AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Her rage has built up inside her through the years against this man who was cruel to her,” Fire Thunder said. “A person can take just so much abuse, so much badgering. Then when she thought that he had told you the truth about your birthright, that was all it needed to make her snap. This man had taken from her something precious. You were all that she had left. And now she doesn’t even have you.”
“It’s so sad,” Kaylene said, wiping tears from her eyes. Her tears were not for John, but for the way it had turned out. It had started the day they had taken her to raise as theirs.
“Go to your mother,” Fire Thunder said thickly.
“Mother . . . ?” Kaylene said, giving him a startled, questioning glance.
“In a sense she is,” Fire Thunder said. “She loves you, Kaylene. She has sacrificed for you. Go to her. She is a woman in need.”
“But she is also a murderess,” Kaylene said, an involuntary shiver racing across her flesh.
Fire Thunder clasped her shoulders with his hands. “She has done everyone a good deed by ridding the world of that vile man,” he said. “Go to her. Hold her. Then question her. Perhaps now she will tell you the full truth.”
Kaylene gave Fire Thunder a soft kiss on his lips, then turned and went to Anna.
Several women were caring for her, wiping her brow with a cloth, trying to awaken her. Kaylene nodded to the women and they stepped aside.
She knelt down beside Anna and she placed a gentle hand to her brow. “Mother,” she murmured, “please wake up. I’m sorry if I hurt you. I do love you, but . . . but . . . I want to know my true mother.”
Anna slowly opened her eyes. Tears filled them again when she found Kaylene there, being so sweet, so gentle, so caring. As she had awakened, she had heard Kaylene call her mother.
She reached a hand out for Kaylene. “I do love you so,” she murmured. “Kaylene, you are my life.”
“And I love you,” Kaylene said, trying desperately to brush aside the fact that this woman had deceived her for so long. “But that doesn’t keep me from wanting to know my true mother. Please tell me. It’s not fair keeping it from me any longer.”
Trembling, Anna moved to a sitting position. She hugged herself as she gazed at Kaylene. “Yes, I will tell you,” she murmured. “Then you will know that it is not as bad as it seems, your being here, raised as my child.”
“Please tell me everything,” Kaylene said, as Fire Thunder came and stood over her and Anna, listening.
“One day, long ago, while giving a show at Laredo, an ailing lady named Eloisa Soriano, came to me with her six-month-old baby,” Anna said, her voice drawn. “The woman explained that she was ill and that she was unwed. She was from Gypsy stock, but had been cast away when it was discovered that she was in the first stages of leprosy.”
Kaylene paled and gasped. “Leprosy?” she said, in barely a whisper.
“With my husband’s consent, I took the child, a precious tiny girl,” Anna said softly. “Before the woman left, she told me that if I ever wanted to bring the child by on occasions, for her to see from a distance, so as not to give the child leprosy, she would be living in Laredo.”
“Did you?” Kaylene asked, her eyes wide, her heart thumping wildly to know the truth, troubling though it was. And it was wonderful, it was a relief, to know that she hadn’t been stolen, and that she had been taken in to raise as a daughter, not as a slave. Knowing that meant a lot to her.
“No,” Anna said, slowly shaking her head. “Never. I feared the leprosy. And I feared that she might change her mind and want you back.”
“Do you think she is alive?” Kaylene asked, hardly able to envision what the lady might look like with the leprosy. She knew little about the disease. It terribly disfigured a person. And no one would go near anyone with it. They were usually outcast from the community.
“I’m not certain if she is or isn’t,” Anna said, then reached over and placed a gentle hand on Kaylene’s face. “Through the years, Kaylene, John for the most part behaved kindly toward you. When he became greedy and loved tequila too much, he totally changed. He beat me whenever he chose to. And he saw you as a draw for the carnival, especially when you found the baby panther and raised it into a tame adult. That’s when John started seeing you more as an object for making money, than as a daughter.”
Anna hung her head in her hands. “You don’t know how often I begged him not to treat you like the other children he stole and placed into slavery,” she cried. “But he would never listen. He was blinded by so many things. I’m . . . glad that I shot him.”
“So Father did abduct other children,” Kaylene said, shivering at the thought of how many she had seen working in the carnival.
“Yes, they were abducted,” Anna said, lifting desperate eyes to Kaylene. “That is why we had to keep on moving so often, from town to town, from state to state. He was always afraid of being caught. In the end, he became too smug . . . too careless.”
Anna flung herself into Kaylene’s arms. “I
have always loved you,” she cried. “I love you now, as though you are my true child. Do not forsake me, Kaylene. Not now, not when I need you so much.”
Kaylene looked up at Fire Thunder. “Can she go back to the village with us?” she asked hoarsely. “Fire Thunder, I just can’t abandon her. Please? Can I take her with me?”
Fire Thunder hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, if that is what you wish,” he said, clasping his hands tightly behind him.
Kaylene framed her mother’s face between her hands. “Mother, will you take me to my true mother?” she asked warily.
