Niabi often bantered with her sisters, their teasing full of verve and laughter and that familiarity of a lifetime of loving each other. My relationship with Magnolia had none of that vitality now—it was something abandoned, something that haunted. Magnolia continued on back in Kansas, comfortable in her little safe haven, our betrayals forever mounting and hovering, dense shadows that just wouldn’t flee.
“There’s no possibility for reconciliation,” I said.
“So now you’re creating something new, here on the frontier.”
I nodded and pressed a tiny petal in the cluster of many blooms. It was coarse and springy. “Oh.” I tucked the stem in the crook of my arm and dug a package from my pocket. “I have a Yuletide present for you.”
I laid the tile in Niabi’s hands, the painting wrapped in an Irish linen handkerchief. Her thumb rubbed across the needlepoint: a field of violets embroidered by my grandmother.
I held my elbows against my side. “It’s just our custom.”
“What are we but our customs?” Niabi said.
She untied the bundle to reveal a ceramic square, the slippery material blasting with a multihued sunrise streaking above the soft curves of the earth. Niabi studied the tile, her fingers shivering over the wayward pigments.
I adjusted my hatpin. “It’s just a splash of color on stone.”
“Don’t make it less.” Niabi looked up, the tile held to her chest. “This painting seems to contain whispers.”
I’d splattered flecks of golden paint throughout the grass. As if lightning bugs lit the prairie. It was as if the glow of sunshine had fallen onto my land and yet—was I now painting voices?
The afternoon smelt of distance and butter, of fry bread and black coffee. Niabi held out a hand. “Do you hear the voice of Earth Mother?”
I shook my head, felt as if all the blood within me drained out. Well, certainly not. That was absurd. “No, of course not.”
I swallowed and gestured with the stem. “Yarrow?” I’d woven yarrow into crowns before, laid the circlets under pillows, a wish for health and happiness.
Niabi flicked her gaze back and forth between my eyes, then turned. She propped the tile on a shelf and grabbed an oval of paprika-hued dried flowers. “Some call this plant Thousand Starlight. We find them in sunglow, their thousands of tiny flowers open to the day.” Niabi crushed the flower, the blooms like crumbled Yuletide velvet. “They’re stronger fresh, in springtime.” She moved her shoulders in something like a shrug, her long black hair swaying. “But dried, in winter, they’re still powerful.”
I snapped off my bloom, the white clusters like a foam of nighttime clouds. It smelt faintly of pepper and spice. Niabi told me to crush them. I smashed the blooms in my palm, then tipped the blossoms into a red oak bowl. She pulled a puff of eagle down from a rawhide container on the shelf. Niabi stirred the airy gray whirl in with the crushed petals, then lifted the mixture onto her fingers. “Smear this poultice onto a bleeding wound. The blood will stop.”
I rubbed the chalky, brittle mixture between my fingers. “And if I don’t have any eagle down?”
“Cotton. Sumac scrapings.” She fiddled with the ends of her hair. “Fur.”
I touched the blossom. To heal oneself, one needed flowers and trees, fragments of the earth. “But always Thousand Starlight?”
“You can also stab the stem into the gash.” She fluttered her fingers. “Light it on fire.”
“Light the flower. On fire.”
Niabi grinned.
I motioned packing a wound. “And then press on ground petals and eagle down.”
She nodded, and her smile turned wicked. “I like the fire.”
I laughed. “You would.”
She handed me the pot and pestle with the crushed white blossom, rubbed her nose. “Grind.”
I ground, and Niabi placed her hands atop mine, adjusting the angle of the pestle. It was warm in her lodge, the sounds of others faraway. I mixed a pull of down into my bowl and held out my poultice. Niabi nodded and handed me my mug, the boiling water now frothy, lukewarm tea. I sat on the braided rug and curled my feet beneath my thighs. I stirred in some honeycomb and gulped the tea. The willow bark tasted sharp and harsh. It felt brutal to hope—that the marigold-hued liquid swirling round the cup could soothe my chipped and broken pieces.
Niabi grabbed a reed basket with some beads and ribbons for her finger weaving, tom-toms rattling beyond the fabric of her lodge. “Once there was a happy and peaceful tribe.” She told of a tribe falling under the spell of a strange illness. Too weak to climb the hills, the medicine woman sent her granddaughter in search of a healing plant.
“Did the girl find the herb?” I asked.
She picked up a red bead, looked down at the weaving in her hands. This was the power of story: It broke through skin and bone. This story, like all stories, was alive.
