Captive Spirit by Liz Fichera

gladly dove in and bathed. My deerskin still reeked of smoke and my hair was knotted and smelled like the horses.
    Without a word to Jorge, I turned for the other end of the stream carrying the empty deerskin water pouches. Jorge followed, saying nothing. If he could stop staring at me long enough, I’d try to sneak a filled water pouch down the front of my dress. It had grown loose around my waist. Surely one small pouch could go unnoticed.
    The clear stream rushed over glistening red and brown rocks where the late afternoon sunlight was lucky to pierce through the tops of the trees that hid it from the sky. The water gushed so loudly that it drowned out the wind.
    Alongside me, Jorge knelt over the stream and began to fill the pouches that I lined next to the edge. I kept the tiniest one next to my foot and saved it for last. After I filled it, I tucked it close to my leg and then I bent over the stream and begin to cup water into my hands. I wanted to shriek from the cold. It stiffened my fingers but I kept cupping it anyway, splashing it over my face and neck and drinking till my lips turned numb. My skin prickled from the iciness of it, even the parts where the water didn’t touch.
    Jorge, still silent, did the same, and resorted to only sideways glances as he splashed water into his mouth. I wondered why I made him so nervous. Of the three men, I felt most comfortable with him, perhaps because he reminded me of Onawa. I wondered if I could trust him. Could he be a friend, too?
    “Are you from Spain, too?” I asked him carefully.
    His body stiffened. “Yes,” he said, his eyes darting away from mine. He threaded loose strands of his straight black hair behind his ears, more so as something to do with his hands.
    I paused, drank another handful of water, and then said. “What’s it like? Spain?”
    Jorge inhaled deeply and then sighed. He looked across the stream at the cottonwood trees that lined the edges. “It’s not like here.”
    “Then what’s it like?”
    Jorge shrugged his shoulder. He didn’t answer.
    I swallowed. Quietly, I said, “Do you miss your village?”
    He turned to me and nodded. In the clearness of his eyes, I could see that he told the truth.
    Tentatively, I said, “I miss my village, too.”
    But my words made Jorge nervous, uncomfortable. He rose from the water’s edge and dusted off the front of his pants. Suddenly he behaved as if he’d rather be anywhere than beside me. He stuffed his hands in his front pockets and started scanning the other side of the stream, the cliff, the sky—anything but me.
    I sighed inwardly. We were strangers again and I wondered if maybe that’s all people from different villages can ever be.
    I bent over the water and stared at my reflection. I brought my hand to my cheek. My face had thinned. My hair was frizzy around my face and I ran wet fingers through it, detangling some of the knots. I sat back on my knees, surrounded by the water pouches, and then scanned the river for fish. Fish as long as my forearm and the colors of the rainbow darted underneath the water, sometimes crashing into each other as they navigated the rocks. I smiled again. Catching a fish in this river would be easy. But I would need to make myself a spear.
    Jorge walked behind a nearby tree, close enough to keep an eye on me but far enough away for some privacy. He loosened his pants and I instinctively looked the other way. Anxiously, my eyes scanned the ground for a suitable stick, one that would be as long as my arm and no thicker than my thumb. It would serve as a spear.
    And a weapon.
    I would sharpen the tip with a flat river rock. Diego wouldn’t mind, as long as it caught fish.
    Across the stream, I stared at a wall of trees. The water’s edge was thick with them, all different sizes and shades of green. Some grew like deformed arms out of the side of the cliff. Finding a suitable stick would be as easy as spearing a juicy fish. As my eyes scanned for the perfect