She closed her eyes as stars formed and fell to earth, turning to fabric in her mind. It had kept her warm through winter, its pattern stitched into her bones like history. Wicá?pi Owí?ža. Her star quilt, a handcrafted heirloom from her grandmother she no longer thought she deserved. Her fingers curled into the fabric, soft and alive beneath her skin, and her chest tightened with the weight of everything she’d failed to become.
At thirteen, everyone said she’d begun her path. When nothing came, it started to feel like failure. Her grandmother’s eyes had been confident at the gifting ceremony, then as time wore on and she heard nothing, received nothing from the ancestors, those wizened eyes went to uncertainty, then doubt, then finally faded into a deep disappointment. She’d said to wait, that the spirits would speak when they were ready, but even now Bailee was still waiting. The chosen one who had never been chosen.
Bailee sobbed softly, the fabric clenched in her hand, then it slipped away like water as liquid replaced it. Her heart tightened, the memory of how she’d locked it into a trunk, like an unbearable promise unfulfilled.
Her radio clicked once in her ear, and she jerked against the stone at her back. “Eagle Two, Razor has your scent. Team is moving.” Joker again. Not a promise. A plan. She let the words pass through her like water.
It was time to move. She slipped out of the waterfall, looked around for any danger, then when she decided it was clear, she climbed the bank and disappeared into the shadows.
Bailee moved through the jungle like she’d been born to it. Every rise and hollow registered without thought. She stayed low, using the ground for cover, avoiding the ridges where moonlight could expose her. Bark scraped her arms as she cut corners too tight, but she didn’t slow down. The air shifted. She glanced back. Pursuit.
Seconds mattered now. Minutes could get her killed.
Between breaths, something else began to move in.
Not sound. Not word.
A drum that didn’t come from human hands, a far-off pulse in the marrow. Not a literal drum, not something any man could measure. The earth below her, beating. A reminder.
She blinked, seeing a rushing river, the sound of a girl’s laughter scattered over it like bright fish. Her cousin stood on the far bank just the way she had in memory, half turned, hair caught in a wind that didn’t blow here, eyes carrying light the way a sky carries morning. The women behind her didn’t show their faces. Their presence ran around the circle like breath. Bailee’s mouth moved, and a name came without the voice to hold it. The girl didn’t accuse her. The girl only waited. The waiting was worse than judgment. The waiting meant there was still something to hear.
Wolakota.
The old word rose the way smoke would rise if the night was very still. The balance she never granted herself. Right relationship. Not a concept, not a thesis. A way of walking. Of carrying where you came from and where you were going in the same body without letting either break the other.
Her grandmother’s breath in winter over hot stones. Sage smoke rising from braid and bowl. The way the wind, t?até, used to press its palm against the door before it came in.
You haven’t been forgotten, child, said nothing and everything at once. You haven’t been listening.
She came to at the sound of another voice, flesh and blood this time, not vision. Men downrange, closing through the understory, too certain by half. She lay in a small stream, felt the cold through her shirt, her head fuzzy, and her body throbbing from passing out. But she took a breath and lined the sight. Her wrist screamed. She made the pain very small and very distant and let the geometry do what it knew.
Two figures broke through the brush, offset in a staggered line. The first carried his rifle too low—fatal rookie mistake. The second swung wide, his elbow flaring with the motion. Bailee didn’t hesitate. She took the first in the throat, then shifted half an inch and put the next round into the armpit of the second, right where his vest ended. Both dropped fast, the jungle swallowing the sound.
Her vision went black around the edges. She lowered her forehead to the leaves and forced a breath, just one, steady and slow. The world stabilized with it. When the pounding in her ears eased, she pushed back to her knees.
“Keep moving,” Bailee whispered. She wasn’t sure if she meant it for her legs or for the small, frightened part of her that wanted to lie down in the stream and let it take her.
She pushed to her feet. The jungle seemed to grab at her, vines catching across her shoulders and arms. She tore through them with her left forearm and felt the sting of new cuts, pain she’d deal with later.
Behind her, branches cracked, more men closing in. She angled across the slope, used a narrow game trail to throw them off, then cut hard into the brush. The green closed around her, thick and smothering, the air heavy as a hand over her mouth.
Pain came in waves, sharp, then dull, then sharp again. The night pressed down, coaxing her to stop, to fall, to give in. She wanted to. She didn’t.
Bailee dropped into the next low hollow and went to one knee. She braced the carbine in the fork of a root and listened. The river whispered nearby, a low rush between stones. Insects hummed all around, a constant, pulsing math in the dark. Between the sounds came the faint tread of boots. She wouldn’t have heard it if every nerve in her body hadn’t been tuned to danger.
Movement, a shape where there shouldn’t be one. Mid-thirties, too clean for this terrain, the glint of steel where locals carried worn wood. She fired once, straight into the notch above his sternum. He dropped fast, like someone had cut his strings.
She pushed to stand and the world tilted. The memory hit her before she could steady herself. Not Rio. Not a hospital. A room from long ago. A low canvas dome in winter. Breath fogging the air. Stones glowing red in the fire pit. Her grandmother’s hands steady, voice soft and sure.
Wóchekiye, little one. If you must call out, let it be a call home.
Bailee’s throat tightened. “Not a prayer for rescue,” she muttered, half laugh, half choke. “A call home.”
Something inside her answered. Wolakota, again. Balance. A weight settling under her ribs where fear had hollowed her out. She pressed her palm against a tree trunk, letting the bark bite her skin. The tree didn’t bend. It didn’t have to. She did.
When she lifted her head, she heard them, closer now.
She slid down into the river, the cold shocking her lungs. She crossed where the rocks circled like an old prayer, moving quieter now, inside the rhythm instead of against it.
