Chapter 10

Chakotay gently spread out the items from his medicine bundle onto his bed. On the other side of the wall, he could hear the clatter of dishes and the murmur of voices as Sekaya and Atl prepared dinner.

He knew he'd put this off for too long. Right now he needed the guidance of his animal spirit more than ever, yet he had kept making excuses the past few weeks, stubbornly telling himself he was too busy to go on a vision quest. Too many things to do, too many things to think about - or, more accurately, worry about.

But tonight, after enduring yet another day distracted by grief and pain over his fallen Maquis friends, he remembered Kathryn's words to him, and managed to be sensible enough to pull out his medicine bundle and place his hand gently on the akoonah.

"A-koo-chee-moya," he said softly. "I am here, after a long journey, back in the land of my forefathers. I pray on this day to speak to my animal guide, so that I may find the answers that I seek."

When Chakotay opened his eyes, he immediately recognized where he was: the lush green jungle in Central America where his father had taken him, at age 15, to try to find the Rubber Tree People. He was standing amid a jumble of rocks next to a deeply-shaded tree, and there, standing beside him, was his animal guide.

"It's been a long time since we spoke, brother."

His animal guide, a capuchin monkey with dark fur and splashes of white on her chest and face, tilted her head curiously at Chakotay.

"It has," Chakotay admitted.

"And what has brought you here to me today?"

Chakotay sat down cross-legged on a large rounded rock. "I'm unhappy. I need your help."

The monkey scampered up and perched on the rock next to him, curling her tail about her paws. "Tell me, brother."

Chakotay sighed deeply. "I just found out that a lot of my friends are dead. Good people, people who just wanted to live their lives in peace, but they got dragged into fighting a war to protect their homes and their families. Now they're dead, and their families are refugees, and their homes are in ruins."

"That must make you very sad."

"Sad. Angry. Guilty. You name it, I'm feeling it."

"I can't say that I blame you."

The monkey began picking insects out of her fur and eating them. Chakotay waited as patiently as he could, but after several minutes of being ignored by his animal guide, he became restless.

"Well?" he prompted.

"Well, what?" the monkey said.

"What am I supposed to do?"

The monkey twitched her shoulder in a manner that looked almost like a human shrug. "Something."

Chakotay found this maddening. "I know that, but what?"

"Anything would be better than what you're doing now, which is nothing."

"Aren't you going to give me a hint?" Chakotay asked.

The monkey idly scratched her ear. "Do you really need me to?"

"You're my animal guide, aren't you? So guide me."

The monkey jumped up to a nearby branch and crouched there, peering down at Chakotay.

"There was a time when you didn't wait around to be told what to do," the monkey said. "If you saw something that needed to be done, you went and did it. What happened to that Chakotay?"

"He got demoted the day his ship blew up in the Delta Quadrant."

"Are you telling me that reverting to First Officer made you forget how to be a man?"

This was becoming downright insulting. "You aren't being fair. I'm not waiting for someone to give me an order. I'm ready to take action, it's just that I don't know what action I'm supposed to take."

"First, why don't you tell me what your problem really is?"

Chakotay was beginning to understand why B'Elanna had tried to kill her animal guide. "I just did!"

"So you're angry with the Cardassians. You have been before."

"Yes, and last time I coped with it by resigning from Starfleet so I could go out and kill them! That doesn't seem to be a valid option this time."

"It isn't?"

Chakotay paused. He hadn't even really considered it, but he wasn't wearing a security anklet, was he? If he became truly determined to leave Earth, how hard could it be to escape Starfleet's clutches and track down the ones who were responsible for killing K'Tarra and Meyer and Roberto and then... and then...

And then what?

"I don't want to kill Cardassians," Chakotay said slowly.

"No? Why not?"

"At this point, I think it would feel less like self-defense and more like revenge. I want my wounds to close, not open new ones."

The monkey gripped the branch with her tail and then let go with her hands and feet, slowly lowering herself so that she hung upside down, looking Chakotay in the eyes.

"This isn't really about the Cardassians, is it?" the monkey asked.

"Yes, it is!" Chakotay insisted. "Or... at least part of it is."

"Well, what's the rest of it? How can you expect me to help you if you haven't fully explained the problem?"

"It's just that... it's..." Chakotay floundered a bit.

"Think before you talk," the monkey advised.

Chakotay sighed and sat down on a rock at the edge of the stream. It was so hot in the jungle that he could feel his hair getting damp and plastering itself against his head. After a minute, he took his shoes and socks off and paddled his bare feet in the water. That felt better. But even so, the heat and the humidity were so oppressive that it still wasn't enough. Finally, Chakotay ended up stripping off all his clothes and wading out into the stream, wincing as the sharp rocks bit into his feet, and then when he got to deeper water he laid back in the coolness and closed his eyes and just let himself drift in the slow current.

He floated for a long time. Every now and again, he opened his eyes and saw his animal guide swinging lazily from branch to branch, keeping up with him as he drifted downstream.

Time went past unheeded while Chakotay thought. At last, he turned over and swam with firm strokes back to the banks of the stream, and heaved himself, dripping wet, onto a sun-warmed rock to dry. Without noticing what he was doing, he ran his hand briefly over the scar running across his ribs.

The capuchin monkey dropped down from the tree to join him.

"Well?" the monkey asked.

Chakotay smoothed back his dripping hair and then wiped water out of his eyes.

"It's like I'm having a mid-life crisis," Chakotay said, "only it's much worse. I'm having an entire-life crisis."

"Meaning?"

It all came out of his mouth in a rush, everything that had come to him as he floated down that stream. "I spent the first half of my adult life putting my heart and soul into my Starfleet career, and then I threw it all away to join the Maquis because I thought it was a nobler cause, only I failed to make a difference because I got transported to the Delta Quadrant before the job was done and missed my chance to become a martyr alongside my friends. Then I spent all those years in the Delta Quadrant trying to protect the woman I came to love and to earn her love in return, and just when I thought I had done that, we came back home and now I'm losing her to somebody else. My time with Starfleet is over, my time with the Maquis is over, and my time on Voyager is over. There's nothing left. What was the point of it all? Was there one? I'm beginning to wonder. It feels like everything I've ever tried to do has been a complete waste of energy."

"That's quite the story," the monkey said.

"You're telling me. I've created nothing lasting in my past, or my present. And I'm not likely to do so in my future either, as far as I can see."

The monkey put a tiny hand on his bare knee. "No wonder you're unhappy, brother."

"So I would really appreciate it if you would stop playing mind games with me," Chakotay said quietly, "and tell me what I need to do to fix this."

The monkey blinked her dark eyes several times. "You can't change your past."

"No."

"You can't fully control your future, either."

"No."

"As for the present, I don't think it's nearly as grim as you're making it out to be. You have friends who would be willing to help you."

Chakotay was getting irritated again. "I have an animal guide willing to help me, or at least I used to. My friends have plenty of their own problems to deal with right now."

"You think you're being noble by taking all this weight on your own shoulders? That isn't heroism, that's pride."

Chakotay scowled. "Stop that."

"Stop what?"

"You're just saying what Kathryn said to me the other day. You're just pulling things out of my memory."

"She gave you good advice, for a mortal."

Chakotay stood up, flipping water everywhere as he did so. "Are you going to tell me anything useful, or not?"

The monkey stared up at him, with little drops of water glistening in her fur. "Stop pinning this on me, brother. You already know what you're supposed to do. Now be a man and go do it."

Chakotay took his hand off the akoonah and dropped the river stone in disgust. He glanced around the empty bedroom, with all the knick knacks Ikal had left behind when he moved to Dorvan V. From the kitchen, he heard the bang of the oven door. He'd been in the trance for more than an hour, and hadn't accomplished a single thing. With less care than usual, Chakotay gathered the items back into his medicine bundle and set it on top of his bed. Then he stood up and glared at it.

"Useless monkey," he said.

The most maddening thing of all was that he knew exactly what his animal guide wanted him to do, and it was precisely the thing he most strenuously didn't want to do.

I'm not ready to ask. She's not ready to answer. The timing's all wrong.

And then he thought: the timing has always been wrong for us. Maybe it always will be.

The thought sickened him. And even though he knew there was no way he could talk to Kathryn about that yet, there was a part of him that was tempted, very tempted, to show up on her doorstep tonight and spill his guts about some of the other things. The Maquis. His career. His trial. The Cardassians. It would be a relief just to talk about it. The monkey was right, he should go see her. He didn't have to tell her about the rest yet. The monkey didn't know everything, after all.

By now, he should know better, but Chakotay did it anyway: he sat at his desk and brought up Kathryn's schedule to see where she was tonight. And of course, she was with Mark. Having dinner with him at her mother's house.

Chakotay leaned back and rubbed his eyes wearily with both hands. He found himself holding an argument with himself inside his head.

She told me to call her. Any time, day or night. She said to call even if she was with an admiral.

She didn't say to call if she was with her ex-fiance. Or fiance. Whichever it is now.

She's my friend. She would drop anything to help me if it was important.

How awkward is it going to be for her if you call while she's with Mark? Do you really want to upset her?

She said she wanted me to impose on her. She told me not to shut her out.

No, she said don't shut people out. You don't have to talk to her. Go talk to someone else.

Who else do I have? Sekaya doesn't want to hear about how much I fear losing my Starfleet career. B'Elanna's still in counseling for her problems and doesn't need to grapple with mine, too. Who else can I trust with something this personal?

"You can call anytime you like. If you ever get bored and want to talk, you know where to find me."

Itzel. He could talk to Itzel.

No. Bad idea. He barely knew her. He couldn't talk to her about all this.

Or could he? She had been widowed by the Cardassians, had supported the Maquis. She would understand about all of that. And she didn't seem to have the same abiding hatred for Starfleet that Sekaya had. Maybe she wouldn't shut down like Sekaya did every time he tried to talk about Voyager or any of his friends there. And Itzel was a good listener, he did know that much about her.

Maybe this was what his animal guide had been referring to. Itzel, not Kathryn. After all, why had he rejected her in the first place? Simply because she wasn't like Kathryn. Well, maybe that was a good thing. Unlike Kathryn, Itzel hadn't made her intentions toward him opaque.

Yes. He would go see Itzel. He knew she would be pleased to see him, and Sekaya would be pleased by his choice, too.

Chakotay stood up resolutely, found his broad-brimmed hat, and put it on. As he left his room, he shot an apologetic look at his medicine bundle.

"I guess you're not completely useless," he admitted to the monkey.

And then he was out the door.

Forty-five minutes later, an unhappy Chakotay was sitting on Itzel's front porch, after several attempts at knocking had failed to bring anyone to the door.

Just my luck. Nobody home.

Couldn't he just hear that little monkey chittering and laughing at him now? "You guessed wrong, brother. You went to the wrong house."

Wait. Maybe he didn't. Itzel might be at that little bar where they had first met. El Perro Marron. He should walk there and see. It wasn't far.

But when he got there, the bartender only shrugged when Chakotay asked if he had seen Itzel recently, and then went back to his work. This was less than helpful. Weren't bartenders supposed to know everyone in town? Weren't they supposed to be sympathetic listeners? Aggravated by the man's indifference, Chakotay left and wearily turned down the road back toward Sekaya's house, tilting his hat forward to block the glare from the setting sun. He had just wasted the whole evening on a wild goose chase.

He was shuffling carelessly through the dust on the side of the road, hands in pockets, when he spotted a hovercar in the distance, appearing wavery in the heat mirage. It was unusual to see a hovercar around here, and Chakotay frowned as he realized that it was halted in the middle of the road, with the hood up and someone leaning inside, looking at the machinery.

When he got close enough, Chakotay called out to the man under the hood.

"Broken down?" he asked.

The driver, dressed in a loose button-up shirt and a broad-brimmed hat much like Chakotay's, glanced up at him and smiled humorlessly. "So it would seem." He was a young man, with Mayan features, and appeared to be alone.

"Can I give you a hand?" Chakotay asked.

"Not unless you know more about hovercars than the last three people who walked by to offer their help," the young man replied. "I've called Mech Assist, but they said I didn't qualify as an emergency, so they couldn't approve a site-to-site transport to get a mechanic here. Apparently no one in Huatabampo is qualified to fix these things."

That didn't really surprise Chakotay. "It's going to take nearly an hour for them to get here from the transport station."

"Yeah, that's what they said. They didn't sound too happy about having to send someone out into the sticks, either. These modernists. They're softer than butter on a hot day." The man laughed, but he sounded more good-natured than bitter.

"Let me take a look," Chakotay said, coming over to look under the hood.

The young man looked at him in surprise. "Don't tell me you actually do know something about hovercars?"

Chakotay switched on the onboard computer and started scrolling through the readouts. "Engineering isn't really my specialty, and to be honest I haven't touched a hovercar in nearly a decade, but I know something about spacecraft, and I might be able to blunder my way through this."

"Oh, if you could get me going again, I would be very grateful," the man said eagerly. "I'm in a big hurry and I really didn't want to wait that long for a mechanic."

"What's the rush?" Chakotay asked.

"There's a baby on the way, and I'm hoping to get there in time."

"You're a doctor?" Chakotay asked, suddenly alarmed. He couldn't believe Mech Assist wouldn't consider that an emergency.

"Oh no, I'm the medicine man," the man said. "My name's Emetal, by the way."

Chakotay looked at him in surprise for a long moment. Emetal certainly didn't look like any medicine man Chakotay had seen before.

"What?" Emetal asked.

Chakotay cleared his throat. "Sorry. I guess I'm used to my medicine men looking a little more... wrinkled and gray. How old are you, 20?"

Emetal laughed. "23. What can I say? We have to start sometime."

"Guess so." Chakotay turned away from the computer display and started unlatching the casing for the anti-grav generator. "Looks like there's a power loss somewhere in here. Might be a faulty connector, or maybe a tetralubisol leak. Let's take a look." He found the hyperspanner stored under the hood and began testing each port.

"So, how does a medicine man end up traveling around his traditionalist community in a hovercar?" Chakotay asked conversationally as he worked.

Emetal shrugged. "I get called out all the time for births, deaths, illnesses, family fights, you name it. I figured, I can either go with the traditionalist flow and make people wait hours for me to show up, or I can risk offending a few people by zipping around in a hovercar. It worked out pretty well at first, but I failed to take into account how hard it would be to get this thing fixed." He gestured at the power conduits Chakotay was now pulling out and inspecting. "Where did you learn how to do all this?"

Chakotay hesitated a moment. "Starfleet Academy."

"No kidding. And you were insinuating a moment ago that I was the odd one."

Chakotay chuckled despite himself. "You got me there." He opened the cover of a circuit board, and raised his eyebrows. "Well, there's your problem right there." He bent down and blew all the dust out of it. "The casing on the anti-grav generator isn't sealed as tight as it should be. You got a lot of dust in there, and the engine ran out of tetralubisol trying to flush it out. The engine switched off automatically to keep you from burning it up."

Emetal looked anxious. "Is that hard to fix?"

"Not if you have an emergency kit in the the trunk that's stocked with tetralubisol. Then we'll just clean out the dust and fill it back up with lube. And sometime soon you should see about getting the innards of your engine weather-proofed better than they are now. I suspect this thing was designed by engineers who were picturing it being used in a nice clean modernist city, not off-roading out in the middle of nowhere."

Emetal hurried to the back of the hover car and found the kit. It took a few minutes, but before long Chakotay had the anti-grav generator cleaned out and refilled, and he told Emetal to try starting it up again.

The engine purred to life again, and the car lifted off the ground about a foot and hovered there. Chakotay lowered the hood and turned to Emetal, who had climbed out of the driver's seat and came back to the front of the car.

Emetal had taken off his broad-brimmed hat to start the hovercar. Chakotay took one look at him, grinned suddenly, and took off his own hat. They stared at each other for a moment and then said simultaneously: "Nice tattoo."

They both laughed.

"I thought I knew all the Rubber Tree People around here," Emetal said, slapping his shoulder affectionately. "I'm delighted to find another one! What's your name, and who do you belong to?"

"Chakotay. I stay here with my sister sometimes. Sekaya, and her husband Atl."

"Oh, yes, I've met them. Haven't headed out that way recently. I didn't realize they had relatives visiting. Where do you call home?"

It was a harmless, small-talk sort of question to ask, but Chakotay found himself at a total loss to answer it. What could he say to that? Dorvan 5? He hadn't lived there for decades. The Delta Quadrant? An unscheduled "vacation." Voyager? It wasn't his home anymore. Only his apartment in San Francisco was his own, but even that only felt like a stopping place on his way to... wherever it was he was going next. Chakotay realized his silence had just stretched into the awkward zone.

"That's... complicated," he confessed.

"Guess so," Emetal said, looking at him inquisitively. "Hey, I've got to go see about that baby. Why don't you jump in and come with me?"

"I checked the readouts," Chakotay said. "Your engine's all clear now. You shouldn't have any more problems getting there and back."

"I wasn't worried about the engine," Emetal said. "I was hoping to get to know you. Hop in."

"I don't even know the family," Chakotay protested. "I can't just show up for a birth-"

"We're all family, all of the Rubber Tree People," Emetal said with a sudden passion. "There are so few of us left, we have to be. And a baby... well, we have even more cause to rejoice over a birth than we did before. You have children of your own?"

Briefly, and not without regret, Chakotay thought of Seska's baby. "No."

Emetal nodded. "Well, if you ever do, we will throw you a celebration to remember," he promised with a grin. "Every wedding, every birth, means another chance for our traditions, our history, to be remembered and passed down. Tonight's birth is a joyful occasion. No one will mind if you come."

Chakotay felt a little odd about it, but there was no denying this meeting seemed providential. How many times in the Delta Quadrant had he wished he had access to a medicine man for guidance and advice? And with everything that had happened since he got home, he hadn't even thought to go looking for one.

He got in the hovercar, and answered a flood of questions from Emetal while they drove to a distant home several miles away from the village. As soon as Emetal figured out that Chakotay had been on the crew of Voyager, he nearly clipped a cactus.

"That was you? I've been hearing all kinds of things," he said eagerly. "All kinds of rumors. Did you really find the homeworld of the Sky Spirits?"

Chakotay started to tell Emetal about his experiences there, but he hadn't gotten far when they arrived at the house. The sun had now dipped below the horizon, and it was rapidly growing darker.

"You'll have to come over to my place sometime and tell me the whole story properly," Emetal said as they got out of the car and hurried up to the house.

An old man with gray hair that fell around his shoulders was sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch, and he lifted a hand in silent greeting to them.

"The baby?" Emetal asked him anxiously.

"The child has not arrived yet."

"And the mother?"

"She asked for a blessing. You can go in. The women are expecting you."

Emetal nodded seriously. "Kabil, this is my friend, Chakotay. Is it all right if he waits with you?"

The old man nodded and gestured at an empty chair on the porch, and Chakotay settled into it as Emetal set down his medicine bundle, reverently opened it, and began to make his preparations.

The medicine man selected several resin-coated sticks from a large bundle, and carefully lighted them. A thin stream of white smoke from the burning incense spiraled up into the air, and in moments Chakotay could smell the sharp, clean scent of copal.

It was an intensely familiar scent, one he had long been denied, and instantly it triggered memories within him, as varied and as diaphanous as the curls of smoke that were now rising skywards from Emetal's hands. The farewell ceremony the day he had left for Starfleet Academy. The offering Sekaya had made upon their father's death. The day he had received his tattoo. There were other days, too; other rituals from his childhood, growing faint in his aging memory, but all infused with the clear, clean scent of burning sap, the lifeblood of the copal tree, the thread that wove through his entire life.

Holding the smoking incense sticks between the fingers of one hand, Emetal picked up a small, heavy object from the medicine bundle with his other hand. The object was wrapped in a cloth, but Chakotay knew what it was: a rubber figure of She of the Jade Skirt, to watch over the birth as was traditional.

With his precious items in hand, Emetal quietly slipped through the front door. When it opened, Chakotay and Kabil could briefly hear a woman inside, moaning in pain, until the door swung shut and all was quiet again.

It was a testament to his long years in Starfleet that Chakotay's first thought was: with all the medical advances in the Federation, why would the mother choose to give birth that way? Why not use one of the many medicines available to make sure it was painless?

He remembered asking his mother that question, long ago, when he discovered she had done the same thing, not once but twice, giving birth to himself and to Sekaya. He distinctly remembered her reply, delivered with a casual shrug of the shoulder: "Pain doesn't kill you, Chakotay. It wakes you up."

Chakotay glanced over at Kabil. The old man's eyes were closed as he rocked gently in his chair. A warm, dry breeze briefly ruffled his gray hair and then died down again.

Almost as if sensing Chakotay's eyes on him, Kabil opened his eyes and looked over at him.

"Tell me about your family, Chakotay," he said.

And so Chakotay did, as the sun sank below the horizon. It seemed as good a way as any to pass the time. So he talked about growing up on Dorvan 5, and all about his mother and how she had died of a snake bite when he was 10, and he spoke of his father and his sister and her husband and their two sons, and all the troubles they'd had during the border dispute with the Cardassians. Kabil didn't say much, only breaking in to ask a question here and there. Mostly he just rocked in his chair, eyes closed, listening.

The conversation reached a lull. Kabil rocked for a few more minutes, and then suddenly asked, as though they had never stopped talking: "Did you forgive them?"

"Who?" Chakotay asked blankly.

"The ones who killed your father and your nephew. Did you forgive them?"

Chakotay paused for a long moment. "I... don't know."

Kabil nodded, eyes closed. "If you don't know, then you didn't."

Chakotay felt compelled to defend himself, although there had been no tone of accusation in Kabil's voice. "I'm not as angry as I used to be."

Kabil raised both eyebrows slightly. "Forgiveness isn't something you feel," he said quietly. "It's something you do."

Footsteps sounded inside the house, and then Emetal was back, slipping through the front door to rejoin them on the porch.

"The baby isn't here yet," he told Kabil. "It won't be long now, I think." Emetal perched on the porch railing and gazed out across the cacti dotting the gently rolling hills, just visible in the moonlight.

"Our ancestors," Kabil remarked to Chakotay, as though their conversation hadn't been interrupted, "were deeply wronged by invaders who came to their lands many centuries ago. Some of them did not forgive their enemies. And after all, why should they? The invaders did not deserve forgiveness. And so some of our ancestors retreated to what little land they had left and drowned their misery in alcohol and despair. It didn't hurt their enemies a bit, of course, but it took their own families generations to recover from that old bitterness."

Emetal nodded in agreement from his perch on the railing. "A sickness in spirit will poison everything in your life, from eating food, to working, to making love," he said slowly. "Nothing will be right again until you cure it."

There couldn't have been a better description of what Chakotay was feeling right now. But still there was something holding him back. It was so much simpler to believe that the Cardassians, or the Caretaker, or the cruelty of fate, were responsible for his current misery. Not his own hang-ups.

He was tempted to remain silent. Just let the subject drop, and go home as soon as Emetal could take him, and then continue on as he was. Probably everything would get better with time.

But Kathryn's words kept ringing in his ears: Don't be like me. Don't shut people out.

There were a thousand reasons why he shouldn't talk about his problems know. He barely knew Kabil and Emetal. It was late. They were undoubtedly eager to go home to bed as soon as the baby was born. They wouldn't understand his problems, or care about them. And yet… And yet...

"I need help."

Chakotay was almost startled by his own choice. He'd done it. He'd said the words out loud.

"With what?" Emetal asked, growing more attentive.

Chakotay let out a soft explosive of air. "Everything," he admitted.

Slowly, haltingly, he began to explain. About the Cardassians, and the loss of his home colony. About losing his Starfleet dream, and then his comrades in the Maquis. He told Emetal and Kabil about Kathryn - and it was terrifying, because he had never told anyone how he felt about her. But there was no judgement in their eyes, only understanding. And he told them of his fears, that he might be denied re-entry into Starfleet or even lose his freedom, thanks to his past.

When he was done, there was a long silence. To Chakotay's surprise, he found that he was not anxiously awaiting some great store of wisdom from either man. If they had advice, he was ready to hear it, but simply getting everything off his chest had left him feeling 50 pounds lighter.

"Listen to that," Emetal said suddenly.

The three of them lifted their heads, and from the depths of the house, they could hear a baby's thin wail.

"Grandfather! Grandfather!" They could hear footsteps inside the house, and then a young girl, maybe 10 or 11, suddenly poked her head out of the window and looked over at Kabil where he was sitting on the porch. "The baby's here! It's a little girl! Come and see her!"

Emetal didn't need to be told twice. He picked up his medicine bundle and hurried inside once again.

"Is she well?" Kabil asked.

The girl wrinkled her nose. "She's all messy, but Grandmother says she'll be pretty when she's washed and dressed. Come and see her!"

"I will wait until the women have completed their tasks," Kabil told his granddaughter gravely. "You had better go back and help your mother with whatever she needs. Thank you for coming to tell us the good news."

The girl ran off again. They heard a door open, and suddenly they could clearly hear Emetal's soft chanting accompanied by a rhythmic rattling. The baby was no longer crying, but they could hear a woman weeping and laughing at the same time. Then the door shut and the sounds were muted once more.

Kabil turned to Chakotay. "My son will name her Dorotaya," he said with satisfaction, "because she is a gift."

"I'm sure she is," Chakotay murmured.

When Emetal had finished with his duties, he walked with Chakotay back to the hovercar, with Kabil calling to both of them to come back and visit soon. And then Chakotay and Emetal were gliding across the darkness of the desert, with the hovercar's headlights cutting swaths of gold across the blackness of the night.

"I can take you back to your sister's house now," Emetal said to Chakotay as they drove. "Or, if you would rather… I have a tamazcal set up at my place. I could light some copal for you, and we could discuss some things. While you were talking, I had a few thoughts that I'd like to run past you. I know it's late, but I'd be glad to have you over."

Chakotay nodded gratefully. "I did say I needed help."

Emetal smiled. "Yes, you did. I just hope I can provide some."

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter! Feel free to share.