Under the Same Sky Read online

  I knew where to find my father’s body. Not far—the horse had raced past a familiar oak my sisters and I often climbed.

  I woke my mother and we ran without a word along the dimly lit path, faded nightgowns flapping around our ankles.

  My father’s body was little more than a heap of bloodstained rags. The horse stood nearby, chewing, glancing at us before dropping his head to the grass again. Scraps of cloth fluttered along the pathway the wagon had taken, bits of clothing caught on rocks. My father’s tired gray hat lay at the top of the hill.

  I stared at what was left of him and wasn’t sure how I felt. He hadn’t been a kind man. The only thing he had ever given us was beatings.

  Still, I should have been lost in grief beside my mother, but my mind was on something else. My dreams had changed. For the first time, they had occurred simultaneously with the event. My dreams were no longer limited to vague messages forecasting the future.

  Burying a man in hard ground is difficult work. It took two full days for Adelaide and me to manage a trench large enough for his mangled body. Even then, we had to bend his knees a bit so he fit into the hole. My mother read from her Bible, then nodded at me to shovel the earth onto his body.

  Our father had never spent much time with us when he was alive. Even so, the house seemed eerily quiet after his death. It was strange not hearing his heavy footsteps, not hearing him gripe about the sorry state of his life. We mourned, but not terribly. When he left the living, my father took with him the stale reek of alcohol, a sullen expression, and a pair of overused fists.

  My mother, my sisters, and I were forced to take on my father’s duties, which included driving the wagon to town for buying and selling. The ride took over two hours each way, but once we arrived, we forgot every bump. My sisters and I never tired of the activity in town. The painted building fronts with fine glass windows, the people who walked the treeless street, kicking up dust as they visited the stores. Dirty children watched like sparrows on perches while fancy ladies strolled the boardwalks under parasols, protecting their faces from the sun, tucking their hands into the arms of stiff-backed men in suits and hats. Sometimes they were shadowed by people whose eyes gleamed white out of sullen black faces. My mother told us they were from Africa, brought to America as slaves.

  The town of Saxe Gotha boasted more than two skin colours. Fierce tattoos and feathers enhanced the bronze skin and black hair of men who moved with the casual grace of cats. They avoided the plank walkways, preferring the dust of the road under their feet.

  My father had told us stories about Indians and their bloodthirsty ways. We had stared open-mouthed as he regaled us with violent tales. So when I saw the Indians in town, they both frightened and intrigued me, but I never saw them attack anyone. They were in town for the same reason we were: to trade. An uneasy peace existed between them and the white men while business was conducted. They brought deerskins and beaded jewellery and left with weapons, tools, and rum. No one spoke to them on the street, and they offered no conversation. Business complete, they leapt onto the bare backs of their horses and disappeared into the shadows of the trees beyond the town.

  I felt an odd connection to these men. When my mother led my sisters and me into the local shop to trade eggs or small hides for blankets or whatever else we needed, the other customers avoided us as if they were afraid our poverty might touch them. At the end of our day, we climbed onto our clumsily rebuilt wagon, pulled by the only horse we’d ever owned, and were gone.

  We crossed paths with the Indians, but never came close enough to make contact. And yet their images began to appear in my dreams, to emerge from the trees and surround me with purpose, the tight skins of their drums resonating with the heartbeat of the earth.

  Chapter 2

  Battle Dream

  There was so much blood. My senses reeled with the unfamiliar heat of it, the stench, the sticky weight of it.

  It was more than a dream. It had to be. The images were real, but hadn’t come from my own thoughts. It wasn’t my bloodstained hand that gripped the slick hilt of a sword.

  But I knew whose it was. He was perhaps twenty, two years older than I, with deep brown eyes. I had seen him my entire life. We had grown together since I was a little girl, in dreams as clear as waking days.

  Usually when I saw him, he was at peace. Not this time. His dark hair was pulled back from his sweat-streaked face, tied into a tail. His teeth were bared. He was weak with injuries and exhaustion, disheartened by the sight of an endless tide of red coats pushing toward him through a field of smoke. Muskets and cannons boomed in their wake.

  Every one of his muscles ached. I rolled over in my bed, feeling the tension between my shoulders though I was cradled within my mattress. His head thrummed, echoing the drums in the field, the crack of guns, and his racing heartbeat.

  I felt what he felt, but my body was miles away. My eyes burned with gritty tears. My limbs were heavy, weighted down by defeat. The stink of sulphur singed my nostrils, and my feet squelched through ice-cold muck while my body slept in my warm, safe bedroom, the air sweet with baking bread.

  The sensations roaring through my veins were unlike anything I’d felt before. Fear forced the blood through my veins at an exhilarating speed, but I had to control the panic. He was in grave danger. He needed more than encouragement from me. He needed me to be a part of him. My senses were alive, my body untouched. I gave him all I had, despite the fact I couldn’t touch him. Where he felt pain, I brought a healing touch. Where there was dizziness, I gave him strength.

  A grunt alerted me to someone approaching from behind. In my mind I thrust out an arm, and the body I inhabited followed. He jumped, reacting to my unexpected presence, and I felt his sense of surprise. But of course I was there. I would never let him die. He took the strength I offered and turned it to rage. He roared, fighting for his life, twisting and moving with the violent grace of a wolf. His sword blocked a strike, although the smoke was so thick I almost didn’t see it happen. Steel sliced through the air on his other side, and I turned to foil its attack, knowing he would turn with me. Again and again he blocked killing blows and struck out, cutting through the attacking soldiers. His strength was returning, his confidence back in place. I felt a surge of power as it filled his body and mind.

  All the silent communication from our childhood had brought us to this point. I would never leave him. I would be wherever, whatever he needed me to be, if only in his thoughts. I would give him courage and strength and love. And he would give me the same whenever my mind called to him.

  Close enough that our minds were like one, far enough that we never felt each other’s touch. We were what we had always been.

  Chapter 3

  Beyond the House

  For nearly two years I spent my days looking forward to falling asleep. For me, the darkness was full of life.

  The dreams that comforted me the most were the ones featuring him, the boy from my childhood, now grown into a man about the same age as I. He was tall with a solid build and ruddy complexion. Dark hair fell in loose waves to just past his shoulders, and sometimes a short beard framed lips that curled slightly at the edges. When we saw each other in dreams, his smile felt so warm I thought I might burst into flame. But it was his fathomless brown eyes that spoke to me the most.

  He usually visited when I slept, but if I could find a quiet place and relax, I might see him under the light of the sun. He appeared in my thoughts as if to watch me, as intrigued by me as I was by him. Sometimes I sensed his presence, but couldn’t see him. Occasionally the spectre of a wolf loped through my thoughts, but somehow I knew the spirit of a man lived within its coarse dark coat. The eyes were the same: unflinching, deep wells of intelligence. So, without any other name to give him, I took to calling him Wolf.

  I had dreams where I walked without him, seeing images I didn’t try to understand: colours that swirled and left me breathless, streams of voices shining silver as they passed, featurel
ess faces shadowed by unfamiliar trees.

  Then something changed. The dreams went dark.

  Nightmares invaded my sleep the summer after I turned seventeen. It was the hottest summer anyone could remember. Weeks passed with no rain, and the air grew fragile with need. Dead grass lay flat on the cracked earth with no hope of resurrection. Cicadas screeched from the faraway forest, a constant trill from dawn until dusk. And at night apparitions stole my sleep—bulky shadows creeping closer or retreating at their whim, like creatures hunting.

  Everyone has nightmares, but mine were different. They showed me my future. Except they were unclear. All I knew was something horrible was coming. Something I couldn’t see, but knew. I could do nothing but wait.

  I found it hard to fall asleep in the heat, but I didn’t mind. When sleep finally claimed me, I wished it hadn’t come. My nightmares became darker every night, oppressive with growing urgency. Their menace accompanied me constantly, even creeping into my waking hours.

  When the need for waiting came to an end, I knew. On the morning of that day, sunshine flooded the walls of the bedroom I shared with my sisters, but I saw only blackness. Fighting dizziness and nausea, I rose from our bed, needing to escape the grasp of the dreams. My legs were weak, and I clung to the yellowed wall. I stared at my sleeping sisters for so long they awoke and returned my stare.

  “What is it?” Adelaide whispered.

  My mouth opened and closed, but words were trapped in my throat.

  “Get Mama,” Adelaide said to Ruth, keeping her eyes on me.

  Ruth ran to our mother’s room, next to ours. Mother came and stood with me, letting me cling to her as if I were a small child. Slightly steadied by her presence, I dressed in the same dress I wore every day. I only had one other, and I kept it folded in our wardrobe, saving it until this one was too dirty to wear. On the table by our bedroom door sat a large tin bowl and a small ewer half full of precious well water. I dipped in a cloth and used it to scrub my teeth, then wet down my hair with my fingers and tied a neat blue ribbon around my braid. My mother had given me the ribbon a week before, in celebration of Adelaide’s fifteenth birthday. Blue for me, pink for Adelaide, and yellow for Ruth. To distract myself from the pounding fear in my head, I kept busy, mending torn clothing and cleaning the house. I wove a thin bracelet for Adelaide out of the dry grass that brushed our house’s walls, and pieced together a little dress for the black-eyed rag doll Ruth carried everywhere.

  The day seethed with heat, trembling in distorted waves over the baked grass. There wasn’t even a hint of breeze. The late afternoon sun bubbled low on the horizon, and its glare painted black silhouettes of our small barn and listing fence posts.

  From out of the silence came the sounds of horses’ hooves, heavy on the dried earth, coming toward our house.

  My mother had never been a hunter, but I had seen her use our father’s rifle against coyotes that pestered our hens. She had never hit one while I’d been watching, but the crack of a shot scattered the predators and urged them to seek easier meals. At the sounds of the horses, she grabbed the rifle from where it hung on the wall. My mother, my sisters, and I crowded through the doorway and stood on either side of its crooked frame, squinting into the light and watching the black profiles of men on horseback as they rode toward us. She held the rifle across her body like a shield, resting the end of its barrel on our faded wooden doorstep.

  Before their faces came into view, I knew who they were. I started to shake. Adelaide took my hand and clung to it.

  The strangers had ridden here from town. I half remembered their slouching figures from the last time we had been there to trade. They had tracked us like wolves might follow a flock of lambs, and we were just as helpless. We had no neighbours to come to our aid; no man had come to champion the tattered household of women.

  I counted twelve men. They were scruffy and unshaven, tobacco juice staining their beards. Their apparent leader looked perhaps in his forties and wore a blue shirt, the only colour that stood out among the group’s worn gray clothing. He looked us over, then touched the brim of his hat in greeting.

  My mother shepherded us behind her and straightened her shoulders, standing a little taller. An unexpected breath of hot, dry air moved through us, lifting her apron in a halfhearted wave and tickling strands of golden hair that hung around her ears.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud to my ears.

  Blue Shirt’s lips widened into a smile, but he said nothing. My mother tried again.

  “My husband will be here shortly. Is there something I can help you with?”

  Blue Shirt grinned through his remaining teeth and spat beside his horse’s front hooves. The animal shifted its weight and the saddle creaked.

  “Well, now, missus, we all know that ain’t true, don’t we?” he drawled. He smiled wryly at his men for confirmation.

  “Ain’t no husband, ’less you’s married to a ghost,” called one, and amusement rippled through the circle of men.

  Blue Shirt slid from his horse, reached up to his saddle, and grabbed a coil of rope. Four other men did the same.

  “Hold it right there,” Mother said. She lifted the butt of the gun to her shoulder and aimed it at the men. I saw a tremor pass through her, and I heard the rustling of her skirt against the door. “Get right back on those horses, please. I’ve no wish to shoot any of you.”

  Blue Shirt drew his mouth into a tight line, his eyes cold. When he took a step toward us, my mother cocked the trigger, and shut one eye, focusing.

  “Chandler?” Blue Shirt said, glancing over his shoulder toward a young man still on horseback.

  “Yes, sir,” said Chandler. He drew a pistol from his belt, aimed it at my mother, and shot her through her head.

  She died in that instant, but the echo of the gunshot went on and on. My sisters and I stood frozen to the spot, not breathing, watching my mother’s body slide down the wall. The back of her skull smeared an uneven path of red down the gray wood.

  “Aw, Chandler,” Blue Shirt said. He made a clucking sound in his mouth and shook his head. “I wasn’t going for the kill. What a waste.”

  “Sorry, boss,” Chandler said, sliding his pistol back into his holster.

  We stared at the men, speechless. It wasn’t until they began stepping toward us again, ropes twisting between their fingers, that we jerked out of our daze.

  Everything moved very quickly. I shoved Ruth through the door and grabbed for Adelaide, but someone yanked her away. Her screams were terrifying, but I couldn’t stop to help her. I had to get Ruth away. My baby sister ran into the house ahead of me, blond curls bouncing against her back. The cellar, I thought desperately, shoving Ruth through the narrow hall as I ran, needing to get to the back door. If we could get there, if we could fling open the heavy doors in the earth, if we could pull the bolt down in time—

  One of them cinched a thick arm around my waist, forcing my breath out in a grunt.

  “Run, Ruth!” I screamed. “The cellar!”

  I dug my nails into the man’s arms and kicked against his shins with my bare heels. He flung me to the floor and my forehead banged it hard. He flipped me onto my back so I saw the gleam of sweat leaking from his sunburnt pores. He sneered and slapped my face so my cheek burned and my vision went momentarily white. I thought I heard something crack in my nose. Tears flooded my eyes, but I fought as hard as I could. He pinned me beneath his body, grabbed both my wrists in one big, calloused hand, then tied them together with a rough rope. He tightened the knot, yanked me to my feet, and dragged me toward the door.

  I looked behind me and saw Ruth, slung over a man’s shoulder like a madly wriggling sack of corn. She was sobbing and calling my name.

  “I’m here, Ruth!” I cried. I needed to give her something to hold on to, if only my voice.

  Sunshine flooded through our open door, blinding me as my captor shoved me outside. My mother’s body slumped against the
outer doorframe, her head tilted to one side. Her eyes were open, staring, faded blue crystals going dark beneath the black hole in her forehead. The wind tickled the loose strands of her hair, blowing them back and forth across her face. A few got stuck on the thin line of blood that snaked down her neck and into the top of her gown.

  Adelaide sat on a horse, her face twisted in terror, her hands tied to the pommel of the saddle. She saw me and tried to scream, but a rag was stuffed in her mouth and tied tight over her cheeks, muffling her voice. A man sat behind her, keeping her from sliding off. My captor carried me toward a different horse and handed me, kicking and screaming, to another man on horseback. My back met the solid wall of his chest and I pulled away, but he stopped my struggles by anchoring me against him, shoving his hands between my thighs and gripping hard enough to bruise. When he released my legs, I started to look around at him, but he shoved a cloth in my mouth and tied it tightly. My lips stretched until I thought they would split, but I managed to work my teeth over the gag so at least I could breathe through my mouth.

  Blue Shirt strode through the group of men, pausing to look at each of us, ignoring our sobs. He studied me through squinted eyes, then reached up and ripped out the blue ribbon I had tied in my hair that morning. I yelped and tried to lift my hands to my head in reflex, but the man behind me shoved them down again. Blue Shirt stepped toward Adelaide, who sobbed through the gag. He grabbed her wrists and twisted off the bracelet I had made for her that morning. Finally, he turned toward little Ruth, also bound but not gagged.

  “Leave her!” I tried to yell, but my words were swallowed up by the putrid fibres of the cloth in my mouth. I couldn’t bear the thought of his hands on her, of any kind of pain inflicted on my baby sister. I tried again, even though no one would understand what I said. “She’s just a little girl!”