The Dove (Prophecy Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

before your work is done.”
    Tyhen’s eyes widened, and then she glanced at Yuma to see his reaction. He was smiling. She didn’t know whether to be insulted that he was laughing at her or relieved he wasn’t afraid.
    “I will not be afraid of frozen,” she muttered.
    Yuma laughed.
    She glared.
    Singing Bird rolled her eyes.
    “I miss ice cream,” Evan muttered.
    “What is ice cream?” Cayetano asked.
    Singing Bird sighed. “It’s something cold and sweet and good to eat. I miss it, too,” she said. “But I do not miss Firewalker and that is enough talk about what is gone.”
    When she got up from the table and walked out of the room, Cayetano looked at Yuma and frowned.
    “Why is she sad?”
    Yuma shrugged. “Probably for the same reason all of us are from time to time. We are grateful to be alive and feel honored that what we did by coming here will make a difference to all the generations to come, but we had a different way of life and now it’s gone. And so are the people we loved. I go back there in my dreams to visit my father, then I wake and I am here.”
    He looked down for a moment and then back up. When he did, Tyhen thought she saw tears in his eyes. Then he looked at her and smiled.
    “But here is good. Different, but very good.”
    Cayetano didn’t like Yuma’s answer. He didn’t like to think about the past because in Singing Bird’s past, she was Layla Birdsong, and he was not a part of that world.
    He got up from the table and walked out. He needed to make sure she wasn’t crying. It hurt his heart when he saw her cry.
    Tyhen glanced at the twins. “Are you sad, too?”
    Adam shook his head.
    “No,” Evan added. “We were not happy in the past. Now we are.”
    She nodded, but wouldn’t look at Yuma. She didn’t want to see tears in his eyes. She didn’t want this place to be lacking because that meant she wasn’t enough.
    She took a piece of bread as she got up from the table and then walked out of the room. She knew Yuma was behind her. Still, she said nothing as she paused just inside the doorway to look out.
    The rain had stopped, but the birds were still sheltering up in the trees beneath the leaves. She stepped outside onto the stone walkway and began tearing off pieces of the bread and tossing them out onto the ground.
    Within moments, birds began coming down from the trees, pecking hungrily at the unexpected treats.
    Yuma watched her, wondering what she was thinking. He knew she was upset and he knew he shouldn’t have laughed at her. Like Cayetano, it hurt his heart when she was sad.
    “I’m sorry I laughed at you,” he said.
    She kept tossing bits of bread.
    He walked up behind her and then stopped just short of touching her.
    “I’m truly sorry,” he said softly.
    Tyhen could feel the warmth of his breath against the back of her ear and there was a knot in her belly. She needed to say something but words wouldn’t come. All she managed to do was just shrug.
    Cayetano put his hands on her shoulders, then let them slide down the length of her arms all the way to her elbows.
    “Do you forgive me?” he whispered.
    She spun around to face him. “You laughed at me.”
    He could hear the hurt in her voice. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close, but settled for a touch of her cheek instead.
    “One day I will take you to a land where you will see such things as ice and animals very different from what you know here. You will see people like us but different. Some will be more like the New Ones who came from the time of Firewalker. And the message you bring to them, and to all the others in that land, is what’s going to change everything we were. By the time that happens, you will be a woman of great power and magic. The twins have seen it. It will be so. And then you can laugh at me in all my ignorance.”
    Her eyes widened. Even as he was speaking of it, she was seeing it—vast flat lands and mountains so far away they looked blue. As the