Heart Tattoo Sioux Falls
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“The old woman is right, you know,” said the girl. “It’s a good thing I’ve come to live here.”
“Why?” asked the man.
He was tall and thin. He wore only an open shirt with no pants, and his arms were covered in hair so that they looked like tree branches, or vines—or something alive. She could not imagine how she would have found him attractive if he hadn’t had such beautiful eyes: dark blue, almost black; and very kind-looking.
And he spoke well enough for all that. That surprised her because people of the Plains rarely made any pretense of being educated. The old woman who ran the trading post told her this was true on most reservations in South Dakota.
But not on Pine Ridge where people were more curious about things other than their own families or their traditions, she decided. Maybe it was only when someone from off the Reservation came to visit…
“Because I want your wife.”
His mouth went wide as though in surprise. Then he smiled at her and reached out and touched her wrist gently. His hand smelled like smoke and pine needles, which brought back memories she did not want to recall.
But she liked the touch and let herself lean into it. It seemed that his voice had stopped speaking altogether, but she couldn’t be certain. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What do you mean?”
She laughed. A little too hard perhaps. But what else could she do? He seemed so serious. What did she owe him by way of explanation? How should she begin? There was nothing she had seen before that might help her to speak the words. No one she’d ever met could possibly understand. “My name is Kade,” she began slowly, “and my mother died today. Her heart just stopped beating.”
And she saw then, as if through another pair of eyes, that this man had been in love once and had lost his wife and children and the land on which they lived. And there was a pain in his face that she recognized. He understood because he knew this feeling better than she did.
Perhaps even better than her mother, who had never really known this feeling and so didn’t believe that it was possible. And suddenly she understood why the old woman thought the way she did and how she got away with it.
People were too busy to notice anything that happened to them unless something unusual happened, so the old woman could get away with saying just about anything and everyone would assume it must be true, and she always managed to find something new each year, and people believed it.
Because they felt sorry for her. Or perhaps because she reminded them of their own grandmothers and mothers, whom they loved and respected, and the idea of a witch in their midst was abhorrent.
So the man stood up and walked over to stand beside her, looking down at the body, which was now beginning to wilt as the heat ebbed from the air. “How long has she been dead?” he asked.
“Not very long,” said the girl. “No longer than half an hour.”
“Then there’s no reason—”
She put out her hand to stop him from talking, and then she leaned forward to see whether the heart had begun to turn brown like hers had.
“Don’t,” he warned, touching her shoulder. “We must wait until we are ready.”
“There’s plenty of time,” she replied.
The man was silent, and they both stared at the still-warm body. Finally, he turned toward her and held out his hands to show her the scars upon them. They weren’t like hers. The skin was smooth, pale, and white; and the fingers themselves were scarred, too, but only in places.
Where they had been burned as if they had been cooked in some pot. The rest of them were unmarked, and she could tell without looking at him that he was young.
“Do you know what these scars mean?” asked the man, and his voice was different, less deep, and quieter.
“Only that the medicine men call them the marks of a bad spirit that has come near,” she answered him.
And he nodded slightly, as though in relief that she was not afraid. “You needn’t worry yourself about me,” he said. “I’m quite harmless.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Maybe I should leave.”
But he shook his head and smiled kindly at her, and he touched her arm and whispered, “Don’t be frightened.” So she leaned close against him again, and they sat in silence for a while watching the light fade and the stars appear.
***
In the morning, when the boy came to wake her, she was lying under the same blanket. There was no sign of anyone having disturbed her body during the night. He found her still where he had left her, curled into a ball and fast asleep. She was breathing deeply and evenly, but otherwise motionless.
They all looked down on her, the old man and his son and the girl, and watched her for a moment, and then the girl spoke: “Can someone have been here?”
“Yes,” said the boy, but he was already reaching for the knife by the bedside table.
“Why? What did he want?”
He was looking down at the body. As far as they could tell, the wound was clean and fresh. No blood had seeped beyond the borders of the skin or soaked into the blankets beneath. In fact, it looked as though the wound had been made not more than an hour earlier.
The flesh inside was soft and pliable, almost translucent, yet the color had drained entirely away so that it appeared to be a piece of wax or clay that someone had pressed against her skin. It wasn’t a wound she remembered ever seeing before.
“What kind of a man is this?” wondered the old woman.
The boy was silent for a moment. He was staring down at her stomach, at the small round mark that was still visible upon it. “I don’t know,” he told her softly. Then, after a moment: “Perhaps you should go home.”
Her first impulse was to agree, but she hesitated. This was a place she knew well, although there was nothing familiar about the room itself. And yet, she hadn’t been back since she was twelve years old. When she had been allowed to choose her own place. Now she was too frightened to think about it.
“Let’s wait until we decide,” she decided. “If you are going to do anything, do it quickly.”
“It won’t take much longer,” the boy promised her, and he began to cut at her dress. The fabric tore easily. His fingers were deft, quick. After a few minutes, she felt the pressure and tugging within herself, as something within her flesh moved, stretched, and then released. “That’s enough,” he said. “There. You can get up now.”
As she pulled her legs free she could feel a faint tingling sensation through her entire body. A warmth was spreading from somewhere in the middle of her torso and outwards. For a moment she thought that it was coming from the wound, but then she realized that she wasn’t cold at all. Not even with the wind outside howling around the shuttered windows.
She looked at the boy. He was standing beside her bed with one arm across his chest and another holding the knife, as though he had just finished cutting off a chunk of meat. But he was smiling kindly at her, as he always did.
“How long will it last?” she asked him.
“For as long as it takes. Maybe a day or two—or maybe forever.” And then he added, without looking at her, “It depends on the strength of the medicine. If you want to stay on your feet for more than a year or so, then you’ll have to learn how to draw power directly from the world around you like I do. Otherwise, it will weaken and fail you sooner.”
She looked down at the wound again and felt a sudden rush of revulsion. That was part of her body, and now she would never know it again. The boy had spoken the truth; she couldn’t remember it anymore. “What if I refuse?” she asked quietly. “Will I die? Will the pain return?”
“Yes,” he said, looking straight ahead of him, as though his eyes were fixed on some distant horizon. “Yes and yes, unless you come to understand why you’re here and what you must do.”
Then he handed the knife back to his father, who laid it carefully down on the side table beside the bed. They both turned their attention back to her and waited patiently for her answer.
When she finally spoke, her voice was trembling a little with the shock of awakening. She had known that she was alone when she woke, but this was a place she knew well and it had been her home for most of her life.
Now that it had changed completely, she didn’t know quite what to do. The walls were white and smooth and uncluttered. They had taken nothing away from her except a few old clothes that she had been wearing the night before and the small pouch that she carried on her person.
Her hair had grown over its surface during the night. It glowed silver in the morning light, so bright that it seemed almost luminous and very beautiful.
And yet it was only skin and no more than skin. The real thing was buried deep beneath the ground, where it should be. She reached out and touched it, and it shimmered, but she couldn’t sense the connection of her soul to it, or hear its song. So much had been stripped away from it…
No, it was all gone. There was nothing left but an empty shell that was barely human and could no longer feel the touch of any other creature’s hand. It was dead, and there was nothing she could do to bring it back. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, and tears filled her eyes as she looked at them. “I don’t want to leave this house. Or this street. What am I supposed to do now?”
The boy took the cloth that was still tied tightly across her stomach. “You can start by telling me about yourself. I know your name—”
“Not yours,” she told him flatly. “This is not your place.”
“—but I’m interested in what happened to you. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Is it the war?” He hesitated and then went on more quietly, “Is it because you saw your brother die and it made you afraid?”
“Of course I’m afraid! Everyone here has seen the dead men walking and heard their screams. No one wants to live here anymore.”
He looked at her with a sad smile, but then he shook his head slowly. “It’s not that easy. You’re not really afraid—you just think you are.” He put one finger to the corner of his eye and looked away, as though he didn’t believe it himself.
Then he continued with quiet certainty: “They aren’t dead, they’re not walking. They’re alive inside, just as you are. They’re waiting to get back into flesh, like I am, and then we’ll see what happens.”
Her fingers twitched restlessly against the blanket covering the end of her bed. “Who is this ‘we’?” she demanded.
But the boy was already rising up from his chair and coming toward her. He took one look at her face and stopped. She hadn’t moved; she was frozen like a statue. “That is the first lesson,” he murmured in surprise, as he stared at the blankness of her expression.
She wasn’t listening; she had gone somewhere else. The boy looked helplessly at his father, and together they walked to her side. “Tell me,” he ordered gently. “Why did you come here?”
She didn’t answer for a moment, and he tried again, speaking softly until she looked directly into his eyes. “Because it was my time to die,” she said finally, in a dull voice that made no difference between past and presents tense.
“I was going to meet my father and tell him how sorry I was for being angry with him all these years. And now I can’t do anything of the kind. Not here, anyway.” She paused. “So what are you two doing here? Where am I supposed to go, and what am I supposed to do?”
The man took a long breath. He was older and stronger than her, but even he could not bear to look into her eyes.
“We’re trying to find another way,” he said quietly, “but it’s hard work, and we need you.”
There was silence in the room after this, broken only by the sound of her own breathing as she listened to the soft words from her new teacher and thought over what he had told her.
***
As soon as she heard the news, she packed a bag. In her hurry she forgot to take something important; she never found out what it was. The next day they brought her breakfast in a basket. She sat in her chair, looking down at it while her thoughts whirled through the confusion that was beginning to settle around her.
She had always been able to talk to herself when she wanted to keep her mind off things; now that option had vanished.
For a long time, she just sat there and watched the food grow cold without tasting it. It was a strange feeling, and she felt dizzy so that she wondered if she might throw up. She pushed her hair back from her forehead and waited to see whether there would be anything different today.
After a while, her father came into the kitchen. “What are you staring at?” he asked. “Eat your breakfast.”
“No.” Her voice sounded small and far away in her ears. “It isn’t real. Don’t make me eat this stuff.”
“You have to,” he told her sharply, as though he was afraid of her anger or perhaps of the powerlessness that gripped her. He looked at her steadily but his expression was gentle. “Look at me,” he ordered gently. “What do you see?”
For a moment, her gaze wandered to the floor. But then she forced herself to look up again and saw her father’s face clearly before her. “I see myself,” she said dully, and then added, “And that’s all right.” For a moment, everything seemed very quiet. The room was full of a peaceful light that seemed to fill up every corner and shadow. “Can I ask you something?” she asked suddenly.
He nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“If I don’t go on living—”
She was interrupted by her mother. “What is she saying?” she demanded. She stood beside the door to the hallway, watching intently.
Her father glanced quickly at his wife and then returned his attention to the girl. “She wants to know whether it is safe for you to stay here alone. We think it is. But why don’t you try it for yourself?”
A moment later she was walking up and down in front of the house, talking to her father about everything she remembered of their life together, and he was telling her more things that they had forgotten.
When she began to cry, he held her close and whispered reassurances until the tears dried up. Then he gave her a little money and told her where she should go. “Don’t worry,” he said. “They’ll feed you.”
In the afternoon, after her parents had left, she walked along the road to the city of Tashkent. As she went, she looked at each person who passed by her. Most were strangers; others—she couldn’t remember how many—were her fellow citizens whom she had never met before.
A few were people whose faces meant something to her: she had known them when they were children or teenagers; some of them had become her teachers. Some of them looked sad or frightened, and a number of them were young girls or boys with bright smiles and clear minds.
They knew she was one of themselves, and she smiled at them in return. They didn’t seem surprised or afraid; instead, they looked happy.
It seemed to her that everywhere she went she was being welcomed. Children ran out onto the street ahead of her; men in the fields pointed to her and called out. At night she slept in a stable or under trees or bushes.
She did not know exactly what she was supposed to do until someone explained matters to her. The authorities decided which places she ought to visit and when. There were other children waiting in the wings to join her; they followed her instructions and talked to her whenever they were asked.
When people learned that she was going to be one of the first, they sent word to their friends and families, and the news spread quickly through the land. She spoke to thousands of people across the country.
People brought food for her meals—fruit or vegetables or meat; bread baked in the open ovens, or pots of yogurt with nuts mixed in; cakes of honeyed wheat with raisins. She took nothing from them; she had no need to eat; she just needed the company.
She made sure that they knew what had happened and what she thought the future would bring. Many of them had lost friends and family members—some because they had died and others simply because they had run away or gone somewhere else.
She talked to them about those who remained and tried to ease their fears. She told them that everyone had a right to live wherever they chose; that people would always be able to leave their homes and walk freely among the stars.
They should never hesitate to do that if they ever became anxious, or if anyone threatened to hurt them. The authorities knew where they could go and what help she was prepared to give them.
Most of all, she wanted them to understand that they shouldn’t feel ashamed or afraid. They had done nothing wrong; they were no longer criminals—they had been innocent victims of cruel injustice and they had survived.
If anyone had a reason for feeling guilty, it was the ones who had planned this cruelty and inflicted it upon the rest of humanity. In the end, most people felt a great sense of relief that she was there with them. Their spirits rose a little when they heard her speak.
They came forward to shake her hand or embrace her as one of themselves. She never failed to tell them that they should always feel free to do the same.
“We’re going to be all right!” she said over and over again. “I promise. We will survive. It’s going to get better for us now. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.”
After a while, the news spread even farther than her voice could take it, and people who had not seen her personally heard that she had spoken openly with those who had been freed. That was enough for most of them. After that, they trusted what she had to say. They were willing to believe that they might find happiness again.
The End