Chilali. My little snowbird. How I miss her.

Such sweet laughter would leave her soft lips. Such sweet songs. Chilali, or 'Snowbird,' was a fitting name for her with her pale hair and that lilting voice that could trill like the birds in the springtime. I think I loved her from the first. She was so small. Nothing more than a tiny babe when my people found her squalling on the edges of our land near the body of a old Sylvan woman. They had both suffered much. The baby's body was covered in scratches and abrasions as was the woman... as if she had raced through the brambles with the unclothed child in her arms. We never knew what had happened to cause them to be there, but the pale-haired child became one of our own. One of the Ahanudena.

It was so easy to love her. I was forty seasons old when she came to us. Ten years. Old enough to help with her. And I did. I held her in my arms. I aided Mama-Alona in bathing her. And I loved her. So small. So lovely. Her eyes were green... but they were not green. There was a touch of blue in them that matched the sky. I noticed this one day when she climbed higher into a tree than I and looked down upon me, laughing. I remember how she stood upon the branch and stretched out her arms as if they were wings and she would join the birds in flight. And how my heart pounded when I feared that she would fall. Protective was I. Perhaps too much so.

I wonder now, why it never dawned upon us that she was different. There was only a faint point to her ears and I sometimes wondered at the shape of them, for they were not like my own. She had nearly died in her first month with us, however, so I suppose that I thought her frail and this could excuse that difference. No one else in the tribe seemed to take note of it, so I merely continued to admire her beauty and kind heart without a word of it.

It was agonizing to wait until she grew to be a woman. I could see the potential in her form, could envision the woman that she would be and my older self ached for it to happen. So long, it seemed, until she bled. So long, until her body flowered like the trees in spring and she was mine. Mama-Alona knew that we would be mated. She told me so the night before I first went to my Chilali. She told me of the gentleness her heart-daughter deserved and she wept as she embraced me. Tears of happiness. She wished for me to be with our little Snowbird.

Papa-Songan, however, was not so intuitive. We had a small border dispute with the Varati clan to the north and he was heavily distracted with maintaining our lands as well as peace. More than once the dark, hulking forms of Varati entered our circle to speak with my father. I did not like them, especially the one with glittering black eyes that looked upon my Chilali in a way that made my heart flame with rage. She sang for them that night and my anger toward that Varati festered as I watched him lust for her. He did not seem the gentle sort. He would hurt her and for her to suffer that would pain me as much as it would my Chilali. I made certain to stay near to her that night, to sleep at her side with my knife at hand should he decide to further partake of our 'hospitality.' My fears were unfounded. He did not come and I was relieved.

My relief lasted only until Papa-Songan called me for a private meet the next morning. Oh, how the anger welled within my heart as I feared what he would ask of my beloved and I! But... what Papa-Songan wished to discuss was not what I feared. I should have known that my father the Sachem was too wise and too strong to offer our women in joining to the Varati even to make peace. It would be wrong. The joining of two races is always wrong. Such magic the offspring of such matings wield, terrible and dangerous. Never could my heart have imagined what my Papa-Songan would say to me.

"It is truth," said his sadly gentle voice in the face of my disbelief. "It is truth. I have often wondered at it and the Varati took note of it, too." His words cut to the core of me. He wished me to give up my Chilali. My beloved. My very heart. He wished to take from me the one thing that kept me breathing. The pain of what he asked of me made my lungs ache and... I could not do it. In the face of tradition, in the face of my father, in the face of my Sachem, I refused. And so he cast me out.

Chilali went with me. I could not have stopped her had I wished to do so. So earnest she was, so sweet and dear. Her small hands packed up all that they could carry and we ran from the Ahanudena to a small clearing just outside of the tribal lands. I had not been able to tell my father what Chilali and I both knew, that she carried my child, and in a few moons, her belly was obviously swollen. I watched her with the birds. I watched her as she prepared the things I hunted for us. How could Papa-Songan's words be true? I could not believe them.

Perhaps I had been right in thinking her frail for all those years. Perhaps that was why she was smaller of frame and more delicate than the other women of the tribe. Perhaps it was that frailty that caused her to begin birthing our baby too soon. Perhaps. I returned from the hunt in the chill air of new winter to find her crying out in pain upon the furs of our bed. I saw her struggle. I clutched at her hand and I begged the Grandmother to aid her and then, near the end, to spare her. But I was punished for my disobedience to tradition and to family. My Chilali died as she tried to squeeze our child from her loins. Our winged child. My son did not survive his birth even when I cut him from the body of my beloved. The cord that tied him to her had wrapped about his neck in his struggles.

Papa-Songan and the Varati had been right. My Chilali was not Sylvan... she was Empyrean. The scars where her wings had been taken had been lost amongst the other scars created by the brambles. I did not care. It did not change that my heart had loved her and only her for so long. I thought that I would die myself as I went through the required ritual to send my heart-mate and my son to the afterlife. I sang to them with my rough, tear-strained voice. I told our child stories of his mother and her beauty and I cried as I held them both in my arms. I cried as I wrapped them in the furs from our bed and as I covered them over with the earth to which they would return. Each thing that my Chilali had gathered to bring from the Ahanudena was placed with her. Each thing she had thought she could not do without was placed near at hand should she need it when she reached her new home. Everything but myself, though I was sorely tempted.

When the last handful of earth covered them, I looked upon their grave and I arranged the rocks that I had gathered into the crude shape of a bird. No artist am I, but I tried. A bird for my Snowbird. A bird for our winged son who was not allowed to breathe in the air of the forest. When I had finished, I took up my bow and my pouch and I began to walk. Away from the pain. Away from the Ahanudena. Away from the family I was forbidden to have...

And I am walking still.

FIN  

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