CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Jahnu sat in the communal hut for the evening meal, without a morsel eaten. His people sat in groups around the canopy, eating. The sounds of their conversation were a welcome distraction and an aggravating intrusion on thoughts that had not yet found their rightful resting place inside his mind.
Sidney sat with Talula, M’lea, and several other women. She was not eating either, he noticed, and saw the same tension across her brow that he felt on his own. He wished he could see her smile like she had done today.
Her gleaming hair spilled across the soft curve of her delicate, bare shoulder.
Hair as golden as the setting sun, her tunic pulled tight across her well-formed breasts, and her legs folded neatly beneath her.
Dotted with bug bites, bruises and scrapes, their creamy color drew his eyes, even from this distance.
He beheld a radiant light in a sea of brown like a beacon that somehow attracted his heart, despite all resistance.
He had watched her today with the women, from a distant vantage point in his efforts to guard her. He’d failed miserably as he thought of Hani’s violent anger and her injured lip, and attempted to block the negativity of his own thoughts.
He’d been uncertain if his kiss would frighten her, but when she’d leaned into him and opened her mouth to his, seeking more, it had sent a shock through his system.
He’d barely had enough control to stop, and wondered briefly, if her busted lip hadn’t come open—would he have taken her right there on the longhouse floor?
He’d wanted to—wanted to still. Her presence had awakened dormant places inside him, long thought dead.
He experienced a sensation that was both agonizing and exhilarating.
Just her being here presented a major disruption in the tribe. But just to observe her today as she interacted with the women, sometimes tilting her head back in laughter, had elevated him from the mire of uncertainty he faced.
Every woman that had come to her with their questions got answers. Whether examining young children’s mouths, or lesions, or giving medical advice—he’d payed careful attention to her. She was in her element when she was caring for others, and it was obvious to any.
It was true—Sidney intoxicated him. If he’d been a wise man, he would’ve taken his meal alone in his hut—but he was not wise. He was a fool. Here he sat among love and connection but partaking in none of it, while his brooding demeanor kept everyone at a distance—which is the way he preferred it
They had traveled back from the eastern village that morning with Sali in tow.
If the old woman had noticed any change in their behavior toward one another, she did not let on—God bless her!
He knew she could tell something had happened, and how could she not?
The tension between him and Sidney held a palpable aura of longing.
Add to that the way both of them tried to restrain that longing, and you were left with the push and pull that reminded him of surging ocean waves.
But thoughts of the medicine woman were not the only thing causing him to lose his appetite.
Hani’s words rang in his ears. Call the men to arms and we will avenge the blood that has been spilled, or die trying.
Damn Mimbeck and his cunning persuasion.
Jahnu wished it could be that easy. It’s what he’d wanted and why he’d allowed the small-scale attacks to take place, but it hadn’t been enough to satisfy their bloodlust. Now he faced an impossible choice.
Call the men to arms and lose even more fathers, sons, and brothers, or risk splitting his tribe in two.
His uncle, Shemu, would never tell him what he should do. Jahnu had pleaded early on for the old man to tell him what he thought was best when decisions for the tribe felt overwhelming, but he refused.
“You will never learn to trust yourself as the leader if you always have someone to fall back on,” he’d told Jahnu.
Jahnu was glad, in a way, and thankful for the old man’s confidence, especially when he’d felt none of his own. In the five years since Jahnu was made chief, his uncle had stuck to his promise. Mimbeck was not so trusting.
Fighting seemed inevitable. The question was, who would they fight? Makia, or each other? His father had been right.
“The art of any war is to conquer the enemy without fighting.” He’d warned Jahnu of this when he was just a young man. It was his solution for everything. Stay united.
“When there is no enemy within, the enemy outside can do you no harm,” he advised.
His father, Hamish, had done it. And Hamish’s father before him.
They had had peace for two generations. But it seemed their time was up and it was under Jahnu’s leadership that war and rebellion threatened to break out once again.
He’d underestimated the enemy, and now he’d lost his footing and didn’t know how to get it back.
He felt Sidney had a part to play. Why else would she have come to them when she did? But he couldn’t see what it was, not with any clarity. The more he was around her, the more fiercely he desired to protect her from playing any part at all.
He knew he should make arrangements for her return.
Perhaps strike a deal with Makia somehow, but hated himself for even thinking of using her as a bribe to get what he wanted.
Selfishly, he’d come to enjoy her presence in his tribe these past few weeks, and allowed himself a brief moment of daydreaming, if she stayed and chose to love him.
He despised himself even further at the thought.
His focus was divided, and he was paralyzed because of it.
Sali approached him and sat, slowly. The woman had been like a mother to him growing up, and she’d seemed old then. He hadn’t noticed that she’d aged much at all in the last twenty years and was convinced she would outlive them all.
“Can’t you tell I am not in the mood to talk?” he said in his native tongue.
“That is why I am here. I know that look. That look means you need to talk. But speak English,” she said, “I need de practice.”
“I am not good company, woman” he sighed, “My thoughts consume me.”
“You will figure it out. You are wise, like you fadda.”
“I am not wise. I am a fool.”
“Well, we are all fools when we are falling in love.”
“Love?” He spat, looking at her, incredulous.
“You care for her,” she gestured to Sidney.
“I care for her as much as what her people might do to our tribe if something were to happen to her. She is a problem!” he whispered sharply.
“Bulsitim!” she laughed out the native curse word which meant deceived, and he felt his anger rise. “You have feelings for her. That fact is as clear as the big nose on your face! It’s been five wet seasons, Jahnu. It was bound to happen sooner or later.”
“What would happen?”
“That your heart would open to another.”
“My heart is not open.”
“No? The heart does not always obey the head,” she said tapping her temple.
“That is why wisdom says to keep it.” Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
“It says keep it, not kill it!”
Jahnu was silent until he sighed, “I do not know the difference. To kill my heart is better then to condemn her, because if I…love her…as you say, she should stay far away from me. My love is a curse.”
“Bulsitim! Not this again.”
“Everyone I love has been taken from me. You cannot argue wit that, old woman.” He slid a hand down his face as if he could erase the grief.
“I am still here! Do you not love me? Shemu is still here. Do not think yourself so strong as to control who lives or dies, Jahnu.” He’d told Sidney the same thing when the baby twin died, but he couldn’t take his own advice.
“People die,” Sali continued, “and it has not’ing to do with what you have done or what you have not done.
We live. We love. And then, we die. Do not skip the middle one.
Do not kill your heart while you are still breathing.
To walk around dead while there is life all around you, that is the greater tragedy.
To lose your heart is to lose everything. ”
“I have already lost my heart.”
“If you could see the way you look at her, you would disagree.”
He regarded the old woman whose eyes danced with wisdom. Then he set eyes on Sidney, and that melting feeling flooded his heart again. Jahnu recognized it now, and realized it had been a long time since he’d allowed himself to feel it. That feeling was hope.