HE WHO EATS THE FLESH OF MAN_PART 3 OF 7_THE COLOR OF HER THOUGHTS

{The last Lakota Shaman, Wolf Howl,

has helped a young white girl survive a bus accident that was no accident.

Going back into the smoldering remains of the vehicle,

Wolf Howl discovers the Mossad agent who has been hunting him ....}

Shadow did the impossible and smiled even sadder. "Oh, Drew, don't tell me you've been quoting Yeats to her?"

I walked to her side and kneeled next to her, and her smile seemed a raw wound as she husked, "Come, give a girl a kiss."

We kissed. Her lips parted. Mine met hers.

And it was all I remembered from so long ago. It was a fire, an all consuming passion of fused spirits. It tingled with icy needles.

Only part of the tingle was from the poison on her lips.

I eased back, tweaking her nose. "Lethal lipstick you have on. Pity no venom on earth can hurt me."

Abby's mouth dropped. "What's with you, lady? He loves you for God's sake."

Shadow's face hardened. "Not for God's sake, but for the world's, Drew must die. And only those he cares for can get close enough to kill him."

Abby sputtered, "Ha-Have you seen what he can do, lady?"

"It is not his power for which he must die, but for the insanity driving that power."

Shadow cocked a brow. "Has he talked to you of his GrandMother yet?"

Abby backed up a step. "You're gonna kill him because of his relatives? Jeez, lady, you're the one who's nuts."

I ruffled Abby's blond mop. "The ancient Greeks called her Gaia. The Navaho call her Estanatlehi, The Turquoise Woman. I call her GrandMother."

And with my naming her, she laughed with a crackle of fierce lightning, and Abby glanced up, slowly nodded, and even more slowly stretched out,

"O.K."

"What?," exclaimed Shadow. "You believe him?"

"Hey, lady, with what I've seen, I'm willing to go on a little faith here."

And because she gave me the courtesy of willingness to believe, I explained, "Abby, you've heard about the electro-magnetic field around the earth, haven't you?"

"Yeah, in science class."

"Well, somehow over the eons that field gained self-awareness."

"You're shitting me!"

I smiled. "No, I am not 'shitting' you. But, though GrandMother has never told me this, I believe it took the birth of the species of Man before she could grow into more than a sense of being."

Now, I even had Shadow's attention as she murmured, "Why?"

"Language. GrandMother was aware, but it took her listening, then comprending Man's language before she, too, could put into focus her awareness."

I shrugged. "When that happened, given her unique perspective on all living on and within her body and the vast cosmos that lay beyond it, she far surpassed Man's limited, stunted view of reality."

Abby's lips turned ugly. "I know what's real, alright."

I shook my head. "Our minds only allow to filter through what is understood and believed.

Language can only put into words that which the mind has experienced or reasoned. How can we comprehend that which we have never seen or even guessed?"

I quoted from Walden again, "Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

Shadow husked, "The universe is indeed wider than our views of it. Your delusion has made you a sweet mystic. If only you possessed no power, I would let you live."

"We Lakota hear that a lot."

"You have no People!," cried Larry from behind us.

Abby made a face. "And I hear that a lot."

I stroked Shadow's face. "I'll free you if you promise to stop trying to kill me until I can show you some false teeth."

She laughed in a velvet splash of sound. "How could a girl resist an offer like that?"

Abby glowered at her. "You must be a red princess."

"Actually, I am more dangerous than that. I am Jewish."

"Me, too."

"I rest my case."

I made a lever of my Orenda and pried the twisted seat from her, and Larry called out, "Hey, you gonna free me, too?"

I turned. "No. Company's coming over for a bite. Thought you'd make a good appetizer."

"Go to Hell!"

"You first."

Shadow studied me for a long moment. "I told them that you were making this too easy. Americans. They never listen. Not even you."

"I listen to the voices in the wind."

"In your head, you mean."

I ignored her and led her and Abby past the moaning passengers yet alive. Sylvia was nowhere to be seen. Some begged me to help. I ignored them as well.

Abby whispered, "Aren't you gonna help them?"

"I am not a priest or a psychiatrist."

"That's supposed to tell me something, right?"

"The color of their thoughts is death."

She paled. "You can read thoughts?"

"I am not a Peeping Tom. I limit myself to observing the colors of thoughts, not their substance."

She looked at me. "What colors are your GrandMother's thoughts?"

"The colors of her thoughts are the Northern Lights."

"Well, whoop-de-doo for her. What about mine?"

I mussed her hair sadly. "They could use some scrubbing."

"Says you."

We passed the returning soldier. I sighed. He had survived Iraq, only to die on a "safe" bus ride. There was a life lesson there if I cared to look deep enough. I didn't.

We had reached the bus driver, impaled on the steering column. Abby made a face as she stared at the slumped body. I hated to expose her to this, but there was no choice.

She said low, "She was always nice to me."

I kneeled down next to the black woman and parted her lips. "That might have ended if she had ever invited you over ..."

I flicked off the false teeth she wore to reveal the filed sharp needles under them. " ... for a bite."

Abby scuttled back so fast she fell on her butt. "Shit!"

Shadow muttered, "But she was on the team."

"Just not yours. She was ... co-opted by those killers up the mountain when they tricked her with their phony detour some months back. Got her to like the taste of human flesh, the thrill of the hunt."

I shook my head. "Today, she wasn't tricked by the detour. She was part of it."

Shadow murmured, "I wondered why she did not call ahead when she took that detour."

I raised an eyebrow. "Your own detour was thirty miles from here. Going to take the rest of your team some time to notice we're not coming and back track."

Abby husked, "We're on our own."

She jerked as a wolf howled much too close for comfort. A two legged wolf. Another far to his right answered him, closer still.

Abby cleared her throat. "Relatives of yours?"

I tapped the filed teeth of the dead bus driver. "Her pack. And they sound hungry."

Shadow's eyes narrowed into slits. "You knew about them."

"Yes."

"You led us to this damn mountain on purpose."

"Yes."

"Why, damn it?"

"You folks want to kill so bad, thought I'd give you targets worth the killing."

"How did you know about these filthy cannibals?"

"GrandMother."

I ignored Shadow's rolling eyes. "She doesn't much care when we eat our own through war or politics. But the real thing releases the spirit of the Wendigo."

"I do not believe in the supernatural."

"And GrandMother wants you and the rest of your civilized brethren to keep on thinking that. The moment you suspect her existence, you will never stop hounding her, trying to exploit her, and ultimately destroying her."

I made a face. "It is what the White Man does best. So she asked me to stop these predators and the unclean spirit of Wendigo that they have given birth to. Stop them before the White Man takes notice of them ... and of her."

Abby frowned. "Wendigo?"

"From the Cree word Witiku, he who eats the flesh of Man."

Larry snorted, "You're nuts. There ain't no such mon ...."

A howl that grated on the marrow of my bones shrilled from far up the mountain. It scaled high, husky yet taunt with hunger.

Undying hunger.

Seconds later it sounded much closer. Three wolf howls peppered uncertainly right afterwards. The hunters were beginning to suspect that they might have become the hunted.

I blew out my cheeks. "The two-leggeds have it all wrong. It is not the cannibal who becomes the Wendigo. Their victims' rage and fear give birth to it."

Shadow sneered, "Superstition."

"No. I stumbled onto one long ago. Mists of crystalized breath snorting in front of its face, black with frostbite, the furred creature was bent over in hunger pains, vomiting ice."

Abby, eyes wide, whispered, "Ice?"

I nodded. "Yes. Ice. Its very heart is ice, which, of course, is its one weakness."

Abby rasped, "But you killed it, right?"

"Yes. But it was a near thing. And I was younger then. Which is why I needed these government killers to act as a diversion."

I remembered the bus driver's words. "But these human cannibals got too greedy and peppered the road with too many tire-busters. Now, Shadow, it's up to just you and me."

She snorted, "What do you mean we, red face?"
***