Daughter of Xanadu - Dori Jones Yang [62]
I found my hands shaking. In my whole life, I had never killed anything larger than an eagle. Now I might have killed a great beast of the forest, a lion. I wondered if it was still alive, thrashing in pain, possibly even approaching our fire to attack again. Or was it feasting on the meat of Principessa?
I had not expected such a strong, nearly paralyzing surge of fear. Was that how I would react in battle? Suren had not hesitated to shoot. I worried that Marco might bleed to death. Would someone have to amputate his arm?
Finally, Marco’s servant came up to me with a whispered report. “The wound is not too deep. I have treated it. The foreigner is lucky. He is resting.” I was relieved but still could not take my eyes off the menacing darkness that was the forest.
After a silence, when Abaji had gone away, the other soldiers began talking.
“Suren said she killed a lion,” one said.
“With one shot,” said another, who could not possibly know.
The soldiers gazed at me with awe. I looked away. I welcomed their admiration, but it was not the reason I had shot the beast. My motive had been to save Marco.
After a time, we took turns guarding as others slept. Captain Todogen told me to rest. I went straight to Marco, who was lying on a sleeping fur on the far side of the popping fire. I squatted next to him and his eyes fluttered open. “Are you all right?”
He tried to smile. “I will live.”
“Your horse is gone,” I said, unable to think of better words to say.
“I owe you my life.”
I wanted to tell him how frightened I had been, not of the lion, but of losing him. Why had I thought it so important to keep my distance? But words failed me. “You should not have run off like that,” I said instead. “And I should not have followed you.”
He smiled. “But you did. God bless you.”
My words of response got stuck in my throat, so I put my hand on his good shoulder. I cherished the feel of his warm body, and I didn’t want to take my hand away, not ever.
He gave me a lopsided smile. That moment I knew: He had forgiven me. He had not stopped thinking of me. The distance between us was false. He had known all along about that invisible rope. We were closer than ever.
Suren called for me to take my rest, but I stayed a long time at Marco’s side, watching his eyes close, first in pain, then in sleep.
O-mi-to-fu, I called out in my mind, using the Buddhist term I had heard from my devout father but never used myself. O-mi-to-fu. Let him live. Heal his wound. Don’t ever take him from me. I had never prayed before.
I learned something about courage that night, in the wild woods of Szechwan. Courage is not an attribute some people have and others do not. It comes when you fear losing something valuable. I wondered about the other Mongol soldiers around me, and about other soldiers in history. How many of them had been brave in battle simply to defend themselves or comrades they loved? No storyteller would relate this side of valor.
The next day, some soldiers went into the woods, well armed, and found the body of a full-grown female lion, its powerful jaws slack yet stiff in death. Next to the creature, Principessa lay dead, her mouth and eyes wide in terror, but no flesh consumed. A Mongol soldier shut the mare’s eyes. My arrow had lodged deep in the eye of the lioness.
After that, my fellow soldiers treated me with deference. But I still wondered how I would react in battle. If an enemy soldier threatened me in the darkness, as the lion had, I could kill him. But what about face to face, in daylight? I could not yet be sure.
Marco’s arm was not as sorely wounded as I had feared. He rode one of the packhorses, using his right arm to hold the reins. He rested his left in a makeshift sling, and within a few days, he could use it almost normally. His servant, who had applied a mysterious white balm to the wound, predicted that his remedy would work.
For the first time, I rode beside Marco. By now I did not care