Shadow of the Tomahawk

Lydia's eyes widened at the good english rolling off the Indian Queen's tongue. In grief all things flowed more easily, she reasoned. "Yes,"she said, wanting to reach out and touch the Queen's hand to thank her but thinking better of it. She had destroyed their home and sent the men folk to who knows what hell in Canada. Now she sent her and her innocent children to the same fate. But at the same time she knew without the Queen's protection they would have all been killed or she at least seperated from her children. That meant something. "Thank you!" she said on a gasp of emotion before turning away holding her hands to her cheeks to check her tears. She stopped a few steps away and turned, wishing to find better words to express her gratitude but none could pass the growing lump in her throat. Ester heard her stop and looked down to her hands. "They cry for vengeance! I have had vengeance with these very hands! Still it does little to ease the grief of my son! Much blood flowed, but none cleans my heart of its pain! No! It will never! Jogo, dear Lydia, par Dieu, I hope you find Boss and be happy! Is all I can do! Jogo!" Lydia took a few steps forward, reaching her hand down to the Queen. By the shadows on the Queen's face she saw the tears streaming down her cheeks before she gruffly wiped them away with her arm. The bells and trickets on her clothing jingled in a strange rhythm that seemed out of place. "Jogo!" Ester demanded, waving her jingling arms behind her. "Les mieux est l'ennemi du bien." "I can hear the pain of your broken heart," Lydia said on a whisper."It flows to the waters and spreads across the land. It weeps with your beleaguered soul. Once more I thank you, for I know you have done all in your power you could do. You are caught up in this as we all are, may God have mercy on our our souls!" A cry of pure anguish poured from Ester's soul. She waved her arm behind her, fighting her tears to no avail. She fell face first in the grass, clutching it as she would a dear child just about to die. This land, as she knew it, as her people had known it for thousands of years, would change soon, and with that part of it would die, never to be reborn but in the vague memory of its conquerers. She, nor no one, white or red, seemed able to stop it. Fear flooded over her whole body. "C'est dommage," she cried. "C'est fait! Frapp'e de stupor! Hartley foius-moi le camp!" She wept profusely for the earth and her people. One life had to die to make way for a new life; one she feared more than death itself. This brought a grief that pulsated through her very being as if conjoined with the trembling mother earth itself. She feared nothing but death itself could ease this grief. Nothing.