FLORIDA
1527
THE WOMAN STALKED through the trees, still furious.
She carried everything she needed to stay away for weeks. Months, if necessary. Her father kept telling her she did not understand. That was the problem. She understood all too well.
The Uzita were under attack. They’d heard from other tribes far south that more and more of the strangely dressed invaders arrived every month. They spilled out of their giant ships on the coastline and moved inland like a river going backward. Some of the other tribes hoped the invaders would leave—there had been visitors before, but they always went away.
Clearly, this was not the case this time. The invaders set up camps, chopped down trees, and began building shelters. They would not be ignored. They were not going away.
Which was why the Uzita needed to be united and strong. They needed to put aside any of their own differences to face the threat.
And she had been chosen by her father as the sacrifice that would bridge the gap between the Water Clan and the Wolf Clan. A marriage between the two most powerful families of the Uzita. Yaha had many sons and grandsons. Despite his age, he was still a fierce warrior, and he was the strength of the tribe. Her own father knew this, because her own father held the wisdom of the Uzita. Yaha had always believed that his strength was greater than her father’s brain and heart. They had clashed for years, since they were boys themselves.
Now her father had decided it was time to end the rivalry. So he chose to merge their families. She was promised as a wife to Yaha’s oldest son, a thick, dull boy with twice his father’s strength and none of his intelligence.
She had protested. Her father, ordinarily tolerant, became a different man in front of her eyes. He raged at her. He commanded her to go along with the marriage for the good of the entire tribe.
She saw the fear in his eyes then, and misunderstood it. She thought he was frightened of Yaha. She felt rage and contempt. He was bargaining with her life to preserve his own power. She had never thought he would be so cold or cruel.
If he cared that little for her, she could show him the same regard. A week before she was supposed to wed Yaha’s son, she ran into the woods.
She ran to the one place she knew no one would look, where not even her father would dare follow her, because to do so would be to risk the secret.
She was going to the place that did not exist. She went to the cave.
To her great shock, she discovered someone there. One of the invaders. He was dying. She saw the wound in his leg, the blood gone black. His breath came in ragged gasps. She recognized the poison, and wondered idly if her husband-to-be was the one who had fired the arrow that would kill this man.
He did not look as strange as the stories said. His skin was pale, true, but he was shaped like any other man, now that he was stripped out of the odd shells they wore. His face was different, but somehow familiar to her. As if she had always known it, and was just now remembering him.
It was in her power to save him. She knew what her father would do—what he would order her to do, if he were here. He would tell her that this man was an alien, an invader, a disease infiltrating their land, who would kill everyone with his mere presence if given the chance.
Her father was no coward. She’d seen him fight and, more important, she’d seen him win without fighting, simply by standing his ground. Until the invaders came, she’d never seen him afraid.
And this? This was what he was afraid of? A pale man, sick and dying, unable to even find water when left on his own.
She touched the invader’s cheek.
His eyes snapped open. For a moment, she saw his fear and panic and pain. She felt for him. For all his strangeness, he was lost and alone. She thought she understood the feeling.
Then as his eyes latched on to her, he smiled. He said something in a language she didn’t understand, barely a whisper.
He touched her hand and brought it back to his cheek. He burned with fever, but his eyes never left hers.
“Angel,” he said again. “Angel del Cielo.”
He closed his eyes again. Peace radiated from his features like the heat from his skin. There was, in that moment, a perfect trust between them. His life was in her hands. She could almost feel him handing it over, like a physical weight had passed to her.
At that moment, she decided.
He would not die.
FOR THE SECOND TIME that day, they sat down outside the cave and the man tried to teach her to speak.
The first time had not ended well. He’d brought over a group of small objects: stones, sticks, some things he’d salvaged from his few possessions. Then he would point at them while speaking very slowly at her. He looked so serious, his young features drawn into such fierce concentration, that she kept laughing.
Eventually he was holding the stone in front of him, barking the same word over and over: “Piedra, piedra, piedra!” She couldn’t help herself. She fell into a fit of giggles.
He stood up and stomped away.
She felt bad for him. She was young, but she already knew how men treasured their dignity. Laughter was the quickest way to shatter their illusion of controlling the world.
It did not help that he was nearly naked. So was she, but she was accustomed to wearing little in the hot summer months. For him, it was clearly a maddening distraction. When he was sick and dying, she had used her knife to cut the torn and bloody clothing off him. The pile of rags was thick and stank of sweat and piss and blood, and she’d taken it far away from the cave.
After he woke, healed by her, he covered himself with his hands and searched for the stinking pile. He came back with what was left of his pants tied around himself, and the white shirt he’d worn under everything else.
She had decided that where he was from, everyone must have worn that heavy clothing all the time. He stole glances at her and quickly looked away. She wondered briefly if her body was somehow different from those of the women he knew, but quickly dismissed the notion. He turned from her, but she saw his erection rising at those moments. It wasn’t that he didn’t like how she looked. He’d simply never seen a woman’s breasts before.
She took pity on him when he finally came back to her. She wrapped her breasts in a cloth so that he would be able to meet her eyes. This was hard for him. She would have to be kinder.
They sat facing each other again. He pointed to himself. “Hombre,” he said.
She pointed to herself. “Shako,” she said back.
He looked frustrated. Pointed again. “Hombre,” he repeated.
“Shako,” she said again.
He shook his head, grabbed her hand, used it to poke himself in the chest. “Hombre,” he said, even slower now.
She tried not to roll her eyes. “Shako,” she said, even slower than him.
He shrugged irritably and moved on to something else. He pointed up at the sun in the sky. “Sol,” he said slowly and carefully. “Sol.”
“Haasi,” she said back.
His eyes narrowed. “Sol.”
“Haasi.”
“Sol!” he insisted. “Sol. Sol.”
She tried to keep from laughing, but her mouth quirked into a smile. “Haasi, haasi, haasi!”
“Maldición!” he spat. Then another string of rapid-fire words. She didn’t understand a single one, but she knew the tone.
She took his hand and gently pulled it toward her chest. She placed it on her skin. The sudden contact seemed to shock him out of his tirade. She looked deep into his eyes, trying to will him to understand what was really happening here.
“Shako,” she said, tapping his fingers against her chest. She pointed at the sun. “Haasi. Sol.”
She picked up the stone and placed it in his hand. “Cvto,” she said. Then, mimicking him perfectly, “Piedra.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. He thought he had been teaching her. Now he realized, she was teaching him.
He pointed at the sun. “Haasi!” he said.
She smiled back and playfully mimicked him again, repeating the word as slowly as possible, putting a thick look on her face.
He was shocked. For that moment, she saw him struggle with his temper again.
Then he laughed and smiled, suddenly delighted.
She placed her fingers gently on the skin under the remnants of his once-white shirt. “Hombre?” she asked.
He understood now. He shook his head. “Simón,” he said. He put his hand over hers. “Simón.”
She pulled his hand back to her chest. “Shako,” she said again.
“Shako,” he repeated.
So now they at least knew each other’s names: Simón and Shako.
His hand was still on her. She let him keep it there.
ONCE THEY LEARNED HOW to speak to each other, one of the first things he asked her was to show him the way back to his people.
That was something she couldn’t do, no matter how much it displeased him. (And to be honest, it hurt her a little, too. She knew it was absurd. If she woke up lost and far from her people, she would expect to go back home as well. Still, she wondered why she felt such a pang at the thought of him leaving.)
Either way, it was irrelevant. She did not know how to find his people. And she wouldn’t take him, even if she did. There had been only minimal contact between the Uzita and the invaders now coming to their lands. But her father feared them enough to begin preparing for war. She wasn’t as afraid, but that didn’t mean she would willingly put herself at their mercy, either.
He was smart enough, at least, to keep from running off into the swamps by himself in search of them. It had been sheer luck that he’d found her the first time. He would, most likely, end up lost and starving or feeding some alligator or panther.
With Shako, he was safe. She could keep him safe. She hunted and caught fish. They cooked over a small fire and slept in peace under the trees.
After a while, he stopped asking how to get back.