The landscape changed. It wasn’t a sudden shift, but a gradual softening of the edges, a deepening of the earth’s palette from sun-bleached tan to rich ochre and rust.
The scrubby mesquite and prickly pear gave way to stands of hardy juniper and piñon pine that clung to the rising slopes of the mesas. The air itself felt different—cleaner, laced with the scent of resin and dry soil, carrying a stillness that seemed to hum with age.
Beatrice rode beside Wes, noticing the transformation was not just in the land, but in the man. The tense, coiled vigilance he carried like a second skin had eased.
His shoulders were less rigid, his gaze less of a sweep for threats and more of a familiar communion. He was quieter than ever, but it was a different kind of silence.
Not the hostile, barricaded quiet of their first days together, but a deep, resonant quiet that seemed to belong to this place. He was home.
She felt an unexpected pang of something akin to envy. Her home was a world of brick and cobblestone, of lectures and libraries—a world she fought to conquer, not one she belonged to.
Here, Wes was not merely in the landscape; he was an extension of it.
After another hour of travel through a winding, rock-strewn arroyo, he finally reined in his horse. “We’re here.”
Ahead, nestled in a protective crook of a low-slung mesa, was a small camp. It was a place of profound simplicity and order. Two tipis, their hides tanned to a soft, buttery color, stood against the red rock.
A fire pit, ringed with stones blackened by countless fires, smoldered gently, sending a thin ribbon of fragrant cedar smoke into the crystalline air. A few ponies grazed peacefully nearby.
There were no fences, no clutter, no sign of the frantic, grasping struggle for existence that defined Redemption. This was a place of harmony.
An old woman emerged from one of the tipis as they dismounted. She was small and weathered, her face a beautiful map of deep-set lines that spoke of laughter and sorrow in equal measure.
Her long, silver-shot hair was woven into two thick braids, and her dark eyes, when they met Beatrice’s, were as sharp and intelligent as a hawk’s. This was Running Water.
Wes approached her first, speaking in the low, fluid cadence of the Comanche language. The sounds were soft, guttural, entirely foreign to Beatrice’s ears, yet the tone was unmistakable.
It was filled with a deep, abiding respect and affection that she had never heard from him before. He gestured toward Beatrice, and Running Water’s gaze settled on her again, patient and appraising.
Beatrice felt a sudden wave of self-consciousness. Her practical riding skirt and dusty blouse, so functional on the trail, now felt coarse and alien.
She was an intruder here, a symbol of the world that had taken so much from these people.
“Grandmother,” Wes said, turning back to her. His voice was rough, as if the English words were clumsy on his tongue after speaking his own.
“This is Beatrice Kincaid.”
Running Water nodded slowly, her eyes missing nothing. “The Woman Who Chases Flowers,” she said in clear, slightly accented English.
Her voice was like the rustle of dry leaves. “My grandson has spoken of you.”
Beatrice blinked, surprised. “He has?” She glanced at Wes, whose stony expression was unreadable.
“He said you listen to the land,” Running Water continued, a faint smile touching her lips. “Few of your people do. Come. Sit. You are weary from your journey.”
They settled around the fire, and Running Water ladled a rich, savory stew into wooden bowls for them. It was made with rabbit and wild roots Beatrice didn’t recognize, and it was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted.
As they ate, the initial awkwardness began to dissolve in the warmth of the fire and the elder’s calm presence.
Running Water watched them, her gaze moving between her grandson and the strange woman he had brought into their sacred lands. She saw the way Beatrice, for all her bookish learning, held her bowl with a reverence for the food it contained.
She saw the way Wes, for all his cultivated hardness, positioned himself ever so slightly between Beatrice and the open wilderness, a silent, protective shield.
“You seek a special flower,” Running Water said, breaking the comfortable silence. It was not a question.
“Yes,” Beatrice replied, her heart quickening. “A lily. Very rare. It is said to have… curative properties.”
She felt foolishly clinical saying it, as if reducing a miracle to a chemical compound.
Running Water’s eyes held a knowing glint. “Your people look for cures in petals and roots. You see the vessel, but not the spirit within.”
She set her bowl aside.
“We have a story about this flower. The Nuhmuhnuh call it Tuhu-pitu, the Ghost Lily.”
Wes shifted, leaning forward slightly. Even he, it seemed, was captivated.
“Long ago,” Running Water began, her voice taking on a storyteller’s rhythm,
“in the time of the first grandmothers, a sickness came upon the People. It stole the breath from the children and the strength from the warriors. The shaman prayed, the medicine men made their poultices, but the spirits of sickness were strong and would not leave.”
Her gaze drifted toward the darkening sky, where the first stars were beginning to appear.
“One night, a young woman whose husband was near death had a dream. In her dream, the Moon herself came down from the sky and walked the earth. Where her silver feet touched the stone in the darkest part of a hidden canyon, a flower grew. It was pale as her own light, its petals shaped like captured stars. The Moon told the woman that the flower held her own essence—the power to soothe a fever, to quiet a troubled heart, and to guide a spirit back from the edge of the shadow-land.”
Beatrice was mesmerized. The tale was unscientific, a myth born of desperation and hope, yet it resonated with a truth deeper than any textbook diagram.
“When the woman woke,” Running Water continued, “she followed the memory of her dream. She walked for a day and a night until she found a canyon hidden by a curtain of rock.
She went inside, and there, in a place where the sun shone for only a brief moment at midday, she found them. A field of lilies, glowing in the gloom as if they held their own light.
She made a tea from the petals as the Moon had shown her, and it saved her husband. It saved our People.”
A profound silence settled over the camp, broken only by the crackle of the fire. The legend had given Beatrice’s quest a soul.
This wasn’t just a specimen; it was a repository of hope, a piece of the moon brought to earth.
“The canyon… is it real?” Beatrice asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“It is real,” Running Water affirmed.
“It is a sacred place. A place of healing. The Ghost Lily does not grow for just anyone. It reveals itself only to those who come with a good heart and a true purpose.”
Her eyes found Beatrice’s, and for a long moment, she seemed to be looking straight into her soul. “Your purpose is true. You wish to heal your father.”
Beatrice could only nod, a lump forming in her throat.
Running Water then turned her gaze to her grandson. “But it is not the only purpose that has brought you here.”
Wes’s jaw tightened. “Grandmother…”
She held up a hand, silencing him gently.
“He brought you to me, Flower-Chaser. He has not brought a white woman to these lands since his mother first walked them with his father.”
The simple statement landed in the space between Beatrice and Wes with the weight of a boulder. Beatrice’s breath caught.
She looked at Wes, whose face was a mask of conflicting emotions in the firelight—annoyance, vulnerability, and a raw honesty he couldn’t quite conceal. He refused to meet her eyes, staring instead into the flames.
The unspoken thing that had been growing between them—the fragile tendrils of respect, the spark of attraction, the deep well of shared vulnerability—was now laid bare in the quiet wisdom of an old woman’s observation. It was no longer a secret they could keep even from themselves.
Running Water smiled, a knowing, gentle expression.
“Sometimes a person goes looking for one root and finds another, tangled with the first, both drawing strength from the same earth. It is not a mistake. It is the way of the land.”
She rose then, her small frame moving with a quiet grace.
“I will show you the way to the canyon’s mouth on your map tomorrow. For tonight, rest. The land asks for your respect, and you have given it. It will reward you.”
She retreated into her tipi, leaving Beatrice and Wes alone in the vast, star-dusted silence. The air was thick with everything that had just been said and everything that hadn’t.
The professional arrangement of guide and client had been irrevocably burned away in the heat of the small fire, leaving something far more complex and terrifying and wonderful in its place.
Beatrice looked at Wes, who finally lifted his head. His dark eyes met hers across the flickering flames.
The cynicism was gone, stripped away by the sanctity of his ancestral home and the truth in his grandmother’s words. In its place was a question, one that mirrored the frantic, hopeful beating of her own heart.
He had brought her here. Not just to find a flower, but to this place, to his grandmother, to the very heart of who he was.
Their thorny bargain had led them down a path neither had anticipated, to a canyon that promised not only a botanical miracle, but perhaps another kind of healing altogether.