Chapter 2

A/N: The parts in ITALICS is the characters speaking in the fictional Quedeyona language. And the word "galiha" is a word I made up. It's supposed to translate into an insult, like 'stupid', 'imbecile' or 'idiot'...take your pick. Remember to refer to the "Cast of Characters" discussion page if you can't remember who is who! ;-)


Disclaimer: I do not own the books of the Twilight series. I also do not own anything from the FICTIONAL Quedeyona nation. Nor do I claim to know exactly what life was like for any Native American tribes in the past. This story is purely from my imagination and is in NO WAY meant to reflect the real Native American tribes that once existed or still exist today.





Chapter 2

White Swan hoisted the basket higher on her hip as she made her way through the brush towards the village. As the rest of the group made their way right, she turned left since that was the direction of her home.

Mouse Daydreams waved goodbye to her before going with the rest of the group and the braves who had been assigned to protect them. The braves knew White Swan didn’t need their protection any longer since they were within the village grounds now. It was typical for them to always start walking back as a group until they reached the village grounds, then little by little people would soon break off from the group to head towards their own homes.

White Swan moved onto the well worn path that she often took when she went to join the others on wash days then headed in the direction of the center of the village. Since she was still on the outskirts of the village, she could see the tops of several homes peeking over the brush and trees that surrounded the path, so she stepped up her pace a bit.

She wanted to hurry home so she could put the freshly washed clothing away before making dinner. After a long day of doing different chores, she had not really stopped to have a mid-day meal so she was starving. She couldn’t wait to get home to begin preparing dinner since she knew she’d have a chance to pop a few morsels in her mouth while she prepared and cooked it.

As she thought about what she would make for dinner and if she had all the proper ingredients she needed, a shadow fell across her path. Blinking away her musings of making a meal, she frowned when she looked up and realized who it was.

Badger Snaps stood blocking her way to the village with his arms folded over his chest while wearing a smug look on his face. When she tried to ignore him by stepping around him, he simply moved with her, blocking her path once more.

Gritting her teeth, she spoke to him in Quedeyona. “Would you get out of my way.”

Badger Snaps arched a sardonic eyebrow. “What was that? Did I hear a demand from a slave?”

White Swan took a deep breath and prayed for patience while hoping her voice sounded polite. “Would you please get out of my way.”

He lifted his hand to move a finger from left to right as he tsked at her. “Uh uh uh. You still didn’t say it right, White Swan.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, her patience already wearing thin. “I said please.”


“Please what?” he mocked.

“Get out of my way!” she hissed between gritted teeth.

He moved closer to her until he was literally on top of her. Looking down into her eyes, she spoke in a low, thick voice. “You forgot to say…master.”

She resisted the urge to smack the smug look he still wore as she side-stepped him once more and began to storm back to the camp. Just when she thought he’d given up his game, she felt him grab her arm as he swung her around to face him once more.

Glaring up at him, she hissed. “Let go of me!”

He yanked her closer to him with one hand as he shoved the basket out of her hands with the other while muttering, “I think it’s time someone taught the little slave a lesson on manners.”

She tried to pull her arm out of his grasp as she hissed at him again. “Manners? I’ve got plenty of them. It’s you who doesn’t know his place, galiha!”

At her insult, his pupils widened for a moment even as his nostrils flared. As his face began to flush with anger, he grabbed her by both arms and shook her while growling at her. “That’s it! You have been the family’s favored pet for too long. It’s time you were knocked down to the ground where you belong!”


“What are you talking about?”

His cruel laugh sent a chill down her spine. “Oh, I’m talking about me being the one to put you on your back…like a good little slave should be.”

White Swan shrieked in outrage as she immediately understood his meaning. Before he had a chance to shove her to the ground, her instincts made her kick him in the shin while she began cursing him in Quedeyona as she struggled to get free of his hold.

The surprise of the kick made him let go of her, but he managed to remain standing so that he could reach out quickly to grab her before she got too far away. As he pulled her back to his body, White Swan simply whirled around and began clawing at him with her hands while she continued her vocal tirade against him.

Desperately trying to get away from him, she was so angry at his audacity that she lost her footing which made her stumble backwards until she ended up landing on her rump. He smirked at her in triumph as he quickly loomed over her. Falling to his knees, he spread his arms out around her, planting his hands on the ground near her sides to make sure she couldn’t get back up to get away from him again.

Still, White Swan wasn’t one to go down that easily. She began to shove him back before he could get the chance to put his entire weight on her. Even as she cursed and beat at him with her fists, she wasn’t aware that they were no longer alone, until he was suddenly and roughly jerked off of her. She lay there panting in anger and a little bit of fear as she watched him regain his balance before he whirled around to glare at the intruder.

Stunned, White Swan watched as Black Wolf spoke a warning to Badger Snaps with a steady gaze and stern voice. “If I were you I’d be careful how I treat a member of my family in front of others, Badger Snaps. You never know when one little mistake can come back to hound you to your grave.”

Badger Snaps scowled at him. “What I do with a slave of mine is none of your business, Black Wolf.”

The only outward sign of emotion Black Wolf showed was the lifting of an eyebrow. “Really? Then by all means, let’s you and I go to your father right now so that we can tell him exactly what your intentions with your slave were.” He took a few steps in the direction of Badger Snap’s house and swept his hand out towards it. “Shall we?”

Badger Snaps immediately went pale as he realized that Black Wolf was calling his bluff. He knew he didn’t stand a chance against someone like Black Wolf as he gave the warrior a once over, quickly assessing that he carried his usual weapons of a bow and a quiver of arrows both slung over his back. He also had two knives, one strapped to his left bicep and the other to his waist.

Badger Snaps knew without a doubt that there had to be even more knives hidden beneath his leggings, strapped securely to an ankle or a thigh. For like Mountain Lion Guides, Black Wolf was a much celebrated warrior of the tribe at the moment.

As the son of the tribe’s chief, Black Wolf had been trained from an early age, long before most of the other males of the tribe usually were. Even though Black Wolf had been living among the pale faces for nearly four years, it would be foolish for someone as unseasoned as Badger Snaps to get into a serious fight with a more seasoned warrior like Black Wolf.

Acknowledging that he couldn’t win this round, Badger Snaps scowled once more at White Swan, who was still on the ground, before he turned and sulked away from the area. White Swan frowned at his retreating back, continuing to watch him disappear among the foliage before she began to get to her feet.

Muttering to herself in English, she tried to regain her balance even as she began to brush the debris from her clothing. “Stupid redskin men! No wonder people call them savage heathens! Such pigs and no manners whatsoever!”

A hand appeared in front of her as if offering to help her up just as she heard a male’s voice speaking to her in nearly perfect English. “Actually, our skin is more of a dark brown, but I guess it’s just our bad luck that the first Indian the white man ever saw happened to be a sunburned one.”

As she gaped at Black Wolf’s words, he took her hand and helped her to her feet, gifting her with his sunny smile. He used her silent, surprised interlude to continue with, “Since the name stuck, we’ve just had to get used to it, huh?”

She nodded mutely, still amazed at how flawless his English seemed to be. Not only could he speak and understand English perfectly well, but he seemed to let the rest of what she had muttered slide. Clearly her remarks hadn’t upset him as he chuckled while beginning to remove pieces of debris from her hair.

“You look like a…what’s the word?” He paused as if thinking before he grinned again. “Ah, a wood nymph.”

She blinked in confusion. “What?”

He picked more debris from her hair and held it up for her to see. “You know, a female spirit of the woods…with all the leaves in your hair.”

She nodded, still looking confused. “How do you…how do you even know what a wood nymph is?”

He winked at her, the smile never leaving his face. “I went to an English school for a few years while I was away. Amazing what you can learn from a classroom and a book, huh?”

She smiled at him, as she finally got it. “So that’s where you learned English then!”

“For the most part, yes.” He stepped back to look her over. “You okay?”

She looked down at herself before brushing her skirt out once more. “Yeah, I’m fine now. Thanks for coming to my rescue.”

“No problem. He didn’t hurt you, did he?” he asked as he gave her a worried look.

She shook her head. “No, but I don’t doubt he probably would have if you hadn’t come along. Thanks again.”

He nodded as he went to pick up her basket of clothing before returning to her side. “Come on, I’ll walk you back to your home, okay?”

“Okay.” She held out her arms for the basket which Black Wolf reluctantly handed to her.

“Are you sure you can…”

She gave him a grateful, yet reassuring smile. “It’s okay Black Wolf, I can carry it. Besides, we both know it would look bad for a warrior like you to be seen carrying a slave’s burden.”

“True, but there are exceptions to the rules.”

“I know, but I’m not seriously hurt. Really, it’s okay.”

Finally accepting her word, he nodded as he motioned for her to lead the way back to her home.

For a few moments, the two of them walked down the path in companionable silence until she spoke up again.

“Is that why you were gone for so long?” she asked, “To learn English, I mean?”

He nodded as he folded his hands behind his back and turned briefly to smile at her. “Yes. My father decided that I should learn to speak English in the hopes that I’d take over being a negotiator like he is. He figured I could learn English better if I went to study with others for a few years rather than learn it in bits and pieces from a local trapper like he did.”

White Swan nodded. “So your father speaks English too?”

He shrugged. “A little. He understands it more than he can speak it, which is why he was a good negotiator. The pale faces couldn’t fool him as much as they could the rest of the tribes.”

“Wow, I never really heard him speak it except once. I didn’t think anyone here knew English as good as you seem to.”

Black Wolf held a tree branch out of her way so that she could pass by before he answered her. “No one really could speak it and father would only speak it to the pale faces he did business with. The only other three people who can speak it as well as I do now are Mountain Lion Guides, Hawk Soars and Laughing Antelope.”

She smiled up at him. “Right, they’re the ones who returned with you a few days ago.”

He returned her smile. “Yes. We were all sent to school together to learn some of the ways of the pale faces. However, I was the only one who already knew how to speak a little bit of the language before we left.”

“Because of your father?”

He shook his head. “No, because of the trappers who had originally taught my father how to speak the language. One of them became a really good friend to my father. He lived close by and often traded goods with our tribe. My father liked his honesty and the way he would go out of his way to bring useful items back from the travels he made to the towns of the pale faces. The closer they became, the more he taught my father how to negotiate with the other pale faces who came through here.”

“Oh, well I guess he really looked out for your father and the tribe then.”

Black Wolf nodded, looking up at the sky with a small smile dancing on his lips.

They fell into comfortable silence once more as they left the path and began walking into the village. Winding their way between the homes that were near the outskirts, White Swan glanced out of the corner of her eye at Black Wolf who still wore the small smile on his face. It made her wonder what he was thinking about, until she remembered something she had been curious about ever since the day he had returned.

As they neared her home, White Swan looked up at him once more, determined to satisfy her curiosity. “Black Wolf, that day you came back to the village. I heard you and Mountain Lion Guides talking to each other. I think you called him something like “sa-ham”. Was that a word you two picked up at school?”

He chuckled as he shook his head, then began to explain. “No. It’s actually a take on the name the pale faces gave to him. While we lived with them, they insisted on calling him Sam, instead of his birth name.

I became so used to calling him by the pale face name, that I kept using it even when we joined up with the other braves who’d come to escort us back home. Since they couldn’t pronounce the name Sam right, I started to say it like they did, ‘sa-ham’. It became something to laugh about between all of us for the rest of the way home.”

She arched a brow at him. “Oh, so you have an English name too?” At his nod, she chuckled. “And since you called him ‘sa-ham’, he returned the favor by saying ‘jah-cub’ instead of Jacob, which is the name the white men gave to you.”

He gave her a huge smile, clearly pleased that she had guessed it. “That’s right.”

She chuckled at the idea that the stoic Mountain Lion Guides could even be so light hearted as to goof around with a fellow warrior the way he did with Black Wolf. Still, it was nice to imagine him in a much friendlier way than she was used to, clearly Mountain Lion Guides had become much more relaxed and playful as he had gotten older.

Black Wolf came to a stop in front of the door to her home. Turning to face her, he gave her a mischievous grin. “Well, White Swan now that you know my English name, would you mind if I could learn what name it is that your parents gave to you?”

She giggled at the playful light in his eyes. “They named me Isabella Marie Swan.”

“Isabella,” he repeated, softly.

She nodded. “Yes, but they usually called me Bella or Bells.”

He tilted his head to the side as he asked, “Which one would you prefer I call you?”

“Whichever one you want,” she answered with a shy smile.

His eyes lit up as he gave her his sunny smile. “Bells it is then! And you can call me Jake.”

His playfulness was infectious, making it hard for her to resist smiling as much as he was. Still, she managed to give him a grateful look. “Thanks again for what you did…Jake.”

He inclined his head in answer, before asking in all seriousness, “Would you like for me to speak with Crow Flies about what his son did to you today?”

She shook her head. “No that’s okay.”

He frowned. “Bells, I don’t think you should let him get away with it. It’ll only give him a reason to try it again.”

She nodded. “Oh, I know that. Which is why I will tell Crow Flies what happened as soon as I see him. I don’t intend to let Badger Snaps get away with what he tried to do.”

Black Wolf smiled at the innate strength he saw in her. “Okay then, I’ll let you do it. But I want you to know if you need me to back up what you tell him, I’ll be more than happy to do so. After all, I did witness most of it.”

White Swan beamed at him. “Thanks Jake. If Crow Flies needs more proof, I’ll be sure to take you up on your offer.”

He grinned, as he began to back away from her. “Good luck, Bells. And good night.”

“Good night Jake,” she replied.

He gave her a little wave before he turned and walked away from her.

Once he had disappeared around the corner, she turned to her door and took a deep breath. Bracing herself for the confrontation she knew was coming, she balanced the basket of clothes on her hip and entered the home of Crow Flies and his family.





A/N: I know, I know...all you Paul lovers out there are mad at me now....but I had to figure out who to put into the role of Badger Snaps and he just fit the "image" the best! I don't hate Paul, just so you know...I did think he was a rude bully in the books, but I didn't hate him. And Alex Meraz...mmmm, yeah, 'nuf said! :D