Unknown - The_Growing_589064

Kirsten shakes her head and pushes her chair away from the table. “I had a good supply in my truck.” As she rises, an odd thought strikes her, and she asks, “Animals mean something in your traditions, don’t they? Symbolically, that is.”

The Lakota woman’s withdrawal is both instant and almost imperceptible. There was a time, Kirsten thinks, when I wouldn’t have noticed that. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Asi found a raccoon yesterday, and I just thought it was odd. Don’t they hibernate?”

“No, not exactly. They sleep a lot, living off their fat. They come out of their dens to feed periodically, though.”

“So it doesn’t necessarily mean the cold is going to let up some?” Shift the context. For some reason it is important to her not to offend this woman. “I’ve never seen so damned much snow in my life.”

“No, I’m afraid not.”

Kirsten shrugs and moves toward the door. “Too bad.”

Koda’s voice stops her where she stands. “It means disguise, Kirsten, and the need to let go of old identities. It means transformation.”

And it is with her again, that long spiraling plunge toward death and the deep baying of the hunter who runs lithe beside her, a glimpse of driving muscles rippling under grey fur that turns in upon itself, moebius-like, to become a small pointed face with eyes burning like molten gold out of a black mask. The narrow muzzle opens, and the creature speaks in a voice to silence thunder, one long-fingered hand raised to bar her passage.

Go back. The time is not yet.

Her heart pounds in her chest like a trip hammer; sweat prickles along her skin. The time is not yet.

“Thank you,” she says, and flees.

Again.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE DAY IS gray. Gray clouds, gray snow, gray faces of people walking along shoveled and salted paths. Even Asi’s vibrant coat looks washed out and dull as he plods along behind Kirsten, head bobbing like a tired draft horse on his way to the stables.

An almost pleasant sense of melancholia steels over her and she quickens her step, outpacing her thoughts, content to exist simply for and in this one moment in time. Life passes by, its stories writ large on the faces of the men and women with whom she shares this space.

As she wanders down a ruler-straight path, her steps take her to a scene that stops her, and makes her wish for perhaps the first time in her life that she had been born with the ability to draw. Before her stands a woman of no more than twenty whose life has painted age upon her face and form far beyond her years. Directly in front of her, pressed back to belly, is a girl-child, dirty, bedraggled, and pale as a wraith. The young woman has her arms crossed over the shoulders and chest of the girl in a gesture of desperate possession, as if she is the only thing of worth left in a world gone totally mad. The expression in the woman’s eyes transports Kirsten back in time to when she, herself, was a young girl standing in St. Peter’s in Rome, staring at the Pieta and wondering how simple stone could engender such profound emotions within her.

The child’s soft “hello” brings Kirsten back to the present, and she offers up a smile that is equal parts welcoming and sad.

“Pretty doggie.”

As if agreeing, Asi sits proudly and offers up a soft chuff, causing the young girl to giggle. “What’s his name?”

“Asimov.”

The girl looks a little confused. “Asmimoff?”

“That’s pretty close,” Kirsten commends, smiling. “He likes being called Asi.”

“Asi?” The child looks up at her mother for confirmation before returning her attention to the dog. “Asi.”

Asimov gives a louder bark, which makes the girl jump. Her mother tightens her grip, fright winging its way across her haggard face.

“It’s okay,” Kirsten hastens to reassure. “He won’t hurt you. I promise.”

The girl seems convinced. She lifts a small, dirty hand, fingers splayed wide. “Pet?”

Ever the ham, Asimov lifts his left paw, giving the young girl a doggie grin and another soft chuff. Kirsten laughs. “I think he’d like that.”

Responding to the pleading look from her daughter, the woman slowly—surely ice ages have come and gone in less time—relaxes her desperate grip. The child steps forward cautiously. Asi keeps his calm, one paw still raised. The girl takes it gently in both hands, then giggles as Asi covers her face with generous swipes of his tongue. Stepping away, she wipes her face with both hands. “Funny doggie. All wet!” Pulling her hands away from her eyes, she gifts Kirsten with a bright, innocent smile. “What’s your name?”

“Kirsten,” she replies, unable to keep from returning the sweet grin. “What’s yours?”

“Lisa,” the child replies, shyly peering at Kirsten from beneath long, lush lashes. “Can Asi be my friend?”

“Oh sweetheart, of course he can! We come for walks out here almost every day. If it’s okay with your mom, you can walk with us when you see us, ok?”

Lisa’s mother’s expression is pained as her daughter looks to her for approval. “We’ll talk about it tonight, sweetie. Now, we have to go get lunch.”

After a moment, Lisa nods. “Okay,” she replies softly. Turning back, she takes a step forward and wraps small arms around Asi’s neck, squeezing with all her tiny strength. “Bye, bye, doggie,” she whispers into his warm fur. “Bye, bye.”

Tears prick at Kirsten’s eyes and another part of her soul she thought long desiccated comes back to life, and with it, a renewal of her determination to give this child, and all others like her, a better world to grow up in.

As she turns for home, her last vision is a replay of the first. Lisa is back in her mother’s arms, but this time she sees a spark of what she can only call hope shining in twin sets of eyes.

For now, it will have to be enough.

She makes it as far as the door to her temporary home when a note taped to the door brings her up short. Written in a fine hand, the words jump out at her, making her, by turns, determined, angry, then both at once.

“Not this time,” she vows, ripping the paper from the door and crumpling it in one tense fist. “Not this time. C’mon, Asi. We’ve got a party to crash.”

*

The room is grey as a November day. Grey walls, set off by a tasteful strip of white PVC running along the bottom in lieu of baseboard. Grey carpet, with tone-on-tone USAF logs imposed on diagonally offset laurel wreaths. Grey curtains, likewise. On the wall hang photographs of warplanes based at Ellsworth, the intensely turquoise skies behind and below the airborne Tomcats and SuperHornets virtually the only color in the room. On a table in one corner sits an unwatered Norfolk pine, its pot wrapped in peeling red-black foil and its wilting branches hung with miniature lights and iridescent glass globes, dull in the dim light that penetrates the heavily lined window coverings. The long conference table is grey steel. Its vinyl-upholstered chairs match. Koda has, she thinks wryly, seen cheerier coffins.

Maggie says it for her. “Somebody get me a happy pill. This place would depress goddam Shirley Temple.”

“Never mind goddam Shirley Temple. It depresses me.” Tacoma gives a half-suppressed snort, not unlike a big cat’s disdainful whuffle. “Droids get the psych-ops staff?”

Maggie shakes her head. “Hart got the decorators, years ago. Too touchy-feely.”

“It could be worse,” Koda offers. “It could be pecan laminate and stuffed deers’ heads.”

Tacoma winces visibly as he shrugs out of his jacket and drapes it across the back of a chair about halfway down the table. He has resumed his Army uniform, the brass of his greens newly shined, his campaign ribbons proud in their many colors over his left pocket. Koda knows them as well as he does: the Afghan Meritorious Service Ribbon, bright green with its silver crescent; the Kingdom of Jordan Honor Legion; the Medal for Humane Action; Combat Action Ribbon; Bronze and Silver Stars, both with oak leaf. And there is the one she hates, purple with white edges. Wounded in action, gone missing in the frozen mountains of Panjir for two weeks and more when no one, not his commander, not his family, knew whether he was alive or dead, and neither she nor her father, for all their special skills, had been able to find him in the spirit world. Her eyes meet Tacoma’s as she seats herself across from his place, numbering his honors. Their father, veteran of VietNam, calls the tunic with the array of medals her brother’s scalp shirt, boasting that it is even more lavish than his own.. “Hey,” Tacoma says softly, reaching over the space between to touch her arm, calling her back to the present.