Stormfeather Ch. 02

I wanted a pretty confident female lead for this one. The story just called for it and I've placed her in a rather male-dominated period. She doesn't give a damn.

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Amy Monaghan rode down the main street of Portales in something of a foul mood. The one pleasing thing to her was that here in this place, she could ride with her long red hair free since she was known to the inhabitants of the town. If there was a drawback, it was the fact that the day's heat caused her mane to stick to the back of her neck, but it was a small price to pay for the luxury of it, she considered. Most often when she traveled, she had to hide her hair under her hat. The result was less than pleasant to her and there was the side-effect of the sun on her pale skin back there. She sighed; her mother had called it the curse of being a red-head.

She frowned at her own grumpiness. It wasn't like her at all, but then neither was the hangover that she was presently nursing. It made riding more of a torture than a means of transportation. There were a few other contributing factors, she allowed, not the least of which concerned her having buried her father the previous day. But the truth of it was that there were several others, not all of them bad, necessarily, but in her present state of mind the level of thought that they required was taxing. Right now, she'd have had her hands full with just the one.

Her family's history from her perspective seemed to be too short and far from sweet. Her father had led something of an adventurous life in his own youth, having been born into a family with at least some money. A restless sort, he'd spent time on both sides of the law, and his travels had led him to occupations as varied as a cook, an army trooper and a sailor. This last had seen his eventual rise to the captaincy of a trade clipper, which was the nice way to say it to anyone who might have asked.

Mostly, he'd been a bootlegger.

Having made his fortune and knowing that nothing can last forever, he'd made one last Atlantic crossing, collected his young Irish wife and small son and taken them about as far from the call of the ocean as he could. To him, that was here in the New Mexico Territory to start a farm.

Amy had been born when her brother was ten and though he told anyone who would listen that his little sister was a personal curse to him, he loved her dearly. For her part, Amy worshiped her father and lionized her brother. It made the shocks of their departures from her life all the harder to bear each time.

Her brother had tried to tell her of his reasons for joining the Confederate Army in the waning days of the Civil War, but at the age of twelve they made no sense to Amy. It was after his reported death fighting the Union Army that she decided that for the most part, he'd done it for a bit of adventure and to see at least a little bit more of the world than the backs of the team of plow horses that he'd felt shackled to. Amy's mother had taken the news even harder than she had, and died after a bout of fever over the next winter.

Whatever boldness she'd gotten from her Pa, it was her mother who had contributed to Amy's sense of stubbornness and passion towards whatever things she felt passionate toward. Her ability to look hardship in the eye and toss it a wave of jaunty acceptance had come from that direction as well – that, and the green eyes which could either wilt an adversary or make them want to laugh in joy, depending on the way that Amy chose to level her gaze.

Amy's assumption had been that she would finish her grade schooling and then live on the farm with her Pa. It had started out that way with her helping him as best she could while soaking up his patient teaching of the many skills that schools just didn't have in their curriculums. Things such as the ability to quickly size up what one was up against and to formulate at least a preliminary response to it had benefited Amy to no end many times.

To her Pa's delight, Amy loved to ride and absorbed everything that he had to show her. Without the arguments of his deceased wife against it, he'd turned Amy into a girl who could ride with the best of them, track and hunt as though Diana the huntress herself was by her side and hit whatever she aimed at with a firearm. Amy was a natural at shooting and could rob a snake of his eyes at three hundred yards and better. At fifteen, Amy had been happy.

But it didn't last. Amy had suddenly found herself living with her great aunt Maeve in Santa Fe. Her father wanted her to rise above dirt farming and his own aunt could provide that for her better than he could. All of her begging and tears changed nothing. It had helped that Maeve doted over her great niece. She was from what Amy supposed was or had been the rich side of the family. Maeve often said that they'd all been as crooked as any other old money back in the day.

Amy had attended a well-connected finishing school and Maeve made certain that Amy knew how to carry herself in the highest circles. Amy herself never felt comfortable trudging around in what to her resembled not so much a fashionable garment as perhaps a mobile tent in which to hide and restrict a female. She was happier in pants and boots, and if there was a horse involved, well that was almost bliss.

She'd gotten through the school earning top marks for herself from almost the first day. Close to the end of that, the headmistress had taken her aside and offered her a teaching position, since there was an opening. Amy had accepted it and taught school in the mornings for the next couple of years. The hot afternoons were spent either with her great aunt, or tutoring the children of some of the wealthier families around town. Maeve's house was large and rambling, and Amy had permission to use the drawing room for her teaching. With her every need seen to by her great aunt, Amy's earnings had piled up handsomely. One of the spare stalls in the stable became home to Amy's mare.

This was about the only thing that Maeve had resisted. To her mind, a young woman like Amy ought to ride, but more in the fashion of the ladies of Santa Fe's finer families. Amy had taken a pass. It had been a long fight to sweet-talk the old girl, but Amy rode the way that her father had taught her and ladylike be damned. Amy smiled for a moment at the thought, but was then reminded of the other contributing factors to her dark mood.

With her father's passing, she was the last surviving member of her immediate family. For a young woman in her early twenties it was a sobering thought, and there were other things now to consider and choices waiting to be made. Only a week ago, the headmistress had called on Amy again, indicating that she intended to retire. It would leave an opening for a new headmistress. She'd made her inquiries and passed on her recommendation. She was asking if Amy would consider the position.

For her part Amy would have happily accepted, but she'd gotten word that her father had passed on and it cast something of a pall over everything for her. She'd begged for a month at the outside to consider since she had to settle her father's affairs, and it had been readily granted. Within a day she'd saddled up and ridden off alone to bury her father.

New Mexico Territory at the time was still a long way from becoming a state of the union, and it could be argued that it was perhaps more than a little unwise for a young lady to travel alone the four days and three nights of the journey. But for her to travel in the way that would be considered more conventional for women would take even longer. Amy could make far better time on horseback. She just had to hide her femininity a bit. It always made her want to laugh a little to travel this way. She'd been doing it this way before she'd turned eighteen.

The truth of it in Amy's eyes was that there wasn't a lot of femininity to hide. As far as she was concerned, she wasn't a late-bloomer so much as she was a non-bloomer. Other than a pair of small lumps on her chest and the arrival of her period at thirteen, puberty to her had been pretty much a whole lot of nothing. Her hips had come in as bony points under her waist and that was it.

There had been only one boy who had ever expressed more than the slightest interest in her. The few times that they'd been alone together had been far more frustrating that they were satisfying, at least from her point of view. To put it as bluntly as Amy did in her quiet admissions to herself, aside from the quiet tortured conversation, she'd found the handle of her hair brush to be a far better companion.

Carrying off a male disguise was a snap. She just tucked her bright red mane under her Stetson, pulled on a pair of pants, topped that with a small men's style shirt and nobody was the wiser. On the road, she was beyond extremely careful. She never engaged anyone in conversation if she could help it, and to all eyes, she passed as something of a slim youth. If she didn't like the look of anyone who she saw approaching her from far off, she usually slipped off the road at a convenient place and disappeared into the scenery until they'd passed by.

And so it was that Amy had ridden out. She'd taken enough clothing to make a decent appearance at the cemetery, and stood in the hot sun as her father was laid to rest. Up until the point where the coffin was lowered into the ground, Amy had it under control. She'd begun saying her goodbyes to the man from the time that she'd left Santa Fe. But the finality of the sight of it brought home to her that she'd lost the last of her closest kin, and the trip back to the now-deserted farm had been awful. What amounted to Amy's first evening all alone in the house where she'd been born had been far worse.

Everywhere she looked, she found herself reminded of the people whom she'd held dear. Now the last had gone and she was alone. The sun had nearly set by the time she had cried enough tears as she sat by the fire and came to the conclusion that if she didn't want to join the dearly departed, she ought to at least eat something. By the time her lonely meal was over she wondered how her father would have counseled her about getting over the raw, roughest part of her grief.

It had made her laugh out loud a little when it had come to her. She knew exactly what her Pa would have advised. He'd have told her to lock the door, get good and drunk and let it all out. She didn't act on it, though she did make a start. Amy poured herself four shot glasses of her father's whiskey, one for each of them. She spent the rest of the evening sipping quietly by the roaring hearth and weeping softly at the memories which came to her. The first glass had been for her brother, the next for her mother. She'd spent a lot of time over the third glass, and then sat staring at the last, wondering what to think about.

Nothing came to her. She wasn't even really drunk she had to admit, since she'd taken hours to consume the first three. At last, she'd thrown it back and forced it down as it burned. If nothing constructive came to mind, she reasoned, perhaps the alcohol would do her the kindness of letting her get to sleep. It might have worked, but somewhere in her mind, some connection had been made to something that had nothing to do with her present circumstances. She slept, but something else was awakening.

Her dreams that night had been like nothing she'd ever dreamt before in her entire life. Amy had awoken several times to stare at the dull embers of the banked fire. Each time, she told herself that the whiskey had fueled her visions, but as soon as she was asleep again they began anew. The dreams had been in the third person, as though Amy was being forced to watch events which were, or had occurred in the life of another person.

To Amy, he was a singular individual and completely foreign to her. She learned his names, and that he had been an outcast among his kind. Little of what she saw made any sense to her, but she found that she was completely captive in the playing out of the dream. She couldn't help but watch him whether she wanted to or not. He'd been born of a people, but was also the progeny of another race as well. The first contact of the two had not gone well and the mix as it applied to him was something that had always made his life difficult.

From his father before he'd died, he learned the ways of existence, of living as peaceful a life as could be managed at all times. But if that proved impossible, he'd been taught the strategies, tactics and the arts of war of a kind that was vastly different from what his mother's people considered accomplished and sufficient for a warrior. Something else that he'd inherited was the size and innate strength of his father's forebears, though the father was long dead before the son had come into his own as a man.

It was undesired, but he'd been given something else from his father, something which his father had chosen to distance himself from and so had not taught his young son about. It concerned some rather uncanny abilities that several distant relations possessed.

But his beautiful and kind mother had seen the possibilities. Of those few who even cared to know him, only his mother knew of his potential. Her own bloodline had come from the wiser and more shaman-like of her kind. She had other things to teach her only child, once she'd found that his nascent abilities were rising to the fore. Amy watched in fascination as the woman patiently schooled her son in arts which Amy considered to be patently impossible.

As a young woman, Amy found her glimpses of the man riveting. He was quietly confident, learning quickly and turning whatever he'd learned to his advantage. At the same time, he was humble and kind to everyone. With a sad twinge in her heart which she couldn't explain to herself, she'd seen him fall in love. Like anything else in his life, that love cost him dearly.

Amy strained and tried without success to avert her gaze from the horrific scenes of the brutal and bloody murders of the only ones who had loved him. Watching the effects of his discovery of it on his return from hunting had caused Amy to awaken gasping and trembling with hot tears on her cheeks. But the last time that she'd tried to get back to some hopefully peaceful sleep had been the most visceral of all.

She'd seen him hold back his grief long enough to ask things of his mother's spirit. What he learned confirmed his oldest fears. They'd gone a long way to get far from her people, but the hatred of their common enemies had an even longer reach. Her last wish to her son had shocked even him when she'd begged him for vengeance. As her spirit passed from his ability to hold it, he'd given in to his grief for long hours and then built the funeral pyre for the women who had loved him.

In the dawn of what Amy knew must have been the next day, he was a different man as he strapped his father's sword and axe across his broad shoulders and traveled even farther away. His mother's killers told themselves that he'd taken the coward's path, but even Amy knew that they were deluding themselves. He spent the winter in solitude and quietly prepared for his return.

Amy tried again to avert her gaze from her visions of the next year. It became a long summer of death for many of the warriors of the marauding tribe. One red dawn after another lit the torn and scorched bodies of his prey. What was remarkable to Amy was what she read from his heart. His swiftness was not driven by rage; it was only the granting of his mother's wish that any who had taken part be killed. The brutality of each murder was only the by-product of his efficiency except where he judged it desirable to cause their fear to lead them into mistakes in judgment.

The dogs of the tribe were of no use as a warning system. Each day found them asleep near to the carnage and as upset as anyone else at the loss of their masters. Any man who stayed out as a night sentry was counted among the dead the next day. The name which his mother had given him had always been spat at him as though it were an insult. From the captives taken from Stormfeather's band, the murderers learned his background. That summer his name was spoken in dread if it was mentioned at all. Mostly they just used the new one which they spoke in whispered fear.

A horrific realization came to Amy as she watched it all. He had no expectation to survive this terrible campaign that he'd mounted; he only needed to finish it. Throughout her visions, Amy felt a strange kind of kinship with him and though she knew that the events before her had occurred a long time ago, she found herself longing for the ability to meet him at least once.

That desire caused her heart to quail when she realized that she was watching the showdown which he'd contrived against the marauding tribe's chief. Amy felt the impact and pain of each arrow which penetrated his defenses. She wanted to cry out as she felt each cut of their blades when the range of the fight got down to knives, hatchets, and clubs.

To Amy it was incomprehensible how he chose not to use his other abilities, but instead allowed it to become one man against the nine male survivors, the nine who had done the most harm to his women, the nine whom he'd carefully spared all summer for this fight. If there was a technological advantage, it was his use of the old longsword, but what defeated them all was the speed of his reflexes and the power behind his strikes.

When it was over, she found that she didn't mind at all as she watched his retribution. He'd kept them all debilitated but alive, though his own wounds were the most grievous. Their women heard their screams all morning and found them still warm to the touch. Amy watched weeping as he made his way to the place where his family had perished. He calmly broke off any arrows which impeded his progress through the trees, coming at last to the place. He painfully lay down and lost consciousness after a time.

Amy seemed to be circling above his body as she watched a stranger come to his side and begin to care for him. It went on for days until he awoke to find a two-legged beast who could change her shape into a human form as she wished. The warrior had no fear of her since he was beyond caring about himself, but he listened to her talk to him in a strange tongue as she worked and told him that he needed to live. Amy had no idea what the stranger was, though she admitted to herself that she was beautiful and captivating no matter which of the two forms she had chosen for the moment.

It took several more days, but at last the man had acquiesced to her suggestions and as his strength began to return to him, she bit him as she held him down gently. What was clear to Amy was that she took nothing from him, but had only placed her saliva in the wound that she'd created with the utmost care. Amy was astounded at the changes that her bite had wrought in him. He became a male version of whatever being the stranger was. When she was certain that he could manage his own survival, the stranger left as he slept. After that, Amy saw him search for her for a time, and then begin to travel. It looked aimless to her, but she was sure now that he would be fine as he wandered the wilds.

Where he was headed was a mystery to Amy. She didn't know what he was now, but for reasons that she couldn't begin to explain to herself, she was happier that he'd made the decision to live on. She caught only brief glimpses of him after that as he traveled. As a man, he'd been unique to her for his strength and his heart. The other more magical abilities made him even more so. But what he'd become had built on these things to such a degree that it was beyond imagining to Amy. Everything about him had become enhanced.