32

It’s hard to explain that naming moment. I mean, I loved the name Mom gave me, but there was something about the way Chief Úwápaa said my new name, the respect in it: Woman of the Trees. Honestly? Bear Necklace. Really? Plus, no one had ever called me a “woman.” Though I’d be nineteen in May, I was still just a Crystal High junior. A screwed-up, rebellious teenager, monitored by the school counselor. Briggs’s brat, babysat by her ski-patrol family. Yet how Chief Úwápaa named me, and not even in my own language, made it easy for me to stand with my shoulders back. I had come from the trees. I did have a necklace of punctures from a bear’s claws. Mom’s claws.

“Tonight, we dance in your honor,” Súmáí said.

“What?”

“We will dance. We have already danced the Bear Dance of the first thunder. This dance will honor the bear’s choice.”

I was here for answers. Dancing was definitely not on the agenda. “I can’t.”

He shook his head. “All dance. Do you wish me to dance with another?”

I thought of how Gage and I had laughed at just the thought of us at the winter formal. Sovern Briggs did not dance. Yet when I considered Súmáí with someone else, I blurted, “No.”

“Then you dance.”

I wanted to slap the smirk off his face.

“The women will prepare you.”

“Prepare?”

He led me out of the tepee. Two women waited there. I recognized the furious one.

“This is my mother.” His mother nodded once and I nodded back. Súmáí eyed the furious woman. “And this is Túwámúpǘch, the widow of my brother.”

“Widow?” I said. “Súmáí, I’m so sorry.”

He ignored me and eyed that horizon again, but only for a minute. He squinted at Túwámúpǘch and spoke in his language—low, steady—a warning.

Túwámúpǘch spat words at him, and they glared at one another. I wondered if Túwámúpǘch meant pissed off. He spoke again, and I wished I understood Ute because her glare fell to her feet.

I did not want to deal with this chick, and all this was using up valuable time when I could be seeking answers from Súmáí. “I don’t—”

“Go,” he said.

Down the valley, Phantom Peak seemed to watch me with those eerie eyes. How had I ended up in this situation? Yet this dance was in my honor. How could I not go?

Two girls of maybe seven walked past carrying colorful cloth dolls, and they giggled and smiled at us. As I followed Súmáí’s mom back into his family’s tepee—Túwámúpǘch trailing through the low flap—I noticed that they both wore sheepskin slippers. Stolen slippers. Dogs barked on the far side of camp. Sounds of movement and excitement came from that direction.

Súmáí’s mom lifted the hem of my shirt, gesturing for me to take it off. She sniffed at Súmáí’s leggings and pointed at those too. I faced the tepee wall, unclasped my brace, and took off my shirt. I slid off my snow boots and peeled out of the leggings, then the belt with the rectangles. The word “breechcloth” came to me as I turned, wearing only my bra and Tuesday panties. Both women gaped at my punctures.

I felt pale as snow and just as likely to melt. I looked down at my chest and found purple bloomed around the punctures I could see. Scabs were forming on the holes, like the centers of flowers. Both women bowed their heads, though Túwámúpǘch did not seem happy about it. Súmáí’s mom spoke—no clue what she said—but it sounded reverent. Her hair was as short as Túwámúpǘch’s, and I remembered Lindholm saying that Ute women cut their hair when they mourned.

She moved to a pile of belongings between the blankets spread over willow boughs and returned with a sand-colored deerskin dress. Down its front stretched two rows of porcupine quills stitched between red and blue beads. Fringe hung round its short sleeves and hem. She held it out to me.

“Gracias,” I said.

She seemed to know this thank you and nodded. “Towéiyak,” she said.

“Towéiyak? ” I remembered Súmáí as he’d accepted Dad’s hat. “Gracias ? ”

She smiled and nodded.

Túwámúpǘch fumed.

Súmáí’s mom scolded her, and she reluctantly stepped forward, took the dress, and held its hem open to slide it over my head, turning her face aside like I reeked. I stood there, taking in that open dress and that furious girl.

Túwámúpǘch said something scalding, and I dipped my head into the dress, dove my hands through the arms, and straightened as she tugged it down to knee-length. She roughly slid a wide belt around my waist. I lifted my arms, and she spoke—low and unkind—as she buckled it.

Keep searching for answers, I reassured myself. I ran my fingers over bear claws stitched along the belt’s leather. Today, that bear’s crescent scar had been no coincidence. That had been Mom. I recalled her claws piercing my chest and rolled my aching shoulders. My thoughts skipped to Súmáí, almost remembering what he’d reminded me of when he’d stood so rebelliously before his father. He’d said he saw Gage first, that I’d been following Gage. He said he’d seen Gage fight with his dad, some time when I wasn’t there.

Túwámúpǘch set knee-high moccasins before me, I stepped into them, and she laced the fronts.

Súmáí’s mom, bone-comb in hand, took a lock of my light hair and held it on her fingers, eyeing it. She moved behind me, and I heard her sniff before the comb tugged tangles from this morning’s snowboarding, the bear encounter, the creek’s pool, the scumbag attack, and the breeze as Chief Úwápaa had assessed me.

Was it really only this morning that I’d gone to the doctor with Dad? Take it easy. My pulse skipped a beat. No way could I hide my chest’s bruises or its future scars. What the hell was I doing? I eyed my arm brace, lying on the ground, and decided to leave it off. As I searched for a place to set it, I saw, resting at the head of one of the beds, Dad’s hat that I’d given Súmáí.

The first beat of a drum sounded outside. The first note of a dance to honor me, Bear Necklace, Woman of the Trees.