Her only reaction to this statement was to stare straight back at him.
Then, carefully, tenderly, he placed her hand back onto her knee, and, removing the bag from around his shoulder—it housing his newly-made pipe—he withdrew the object and then meticulously lifted it from its soft buckskin bag, its four attached eagle's feathers falling down from the cedar stem of the pipe and the beaded shafts of these feathers clicking together. Placing the pipe's tender wrappings onto the bed, he held the pipe stem firmly in one hand and added the sacred tobacco into the pipe's red, catlinite stone bowl with his other hand. Then, arising and stepping toward the fire in the room, he took up a coal from it and quickly lit the tobacco.
Pacing back toward Otahki, he bent again on one knee before her, and, offering his hand again, he ignored the thrill of her touch and brought her up to her feet so she was standing with him. Setting her hand back to her side, he took hold of thepipe with both of his hands, and, lifting it up, he took a puff upon it and blew smoke first to the Creator, then down to the Earth, then to the sacred four directions. Only once this was done did he begin his prayer in the Blackfoot tongue:
"O Creator, have pity upon me and upon my friend whose eye and face are damaged.
"O Creator, I come to you with an open heart. Outside this fort are new clothes recently made. These I give to you where they lay as a sacrifice to you for your blessing in healing this woman.
"O Creator, I know the heart of this woman, and she is good. Have pity upon her and upon me, for I wish to heal this wound in her eye and the bruises on her face.
"O Creator, this is a beautiful woman, and she should retain her eye so she might bring joy into this world with her beauty.
"O Creator, pity me. Help me to take this stick from her eye without damaging her eye and help me to bring hope into this woman's heart again.
"O Creator, I have said it."
He helped her to sit down again upon the edge of the bed and, laying his pipe atop its sacred bag, resumed his position on one knee in front of her. He then signed, "Can you see out of the damaged eye?"
"A little," she answered him in English. It was a language First Rider was learning out of necessity, but, though dialects usually came easily to him, this particular vernacular caused the tongue to whip the teeth as though angry with them, creating sounds foreign to his ear. Indeed, the Pikuni language was so much prettier sounding.
But, his biggest problem with the language was how many rules it broke in order to convey a thought. It broke so many of the rules for speaking, it was hard to know how to use the English expressions well.
And when she asked, "Does thou think me own eye will come out when thou tries to remove the stick?" he could barely answer her. Indeed, he was struggling within—fighting not only himself and his newly discovered inclinations toward her—but he was also enraged at this "husband" who had let out his wrath upon an innocent woman—a woman whom a husband should treat with the respect she is due.
But, swallowing both of these desires, he merely shook his head and said, "I try…be gentle."
She nodded, though he noticed a tear was gently falling over her cheek. In reaction, he reached out and touched the tear, wiping it from her face and placing it, instead, upon his own countenance. "No need…cry," he said. "I take…your…tears…and pain upon me. It…go well." He smiled at her.
Reaching out, he again grasped her hand in his and held it firmly, noticing that even her hand trembled. Then she gulped as more tears fled down her cheeks, rushing over her countenance, onto her breast…a womanly breast, he noted.
Then, still clutching her hand within his, he began to sing the song of healing, the same words and weird melody given to him by his Big-Person mother. As he sang, he made motions around and toward the stick stuck in her eye, never touching it, though his hand and his fingers looked as though he were pulling the object out. Over and over he repeated the actions as he sang.
The song went on and on with no change in the condition of her eye. But, he didn't cease either his actions or his singing.
Then it happened, and when it did, his heart rejoiced: this beautiful woman began to sing the healing song along withhim, slowly at first, but then, as though the words and sounds were not a distant memory, she sang the strange sounds, lyrics and odd tune perfectly, as she had once done in the past. And, though First Rider thought again how odd it was that this young woman should know his Big-Person mother's song almost as well as he, he kept making the same hand motions, his gestures looking as though he were pulling the object free from her eye, yet never touching either the eye or the stick.
And, it was with some surprise when he found he, too, was crying.
Yet, tears or not, he continued to sing along with her. How long they sang the strange uneven melody of the song over and over, he didn't know, but it little mattered. He would keep reciting the "words," along with the odd-sounding music to the rhythm of his motions. He would do it through the night and the coming day, if necessary.
So greatly was he intent upon the healing song and removing the stick without damaging her eye, he was unaware of his success until he felt the stick jump out from her eye and into his hand. Quickly, he held the piece of sharp wood up and looked at it against the light of the fire, then, anxiously, he glanced at her to see if her eye remained firmly in its place.
Her eye, with its deep-blue-colored iris, was still perfectly situated within her eye socket, though there was bleeding there at the side of her eye. Relieved at his triumph, he drew in a deep breath. There would be no quick actions needed on his part to put the eye back into place, which would have been required had the eye moved when the stick had released.
But, during all of this, neither he nor the girl stopped singing. They sang on and on as though they were both unwilling to end either the song or their closeness to one another which had been spurred on by the strange melody. He could only wonder again how, four years ago, he could have missedhow deeply he was connected to this girl, grown now into a desirable woman.
Looking into her eyes, he saw she, too, was crying. But, like him, it was not a sadness of heart. Indeed not. It was a gladness, a coming together again, only this time First Rider recognized his heart's connection to her.
As he knelt in front of her, he wondered at himself. His body was telling him this young woman was the object of his desire, yet his heart reminded him she was, and had always been, more than a special and dear friend.
He simply hadn't recognized it.
She would make me a fine wife.
The thought seemed to materialize from the very air around him, as though the spirits were talking to him in the only way he could understand. Was it true? Did he wish to take this woman as his wife?
Áa,yes, he did.
