Heart of the Storm. Lindsay McKenna

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СКАЧАТЬ the open window, filling Dana’s bedroom with brilliance. She rolled onto her back, her arm still wrapped around the pipe bag. Gently, Dana placed it on the pillow again. The dream was alive and vibrant within her. Sitting up and sliding her feet from beneath the covers, she wriggled her toes on the thick, dark-green carpet.

      Outside, a robin was singing melodiously. The sky was light-blue and cloudless, the breeze fragrant with the scent of flower blossoms. The world looked different to Dana as she stared wonderingly out the window. It was 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning…and the vivid dream became a wake-up call.

      Running her palm across her purple duvet cover, Dana closed her eyes and allowed the full beauty of the dream and of her grandma’s love to shimmer through her. Her heart opened like a flower, and she drew in a tremulous breath. Home. She was going home. Agnes had asked her to come visit.

      As she opened her eyes, Dana felt relief from the guilt she’d carried since the murders. Her grandmother had asked her to come and stay with her. Instead, Dana had run like a coward and hidden in the white man’s world.

      The familiar odor of burning sage came to her. Oh! How she loved the smell of ceremonial smudge, being wafted to cleanse her of any negative thoughts and feelings. Dana could sense her adopted grandmother in astral form nearby. Even though she couldn’t see her with her eyes, Dana felt her loving and powerful presence. She had been taught astral travel at an early age. It was an easy way to visit a friend or loved one anywhere, in the blink of an eye. The sage was her grandmother’s calling card. A welcome one.

      Lifting her head, Dana looked around her small bedroom. “I’m coming, Grandma. I’m coming home to you….” she said aloud.

      Dana could swear she heard her grandmother’s cackling chuckle, felt her hand rest gently on her shoulder. The sensation was comforting. Strengthening. For too long, Dana had been off the reservation, disconnected from Mother Earth and all her relations. She’d run to the empty world of the white man instead.

      Not happy about her choices, but knowing she couldn’t change the past, Dana slowly got to her feet. The warmth of the sun embraced her as she walked to the curtained window. Seeing the robin singing in the Jonathan apple tree made Dana smile.

      Her grandmother was near. She could feel her standing at her side, her arm wrapped lovingly across her shoulders. A sharp longing to be back on Native American land plunged through Dana.

      There was such a difference in energy, living on a reservation versus in the mechanized world of whites. Indians still had an invisible connection, like an umbilical cord, between themselves and the land. Mother Earth pumped energy and love into the “children” who were still attached to her. As a result, Native Americans cared for and honored the earth. They gave daily prayers of gratitude for being alive, for being nourished and fed. They were reverent toward their true mother, for without her, no one would be alive.

      “Yes…” Dana whispered, her throat suddenly closing with tears. “I’ll leave today, Grandma. I’ll call the school and get someone to fulfill my contract.” As a teacher, she would miss her children. Dana felt badly about that. Right now, she needed healing and help. “I’m coming home, back to where I belong.” Even though she was born and raised in South Dakota, the southwest was her favorite place to live. Many times in the past, she’d spent wonderful moments with Agnes in Arizona and had come to call it her real home over time.

      As she turned from the window, she noticed something on the carpet. Frowning, Dana padded to the end of the bed and picked it up. It was a blue-gray feather—a feather from a great blue heron.

      How she had missed the daily magic and synchronicity in her life. Gazing at the feather as she straightened, Dana understood that the dream had been more than just a pleasant experience. The great blue heron was her grandmother’s spirit guide. And Agnes had sent her here to call Dana home.

      Caressing the feather with her fingers, Dana understood the gravity of the invitation. Finally, after a two-year-long dark night of the soul, she was going home….

      CHAPTER FIVE

      “I’VE BEEN EXPECTING YOU, Chase Iron Hand. Enter.” Agnes waved into her hogan. Although not related to him, he had visited and lived with her as a young boy. Chase saw Agnes as his adopted grandmother and she loved being that for him. He had just come off the bluff after a four-day vision quest, and taken the sweat lodge that must precede his speaking about his vision with her. Sunlight lanced in the doorway where he stood, awaiting her invitation.

      He was dressed now in a white cotton shirt, the long sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. The jeans he wore hugged his strong, powerful body. Agnes was pleased to see that Chase wore the black buffalo horn choker around his thick neck, an abalone disk attached to it. She had given it to him as a departing gift when he was a young man about to go to West Point Military Academy.

      Chase’s military short black hair, still damp from the sweat, gleamed with blue highlights. He had obvious Indian features, a square face and high cheekbones, and a restless gaze constantly moving around to check out his territory. Golden cougar eyes. Agnes was pleased with Chase’s alertness. It was what had kept him alive during his years in Delta Force.

      Turning to prop the door open to welcome in the morning air, Chase smelled the wonderful fragrance of sage. He knew that each morning, as the sun rose, Grandmother lit the sage in a rainbow-colored abalone shell, stood in her doorway and sang the sun up. The white smoke was healing and uplifting in a spiritual sense. It got one clean and in harmony for the coming day.

      “Come sit.” Agnes gestured for her tall, well-built young man to sit on a red-black-and-white wool rug she had woven fifty years earlier. She watched as Chase moved with the boneless grace of a cougar to settle opposite her, legs crossed. She accepted the dried, wrapped bundle of sage that he handed her. That was a sacred calling card, regardless of nation—a gift of sacred sage from one party to another. It was a sign of respect.

      Searching Chase’s eyes, Agnes saw that the four days of the vision quest had exhausted him. But that was the point of a quest: to wear down the physical body and mind enough so that the Great Spirit could talk to the supplicant’s heart in dream language.

      When Agnes handed him a cup of steaming sage tea in a chipped blue pottery mug, he took it with a slight nod of his head. Chase had not eaten nor drunk anything in four days. Agnes watched as pleasure wreathed his coppery face, his eyes closing slightly as he sipped the fragrant, life-infusing tea. Sage cleansed a person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It was one of the most powerful members of the plant kingdom.

      “This hits the spot, Grandmother,” Chase growled. “Thank you.” He savored the medicinal taste as the tea trickled down his gullet into his shrunken stomach and brought him back to life.

      Pleased, Agnes lifted a beat-up copper teakettle and placed it nearby so that Chase could drink all he wanted. A person coming off a vision quest was dehydrated, no question. And sage tea was the perfect way to replace lost fluids. “I’m glad.”

      Without hesitation, Chase drank two more cups of the tepid tea. After pouring a fourth cup, he looked over at the aged woman, whose shoulders were drawn back with unconscious pride. “I’ve missed sage tea,” he admitted, his voice raspy. “I’ve missed a lot, I think.”

      Even in her nineties, Agnes Spider Woman was beautiful. Elegant. Chase wondered if he’d ever find a woman who had these inner qualities that shone through like sunlight, as they did in Agnes. At thirty years of age, he had given up hope of finding such a woman, convinced he had only bad luck with the opposite sex.

      “You СКАЧАТЬ