10:45 PM
Daryl seemed to be gearing up for a second round of lovemaking in the nest they'd made before the fire pit in the center of the cabin. He'd just kissed Carol when the noise of feminine laughter—followed by a male voice—rose from just outside the cabin. Daryl froze with his hand half-cupping her bare breast. "Shhh!" he hissed as he reached behind himself and yanked the blanket up to his neck, rolled quickly on his side with his back to her, and pretended to be asleep.
It was all Carol could do to keep herself from bursting out laughing. He was acting like a teenager who might be caught by his parents on the basement couch with his high school girlfriend. She covered her mouth, but a snort slipped through her fingers.
"Shh!" Daryl insisted, and smiling, Carol rolled on her side, too, pressing her bare back to his and making sure the blanket was settled beneath her chin as Tala and Sophia came into the cabin.
"Careful of the fire," came Tala's voice. "This way."
Sophia was giggling.
"Shh!" Tala murmured. "You'll wake Koo and your parents. This way now."
There was the sound of a light thud and the cot scootching in the corner.
"Legs this way now."
"Are you undressing me, Tala? Are you going to ravish me?" .
"I'm just going to take your boots off and get you to bed."
"But I don't want to go to bed! I want you to take you back to your cabin and ravish me."
Carol could feel the entire frame of Daryl's body stiffen beside her.
"Mhmhm," Tala murmured. "Well, if you still feel that way in the sober light of morning, then you know where to find me."
Carol could now feel the tension begin to slowly ease from Daryl's body.
"Is that warm enough?" Tala asked. "Do you want another blanket?"
Sophia said something to Tala in reply, and Carol though she must be so drunk it was unintelligible, but when Tala replied with the same unintelligibility, she realized they were speaking to one another in the Cherokee language. She'd heard some members of the tribe use it on occasion, though they typically spoke English. She hadn't realized Sophia was fluent. Of course she would be. After eight years, Wohali had no doubt taught her. After the death of millions of people, Wohali had taken it upon himself to preserve a dying language. There was something strangely moving in that.
Tala switched to English now. "I'm going to get you a cup of water. I'll put it on the floor here by the cot. If you wake up thirsty in the middle of the night…it's there."
Sophia said something in Cherokee.
Tala chuckled. He tiptoed across the dirt floor of the cabin, on the other side of the firepit from Daryl and Carol. By the dim light of the low fire he managed to pour water form the pitcher on the hutch into a cup and bring it back to Sophia's bedside.
"Tala," Sophia whispered, or at least she probably thought she was whispering. "Why aren't you drunk?"
"Because we didn't have that much wine. I'm sixty pounds heavier than you, and you must have a very low tolerance. I'm sorry. If I'd known, I wouldn't have kept pouring. I didn't mean for – "
"- I had fun tonight," Sophia interrupted him. "Talking to you. I really did."
"I did, too. A very good time. It was good to get to know you better…Sophia. Osda enyoi."
"Sgwanugatsaga," Sophia murmured. "Sgisgwanutsa."
This was followed by the sound of a kiss and then Tala again saying, "Osda enoyi" again, which Carol took to mean good night, since Sophia said the same thing back to him, and then he tiptoed from the cabin.
Sophia. Tala had just called her Sophia, Carol thought.
Daryl's body relaxed more once Tala was gone. Sophia let out a cute, quiet, uneven snore, and Carol smiled. She rolled on her side and kissed the back of Daryl's neck. He turned to her. "See, you don't know everything, Miss Murphy. Said she wouldn't be back. 'N we almost got caught."
Carol chuckled. "We're married, Daryl. We have been for over nine years now." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "I don't think we'd get in trouble."
"Don't like that he got 'er drunk," Daryl muttered.
"I don't think he intended to," Carol said. "And if he'd wanted to take advantage, he wouldn't have brought her back here."
Sophia let out another light snore.
"She ain't s'posed to drink when she's nursin', is she?"
"It'll be hours before she has to nurse. And she can pump and dump. I saw she has an Old World manual pump."
"You gonna be this loosey gossey a parent when Murphy's a teenager?"
"Lossey gossey?" Carol asked. "First of all, Sophia is not a teenager. She's twenty-one. And she's been a wife and is currently a mother. And second of all - if Murphy comes in drunk at sixteen, no, I'm not going to be loosey goosey about it. But I bet you will be."
"Me?"
"You're not going to lay down the law over that," she assured him.
"Well…mean… probably would mean he's been accepted by the older boys."
"See."
"Just sayin'. Rite of passage."
"Uh huh. I know you."
"You don't know me," Daryl insisted.
"Like the back of my own hand." Carol stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers.
Daryl drew her close and nuzzled her neck with his nose. "Love you, Miss Murphy."
"I love you, too, Pookie. But before you drift off…we better get dressed."
November 25
Five days passed. Over three of them, the coalition hunters filled the cooling shed with white-tailed deer, pheasant, grouse, quail, wild turkey, and wild boar. The tribal hunters also killed a black bear, which was used to feed the whole tribe and its coalition guests for two days. While letting the deer hang and age two more days, the coalition hunters took advantage of their free time to help around the tribe's camp, play cards, and make friends and allies.
Patrick regained some of his strength and got a pair of crutches to keep the weight off his wounded thigh. Tala broke in his new wild horse and told Murphy he could name it, but when Murphy chose "Zippity Doo Dah," Tala thought better of his offer and said, "How about Enumclaw. That's the name of the Cherokee god of lightning" and Murphy responded with, "Just Claw. Claw's cool!" The compromise was accepted.
Wohali had Sophia, Carol, Daryl, and Rick at his table three more times over the course of the week, and he began to refer to Daryl as Sophia's "first father" and himself as her "second father." They learned more about one another's communities and histories.
Sophia had another date at Tala's cabin while Jitsu and Murphy were on their second "campout" in the tent. (They ended up inside the Council House with Rick and Dixon and the others when it got too cold.) She returned the next morning just in time to nurse Koo. Daryl looked a little grumpy, but didn't say anything about her overnight date, as he left to do some solo tracking.
While Sophia nursed and rocked, Carol took a seat on the bench against the wall. Not being able to resist playing the mother she was, she said, "I do hope you used some kind of protection."
Sophia flushed. Then she smiled. "Remember when Carl didn't know anything about sex, and I filled him in, and Lori got upset?"
"Vaguely," Carol replied. "I think she and Rick argued about who was supposed to have told him. And you just gave him the blunt details."
"You were always very direct about that stuff."
"Sorry. I know you're an adult. But I'm still your mother."
"Well, in the interest of directness…we don't have any kind of protection around here. Nothing really safe or comfortable anyway. But Tala and I didn't do anything that could make me pregnant. I wouldn't take that risk, not knowing what's going to happen after this separation, whether we'll keep dating or not. But I like him, and he's good-looking, and it's been so long since I got any kind of really good physical release."
Carol flushed slightly. When she lost her little girl, Sophia had never so much as kissed a boy. Now she had a baby after a near three-year relationship with Carl and was talking about needing release from a Cherokee warrior.
"Look, I understand," Sophia continued. "You're worried about me getting pregnant without being in a committed relationship. I get it. That can be complicated, not to mention I don't want to be juggling two kids under two in nine months."
"And you know you can't rely on a man to pull out?" Carol asked. That was not a detail any of her former sex talks had covered.
Sophia laughed. "Oh, I know. How do you think I got this little one?" She stroked Koo's fine hair. "Carl and I were planning to wait another year before we threw caution to the wind. Of course I'm glad now for the happy accident."
"Since we're being direct," Carol said, "remember when you were eight, and you wanted to be called Athena?"
Sophia looked puzzled by the seeming non sequitur. "I'd been learning about Greek mythology. I liked the name, but I dropped that I idea really quickly when - " Sophia stopped.
When Ed roared at her and told her she had a goddamn name already and there was no way in hell they were going to call her Athena and who in the hell did she think she was thinking she had the right to change the name her mother had given her? He'd paced and roared and menaced, and Carol had remained silent out of fear of upsetting him further, instead of stepping in and defending her daughter against her ass of a husband. She only got between them when a fist came out, so she could take the blow instead. But she should have shut him down, shut down his abusive roaring. Hell, she should have taken Sophia and shut the front door behind them.
"That's one of a thousand things I still feel guilty about," Carol told her. "Not standing up for you when he said those things."
"Mom, that was another time. It was another world. You're another person now."
"I hope I am. I've tried to be. But I just realized - I didn't even bother to ask you. What do you want us to call you now? Do you want us to call you Deyani? Because we will, if that's what you want."
"I like my Cherokee name," Sophia said. "It was given to me out of affection and as a sign that I wasn't going to be an outsider to the tribe. But I like the name you gave me, too. And everyone who's still alive from Fun Kingdom knows me by it. I can be Sophia to one group of people and Deyani to another. Both names are a part of who I am."
"I heard Tala call you Sophia the other night."
She smiled and shifted Koo to her other breast. "He sounds like he's chewing on a foreign thing when he says it. But he's trying it out. I think he really does want to get to know me, and getting to know me means getting to know Sophia as well as Deyani. I don't know that I love him, at least not the way I loved Carl. But I think maybe I'm going to miss him more than I expected."
"I know it won't be easy leaving your tribe," Carol told her, "even for a few months, but I'm so glad you're coming to Alexandria with us."
"I missed you, too, Mom. You and Dad. Every day."
November 26
On the coalition's last day in the Cherokee village, they spent the entire morning, from sunrise until an hour after noon, processing the game, wrapping it, and loading the packed meat onto the flat bed of the truck for the journey home. They would leave the bones for the tribe to use for broth, spears, arrows, fishhooks, weaving tools, scrapers, toys, jewelry, and fertilizer, as a thank you for the tribe's hospitality.
There was a bounteous farewell meal held in the mid-afternoon on long wooden tables in the plaza, with wild turkey, squash, pumpkin, kanuchi, fired hominy, wild onions, and spicebush tea. "This remind anyone of the first Thanksgiving?" Rick asked with a smile.
"We do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims," Wohali told him coolly. "We do not rejoice in the event that ultimately precipitated the genocide of tens of thousands of our people."
Rick's smile faltered. "I just meant…the friendship part...the whole…"
Sophia, who sat next to Wohali, said, "He's just giving you a hard time, Uncle Rick. Agidoda has a very strange sense of humor."
Wohali's stern face cracked into a smile, followed by a low chuckle, and Rick relaxed. "Try the chestnut bread," Wohali told him. "It was my mother's recipe."
After the meal, the bed of the flatbed truck was loaded, and goodbyes were exchanged. Daryl kissed Carol and said, "Catch up with ya in a couple days or so."
Carol hugged Murphy tightly. "Sure you don't want to come with us? We can squeeze you in the bed. It might be a little smelly, but...there's a corner. And you'd be home a lot sooner."
"I want to ride and camp with Pa!"
"Always Pa," Carol murmured.
"First six years it was always Mama," Daryl reminded her.
Patrick's friends hugged him goodbye one by one as he leaned on his crutches. His last hug was from Wohali. "I left the winter insultation plans with Ahyoka," Patrick told him. "She understands them. And I'll be back to supervise the engineering of the new irrigation system in spring."
Wohali put a hand on each of his shoulders. "You know, Conocotocko, I'm not just going to miss you for what you can do for us." He reached up and patted one of Patrick's cheeks affectionately. "If you find yourself a good woman while you're gone, feel free to bring her back."
Patrick laughed.
"I'm not joking," Wohali told him. "You will enter that world a mysterious Cherokee warrior, wounded in a recent and heroic battle with the wendigo. Use it to your advantage." He smiled. "At least...put away the notebook for awhile and enjoy yourself, Conoco."
An eighteen-year-old Cherokee girl slipped a necklace of bones around Benjamin's neck, telling him, "Something to remember our time by." He smiled and kissed her cheek. Her mother, who stood nearby, looked at Benjamin warily.
Jitsu offered Murphy the ring and pin game they'd spent so much time playing together, while Patty's seven-year-old Cherokee friend gave her a small drum made of wood and deer hide.
The hunters began mounting their horses, two-to-a-steed (except for Jerry, who filled his saddle all too well, and Rick, who climbed alone atop Magnus). Dixon stroked Magnus's mane and said, "Beth is going to be so happy to see you," before lifting Patty onto his own horse.
Tala kissed Sophia goodbye and embraced her. After a moment, he pulled away to let her say her farewells to her second father, whom she hugged tightly. "It will be a long winter without you and my grandson," Wohali said, "my great gifts from the Spirit." He lay a hand on the head of Koo, who rested on his mother's hip. "But the spring will bring your bloom again."