Brave Warrior by Ann Hood Page B

thought about the day they had gone to touch the enemy. He still could clearly see the face of the Comanche, his bow drawn, the arrow aimed at Felix. In a battle, that arrow would be fired.
    “Curly, I don’t want to fight,” Felix said, trying tohide the trembling in his voice.
    Curly stood before them both, dressed simply. On his cheek he’d painted a white zigzag that looked like a lightning bolt, but nothing more.
    “We attack Arapaho before they attack us,” he said matter-of-factly.
    He waited until Felix reluctantly got up. Curly reached forward and painted white spots on Felix’s face.
    “Hail,” he said when he’d finished. “Like the hail of our arrows on the Arapaho.”
    In the moonlight streaming in from the top of the tepee, Curly’s and Felix’s faces glowed eerily.
    Maisie jumped up.
    “I can’t let him go alone,” she said.
    “Girls do not come on raids,” Curly told her.
    “Stay, Maisie,” Felix said. “It’s too dangerous.”
    “If you’re going, I’m going,” Maisie insisted.
    “In a dress?” Curly said, pointing at her.
    “Get me leggings. And a shirt,” Maisie said firmly.
    Curly hesitated, then left the tepee.
    “You don’t have any idea how scary it is,” Felix said.
    “I saw the attack on Yellow Feather’s village,” she reminded him. “I’ll never forget it.”
    Curly returned and handed her buckskin leggings and a shirt with a white sun painted on the front.
    “Power,” he said, showing her the circle there.
    “I’ll be right out,” Maisie said.
    The clothes smelled like the suede jacket her father used to wear. He’d bought it long ago at a flea market in Rome, and it had been one of his prized possessions. Maisie used to like to bury her head in his chest and smell the rich scent mixed with a long-ago owner’s tobacco. She wondered if he’d taken that jacket with him to Qatar, where it was always hot and no one ever needed to wear jackets. Like so many things from their old lives in New York, it had probably been discarded. Maisie was probably the only one of the four of them who even thought about it so fondly. Everyone else just kept moving on, as if their lives together on Bethune Street didn’t matter anymore.
    Sighing, she stepped out of her dress and into the leggings and shirt. The clothes felt heavy, the rich smell enveloping her. Maisie reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the elastic she alwayscarried but never used on her unruly hair. But now she gathered it into a thick ponytail and tucked the ends under the elastic, hoping she looked a little bit more like a boy.
    Then she stepped out of the tepee, where, as far as she could see, bare-chested warriors sat erect on horseback.
    Her eyes scanned the group until she found Felix and Curly. Beside them, a white-and-black-spotted horse waited for her. Curly watched her struggle onto it. But she did it, finally settling into the curve of its back. In the distance, the sun was beginning to rise, the blazing orange ball on the horizon.
    Curly raised his hand and let out a war cry, high-pitched and ferocious.
    The others responded with whooping and cries.
    With a thunder of hooves and a cloud of dust swirling around them, Maisie and Felix were off to battle.

    The Lakota warriors charged forward, directly into the Arapaho preparing to attack. The Arapaho wore large feathered warbonnets, like the Lakota. But the Arapaho warriors wore elaborate fringedshirts decorated with colorful beads, lines of porcupine quills, and rows of elk’s teeth. Their faces were painted with bright war paint. Except for Curly, who painted just the lightning bolt on his cheek, the Lakota also painted their faces and bodies with bright colors and sacred designs. They painted their horses, too, and attached feathers to their tails. The bravest warriors wore fur necklaces and sashes across their bare chests. Maisie noticed they all had their medicine bundles tied to their breeches or to the horses’ tails, and