Rider on Fire. Sharon Sala

so without arguing. Adam took a seat opposite Franklin’s chair and leaned back, waiting for the older man to begin.

      “I had a dream,” Franklin said.

      Adam set his coffee aside and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair.

      “Tell me.”

      Franklin relayed what he’d dreamed, and what he believed that it meant. When he was finished, he leaned back and crossed his arms across his chest.

      “So, can you help me?” he asked.

      “What do you want me to do?” Adam countered.

      Franklin sighed. “I guess, I want to know if I’m right, if Leila and I had a child. I want to know this before I die.”

      Adam stood, then paced to the window, absently staring at the way sunlight reflected from his windshield onto a wind chime hanging from the porch. He knew what Franklin was asking. He just wasn’t convinced Franklin would get the answer he desired.

      “So, will you make medicine for me?” Franklin asked.

      Adam turned abruptly and asked, “Will you accept what comes, even if it’s not what you wanted?”

      “Yes.”

      Adam nodded shortly. “Then, yes, I’ll help you.”

      Franklin sighed, then swiped a shaky hand across his face.

      “What do you need from me?” he asked.

      “Something that is remarkably yours alone.”

      Franklin hesitated a moment, then left the room. He returned shortly carrying a carving of an owl in flight.

      “This was my first owl. Would this do?”

      “Are you willing to sacrifice it?”

      Franklin rubbed a hand over the owl one last time, as if imprinting the perfection of the shape and the feathers in his mind, then handed it over.

      Adam took it. The wood felt warm where Franklin had been holding it, adding yet another layer of reality to the piece. Then he took out his knife.

      “Are you still on blood thinner?” Adam asked.

      Franklin nodded.

      “Then hair will have to do.”

      Franklin sat down. Adam deftly separated a couple of strands of Franklin’s hair from his head and cut them off, wrapped them in his handkerchief and put them in his pocket.

      “Is that all you need?” Franklin asked.

      Adam nodded. “I will make medicine for you.”

      Franklin’s shoulders slumped with relief. “When will we know if it worked?”

      “When someone comes.”

      “When? Not if, but when? How can you be so sure?”

      “I know what I know,” Adam said, and it was all he would say.

      For Franklin, it wasn’t enough, but it would have to do. “Then I will wait,” he said.

      Adam nodded, then picked up his coffee cup and leaned back in his chair and took a sip.

      Franklin picked up his cup as well, but he didn’t drink. He tightened his fingers around the mug, letting the warmth of the crockery settle within him as he watched his old friend’s son.

      Adam was looking out the window, his eyes narrowing sharply as he squinted against the light. Franklin thought that Adam looked a lot like his father. Same strong face—same far-seeing expression in his eyes, but he was taller and more muscular. And he’d been beyond the Kiamichis. He’d lived a warrior’s life for the United States government.

      Franklin set his coffee cup aside, folded his hands in his lap, and closed his eyes.

      It was good that Adam Two Eagles had come home.

      Within an hour after arriving back at his home, Adam began the preparations. He drank some water before going out to ready the sweat lodge. On the way down the hillside, he got work gloves from the tool shed and a small hatchet from a shelf.

      A sense of peace came over him as he worked, gathering wood and patching a small hole in the lodge. Tonight, he would begin the ceremony. If Franklin and Leila had made a baby together, the Old Ones would find it.

      He hurried back to the house, gathering everything he needed, then walked back to the small lodge above the creek bank.

      He undressed with care, shedding his clothes a layer at a time. By the time he’d dropped his last garment, a slight breeze had come up, lifting his hair away from his face and cooling the sweat beading on his body. The first star of the evening was just visible when he looked up at the sky. He checked the fire. Ideally, there would be someone outside the lodge continuing to feed the fire, but not tonight. Tonight the fire that he’d already built would serve the purpose.

      He lifted the flap and crawled in. Within seconds, he was covered in sweat. He sat down cross-legged, letting his arms and hands rest on his knees. With a slow, even rhythm he breathed in and breathed out. Then he closed his eyes and began to chant. The words were almost as old as the land on which he sat.

      The hours passed and the moon that had been hanging high in the sky, was more than halfway through its slow descent to the horizon. Morning was but an hour or so away.

      Inside the sweat lodge, all the words had been said. All the prayers had been prayed.

      Adam was ready.

      He crawled out of the lodge. When he stood, the muscles in his legs tried to cramp, but he walked them out as he then moved behind the lodge and laid another stick of wood on the fire.

      With the sweat drying swiftly on his skin and his mind and body free from impurities, he reached into his pack and took out the carving, as well as the hairs he’d cut from Franklin’s head.

      Some might have called it a prayer—others might have said it was a chant—but the words Adam spoke were a call to the Old Ones. The rhythm of the syllables rolled off Adam’s tongue like a song. The log he’d laid on the fire popped, sending a shower of sparks up into the air. Adam felt the prick of heat from one as it landed on his skin, but he didn’t flinch.

      Still wrapped in the cloak of darkness, he lifted his arms to the heavens and began to dance. Dust and ashes rose up from the ground, coating his feet and legs as he moved in and out of the shadows around the fire. He danced and he sang until his heartbeat matched the rhythm of his feet.

      The wind rose, whistling through the trees in a thin, constant wail, sucking the hair from the back of his neck and then swirling it about his face.

      They were coming.

      He tossed the owl and the hairs into the fire, and then lifted his hands above his head. As he did, there was what he could only describe as an absence of air. He could still breathe, but he was unable to move.

      The great warriors manifested themselves within the smoke, using it to coat the shapes of what they’d once been. They came mounted on spirit horses with eyes of fire. The horses stomped and reared, inhaling showers of sparks that had been following the column of smoke, and exhaling what appeared to be stars.

      One warrior wore a war bonnet so long that it dragged beneath the ghost horse’s feet. Another was wrapped in the skin of a bear, with the mark of the claw painted on his chest. The third horse had a black handprint on its flank, while matching handprints of white were on the old warrior’s cheeks. The last one rode naked on a horse of pure white. The wrinkles in his face were as many as the rivers of the earth. His gray hair so long that it appeared tangled in the horse’s mane and tail, making it difficult to tell where man ended and horse began.

      They spoke in unison, with the sounds getting lost in the whirlwind that brought them, and yet Adam knew what they’d said.

      They would help.