Cassie grabbed Cyrus’s arm. “Please,” she begged. “He’s hurting himself. You have to do something.”
“I can’t do anything,” Cyrus said. “He has to do this himself.”
Cassie let the tears run down her face and wondered why she had ever encouraged Will to accept the Lakota side of himself. This was barbaric. She pictured him in his neatLAPDuniform, his cap tilted low on his forehead. She saw him standing near her in the emergency room the day he’d found her, his arms crossed with concern. She imagined him dancing with her in the summer rain, her baby kicking between them.
“Whythisdance?” she whispered brokenly, thinking of the other ceremonies she had seen, ones that hadn’t involved self-mutilation. She turned her head, shocked to see the milling crowd with smiles spread across their faces, enjoying the taste of someone else’s agony.
“He’s not suffering,” Cyrus murmured. “Not for himself.” He pointed to the dancer beside Will. “Louis dances the Sun Dance so that his daughter will live, even though her kidneys are dying. Arthur Peel, over to the right, has a brother still missing in action in Vietnam.” He turned to face Cassie. “The dancers take pain upon themselves,” he said, “so someone close to them won’t have to feel it.”
As the dance drew to a close, Joseph Stands in Sun stepped from the circle. The men began to twist and pull in earnest, straining to free themselves. Cassie stood up, helpless, and felt Dorothea’s hand on her calf. “Don’t,” Dorothea said.
Suffering so someone else didn’t have to suffer. Sacrificing your body for someone else’s well-being. Cassie saw the skewer split another inch of Will’s skin, watched the blood run down his chest.
He was looking at her. Cassie dragged her eyes to meet Will’s, locked her gaze with his. His image flickered, and she pictured her own body, bleeding and broken at Alex’s feet, a venting ground for anger that had no connection to her. Will was only doing for Cassie what she had spent years doing for Alex.
When the skin of Will’s chest ripped ragged from the skewers, Cassie cried out. She ran forward and knelt beside him, pressing the wounds on his chest with sage from his wreath and then with the hem of her shirt. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was fast and shallow. “It still hurts,” she whispered. “Even when you’re doing it for someone else, that doesn’t stop your ribs from getting cracked, or your wrist from swelling, or your cuts from bleeding.”
Will opened his eyes. He reached up his hand to wipe the tears from Cassie’s cheeks. “You did this for me,” Cassie said. “So it would hurt less when I did it forhim.” Will nodded.
Through her tears, Cassie laughed. “If I didn’t know you better, Will Flying Horse, I’d say you’re acting like some Big Indian.”
Will grinned at her weakly. “Go figure,” he said.
Cassie brushed his hair away from his face. She rubbed her fingers lightly over the gaping edges of Will’s wounds. Even Alex, who had offered her the world, had never given her so much.
TWO WEEKS AFTER THE SUN DANCE, CASSIE WENT INTO LABOR. SHE would have had plenty of time to make the drive into the clinic in town, but she wanted to have the baby somewhere familiar. And so, ten hours later, propped up in the bed where Cyrus, Zachary, and Will had all been born, she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Dorothea stood at the foot of the bed, measuring Cassie’s progress.
Will was next to Cassie, suffering her death grip on his hand. “Less than an hour now,” Dorothea said proudly. “Baby’s crowned.”
“I’m going to go,” Will said, trying to tug free, but Cassie wouldn’t let him leave. He had been uncomfortable in the first place, but Cassie had begged. He might still have found the fortitude to refuse if Cassie hadn’t been seized by a contraction just then that had nearly doubled her over in his arms.
“Please,” Cassie panted. “Don’t leave me to do this all by myself.”
She grabbed handfuls of Will’s shirt.
But then she couldn’t talk because her belly was knotted up and this unbelievable pressure was forcing itself down through her lower half.
Ridiculous, wasn’t it, that she’d run away to save this baby’s life, only to die in the end? She took a deep breath and fell back against the pillows again.I understand you, she silently told the baby.I know how hard it is to go from one world into another.
“Here it comes,” said Dorothea. Cassie could feel the cool pressure of Dorothea’s fingertips breaking the seal of flesh around her baby’s head. She struggled up, dug her fingernails into Will’s hand, and bore down.
Ten minutes later, Cassie felt something long and wet slip between her chafed thighs. Dorothea held up a squalling, stunning bundle.
“Hoks?i´la luha´!A boy!” she crowed. “Big and healthy, even if he is a little pale for my tastes.”
Cassie laughed, reaching out her hands, first noticing the tears in the corners of her own eyes. She jiggled the baby in her arms, trying to get comfortable, not really knowing exactly how that should feel. The baby opened up his mouth and howled.
“It even sounds like you,” Will murmured, and Cassie remembered he was there. His hand stroked the back of her head, lightly, as if he were awestruck and not sure he should be allowed the contact.
“How do you feel?” Will asked.
Cassie glanced up at him, struggling for the right word. “Full.”
“Well, you look a lot more empty.”
Cassie shook her head. How could she explain it? After all the longing she’d done for Alex, she wasn’t alone anymore. This tiny wriggling thing completed her too, in a different sort of way.
