Seminole Song by Vella Munn

Author:Vella Munn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePublishing Works!
Published: 2015-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Spinning around, Calida found herself face-to-face with Gaitor. "Git out!" he ordered. "Git out whiles you can!"

"My mother—"

"There's no helpin' anyone 'cept yurself, girl. Everyone's leavin'."

Everyone who could. Driven by the desperate need to find her mother, Calida tried to step around Gaitor, but he stopped her. She felt the weight of his hand around her wrist and willed herself not to fight him. The air smelled of sulfur and sweat, of too many people in too little space for too long. It had smelled like this on that awful day when she and her mother stood on an auction block while strange white men pressed around them. She'd been a child then but not so young that she didn't understand what it meant to be helpless.

She'd never be like that again!

"I have to find her!" she insisted. "I know she's here. He brought her here."

"It don' matter." Gaitor pulled her with him until they stood near the wall, out of the way of the confusion. Flickering flames painted his face in bloody colors until she barely recognized him. "Nuthin does 'cept stayin' alive."

"What are you doing here?"

"He is with me."

Yet another musket shot cut through the screams and curses, but the sound wasn't loud enough to prevent her from recognizing who had just spoken. As with Gaitor, firelight bucked and danced over Panther's features. A child might shrink in fear from the ever-changing images. She wanted to draw away from Panther, not because she was afraid of him, but because—because why?

"Is this your doing?" she demanded as she indicated the confusion swirling around them. The soldiers were gathering into a number of tightly bunched groups. It didn't look to her as if they had any interest in stopping the mass exodus, just staying alive. "Is this why you left us? So you could—Panther, have you seen my mother?"

"That is what brought you here?"

"Yes!" She had to yell to be heard. "Where is she? Please, where is she?"

"Calida, there is no time. If you are seen—"

She couldn't remember when Gaitor had released her and Panther had taken hold of her. Energy pulsed through him. He felt alive with a sense of urgency; his emotion imprinted itself on her. Feeling all but consumed by it, she quickly told him what she'd learned from the Creek Indian. "Winter Rain led me here. She didn't want to, I know she didn't. But she did."

"Winter Rain?" Gaitor insisted. "She should not—where is she?"

She pointed toward the gaping hole that was the fort's entrance. "I don't think she came inside. I told her to stay where it was safe." Had she?

Something passed between Gaitor and Panther, but with fear driving her, she couldn't concentrate on making sense of it. Gaitor whispered something in Seminole; Panther responded, and then Gaitor was gone.

"What—"

"Calida, listen to me," Panther interrupted. "It was not my wish to come here. I wanted nothing to do with the white men, but I could not defy Micanopy. I did as a tastanagee must.

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