Chapter 20: Thorns and Flowers

Bucky slashed the vines around his land with so much force he knocked down a young tree with them. He did not care which vines he slashed. He needed to simply fight something. With his one arm, he swung his panga through the dense growth until he cleared an area twice the size of his hut.

Sweat rolled down his forehead and he thought again how much he preferred the heat to the cold.

He took his hoe and began to weed in between his rows of cassava, maize, beans, and millet. When he finished, he looked sadly at his work, wishing he could find some more weeds.

He left his tools behind and walked straight into the bush, wandering aimlessly down human and animal paths, and into the untrodden grasslands. He walked until he finally felt tired and then he plopped onto the ground in a pile of overcast man.

The sun traversed the shallow sky until it sank into the acacia trees. He heard footsteps and turned to see Bella walking towards him, pale violet dress clinging to her ankles, the slightest glimmer shining off one spot she didn't manage to lotion well enough. He covered his eyes with his arm.

"What are you doing out here?" she asked. She sat on the dry, dusty earth besides him.

"Watching the moon," he answered, refusing to uncover his face.

"Right. You've been watching the moon all day."

"Yep."

"You are moping. Why?"

"Am not."

"Are too," she said and stuck her tongue out at him. It would have been more effective if he was looking at her.

He gave a laugh that lacked heart. "Did you need me for something?"

"Nah. I just watched you take out a good chunk of forest a while ago and wanted to know what was troubling you. I mean, I'm all for having more land farmed on the homestead, but your project didn't seem to be fueled by agricultural aspiration."

He peeked at her from under his arm. "Well, you are wrong. I am always fueled by agricultural aspiration."

She sat next to him in silence before she finally took his hand off his forehead and placed it in her own in her lap, intertwining her fingers with his.

"What's wrong?"

"T'Challa asked me my intentions for you," Bucky finally said.

"I see. And that made you angry enough to chop down a tree with a machete?"

"Yes…no…I mean, I don't know. OK, I just don't know," he said, pulling his hand out of hers and facing the other direction.

"You're not exactly building my self-esteem here," she said. Bucky groused and grumbled before his words poured out like a broken dam.

"Bella, what can I give you? I am a hundred year old man with one arm working as a subsistence farmer in a mud hut. And you can't even eat the food I grow. I have nothing, am nothing, will be nothing. My hands are so soaked in blood, I can't even find my fingerprints. And you, you are…" he trailed off, motioning towards her with his hands. "Malaika wa vita…a warrior angel, a divine goddess…"

"Nah. I am just a girl who lives right beside you in the next hut," she said, nestling into his side and draping his arm around her shoulder. "And I am hoping you will still be next to me when I turn a hundred, using your one arm to keep me warm at night," she said.

Bucky leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes again.

"Bella, I could break again at any time and then you'd be even worse off than before…."

"It's a good thing I can take you down, then. You can't kill anyone if I'm holding you down."

"I'm sorry, doll. I'm making a mess of this. I need to get my mind sorted. It's all mixed up right now and that's lousy, but it's where I'm at. I just need to go," Bucky said. He stood and ran as fast as he could into the savanna.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Bucky woke in a tree. He hopped down and kept walking eastward. He walked till near sunset when he finally reached his destination. A dilapidated, abandoned homestead on the borderlands sat in silence, home now to lizards and rats instead of people.

Bucky entered the overgrown remains of a garden, slashing at branches until he found what he sought. He cut back the overgrown vines surrounding the engraved headstone for Isabella Marie Swan. Then he began to gather stones by the light of the moon. He carefully stacked piles of rocks into delicately balanced towers encircling the grave.

Three dawns later, the clearing for the homestead had tripled in size and now grew hundreds of jagged cairns. Bucky sat in the center, a spider in his web, and looked out on his handiwork. Then he buried his head in his hands and wept.

T'Challa found Bucky fast asleep on the freshly cleared grass of the homestead, panga near his disheveled head, and his face a riot of mud and tears. T'Challa rolled up the grey sleeves of his linen shirt and quietly gathered dry wood. A small fire soon crackled and sparked, heating chai and cassava. The smell of the smoke woke the sleeper.

"Habari ya asubuhi," T'Challa said, carrying Bucky a metal mug and banana leaf plate. Bucky nodded and took them, devouring both without taking a breath.

"Thank you," he said when finished. "Why are you here?"

"There are times when wounds heal better in the company of friends," T'Challa responded. He nodded towards the ocean of cairns. "You know each of their names?"

"The ones I'm directly responsible for? Mostly."

"Tell me," T'Challa said. Bucky nodded and rose, placing his hand on each tower as he spoke.

"This one is for Tasha Ivanovich from Moscow. This one is for Dale Heartland from Detroit. This is for Thulani Nzima of Capetown," he said, feigning stoicism and fighting the quiver in his voice.

"The spirits can hear you. Speak what is on your heart," T'Challa said.

Bucky's stoicism evaporated as he walked stone by stone. Some stones needed shouts, others whispers, some tears, and others utter silence.

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to kill you. I'm sorry for your children, for your family. I'm sorry for everything," he said a hundred times over.

Hours and hours and hours later, Bucky collapsed onto the ground, a weight lifted from his heart even as his body sagged with the weariness.

"Last one," Bucky said. He pulled out a smooth granite slab into which he carved the words:

Winter Soldier

1944 to 2017

He buried the stone and collapsed into an exhausted sleep.

oooooooooooo

The brilliant whiteness of the snow nearly hurt his eyes. Snow covered hills fringed the horizon in the twilight air. Bucky groaned. He hated this dream but it found him. Again and again, he found himself here. He looked ahead until he found the rusty metal trunk full of his victims' photographs and the unstoppable flow of blood.

"I can't do it," he shouted, as the photographs melted in his hands. "I can't stop the blood. Please, make it stop!"

This time, his dream shifted course.

"Please make it stop!" reverberated and replayed in the cold air. Without a cavern or cliff nearby, he could not distinguish the source of the echo.

"I can't do it. Please, make it stop!" the voice repeated a second time.

The Bucky realized it wasn't his voice speaking.

He turned around and behind him, an inhuman creature loomed. A lion, a head taller than Bucky standing, sat licking his paw vigorously. The lion's golden mane shook as he twisted his neck to reach his paw. A large acacia thorn protruded from the injured paw and drew rich drops of blood. The lion growled in frustration and kept licking. The thorn stayed lodged in between the soft pads and the blood flowed. The great beast looked Bucky in the eye and spoke.

"Bucky, you must stop the blood."

"I tried. I can't."

"Remove my thorn."

Bucky hesitantly walked up to the creature. He struggled to lift the weight of the velvet paw, easily the size of his head. He wrapped his entire hand around the large thorn and pulled. He tried again with two hands and this time, the thorn slipped out. Bucky discarded it into the snow where it was soon covered in flowing drops of blood from the open wound.

Bucky removed his jacked and tore off the white t-shirt underneath. He ripped it into shreds to bandage the paw. The blood stopped.

The lion bounded up, knocking Bucky to the ground in his haste. He leapt towards the trunk and began to lap at the blood. He drank and he drank and he drank until Bucky thought for sure he would burst. The blood stopped.

When the lion flopped to the ground to wash himself, the entire snows cape was once again clean.

"Bucky, what remains in the trunk?" the lion asked.

Bucky looked inside.

"It is empty," he replied.

"Keep it so," the lion replied. The great beast rose and padded towards him, bending his massive head so his golden eyes bore into his own. "Give me your hands," the lion said.

Bucky held up his dirty, blood-stained hands. The lion's rough tongue licked each side, leaving them fresh and unmarred. Then the lion looked at him, lunged, and knocked him to the ground where he licked Bucky's face.

Bucky gasped and woke with a start.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Thank you," Bucky said as T'Challa drove him home. The tears had been washed and left at the old homestead and now Bucky sat tall, dressed in a deep blue shuka and his brown hair pulled back behind his head. In his hands, he held a bouquet of bright yellow acacia flowers.

"Bucky, you will need to send me two cows and a goat. And be ready for us to come on Saturday. You will need to prepare a feast."

"For what?"

"To celebrate your marriage."

"My what?" Bucky stuttered.

"You do not carry those flowers to place in your own home. As she has no father or uncles or brothers to stand in for her, her adopted family will fill that role. It is our custom for the community to acknowledge when a new family is born. We will come to celebrate and accept the bride price. In that way, you will show your new in-laws that you are committed to our daughter. In your culture, you use rings. In our culture, we use livestock."

"Isn't it a little premature to be talking about all this?"

"What are you waiting for?"

"I don't know."

"You are thinking too hard, bwana. We will see you on Saturday."

T'Challa dropped him at the road leading to the homestead and Bucky walked over the hill to where the lake and the two homesteads emerged in his view. He found Bella washing clothes by the side of the lake. She threw her clothes back into the bucket and ran towards him, knocking him to the ground.

"You! You disappeared for a week! You didn't even say anything. I bear my heart to you and you turn and run."

"I'm sorry, doll. I needed some time to figure out what I want and I figured it out and I came back," he said and handed her the flowers.

"Just like that?"

"Well, I mean, there might have been a few trees knocked down, some holes dug, and some rocks thrown around, but yeah. I know what I want."

"And what is that?"

"I want to plant my heart here, with you, if you will have me," he said and kissed her hand.

ooooooooooooooooooo

A/N: Pulled bits and pieces of the lion dream from Androcles and the Lion, one of the fables of Aesop (Greece)