well, that’s reasonable, I guess, considering the fact that no one in your tribe would be putting together a telephone book.”
“Pardon me?”
“Never mind. Dakota, this is not 1877. It’s 125 years later than that, give or take a handful.”
“That is ridiculous.”
“I know, but for now we’re pretending that it isn’t ridiculous. Okay? Do you remember what you were doing before you woke up here?”
He nodded. “I was riding my horse on open land. There were wildflowers in all directions. My thoughts were—” He stopped speaking and frowned. “An Indian brave deals with his own problems, solves them privately.”
“Dakota, please,” Kathy said gently, “I understand and respect that, I truly do, because I often keep troubling things within myself, too. But this is so important. Share with me, tell me what you were thinking as you rode through the wildflowers. Your inner feelings are safe with me, Dakota.”
He stared at her for a long moment, and she met his gaze directly, aware that he was weighing and measuring, deciding if he would do as she’d asked.
“Yes, all right,” he said with a weary-sounding sigh. “I was dwelling on the condition of my life, the emptiness of it, the loneliness. My people have all gone to the reservation, but I chose not to go, not to be penned up like an animal. I could not survive like that, and I knew I had to stay behind. Yet at that moment, I was wishing I had a place to belong, somewhere I could call home.”
“Oh, Dakota,” Kathy said, hearing the pain in his voice, “I’m so sorry.”
He cleared his throat. “My thoughts were interrupted as I saw a woman standing in the distance. A white woman. I did not know her, but then…I did know her. I was going to her, she was waiting for me. This does not make sense, because I would never approach a white woman.”
Kathy got to her feet. “Yes, it does make sense, because that was my dream. Oh, my gosh, Dakota, don’t you see what this means? I somehow connected to your airwaves, or brain waves, or something. That was me standing there in that yellow dress. Do you understand?”
“Then you did tamper with the powers of the Dream Catcher.”
“Not intentionally. I bought it at a craft show because I thought it was pretty and I liked the legend it represented. Dakota, I hate to say this, but I think we’d better start accepting the fact that you really were transported through time in the Dream Catcher.”
“I do not know, I just do not know. How is it that you speak Apache?”
“I don’t. I’m speaking English and so are you.”
“No. I know only my native tongue.”
Kathy threw up her hands. “This is more evidence that this whole thing is true. We’re both talking in our own language, but we can understand each other. That must be part of the Dream Catcher’s power.”
“I will have to think about this,” Dakota said, shaking his head. “I speak so you can understand me in this era, yet I wear my own clothing.” His gaze slid over the soft T-shirt Kathy wore. It clearly outlined the swell of her breasts. “Is that your usual attire? Is that an image of the god you worship?”
For the first time since the bizarre beginning of the morning, Kathy became acutely aware of her scanty attire. The Indian’s dark eyes seemed to be peering through her shirt, scrutinizing her bare breasts beneath.
She could feel the heat from his penetrating gaze. It touched a place deep and low within her, churning, swirling, causing a flush to stain her cheeks. She was pinned in place, unable to move, having to remind herself to breathe.
This man, she thought hazily, was real. He was there. Denying his existence was foolhardy. There was no lingering doubt in her mind that he had been flung through time and space to arrive in the present from the past.
She had somehow managed to dream about a living, human being, rather than a creation of her imagination. The potent powers of the Dream Catcher had then captured him and brought him to her.
But why?
The magnitude of what had taken place was too enormous, too overwhelming, to be chalked up to some weird cosmic glitch.
Why had this happened to her and Dakota?
“Kathy?”
“What? Oh, my clothes. I don’t go outside like this. I wear this to sleep in, that’s all.”
“And that image? Is that who you worship?”
“Heavens no,” she said. “That’s Mickey. He’s not a god, he’s a mouse.” She paused. “Dakota, the only way that I can deal with all of this is to accept the facts as they stand and give it all a semblance of reality, even if it’s not reasonable reality. Oh, dear, I’m not making sense. What I’m saying is, until I have just cause to change my mind, I’m going to believe you were transported from 1877 to now through the Dream Catcher.”
“You have the right to do what you wish.”
“And you? What do you believe is happening here?”
Dakota sighed. “I do not want to believe it. There’s no purpose to my being here. Yes, I was feeling lonely, alone, but there’s no life for me here in the future, in the white man’s world. I do not belong here, Kathy.”
“We don’t know that, Dakota. If we accept this scenario as being the truth, as being what actually happened, then we have to move on to the question of why it occurred.”
“The why is because you tampered with the powers of the Dream Catcher. The question is not why, it is how. How do we send me back to my own time? I don’t want to be here, Kathy, and I have no intention of staying.”
“Dakota,” she said quietly, “maybe there is something important that you’re supposed to do here. Yes, all right, to be fair to you we should be trying to figure out how to send you back. But I truly believe we should also be considering the question of why you are here, what it all means.”
“Mmm,” he said, frowning.
“Will you think about both issues? Please, Dakota?”
He stared at her for a long moment before answering.
“Yes,” he said finally, “I will think about both. That will enable me to postpone, at least for a while, the bleak thought that we may never know the answer to either of those questions. We may never know.”
Why?
The question beat against Kathy in time with the water from the shower.
Perhaps she was placing too much emphasis on that question, adding to the situation further complexity that didn’t need to be there.
It
