The baby was indeed Carl's reflection. Rick wept while he held the infant, which sucked on its pacifier while staring at him, entranced, with Carl's light blue eyes. The nose was Carl's, too, though the infant's hair was the same strawberry blonde Sophia's had been when Daryl first met her. He noticed that when Carol was given her grandson to hold. Daryl stood close beside her, a hand on the small of her back, looking down at the child with awe.
When the baby fussed, Carol returned it to its mother to nurse. Sophia grabbed a blanket, and the baby soon disappeared beneath it and onto her breast.
"I'll leave you," Wohali told her, "to get reacquainted with your…first family. I'll check on Concotocko and see if the scouts have returned."
Wohali looked the trio of adults over before disappearing. Daryl saw it again, that same fear in his eyes, and he understood it now. Wohali was afraid of losing his adoptive daughter, afraid she would leave the tribe and return to her first family. Daryl understood that fear because he shared it—he was afraid Sophia wouldn't leave with them. Wohali had now been Sophia's father longer than he had. But Carol had been her mother since birth, and Wohali had mentioned no wife, no rival adopted mother. There was the family back in Alexandria, too, the aunts and uncles and near-siblings Sophia had left behind.
But there was also her fuck-up adoptive father, who had failed to find her. She seemed to hold no grudge against him for that, Daryl observed, but maybe it was only because she had become one of the tribe and didn't miss that old life with him. He felt a rolling sickness in his stomach when Sophia invited them to sit down.
The bark-roof cabin was spartan. Sophia's old wakizashi hung on one wall. A hutch with a pantry stood in one corner, and a cot piled with blankets in another. There was a crib, a rustic wooden rocking chair—into which Sophia had settled with the baby—and a wooden bench along most of one wall (where Rick, Carol, and Daryl now sat down), under which folded clothes and other personal effects were stored in woven baskets. A stone pit in the center of the cabin housed a fire, which was vented through a hole in the roof.
The only other piece of furniture was a low stone table—a literal stone, clean but unsharpened—with deer-skin mats positioned on either side, where Sophia and a guest sat Indian-style, Daryl supposed, to eat. That's what they'd called it when he was in elementary school, anyway, but Sophia at twelve had said "criss-cross applesauce." He had a vision of her now, back at that first camp in the quarry, and his heart seized. She was so grown-up, and he'd missed it all.
"What's his name?" Carol asked. Daryl could tell by the softness in her voice that she was holding back tears, maybe holding back the same fears that were somersaulting through his mind. He reached over and covered his hand with hers.
"Koo-wi-s-gu-wi," Sophia answered. "It means mysterious little white bird."
That was a mouthful. Daryl would probably just call him Koo, if he was allowed to call him anything at all, if the baby came back with them.
"But I just call him Koo," Sophia said, and Daryl smiled. Maybe there was still a little bit of him in his not-so-little girl.
Sophia proceeded to tell them how she and Carl and Patrick had fled the fires of Fun Kingdom and lost Freckles at a fork in the road when they were set upon by walkers. "We call them wendigo." (We, Daryl thought with a pang, we…). They rode into the stream to avoid the walkers pursuing them (that was how Daryl had lost the trail; if only they'd stayed on the shore) and then rode for miles in the forest, not knowing where they were going, trying to find their way out of the woods.
"It was day to day survival after that," Sophia said. "We got lost in the forest for days, hunted as best we could, drank from creeks. When we finally stumbled out on a roadway, we decided we would try to find a map and go to Shirewilt. We could only find a Georgia map. By the time we got as far as the North Carolina border, we were near starving."
That was when six members of the tribe, led by Wohali, found them. The tribal scouts had been out east to assess potential threats and scavenge. They brought the kids back to Qualla. Wohali had lost his wife, all three of his adult daughters, and two granddaughters when "the earth groaned," as the tribe phrased it, and he thought Sophia was a gift from the Great Spirit. He adopted her and named her Deyani, which meant "determined," because she, like Carl, had tried to resist the scouts at first, fiercely pointing her little sword, despite the fact that she was outnumbered, and, back then, outgunned. (The tribe still had a few firearms, but no ammunition.) A middle-aged married couple had adopted Carl and Patrick.
"I should have just written down the address of the gardens directly," Carol said. "I was worried raiders would find it and attack those people. They'd already been through so much. But I should have taken the risk. I shouldn't have expected you to remember the name of—"
"—Mom, it's all right. Really. I know you two looked for me. I know how hard you must have tried, even when it was hopeless. But here I am. We've found each other!"
Carol smiled faintly. She gave Daryl a wary glance. He could see she feared the same thing he did—that it was too easy. Sophia was too forgiving of their failure to find her. Her life with the tribe was settled, happy. There was no anger because there was no regret.
Carol returned her attention to her daughter. "So…you and Carl? I admit I'd always imagined you would end up with Patrick."
"Oh, I knew Carl had a crush on her back at Fun Kingdom," Rick said.
Sophia looked up from the baby moving beneath the blanket. "He did? He never told me that."
Rick chuckled. "Well, he told me. Not in so many words…but he did."
Sophia said they were friends for a long time, that they didn't really begin to fall in love—or at least she didn't—until they were seventeen. They were married at the age of eighteen in a traditional Cherokee wedding ceremony, or, at least, what the tribe imagined the ceremony had once been like, though it had been lost in time, like so much of the past.
Fifteen months ago, when Qualla collapsed, Sophia had fought and killed as many of the wendigo as she could, but when she was completely surrounded by a pack, Carl had drawn them off. He'd died getting her and several others out alive. Sophia hadn't realized until two weeks later that she was pregnant. Koo had been born shortly before she turned twenty-one, and he was now seven months old.
"You weren't exactly wrong about Patrick," Sophia told Carol, "at least on his end. After I got engaged to Carl, he was so upset. I kept asking him what was wrong, and he confessed he'd loved me for years. Up until I married Carl, he was hoping there was still a chance. I felt so badly for him. I love him, I do…I always have…just…not like that. I hope he finds someone. He deserves to. We found these people a few months ago and took them in. There's this woman, Kelly…" Sophia smiled. "I've been trying to steer him in her direction."
Patrick's Cherokee name, she told them, meant "standing turkey." He had received his share of ribbing from the tribe in the early years, but they'd grown to deeply respect him because of his intelligence; he had a way of finding sources of water, building simple machines with pullies, and making useful inventions that made daily work of the tribe easier. Patrick was on the Council, along with Wohali, who was the chief of the tribe, a warrior and scout named Tala, and the medicine woman, Walela. "She was a brain surgeon in the old world, but now she's more of a general practitioner."
"So a real doc?" Daryl asked. "No hocus pocus?"
Sophia laughed. "You haven't changed a bit."
Daryl wasn't sure what to make of that. She'd said it affectionately, at least. It wasn't exactly true, though. He'd changed in a lot of ways these past eight years, but maybe not in certain essentials of his personality.
"You aren't on the Council?" Carol asked. "They're really missing out."
"I was the year Qualla fell. I didn't run for re-election this past April, because Koo was just about to be born, and I thought I'd have enough on my plate with a baby. We have elections every spring. Wohali always wins. The rest of the spots turn over. Tala took my spot this year."
A man popped his head hesitantly through the open doorframe.
"Your ears must be itching, Tala," Sophia told him. "I was just talking about you. Come in."
The man stepped inside. He was tall and lean with rich, brown skin and hair as black as a raven, but unlike most of the tribe, he wore a brown felt Stetson cowboy hat instead of a woven headband, though he did have five black feathers tucked into the band. Five, Daryl thought. That was only one less than Wohali had worn. He wondered what they meant—number of men killed? It certainly couldn't be walkers. They would all fall over from the weight of the feathers. Sophia wasn't wearing a headdress, but he saw it hanging over the back of her rocking chair – four feathers.
Tala swept his hat off and he looked at the newcomers. "I heard you found your parents."
"And my Uncle Rick. Junaluska's father."
Tala's face crinkled momentarily in disgust. "Your uncle?"
"Not biologically!" Sophia exclaimed.
"Oh. Not that cousin-marriage never happened in Qualla."
"And that baby didn't even have a second head," Sophia quipped.
Tala chuckled. He looked straight at Rick. "I assume you must be Uncle Rick. I see the resemblance to my late friend." He extended his hand, and Rick stood to shake. "It's an honor to meet you. It was an honor to fight alongside your son. He saved my life, more than once."
"And you saved his," Sophia said. "More than once."
"We had more than our share of trials at Qualla," Tala agreed. "May only friends find us here."
Rick swallowed hard as Tala released his hand. "You were friends with Carl?"
"The best of friends," Tala replied. "Well, after his wife, of course. And after Concotocko." He smiled self-deprecatingly. "I was his third best friend, anyway. I admit it took some time for me to see him as an equal. I was twenty-one to his thirteen when we met. But he grew to be a greater man than me. He was a brave man. A true warrior. And a generous friend."
Rick gritted his teeth as if fighting back tears.
"So the scouts have all returned?" Sophia asked. "And the second search party?"
"Yes. We spied several hunters and found your parents' temporary camp. You are far from home, I presume?" This question he addressed to Carol.
"We live in Virginia," Carol answered vaguely.
"The scouts didn't engage, I hope?" Sophia said.
"Well…We didn't, but a certain young rascal did." Tala smiled. "He spied Saloneeta when we were scoping out their camp. He came crawling under the barbwire perimeter before his guardian could see him escape, with his little .22 rifle pointed right at us."
"You didn't hurt him!" Carol cried.
"No, ma'am," Tala replied. "No one was injured. As it so happened, I was able to talk things out with your nephew. We had a long conversation. A certain horse came up. Then a certain girl named Sophia." He half raised the hat in his hand toward the young mother. "I remembered that was your old name."
"Dixon?" Sophia asked with excitement. "He's here? Nearby?"
"Very nearby. In the Council House." Tala addressed Rick now, "Your camp is still guarded. Some of your hunters came back with game. But Dixon is here now." He looked at Sophia and grinned. "Along with your little brother. Quite the pistol, that one. Would you like to meet him? He's eating roasted pumpkin seeds as we speak. He can catch two in his mouth at once."
With mouth agape, Sophia looked from Daryl to Carol.
"We were going to tell you when you were finished with your story," Carol assured her. "Murphy is almost eight."
"Murphy." Sophia's eyes twinkled. She looked at Daryl. "Do you still call Mom Miss Murphy?"
Daryl was glad Sophia hadn't forgotten their shared past. He chuckled. "Yeah. Sometimes."
"Does Murphy have a middle name?" Sophia took the baby out from underneath the nursing blanket and began rubbing his back as he squirmed against her shoulder. "Let me guess. It's Baby Boy."
Carol burst out laughing and Daryl flushed. "Ya told her?"
"She guessed, actually, eventually."
"As soon as this little one burps," Sophia insisted, "I want to go meet Murphy Baby Boy Dixon."
As if on cue, Koo let out a great belch. Tala chuckled and Sophia stood from the rocking chair. She handed the baby over to Carol, who was more than happy to take her grandson for a moment while Tala handed Sophia her sling. Once Sophia had the sling in place, she settled Koo inside.
"I assume our date is cancelled this evening," Tala said, "seeing as your family is in town so to speak?"
Daryl snapped to attention. Was this man a potential suitor to his daughter? Fathering must be an instinct like riding a bike—it comes back to a man in an instant, because he felt suddenly on guard. He looked Tala over warily. How old was this man? Twenty-nine, he calculated, maybe even thirty, based on what he'd said about being twenty-one when Carl was thirteen. Daryl steadied his nerves by reminding himself that Sophia was a woman now. A mother. She wasn't a thirteen-year-old girl anymore.
"Yes, sorry," Sophia told him as she adjusted her sling. "Can I take a raincheck?"
Tala smiled weakly. "Anytime. If you're around to take one, that is." His eyes swept over Carol, Daryl, and Rick as if he were drawing a question mark in the air.
No one knew what Sophia's future held, Daryl thought, whether she would stay here with her new family or return to Virginia with her old one. Maybe not even Sophia knew.
"Come on," Carol said gently. "Let's go meet your little brother."
The group filed from the cabin and toward the Council House, with Tala splitting off in another direction. Sophia threw him a smile over her shoulder, which he caught with a hint of sadness in his espresso-brown eyes.