had seen them.
There had been awful moments when he had felt sheer terror. He had seen the soldiers and the warriors. Heard the savage war cries. The shouts of the cavalry.
The cries for mercy.
He had seen the agony and fear, tasted the acrid scent of gunpowder.
He had kept silent, had not corrected the tour guide. It would be wrong for a little boy to correct his elders, even though he knew what they did not. He had listened to the tours; he had gone to the encampments. He had sat with his grandfather in a sweat lodge, and the old men and the younger ones had discussed how Custer’s last stand had in reality been the last stand of the American Indian.
Later his grandfather had talked to him. He had known.
“It’s all right,” he had assured him. “It’s all right.”
“Is it because I’m a quarter Indian?” he had asked.
And his grandfather had taken him into his arms. “Well, boy, I don’t know. Your mom, now, she was what they called a truly lovely lass from the old country. And her people are known for being what they call a bit ‘fey.’ What matters is that you have a gift, and you have it for a reason. Perhaps in time you’ll see that it’s not frightening, and you’ll know why it’s been given to you. And that it’s good.”
Sometimes, he still wondered when the “good” would kick in. He had learned to use it, just as a policeman learned to use his weapon. There were times when he knew that his help changed lives, even made them bearable again.
But as for himself…
In the dream, he groaned.
It’s time again, his grandfather told him.
I know, he replied. I’ve felt it coming.
His grandfather nodded.
So they stood together again in that valley near the Black Hills, and the mist began to swirl around them.
Those who thought that native peoples were stoic, that they did not show their emotions, were wrong. He felt, in the deep recesses of the dream, the love that came to him through time, through space. Through the darkest boundary of death.
He woke. And when he did, he sighed, looking at the rays of sun that streaked through his bedroom window.
Nothing to do about it. Go along with his life as it had been planned.
When he was needed, Adam would find him.
Nikki awoke in the morning, feeling oddly exhausted.
She felt as if she had barely slept at all, and she knew it was because she had tossed and turned in a series of weird nightmares.
She couldn’t remember her dreams; she just had the lingering sense of having spent the night in a whirl of very strange sensation. It left her with an odd feeling.
A foreboding.
Oh, man!
She tried to shake it off. It was a beautiful morning. The sun…she could just see it peeking in through her drapes.
She rose, thinking it must have been the conversation with Mrs. Montobello and then Contessa’s reading.
This sense of unease wasn’t something she usually felt. Even when the “ghosts” were around. The ghosts were benign…faint indentations upon the present that simply lingered. There was a sweet nostalgia to what she saw and felt, something that made her feel even more affectionate toward her home, reassured her that New Orleans was special.
But there had been something about the dreams last night. Something…
Something that was malignant rather than benign.
Something that seemed to be a warning.
“Hey, it’s a beautiful day,” she said aloud, and went into the bathroom, where she splashed her face with cold water.
Suddenly she was afraid to look up. Afraid to look in the mirror above the sink. If she looked into the mirror…
Would someone else be looking back at her?
She had to look up, of course. She couldn’t remain in her bathroom forever, bent over the sink.
She looked up. And felt like a fool. There was nothing there but her own reflection.
She gave herself a shake, got ready quickly and left the house.
And still…
That sense of foreboding clung to her, like a gray mist, damp and chill against her flesh.
3
“At first man wandered the earth with little thought as to the great beyond, to right or wrong, and the way that he should live. Then came the White Buffalo Woman. Two hunters were out one day, and she appeared. She was very beautiful, dressed in white skins, and she carried something in a pack that she wore on her back. Now, when I say beautiful, she was stunning. And one of the hunters thought, ‘Hmm, now there’s a woman I would like to have in my tepee,’” Brent Blackhawk said, scanning the eyes of his audience.
“Have in his tepee?” one of the older boys teased lightly.
“Do you mean date?” asked one of the girls.
“Something like that,” Brent said dryly. “But, you see, she was the White Buffalo Woman, and not to be taken lightly. She saw that the hunter had designs on her, so she crooked her finger toward him, and thinking himself the big and mighty hunter and warrior, he approached her. But as he did so, white fog rolled out around the both of them. And when it dissipated, the great and mighty warrior had been turned to bone. And as the bones fell to the earth, they were covered with snakes that writhed and crawled among them.”
“Ugh!” cried one of the younger girls.
“What happened then?” asked the older boy who had heckled him before.
“Ah, well, the other hunter was naturally amazed—and more than a little afraid. But the woman told him to hurry to his village and tell the elders, chiefs, shamans and all the people that she was coming, and that she had a message to give that all must heed. The hunter hurried to the village and relayed his story, and everyone—from the great chief to the smallest child—dressed in his and her best and gathered in the great tepee as if for a council, and awaited her. She came, beautiful in her white, carrying the bundle that she had previously worn on her back.”
“And what then?” asked a boy of about eleven.
“First she took a stone from the bundle and set it on the ground. Then she took out a pipe. It had a red stone bowl, the color of the earth, and she said that it stood for the earth. There was a calf carved upon it, and the carving stood not just for the calf but for all the creatures that walked the earth. The stem of the pipe was wood, and that stood for all things that grew. There were beautiful feathers attached to the pipe, and they stood not just for the hawks
