An Obese Noblewoman Was Handed Over to an Apache as Punishment by Her Father, But He Loved Her Like

Chapter 9

**Twenty Years Later**

Spring came to the valley in a riot of wildflowers and new growth — purple lupine dotted the canyon floor, red paintbrush climbed the cliffsides, and the stream ran clear and cold with melted snow from the mountains. Two decades had passed since Arabella’s arrival among the Apache, and the woman who moved through the village now bore no resemblance to the frightened creature who had stumbled in on blistered feet.

Her body was full-figured and strong. Her shoulders were broad from carrying water, her arms corded with muscle from grinding corn and gathering wood, her hands calloused and sure. She walked with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly where she belonged.

The children called her *Nana* — grandmother — though she was not their grandmother by blood. They ran to her with their scraped knees and fevers, their broken bones and mysterious rashes, knowing her gentle touch would bring relief. Her dwelling had become a clinic of sorts, lined with clay pots of salves and bundles of dried herbs, the air thick with the smell of sage and lavender.

She had become a healer. The tribe’s elder healer.

Combining the knowledge Maka had taught her — which plants healed, which could be eaten, which were poison — with remedies she remembered from her mother’s journals. Journals her father had ordered burned after Catherine’s death, but whose contents Arabella had memorized as a child, reading them in secret by candlelight while Esther stood guard at the door.

*Lavender for sleep. Chamomile for the stomach. Willow bark for pain. Sage for cleansing.*

Her mother’s knowledge, passed down through Esther, passed into Arabella’s hands, and now passed to a new generation. She taught the young women of the tribe everything she knew, and she watched them grow into healers themselves.

Maka’s hair had silvered with time, but his strength remained, as did his quiet dignity. Together, they had helped their people navigate the increasingly complex relationship with white settlers and government officials. He had become a diplomat of sorts — the man who could speak to both worlds, who understood that the old ways and the new ways would have to find a way to coexist.

They had never had children of their own. There had been a pregnancy once, early in their marriage. Arabella had carried the child for four months before losing it in a flood of blood and pain that had nearly taken her as well. Maka had held her through the night, saying nothing, his hand pressed against her heart as if willing it to keep beating.

After that, they had not tried again. But the village’s children filled that void — the orphans she took in, the sick she nursed back to health, the babies she delivered into the world with her own hands. The love she and Maka shared was no less deep for being given to many rather than concentrated in one.

—

On the twentieth anniversary of her arrival, Nalani — she was known only by her Apache name now; even Margaret Fulton’s articles referred to her as Nalani — sat with Maka on the ledge overlooking the valley.

The village below had grown. The fires still burned at night, but they burned alongside lanterns now. Children still learned the old songs, but some of them also knew English words and numbers. The old ways endured, even as the world pressed in from all sides.

“Are you thinking about your father?” Maka asked, watching her face.

“I was thinking about Esther, actually.” Nalani smiled softly. “I wonder if she ever knew. If she ever found out what happened to me. If she knew her letter worked.”

“She knew.” Maka’s voice was certain. “I wrote back to her. One letter, to the trading post. I told her you were safe. That you were becoming who you were meant to be.”

Nalani turned to him, surprise flickering across her features. “You wrote to her?”

“I owed her that much. She had given me a gift I did not know I needed.” He paused. “I told her you were learning to carry water. That you had broken a clay pot and cut your finger. That you were stubborn and proud and exactly as she had described.”

“You wrote about the broken pot?”

“The small things are the most important.” He touched her hand. “She asked about you. I thought she deserved to know.”

Nalani felt tears prick her eyes. Somewhere, across a divide she could no longer cross, Esther had known. Had known she was safe. Had known her letter had found its mark.

“Do you ever regret it?” Maka asked, his English now fluent after twenty years of evening conversations. “Staying with us? With me?”

Nalani smiled. She took his weathered hand in hers — the same hand that had offered her an extra blanket on a cold night, that had pressed a healing leaf to her cut finger, that had held her through a miscarriage and a flood of blood and the death of a dream she hadn’t known she carried.

“Not for a single moment.”

She looked down at the valley — at the village that had become her home, at the people who had become her family, at the life she had built from the ashes of her old one.

“My father thought he was condemning me to a life of suffering,” she said. “Instead, he gave me the greatest gift. A chance to discover who I truly am.”

Maka nodded, his eyes reflecting the sunset.

“When your father brought you that day, the other chiefs thought I was foolish to accept you. They saw only a burden. A large, soft woman who knew nothing of our ways.”

“And what did you see?” she asked, though she already knew the answer by heart.

“I saw a woman whose body spoke of abundance in a land of scarcity. Whose eyes held more courage than she knew. Whose spirit was trapped, waiting to soar.”

He touched her cheek.

“I saw you, Nalani. Not what others claimed you were. *You.*”