Anything Goes 
Anthology of Prize-winning Fiction

Grand Prize Winner

Runs Away and Wanders From Home

 By Helen Delaney

 I’m not afraid any more. Oh, but I was, that last day, I was. But I wasn’t alone. Oh, no. My husband was with me.

***

I was intuitive when I was a child. I could sense things that would pass other people by. I’d know when it was going to rain, or when the buffalo were going to come near us. Once I knew when a baby was going to die. When the sun went down, I heard the mother crying and I ran away. I was afraid they would think I caused the baby to die. I sat by the river until I could see the moon in it. My mother came and found me. She picked me up and carried me back to our teepee. I clung to her really tight and she whispered to me very sweetly and told me not to cry. She knew about me then. But she said nothing either. After that, I tried hard not to be intuitive.

But I knew that last day that something was going to happen. Very early in the morning, I left my husband sleeping in our teepee. I was careful and didn’t make any noise. It was still dark, but I couldn’t sleep. I went to the river and watched the sun come up. It made the river look as if it were on fire. I don’t know why that frightened me, but it did. It became too bright for the birds to sleep and so they woke, one by one, singing in a most wonderful way together. It was quite beautiful, and I was so taken with it, I felt as if I were floating. And then a bird with great wings passed over me, slowly, slowly, circling. I could see the white markings under his wings. I said to myself, “Something is going to happen today.” And then I heard the stirrings of the camp, and the women were coming toward the river for water and I pretended I was there for water too.

These are not my people. They are my husband’s people. I was a captive, taken by my husband, but he did not kill me, and he did not let them kill me. I was a very young girl, little more than a child, when we were attacked. I was some ways away from our camp, looking for blueberries, and all of a sudden it seemed to me that the air became very still and quiet, so quiet that I could hear the gnats that swarmed around my head. I tried to brush them away, but they continued to swarm and I knew that they were warning me. I turned toward the camp and saw the attackers on horseback, everywhere, striking down the people. I wanted to run toward them, to my mother and father, but I could not move. I stood there, rooted like a tree. There was screaming everywhere and I knew that my mother and father were dead. The picture of them was in my head. I saw them on the floor of our teepee with blood coming from them. I started to cry, but still I could not move. And then he was there, on his great horse, looking down at me. I looked into his eyes and he looked into my eyes. I waited for him to strike me with his axe. After some time, he lifted me onto his horse, and rode like the wind. I looked back once. Everyone was dead in our camp. I think that I fainted then, because I cannot remember coming to his camp.

I woke up in a teepee by myself. I was afraid to come out and I did not know if it was day or night. The women brought food and put it inside the teepee, but I could not eat. I closed my eyes and saw my mother and father as they used to be, smiling and happy, playing games. I slept and dreamed my mother was brushing my hair. I must have been very sick, because the only thing I can remember about that time is waking up and seeing the man who had captured me. He was blowing smoke over me and saying some words in a singsong way, but I did not understand them. When he brought me something to eat, I ate it. And then I was well again and the women took me down to the river and bathed me. But I could not understand what they were saying to me. After a while, they began to teach me words and after a while I learned to speak their language. And sometimes I would see him, the one who healed me, but he did not speak to me. I felt very lonely. I was the only young girl in a teepee by herself.

***

That last day, the sun was upon the river, and made it orange, then red. It frightened me and made me feel strange, as if somebody else’s heart was in my chest. I went back to the camp and made a fire, as I always did, and warmed meat and turnips for my husband’s breakfast. I must have looked strange to him, because he touched my hair and my face and asked me what was wrong. I told him that a great bird had circled over me at the river in the first light of day and that the river had become orange and then red and that it made me feel very strange. But he could make no sense of it and neither could I. And just then, something heavy came into my heart and made the tears come from my eyes. He put out the fire then and led me into our teepee. He held me and stroked my hair and we made love and I fell asleep.

He had killed many people and white men; still with me he was gentle. Ever since I was a girl and to that last day, when I was no longer young and my hair had white hairs in it, he was gentle with me.

When I came to his camp I was an orphan and an outsider; I was made to work hard and some of the women were mean to me. When the young men would go to attack the white men and make war with them, he would lead them on his great horse, even though he was not the chief of the people. And when the war parties returned, I always looked very hard for him. I remember the first time he was wounded. On that day, I was at the river, beating skins against the stones. Suddenly, the air went still and I felt as if I could not breathe. And then I felt a stab, a great pain, in my thigh. I cried out and grabbed my leg hard and fell over on the ground. His face came to me and I cried because I thought he had died. When the sun was going down, the war party returned and I saw him with the great bloody wound on his thigh. I tried to go to him, but the other women pushed me aside. But he saw me run toward him and his eyes looked at me and saw me crying. After that I did not see him for a long time, but one day I was gathering wood near the camp and he came up behind me. He did not make any noise, but I felt him coming. I turned and he spoke to me. He had never spoken to me in all the time I was in the camp. “Would you like to have a name, Little Orphan?” That is what they had called me, Little Orphan. I nodded. I had a name from my mother and father, but I did not say this to him. “Your name is Wanders From Home.” I was rooted to the ground, as I was on the day he found me. “Now you will return to camp. It is dangerous to be away from the people. Have you not learned that by now?” And he turned and walked back to the camp and I followed him. After that, I looked for him every day. He was all that I had.