Page 17 of High Noon

Chapter Five

Eve

Kohana motionedfor me to leave the tipi. He led the way, holding the flap open until I was outside, and then gently let it down again. Maru snored lightly inside.

Kohana gestured to a separate tipi a couple feet away. “What do you want?” I whispered.

“You must tell me exactly what you saw.”

“Why is it so important to you?”

“Because you were in two visions I received in the spring.”

I ticked my head back. “How?”

He gestured to the second tipi again, so I went inside. A second fire smoldered in the center, smoke swirling up and out of the top between the poles encircling us. I settled on one side of the fire and Kohana positioned himself across the smoke from me. He tossed a bundle of herbs into the flames and white smoke poured out, thick and writhing.

“Is that why you won’t let me out of your sight?”

He nodded once.

“What did I do in your visions?” It must have been horrible. The waves of tension flowing from him were overwhelming at times.

He replied, “Don’t lie to me and tell me you only saw crows. I know better.”

I swallowed, wondering how I would explain any of it to him.

“I will give you part of my first vision, but you must give me part of yours in return. And you must be honest. I think you’ll understand my concern once you hear what I’m about to tell you.”

I realized Kohana was making a peace offering, and I appreciated it and respected him all the more for it. Letting out a pent-up breath, I closed my eyes. “Thank you.”

“You fell from the sky, not in a suit of glowing white, but in one that was as black as the raven’s,” he began. “I will tell you what this means to my people, because it may mean something entirely different to you. I’ve found that all peoples have their own legends and histories. Often, they are similar, despite the differences among nations and tribes. This is ours: Once, ravens were stark white, and they were troublemakers. The birds would warn buffalo of hunting parties and our people would go hungry. Eventually, our people began to starve. Until one day, one of our warriors caught the troublesome raven and threw him into a fire. He emerged from the flames with all his feathers blackened with soot. But it wasn’t ash and soot at all. He’d been transformed. It was punishment for his past harshness against us. From that day forward, he was tasked with warning our chief of anything that might destroy us. He was not allowed to use his voice in any way that might harm our people. From that point forward, we have been able to feed ourselves as we pleased without the bird’s interference. The Lakota have flourished.”

“I’m no bird,” I told him, feeling his story creep beneath my skin.

“And you are no mere girl.”

He was right.

“There is more. When you landed in your dark suit, you landed on your feet. You plucked thick, sharp splinters, like those,” he said, nodding to my stakes, “from your side and began to kill our people with them.”

I would never do that, I wanted to tell him. I wouldn’t kill indiscriminately, and the only two humans I wanted dead were in a time far from this one. But the fear in his eyes told me that no matter how much I reassured him, he wouldn’t trust me. Not now that he’d seen something different in me. Something terrible.

“Tell me what you saw,” he demanded.

Respecting the peace of our trade, I began, “I saw my friend and Enoch’s sister lying dead on the ground to my left. I looked right and saw my enemy and Enoch’s brother also lying on the ground dead.”

“Caused by your hand?”

“I didn’t see how it happened, but yes. I knew I was the one who killed them.”

“You felt it, here?” He clapped a hand over his heart.

I nodded. “Yes.” My breaths came hard, and I struggled to even out my breathing.

Kohana waited patiently and quietly until I calmed down, and then he revealed more of his visions. “You came for vengeance. You thirsted for blood and began to massacre my people. Not because they’d done anything to you, but because you remembered me and Hotah. And because you had really come to end Kangi’s life, but we refused to tell you where he was.”

“Do you think it was a vision of the future?”

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