Jim Silver died in her arms, quietly, under a late autumn sunrise. His eyes remained open, gazing into the morning sun as it crested the Appalachian Mountains. She could hear the silence of the people in the foreground, with the flowing music made by the Good-river and the Canoeway, providing a serene background, where they joined beneath their town, the town they had loved together.

Jim had been twice her age, and wise, but not strong. He came to her with a weak body. This journey into their Native American past, if far east of their Navaho homeland, had been good for them, for Father—who found he was not autistic in the past—and for their adopted people. Father had helped sanctify the spirit mound with his sand paintings. Jim had shared sacred stories with the Shawnee elders.

When Jim Silver felt his heart failing he asked only that he be taken atop the mound. He did not have to ask her to hold him and lend her strength through the night so that he might see the sunrise one last time. He was barely breathing when the sun rose. She had lifted his gaunt frame with her tiny hands and braced his left side under her thighs as she knelt, to elevate the heart, and so that he might see the sun come, rising up from the far side of the world.

He coughed hollowly and she felt his heart begin to race. She then looked to Amble and Egg Shell who came to hold his hands in such a way as not to obstruct his view of the sunrise, which had been an obsession of his of late. When the crown of the sun topped the last rise of the wooded hills above AllPeople Town, he croaked with a voice uncharacteristically deep, “Such a shame, that our killers come with the sunrise—may they fall with its setting…”

She had felt the rattle in her thighs. It had not overwhelmed her. She had been tortured with unresolved grief over her first husband’s passing for over a year—dead in an undreamed ancient land, this land. Jim Silver had honored her first husband’s memory and now joined him, leaving her without a mate again.

He was so good to me—I will miss you Jim Silver!

I am barely thirty and twice widowed.

The entire globe of the sun had cleared the mountains now, and still he lay in her arms, a kind of reflective spirit still present in his eyes. It hit her then that she had so needed him, and he would never be with her again. Her first husband was a warrior who had had the decency to neglect her before he went off to die. But Jim, Jim had been her strength, had drifted off to sleep with her every night, and had greeted her with kindness every morning. And now he was gone!

She began to sob and rock as she clutched at his buckskins.

Her father, Amble Mesa, then came to hold Jim’s head so it would not hit the ground as the women, Egg Shell and Muskrat, pulled her gently away. Egg Shell’s voice was soothing and young for a woman of her vast years, “You made him happy, in life, and even past his release from torment. Let him fly Hyacinth—come make an offering on the water, it flows to sunset just as his spirit soars.”

She was now weeping in the way she had promised herself she would not; weeping for Jim and Joseph, as the two sure-footed women—one youthful, one elderly—helped her down from the sacred little mountain of earth at the center of their small town. She could hear Father—a man who had uttered barely a sentence in his entire life in the 20th and 21st Centuries of the Whiteman’s world—belt out a song from lungs that sounded too strong to be housed within that small chest. His voice made the sound of the drum, of the gourd, of the chime, and of the wind whistling through bottomland reeds. His voice accompanied the spirit of Jim Silver beyond this life, not with the voice of Man, but with the elemental songs of the world he was leaving.

Thank you for your blessings, Father.

She made the offerings on a dry stone above the flowing waters and it comforted her. She had no wish to leave this spot. Egg Shell left her with Muskrat. Soon men came and erected a shelter of poles and hides above the mourning women, open to the west, so that they could look into the sunset for as long as it took for Hyacinth to etch every aspect of their life together into her mind, for she did not want to forget such kindness and strength housed in one weak body. The man had been her miracle, come walking into the wreckage of her life at the point most needed.

Night fell.

Another day came.

Night fell again.

Just after sunrise of the next day she heard a great commotion back up by the mound. She looked to Muskrat, who nodded, and spoke in English, “It is time to walk on Beautiful Flower.”

She reached out and took her hand and they rose from the shelter. As they walked toward the walls of the town and the sacred mound within, the gates were flung open. Three-Rivers had returned, with a white woman of middle years. He had grown tall and handsome since last she saw him, but that boyish light remained in his improbably gray-blue eyes.

He stopped before her and nodded to his guest. “Beautiful Flower, I shall miss Jim Silver. This is Whiteman Mother Jerry of the Lutherville Fields. She will be assisting Egg Shell and Muskrat now.”

He is beautiful.

Hyacinth looked up into his dreamy eyes. “But I thought I was to stay with Father?”

You know you want to go with him, to hold his hand until the next world comes.

Amble came up next to the youth and put an arm around the white woman. “I will be here when you return, Beautiful Flower—this crazy young prophet will not let me die.”

Father does seem to have lost twenty years or so since coming back to this time. Is Three-Rivers more than a prophet?

Three-Rivers then let go of the white woman’s hand and extended it to Hyacinth. “I have a painter to woo, Flower of the Dine, in the Whiteman’s winter count of Fourteen-seventy-three. His name is Leonardo. Let you be the painting he cannot resist!”

A devilish twist of the handsome mouth made her smile and she took his hand, a hand that was as smooth as a baby’s behind, and had never done a thing other than this. It was as if Three-Rivers was born this very day, in the form of a tall handsome youth.

When she took his hand his thoughts came with crystal clarity, chiming into her mind, A normal painter would be thrilled by any number of the perfect white beauties of Sunset. But this painter sees the soul, for he holds The Beginner’s hand while he paints—you, Beautiful Flower, he shall not resist.

I am flattered, Three-Rivers, though I think it is you he shall most wish to paint.