garden of her remembrance. She took a deep breath and continued down the road. Though her chest heaved and sweat returned to her brow, she doubted an Indian—unencumbered by heavy petticoats, a corset, and high-heeled boots—would yet require a rest.

After a few more minutes of travel, the tall roadside grasses parted to reveal a narrow trail. It snaked eastward through the prairie and disappeared into a sparse woodland. Alma stretched onto her tiptoes and looked down the main road. No other trailheads visible. Hiking her skirts, she clambered up the road’s embankment onto the trail.

Alma’s insides tightened as she tramped down the path. Every inch of her skin itched with the urge to turn back. Asku she could talk to. And Frederick. They’d both been gone before she and announced their plans to marry. What they knew, if anything, came secondhand. But Minowe bore witness to it all.

She stopped and shook the clenched-fist tension from her hands. Turn back now and Asku hanged. Her feet shuffled onward. She couldn’t abide more sorrow and guilt.

The path dead-ended at several acres of downward-sloping farmland. Weeds and dry prairie grass overran most of the land. A few rows of corn stood like skeletons at the far end, bounded by sprawling squash plants and a leafy cluster of beet tops. Trees sprouted like whiskers beyond the modest stretch of crops, and farther on a small lake rippled in the afternoon sunlight.