And Other Stories by Emma Bull Page A

up
and pointed at me and said, “She wanted—” and “You don’t think I
was going to—” and “I was drunk, I didn’t know—”
    Grandmother came straight to me and
hugged me. She wrapped my blanket around me real tight. She said,
“We’re going.”
    Father said, “It’s not what you’re
thinking! You can’t believe—”
    Grandmother led me to the dream
catcher and took it down from the window.
    “She’s my daughter!”
Father yelled. “You’re not taking her—”
    Grandmother held up the dream
catcher and said, “Look.”
    He looked at it, and then at her,
and then at me. I looked at the dream catcher. Grandmother handed
it to me. I hugged it. Father screamed and ran out.
    Mother was in the hallway. She did
not say anything as we went out. Father was in the living room,
curled up in a ball and gasping. Grandmother did not slow
down.
    I am living on the reservation now.
I have two best friends, Adam Mishenene and Martha Kwandibens. I
have a dog, Socks. He walks funny because he was hit by a car, but
he will fetch anything. I have to talk to a counselor every week
who thinks if I say everything that happened, it will be better.
Mother and Father have to see a counselor too. Maybe we will be a
family again this summer. I said I would give it a try, anyway, and
everyone cried.
    I wrote to my old teacher, asking
how everyone was. She said you had been taken away, John Marshall.
When I saw that, I was happy. Then she said your parents had been
doing something bad to you for a long time. That is why I am
sending you what’s with this letter. You hang it in the window, and
only the good dreams come through.
    Your friend,
    Crosses Water Safely (Janine
Skunk)

 
Stories by Emma Bull

 
    The
Princess and the Lord of Night
    Emma Bull
    This story is for Carolyn Brust,
with best wishes.
    Once upon a time there was a
princess who had everything she wanted. She had a horse as white as
the high clouds of a summer sky who could run from one end of the
kingdom to the other in a day. She had a walnut-brown dog who
understood anything she said. She had an ash-gray cat as swift as a
blink and as clever as six professors. She had a crow as black as
the inside of an inkwell who could recite every poem ever written.
She had a velvet cloak as blue as twilight that could turn its
wearer invisible.
    Whenever the princess said she
wanted anything—or even when she looked as if she might want
something—the king and the queen, her father and mother, hurried to
give it to her. For the Lord of Night had put a curse on the
princess when she was born, that if ever she wanted something she
couldn’t have, the kingdom would fall into ruin and the king and
queen would die.
    Some people, if they got everything
they wanted, would become spoiled and silly before they could turn
around once. But the princess had seen her mother and father
hurrying to get her whatever she wanted, afraid that the Lord of
Night might appear in a burst of green smoke and destroy the
kingdom if they failed.
    The princess felt terrible about
it, so she tried to delight in all she had instead of longing for
more. Still, there were her horse, and her dog, and her cat, and
her crow, and her cloak, which she had wanted and gotten, and she
was glad to have them.
    On the morning of her thirteenth
birthday, the princess woke very early and sat straight up in bed.
She had dreamed of something she wanted, and now that she was
awake, she found she wanted it more than ever. But she resolved not
to tell the king and queen about it. She would go out and get it
for herself.
    So she mounted her white horse, who
could run from one end of the kingdom to the other in a day. She
called her brown dog, who understood everything she said. She put
her gray cat, swift as a blink and clever as six professors, on the
saddle before her. She set the crow that could recite all the
world’s poems on her shoulder, and tucked the velvet cloak that
could make her invisible into the saddle